If I were King of the Forest, elected Emperor of the Universe, found Aladdin’s magic lamp, won the Powerball, was a leotard-clad superhero…if I “had the power” I’d:

1. Make money not so tight for folks with disabilities. I’d pay for all consumers to actually go to a first-run movie on a weekend night (not the cheapo afternoon show) and maybe even spring for the big box of Milk Duds, too. Tevya, the milkman from “Fiddler on the Roof,” put it so well when he’d talk God about his poverty: “Lord, I realize of course that it’s no shame to be poor. But it’s no great honor either!”
   
2. Officially announce “Vicki Bresson Day,” and hold the day of her birth in reverence. When her son lost his battle with depression, Vicki’s heart was broken—but also broken open. As a speaker for SA/VE (Suicide Awareness/Voices of Education), her insights about depression are changing attitudes about suicide around the nation. I’d also write a check for a million dollars to the Mental Health Association’s Tom Johnson, a tireless advocate who has worked 90 hours a week, year after year—for almost no pay—simply because of his passion and kindness. And I’d award Tasks Unlimited’s Theresa Carufel the highest honors that could ever be given. She also lost a son to this terrible illness, also works 90-hour weeks and has inspired more people to become involved with the cause of MI than anyone else in Minnesota.
   
3. Help the professionals to understand that even if an angel came down, hit me with a wand and instantly cured me of all of the biochemical connections to my MI, I’d still have 30 years where, because of my diagnosis, I was fired from jobs, shamed, abandoned, ostracized, hated and feared. Things that by themselves would cause anyone to feel “crazy” and to despair.
   
4. Hope that all of the doctors worldwide would finally forgive us for having mental illness, a disease so complex that for centuries it baffled them and subsequently shamed them.
   
5. Make it illegal for collection agencies that work for the hospitals and medical professionals to have access to our mental health information to use as leverage against us. And if they wouldn’t cease and desist, we’d stick a live badger down their pants.
   
6. Require every politician from George W. on down to spend a day, just one day, with a person with a disability. To watch people have to get on the bus with a wheelchair, do their shopping, get up the stairs; to spend one day with a person with schizophrenia and watch them deal with their disability, with stigma and see how strong and brave they are, but how tough it is for them. And then report what they learned to other lawmakers. Just 24 hours, strong and brave they are, but how tough it is for them. And then report what they learned to other lawmakers. Just 24 hours, my friend—and I believe Gov. Pawlenty would never be so glib again with “all of us equally sharing the burden of budget cuts.”
   
7. Create Nurturing Days for people with disabilities and give them massages, makeovers, pedicures, hair styling, fashion consultations, facials. Give people a chance to feel attractive and important, to have “good touch,” to feel pampered, sexy and valued.
   
8. Send folks with disabilities on monthlong vacations to Hawaii, the Greek Islands, the Caribbean, London, Paris—where they’ve dreamed or read about. Living with a disability is a 24/7 job just as it is, one you can never “take a vacation” from, and no one needs or deserves a sunny beach and a drink with a little umbrella in it more than they.
   
9. Have better magazines in the doctor’s offices. Reader’s Digests from 1983, Cat Fancy and Coins, Coins, Coins don’t cut it.
   
10. Make the procedures, forms and paperwork for obtaining Medical Assistance or Disability easier and more compassionate. When someone’s mind has been wounded, why do we have to wound their pride and souls as well?
    
11. Take out a two-page spread in every Sunday newspaper in the country saying: “Wake Up, America! Mental Illness affects 1 out of 4 Americans at any given time. And there is Hope and Help. Call 1-800 for resources.”
    
12. Make an addition to #9—I’d move all the mental health units to the fronts of hospitals, next to the Heart Unit, not hidden in the back. And have nice office furniture, beautiful art, bouquets of fresh flowers, and fresh, warm chocolate chip cookies in the waiting room.
    
13. Help remind people that helping others in need is not a hardship, but a cherished gift, even an honor. I believe most people don’t mind giving money if they know the money will be used truly to help people in genuine need, and that’s how we need to approach our fundraising attempts. What they do mind is having their money pissed away, a graphic image I use quite on purpose.
    
14. Try to have the courage to remember that the American Dream has less to do with making money (I;ve got-mine-so-screw-you)—and more with dreams of the soul. Helping the other guy and making others’ dreams come true is how our dreams are also realized.
    
15. Have the media focus on real courage, beauty and strength. That a woman in a wheelchair doing her shopping is the true athlete; that a person with bipolar disorder who refuses to harden his heart in the face of terrible prejudice is the real example of strength.
    
16. Try and give people who have had their hearts broken in love the courage to try again and again, and again, if need be.
    
17. Create a medical environment where genetic research and the insights it can bring would be kept in the hands of the healers and out of the claws of the insurance companies. An environment where genetic cloning would be used sparingly and with great deliberation and intelligence…perhaps a new Albert Einstein, Babe Ruth, Mother Teresa, Louis Armstrong, the Marx Brothers (except Zeppo), some woolly mammoths and maybe a spare Halle Berry.
    
18. Strike the diagnosis of Borderline Personality. “Borderline” has been misused by some professionals to brand or “red flag” consumers who were tough to treat or who (GASP!) disagreed with their diagnosis or treatment options. A diagnosis is a way to focus help or treatment, not a way to alert other therapists about whom to avoid. If you don’t have your own ego and passions in check enough to mind your manners even if ill people in crisis don’t mind theirs, then find another profession. Get rid of the nasty uses of borderline diagnosis or else clean it up and use it responsibly.
    
19. If I had the power, I’d go back in time and be with the 19 others I was hospitalized with in an adolescent unit back in 1971. On one terrible day, almost two decades later, I learned that almost none of them had survived. They all ended up on The Street, in The State Hospital, The Penitentiary and The Graveyard. I wish I could go back for just one day and tell those teenagers all that they gave me, all that they did for me. That I felt so empty and hopeless and afraid back then, but I survived on their courage, borrowed parts of their souls to live one more day. That why I speak and write and live is for them.