![]() ![]() I was no stranger to mental illness before this year-I’ve had waxing and waning OCD since my early teens, as well as what I now recognize as a few bouts of mild depression in the past-but I was entirely unprepared for how painful more severe depression would be. That, at least, is what depression has been like for me. And when you don’t, it just exacerbates what is already an isolating experience-being trapped inside a mind that’s already screaming at you that you’re different, freakish, and bad. Which is tricky, because you may or may not recognize yourself in the official psychological lexicon. Mental illness typically doesn’t leave physical traces that can be measured or examined its only symptoms are thoughts, feelings, and (sometimes) odd behavior-the kinds of things patients themselves have to identify and report. Mental illness is strange, because it’s both completely subjective and (in my experience) totally predictable. This wasn’t reading a story I could empathize with this was reading my own story. I’m an emotional reader anyway-the kind who projects herself into books and uses books to understand herself-but I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything where the identification was so immediate. It can’t be-the subject matter is just too personal. This isn’t a book review in the usual sense. ![]()
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