Once again…
…tonight, I’m having that thought, of what would happen if I really truly stopped apologizing for who I am, for taking up space, for having feelings, for having quirks, for being me? If I stopped cloaking my vulnerability in sarcastic self-deprecating asides about “navel-gazing” and being “emo?”
What would that be like?
Every few months/years/whatever I have this moment of, good lord, that would be REALLY different, maybe I should try it! And I’ve been steadily moving toward it for years, but let me tell you, it’s REALLY fucking hard. This isn’t just psychobabble, people.
What would happen if I really did enact that personal revolution?
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:
Thank you to everyone who left comments on my depression/mental health post from last night. I’ve read all the comments and have been thinking about them and formulating a response (likely in the form of another post), but it’s not fully baked yet. Just wanted to let you know I haven’t been ignoring your comments. Keep ‘em coming!
ETA: I find myself flustered/annoyed at certain words now that I am more familiar w/ the disability rights movement. I guess I am realizing (not that I didn’t realize it before, but seeing in a different way, maybe I should say) just how deeply ingrained the stigmas and preconceptions about disability are. But I’ll save that for the fabled post to come.
Fragments: Fear
Last night I was thinking about the fact that fear has been a theme throughout my life. It kept me in a state of inertia during my teen years when I was still living at home; I was being harmed but trying to take any sort of action was too risky because if the outcome wasn’t perfectly in my favor then I would be in trouble; I’d be harmed further. The same thing was repeated in my marriage (though ultimately I broke the pattern, in that case; yay for personal growth!). It’s also what stopped me from ever taking the step over the line and actually going into sex work. There are other examples. Is it what stops me from calling my health issues what they are?
Tonight, on the way home from Manuel’s, I was thinking again about all the considerations about whether depression should be called a disability. (I even have a hard time calling it a mental illness – hey, I grew up in the same society as everyone else, and we’ve all internalized the stigma to an extent.) I was having the usual back and forth in my head. I wondered what other people think of people who have mental health issues and identify as disabled. I wondered what my closest friends really think about my struggle with depression and my questions about whether or not it is a disability. I wondered how much it really matters what it’s called and why I’m so preoccupied with that question lately. I wondered if Rusty feels burdened or irritated or manipulated or limited or frustrated or exasperated or thinks I blow shit out of proportion or thinks I make shit up or thinks I do things just to get attention or rolls his eyes at all my ponderings on identity. But maybe that’s just because I roll my eyes at myself, a little (or a lot) and maybe I should stop that. I wondered how much of this comes from internalizing of the societal stigmas and how much is me being a responsible person who thinks of others instead of being too self-absorbed.
I wondered what it would be like if I could wipe the slate clean and not have all that baggage and all those wonderings.
Do other people think about this stuff, in the way I do? I often think about how we can never really know if the way we experience the world is “the norm” or if it’s an exception. We can never really know what it feels like to be someone else. But because I’m fascinated with people and interactions, and because it comes perhaps too easily to me to think of how I would feel/act if I were in a certain situation that someone else is in, I always wonder.
We hear a lot of messages in the media and pop culture about being an over-medicated society; people talk about kids getting ADHD diagnoses and roll their eyes because that’s just a scapegoat, that’s not a real condition; we get angry at people who can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and shake things off. I admit I feel that way sometimes, when I hear about someone filing for disability, and then their disability turns out to be… PTSD. Anxiety. Depression. ADD. Etc. C’mon if I can force myself through the day certainly other people can too! Plus Americans love to focus on individualism (which, let me be clear, I do not think is a bad thing at all) – why should I subsidize someone else just because they have depression, right? Not on the tax payer’s dime, etc.; all the Libertarian/Republican talking points. And even as I push back and say, that’s spoken as someone who has never dealt with mental illness, sometimes those thoughts go through my head too.
Blogging Against Disablism, in a roundabout way
Inside my head, today is a weird day. The jumbled thoughts and emotions about Sex 2.0, about what I can/can’t, should/shouldn’t say are still swirling around. I’m trying to push that stuff away and stay positive. -But even that isn’t an accurate description, because I am positive. I don’t like the false binary here of positive/negative. I have a positive attitude about Sex 2.0 and I am very excited about it, and at the same time there are some things I’m apprehensive about. That’s not so out of this world, is it?
Last night, I started another “personal internet history” post. I’m happy with my first one, which I wrote after hearing about GeoCities’ impending shutdown; but I want to do another one that’s more of a straight chronology, similar to Rusty’s. One thing my first post did was take me back to exploring some things that I hadn’t revisited in a long time. Actually, I’ve been awash in reminders of the past lately, previous versions of myself confronting me unexpectedly. It’s been jarring at times but, I think, also good; it’s important to take stock once in a while of where we’ve been, and to acknowledge that those “previous versions” are not things that we cast off like a skin but rather we build on them, so who I was is still who I am, even if sometimes that person seems very distant.
This has been happening as I’ve been unpacking. The computers are one piece of it, and with any luck I will start making those videos next week. But there are many more little pieces here and there that I’ve come across; it’s funny how something as simple as a rainbow-colored hair clip can bring tons of memories flooding back. I have a bunch of stuff sitting out that I keep meaning to photograph, or something; and talk about what it means to me. Maybe more videos?
So delving into personal online history is just a natural offshoot of that.
But that post will come later.
I knew today was Blogging Against Disablism Day but I wasn’t planning to write anything about it. Then I read Cara’s post about depression and was motivated.
Technically I am a person with mental illness. -And it bugs me that I just wrote “technically.” I guess I have some of the same concerns about appropriation as amandaw does. Even acknowledging that, and defying the stigma (which I’ve been doing for over ten years now), still it’s not an identity I feel like claiming. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with that, but for some reason I just don’t feel motivated to name it as part of my identity, rather just a trait of who I am. I know that seems like a meaningless semantic distinction but I don’t want to get off on a tangent, so I’ll move on.
I said I’ve been defying the stigma for ten years, and it’s true, in many ways I have. I talk openly and unashamedly about my history with depression and the fact that I take medication. I talk about it as if it’s no big deal, it’s just a natural part of daily life; which it is. At the same time, I’m also always aware in the back of my mind that this can be a small act of revolution, depending on who hears it; here I am, normalizing mental health issues and making the treatment of mental illness about as interesting as the treatment of, say, asthma or high cholesterol. For people who are still caught up in the stigma – either from feeling ashamed that they have mental illness or from harboring negative bullshit stereotypes about people with mental illness – this can have an impact.
In the latter case, it’s the same principle as the “I am a sex worker” PSA; it’s the same thing Jenny has talked about in describing her interactions with Republicans, how if she puts things in the context of “what if it was me?“, they start to get it. Humanizing is important. If you know me, and think I’m an okay person, and then you happen to find out I have a history of depression, it might make you challenge your own assumptions. “Huh, here’s a person with mental illness who’s a functioning adult just like me… so I guess they’re not all crazy and weird!” Or, “Hey, I think so-and-so is pretty cool. Oh, she’s also a sex worker? Huh, maybe they’re not all damaged and drug-addicted!” And so on.
Jenny does it by giving concrete examples; I remember one was something like, “What if I had a child, and I said if anything ever happened to me I’d want my sister to take care of my child; then I die in an accident and my sister wants to adopt my child, but she can’t, because she’s a lesbian” – suddenly, to the Republican she’s talking to, it’s about people, not faceless “issues.”
So that’s how I’ve always approached mental illness. For the most part.
Cara’s point here really resonated w/ me:
I’ve never mentioned this here before, though you may have seen me mentioning it in passing on other blogs or on Twitter, despite the fact that it would have been exceedingly relevant to do so on more than one occasion. The answer is simple: I’ve seen the reactions to it. I’ve seen that daring to confess any sort of mental illness and/or instability can be used against you, especially in the blogging world where credibility is regularly attacked, and where women are often called irrational just for having an opinion. And that people with anything short of “normal” mental health are often called irrational just by existing.
As I said when I was interviewed on the Cult of Gracie radio show a while back – sometimes I am hesitant to talk about some of the not so great parts of my life, because I’m afraid of how others with an agenda might try to use them against me. Someone hearing about my history of verbal and emotional abuse, growing up w/ an alcoholic father, being suicidal and being hospitalized in a psych ward, might use that information for their own means to try to prove whatever fucked-up theory they have about sexually expressive women, for example. They might pair that information with posts I’ve done about wanting to be a sex worker, and go, “A-ha! See??” But I didn’t sign on to be anyone’s poster child, and I go back and forth on it, because should I really let the threat of what someone might do control when and if I speak about my own life? The answer is not always clear-cut, because it depends on what the impact would be of what they might do.
The problem, as I said on the radio show, is how to balance that, and not go too far in the other direction. Sometimes as sex-positive feminists (as with many other identities), we try to over-compensate as a defense mechanism. It’s totally understandable – it’s an act of self-preservation. When people are waiting, watching, always at the ready to use our lives to further their own agendas, we feel the need to constantly focus on how happy, healthy, and well-adjusted we are. And it’s not bad to talk about those things; but if that’s all we talk about, then once again it’s easy to see us as not really human: perfect, flawless, completely well-adjusted, no hang-ups.
But that’s not reality. As humans, we are all a jumbled mess of contradictions, good and bad stories. We don’t live in isolation, and the words and actions of others affect us, just as our words and actions affect others. And having had painful things happen to you doesn’t automatically erase your agency, your ability to make informed decisions, your status as a “well-adjusted adult.”
As I said above, for the most part I haven’t ever claimed mental illness as an identity (although I did claim it during an identity exercise we did at the Desiree Alliance conference). And I hear every day the little pieces of the stigma that are woven into our society so intricately that it would be easy to not even notice. How many times have I heard, for example, when talking about someone who’s done something batshit and you can’t understand what the hell they’ve done, someone says, “She’s crazy. No, really, she has, like, a mental illness.” Because that shows that they’re REALLY crazy! They have a mental illness? Well, suddenly there’s just something so beyond the pale wrong with them that you can’t even try to figure it out, you can’t even reason with them, they’re not like us regular people who sometimes do crazy things.
And there are some rare occasions where this sort of distinction is important; but the way it’s often used? Nope. Because most of the people who throw it around are not qualified to make a diagnosis and probably don’t know what truly constitutes, say, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
They don’t know that they could be sitting there conversing with a person who has a mental illness. Because that person doesn’t match their preconceived notion of off-their-rocker non-functioning.
For a more specific example: there’s a guy who used to work where I work who was a real asshole, and a creep, and a weirdo. Sometimes his name comes up and we all laugh about what a fucking tool he was, because what can you do but laugh? (He sucked.) Invariably someone will bring up how he mentioned to a coworker that he had been in a mental hospital. Everyone will go, “Ohhhh!” Because see, that proves it! He’s FUCKED UP! Seriously! Last time it happened, I don’t know if I mentioned it or just thought about it, but I always wonder, how many of them would guess that I’ve been “in a mental hospital” too? Does that mark me as fucked up? Or maybe, just maybe, if someone got treatment, then they are NOT fucked up? (Leaving aside for a moment the topic at Jane Brazen’s, about whether or not certain kinds of “treatment” actually does a damn thing half the time.) That’s the part that has always confounded me. People will be like, “You know, she takes medication.” Well, GOOD! If she has a condition that she needs medication for, it’s good that she’s taking her medication! It would be bad if she weren’t on medication!
Talk about a headfuck.
I’m pretty good at confronting the mental illness stigma when I see it and just not giving a fuck about what anyone might think, because it’s their problem and they need to deal. But I realize there are a few areas where I’ve let shit slide, and I need to be better at calling it out when it happens, not just laughing along and pretending like there’s nothing wrong. And I need to remind myself that it’s okay to talk about the bad as well as the good, and people are going to make of it what they will, but in the end the only person who knows the truth of my life is me.
Sunday night
Inspired by this post and this post, I was all motivated earlier to settle down tonight and write a post about my history of being on the internet. But then I got so upset w/ myself when I was struggling to plant the begonias in the window boxes, and yeah I know, not a big deal… but for some reason the past several days have just been an emotional rollercoaster to me. So, I don’t know if I’m in the right frame of mind to blog. And yes, I know maybe my blog has sucked lately – all daily tweets and del.icio.us links. Occasionally I write blog posts in my head but they don’t see the light of day. It’s also true that I have less time for blogging now. But I guess if I were really really motivated about it, I’d find a way to make time. That episode at the end of February just took the joy out of it for me, though; it hasn’t felt the same since. I’m hoping I’ll get the blog itch back soon. I mean, I’m scheduled to be on a panel at BlogHer, so I better do some blogging! But so far… I just haven’t been able to get there.
I am ready for the house to be totally unpacked and settled. Maybe I’ll also feel better (the whole emotional rollercoaster thing) once that’s done.
Tomorrow I’m working from home because Chem-Dry is coming at 8:00. I hope I don’t get antsy/lonely. If I do, I guess I’ll waste time, gas, and money and drive to the office. We’ll see.
Depression spacetalk (as Kim would say)
Even though I take my meds and practice the techniques learned through over 10 years of therapy, every once in a while I feel myself teetering on the edge of slipping back into depression.
It happened again this weekend when nobody could be bothered to come out to a thing I wanted to do. This has happened several times and I’m starting to get a complex about it.
And then I start having horrible thoughts. Who is really my friend? If something horrible were to happen, who would really be there for me? I’ve know far too many fair-weather “friends” in my life. I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting them. But sometimes they still trip me up.
I’ve mentioned I don’t trust people easily.
Would they do what they did for my mom when my dad died? Would they help me the way Mary Lou, Kim, Angie, and Maria helped her?
These thoughts are horrible, I know, I know. But they creep in.
And I get scared. I remember exactly why I need my meds, to keep me functional. If anything were ever to happen so that I didn’t have access anymore, I’d be in a pretty bad place.
People who haven’t experienced depression like to talk a lot of shit about anti-depressant medication. They say it alters your personality and makes you numb. Complete and utter bullshit. Depression alters your personality. Depression makes you feel like someone other than yourself. Your body has betrayed you and there’s nothing you can do to make it stop, even though logically you might know what’s happening. Just like with any other medical condition? The meds bring you back to yourself, let you function as yourself.
Nobody ever says this shit to diabetics who give themselves insulin shots, people with asthma who carry inhalers with them, people with a high blood pressure who take medication to keep it under control.
I know the signs and the triggers, and I try to manage them. But it’s hard. Especially because sometimes I don’t know what to do. I’m starting to get stressed out about some relatively minor stuff relating to the house and I can feel it threatening to spiral into something more serious. I’m trying my best not to let that happen… cue cognitive behavioral therapy. But it’s damn difficult. (Side note: I really do need to find another therapist I like. But the ones I’ve been to in Atlanta have all been lackluster at best and downright bad at worst. For now, I don’t have the energy, time, or money to keep shopping around.)
In the blogosphere fairly recently I encountered a term I’d never heard before… “non-neurotypical.” Some people use it as a self-descriptor. I think it’s interesting – and of course I support anyone’s right to self-identify as they deem appropriate. Not sure if I’d claim it for myself, though. My ongoing struggle w/ depression isn’t something I’ve ever viewed as part of my identity. And it’s not because of the stigma or anything – because I will talk openly about it. But for some reason I don’t see it as an identity, just one facet of who I am.
Anyhow. This depression stuff? It’s just another one of those things… if you haven’t experienced it, you don’t KNOW.
Ramble
Not sure where to start or what to say… but alas most of life isn’t a nice consistent narrative. But then, when I was going through my archives to tag old posts (I gave up ’round about 2004) it reminded me that I used to blog more freely before I didn’t feel the constraints of titles, tags, potential audience, and a million other things. (I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate!)
Been having a weird week so far. Sometimes I have these “lapses”… not sure what else to call ‘em. Oh and first of all, if my mom reads this (which I don’t think she does lately, she’s been so busy with other things) DON’T GET ALL WORRIED ABOUT ME. It’s a characteristic of depression, unfortunately; sometimes, even though I’m taking my meds and doing everything I’m supposed to do to take care of myself, I have bad days or weeks. Often I can’t put my finger on a particular “trigger,” but that doesn’t stop me from trying.
I really need to find a therapist that doesn’t suck. Truthfully, I haven’t had a good therapist since I lived in Texas. She was one of the only good things about living there. Her, and my apartment. And being driving distance from Niki. That was basically it.
Anyway, one thing that I’ve identified that has been bothering me is that I’m just so ready to find our house and move out of our apartment. For the longest time I was not at all worked up about home-ownership (unlike a lot of other people who just seemed to jump into it because it was “the thing to do,” even though they hadn’t done any proper planning) but I always figured when the time came for it to be right for me, I would know. And now it’s here, and I know. I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore (fingers crossed that it stays that way!), Rusty and I are together, I don’t want to leave Atlanta, etc. – it all makes sense. I think being mentally ready to move on – mentally already having moved on, in some ways – heightens my frustration. I feel like things are breaking all the time. Like this week, our garbage disposal broke twice (and as of now isn’t fixed for good yet). I try not to complain because I know about having it better than a lot of people, blah blah. But this is my blog so deal.
It’s very important to me to have a “home base” where I truly feel at home, and where things are clean, organized, in their place, and feel comfortable. For a long time that place was our apartment, but increasingly I don’t feel that way about it – I just feel annoyed. I want furniture that isn’t made out of particle board. I’m tired of concrete floors. I hate that there are marks on our walls from where the movers banged shit around when we moved in. All these things didn’t used to bother me (well, the marks on the walls always did), but now they do, and I can only conclude it’s because I’m ready to move on to the next stage. I’m annoyed with nothing feeling “settled.”
I’m sick of: strange noises coming from the upstairs neighbors’ apartment, as if they’re running a wood shop (seriously, we’ve heard sawing noises); the kid in some apartment somewhere that I can always hear from my bathroom, who screams and wails all the freaking time; weird smells in the hallway because apparently some of our neighbors are disgusting; the Phantom Pooper.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no sparkly illusions about home-ownership being the solution to all problems oh except for the part where if anything breaks you have to fix it yourself and buy your own HVAC unit etc. etc. But I am ready.
I felt a little better last night after talking to Rusty about some of this. But I still feel kind of out of whack (<– correct spelling?).
Here are some photos of houses I like:
More later.
This is what I’ve been saying… now WHY is it such a difficult concept??
From Superlagirl:
This bothers me: “Their first sexual experiences have taught them that their primary value in life is their body and what others want to do with it. Or they learn that they are dirty little whores and they might as well live the part.” I am severely uncomfortable with putting words in survivors’ mouths. When I talk about my experience, I speak for myself. When I listen to other survivors, I respect that they are speaking for themselves, which is a hell of a lot harder to do than just making arbitrary generalizations. Yes, there are certainly common themes that arise in the telling of these stories, but there are no universal truths. I am glad that you are concerned with the needs of adult survivors of childhood abuse, but please do not attempt distill the experiences of those who suffer from abuse-related PTSD to She Was Treated Like a Whore, and Now She Acts Like One. We might be damaged, but we’re still nuanced. (Generally speaking, of course.)
And now this: “Can a truly free choice be made in response to childhood trauma? We think not.” Really? So my choice to seek therapy wasn’t a free choice? My choice to pursue positive sexual relationships wasn’t a free choice? My choice to give birth at home wasn’t a free choice? My choice to raise my daughters nonviolently wasn’t a free choice? All of these decisions stem from my experience with abuse. I don’t really like the implication that I’m just some traumabot with no capacity for self-determination.
EXACTLY.
Or, more succinctly, Lia:
I’ve decided that saying that someone goes into sex work because they have been sexually abused is like saying that someone becomes a baker because their Easy Bake Oven burned them when they were a child.
Lots of stuff
I have several posts on particular topics saved as drafts, but since I’ll probably never actually write them all, I decided I’ll just do one post addressing all or most of them. Besides, reading my archives (which I’ve been doing periodically over the past week or so, as I slowly go through and tag the old pre-WP entries and update old URLs) made me remember that that’s how I used to write my blog all the time, that’s what comes naturally to me, and that’s why and how I started blogging in the first place. So, back to basics!
(more…)