This post is inspired by a conversation I had driving to the airport this weekend. Someone asked me why anyone would pay $80-100 for a Glee concert ticket, to which I responded that I had in fact paid $107 for the privilege of attending a Glee concert and eagerly awaited my chance to do so in just a few weeks. For the ignorant in my readership base, Glee is a very popular musical comedy show on Fox, starring Lea Michele as a self centered high school student leading a band of misfits to unimaginable musical heights. On Glee's last episode, mental health was part of a major storyline.
Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counselor on Glee, is one of the central adult characters on the show and on and off love interest to Will Schuester, the Spanish teacher and Glee's fearless faculty advisor. She's an integral part of the show and she also has OCD. This has been an ongoing storyline that I've been following closely, but I haven't found it particularly interesting until last week's episode, Born This Way. I wanted to stand up and cheer, with tears in my eyes, at the painful, honest portrayal of a woman struggling to accept herself and her diagnosis. This in a 90-minute, prime time, musical comedy featuring Lady Gaga.
After Will repeatedly urges her to seek help, Emma goes to a psychologist, a steely, compassionate woman who reminded me of my own psychologist in Portland. The woman counsels Emma, compares her illness to a physical one, diabetes, and encourages her to give herself a chance with some medication. It gets better, she says. It gets better. Emma takes her first pill alone in her office, staring down at the orange bottle, and in her eyes I saw so many fears I recognized. Fear that the pill won't work, and fear that it will. Fear that everything could change, and fear that one more day could pass and everything would be the same. I don't know if Emma feels better right away, but she "outs" herself and her illness at school to the tunes of Lady Gaga. As bloggers across the universe have pointed out, this episode hit it out of park.
Am I born this way? I asked as I wiped the tears away, picturing Emma ration one pill into her perfect gloved hand. Is this how I'm supposed to be? What if my medications turn me into someone I'm not? What if I'm cheating the universe, myself, God by taking them? What if I were just a little stronger? What if I do better tomorrow? These are all questions we ask ourselves, we grabble with, and just a few moments of prime time television captured them in an eloquent and heart wrenching way.
I've grappled with these questions a lot, and I've rarely found answers. Instead, when I look too closely at them I find anger, as Emma seems to express when she tells the shrink that "this is just who I am," or sadness, which is written all over Emma's big eyes. When personality is so integral to our uniqueness, it's hard to reject or fix something so close to personality (mood, behavior), even though it may be eroded or corrupted by illness.
This weekend, I attended a beautiful wedding in the South with some old friends and many new ones. It was a lovely, casual, lighthearted weekend of laughter, and one moment at the rehearsal dinner I looked over and locked eyes with the groom. His expression was unreadable but full of happiness, and as his eyes passed mine I saw myself. I saw a friend he was proud of. He was happy that I attended his wedding, he was happier because I was there, and he was proud of me. That look, that glance across the room from a man looking a hundred different ways at once, touched me down to my toes and it its small way, like one of a myriad waves that beat along an obsidian beach, eroded some of the pain of those questions with a simple fact: Yes. I was born this way.
Every time someone tells me they are proud of me, as my manager did last week, or tries to spend a bit more time with me, as my friends do, they change my narrative. Yes, I will always have bipolar written across my white T-shirt, but in their eyes, I also have: Loyal. Friend. Funny. Diligent. Smart. Passionate. Human love and belief can never destroy a diagnosis, but they can counterbalance it. Maybe I was born that way, but I was born all these ways, too.
In conclusion, while prime time television and Glee certainly don't always get it right, a win in front of millions of viewers is a big one. Let's watch Glee tonight and hope for more stand up and cheer moments.
Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counselor on Glee, is one of the central adult characters on the show and on and off love interest to Will Schuester, the Spanish teacher and Glee's fearless faculty advisor. She's an integral part of the show and she also has OCD. This has been an ongoing storyline that I've been following closely, but I haven't found it particularly interesting until last week's episode, Born This Way. I wanted to stand up and cheer, with tears in my eyes, at the painful, honest portrayal of a woman struggling to accept herself and her diagnosis. This in a 90-minute, prime time, musical comedy featuring Lady Gaga.
After Will repeatedly urges her to seek help, Emma goes to a psychologist, a steely, compassionate woman who reminded me of my own psychologist in Portland. The woman counsels Emma, compares her illness to a physical one, diabetes, and encourages her to give herself a chance with some medication. It gets better, she says. It gets better. Emma takes her first pill alone in her office, staring down at the orange bottle, and in her eyes I saw so many fears I recognized. Fear that the pill won't work, and fear that it will. Fear that everything could change, and fear that one more day could pass and everything would be the same. I don't know if Emma feels better right away, but she "outs" herself and her illness at school to the tunes of Lady Gaga. As bloggers across the universe have pointed out, this episode hit it out of park.
Am I born this way? I asked as I wiped the tears away, picturing Emma ration one pill into her perfect gloved hand. Is this how I'm supposed to be? What if my medications turn me into someone I'm not? What if I'm cheating the universe, myself, God by taking them? What if I were just a little stronger? What if I do better tomorrow? These are all questions we ask ourselves, we grabble with, and just a few moments of prime time television captured them in an eloquent and heart wrenching way.
I've grappled with these questions a lot, and I've rarely found answers. Instead, when I look too closely at them I find anger, as Emma seems to express when she tells the shrink that "this is just who I am," or sadness, which is written all over Emma's big eyes. When personality is so integral to our uniqueness, it's hard to reject or fix something so close to personality (mood, behavior), even though it may be eroded or corrupted by illness.
This weekend, I attended a beautiful wedding in the South with some old friends and many new ones. It was a lovely, casual, lighthearted weekend of laughter, and one moment at the rehearsal dinner I looked over and locked eyes with the groom. His expression was unreadable but full of happiness, and as his eyes passed mine I saw myself. I saw a friend he was proud of. He was happy that I attended his wedding, he was happier because I was there, and he was proud of me. That look, that glance across the room from a man looking a hundred different ways at once, touched me down to my toes and it its small way, like one of a myriad waves that beat along an obsidian beach, eroded some of the pain of those questions with a simple fact: Yes. I was born this way.
Every time someone tells me they are proud of me, as my manager did last week, or tries to spend a bit more time with me, as my friends do, they change my narrative. Yes, I will always have bipolar written across my white T-shirt, but in their eyes, I also have: Loyal. Friend. Funny. Diligent. Smart. Passionate. Human love and belief can never destroy a diagnosis, but they can counterbalance it. Maybe I was born that way, but I was born all these ways, too.
In conclusion, while prime time television and Glee certainly don't always get it right, a win in front of millions of viewers is a big one. Let's watch Glee tonight and hope for more stand up and cheer moments.
This is SUCH an amazing piece of writing. Full of heart, critical and interesting. You really get to the center of how art (even super commercial and mainstream tv) can enrich our lives and help us understand who we are. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, and thanks for reading!
ReplyDeletereally insightful... change is not so easy, and the myriad dilemmas that we have to pass thru are so well expressed (both in real life and on TV). wonderful of you to share it all thru blog...
ReplyDeleteit's amazing how you can tackle a sensitive subject, grapple with your own, deepest fears, and truly touch other people - not only that, but with beautiful writing and lighthearted humor. if i may be so bold, while it's absolutely courageous to accept that you/i/we were born this way, that's not what we have control over. that's not what i admire or condemn people for. i find it much more productive to judge people by their actions and reactions. it's about controlling the controllable. i think even striving to control the controllable is an important step to self-awareness. what i admire about you is that despite the difficulties, you're not only striving to control the controllable, but you do a pretty damn great job at it.
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