The Loss of Objective Reality Isn’t Fiction—It’s Policy-Relevant

There is a specific kind of frustration that comes from having your reality simplified into something it is not. It reaches deep into who you are, how you identify, and how much energy it takes to keep explaining yourself to people who have already decided your experience is too complicated to take seriously.

To be fully seen, heard, and known is a powerful thing. But too often, people minimize the identities and realities of others because they do not understand them. People are told their realities are distortions—simplified, dismissed, or explained away by people who do not have to live inside them.

That matters because we do not just misunderstand complexity. We often relabel it as distortion so it becomes easier to ignore.

I have said many times that we need to acknowledge people’s identities even when we do not fully understand them ourselves, because what may seem unfamiliar to us may be someone else’s lived reality.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2024, and that diagnosis brought both clarity and shock. For years, I wondered why I was the way I was: an insomniac, gay, adrenaline-fueled, overthinking, people-pleasing person trying to make sense of myself. I was a decent singer, an okay writer, and, more than anything, a reality-bending thinker.

To exist felt both breathtaking and exhausting.

For much of my life, I believed God created everything we see, hear, and think. But I was never fully satisfied with that answer. There had to be more. I had to be more. Even with my insecurities, mood fluctuations, chemical imbalances, religious shame, and growing concern for the planet and humanity, I knew my life required a deeper honesty. I had to acknowledge the objective realities within myself and within the world around me.

People simplify bipolar disorder all the time. They treat it like a mood, an attitude, or something you can overcome if you simply try hard enough. But bipolar disorder is not just a passing mental state. It is a condition that can destabilize mood, emotional regulation, sleep, health, and overall well-being. It is dismissive to suggest that someone can simply think their way out of something that shapes how they experience themselves and the world.

And this does not only apply to bipolar disorder.

I have known people whose realities are dismissed in similar ways. One person I know lives with dissociative identity disorder and manages more than ten distinct identities in their daily life. Another is a trans man who transitioned early in life and now lives fully as himself, including as a successful drag king in his own right.

Their lives are not abstractions. Their identities are not debates. Their realities are not distortions simply because someone else does not understand them.

They move through the world each day hoping to be recognized, while knowing they may also be ignored, questioned, or dismissed. I value their friendships and perspectives because their lived realities are just as breathtaking, difficult, and joyful as mine can be.

And that is where this becomes policy-relevant.

Because when institutions fail to recognize people’s realities, they do not merely misunderstand them. They design systems around that misunderstanding.

When systems are built around a narrow definition of reality, people fall through the gaps. We deal with systems all the time, often without thinking about them: financial institutions, governments, religious organizations, corporations, grocery stores, libraries, movie theaters, coffee shops. Each relies on people, rules, categories, and assumptions to function.

And within those systems, someone decides what is recognized as real.

When people are not recognized, they are often ignored, denied, or forced to translate themselves into terms the system can understand. That can harm a person’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. At a human level, our systems should be built with enough dignity and flexibility to recognize people as they actually exist.

When people are not recognized, they lose trust in systems. And when trust is lost, participation wavers or disappears altogether. Over time, that weakens the very institutions people were asked to trust in the first place.

We need systems that see people clearly and serve them fully.

We do not just need systems that reach people.

We need systems that recognize them.