"No, I Want the 'Cool' Kind of Crazy!"

Let's go window shopping for a little while, readers.

So, we're walking around your favorite mall. Not the one that only has a few pizza places here and there, and a SHIT ton of places that sell fake gold jewelry. No, we're talking about the mall that has enough variety to make your head spin and wonder what you were looking for in the first place.

We pass by a gratuitous amount of displays from different stores that you love, but you just can't find what you're looking for. You have this innate feeling that you're looking for something specific, but you can't quite put your finger on it.

All of a sudden, you see it. You see the thing that makes the sun shine a spotlight on you, and a church choir starts singing praises in your head. You finally identify the exact thing you'd been searching for, and you know it'll definitely make you stand out in a crowd. You've found bipolar disorder.

"What a perfect fit!" you think. "Now, I have this quirky, hilarious reason for being a self-proclaimed 'psychotic bitch' in relationships! I'm just bipolar, and it'll take a special kind of man to be able to handle me. Time to post memes about it on Facebook!"

Okay, so, from the outside of this scenario, get a load of this bullshit. Anyone who's either rational, or actually lives with a mental illness, will see that this is very apparently not how things work in regards to being diagnosed with a true mental illness. "Is—is this really a thing that happens?" you may wonder. But, wipe that feeling of apprehensive disgust away, and replace it with real, rampant horror, because this is a thing that actually happens.

In today's society, it's becoming harder to be able to truly stand out just for being yourself. The trends are getting more outlandish, the music's getting weirder, the porn's getting more hardcore, and your personality won't set you apart from the person you're sitting next to. So, what do people resort to to remedy this situation?

The trend of being "crazy."

I know you've seen it before. All over your Facebook wall or your Twitter feed, you have people claiming to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder because they like to keep things neat and tidy in their houses. You have people who claim to have Bipolar Disorder just because they're not afraid to snap on others in a heartbeat and be an asshole. You have people claiming that they have depression and want to commit suicide, but adding that they won't do it if they get 100 likes or retweets so that they know people really care. You have people claiming to have social anxiety because they "hate people," and don't feel like getting out of the house today. I could go on and on about this, but all of these bold statements have one thing in common: they convey validation-seeking, not true suffering.

This isn't to say that someone can't be open about their mental illnesses and truly be suffering. Hell, I blog about mine, and it doesn't make my experiences with them less excruciating. But, more often than not, if you see instances like the ones above, nine times out of ten, they don't really get it.

This infuriates me. For a while, I didn't pay attention to the trend, and I didn't mind it. But, eventually, I got enough of seeing people use depression to gain attention, and anxiety to seem quirky. It started to feel like my struggles were simply being mocked. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

I was looking around on Reddit the other day and found a thread of people talking about things that they wish weren't romanticized in society. Lo and behold, mental illness was one of the most mentioned topics in the thread.

There were a few things in this thread that I felt really hit the nail on the head about the affects of using mental illnesses as a fad.

User Mataraiki said, "I get so annoyed by the people who self-diagnose and act like it makes them cute and quirky. It's made it so that I have to explain I'm actually diagnosed when I disclose my conditions to people, and then have to deal with them assuming I can just "get over it" like those who self-diagnose. No jackass, my conditions are incredibly debilitating to deal with on a daily basis, and it's demeaning and frustrating when people act like it's my fault I have to struggle with them."

As if that wasn't enough to get your blood boiling, take a look at what User hollythorn101 said of her experience: "If you don't have any mental illness that's "fashionable" to have, then you are screwed. I pick my skin. It's kind of related to OCD in that it's a compulsion issue. No one wants to see my red, scarred shoulders. People would just think you have a skin condition or are crazy."

The people who self-diagnose themselves with mental illnesses to "seem cool" not only infuriate those who actually have them but make a laughing stock of the impacts mental illnesses cause. This, in turn, also lets people repeatedly revise what a mental illness actually is. The truth of the matter is that the majority of us that truly suffer, suffer in silence. We do this not only because we're ashamed of what we have (because people who get to know the true ailments from our mental illnesses often want to opt out), but because now, if we do talk about them, we'll have people roll their eyes at us because we're "just like the suicidal friends" they have on Facebook, begging for likes!

Mental illness is more than just experiencing some inconvenient distress every now and again. It's more than doing some lazy research on a mainstream anxiety disorder, and flaunting that around like you really have it. It's more than just being a little excessive, some of the time. It's more than just a damned fad!

It's losing hair because you feel compelled to pull it out to relieve anxiety, and having to try to hide the balding spots to "look normal." It's wanting to make friends, but feeling uncomfortable with social settings to the miserable point of not even wanting to leave your house. It's monitoring what goes in, and what comes out of your body every second of every day because you want to make sure you don't gain a single pound. It's doing one ritual every day, for hours on end, even if it hurts you because you'll feel an immense amount of distress if you don't. It's keeping your mouth shut about intrusive, debilitating thoughts that you have every day, because you know that if you go to someone about them, you'll be labeled as a "disgusting freak."

But, no one wants to see or hear any of that. They want the "cool" mental illnesses that conjure sympathy likes and attention, and they want to feel like someone.

I feel that, of course. Everyone wants to feel that they're special and that they contribute something new to the world. Same here, man. But, aren't there thousands of different ways to do that without it being at the expense of our suffering?

Mental illnesses are out there, they're real, and they aren't pretty to be worn like your next favorite clothing item.