A few months ago, one of my friends asked me, "So does it bother you when people use the term 'bipolar' casually?" I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Well, like when Katy Perry sings 'Got a case of a love bipolar', does that bother you?" Well, at the time I said no, but now I'm rethinking my answer.
Lately I've been noticing a lot of people loosely throwing around the term "bipolar". I had a neighbor call someone he didn't like bipolar. I had a banker tell me "everyone's bipolar". I was searching for blogs by bipolar people and came up with a whole bunch of blogs casually mentioning the word "bipolar" without having a clue what it meant. And, the one that made me feel the worst; I found a blog by an actual bipolar guy who's symptoms are managed by low dosages of two medicines. (I take high dosages of 3 medicines and my symptoms still aren't managed.)
The one that made me the most angry, though, was the banker telling me everyone's bipolar. I have had horrible experiences in my life of people saying that everyone has the same problems I have. Usually this consists of someone saying, "I have experienced what you're going through, and it's not that bad." In high school some of my classmates took this a step further and said, "I'm handling the same problems just fine, you need to try harder." If you want to crush my heart, tell me I'm just not trying hard enough. I hate it when someone says that everyone has my problems because it makes me feel like I shouldn't be struggling because everyone else is fine.
The fact is that I have some very real problems that I'm really struggling with. I'm sure some people truly understand and I know some people have it worse that I do, but that doesn't mean everyone gets it. You know what? As much as it bugs me to have people misuse "bipolar", I would let everyone misuse it every day if it meant I felt like someone actually understood me and what it means for me to be bipolar.
I've heard that song DOZENS of times and just thought it was lame. But just yesterday, I wondered the same thing about the casual use of that term. Then, as usual, I questioned whether or not I was making something out of nothing and looking for something to bitch about when it wasn't there. I'm often accused of this.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm really relieved to find that I'm not the only person to which that's occurred.