I wish my illness was a more obvious thing. I wish there was this big blue lump on the side of my head that glowed when I was getting down. I wish that while I was talking the lump would play sad music so everyone knew that what I was saying wasn’t me but the lump talking through me. I wish that when I typed there was a special font so that people could see the lump was in charge and I was just watching it tap away at keys, reacting in a way that would destroy friendships and opportunities like an angry child in a crystal shop.
I wish that I could look in the mirror and see the lump and could say to myself “There it is, that’s my illness, right there on the side of my head look how obvious it is. It’s not me it’s the lump, none of this is me”. Other people with lumps would see each other in the street and nod as they passed, understanding just by how blue it was the way each other was feeling precisely.
Other people wouldn’t mention the lump in polite conversation but they’d know when I was talking as me and when the lump was rudely interrupting with it’s desperate attempts to gain favour or incomprehensible bouts of self directed rage. They’d nod at the alien words and phrases I was using and wouldn’t judge it as something I actually believed, rather as a symptom of the lump like excusing someone with a cold for sneezing.
But most of all I wish the lump could be removed, cut out like the pernicious tumour it really is. If it was a lump you’d know what it was.
