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Proclaiming April as Mental Health Month

If random people can proclaim months for different things then I should be able to as well. There’s no better month to dedicate to increasing awareness and removing stigma from our mental health problems (we all have them, don’t pretend you don’t). I mean, April Fool’s Day? What the fuck is up with that?

Maybe this will be the month that I re-watch the entire Mr. Robot series, again. One of the best series on mental health and trauma ever created.

The longer I’m on Twitch (no, not the crazier I am getting, although feels like it sometimes) the more I realize that there are a lot of people struggling in silence with different mental health issues, and they have really talked about them semi-openly on stream.

Even though dumb-shit, morally bankrupt, people have launched Twitter attacks against me — calling me “unhinged” and comparing me to Terry — the fact is that I don’t mind sharing my personal struggle with mental illness. It has been a big part of my entire family history. One family member, running down the highway naked, was tackled by a police officer. They straight-jacketed her. But they are an amazing person. Same thing happened to another family member who was in Insulin shock. Another immediate family member tried to take her own life. Several others were sexually abused. One of my extended family is manic-depressive. I have two Autistic sons (one mine, one from marriage). Others struggled with ADHD. One developed a permanent tick from the shitty meds his school-teachers put him on. One of my close-extended family sucked on an exhaust pipe to kill herself “faster”. One close-family member, given up for adoption at seven years old, invented an entire story for her “real” parents and actually believed it. It’s horrible to recount. All these people are (and were) fucking amazing human beings who were never defined by their breaks, but by all the other substantial things they brought into the world, including me, as fucked up as I am.

The perception managing assholes pretending to be perfect and dishing out advice and condescension as if they represent the moral majority can go fuck themselves with their shriveled cognitive-Dunning-Krueger-dissonance brains. I know they are just as sick as the narcissists and should love them anyway, but fuck ‘em, along with the “bullies” who are some of the most fucked up people on the mental health spectrum of diseases. I don’t mind having a preference.

The rest of us admit that we all have something to work on with regard to our mental health. And why wouldn’t me, mental health is physical and our physical health needs just as much attention as anything. Pretending you don’t have some work to do on your mental health is like being a cross-fit Nazi with great abs full of toxins because you haven’t let your body heal, and just keep “pushing through”, fighting your own body into submission, until you have toxic renal failure (yeah, look it up, it’s a thing).

So April is now “mental health” month. even if there is already another one officially, which I haven’t even bothered to look up. April is my month for mental health reflection and reconnecting with nature during the Spring. I feel better already.

#mentalhealth #wellness