When you look up "depression" on Google images you get a lot of beautiful young white slender cis people crouching, or clutching their heads, or silently crying. It's so pretty, almost glamorous, this universal melancholy that is touching and almost lovely to look at. Poetic, even.

I don't see many images that show what depression means to me- days without showering, lying in a messy bed with clothes discarded all around me, unable to focus on a book or my phone or really anything. Not tired, but unable to do anything but sleep. Not eating. Just barely existing. It doesn't show the diversity of people who have depression- the trans people, the people of colour, the fat people, the people with disabilities, the elderly.

I don't see photos of that. Keedy did a good job with anxiety, which is entwined with my suicidality, personally, which got to the top for image searches around anxiety, but depression is still quiet and beautiful.

Until you have it.

Or your partner has it. Or a family member. Or a friend. And you get to know it intimately, in all it's black molasses sticky tar glory. That sense of futility that permeates everything you do.

I was working on a completely different article, and was doing some research about mental health issues (particularly depression) and how people respond to it, when I came across this on my Twitter feed.

The article, of course, goes on to explain that the author doesn't mean CRAZY crazy, like, how does he phrase it, "women who walk around scratching their skin off and chattering to themselves in a mist of crack smoke or anything like that". Oh no. He means "sassy street-smart lasses", "gals with a slight attitude problem all swirled into a shot of hot-blooded swagger", a "beautiful psycho". Someone who yells at him sometimes, I guess, when he's being a tool, which judging from his writing is likely often.

It seems in fairly poor taste on the heels of the suicide of Robin Williams, is all I'm saying.

This is the romanticization of "crazy" for women, where basically it means we have a lot of feelings, and we express them, and yet are not *too* dangerous or unpredictable when our feelings are dismissed and laughed off as our mentalism.  Now, many men say that all women are crazy, a statement that can be found in this horrible, transphobic, misogynist gem, the Hot Crazy Matrix (stolen from "How I Met your Mother", btw). This is a guide that all young men need to watch in order to understand how to get into the situation they want with the women they want. Sounds like the sort of thing Elliot Rodgers was into, huh? This video goes on to warn against "redheads, strippers, anyone named Tiffany, hairdressers" as being too crazy and just not hot enough (according to his chart) to be worth spending time with, also feeling that anyone who is under the "too crazy line" but is between a 5-8 hotness is only worth sleeping with, not settling down with.

I don't know, I find it incredibly confusing.  But I believe the gist is that crazy is hot, until it impacts your life in a negative way, making it difficult to fetishize it. And I want to say, fuck that.

It's not just women whose mental health struggles are glorified, mind.  The moody artist is another example, or the wounded man with anger issues, or the sociopath who doesn't see you as human, just meat. I've dated the first two of these archetypes, which depend on a partner who will try to heal the troubled mind of their partner, creating a weird, fucked up codependency where you find yourself saying "I'm not your mother/therapist" while simultaneously trying frantically to be both. Often it ends up in a codependent mess, with both people resenting each other.

And I've encountered plenty of people who treat the last archetype as a sexy/scary dating prospect. Hell, I had the partner of the guy I called out about acting like sociopathy is hot send me messages about how he might be a sociopath but he's really a nice person. A nice person who tortured animals as a child, stabbed her for sexyfuntimes and threw her into a wall (hot!), and says things on his dating profile like "you deserve no respect, no consideration, no dignity".

I don't believe you. And I find it frustrating, worrying, and dangerous to keep seeing this trend in making mental health issues seem fun! Scary, but cool!

They're not. I've known plenty of people with mental health issues, and I've struggled with depression and suicide for most of my adult life- the romanticization/stigmatization of "crazy" has negatively impacted my life over and over again. It's caused people to push my boundaries in bed, because "crazy women are up for anything in bed", right? It's caused people to ignore me when I sought help from an abusive relationship, because I could be easily dismissed. I'd made me feel unsafe at work because I can't be honest about advocating for myself without fearing being fired. I've had the police refuse to take statements from me because they decided I was "crazy" and therefore anything that happened to me was irrelevant. People have had unrealistic ideas of what mental illness is like, and have made me feel guilty for not getting "better" more quickly (something I'll be discussing in my next piece). Lovers haven't understood that "crazy" sometimes means a decreased libido instead of an increased one. I've felt incredibly isolated because of the truth of "crazy" is difficult to live with, and I don't think that treating it like a fun quirk is doing me or others any favours.

It's not sexy, or fun. And it certainly doesn't help those of us struggling with mental illness, an estimated 1 in 17 Americans, feel supported by our community when it's advertised or joked about as such. This isn't a fetish, it's something we work with on a day to day basis. Every time I see something saying "crazy women are hot in bed" or "sociopathic men are the best fucks" I just want to shake people. What would you say if someone said "I love people with eating disorders, they're really sexy" or "man, depressed people are the hottest"? I imagine you'd find that weird, creepy, and possibly predatory. Let's call it that, then, and do away with this trope. We don't have enough social care for people with mental health issues as it is, let's not aid in stigmatizing them further and instead, talk to them (to people like me) as people. We want your love, and compassion, and understanding, and care, genuine care, not just the desire to get in our pants because you think we're "wilder" than "normal" people.