My Family and Mental Illiness (Part 7): The Garden of Eatin'

Sheldon's note: If you haven't read of this series up to this point yet, you should probably start reading from post 1 on until this post in order to understand the context of this post, and the events occurring in it.

As I have said in previous posts in this series, my dad's mental health was starting to improve, and in the last post, Social Security finally stepped in and helped us in a big way financially. All of this still didn't resolve the issue of his severe depression. He still didn't want to leave his room, no less go outside, nothing interested him at all, he felt like life was pointless. Mostly he was mourning the loss of all things he used to be able to do, work, drive, etc.

The loss of his job was especially hard, he had worked long hours at the company he worked for, and was there 25 years, it was a major part of his life, and no suddenly it's gone, and he had nothing do to take it's place, to give him a sense of having a reason to get up in the morning, which is important for someone with an  obsessive personality.

My mom couldn't figure out what to do, anti-depressants didn't work, they either left him more confused, or would cause drastic mood changes. One day, how she thought of this, I don't know, but she decided she wanted a vegetable garden. So, there we go, mostly by day when I was doing my ACE coursework, he would be out there digging the back yard up to plant a garden. I would join him in the evenings.

I Don't Think I Should Trust the Chameleon , Even Though It's Acting Friendly.

I have noticed in recent months, ever since I moved into my house, that my mom hasn't quite been herself lately. Her old domineering personality seems to have faded away, and she's actually in some ways acting like, well, a mother.....

It's bizarre, she kept her normal personality all through the rebuilding of the house, but now, she seems to be somewhat not only treating me like an adult human being (which is something she was incapable of before, I always felt like I was more of property than a son to her), but she's acting like I'm her equal, it's bizarre, and I can't help but question her motives. She's gone out of her way to help, even helping to take care of "Happy Horse" even though she used to be scared of large dogs, and is in fact mildly allergic to them.

I distrust her motives in all this, and I wonder what's with her chameleon act, because she has always been a master manipulator, and haven't trusted her since I was a child, and for good reason.

 This is the same woman who slapped me around as a child, barricaded the door when I tried to move out several years ago (and threatened violence against me, and said I would deserve it if she did), forced me to go to a college she probably knew was a scam, just so I wouldn't have the time to work and earn enough money to leave, and was so psychologically abusive and controlling when I was living with her that it damn near drove me to the point of suicide.

Not only all that, but remember my recent (and still ongoing) series on my father's mental health issues when I was a teen? One detail I left out, (and don't know why), is that she was actually going to divorce him at first during this time, the only thing that kept her from doing so was the fact that I made it clear that if she left him, I would do everything I could possible to convince the judge to let me stay with my dad. Though it's an understatement to say that US courts have a heavy bias toward mothers in divorce cases, I was about 13 at the time, and the court would take notice that I was heavily campaigning to go with my father and wonder why (and I would have told them).

So if you want to call me bitter, unforgiving, and mistrusting, then fine, because you're right, and I feel like I have good reason to. She only truly cares about herself, and what she wants, she's a sociopath, to put it bluntly. I have no clue what's behind this campaign of trying to act all nice.

My Family and Mental Illness: (Part 6) Social Security Saves the Day

Sheldon's note: This is a part of a series on my father's mental health issues when  I was a teen, and how it affected my family, if you have never read this series before, I highly recommend you start reading past posts, starting with post 1.

In post 5, I talked about how my father was starting to recover cognitively due to the Neurontin he was taking for seizures, and about how the state of Illinois wasn't very willing to help us (other than giving us Medicaid, which helped, but we needed more help than that, financially). My mom knew that despite his mind starting to clear, that due to his mental health issues and the seizures, he would not be able to work.

We were not very hopeful about Social Security granting him disability benefits, and we had heard many horror stories about how hard it was to get benefits (I talked about this a little in post 4), but we knew something had to be done, even if it took a lawyer to sue the federal government to get it.

We went down to a federal district courthouse complex in East Saint Louis, Illinois, which housed the local Social Security offices. We didn't know what to expect, but we were quite frankly assuming that we would get the same treatment there as we would from the state of Illinois.

We were most definitely wrong in our assumptions. The differences couldn't have been any more drastic in comparison. We could actually get people on the phone when we called, and when we arrived, we didn't have to wait long to be set up with a caseworker, who was respectful, and very businesslike about it.

Check Out My Guest Posts At Laughing In Purgatory and Homeschoolers Anonymous!

It's been a long time since I have wrote a guest post for Andrew Hall's blog Laughing In Purgatory. Normally it's a blog parodying what's going on in the world of politics, religion and everyday life (I've told him his blog reminds me of an atheist version of The Onion), but occasionally he has some serious posts of his own, and has from time to time, let me guest post.

Well, recently, I had a guest post published talking about my most recent blog series on my father's mental health issues as a teen. If you are a regular blog reader, you are probably familiar with it by now, but if not, start at post 1, and keep reading.

I talk about how hard it was to start that series, and how my emotions were getting the better of me when I wrote the first 3 installments all in one evening, and I can't still figure out why I even started this series.

My Family and Mental Illness (Part 5): Whoever Created Neurontin Deserves a Nobel Prize

Sheldon’s note: If you haven’t read any of the previous post in this series, please do so, starting with post 1, before proceeding to read this post.

In post 4, I talked about my father’s massive seizures, one of his doctors started prescribing the medication Neurontin for his seizures. It made a big difference immediately, the seizures slowed down dramatically, though they didn’t stop completely for about 2 years, and there was a good unintended consequence to it, slowly, but surely, his mind gradually started to clear.

We were happy to see this progress, though it would be years before he returned to a state somewhat like we knew him before. Life was finally starting to look up for us in many ways, but finances were still a problem. We started out with about $20,000 that was left from my dad’s 401k, what was left after taxes, early withdrawal penalties, and losses on the stock market, and about $3,000 in savings.

We didn’t realize it then, but this would have to last us around a year, paying our normal bills, and the leftover medical bills. Some doctors were cooperative, accepting our requests to just simply accept what the insurance gave them for the tests and doctor’s visits, and not pursue us for any more money.

Once they heard about our situation, most were very willing to do so, since they were still receiving 80% of what they would normally charge from his insurance (I wonder if some of them wrote the extra amount off on taxes as a loss, knowing how the US tax code works). We still had to stretch the money, though, our house and cars had been paid off several years before this happened, which was a big help, but we were used to having about $40,000 a year to spend, and we didn’t know how long this money was going to have to last.

We tried reaching out for help from government agencies, first starting out with Illinois’ Department of Human Services, which oversees programs like Illinois Link, (which used to be commonly known as “food stamps”, and many people still call it that to this day), Medicaid and other government aid programs.

Illinois has an awful state government, it’s always had a well deserved reputation of being mismanaged, slow to act, and also very corrupt (our last two governors are convicted felons now, look up George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich). Unfortunately, mismanagement and incompetence is what we ran into there. No one would hardly answer the phones when we would call, we would leave voicemail messages that no one would respond to, for up to a week, if at all.

My Family and Mental Illness (Part 4) The Diagnosis Explained/Depression and Seizures Begin

Sheldon's note: This is a continuing series about my family's struggles surrounding my father's mental health issues when I was a teen. If you haven't already read the previous posts in this series, please read (post 1), (post 2) and (post 3)before preceding any farther in reading this post.

My mom didn't want to explain much of what the doctor meant by "dementia" until we got home from the doctor's office. She said that the doctor told her that dementia, in this context, simply meant memory loss. He had moderate brain damage, essentially, and the area of the brain most impacted was the areas of the brain that control short term memory.

The psychiatrists that ran the psychological testing on him, had asked him about his life history and his workplace. They had told the doctor that they really couldn't point to any one certain aspect of his life and say that it was the definite cause of it. He had worked around lead and various toxic industrial chemicals at work, but there was also a traffic accident in his teen years where he had been knocked unconscious, and also like many people of his generation (he's 57 now), he had his extensive experiences with intoxicating substances.

In his case, his favorite combination as a teen was LSD and Seagram's whiskey of all things. He jokes from time to time that he was "the only druggie who listened to country music". He started with the whiskey in his early teens, but the drinking got heavier, and he started on the LSD when he was 17, shortly after the death of his father from a massive heart attack at the rail yard where he worked. I suppose he wanted to forget what was going on around him.

He stopped the use of LSD a little over a year later, and had considerably slowed down on the drinking by the time he met my mother when he was 21. He stopped all together when my sister was born, and shortly after, they both converted to Christian fundamentalism.

Basically, they said because of the combination of all this, the best they could say is that probably all of these factors contributed to it over time, causing a slow buildup, which resulted in what we were now experiencing. We knew what was happening now, and perhaps why, but that didn't help much in many ways.

My father wasn't feeling much better, though his mind was starting to clear slightly, he was started to be become severely depressed. He missed his job, it had become so much of a part of him over those 25 years, his reason to get up in the morning, it was a major part of his life.

He felt like he had nothing to do, and he kept trying to find things to do. We literally could not leave one dish or one cup in the sink without him rushing to wash it. He's still obsessive to this day, I've talked before about his obssesiveness and how he hates it when I joke that the TV character Adrian Monk is his brother.

My Family and Mental Illness (Part 3): The Diagnosis

Sheldon's note: This is a continuing series about my family's struggles surrounding my father's mental health issues when I was a teen. If you haven't already read the previous posts in this series, please read (post 1) and (post 2) before preceding any farther in reading this post.

Several weeks had passed since the day that my father had walked off the premises off the job that he loved as a mechanic, the next day, my mom in desperation, had set up an appointment with the doctor who was treated my father for sleep apnea. This doctor, in addition to running an office where he ran sleep studies that are necessary to be done before someone is fitted with a CPAP or BPAP machine to treat sleep apnea, was also a neurologist.

Because of both the fact that he was a neurologist, and out of all of the doctors they had, he was the one who would listen to her the most. If anyone could help find out what's going, and what to do, he would be the man. Even though she didn't enjoy traffic in St. Louis, she drove us out to his office inside the historic Chase Park Plaza building.

She frantically tried to explain to him what had been happening recently, and she tearfully told him that she was scared that he was starting to develop Alzheimer's. She had taken care of her father for nearly 7 years until his death from complications of Alzheimer's

She was convinced that she was seeing many of the same signs as when her father was in the early stages. This really got the doctor's attention, and he said that he was doubtful that anything would likely show up on brain scans such as MRI's, but there was an extensive physiological test that could be done that would show the effects of most mental disorders as well as brain injury/damage from a stroke (I have long since forgotten what the name of it was).

My Family and Mental Illness (Part 2): The Father I No Longer Knew

Sheldon's note: This is part two in a continuing series about my father's struggles with mental illness, and how it affected my family as a teen, for part 1 (click here). Please read that post, if you haven't already, before continuing to read this post.

After receiving the phone call from the owner of my dad's company that he had went missing from work, my mom tried to regain her composure, but she knew she was still too shaken up to drive, she didn't necessarily like driving from the Illinois suburb we lived in across one of the bridges across the Mississippi River in the first place, fighting all the traffic, and she knew she was definitely in no shape to try it at this point.

A longtime neighbor who lived across the street at the time drove us across the river to my dad's company in St. Louis, about 15 miles away, the building was about two blocks from of the buildings on the campus of St. Louis University.

We went across the Poplar Street bridge, down Highway 40 into St. Louis, and as we pulled up to the building, my mom sternly told me to stay in the neighbor's truck, she would handle this.

She went into the building, not knowing what to do from there, she had already called St. Louis' police department on her cell phone, she was transferred to a detective who said that unless there was proof that he was in immediate danger, had been taken somewhere against his will, etc, that there was nothing they could do for us but let us file a missing person's report 24 hours from that time. My mom tried to explain the circumstances to him to no avail.

She went into the building, and came out about 15 minutes later with my father. She had told me that she had found him the break room with a co-worker of his who was waiting for her to show up, they were just as surprised and confused about what was going on as we were. They had all known him for most of their adult lives, since he had worked there for so long (25 years), it was a small company (at most would have around a dozen people on staff at any given time), and there was a core group of men that had been there almost as long as him.

My Family and Mental Illness (Part 1): The Phone Call that Would Change My Life Forever

Sheldon's note: This will be a long story, and one that is very difficult for me to write, so I will be splitting it into a series. I have alluded before to my father's struggles with mental illness in past posts, but I have never gone into detail as to what his health conditions are, or how it profoundly changed my life as a teen. This series will change all that. 

This series will probably be as hard for me to write, so please, bear with me as write this. It's been over 10 years now since my father had to quit his job due to his health conditions, but beginning to write this is dredging it all up again, and my emotions feel almost as raw as when it happened.

I was 14 years old when one day, there was a call from the owner of my dad's company. I was busy working on my ACE coursework, as a hard working home school kid, the same ACE coursework that I had in the fundamentalist private school I was in until the 4th grade.

My dad worked as an industrial mechanic for a small family owned company in St. Louis for 25 years, but I still had never spoken to the owner of his company before, he refused to say why he was calling, since he knew I was only a teen at the time, and the fact that he would make this kind of call, and refuse to say what it was about meant that something wasn't right.

I was full of dread of finding out what this call was about, but I didn't know if my mom would be happy with me leaving my coursework for a moment, (she was at the house of an elderly neighbor of ours, and this neighbor could tend to talk for quite a while). After my father's boss called several times, about once every 30 minutes, to see if he could talk to my mom, I knew it couldn't wait. I walked down to the neighbor's house, and as I thought she would react, she wasn't happy at first, and was demanding to know why I had stepped out of the house.

I had told her about my father's boss repeatedly calling, and that it apparently was important, because he refused to tell me what was going on, and was insisting to talk to her only. She tried to hide her fear, and pull herself together, because just like me, she knew something wasn't right.

You see, there had been a lot of strange occurrences and patterns in his behavior leading up to this time. For about a year before this day, his normally good memory had been failing him at times, and he wasn't able to understand some things that he had been very good at figuring out. All his life, he was the problem solver, his mind could think through any problem, large or small, and he could react with ease, figuring out the best course of action, whether it was a major decision in life, or how to put something back together that had come apart.

It was a life skill that had served him well over the years, especially in his professional life, in his days as a young man in the construction industry, or at the job he had at the time as a mechanic, working on parts for buses, construction equipment, larger trucks, and even large generators (his company had even worked on generators for the massive Midwestern utility company, Ameren).

Those skills were failing, however, and his personality was rapidly changing. He was growing increasingly more frustrated with himself, and with everyone around him, when normally, he was a happy, easy going man (other then when my mother would be constantly trying to pick fights with him for no good reason, she loved drama). He would get very confused sometimes, and then several hours later, be back to his normal self again.

Bank Teller Confessional

 

Over the last few weeks, I had noticed that a new teller at the credit union that I am a member of would talk to me more often than the others, and seemed to be happy that I had arrived whenever I would show up in line. I do have a hard time reading people, but it sure seemed like more than just the typical rehearsed customer service training friendliness. I had thought that she was just wanting to flirt in her own way, and I didn't mind.

Well, this past Friday, she told me that she had recognized my name. I have a rather unusual first name due to having parents as religious as mine, and she said she thought she had recognized me, but as soon as she saw my name, she knew who I was. Several years ago, she had been attending the church I have attended since I was 12, the church I am undercover in today. I couldn't remember her well, but she remembered me, and many of the people who were there then, when we we both teens, most of those people are still there, including my good friends "Sam and Rose", who I have come out to about my unbelief, there are 2 of only 5 people that know so far.

We had talked for a while about the old days, she didn't know Sam and Rose were dating, and she was happy to hear that they have been together for 3 years now, and all the while I'm talking to her, I can't pull up in my mind much of who she was, I couldn't hardly remember her. I have a strange sense of knowing when I can trust people and when I can't, despite my struggles in reading tone of voice, context, etc in conversations (I guess this special ability comes from dealing with the Stained Glass Masquerade effect that I have talked about in fundamentalist circles), and that radar was starting to come up that she was indeed someone I could trust.

There wasn't any more customers coming in, the credit union was going to close in about a half an hour, so I did what I don't do with hardly anyone: I told her some of the story of my life over the last few years.

I told her about my depression, and dealing with my doctor who couldn't understand why I am depressed ("You have a job, a house and insurance, what do you have to depressed about?"), my mother refusing to believe that I am depressed, and about my suspicions that I could be autistic.

I also talked about my leaving Christianity (but still remaining in the closet about that). There were a few details I left out, but I felt like I was in a confessional booth at a Catholic church, just letting it all out to the priest inside.

Disgusting Attacks Upon the Family of Rick Warren After His Son's Death

This past week, Matthew Warren, 27 year old son of popular minister Rick Warren (he is best known for being the author of "The Purpose Driven Life") decided to end his own life after a nearly lifelong battle with depression.

My heart goes out to this family during this time of tragedy, and I find it incredible that Rick Warren said that he forgives the person who illegally sold a gun to his son, the very gun that he used to end his life.

What I find disturbing about this whole matter though is that some fundamentalists can't seem to take a break from their hatred of Rick Warren over theological issues, or their belief that Rick Warren's books and teaches are watered down Christianity (despite the fact that he is an evangelical like many of them). Some of the comments made on public websites are rather disgusting, and here's a taste of the hate thrown at the family, it really shows the depth of hate and ignorance about mental illness often found in fundamentalism:

Train up your children in the way, live a godly example with right priorities, care enough to home-school despite the great sacrifice involved, don’t let them date unchaperoned, have daily family devotions, turn off the 1-eyed idiot, TRULY HAVE A PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE, and your children WILL NOT COMMIT SUICIDE, nor will they be involved in homosexuality, nor fornication.

Suicide happens soon after your stupid enough to read “The Purpose Driven Life”. 

Exposing the IFB: Pastor Bill Gothard and Advanced Training Institute

(Author's note: This is a post in the continuing series, Exposing the IFB, about the Independent Fundamental Baptist denomination, a group which many of it's former members refer to as a cult. For more information about this group, including my past posts on them, and links to blogs written by survivors of this organization,  check out the Exposing the IFB page on this blog).

The reach of extremist minister Bill Gothard's influence goes quite far in the US, and around the world. Most people have never heard his name before, but he has famous followers and his organization has influence in places that you would never expect.

Some of his famous admirers include the Duggar family of "19 Kids and Counting" fame on TLC, and former Arkansas governor, 2008 Presidential candidate, and commentator Mike Huckabee.

His organizations are also reaching into surprising places in US society. Though his home school support/curriculum organization Advanced Training Institute  is only popular with like minded fundamentalists  a follower of his, Tom Hill, started a training course called Character First, that is used in public schools, workplaces and other organizations, in 28 countries. Their website claims that over 300,000 people a year go through their training every month, and the organization, when asked, tries to distance themselves from Gothard, even thought they admit that their founder and Gothard are close friends, and that most of their character principles are taken word for word from the Institute from Basic Life Principles, a Gothard organization  and that Tom Hill served on the board of IBLP.

Here's why an organization like Character First, which has gotten into some US public schools, might try to distance themselves from a minister like Bill Gothard:

Their practice and promotion of the abusive "Christian Patriarchy" culture:

They don't make any attempt to hide it, Bill Gothard's Vision Forum website, his group for promoting his ideas on marriage and family plainly spells it out. Here's actual quotes from the website:

Their views on children:

". Both sons and daughters are under the command of their fathers as long as they are under his roof or otherwise the recipients of his provision and protection. Fathers release sons from their jurisdiction to undertake a vocation, prepare a home, and take a wife. Until she is given in marriage, a daughter continues under her father’s authority and protection. Even after leaving their father’s house, children should honor their parents by seeking their counsel and blessing throughout their lives."

(As I have said before about the IFB culture, especially part of my post on First Baptist Hammond,churches in the IFB don't truly consider someone to be an adult until marriage, especially the women).

Their views on women:

 "While unmarried women may have more flexibility in applying the principle that women were created for a domestic calling, it is not the ordinary and fitting role of women to work alongside men as their functional equals in public spheres of dominion (industry, commerce, civil government, the military, etc.). The exceptional circumstance (singleness) ought not redefine the ordinary, God-ordained social roles of men and women as created."

 "Male leadership in the home carries over into the church: only men are permitted to hold the ruling office in the church. A God-honoring society will likewise prefer male leadership in civil and other spheres as an application of and support for God’s order in the formative institutions of family and church."

If you want to know how people raised under this kind of system turn out, check out this woman's story. Though she wasn't raised in a family that followed Gothard, her family was in the Christian patriarchy system.

Bigoted/ignorant views on mental illness:

He actually believes that mental illnesses, including schizophrenia are caused by personal irresponsibility, and also guilt. This kind of ignorance unfortunately is rather common in fundamentalism. As I talk about in my guest post series on My Secret Atheist Blog, I was told by my family that my depression and OCD was merely "guilt". I had a pastor who thought that anxiety was a "sin", because it was a sign that someone didn't trust god enough.

Many times, I would hear people with depression say that they needed to let go, and trust god, or claims that their symptoms got better when they started focusing on helping others, as if depression is nothing more than rampant narcissism. This wasn't even during my time in the IFB as a child, this was in a Southern Baptist church. To hear such ignorance now makes me angry, how many people are out there suffering because they actually believe this? How many have even ended their lives, because an ignorant minister convinced them that their mental illness, caused by chemical imbalance, is their fault?

Bizarre beliefs on circumcision: 

Bill Gothard is pro-circumcision and believes that opposition to it is an attack on morality:

"However, the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP) printed materials still draw a moral line in the sand for believers, stating that “The attack against circumcision in the United States coincided with the revolt against authority and morality in the 1960’s” and that “the term uncircumcised is synonymous with immoral men.”

"These materials also conclude that “uncircumcised men have been more promiscuous than circumcised men,” and that even today there is a strong link between circumcision and moral purity.A suggested ceremony, and a certificate suitable for framing, are included in the materials." 

Affiliation with the "Quiverfull" movement:

From the Vision Forum page defending Christian patriarchy:

"God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” still applies to married couples, and He “seeks godly offspring.” He is sovereign over the opening and closing of the womb. Children are a gift of God and it is a blessing to have many of them, if He so ordains."

This is why the Duggar family, followers of Bill Gothard, have so many children (20 as of right now), especially since him and other pastors in what has become known  as the Quiverfull movement reject all forms of birth control:

"The failure of believers to reject the anti-life mindset of the age has resulted in the murder of possibly millions of unborn babies through the use of abortifacient birth control."

Like many fundamentalists, Bill Gothard believes that birth control is merely a form of abortion, since they think that it leads to the female body rejecting a fertilized egg. Actually, a woman's body is less likely to reject a fertilized egg when she is on birth control, as compared to without.

Accusations of sexual harassment by Bill Gothard and a "blame the victim" culture by his followers toward abuse victims:

The creator of the Bill Gothard survivor's site Recovering Grace tells her story of being sexually harassed as a teen by none other than Bill Gothard himself. From her essay Exploited Innocence:

"Gothard touched the other girl and me regularly and with increasing frequency. At first he merely offered a hand to help us in or out of the van, and laid his other hand on our backs as we entered or exited. If there was bench seating, his thigh was closely pressed against mine or the other girl’s. He would take and hold my or her hand as we walked to and from buildings. Without asking or announcing, he stroked my hair. "

"He took his shoes off and suggested that the group in the back of the van do the same. I thought he was just being casual until he started playing “footsy” with me in front of the others. . I could not figure out how to avoid it without making a scene."

Worse yet, in her post, Choosing Both Forgiveness and Prosecution, she talks about her family's reaction to finding out that her 18 year old brother had been molesting her:

"My mother did not become aware of the abuse until I was ten years old. She immediately put an end to it, but blamed me for it in the process, demanding with overtones of disgust that I spend the rest of the day in my room, and that while I was there, I was to “BEG God to forgive [me] for what [I had] done!”"

No one ever told me that the hopeless feelings of hurt and betrayal, shame and worthlessness that plagued me relentlessly were anything other than a deserved reward for my actions, in having allowed these things to happen to me by not telling someone of them immediately, the very first time anything had happened. This was a “principle” my parents had learned in their many attendances of Bill Gothard’s seminars… that the guilt of an attack falls to the young lady who does not “cry out” when assailed. I had failed to cry out.  

Her family blamed her for the sexual abuse, because of years of listening to Bill Gothard's teachings.
His views sound much like the views of Ron Williams, IFB pastor and operator of the torture camp for teen girls called Hephzibah House, read part 1 and part 2 of that two part series, but if you have a history of childhood abuse, proceed with caution.

I have wondered why it is that a group as large as the IFB hasn't been exposed more than it has, how could all this publicly available information be out there, and yet most people have never even heard about them?

I'm doing what I can to inform people, but I want you to help. Click on the share buttons below for social media, the more people know about this group, the better, it's time they be confronted by the masses about their behavior.

My rant about a bigoted Postsecret submission

This is from one of my favorite sites, Postsecret, it truly is one of the greatest sites on the web. People send in postcards, anonymously, with their mostly deeply held  secrets, to the site's founder in upstate New York.

Submissions range from the mundane to the shocking and hilarious. Postsecret's founder, Frank Warren seems to have a policy of not censoring secrets due to their subject matter or offensiveness. Comments are not allowed on the blog itself, but on a separate site known as "Postsecret Community".

This week there was a submission that well, to put it mildly, royally pissed me off.

For those of you that don't know, Aspberger's is the most highly functioning form of autism. For more information, click here. Why this postcard pisses me off is the assumption this person is making that someone with autism is lying about having their condition to get away with being an "asshole", in the words of the secret sender.

I'm sure that there may be one or two people out there who may be doing this in the world, to get away with offensive behavior, or to gain sympathy, but I highly doubt this is the case. Why this makes me angry is that there are many ignorant and bigoted people out there who would assume such a thing about a person, probably for no good reason. I have depression and OCD, and I will that in person, I don't tell many people I have it, because there are so many people out there, riding on a high horse, just like the person who sent this postcard, who do not understand mental illness, and have a burning hatred for those of us out there who are not "normal" by their standards. I have been mocked, misunderstood, told that my depression isn't real, that it was the result of "guilt" (about what, they never told me, and I don't know to this day). I have heard people say that depression is "unconfessed sin", I have had my own family deny my mental illness.

I'm telling you this to say that if you have the notion that mentally ill people have it easier in this world, shake that idea out of your brain now, it's a flat out lie. Ask anyone you know with depression, bipolar disorder, autism, how they have been treated by people in their lives, and the misconceptions people have told them.

Why anyone would lie and voluntarily put themselves through this kind of hate, misunderstanding and discrimination is beyond me, and strikes me as highly unlikely. 

I have to wonder, the person who sent in this postcard, if it would change their mind if they ended up having a son or daughter with autism? What if they themselves came down with depression or schizophrenia?

Would they treat their son or daughter the same way they have treated this person? Would they have the same skepticism and bigotry, or would they finally come to their senses and finally learn more and become a more accepting person? How would they feel if they were the person with mental illness, and had to face the same kind of stupidity they are spouting day after day? 

I think they would start seeing things from a whole different light than their current, bigoted point of view.