Halsey is the musical alias of Ashley Frangipane, a 20-year-old New Jersey-born alt-pop singer who, if you haven’t heard of, you should probably be paying attention to. Her music is likely playing in the headphones of many of your classmates and peers walking down Commonwealth Avenue, and her shocking swath of bright blue hair has been featured lately in The New York Times, Billboard and Elle. There is something about her that speaks to people. There is something about her that spoke to me.
Halsey is honest in her interviews and interactive with her fans — she got matching tattoos with two fans at a meet and greet — so that’s certainly part of the appeal. She’s around my age, and we’re both Libras, so maybe that’s why I felt so connected with her so quickly. She gives off the sort of just-like-you-but-cooler vibe that we all want to emit, so maybe I just want to be her.
She is also biracial and bisexual, making her both extremely relatable and extremely educated on social issues that most celebrities are afraid to talk about. Her music video for her most widely known song, “Ghost,” featured a female love interest for Halsey, even while she was dating a male in real life. She’s tweeted numerous times about not erasing her race simply because she “appears” white, and she has spoken about pressuring her record company to hire more people of color for her music videos.
But maybe the most relatable part about Halsey, at least for me, is that she’s candid about having bipolar disorder. She has spoken about it in multiple interviews and has written songs about it for her debut album “Badlands” (“Control” and “Gasoline,” if you’re curious). And while I am neither biracial nor bisexual, I am, in fact, bipolar.
Bipolar. It seems almost like a coming-out to announce that on such a public platform. It’s sort of a dirty word, despite all of the progress we’ve made concerning stigma surrounding mental health. Depression and anxiety are becoming commonplace, but bipolar disorder? It connotes crazy.
I suppose to convince you that I’m not crazy, I shouldn’t go through what I call “my bipolar saga.” It’s a long story, and reserved for the people closest to me — after I decide that they love me enough to stay after I tell them, of course. But I don’t really have to tell you my bipolar saga because it’s not unique to me. I’m probably not the only person you know with bipolar disorder — it’s shockingly common, and often written about, painted about or made into poetry, as bipolar people are often skilled in the arts.
Thousands upon thousands of people before me have told similar stories: tales of multiple misdiagnoses, nightmarish medication combinations and periods of complete hopelessness and doubt that they will ever get better. And while I’m not totally “normal,” whatever that means, I am better. I’m better enough to recognize when I’m more “up” or more “down” and when I need to be around people or take some time for myself. I’m better enough to recall the worst parts of my bipolar saga in retrospective, knowing that it’s behind me and I probably won’t ever have to go through anything like that again.
I have bipolar II disorder, considered a more “mild” form of bipolar disorder as it is characterized by worse episodes of depression and more mild episodes of mania. Mania, or the “up” part of bipolar, in bipolar II is referred to as “hypomania,” which is basically mania without the diagnostic criteria of “poses danger to self or others.” Hypomania is basically an unusually good (or unusually anxious, depending on the day) mood all the time, an unusual amount of productivity and an unusual lack of need for sleep.
Sounds great, right? Given the choice between depression, mania and hypomania, I would choose hypomania any day. But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies: I’ve drained bank accounts through reckless spending (a common hypomanic activity), I’ve snapped in sudden bouts of anger at my siblings and I’ve experienced a mixed episode, which is basically the energy and motivation of hypomania with the negative, downward-spiral thought process of depression. That was definitely one of the worst things my bipolar has brought me.
Telling someone you’re bipolar is often an Event as well, because I’m relatively fine most of the time. But every now and then I’ll be in an episode of depression or hypomania and have to explain myself, or someone will see me take one of the six pills I take every night to manage my brain and ask what they are. I’ve gotten everything from, “oh, I’m a psychology major, so I get it” (which was nice to hear, as most people immediately associate bipolar with psychoticism) to “does that mean you hear voices?”
No, I do not hear voices. But I can recognize an important voice when I hear it, and Halsey’s is important. While the more severe and less common mental illnesses such as bipolar or schizophrenia still have a long road before they’re understood (even by the medical community), I’m glad people like me have someone like her to feel like someone understands and can speak for us.
