Jo Roberts

I am a Person. I am not A Statistic.

Luis Buñuel — filmmaker, revolutionary, leader of the early 20th century surrealist movement — comments in his autobiography, My Last Sigh, that

(Side note: My Last Sigh is one of my favorite books ever, so, while it's sometimes difficult to find I encourage you read it if you can ever get your hands on a copy.)

I preface this series of stories, essays, and oh-so-personal glimpses beneath the curtain as such because I am well aware that  — especially as the years go on — memories fade, forgotten details are filled in by assumptions, by imaginations. It's not that I intend to lie; it's just a refection of the human condition (which is why eye-witness testimony is now precarious in legal proceedings).

But here are some absolute truths that I know:

In April 2000 I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

I was working my way up the corporate ladder at a dot-com startup. Three promotions in less than 18 months. The future should have been bright. 

Instead, I fell into an abyss. A dark hole in the Earth that had opened beneath my feet. Swallowed me whole. Unexpectedly. And yet ... not.

Most teenagers don't want to admit they're not ok. They are invincible creatures of limitless wisdom. Even in the angst of hormones and peer pressure, fighting the man oft becomes more important. Pushing boundaries. Getting the hell out of dodge because that is your savior. If only you can flee from the problems of youth, you have the potential of running fast enough to free yourself from their shackles forever.

But it never works that way.

Author Stephen King said of teenage years, "If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you." I always thought I was alone in this. Come to find out, for this, at least, I was in the norm.

And for me, the so-called typical teen angst belied the fact that those crushing fears of adulthood — the crying, the utter sadness, the inability to get out of bed, to care — were indicative of larger problems I faced.

Not so normal after all.

Not low self esteem, the end-all, be-all of high school mental health education. That now seems laughable in comparison. And tragic in how no adult bothered to consider it could be anything else. Not school administrators. Not doctors. Not my mother (who had her own demons to fight). No one.

But in some ways I can forgive them, if only a little. Serious metal illness ... that's neither an easy diagnosis nor an easy fix. Not something you can fake your way out of by just picking the too-obvious answers on this year's self esteem warning signs questionnaire. 

And you can't fake your way through treatment. (Trust me: I've tried.) The long-term, sometimes futile feeling, side-effect ridden treatment. But treatment that can provide a freedom that fleeing — and hiding — can't. If you can only get there.

You will never be the same. You will emerge a better, stronger, you. This is not my mantra; this is my advice to you.

These are my stories. My battles. Plunges over the edge. My long-term triumphs. Fleeting successes. All the demons I can't exhale, I can't force from my head. And as my imagination and my dreams have begun to fill in the holes in my reality I can make of them begrudging allies.

I'm not a failure. I'm not a statistic. I'm a person.

A successful, ladder-climbing professional. With a cat and a dog and a husband. And, on most occasions, with terra firma beneath the soles of my feet.

A person much like someone you already know.