Inside Every Person You Know Is a Person You Don’t Know

One thing that really irks me is when I tell someone about a medical condition that I have/had, and they say things like, “You’re just imagining it” or, “Stop looking up your symptoms online and diagnosing yourself” or, “Are you sure?” Let me just make it clear that if I ever outright claim to have a certain condition, it means that I've been officially diagnosed. If I just suspect that I have something, I would say so; I wouldn’t say it as if it’s an undeniable fact. The reason why some people don't believe me when I talk about my experiences is because I've had a lot more hospital experience than the average person my age, and people seem to have a problem comprehending that. Well excuse me for being unique. When it comes to mental health especially, here's what people need to understand— I had frontal lobe epilepsy and a lesion near my left prefrontal cortex, and I had brain surgery to treat it. If you're familiar with neuroscience then you know what the frontal lobe, and specifically the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for. Most of your higher cognitive functions are controlled by this area, including attention, thought processing, emotion regulation, personality expression, problem solving, decision making, and some aspects of memory.

So what do you expect? You tell me how you think this has affected me. It literally screwed me up. I developed an attention deficit, mild forgetfulness, and emotional disturbances, to say the least. I can’t study, focus, think, or remember the way I used to before. I used to be the biggest math and science nerd in the world, and now I can barely do simple arithmetic in my head and I legit count on my fingers at times. I used to be a very practical and somewhat aloof person in the past, but I’ve become highly emotional and expressive, in a way that hinders me and makes people call me dramatic. So you need to realize how ridiculous you sound when you tell me that I'm diagnosing myself. You know what, maybe you're right and I never had epilepsy and just "imagined" the seizures that I had. Maybe I'm not quite so sure whether I actually had brain surgery. Maybe I don't actually have an attention deficit and just "diagnosed myself" and somehow prescribed ADHD medication for myself. Maybe my generalized anxiety disorder was all in my head and I dreamed the CBT sessions that I had.

Here's one thing you need to drill into your head: you don't know me. Period. You think you do, but I can guarantee that everything I've ever told you about myself or you've heard from somewhere or you’ve somehow figured out on your own is no more than 50% of who I am. There will always be more things that I'm hiding, and you'd be shocked to hear them. You didn't grow up with me, you didn't spend every second of your life with me, you don't know what I've been through, and you don't know what goes on inside my mind. You’re not an expert on my life, my experiences, and my thoughts. People are more complicated than you think, and you never truly know a person. So stop making assumptions and judgments about people when you don't (and never will) know their full story. It's honestly hilarious how people try to tell me that my struggles aren't real, when they don't have the slightest clue what those struggles even are. Just like I’ll never genuinely know how it feels like to experience your difficulties (and I don’t try to pretend that I do), you’ll never know how it feels like to experience mine. You don’t know the dread of losing control over your muscles and having them twitch and convulse involuntarily, or your eyes rolling up and losing your vision and all your sensations, or thinking that you're dying as you forcefully plummet into unconsciousness. You don’t know the post-surgery pain you suffer after having your scalp torn apart and skull cracked open and being immobile for a few days. You don’t know the frustration and exhaustion of persistent insomnia and consequent throbbing headaches. You don’t know the agony of having constant digestive issues since a very young age.

And I'm not complaining; I love my life and all the challenges that I face. I wholeheartedly embrace them, and if I had the choice to go back in time and never experience them, I wouldn’t do it. I’m fully aware that my hardships are nothing compared to the hardships of 90% of the people in the world. I admit that I’m a spoiled brat who lives in the wealth and under the protection of her parents, in a safe bubble of sunshine and rainbows, with no real responsibilities in life. But guess what? So are most of the people around me. Funny how some of these people trivialize my problems but then act as if their own are the most grave in the universe. At least I admit that I don’t yet know the adversities of the real world out there, and I'm grateful for my blessings and recognize that I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet and that most people have it far worse than I do. Trust me; no one knows gratitude the way I do. I always see the positive and bright side of things and compare myself to those who are less fortunate than me. Yet at the same time, I never belittle the concerns of other people like they do mine, even when they might seem silly or less serious than mine. So please, we need to have more empathy and acknowledge that there’s always more to a person than we think. Inside every person you know is a person you don’t know.