I have commenced what is deemed my mental health holiday. Unfortunately, it’s much less festive than it sounds as I continue to slowly sink deeper and deeper into a depressive episode. I’m standing on my Bipolar beach and the emotional tides are gushing over me. Sometimes I stand. Sometimes I fall into a salty mouthed scare, as the water overcomes me. I’ve learnt that sometimes it’s best to “swim” your way through it. But there is no one tactic that works – it depends on you, the day, other people. Sometimes the waves are too big and sometimes, you just stand as best you can until the tide recedes.
My holiday was brought about by a classic relapse recipe: over-committing, working long hours, travel, and an onslaught of unrealistic requests and abusive treatment by a beastly boss. I stood in these waves for as long as I could, but tumbled into tears when it became too much. Recoiled into my supposedly self protecting shell in an effort to cope. And other people saw that tumble. When you’re having a tumble you are not aware of the too much gushing of your tears, too much sniveling in pain or recoil from prickly remarks, the situation just being too much. So while I am on ‘holiday’ I am anxious about what will happen when I have to contend with the people’s stares, where they remember your too much. I have experienced those kind of burning stares before.
You see, in the current situation, I am within my rights to claim that they have treated me badly. That they have discriminated against me in tangible ways. That would be option one, would be legally costly and leave me without an income for a while. Nope, my family needs my income.
Option two: now that I have disclosed that I have Bipolar, according to South African labour law, I can ask for reasonable accommodation. South Africa is also a signatory to, and has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This offers a definition of “reasonable accommodation” as “necessary and appropriate modification and adjustment, not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. That sounds lovely but I’m puzzled about what this will mean.
For example could I ask them to please be nice to me because I have anxiety and a wish wash of moods which meanness doesn’t help as an accommodation? Could I ask them to not place undue pressure or stress on me as it may lead to a manic episode I don’t want to experience? And, since I’m likely to be discriminated against anyways, I might as well throw it in , could I ask that beastly bosses and general idiots only communicate with me via email? Not as simple as printing books in braille.
I fully plan and am working on an initiative that will change this for people with mental illness, that will give us more than these two shit*y options. That will not have to mean that we actually end up demeaning ourselves even further? We should scream, we should fight and we should stand up for any person with mental illness and their rights if they are being infringed upon.
What am I going to do though? There’s a third option I didn’t mention. This option will mean that I will smile through the anxiety and the meanness, and the general day of work and people I have to contend with. I will cope. Is this a cop out? You decide. What I have decided in the meantime is that I will work on my own organisation / campaign that will help people like me. Because right now I’m one. Right now legislation and law and practice are not synonymous. Because my children have to eat. In the short term though, I will try to rest more, heal more over my mental health holiday. Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t. I am 4M’s Bipolar Mom.
4 M's Bipolar Mom 