When I spoke at Mental Health Camp last year, I was surrounded by a table of social media types, sermonizing about how mommy blogging has served to reduce stigma of mental illness, depression and the like. How women poking keys late at night gave a voice and created a supportive hug to anyone who was scared to admit that they might need some help.
Women admitting their medications, their dirty dishes and their daydreams to get away from children that they might have wanted with every essence of their being until post-partum set in is a reason why some others can admit those things – on or off the Internet.
Crazy is the new sane, so to speak, and it’s okay. Because women spoke out.
I also talked about how not everyone needed to speak out.
I used homosexuality as an example, citing that just because some people felt freer and comforted to know they were accepted completely transparently by their friends and family (when that occurs), it didn’t mean that it was a requirement. Or even 100% that people who didn’t speak out were ashamed of themselves. I said: Just because my truth is being said loudly doesn’t mean that I expect someone else to march in a parade. Our visions of happiness and necessity all differ, just as we do. Not all of them include flying a rainbow flag or shaking our Lithium in other’s faces.
Last week, I said that I was growing up, right from the almost beginning. Part of that is the discovery that I have my very own ingrained passions – things I never knew existed since I always felt like a shell of a human. Turns out that I have a lot of them.
I want to see a place where an employer, friend, family member or lover doesn’t judge someone by their mental health label; where their health is what bears judgment. When a boss doesn’t hear bipolar and assume instable and ends the conversation. When a loved one doesn’t see broken or burden when synapses don’t fire properly without some help.
I want to live in a city where people living on the street are respected. Because frankly, even if every homeless person in the world was a drug addict and brought their lifestyle upon themselves – an opinion I disagree with hugely – that person has learned to live and struggle and remain alive without the benefit of things and amenities you and I might have, and with more challenges standing in their way.
I want to belong to a community where differences are nourished, shared and enmeshed. Where debate doesn’t devolve into insults and judgments of character. Where liking a different presidential candidate doesn’t make you a moron, not breastfeeding doesn’t make you selfish, and not vaccinating doesn’t mean you’re ignorant. I want this community to continue to affect changes, in stigma, in charity, in economics and ethics.
I want my daughter to be happy. Whether she can read at four, fit into a size 2 at 20, marry her lesbian lover, flip burgers, or pray.
I want to find personal peace, wholly. To continue the stitching of the gashes in my psyche and soul. I want to lose the guilt and persecution complexes and become as logical about my own roles as I can be about anyone else’s. I want to be able to see my life through the same rosy glasses that anyone gets afforded.
I want to see the world and to blow Zoë’s mind doing it. I want to remove us from the comforts of Western Living, to living non-affluently, rurally, organically.
I want to live naturally. To eat whole foods that came from plants, not ones that were made in a plant. To use products that I know no one will pay a price for – environmentally, or through the loss of their childhood or land. To find health and beauty in the everyday normal things, and to find simplicity as romantic as spontaneity.
I want to help create a world where being able to breathe doesn’t mean having to be quiet. I want a place where it’s okay to say and read and celebrate that people have spoken out. I’m proud to have been part of the first year of that world’s life.
Happy first birthday to Violence Unsilenced, everyone who scrubbed their truth from under their fingernails and got even a glimmer of cleanliness from it, and everyone who has visited and opened their own eyes to the unjustness, righted by support.
I’ve gone on at length over the past year to explain the lack of love I’ve felt, and how manipulative I might have been, craving of affection and raging when it’s not found. That’s not entirely true. I’ve felt something I’d consider to be love for a number of people: the tough ones. These are the people that don’t give back what they receive, who might extol your beauty, grace and talents when they’re in the mood to, but otherwise, for whatever reason, might be unavailable for any form of friendship. Those that, on the surface, are there when it’s convenient to be.
These are the people I’ve continually sought out the affections of, whether it was a friend, lover or parent – and they’re the same people who have brought about the largest reactions when their affection wasn’t given, and when mine wasn’t returned, usually thrown out in the garbage and had a pile of shit rubbed in its face.
These people have, I dare say as one who is often just as guilty, little to no integrity. They are judgmental of others nearly always, gossips, arrogant in their perceived roles of power, knowledge or abilities. They don’t see themselves objectively – as most of us don’t – and they’re often quotable on their belief that they always accept responsibility for their faults and misguided actions.
One of the great things about the personal blogging community is that it gives you a lens to look through – different points of view are always coming within your own microcosm, and it can change the way we look at ourselves in the mirror.
Without blogging, I wouldn’t have been exposed to Grace D’s keynote in July. I wouldn’t have cried the ugly cry in a room full of other people (a lot of whom were also crying the ugly cry), hugged someclose women after approaching the table to ask for tissues and approached Grace afterwards, unable to speak. I wouldn’t have ultimately freaked out because it was too much for me to handle, shut down for a few hours, returned back to the party dissociated, drank and stayed up all night, and come back with regrets.
Regrets that taught me about myself, and my ethics.
Without blogging, I wouldn’t have been exposed to posts written in reference to me – some so positive and filled with adoring words that I’ve never felt I would ever deserve, so that my eyes welled up and I cried happy tears; some that filled me with the rage; some that instigated distrust within the community; some that made me stop, stare at myself, and realize how it is that I might seem to people who don’t realize that even if I’m constantly changing and shifting, I am 100% myself online, as I intend to be.
Without blogging, I wouldn’t be where I am, writing professionally, designing websites, speaking at conferences, taking part in projects that are bigger than the universe I was part of five years ago. I wouldn’t be beginning to grasp some semblance of confidence in my abilities. I would be likely be smaller, duller, more marred, without a feeling of futurosity and the hopes and dreams I have (or as many items as there is on my bucket-list).
Because of blogging and specifically a few recent posts, I’ve learned one of the largest lessons I needed to about myself: despite how true Grace’s words are, I am nearly always the person who does things backwards. Even if I forgive myself first, it doesn’t mean that the rage would go away.
I am so tired of feeling rage toward the people that I initially just wanted to care about me – it’s energy that should and could and most definitely would be put to better use somewhere else.
This is not to say, or negate, any of the affection that has come in my direction. There’s been volumes of it in the past couple of years, especially. In fact, I’m owning up to taking that affection for granted, because there wasn’t game needed to get it. I didn’t have to bend over, change my ideals and ethics, open my house and heart to you every time you had a bad moment, or adopt your own mannerisms (even if it wasn’t intentional, totally) to get it. I admit, freely, that I’ve become close with a number of people that required nothing more than me, and because there wasn’t a chase, I didn’t participate actively – because I was busy putting effort into the others.
The ones that needed to just see how well I could take care of them, or advise them, or make them smile during a bad moment, to fall ass over teakettle.
You don’t have to be a Freudian scholar to see the daddy issues, abandonment issues or borderline personality disorder written on the wall.
So. I’ve come to all of these conclusions about the hows and whys of me and my history and now, it’s time to put those into some rational form of cogent action so that I can forgive myself for the self-hatred, the anger, the self-abuse, the denial and the way I’ve brought those facets into others’ lives. I need to forgive them, first.
Might as well do it here, right?
To my father: I forgive you for the knee-jerk reactions that resulted in my ribs and eye socket being fractured, dislocated joints and the migraines I now get regularly. I understand that raising a strong-willed, intelligent, dramatically-mooded child can cause these moments to flare up – I know first-hand what it’s like to want to slap your child and feel the red bubbling up. I forgive you for your weakness of ability to walk away during those moments. I value that it taught me to do so, at any costs and ultimately, to ask for help when it’s needed.
To my mother: I forgive you for walking away when I needed a champion and protector by my side. At nineteen, in the place you were, there was little way that motherhood would have come naturally to you. I forgive your defences against labelling, but still see that I am more like you than anyone in the world – ironic, since I grew up without your influence – and know that should I have been in the same position, in a relationship with the person my father could be and with a difficult child while under some form of chemical, emotional and historical influence, I would have fled, too. And I wouldn’t have come back because I would have felt unworthy to deserve the opportunity. This forgiveness doesn’t continue onward, though, so the true action for any repair and relationship needs to come from you because I need to feel deeply that you want me as your daughter.
To The Ex: I forgive you for not being the person that you have the capacity to be. For assuming your worth is so little, that the existence you lead is the best you deserve. I forgive you for accepting the easy road, because I understand that some days, everything feels an uphill climb and you’re just tired of walking. I forgive you for extending your disillusionment onto me, for the blame and the emotional abuse that you’ve laid upon me (sometimes independently and sometimes as a reaction to my own toward you). I forgive you for not being present for your daughter, because I understand that truly present right now seems less acceptable than sort of around, as much as you have to be. Know that that doesn’t mean she will forgive you, but hopefully, I will raise her with the empathy needed to do so, without taking on your pain personally.
To her: I forgive you for falling into the trap of perception fitting the most recent events. I acknowledge how easy it must be to see someone as never having supported you, when your last memory of them is your conclusion that they weren’t loyal. I forgive you for the lack of holistic vision you have, for how justified you felt in tainting my opinion of others’ and for the concern that you caused – ultimately leading me to invite you into our home and family to remedy the danger to your safety. I appreciate your attempts at healing yourself and your family and for your regret about nearly breaking another’s.
To her and her husband: I forgive you for changing the course of my history, irreparably. I forgive your weakness of strength to approach me with any and all concerns you had both when they first surfaced and later, before emergency measures were taken. I forgive your lack of trust that I was able to seek out help if I needed it, the steadfastness with which I have always raised my daughter to ensure she would grow up missing exactly the experiences I lived with, and your attempts to repeatedly defend your position, without actually expressing anything more than slander toward my character. I appreciate that your vision saw more (and continues to, despite reality) than what you were actually faced with: a recently-relapsed anorexic with severe post-partum depression (who was under treatment for it) parenting to-the-book so as to make up for the daily guilt she felt for resenting her life; a boyfriend/soon-to-be ex who was nearly always drinking, getting high or unemployed; and a difficultly-tempered baby who, in addition to nearly six months of colic, had a severe, undiagnosed wheat allergy. You saw a potential for danger, and you chose to take action months later, apparently, when confrontation and an end to the friendship made it easier for you to do so. I forgive you for not making that call sooner, if you truly feel it was justified.
To me: I forgive you for rarely caring enough about your own happiness, or deservedness, to seek out new options. I forgive you for never completing anything, and then using that as an excuse the next time that you didn’t. I accept that horror begets trepidation, and that this is also part of the reason why loving and being loved doesn’t come naturally to you, and why you’ve been more apt to settle around the types that are only passionate loves for a little while, enemies for the rest. I absolve you of the years of drinking, drugs, smoking, dieting, puking, shitting, fucking, eating and spending – I know they came from a place much larger than the land called bipolar and that sometimes, excess was all that could make you feel. I pardon you for dissociating from life, beatings, sexual assault, conversations, fights, your daughter’s first year, loved ones and responsibilities. I’m happy you’re taking this step.
With that, I close the book on the past, put it on the highest shelf of the bookcase and forget to dust it off from now on. I won’t page through it until I feel as though my journey’s coming to a close, and I won’t consider my journey done until I don’t want to page through it anymore. Until then, I’m going to try to refocus myself.
