Beyond the Label
Why is there suffering in the world?
What does it mean to be depressed, bipolar, or schizoaffective?
What category do you place yourself in?
It’s funny because what if we let go of the expectations, the categories, and the labels?
We create categories to make reality understandable.
Religious.
Secular.
Bipolar.
Healthy.
Sinner.
Neurodivergent.
Successful.
Broken.
Maybe categories help us navigate the world.
But sometimes I wonder if they also shrink us.
When does a label help us understand ourselves, and when does it become a cage?
I could say I’m schizoaffective, or I am bipolar. But does that actually serve me?
I don’t go to people and say, “I’m Barnaby, and I’m bipolar.”
That would create an easy way to assign an association of what a bipolar person should act like.
I don’t fit the stereotype people imagine when they hear words like schizoaffective or bipolar.
Most people probably wouldn’t even know unless I told them.
Sometimes I wonder if people are less static than we think.
One moment, a person is depressed.
Another moment, they’re laughing with a friend.
One year, they’re suicidal.
Another year they’re writing, working, walking their dog, and trying again.
Human beings seem more fluid than the categories we assign to them.
I know for me, I was going to kill myself 5 years ago, and I survived. Since that moment, I’ve laughed, made new friends, and reflected.
The label of schizoaffective has helped me get treatment, but it doesn’t serve me to share with others that I have a chronic condition.
I am Barnaby Alkire. I live with a chronic, potentially debilitating condition.
However, just because I live with it doesn’t diminish the value I offer the world.
At the end of the day, I’m thankful for my story. If I had to do it all over again, I’d wouldn’t change anything.
Living with a mental illness has taught me a lot and has given me empathy for others who are struggling.
I’m stable. I can write. I have an able body. Yes, does the car being out of commission suck? It does, but it’s a lesson.
And who knows, it could have been worse. I could have gotten injured or lost my life, and yet I’m still here writing to you.
I think what’s important is contextualizing suffering. Right now, I’m suffering without a car, but I’m not manic or in psychosis.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
It’s my attitude towards life that keeps me going. It can never be taken away from me, and it keeps me going.
Whatever label you live with, you choose your own way by the attitude you live with.