Carrie Fisher: Royal General and Bipolar Queen

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2016 has to be Death’s favorite year. Death has taken almost everyone we’ve loved and now, it’s snatched Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher, an iconic woman who claimed overnight fame as Princess Leia, passed on December 27^th, 2016 at the age of 60 due to a devastating heart attack.

Carrie Fisher was famous before she was even born on October 21^st, 1956. She was the child of Eddie Fisher, an iconic signer, and Debbie Reynolds, screen legend who divorced when she was two. She escaped into books and was noted as a “bookworm” in her family. This later fueled her passion to write various episodes for series such as “Frasier”, “Family Guy”, “The Big Bang Theory”, “30 Rock”, and many more. She also crafted two plays (“Wishful Drinking” and “A Spy in the House of Me”), five autobiographies, three non- fictional pieces, and seven screenplays.  For some screenplays she was a “script doctor” – fixing scripts to make the films better; she helped with “Hook”, “Sister Act”, and other multiple films.  Fisher was a jack of all trades when it came to the cinema and even Broadway wherein she starred in “Censored Scenes from King Kong”, “Agnes of God”, and “Irene” with her mother, Debbie Reynolds.

Carrie Fisher has inspired many people everywhere as a warrior for women, a symbol of mental illness, and portraying many rolls from Camille (Mystery Woman) from “The Blues Brothers” to Princess Leia from “Star Wars”. Fisher used her struggles with her bipolar disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, and her parents’ divorce to empower her characters. With this, she essentially became the roles she played. It’s a common technique that many people with mental disorders execute. They utilize their struggles into a character – it’s a temporary form of escapism that allows them to become someone else.

Fisher has advocated for people to understand mental illness. As a whole, mental illnesses bear a stigma in society while people attempt to correct this. Mental illnesses are nothing to be ashamed of; they make up our genes and are a part of who we are. Yes, we can repair ourselves in various means and eventually we will emerge as someone stronger than before. Fisher inspired many to take note of mental illnesses and treat those affected like any other human being: with respect, dignity, and care. She emphasized this greatly in her interviews and targeted her own struggles to help people not only understand her better, but her bipolarity as well. She even referred to bipolar disorder as bipolar pride – a trait that is a part of those who have it. After Fisher’s death, people have taken to tweeting their mental illnesses following the hashtag #InhonorofCarrie.

Society still has a long way to go to understand just how crippling depression is, how one can be so shaken from anxiety, or how one manages to live a daily life with bipolar disorder. Yet through Fisher’s legacy of words and strength as well as being open about our illnesses, can we eliminate the stigma. Listen to her words, raise your lightsaber in her honor, buy her books, and remember Carrie Fisher as we march into a new year.

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So tell me, what will you miss most about Carrie Fisher?