One of the biggest problems behind mental challenges is the stigma in revealing them. It’s a very deep secret of mine but some people do notice that something is wrong with me: constantly zoning out, having to leave suddenly, reacting to things that aren’t there and just a general look of being in some imaginary pain.

It’s honestly something I have to reveal to others sometimes, because I’m not the only who has to cope with it. I can’t spend a life’s worth of lying to my family or a potential significant other as it’s really obvious I’m flawed in some really strange way.

Most people don’t know what the diagnosis means. It’s a handful to pronounce and even some spell checkers fail on the diagnosis title. It scares them and makes them think that I’m crazy. I experience so many strange things and often I can’t describe it to anyone. However, I will eventually write about what it feels like for the healthy person.

All I can say is I feel tired and other to those who don’t know what I’m hiding. Honestly, I don’t need recreational drugs to feel these odd experiences and only those like me can understand what it truly feels like and how terrifying it is.

My condition is chronic. I take over 20 pills a day. I’m doing extensive psychotherapy. I’ve developed my own coping mechanisms. All that so I can live a ‘normal’ life but I know I’ll never feel like everyone else. I feel numb, medicated and essentially living a second life.

I’ve learned to be mindful about what I have. It pains me everyday but you learn to numb it with medication, psychotherapy techniques and coping mechanisms. It’s a daily fight and sometimes you just have to give up and stay home with the wild world you’re experiencing.

Three months ago, May 8, 2020, marks the ten year anniversary of my condition. Back then, I experienced my first hallucinations and entered my first bipolar depression episode. It’s an anniversary for me, that I spend in tears to be honest every year.

However, don’t let you think that doesn’t mean I can’t perform at work, or appear normal. Many who will meet me will never guess that I have a broken brain, one with too much dopamine and not enough serotonin.

Often, all I can reveal safely i that I have a disability and end it there. To my future employers, friends and family, don’t be scared of a diagnosis you don’t understand. So many of us living with second lives with diagnoses with unpronounceable names.

What I have is like diabetes or multiple sclerosis, expect it’s invisible. I suffer in silence, completely quiet about my next episode or painful hallucination. I have to smuggle medication that I need to take during the day. Often, I’m hiding in some secluded room taking the pills without water.

To those who are going to judge me and decide to pick me for something, no I’m not ‘normal’. But that doesn’t mean I can offer what other people can. I’m reliable, I can perform, I can do what others can. Chronic mental conditions can never be ‘treated’, but they can be managed and under control.

Give me a chance to complain and take days off even if it’s at my own cost. Let me live with my enemy and stop treating me as high maintenance.