Mental illness depictions in "Silver Linings Playbook"

 I don't usually consider myself a huge fan of Bradley Cooper, but his energy spilled off the screen in Silver Linings Playbook. Cooper portrayed a man who struggled with Bipolar Disorder and spent almost a year in a mental hospital. He swam through a sea of medicine and therapy sessions in attempts to get his cheating wife back.

I think what I really loved about the film is that it painted mental illness in a very real and honest way. Lines were constantly blurred and nothing was ever black and white, as is usually the case with mental illness. You can be perfectly sane and capable in one aspect of life and have a complete loss of control in another area. You can never be defined by your diagnosis because it is only ever one facet of your being. It can control everything, pull your whole self into its pit of despair at one time or another in your life. But in another time, it can be a dormant cell in your body, hiding for years only to rarely show its face.

Watching the film took be back to that time in my life, when it seemed like depression defined me and there would never be a way to escape. I don't remember much about that first year of my diagnosis, my 11th grade year in high school. Too much pain. Too much going through the motions of life without actually living. Too much punishing myself for something that was beyond my control when I thought I could fix it all myself. When I thought I could fix myself.

I remember being convinced that I would one day find myself in a mental facility, much like Bradley Cooper's character in the movie. I was so miserable during that time that I probably should've been admitted, should've gotten even more help than I had, but I was always great at hiding parts of myself away. And no one ever really knew how deep I fell until after I'd managed to claw my way out, at least part of the way.

I look back on that time as a different person; it's almost an out-of-body experience, mostly because I can't imagine it ever getting that bad again. I know too much about myself, too much about my self-destructive habits and tendencies. I know enough to play an upbeat song when all I wanna do is drown myself in a sad one. I know now to get out of the room when all I wanna do is crawl under the covers and stay there. I know now that there's light at the end of a dark tunnel because I'm living in the light now. And then--

all I saw was darkness. So how would I ever believe that the sun would show its face again when all I could see ahead of me was bleak pools of emptiness?

Although it would be inaccurate to label myself as clinically depressed or suffering from Major Depressive Disorder, I still have to acknowledge that at one point in my life, the illness was a big part of me. And it's likely that I will have another episode at some point in the future. The probability of reoccurrence is greater than not.

Self-awareness is everything.

And while it's a complete myth that anyone can pull themselves out of a true state of depression, there are things you can do to at least ease the pain to some degree, perhaps temporarily. Those things that I mentioned earlier are a start. Forcing yourself to be a part of society when you don't want to. Self-soothing.

Although this shouldn't be confused with putting on a mask for society. Suppressing your true feelings will only lead to worse feelings. You shouldn't have to paste a smile on your face just because it's expected of you. Life isn't about being happy all the time.

In fact, most of the time it's just...

Equilibrium.