In 2019, I finally opened up about hearing voices. Not that tiny voice in your head that everyone has, aka, your conscience. This voice is like it’s someone else in the room, someone else around. I introduced Billy to the world. I thought I’d bring him up again because it’s starting to pick up again. I hear him grumbling off things I can’t really understand most of the time, but now that I’m feeling more and more anxious, the voice is angrier.
I recently read something about how mentally ill people are portrayed during Halloween. Why are they seen as scary? Why so often are scary films and tv shows based on people who have mental illness? I recently finished the Haunting series (Hill House and Bly Manor), and honestly, I wasn’t as afraid as I thought I’d be. Why? Because I feel like that on a daily basis.
The night terrors, the nightmares, the voices, the feeling of being uneasy, those aren’t new to me. But watching it on television definitely makes me feel a little uneasy about opening up about it. There was a journal prompt the other day that I didn’t do: “if you saw your situation on television, what would you think? who would side with? what would your thoughts be about what you saw?”
And after watching the Haunting of Hill House, it made me not want to open up. I’m debating on whether to make this blog public again or just open it to people with a password. Seeing how Olivia and Nellie were treated and thought of after they committed suicide, or spoke about their ghosts, man… Talk about negative vibes and stigma on mental health.
Unless you’ve experienced it before, or have seen someone completely lose their mind while dealing with it, you shouldn’t get to have a say in what’s real or not. Because for us, it’s very real, and if that’s too much for you, then maybe it’s a good thing that we aren’t really friends.