Content Warning: Mental illness.

I just watched a Philosophy Tube video on abuse and trauma. It was an emotional watch, partially because of how I related. Not everything, of course; I’ve never been in an abusive relationship. I have written before on here about some of my mental health history and trauma. It was tough to write about, and still affects me deeply.

Something I’ve been thinking about, though, is what someone said to me a while ago. How depression and trauma are the worst, but it also let my minds do some magical things.

My mind let me fly. I’ve left a place while my body stayed. I can sometimes feel the whispers of things that I can’t see. I’ve had more intense experiences sober than some friends have had on psychedelics.

Is all this “real”? No, of course not. It’s not something you can measure easily, and my experiences are only in my mind.

That doesn’t make them any less significant. If anything, my mental health has shaped who I am far more than my body has.

I had the realization while thinking about neurodiversity recently. While what I have gone through has been awful, if I was offered a pill to make me neurotypical, I would refuse.

Now don’t get me wrong: I am on meds. Meds have saved my life, probably multiple times. But I don’t think of them as making me somehow “normal,” but making the symptoms interfere less with me being able to live my life.

I like my life. That’s been a long road to be able to say with confidence, which makes it feel all the more real. And with my life are the things that make it such a surreal journey. These things bring a little bit of magic, both large and small, to my daily life.

And I love them for that.