Free Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

and bipolar – are not words to use lightly. And yet now they’re everywhere. There are TV programmes that actually pun on them. People smile and use them, proud of themselves for learning them, like they should get a sticker or something. Not realizing that if those words are said to you by a medical health professional, as a diagnosis of something you’ll probably have for ever, they’re words you don’t appreciate being misused every single day by someone who likes to keep their house quite clean.
    People actually die of bipolar, you know? They jump in front of trains and tip down bottles of paracetamol and leave letters behind to their devastated families because their bullying brains just won’t let them be for five minutes and they can’t bear to live with that any more.
    People also die of cancer.
    You don’t hear people going around saying: “Oh my God, my headache is so, like, tumoury today.”
    Yet it’s apparently okay to make light of the language of people’s internal hell. And it makes me hate people because I really don’t think they get it.
    â€œOh, you have OCD. That’s the thing where you like to wash your hands a lot, right?”
    It annoys me that I’ve got the most clichéd “version” of OCD. The stereotypical one. But it’s not like I chose it. And, yes, I do like to wash my hands a lot. Or did. Well, I still want to, every second of the day, but I don’t. But I also lost two stone because I refused to eat anything in case it contaminated me and I died. And I have a brain on a permanent loop of bad thoughts that I cannot escape so I’m technically imprisoned in my own mind. And I once didn’t leave the house for eight weeks.
    That is not just liking to wash your hands.
    No, you don’t have OCD too.
    If you had OCD, you wouldn’t tell people about it.
    Because, quite simply, despite all this good work, some people Still. Don’t. Get. It.
    Mental illnesses grab you by the leg, screaming, and chow you down whole. They make you selfish. They make you irrational. They make you self-absorbed. They make you needy. They make you cancel plans last minute. They make you not very fun to spend time with. They make you exhausting to be near.
    And just because people know the right words now, doesn’t mean they’re any better at putting up with the behaviour. They smile and nod and say, “Oh, how awful, yes I watched a programme about that, you poor thing”… And then they get really pissed off at you when you have a panic attack at a party and need to leave early. When they actually have to demonstrate understanding, they bring out the old favourites like “come on, try harder” or “it’s not that bad” or “but that isn’t logical” – undoing all the original hand-patting and there-there-ing.
    That’s why I can’t tell Lottie and Amber. That’s why I have to hold it in.
    Because if any more people don’t get it… Don’t get me… Then I don’t think I’ll be able to take it.

Ten
    Lottie stared at herself dreamily in the mirror and straightened a section of her hair.
    â€œWhen I was a little girl,” she said, in a bedtime story voice. “I always dreamed of growing up and going to a metal gig held in a church hall.”
    Amber and I giggled.
    â€œChurch halls are totally rock ’n’ roll now,” I told her. “It’s like, ironic or something…well, that’s what Jane said.”
    â€œOr…in translation…Jane’s boyfriend’s band can’t get a gig in a real venue?” Amber suggested.
    I giggled again, wonking up my perfect eyeliner cat flick in the process. Sighing, I reached for a tissue. Joel’s band was headlining a gig tonight. In a local church hall. It was all Jane had been talking about. And, dutifully, I’d agreed to go to it. With Amber and Lottie as