I'm pretty smart.
(Well, a certain kind of smart. The way we talk about intelligence is horribly limiting. We've taken a concept that ought to cover every aspect of how people deploy their skills to navigate the challenges of daily life, and we've reduced it to test scores and socio-economic markers. IQ scores correlate to academic and professional success, we're told, so they must be measuring something real, as if success itself is an unquestionable and objective metric. The circularity of psychometrics, like that of any theological system, has a certain beauty. But that's a topic for another time. For now, just know that I mean what we usually call "book smart.")
I don't say that to brag, because I don't see that there's anything to brag about. It's not something I achieved through hard work; it's something I was born with. I might as well brag about having green eyes or being 5'8''. My brain works in a certain way that's useful for taking in, retaining, and synthesizing information. Whatever. The idea that intelligence in the abstract is a sign of personal worth is a reflection of the idea that our minds are entirely under our control, and that in turn contributes to the stigmatization of mental illness. And mental illness is what we're really talking about here.
I got good grades in high school, so from time to time I heard what a lot of high-achieving kids hear from their classmates: "I wish I was as smart as Brendan." I've never known what to say to that. It's an implicit compliment, and even though I'm desperate for the approval of others I have no idea how to handle direct expressions of it. But if someone said it in my Latin teacher's classroom, she had an answer: "No, you don't really want that."
She was a character. Very smart, eccentric, opinionated, an intellectual snob. The kind of teacher that gets in trouble, sometimes deservedly so, for being too familiar with students, treating them more like contemporaries than charges. Which is why I know that she tried to kill herself shortly before the start of my senior year. A few years later, still in her mid-50s, she died. According to her obituary it was "unexpectedly" and "at home." I don't know, and I suppose that's just as well.
Let's be clear: there are plenty of people who are very smart and very happy. I'm not saying, "Woe is me, I have a 138 IQ." That's about as convincing as "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" or "Money doesn't buy happiness." What I'm getting at-- what I think my Latin teacher meant-- is that a quick mind is not always a wonderful thing to have. The brain that lets me multiply two-digit numbers in my head and read 50 or 60 pages in an hour is also the brain that kept me awake until midnight last night, endlessly circling around a very mild social conflict even though I'd been up since 4:00 AM and just wanted to get some fucking sleep.
It's not that uncontrollable brain functions are the entire problem. My brain would have nothing to tear into if I'd developed normal social skills and useful emotional responses to particular impulses, so that the slightest tremor in my relationship with literally anybody wouldn't be devastating. But then, developing those things would have been easier if my brain hadn't spent years producing a panic state at the mere thought of an unstructured interaction with another person or group of people. That is, the illness was reinforcing itself, and my world was getting smaller and smaller, until I was desperate enough to seek medical help.
Right now I'm on some mild anti-anxiety meds, without which I wouldn't be able to function in my current, customer-service heavy job. I need to move into a different line of work soon, but the thought of the mundane steps involved is so terrifying. More medication isn't the answer, I don't think. There's a risk of slowing my brain down too much, and taking away my best asset. I just have to be brave and learn things other people learned in their late teens.
It's important to understand mental illness as a subset of physical illness rather than a separate domain. But it's also important to acknowledge that management of any chronic illness, of the leg or the stomach or the brain, requires conscious effort. And with the brain, the most complex organ in the human body, the challenge can be staggering. Your mind runs in the grooves it developed to compensate for the illness, trapping you in a defensive posture that's now a hindrance instead of a help. It's so hard to change the way you think. Thoughts feel so instinctive that controlling them feels unimaginable. Every failure is an excuse to say, "It's impossible," and give up. But it's not impossible. It's not.
Next: another angle on intelligence vs. mental illness
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