IF I AM CRAZY, YOU ARE TOO

Last night, on the radio station where I had landed, fleeing from football, a schizophrenic man and a bipolar woman were talking about how to live with a mental illness without going mad. He had a sweet, enveloping voice and the woman had such a sensible and sensible speech that I was glued to their voices and to the narration of their anecdotes. Their crises. Their incomes. Their relationships with their partners, friends and work. The man, who I imagined to be young and attractive - I'm a sucker for the well-spoken - gave as an example headlines such as "Schizophrenic holds up a bank and kills the branch manager" and argued: "Diabetic breaks a Picasso in the Reina Sofía Museum in the middle of a hypoglycaemic attack"?

I read today that 75% of people with mental illness claim to have felt discriminated against in some aspect of their lives. And I understand that, I'm not going to be universally sympathetic. If a guy in a lift that stops between floors confessed to me that he had OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) I would be more upset than I should be, I imagine. But we live surrounded by anxious people, anorexics, depressives, insomniacs, agoraphobics, hypochondriacs or social alcoholics without getting too upset. Because there are labels and labels.

I myself have an irrational panic of disorientation and dizziness. It causes me to get lost and dizzy at times. The vomiting doesn't stop until I get a shot of Primperan, when I'm already dehydrated. Which doesn't make me a dangerous madwoman when I take off, but it does make me a woman in need of a friendly arm by my side and a good barf bag. Every time I take the car I fear it will leave me stranded. My picture of desolation is a car in a roundabout surrounded by nothing. The nausea. Every summer I decide to sell my car and hire a loving, literature-loving chauffeur, but then I come to my senses - that's so conventional - and pardon the poor car and make myself look at my own, which seems to me a less drastic solution.

I am very much in favour of therapy and I observe too many "normal" people who reject the couch as if it were a matter for nutters. Some have so much to hide that they'd rather not stick their pickaxe in lest the poison they find inside keep them awake at night. Others simply can't afford to pay for it, so they go between over-the-counter orphidals and anxiety attacks that they call stress so as not to feel bad.

Being stressed out is cool because it makes you a professional. Panicking while driving on a road that suddenly looks like Mars or Jupiter makes you a weak and inattentive woman. So there are cool disorders and there are crappy disorders.

And then there are those that require high-flying medication. Like the ones on the radio last night.

In between, there's a huge number of people who suffer and don't know why. Who wake up startled at four in the morning but claim to be fine. Who don't get involved in relationships because one day someone mortally wounded them. Who cry for no apparent reason. Who explode in anger at the slightest conflict. Who stay in bed when things are bad at the office. Who sometimes take to the streets aimlessly and without destination because they need to. Who often switch off the phone because they can't bear to talk to anyone. That they would like to wake up and be someone else. That everything weighs too much on them. That they always end up with toxic people on the last drink of the night. That they are attracted to danger because without adrenaline they don't feel....

The world is full of crazy people in need of diagnosis and help. I propose an outing of weaknesses that limit us and that, when we deal with them, in hard sessions where one cannot escape from oneself, make us feel that intimate spark that is called courage and confidence.?And a certain pity for those who have decided to continue with the simulator of health and balance while surviving as unlabelled offal. Convinced that they are well, not like those nutters on the radio last night.