One quick thing
No time to write the long response post right now because I’m about to head out to a potluck lunch for SPARK. But I do want to say, some of the comments kind of irritate me because it sounds like people think I have trouble talking about the fact that I have dealt with depression for years and take medication for it. That, I have no qualms whatsoever about mentioning, and in fact sometimes I can be rather aggressive about inserting it into conversations when I perceive the discussion is veering toward “judgmental, ignorant, and assholish regarding mental illness.”
It’s probably not fair of me to be irritated but I just wanted to draw the distinction. I’m not writing about coming to terms with “admitting” that I have depression or how awful it is to “admit” that I take meds. Fuck that. This is something I deal with, the meds are necessary and I would not be alive without them, people can either believe me or blow it out their ass. The stuff I’ve written about so far and intend to write more about, either here or in another space, is more of a higher level thing of confronting my own internalized prejudices/stigma about the concept of disability, and how society in general perceives disability, including a lot of the language around it (e.g., the idea that a person w/ a disability is “damaged” – you would not believe the back and forth I was having w/ myself in the shower this morning over that concept!)
And that’s the sort of thing that I have to scold myself about and laugh at. Because if I can’t laugh at or make fun of my issues, then what’s the point? I refuse to feel sorry for myself because I’m not “normal.” And I’ve seen people who are normal who are more fucked up than I am (and I’m pretty fucked up). But that’s why I’m proud of myself too. For all my problems and all my issues, I am an amazing person. Is a schizophrenic damaged because s/he sees the world differently, and yet can make the most beautiful piece of art that s/he wouldn’t be able to make if s/he was normal? It’s just like culture (and, M@ber, you know how much I love culture (almost as much as I love the gays)), we all see the world through our own experience, and some of our experiences are colored by chemical imbalances, mental retardation, physical handicaps, etc, etc. That’s what makes it all so interesting.
And by “it,” I mean life.