The music goddess herself, Mariah Carey is in the news lately, but not for any performance or “evil-diva” attitude that we’ve seen before. The amazing singer-songwriter, and 5 time Grammy winning music legend, is now opening up about her lifelong Bipolar Disorder struggle. She recently opened up to People Magazine about her diagnosis and has confirmed that she has been battling bipolar disorder for over a decade, the illness beginning in 2001.
Although that is when the official diagnosis began, like a lot of us who struggle with mental illness, Carey “did not want to believe it.” She states, “until recently, I lived in denial and isolation and constant fear someone would expose me. I didn’t want to believe it.’
Carey struggled with denial, but the signs were there and she needed help.
“For a long time I thought I had a severe sleep disorder.”
She was always worried that her mysteriously severe sleep disorder was something more. She stated, “…but it wasn’t normal insomnia…I was working, working, and working…I was irritable and in constant fear of letting people down. It turns out that I was experiencing a form of mania…I would also feel guilty and sad.”
Carey has been in the headlines in recent years for less than stellar performances than what we are used to from the songstress, and no one can forget the hot mess of a moment that was the NYC New Years Eve Performance in Times Square in 2017. However, now that Carey has opened up about her struggles, I think people will begin to see that, like so many of us, Carey has her own human battles and that many headlines on the singer could very well have been a result of her battling her illness.
Let me just say this, I am all the way ecstatic that Mariah has decided to open up, especially because she is known for emanating an aura of perfection and as some would say “diva behaviour.” To me however, Mariah’s constant need to for perfection and the portrayal of a woman with no flaws could have been her way of putting on a show for people; a mechanism for concealing her insecurities.
I recently tweeted to Mariah saying, “You are finally free.”
To me, Mariah being authentic is dope af and I want her to know that as the legend and diva she is, how many people she is actually inspiring by coming out with her diagnosis, how many people she is giving the OK to actually reveal to the world that mental illness is not a flaw, but simply a part of the human experience.
Pehas since stated that, “we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from anyone going through anything alone. It can be incredibly isolating. It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me and control me.”
As someone who struggles with depression, for someone like Mariah to open up like this, I think I just got my whole entire life in one revelation.
I wish Mariah nothing but health and happiness and again, you are free.
