What I did not do was go to school, which is what I’d gone out there to do.

My uncle said, “If you can ride a bus all day, you can go class.”

When I came back home, my mom made me volunteer – 4 hours a day (usually more), 3 days a week. Very flexible, compared to school. And even school is more flexible than work – I don’t go to class for 8-9 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I am depressed right now, but I smiled today when my dog did something funny, even though I’m living with self doubt hatred. I even played fetch with him, becuase he needs me.

If someone wants to take that as evidence that my mental illnesses aren’t real, I really question their understanding of mental illness. Just becuase I can occasionally put on a pretty mask for the public doesn’t mean I suddenly stop being depressed.

The thing that puzzles me is: if one well enough to function at a bar, why can’t one function at work? Maybe the bigger problem is finding a better suiting job?

Because there are different degrees of effect and from your post I’m willing to bet that you haven’t experienced the worst of it. As other posters have said, a bar is different from a job and sometimes madness isn’t predictable. We don’t know what it took for this woman to make it out for one night with her friends, we don’t know the amount of sheer willpower she had to muster to be able to have something approaching normalcy for a few hours, we don’t know how many times she just never made it out of the house. All we know is that once, for one little chunk of time, she was able to appear to be having fun. To extrapolate anything from that is to assume that she is malingering because your view of what depression ought to look like is constructed to protect yourself from the life you face.

This whole discussion reminds me of the first verse of Leonard Cohen’s song “Everybody knows”

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

for someone who has been temporarily-abled, it can be so hard to accept the way your life has changed. sometimes, i want to just say “fuck it” and live, for a moment, the way i could before i became ill. and you know what? that’s my prerogative. i am entitled to make decisions about my own health and well-being, even if those decisions mean that i may be more impaired, or less able, the next day or the next week or whatever.

kate, i’ll assume that you are not trolling and add to hexy’s reply to your comment. i can’t work outside the home because of my disability, but i can get a lot done around my home and i volunteer in the community. why? because as a housewife and volunteer, i have a lot more autonomy and flexibility in my schedule. i can clean my floor when i feel able to. i can bake a whack of bread on one of my good days. i can manage my physical and emotional reserves, without answering to someone who doesn’t love me or who doesn’t understand my illness. i have no deadlines, no “must-dos”. there are not many other jobs that offer that. and i know how hugely privileged i am to have the family support to be a disabled housewife.

A few hours at a bar is a completely different animal. Work also tends to require you to actually be able to do stuff, often requiring concentration and memory capacity… and I know that I, at least, can manage to sit at a bar and down a few pints without really needing to concentrate, remember more than where I left my phone, or be able to prove to a company that I’m functional enough that they shouldn’t fire me.

Some of us manage to find disability friendly work. Most do not.

I’ll also point out that, while I am not implying that this woman was necessarily engaging in this behaviour, a lot of people with depressive illness self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs because (at least temporarily) they can actually work. It’s not a long term solution, but I know more than a few people with depressive illnesses who are capable of bouncing and smiling and having at least a mostly-good night once they’ve downed several drinks or imbibed some other substance.

We can’t fucking win.

I’m certainly familiar with presumptions on health when it comes to invisible disabilities. I have dual-disordered mental illness of a highly stigmatised variety, but I’ve still copped accusations of “faking”… including a friend who had herself experienced years of mental illness telling me that I could work because “people with disabilities can work” and that she was “disgusted” I had a priority parking permit. That’s only the most notable example; there have been years of people either telling me that I should/could be doing more, or writing me off as a crazy bitch undeserving of support when I fail to meet neurotypical standards of behaviour.

Bleh.

At any rate, I’ve just flicked through my facebook. Just out of the pictures I’VE posted (ie, not pics people have taken and tagged me in) there are:

Three pictures that I am certain were taken during really bad periods where my illness was preventing me from functioning normally. I’m smiling in them.

One where the mood stabiliser I was on at the time had me so exhausted I could barely move. It was the only time I dragged myself out in a three month or so period. I lasted about an hour and went home. I’m smiling in the picture.

One where I was in intense pain after surgery and on a shitload of morphine. I’m at the pub just down the road from my house for a friend’s event. I don’t really remember the night, just that I was vague and sore. I’m smiling in the picture.

One taken during a really bad stint when I was more or less housebound for a few months. It’s a web cam shot of me in a hat I’d ordered that had just shown up. I’m smiling in the picture.

Two photos that I know were taken shortly before I left the event in tears and went home to cry and do all those other “appropriate” things for people with mental illness. I’m smiling in them.

One taken within an hour of me fleeing a venue in hysterics, self-mutilating, and having to be talked down from suicide, in an instance that had me off work for weeks afterwards. Not only am I smiling, I look fucking fabulous.

Guess I’m a big fakey-faker, then. Couldn’t possibly be that the obligation to smile when someone points a camera at you is conditioned into us from the earliest point we understand what the word “SMILE!” means, or that people tend to self-censor the version of themselves they put on social networking sites to make themselves look happier and more successful, or even that (as that awesome facebook group I just joined says) people with depressive illnesses smile sometimes.

People will all sorts of illnesses and disabilities smile sometimes. Humans DO THAT. Gah.