Upside

Is there an upside to mental illness? This question stems from one that I asked my doctor a few months ago. I asked, "Don't you think that if I could be Anushka, but not be bipolar," I would be an infinitely better person? He smiled benevolently and rejected the hypothesis. If I weren't bipolar, he said, I couldn't be Anushka. When you have the flu, it's quite obvious that you want, need to get better. If you have cancer, it's quite clear you'd rather not have the cancer, and those these illnesses change you, define you, they are not literally part of your brain chemistry. When I had a serious physical illness a few years ago, it changed me, the way that I look at the world, but it was not part of my core identity. With mental illness, it's hard to piece those things apart: Am I "naturally" (sans illness) an enthusiastic person? How enthusiastic am I? Am I social? Impulsive? Sexy? Would I "naturally" have periods of extreme introspection and melancholy? Many do! But how often would I have mine? What would they look like? It's nearly impossible to piece my identity as a bipolar patient away from my identity as a human, just as it's frustratingly difficult to piece symptoms from "normal" twentysomething feelings and behavior. Like sexuality and athleticism, it's a spectrum, and like the latter, it's hard to tell what could and could not be accomplished without certain enhancements. Is there a reason to piece these things apart, to "know" what you'd be like? For someone as introspective as I am, there's a lot of guilt, confusion, and pain around the ways that I've acted and treated people in the past, and there's also a tremendous desire to both explain it away due to an emerging diagnosis and not allow myself to be defined by said diagnosis. So it's a line that the mind is naturally drawn to, but it's constantly shifting. So would I rather not be bipolar? I don't know, and that's a source of guilt, shame, and wonderment. Who doesn't wish their illness away, or at least, isn't sure if she does? Right - someone's whose illness is embedded within their behaviors, their personality, even their soul.