This post was written while thinking about this March mood. Forward it to the person you wouldn’t lie to if they asked how you are.
A few weeks ago, a friend and former coworker reached out and asked if I wanted to be on the TWLOHA podcast. They were planning an episode on bipolar disorder and, because they knew about my diagnosis and because I’ve talked about it publicly before, they wanted to see if I’d be up for the interview.
It was a funny, full-circle request given that I helped launch the podcast and worked on the first two seasons. I’m so proud of the content they’ve produced and the feedback they’ve received. But my gut reaction when I saw the invitation was an immediate, “Oh no, hell no, I can’t do that.”
My reaction surprised me. I worked for TWLOHA full-time for two years and then consulted for another 5 years or so. I’ve been talking and writing about mental health for the better part of a decade. I’d be talking with someone I know and trust and who would take care in helping me tell my story.
What was one more conversation? Well, according to stigma, it was everything.
I texted a few friends to ask if my concerns were legitimate. I’m lucky enough to be in a job that I don’t think I’m at risk of losing. I’m not a public figure with a platform that could be damaged—no brand deals to fall through, no fans to disappoint, etc.
Was it reasonable to worry that this one interview could have a negative impact on my life and career? Would that interview sit out there forever, waiting for someone to stumble across and define me by this thing outside of my control? By a part of my life I would cut out if I could?
Yes, because that’s how this works. I would talk and the episode would be produced and then it would be out there. Even in 2021 and with all the progress we’ve made since the TWLOHA story first went viral on MySpace in 2006, there is still a risk in telling your story and speaking honestly about mental illness. The nerves were warranted because the potential consequences were there.
Ultimately, after encouragement from friends, I agreed to do the podcast. I recorded the interview last week. When I finished, I was red-cheeked and sick to my stomach and thrilled that I got a Taylor Swift mention in while also being furious with myself that I didn’t bring up Carrie Fisher. The friend who interviewed me said he thought it was great and that I didn’t sound nervous at all. That’s pretty much all I could’ve hoped for.
I’m writing and sending this before it comes out because I’m probably not going to listen to it. It’s less about not standing by my words and more about the mortifying ordeal of listening to my own voice (Try it! Die a little inside!).
But it’s also because I wanted to write this before anyone had a chance to listen to it. I wanted to talk about stigma and how it’s still making me sick to my stomach and making it difficult to breathe days after the interview. I wanted to write in the gray space—before any potential backlash or disappointment, before any praise of bravery or honesty.
I was thinking about all of this when I came across Danez Smith’s* piece in GQ on the stigma of being HIV positive. And GOD did they blow me away.
“This was the summer of 2016, two years after I had tested positive for HIV at the Magic Johnson center, in Oakland. That day had felt like a wake—I remember my mother openly mourning in front of my face—and since then sex had been haunted for me, drained of romance, a negotiation at a death-marked market where pleasure felt accidental and undeserved. HIV was no longer a death sentence, they said, but what of the social loss, the sexual death?”
What of the social loss? What of the death that comes with a diagnosis that may take your life and will certainly complicate it on a level that feels so far beyond manageable?
“I learned what it was like to be “not someone's thing.” What it was like to be a thing. I felt starved for even “hey.” And I started to understand why some positive folks keep their status a secret. Being positive can feel like someone looked into your life and said, “You've been touched enough.” Stigma births a cancer on the soul. If the blood doesn't kill you, stigma will try.”
Every word they wrote is precise and the sentences are beautiful and sad and irreverent and hilarious, but it was that last line there that stood out to me: “If the blood doesn’t kill you, stigma will try.”
One of the main reasons I was hesitant to do the interview is because I’m not at a place where my illness is 100% managed. As I mentioned in the interview, I’m 1.5 years into trying to find a new medication to supplement the one I’ve been on for years. I’m not thriving (In this economy? During a pandemic? With a mental illness? It’s more likely than you think!). I was so, so worried that someone with my diagnosis would tune in—so eager to hear someone else’s perspective—and feel discouraged by where I’m at.
“It was the first time I ever talked about HIV without gesturing toward dark conclusions, a reminder to my then stigma-riddled mind that even within danger, there is room for pleasure.”
Dark conclusions. Stigma-riddled mind. We’re all up against so much when it comes to our various illnesses.
Ultimately, it was a friend’s late-night text that convinced me: Don’t underestimate how big of a deal survival is. Stigma hasn’t killed me yet, and that has to count for something.
I don’t know what the consequences of doing this episode will be. Catch me on the other side of the episode’s release and ask me if I regret it. Ask me years down the road.
But I do know that doing the interview was one small potential death blow to the stigma surrounding mental illness and bipolar disorder in particular, and that happened to be enough to convince me to spend an hour sweating and trying not to swear** while articulating my thoughts and feelings.
If you’re reading this, there’s likely a part of you that is holding tight to something secret and stigmatized. Whether that’s your sexuality or your diagnosis or something else, it’s OK if that’s not a part of you that you want to offer up right now—or ever.
But you shouldn’t have to live in the dark and not just because that’s the place stigma calls home. You deserve the light. You deserve the “and” that comes from fighting stigma: You can be HIV positive and find love. You can have bipolar disorder and hold down a job and maintain friendships and pursue your passions.
Stigma will try to steal that and. It won’t even give you a but. It will give you a period like a bullet to the head.
I hope that Danez’s essay and my interview and whatever else you stumble upon on the Internet give you more than that. I hope they find you when you’re staring into your phone or at the ceiling and wondering if there’s a future for you that’s worth living.
There is. I might not know anything else, but years of working for TWLOHA and living my own life has shown me there is.
I’ll see you on the other side of the episode.
Claire
*Danez is one of my favorite poets. You can find out more about them here.
**Hilariously, I wrote the primer document for podcast guests, and I made it very clear that swearing was allowed. My friends will tell you I’m certainly no stranger to it in my everyday life. I just was holding back that f*ck until I couldn’t anymore. Because sometimes you really do have to say f*ck stigma and the people who repeat its words back to you.
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Deep Pockets: There’s more down here.
In news that feels like it was written specifically for me and my interests, experts have confirmed that Munch wrote a secret message on The Scream.
If you’re wondering how I slipped a Taylor Swift mention into a podcast on bipolar disorder, it had to do with this song and this gifset.
Speaking of, my new friend Laura Dzubay wrote about how everyone else is in love and she’s just listening to Taylor Swift.
I love that writing about what Clarice Starling was up to post-Silence of the Lambs helped co-creator Jenny Lumet heal from some of her traumatic experiences. I also love how that scene of Jodi Foster getting into the elevator full of men at the FBI academy has had such an impact on people (Jenny, me, Brit Marling, etc.).
I’m very much looking forward to reading this interview between Nia DaCosta and Taika Waititi and this conversation between Emerald Fennell and Olivia Wilde.