"--You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently. You cannot know--" -You Shall Know Our Velocity

Whenever someone tells me a story about themselves or someone else, I find a way to relate. I try my hardest, once I realize what I am doing, to not make it about me. At the same time, the only way I can understand and comprehend the story that I am being told is to look at it through my eyes, my experiences, my life. If there is no relation to what I have experienced, all I am doing is taking in words without real meaning, and how can I react or respond intelligently to something I don't understand...?

Maybe its just me. Probably is.

Yesterday, a conversation with a close friend turned to the subject of mental disorders. I am not an expert in that field, though I know I have a tendency to pretend I am. My friend was telling me about someone else, who has experienced rather severe mental conditions leading to certain behaviors that most in society would consider abnormal and unhealthy. I myself live with some mental incapacities which have caused similar, though most decidedly less debilitating actions. While we were discussing, I made clear my own theories on the matter, most of which have developed from my own experiences:

Mental disorders are a disease. There is something fundamentally wrong with the brain in most of these cases, a hormonal imbalance or some such thing, which causes those thought processes and behaviors to occur outside of what our society considers normal. This does not mean that there is something wrong with the personality of the person, simply that they have an illness that, thanks to modern medical technology, can be combated and in most cases today, overcome.

When I was trying to get my points across, I offended my friend, which I am very sorry for. I was not intending to insult and upset; I was simply trying to explain. I was basically told...

Just because that's what you've experienced doesn't mean that its true for others.

...which is very true. Still, I have reason to believe that my theories hold true for all people with mental disorders, regardless of how severe or inconsequential the disorder may be. And yes, those theories have been derived directly from my own, very personal experiences. I suppose that now I must take the time to think upon these theories. After having read the above quote from Dave Eggers, which was originally in an entirely different context, I was reminded that each life is different, seen from a different perspective, felt and experienced through different eyes.

Perhaps the theories of behavior and experience are all false to some extent, because how can a single theory be applied to all the billions of unique personalities and ways of viewing that humanity has produced?