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Sometimes living with a mental illness feels as though you’re in a time machine where you spontaneously revert to the exact emotions that paralyzed you as a child. Sometimes it’s like being in jail because no matter how much encouragement you get or money you have you are locked out of the perimeter of joy.

The good things about the people I know who are classified as mentally ill are:

1. Generally they have purity of intention;

2. Because they’ve been in the depths of despair so many times or for so long they treasure simple things like pretty weather and the ice cream truck song and;

3. They have an ease in forming friendships and a playfulness inside them that most “normal” people wish they could learn again.

Really mental illness is a way of locking out the parts of life that we are allergic to. It’s a spectrum of defense mechanisms that secure us from experiencing things that were going to destroy our innocence and ease of humanity.

The truth is that lots of mentally ill people are incredibly sensitive and they just want to experience the good things about being alive, but they become easily sickened when made to abide by the ruthless, rigid laws of political, educational and other societal systems that separate people from one human family and divide them into classes.

Most people who have been classified as mentally ill are ruled by creative tendencies instead of piles of rules that “normal” people have conformed to in order to reach the classification of “successful” by society. Often people who have been diagnosed as mentally ill have a lot less difficulty listening to the hardships of another person without being judgmental. Mental illness is often an automatic teacher of compassion.

Mental illness is like looking at life through eyes that are not just able to interpret color and shapes and textures, but the very depths of things. All the things that we wish we didn’t see. Sometimes inside a person’s eyes can be so deep they themselves can drown inside. It’s like living in an ocean without being able to breathe underwater. Sometimes, there are the pale turquoise colors and the shimmering schools of fish passing by in synchronicity that surpass the best ballet choreography. Sometimes you’re hiding behind a little rock and there’s a huge octopus waiting only inches away who’s watching for the chance to eat. While you’re waiting for him to go away you feel the ripples he makes under the water while he breathes. Sometimes you pass by a shipwreck and you see keepsakes of souls that perished there and it stays with you clinking into the ears of your heart as you try to swim away to a better place.

Mental illness is knowing too much not too little. It’s not that people here don’t understand. It’s that they understand way too much and that they’re breaking inside because they see so far into what’s real.