11.17.99

I was still feeling all boiled up today. I didn't do a very good job at shrugging yesterday off. It's been so long since someone looked at me as my illness and not as a person. I don't know. I spend so much time convincing myself that this bipolar thing is just a "thing," nothing to make a fuss about - somewhere on the level of a common cold. And most of time, for me, it works. I can live my life without constantly worrying about this but it only takes one person (or a few...) to suddenly bring it back to the "OH MY GOD !!!!!" level.

I talked to the therapist in charge of my practical today (the one from my college, not the one from the hospital) trying to figure out how to deal with this. I will have a talk with the hospital therapist and hopefully end this unpleasantment so I can get to the real work. I can't afford this. Doing the practical is important - but not at the cost of losing it myself. I am sure that if we can get past this stage, it will work out. I just can't stand getting the "you are mentally ill, so you are not a real person" reactions.

The fact that even though I make appointments and keep them, the shrinks feel they can show up whenever they want. And it wasn't just my shrink last month, but also the guy at the hospital. We agreed on 08:00 and since the hospital isn't really close to where I live I woke up quite early to keep it. He showed up at 8:40 and then had other things to do so I "got" to talk to him around 09:00. At first, I thought he forgot about it, but no, he just didn't give a damn. When I asked him about it, he just smiled at me. I wasn't even worth the answer. I don't know about you, but it really pissed me off, and that was before the "are you in for a session" part.

He wasn't the only one. When I came in looking for him, there was a psych sitting there, so I asked her if she had seen the shrink. She ignored me, like I wasn't there. So I asked again. Still no answer. Then I tried a different approach. I said " hi I'm from the college, I'm doing my practical here and I'm supposed to meat with Dr ____". What do you know? It worked! She was really nice and forthcoming. The scary part was that she said she was new there. I thought that this kind of attitude comes from washed-out psyche not people who are new to this. They're supposed to be the caring ones - the ones that still give a damn. I hate to think about this one at 10 years from now.

What I'm trying to say is, that after I've been disconnected from these sort of things for so long, finding myself at that spot where I'm looked upon as subhuman has been painful. And they are wondering why I'm not happy to comply with my treatment. When you feel that the people who are supposed to help you are a bunch of jerks, then you sure as hell ain't going to cooperate with them. It's time people stand up and say: I'm not taking this.

I walked out on my shrink last time because I felt I shouldn't have to wait more that an hour for a meeting scheduled a moth-and-a-half before, and I'll do it again. I am me - Trillian. I am a person. A real one. And its high time they get that.

Trillian

"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk?
but, can they suffer?"
~ Jeremy Bentham ~

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