As a mental health advocate, I feel that it is important to debunk some myths about notions of recovery, and about what someone who is “recovered” should look like. It is essential that I not only speak from the point of view of role model, or of one who has crossed the imaginary finish line into recovery and won the trophy of normalcy and a return to anonymity, but as one who is vulnerable, is messy, is human – someone who is on a nonlinear and meaningful path, regardless of the dubious and oscillating territory where my mind might find itself.

I am someone who has fought harder than I think I realize to reclaim what I deem to be the privilege of normalcy. My past struggles are often invisible. My scars are hidden. My psychiatric status and my medical chart are known to relatively few people I encounter. However…