Schroedinger’s Rain

I wrote once about a conversation I had with Ryan about having a mental illness. He and I both have bipolar and PTSD and anxiety. I was talking to him about reality, about when you have a mental illness, it is like standing in the rain. You know it is raining. You can see the rain. You can feel the rain. You can smell the rain. You are soaking wet with rain and rain is dripping into your eyes. It is raining. And then someone comes up and tells you that it’s not raining. Now, you can see that this person is also getting rained on. It is raining. The skies are gray, rain is dripping into their eyes, it’s raining.

But this person says, “It’s not raining. It’s a beautiful day. It’s bright and sunny and the birds are singing.”

You might be tempted to think this person is delusional, they are hallucinating this sunny day, because, they are standing right next to you in a rainstorm.

But having a mental illness means always doubting whether that other person is the one hallucinating. It is always questioning whether they are right about the weather and you are the one who is wrong. It is learning that your own experiences can’t be trusted.

And this can be a good thing, sometimes, because it is important to realize that one reality is not all realities. But it can also be damaging to constantly live questioning your own perceptions. You learn not to trust yourself. You learn to believe yourself an unreliable narrator of your own life.

It’s hard to know that you are sick. It’s harder to not be able to trust anything you think, or feel, or believe… ever. It is like constant gaslighting – by life.

Yet, I do not experience the same reality that others experience at times. And all of my life I have been told, expected, to subjugate my understanding to that of others. To accept that I am wrong and others are right.

Sir and I have talked about this and I have come to feel that this is unfair, and incorrect. My perception may not be shared, but it is real. It is as real as anyone else’s perception, because all of perception is… subjective. We, as physical beings, can’t know anything but what we perceive. We are all subject to our senses and the processing of our brain to create reality. So saying that mine is wrong is… incorrect and unhelpful.

Mine can be different. But I don’t have to throw it away in favor of someone else’s. Both can exist.

It is Schroedinger’s reality. Both mine and yours can be true simultaneously.

In shorthand, Sir and Sub Brother and I have begun using the phrase, “It is raining. It is not raining.” Neither more or less true than the other… Both existing simultaneously. It allows others to express to me that their perception does not match mine, but it doesn’t invalidate my experience of reality in that moment.

When your reality is a minority of one, it can be incredibly important just to be acknowledged as existing.

It is raining. It is not raining.