Anything that reminds me of those experiences encourages the demons to come forwards, and it often takes all my energy to hold them back until they relent. And they do relent. It is possible for me to put them in their place and to live life just as me, without my demons. But to bounce back from a time when they got the better of me, from a time they have ruled my life, it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Sometimes it feels like a constant fight. I am told that one approach to recovery is to stop fighting. Yet to stop fighting means to fight against the urge to fight. There is no easy way for me to recover and live the life I want to, and it will take time. It might take weeks, months, or even years. No-one can know how long it will take. Matters of the brain and mind are complex. All I can do is keep trying. Some days will be better than others.
My mental illnesses do not care for social or personal etiquette or for what I want. They are selfish and they want to be an entity in themselves, to exert themselves vicariously through my body. They demand to be heard and to have control over my mind. They do not like to be ignored. The level of truth in this is disputed by some who have recovered and others who claim to be experts in the field of mental health; they state that your mental illness is never your identity. They might say that what I am saying in this letter [that my behavior implies a lack of control or will to overcome, that my mental illness has any identity] is taking a “victim attitude”, which is not conducive to recovery. The reality is that accepting your boundaries and working with them and explaining them to those you love is not the same as acting like a victim of your own mind. To act like a victim would be suggested by something more along the lines of the abdication of all responsibility of illness and recovery and disregard for any understanding, or attempted understanding, of the
