Speaker 1:
I am currently working at a food bank doing fundraising. Aside from work, I really enjoy swimming and going up into the mountains, camping, hiking, things like that. When you're in a state of mania, I felt like in that point I had taken an ax and just chopped my life into this crumbling mess. And when I looked at what I had left right then and there, and actually it was a lot. I had my family. I didn't think I had friends. It was also that I didn't want to talk to them about it. But when I looked at the mess that I had created, and it wasn't really me, but it was, when I looked at that and I just didn't know how I could ever overcome it.
Getting back into a normal routine was really important for my recovery from that. Before that, I was just really dwelling on where I was and not focusing on where I needed to go and having goals and accomplishing some goals. Transferring schools and just being around new people was really important for me. My father grew up in Japan and I'm an eighth Japanese, and so there is this cultural... I was raised with a lot of Japanese influence. It was almost the mentality of don't wash your dirty laundry in public. It's, we don't talk about this.
I think in some ways being gay has actually helped with being able to talk about my emotions. I've seen in the gay community where there's sometimes an ability to talk... I've seen kind of two different dichotomies taking place. So there's a lot of my friends who I feel very comfortable talking about my emotions. And then there's a completely separate group of friends that it's almost like you constantly have to pretend like everything's great, and there's a pressure to look good, to have a nice car, to have nice clothes, to everything. And in that perspective, I've seen a lot of emotional turmoil because people don't talk about their emotions and then they explode.
I am very happy on my medication because I feel emotions, I go through the rhythms, but I feel more in control. I think without medication, I feel like I am barreling down a hill in a go-kart without breaks. And right now I feel like I'm in a nice Subaru with all-wheel drive and safety and airbags and all that jazz.
I try to treat my mental health and my mental wellbeing as if the same way I would treat any illness, in that sense. I mean, I don't look at it every day, but if I'm feeling like I really need to stop, I consider that to be me being sick. And I think we discount mental health in that sense because we think, well, I'm physically able to go to work and I'm not going to infect anybody with anything, therefore, I am okay. But in my mind, if I'm falling to pieces on the inside, I need to take a day to just call in sick and say, I really need to just veg today or take a me day. Time for me is important.