The light of illness

※re-post
 
 
A quotation in my diary from December 17, 2018:
 
“There is an aspect of fate and inevitability in illness. And it makes me want to say that a person who has accepted this, and a person who affirms his or her selves’ style of survival as an ill person, has great value just as they are.” (Yoshiyuki Koizumi “Descartes”)
 
An entry in my diary on the same date:
 
In my life, in the fact of survival, is not the process already complete?
 
The process mentioned here is the process self-affirmation. Self-affirmation isn’t easy even when you are blessed with good health. Even more so if you have an illness discriminated by others or society. I’m not only thinking of schizophrenia here. Disorder means something disturbing to society’s order. To gain self-affirmation when burdened with a disorder probably means to reach out of society and seek values in the world. (Society: all the communication/World: all of everything)
 
There are two aspects to dignity. One is pride, the other is self-confidence. Pride is gained by approval in a community or a society, self-confidence is an accumulation of trial and error.
 
I think my struggle since my first hospitalization 22 years ago, was a process to gain self-confidence through trial and error. Error meaning to end up in the hospital over and over again.
Anyway, as I wrote in my diary 6 months ago, I think it is quite safe to say that this process is finally complete.
 
I am happy now.
 
 
※Recently re-diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Still alive, still happy.