OIL & VINEGAR : Mental Illness within the GLBT Community

Depression was unknown to my family up until the time years ago when I put myself into a psych unit here outside Philadelphia. I heard stories of my Aunt Regina who in the late 50's and early 60's my Father would drive her back and forth to Haverford State for a very long series of electric shock treatments. My Father told of the ride back home with her and how she would look out into the world outside the car with the awe of a small child. My Aunt was a rose in a very grey world and these treatments crushed the petals when she was in full bloom. My Mother and Father spoke of her as weird and strange. I knew they loved her but psychiatry was foreign to my family.
Depression and mental illness are subjects one really fully understands when reading such classics as "Cuckoos Nest" or " The Bell Jar " and anything by Tennessee Williams . Being gay and depressed is something almost comical at the religious right's request. I see why so many piano bars are full on Sundays and Holiday evenings. It seems when are anti-depressants gone; off to the piano bar we go in search of others who are those eloquent crushed rose petals. We grew up watching our childhood heroines Garland and Monroe fight those demons and lose to the spectre depression. We became those greats and we almost went down those paths if it wasn't for so many of us that found each other and invisibly clung to each other along with our dry martini or quarter bag of coke.
In all the years I have been within the gay community mental illness and depression are subjects better left unsaid. I do remember when I was 15 in Wisconsin I knew of someone who hung himself after his lover left him. The crowd out there spoke as if he was some crazed Robert Bloch character and loathed the act he had done for ruining one of their large social events. I think if we look back at our lives we might remember that one friend of ours who had that dark shadow over them like Pigpen had his dirt cloud. I was that one in the group. I hid the depression behind my vodka and little bag of drugs. I disappeared from friends and went down those proverbial rabbit holes into my own mental hell.
The GLBT community really does not know how to address an issue that really is only being addressed now socially among everyone. We knew of our friends who took their "happy pills" along with their AIDS cocktail but we never addressed the issue outside of that scenario .  I mean how do we really talk about our side effects from Paxil over our Pomegranate Martini. My hands shake worse than Katherine Hepburn on a mechanical bull and I look at the eyes of the person who notices this and I hear their thought " It's the meth" . It must be a downer for a community to address a problem that is not school bullying or gay marriage . There are many us in and outside the pysch units who really have no voice at the proverbial GLBT table.  I mean whenever homosexual and mental illness are brought up we hear Jeffrey Dahmer or Aileen Wuornos and these are not good role models to follow. I mean mental illness is just not cool within the gay community.  I mean maybe we can claim John Galliano as our voice for his tyrannical rant in that Parisian cafe but it also has some anti-semitic overtones that are a definite no no. I really want my voice heard at the table but it seems for now mental illness within the gay community has been placed at the proverbial childs table away from marriage and bullying and the 2012 elections and yes even Lady GaGa. I guess one day we will be accepted in our own community; but for now I will relish in the help given to me from the community who years ago labeled my sexuality as a mental illness.