Crazy

I hate seeing people brag about being crazy, this ranges from people claiming to be bipolar or to have some low grade autism spectrum disorder and acting like it is some sort of superpower. To people who really mean they are wacky, or possibly assholes who have no intention of moderating their behavior.

The thing about actually being insane, is that it really isn't a lot of fun, my own brushes with depression give me the very faintest idea of what that means, and watching my friends and family who deal daily with very real, severe problems drives home the issue in a very real way. I have a brother in the state hospital in Salem, on his best days he is very obviously unable to interact with the real world consistently, and he knows it, he hates it, and he can do nothing about it.

I realize most people use crazy as a synonym for wacky, and indeed crazy isn't usually the right word to describe someone with real mental health problems, it's insulting at the very least, but it still bugs me when they use it. Obviously I am not going to stop anyone from doing so, but I can at least complain about it here.

What I do want people to stop is thinking that autism spectrum an bipolar disorders come with superpowers, now I don't see this often in the real world, usually it comes up on the internet, although I did get a coworker a couple months ago who did try.
The story goes in one of two ways "My ____(Fill in disorder of choice) means I am totally smarter than the average person", or "I am insulting you because I have Asperger's, no I will not attempt to stop."

There is a narrative that genius goes hand in hand with madness, and while it is true there is a correlation, you know what also correlates with madness? Every goddamn thing else, stupid people have mental illnesses, smart people have them, average people have them, men do, women do, creative people do, literal minded blue collar workers do, liberals, conservatives, whatever.

The only thing in common I have noticed in the people I know with mental illnesses is they don't want to have it. Why should they? It sucks! Their brains tell them on a daily basis that they should believe things that are not real, those things range from telling them they don't deserve happiness, all the way to "I am literally a vampire".

When people claim mental illness when they don't have it, an especially if they treat it like something that isn't a problem, they dilute the message that it is an illness that needs and deserves treatment, and that should be taken seriously, it tells people who are actually suffering with a disease that there is something else specifically wrong with them that means they can't handle being different.

Anyway, that is what is on my mind today, gonna go binge watch TV and eat junk food until I have to go to work tomorrow.