Who the hell is Demi Lovato?

(This is from a comment I made on a thread concerning Demi Lovato where people were commenting that this was a way for her to get her name in the news)   

 "who cares what her reason to come out was. It is the fact that she is helping to remove the stigma that comes with mental illness. It is a stigma that I have lived with for over 26 years and it was only private until the 1st person noticed(and rudely commented) on my tremor from lithium or when I was hospitalized for 4 months at the end of my senior year, etc. etc. the list goes on. So GREAT thanks to: Demi Lovato, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Patty Duke, Sinead O'Conner and Evan Perry(RIP) BTW if you actually had any of the disorders she has you would understand it is NOT a bid for attention"

I am lucky enough to know 2 other people who are Bipolar. I say lucky because most people no matter how much they love you or profess to be a good friend just don't get it. Bipolar gets Bipolar - for good or bad they just do. When someone famous identifies themselves as being in treatment or even having been hospitalized for Bipolar you feel a little bit less alone. Sadly there is a downside. Being famous these people have access to the best doctors, meds, hospitals and treatment - most people diagnosed with Bipolar are not that lucky. All these things take money and insurance, something most people(whether mentally ill or not)do not have or not very much of. This can cause the ones around us, the very people who profess to love us, to compare our behavior, and what they perceive as lack of improvement or trying, to people who tend to be in the spotlight after being helped at a level I can't even imagine (but would love to experience). Very few of the famous implode on "camera". Sinead O'Conner came pretty close - remember Saturday Night Live? Kurt Cobain - self-medicated then suicide. Carrie Fisher almost destroyed her own life/fame but came back and talks openly about her experience with ECT(electro-convulsive therapy)

Voyeurism, when it concerns mental illness, draws the line at friends and family. People are looking for happy endings and for most of us they are not going to be found watching friends and family living with Bipolar. Our struggle will never mirror the struggle of the famous. I don't mean to minimize the famous' struggle but as I've said they tend to have the advantage. 

I fight for some semblance of normalcy everyday. I just recently regained some after over 2 1/2 years of pure hell. Hell that some might dismiss as weakness but whatever you want to judge it as  remember that it was my framework that my life played out in. I dealt with major medical issues for myself and my father. Death: my grandmother, my great-aunt and my dad. My hell consists of some of the deepest most profound depressions you can never imagine. Anger that stems from places I can't understand.... I'll finish this later...