Why Putting Up a Front Sucks

The front is something we mentally ill people are good at putting up. We hide behind a veneer of positivity just because we are paranoid about somebody feeling sorry for us. The dreaded dead-end pity party is something we hate. While I know most people do not waste their energy feeling sorry for me, one old classmate a year older than myself loves to lace her voice with pity despite trying to sound positive. To which I say, what the hell? Why waste your pity on me? I’m not deserving of it. Certainly, she has issues relating to me without pity.

I avoid people like that and yet we must remind ourselves that putting up a front can suck. It can suck because you feel bad and unable to function even as you pretend to be fine. You feel like you have to deal with rough emotions on your own. I put up a front all the time, to hide that I’m stressed or worried, or anxious. I dread working at a real company because then I will feel it my duty to put up a front, and never address my emotions, which is something I feel like I have to do so that nobody feels sorry for me.

I’m working on having perfect diabetes. I’m working very hard on this. Somehow I’m trying but sometimes falling short. The front means I can joke around when feeling very messed up. I’m eventually going to do my first open mic night before my family comes back. The open mic launches my career as a comic who openly discusses mental illness symptoms, health, and stuff like that. What I’m trying to do is lessen the stigma my fellow sufferers get. Stigma is as stigma does. I’m done being on the end of stigma from somebody else.

Illness is, and illness does. Living with it and being productive is something of an expertise of mine. The thing is that I may eventually sleep the whole night one of these days, which scares certain elements in my family really well since they use booze to sleep through the night however fake stability that provides. I’m busy trying to make sure I do well in life as opposed to failing, which is an alternative if I mess myself up deliberately since not taking medication is a deliberate act.

Putting up a front is exhausting. I mean it is exhausting to be positive all the time when you feel the opposite. The opposition with putting up a front means that people think you are fine when you are not. A front doesn’t let people in on how bad you feel. If you feel bad and are acting fine, nobody would know if there was anything going on. Putting up a front then becomes a dangerous way to live, because people with schizoaffective can act fine all they want until they try to do damage to themselves.

Sometimes, putting up a front is all somebody has and it means they are not genuine. Many people try to act positively to avoid somebody’s pity. Pity is different from sympathy or compassion. Real compassion doesn’t make you feel bad while sympathy means that somebody is trying to make you feel better as normal, non-sociopaths would. Sociopaths and psychopaths have limited empathy for the people they mess with. Some know how to fake sympathy. Narcissists are very hard to detect sometimes although my narcissism meter has gotten better over the years. I feel burned by one I had to dump for irresponsibility, although I’m not sure if she is narcissistic because she certainly fakes empathy very well as they tend to do. Putting up a front for everybody gets exhausting, in particular, if you are not feeling very well half the time. What I expect from the workplaces I will be in, and schools I will attend is that I shouldn’t have to put up a front all the time. So was the expectation in high school, despite my dark days with no medication around. I’m done with this expectation.