“Hey Noor, why don’t you talk more about your mental health?”

Thank you for the convenient question, nonexistent person.

So, the main reason is that the mental healthcare system in this country is fucking terrifying

Like, I say this as someone who has a relatively competent therapist-it’s terrifying.

The fact that saying the wrong thing could land me in a psych ward with a fraction of my usual rights or legal protections is scary.

The fact that HAVING BEEN in a psych ward is enough to damage your credibility depending on your job is terrifying.

We have a whole realm of psych ward and other institution survivors who identify as such for a reason-the power imbalance in these places is rife for abuse.

As a brown person who does, in fact, deal with physical, developmental, and mental health disabilities, a single ~well meaning~ call to the police ~worried about my state of mind~ could lead to me being put in a psych ward, physically injured or dead.

So, I shut up. Maybe make a depressing meme every so often.

Is it cowardly? Maybe.
If I’m close to trying something that could hurt myself, I’ll never say it, in public.

You’ll never know. And that...that upsets me, in a way that I find hard to articulate.

There is very little I don’t share with the Internet, about what has hurt me, because I think it’s important that people see that you can have horrible things happen and come out the other side and find community.

Community has saved me, over and over again.

But, frankly, I only talk about my mental health in the very far past tense because if I don’t I’m taking a risk that I’m not able to make work.

Even with my posts about anorexia and ARFID, notice that I rarely to never share the downturns (that are normal, even expected).

Let alone, you know, the big downturns. Unless I’m able to say, “this happened, and now I’m better”. I don’t lie. I just don’t share the whole story.

And yeah, it upsets me. It’s inconsistent with the rest of my M.O. I don’t LIKE not saying when something is hard.

But frankly, having someone weaponize the mental health system against me-toppling what little support I’ve been able to reasonably get from it, as someone who refuses inpatient treatment of any sort-is too big a risk. Having someone be able to point to my account as proof...

...as a way to go, “See, he’s not REALLY okay”? It’s not a risk I can really take.

And yeah, right now I’m kind of sad, but I’m fine. But if and when I’m not, this? One of my biggest sources of support? Not an option.