{"id":107436,"date":"2021-10-07T20:13:27","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T01:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=107436"},"modified":"2022-02-06T12:50:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T18:50:19","slug":"denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=107436","title":{"rendered":"Denial&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1545664804358300\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block; text-align: center;\" data-ad-layout=\"in-article\" data-ad-format=\"fluid\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1545664804358300\" data-ad-slot=\"8616314829\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=107436\" rel=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=107436\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-107437 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Denial-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Denial-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Denial-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Denial-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>By Radical Rhymes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to start this piece with a well-worn joke: name a river in Egypt&#8230; De-Nile. Okay, so it was probably very funny at the time it was coined, but now? Well-worn.<\/p>\n<p>Something that definitely isn&#8217;t funny is being diagnosed with a mental illness. For me it came later in my life, and perhaps that&#8217;s why I have struggled so desperately with acceptance.<\/p>\n<p>There were signs, of course, even early on. One Christmas, I must have been around fourteen, I spent literally in tears. I cried for the entire Holiday. My family didn&#8217;t know how to respond, so they simply ignored it until the waterworks dried up.<\/p>\n<p>The irony was that it was the first year that I received most of the things I&#8217;d asked for. We were poor, so that hadn&#8217;t really happened before. When my parents and sister did acknowledge what was going on they speculated that I was overwhelmed &#8211; but I wasn&#8217;t.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Quite simply, I was depressed.<\/p>\n<p>Brought up in a financially struggling household defined by physical ill health it was hard for me. Consequently, my mental framework was flimsy from the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>Half a lifetime later, as I was entering the fourth major collapse, I was diagnosed as bipolar two combined with extreme social anxiety. This made sense, and I have come to believe that my upbringing allied with chemical problems have contributed to my emotional and psychological melt downs.<\/p>\n<p>But despite the diagnoses and the treatment, I still cannot quite embrace the truth at times. My go to response is to blame myself for low moods and erratic behavior. Knowing that I am not &#8216;normal&#8217; does not mean that I fully believe it.<\/p>\n<p>That is not to excuse the mistakes I&#8217;ve made, nor to shirk responsibility entirely, but, there is also no running away from the fact that I have mental health difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, society is moving forward to some extent, there is more awareness and support, but we are not there yet. We want to blame people for their failings, because it&#8217;s much harder to understand them. My employers just wanted me to leave, even though I was good at my job.<\/p>\n<p>My hope is that I will eventually fully process that I am mentally ill, and that society can do the same &#8211; without throwing people and their skills and abilities away.<\/p>\n<p>I sincerely hope&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808000;\"><em><strong>Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media &#8211; predominantly animal\/human portraits and landscapes &#8211; including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter <a style=\"color: #808000;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RhymesRadical\">@RhymesRadical.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808000;\"><em><strong>For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on <a style=\"color: #808000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.etsy.com\/uk\/shop\/RadicalRhymes?ref=search_shop_redirect\">Etsy<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>[si-contact-form form=&#8217;2&#8242;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Radical Rhymes I&#8217;m going to start this piece with a well-worn joke: name a river in Egypt&#8230; De-Nile. Okay, so it was probably very funny at the time it was coined, but now? Well-worn. Something that definitely isn&#8217;t funny is being diagnosed with a mental illness. For me it came later in my life, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27565],"class_list":["post-107436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-denial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107436"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}