I try to talk a lot about getting better, going through recovery and all that. I use the word “recovery” even though I’m not sure of its accuracy in relation to mental illness. It seems to presume that mental illness can be overcome, or conquered, and that once you have “recovered” long enough, your illness dissipates into thin air, its existence nothing but an uncomfortable memory. I use it here in a sense similar to an alcoholic or a drug addict in recovery. You never stop being an alcoholic, you just stop drinking. So what is recovery, then, from mental illness if it can never be alleviated from your life? I’ll never wake up one day and not suffer from a personality disorder; I’ll always have the depression gene floating around my body. My recovery is I guess attempting to neutralize these genes, to accept that they exist inside me always but hope that through therapy and medication these genes will soon lie dormant. ‘I don’t know much’ about human biology, and honestly, I...