Retzev, it's OK.
What you expressed is what I came to feel.
What I did was horrible, and I would never choose to behave that way.
I brought the story here because, to be honest, I saw a lot of untreated mental illness at the Fests years ago.
Though no one knew about my phone calls to the Halls, people at fests saw me in my hyper manic state.
I was unable to sit still, I talked a mile a minute, I was all over the place.
I was judged harshly then, sometimes by people who needed to look in a mirror.
One guy, whose name I won't mention, actually thought the Fest committee was "out to get him."
He told me he was going to "bring the fests down."
I have no idea how he intended to do this, but he asked me to help him.
I swear I'm not making this up, just as I'm not making my own story up.
For years, people like he & I were allowed to languish
as we were, and that's not OK.
People don't choose to act this way, they act this way because they're sick & need help.
If someone had dragged my sorry butt into a police station, if a judge had thrown my ass into a hospital back in 1976, imagine how much anguish could have been avoided.
Here's another story:
For five years I was in a relationship with Beecher, another manic depressive.
His right wing friends and siblings used our illnesses as a tool to enrage us against each other & destroy the relationship~~because they thought the relationship was wrong.
If I had been properly treated long ago, instead of being laughed at & judged, this too, could have been avoided.
There are millions like me out there.
When a person has diabetes or cancer, we don' laugh at them or judge them, we treat the disease.
It's time to adopt this same policy regarding mental illness.
And that's why I'm telling my story so bluntly and so harshly.
To kick the door open.
To help make sure that what happened to me~~and to the Halls~~doesn't happen anymore.
Don't applaud me.
What I did was horrible.
But honor Grayson's memory, by helping others like me to get help sooner rather than later.
David