words are like
a bit of medicine for the soul.
The idea of responsibility felt overwhelming and downright impossible. I would respond, essay after essay; letter after letter -- I would write back
and be told that "I needed to take accountability and responsibility" as I re-read it stumped. Was I not responding? Did I not say, "yes, I did that"? What world are we living in? What more could I give? What more could I say? What more could I respond to? Was I responsible for every god damn thing in my life? What was the level of control my parents believed I had over their responses, over the entire household environment?
{gaslight fumes filled up the house, take a deep breath in -- and out}
How did it feel to be me?
I talked myself into a corner. And it was the therapist that was right on top of me validating my parent's boundary-breaking behavior -- how were they [my parents, staff, therapists] reading my diaries to be decided as okay-dokie artichokie?
The double standard was difficult to live underneath. I could not read theirs?
Sometimes it felt unending, the way that I could not live without the hounding of something wrong. What sin did I do now? What sin could I be accused of doing? And then one day I woke up in a mental health institution -- being followed around by staff giving me points. It would have been funny if not real. I would have to add these points up to talk the next day, a bridge of 10,000 points.
It was learning to live under a system of likes, comments, shares. The scrutiny I felt as a child was dismissed as some sort of personal problem on my part. They wanted to save me. And I would contort for them, I would sigh, say they "saved me" and then!
AND THEN! I was taking responsibility for myself and my life. I learned through context that to take responsibility was to obey whatever the fuck they wanted, the flavor of the week.
They wanted to save my life, I could see it in some of the staffs' eyes. Maybe they wanted to believe that there was a cure. And that if this rich white man's daughter can be "cured" with this advanced american behavioral modification -- there is hope. How was I sick again? What were these symptoms? Because I felt they were more responses and reactions to an overstimulating environment than dis-eased parts of my mind.
I wasn't asking for less share of the pie. I wasn't asking for less responsibility than my actions require. I was sick and tired of taking more. I couldn't eat the whole fucking cake, alone. Was this not a family affair? Was this not a family dinner?
Capitalism is part of the problem of mental health, we can talk about neurology and research, science and duht-ta-duh-ta-dah. And when a person is not able to afford life, mental health is symptomatic of a larger societal problem. My father's money could not buy eternal springs of health. It bought comfort, ease. Healing from trauma takes time, a luxury that I have been given, a privilege.
and that's something that capitalism does not allow all, the "weak" will be crushed under the systemic invisible wheel. It pummels one physically as well as emotionally, chemically, and spirtitually. It is a real mind-fuckery that places dollars above human life.
What's the solution? Who is responsible?
It's the existential burden of realizing how complicated the problem truly is. It's taking the problem and examining it at various levels -- and before long, I forget -- what's the question? Who is responsible for that? Who can blame me for getting lost in my own thought?
I think my parents were fearful about me, about my life, they projected on to me the answers they didn't have. What could I do? If my parents did not understand basic human rights then why fight this? I stayed in residential treatment. And it hurt. And I couldn't take the moving here, there, and everywhere based on one fight we probably would have if I was to come home. Would I just be sent away again? I did not want to fight, and I was suffering for basic needs to be met. I was surviving, I was striving to get to a place in life to heal.
I found it.
I am okay now.
I am writing.
I am breathing.
I love waking up in the mornings.
I love the feeling of sunshine on my skin.
I am going to be okay.
I am happy.
I took the weight off my shoulders, I saved myself. I chose to heal and that meant I had to ditch my father's idea of what my life was going to look like. He wanted me to be a doctor, and there I was -- in chiropractic college, doing all I could do to make him proud when I was miserable. I loved the science, philosophy -- I just hated adjusting people. I didn't like palpating them. I just wanted to read and write.
So, here I am now -- I guess I am insane for doing what I said I was going to do from the beginning. I am going to write. I am going to express. I am going to publish the pages of my diaries for everyone to read. How off-kilter am I for writing all my woes? Because I haven't even touched on what it was like inside of those treatment centers. I haven't told the stories of what the groups were like; the stories of the "therapeutic treatment" and what it feels like to be drugged on six different anti-psychotics. I think people should know what the treatments are like, because I could not choose to say no.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CAN'T SAY NO TO MEDICAL TREATMENT?
Who is responsible?
I am.
I chose to write down the very essence of my being into a diary because I dreamed of writing a memoir. It was so exciting to me to be able to build this thing up from the ground, and I was so excited -- to live, to write it all down, and then. I stopped. I was told that I couldn't write, or that was not "healthy" or I had to do it in this way or that way.
Look, I am writing as a response to what happened to me. I am responding to life, I am answering for the things that happened because I believe the health care system needs to be kept in check. I went through these treatments, and I want space to be able to speak.
And it's a bit messy at times, but I am doing it; anyways.
I am now building skills to respond better, to express better, to grow and change.
And that's healing. When I am no longer shrinking away from the response needed to live. For a long time, I lay crushed under the sticks and stones that were tossed in my direction. And then I got up. I organized the materials that were thrown at my emotional body and I build something. When I was surviving under the point system at Uinta Academy, I lived inside of the art that I was reading and watching. And I am doing the same now. This time I am choosing this, I am choosing the hot spotlight because it's okay for me to respond.
And it's okay if others do not like my response.
I am able to respond,
anyways.
To respond, it comes from the inside -- a deep gutter growl of authenticity. And it can be polarizing, harsh, abrasive. So I ask, over and over things that I cannot understand because I am unwilling to listen to my own voice because I had been trained to believe that a response was to obey. I shut off my insides once upon a time because I was deceived by the treatment meant to save me.
Here I sit, redefining words, still.
Responsibility is good.
To respond is good.
I am good.
My response is good.
I believe in my own goodness again.
oh
thank
god.
she
said.