Yesterday, Linda Holmes wrote a review of Allie Brosh’s book (which you should all read– if you haven’t read her blog, she’s a painfully real yet comedic story teller, and if you have there’s some new pieces in it.) for NPR. Except it didn’t look like a lot of book reviews, it wasn’t static- it was more about what it means for Brosh (and others like Donald Glover) to write about their struggles not from the perspective of having overcome them or left them in the past, but of having them in the present. I feel like the following gets to the core of the essay:
But there’s something to be said for the currency of Brosh’s vivid, sometimes nervous-making chronicles, or of Glover’s scribbled notes. It’s very sterile and very misleading to hear about battles only from people who either have already won or at least have already experienced the stability of intermediate victories. It presents a false sense of how hard those battles are. It understates the perilous sense of being in the middle of them. It understates how scary they are. -Linda Holmes, Present Tense: Allie Brosh, Donald Glover, And Hurting Right Now, NPR
Holmes was talking about this in the form of writing- be it a book, a blog, or pictures of what you’ve scribbled out in a hotel room. I do try to engage in this sort of writing myself, but so much of what has driven things has been the past. And I’ve told about my past so often, some of it has lost the painful desperation. Other things haven’t, and I try to limit my posts here on this blog to events that even when they are from the past are connected, somehow, with what things are right now. Current events, new perspectives, placing them within a larger context than “I.”
It’s difficult, but not as difficult as opening up about what is emotionally current in my life, In September, I started a post. I hope to get it out soon, but I’ve been saying that since the day I opened the tab to start writing it. It’s been difficult, even though the most intimate parts are there in the draft folder already, waiting for those finishing touches and paragraphs of framing research to connect it to the larger contexts. But it’s waiting, and going into the file means sitting there, paralyzed as to what words could possibly come next. And with that is a circling terror- is it safe to say this “aloud?”
Writing about our current emotional statuses is hard. Allie Brosh has written a little bit about it, if I recall, though within the larger context of her depression. I know that when I keep trying to go back to any of the posts in my draft folder, terror comes out. It’s not just confronting the now, getting it out into words, though that too is difficult. Part of the terror is that every word I write brings me closer to sending it out into the world. And that can, indeed, put my freedom and peace of mind at risk, not because of a lack of privacy or anything like that, but because being as open and raw and now as that invites the care mongers to flood in. I fear greatly that people will react as though I don’t have steps in place, as though I’m not surviving through this, that I need rescued. That if maybe I was forced to the “right” doctors I wouldn’t have this now. (Hint: as someone who has had various points of this now for most of my life and have been in treatments for the majority of that time, you forcing me or having someone else force me into another hospital or care setting isn’t the “right” approach.) And by making it go out into the world, I’m putting myself at risk for your loving emotional violence.
I do write anyways. Not always here, but somewhere. I write poetry; I use tumblr. And part of that isn’t just because of writing, but because of the impact that writing can have. I know that writing can change a person’s mind or life— I’ve both been changed and have heard from people whose minds/lives I’ve helped change. But that action goes beyond writing, beyond casting into the void for another void-dweller to pick up and carry next to their heart.
Because that power goes beyond it. I’ve been involved with advocacy for many years now, since I was a child. Large chunks of that has been in mental health advocacy. And when the topic of ferreting out some more, new advocates comes up, the family members present and the service system people present always tag on something I find both counter productive and slightly obscene: “… who are stable/well/successfully managing their Mental Issues now.”
Don’t get me wrong- it’s important to take care of one’s self and to take time for yourself in this work. Immeasurably so. But that is something different entirely from what those words say. They say that the people who frame themselves as our allies don’t see us as worth working with. That our insights must necessarily be wrong, or useless, or both. It says that they care more about our pasts than our present, let alone our futures.
I hear these words from people who are supposed to be working on changing or reforming the system as it stands right now, and it’s clear they don’t actually want the words and experiences and, yes, wisdom of the people who are in it right now. These people seem, from here, to want to insulate themselves from the difficulties and fear that they would be confronted with in working with someone who they know is “still in it.” They can’t wrap their heads around following through with the needed support to actually work with “those” people— consciously or not, they cling to the idea of supporting a person with Serious Mental Illness (a technical classification) being both a burden and necessarily paternalistic in nature. I do hope that for most of the people I work with it isn’t a conscious thought, but it comes out here and there, and not just on this issue.
It’s a deeply misleading flaw, as much as relying on written narratives which makes those struggles into a past. Then we sit and wonder what went wrong in our efforts, even though the very reasons we bring to people to justify advisories like ours tell us why. We go to offices and we say, “Self advocate advisories are needed because you can’t see what the flaws are if you aren’t on the end that will experience them. You can’t watch flaws in a plan that about a life outside of your experience.”
There are other things wrong with the “but are well now” direction. It dis-empowers people further who are already dis-empowered on both societal and systemic levels. It enforces a framework that leaves those with disabilities that are life long, including those with DDs, being seen as less “valid” observers and contributors. It further continues the stigma about being actively mentally ill, even within circles that claim to push for de-stigmatization. It reinforces the messages that we’ve internalized telling us our voices are worthless. But as far as a fatal functional flaw? I believe that Holmes’s comments on writing are the crux of it.
It’s very sterile and very misleading to hear about battles only from people who either have already won or at least have already experienced the stability of intermediate victories.
Cracked Mirror in Shalott 