New Adventures in Grad School

I’ve begun a new adventure and stage of my journey this week with my first grad school classes. I didn’t realize just how much I’ve missed the academic atmosphere of class discussions and intense readings. I know I’m going to be busy out of my mind over the next few years, but the exhilaration of getting to play with ideas again is worth the extra stress.

I don’t regret taking a break from school after I initially graduated. It was the best decision I could have made at the time, allowing me to get some real-life experience, figure out what I really wanted to be “when I grew up,” and break away from the high-pressure of performance.

I’d recommend it to any student fresh out of college: unless you have a boundless supply of energy and know exactly where you want to go in life, take some time to celebrate your accomplishments and rest. Consider your options over the course of a year or two. Get some experience in the field of your interest, or try out lots of different fields! School will still be there when you’re ready.

I was slightly afraid at first that I’d forgotten how to be a student after several years of being out, but I think the break may have made me a better student. I’ve gotten enough perspective to realize that grades aren’t really the most important part of education, something I struggled with a lot in undergrad. It probably helps that I’m going to a school that doesn’t use traditional grading, but I feel that I would be less concerned about perfect 100’s even if I were going to a traditional educational institution.

I also feel like I’ve had the opportunity to really get to know who I am and what I believe. Everyone talks about school being the place where you find yourself.  It is a great place to get ideas and try out new ways of being, but I feel that it was the space in between undergrad and grad school that really allowed me to find myself. It was then that I was able to digest the information and find out how what I had learned previously applied to my life…and where I still needed to learn and grow.

I feel as though I’ve been glowing this whole week. I’m ready for the challenge of stretching my thinking and worldview. I’m ready for the transformation that will inevitably follow.

For the time being, I’m planning on keeping up with posting something new on the weekends, as usual. In this moment, at least, I feel that my sense of balance and the value of the different parts of my life will prevent school from becoming all-consuming. I even have hopes that grad school will be a kick-start to my blog as well as my life. Get ready for some out-loud musings and some light-hearted frustrations. I encourage my readers to enjoy my journey with me and welcome questions, ideas, and discussion on the various topics that I will metaphorically chewing on in the coming months.

Why I Hate The Mental Illness Rhetoric about Depression

Following the death of Robin Williams, I watched Facebook flood with articles and discussions of depression. It’s a tough subject at the best of times, even harder following the fresh sting of loss.

Emotions were high, so I prepared myself for an onslaught of insensitive posts about suicide being selfish, cowardly, etc. I was dismayed, though, to see phrases like “depression is a life-threatening illness” and “depression is out to kill you” dancing alongside the other comments.

I’ve watched the fight to raise awareness about depression for quite some time, and it seems that we’re finally reaching a place where people sort of understand that depression isn’t a character flaw…but I’m not sure that where we’re headed is any better.

Although it’s important to recognize that depression can be rooted in physical causes, vitamin deficiencies or hormonal imbalances, it’s equally important to recognize that it isn’t always rooted in physical causes. Sometimes it is entirely emotional or situational.

AND THAT’S OKAY.

What’s not okay is to diminish the impact of a person’s emotional process or environment, which is exactly what this “life-threatening disease” model does.

A while back, I talked about reaching the point of no return when I was in the cult. It was the moment that I realized that I would rather die than continue to live the life I was in—that wasn’t an overstatement. I was suicidal for almost two years before I finally left, and one of the things that gave me the courage to break away from the toxicity of the IFB was my suicidality. When I look back on my life, I don’t see that struggle as “dangerous” or as part of a “disease.”

It was a crisis, to be sure—but it was a good crisis. When death was more appealing than my life, I had nothing to lose in trying to make my life worth living. My depression was the signal to me that things couldn’t just go on the way they were. Something had to change.

Had I been taken to a doctor during that time, I could have easily been dismissed as “mentally ill,” given some pills, and sent back into abuse. I might have spent years more, maybe even the rest of my lifetime, trying to battle “depression” (the symptom) rather than the true “disease” (abuse).

I get that the “illness” proponents are trying desperately to end the stigma around depression, but as someone who was depressed for non-medical reasons (still good reasons), I don’t see a true end to stigma.

We might have shifted slightly in our opinion of depressed people, but only because we’ve shifted from thinking of them as emotionally unstable to medically unable to be happy…so technically, the stigma is still there. Sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, desperation—they’re all still “bad.” We’re just more willing to say, “It’s not your fault.”

But I don’t want my emotional state to be acceptable only if it’s caused by an imbalance somewhere. I don’t want to live in a society where being sad is demonized to the point that I either keep it hidden or I go get a pill to make it go away.

I want my emotions to be okay, no matter what. I want to live in a society where having an emotional struggle is as acceptable as having a medical problem. I want to live in a society where depression can be a valid indication that something is off in my environment rather than just an indication of something being off in my body.

The disease model is convenient in a society where minorities and oppressed groups are far more likely to experience depression. It allows us to shake our heads over a “diseased brain” rather than considering what societal factors may be creating an environment in which depression can thrive. It allows us to ignore problems like abuse, discrimination, bullying, economic distress, and prejudice as we scurry around trying to find the magic bullet that will force everyone to be happy with the way things are.

Yes, I struggle with depression. I struggled a lot in high school and college. I struggle less now, but I still struggle (usually when I’m not embracing my emotional work and end up stagnating in the emotion I don’t want to work through).

But NO, I do not have a mental illness or a disease. I don’t have a chemical imbalance. I’m not helpless or in danger because of it. I’ve learned to embrace my downward cycles as an indication that it’s time to make changes in my life or focus on healing old wounds that have been ignored. I’ve found hope. I found my own way of working through it, with the assistance of some amazing people who had the guts to tell me that my emotions weren’t bad or dangerous on their own. It was fucking hard, but it was worth it in the end because I understand my moods better than anyone now, and I know I can sit through the dark times…and grow through them too.

I’m not saying there is never a medical reason for depression. I’m not saying that medication can’t be helpful. I’m not saying that offering assistance isn’t necessary.

But I am saying that the rhetoric that paints depression as nothing more than a physical illness is as damaging, in my opinion, as the rhetoric that paints depression as a character flaw.

What would happen if we stopped talking about depression as if it were the boogyman hiding in the corners of our minds? What would happen if we didn’t assume that emotions were an illness or teach people to be afraid or ashamed of what they are going through?

Maybe, just maybe, we could actually begin to address depression intelligently, allowing each person to figure out what physical, social, and mental components are at play for them. Maybe we’d actually see people capable of working through their depression rather than succumbing to it.

 

Guest Post: Don’t Forget Ferguson

This weekend’s post was written by my partner, outlining some of the things he thinks we can learn from the situation in Ferguson. 

The world’s eye is on Ferguson, Missouri following the police shooting of an unarmed black teen. Questions of racism, mass civilian protests, and para-military reactionary violence hold the nation’s social media spotlight, in spite of reluctant media coverage.

The news has made a point of selectively reporting on the rioters who loot and destroy property, as if that justified the presence of snipers aiming their guns at civilians. Never mind that people go on crimes sprees all the time without prompting law enforcement to resort to armored tanks and riot gear. They ask us to believe that it’s necessary to shut down schools, enact a curfew, and bring out the arsenals over a few Molotov cocktails and broken storefronts.

But when the police are taking cameras away from reporters and citizens and arresting individuals just for protesting, the claim that police response is focused on rioters and looters rings hollow. There is a fundamental difference.

Protesters raise their hands in front of police atop an armored vehicle on Wednesday in Ferguson. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, J.B. Forbes/AP

The scene in Ferguson is not just some small number of criminals who hate and oppose police. Thousands of ordinary citizens congregated to employ one of the dearest human rights in the history of humanity: the right to protest and petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And the police retaliated with teargas, smoke bombs, and rubber bullets. Ferguson PD came out with helicopters, armored vehicles, and military-grade assault weapons, essentially enacting martial law.

And we rightly recognize that this is unacceptable.

The nation responded with a wave of outrage, and following public demonstrations all across the U.S. in solidarity with Ferguson, things seem to be settling down. Yet this shouldn’t be the end of our action.

We must ask difficult questions. Why did these abuses occur? How did the country arrive at a place where it was possible? Who is responsible?

For when police fail to limit their response to the actual criminals and criminal actions, instead removing all constitutionally guaranteed freedoms from every single citizen in an entire city, they have not simply failed as a police organization. They have sunk to the level of the criminals they supposedly despise and fight. And this is more than disturbing.

Yet the near-unanimous social opposition to the police’s actions is slightly surprising. An even more stringent martial law was enacted in the Boston manhunt for the bombers, and the nation’s response this time is fundamentally different. Instead of largely supporting the removal of every citizen’s rights, an entire city (and the nation with them) is protesting the injustices.

This objective contradiction leaves us to wonder what impetus and justification caused these police-state actions. The police do not wake up one day and shoot an unarmed black teenager. A government cannot suddenly seize the power to attack its own citizens, punish them for exercising 1stAmendment rights, indefinitely detain them without probable cause, or suppress them.

Everyone wants to identify different culprits. The nation points at the Ferguson Police department. Some point at Presidents they didn’t/don’t like. Others raise their voices against an oligarchy run by corporations. Still others blame Congresses for passing bad bills or being generally inept.

We decry racism where we find it. We can castigate a media that kowtows to their owners. We throw our hands up in despair.

But to find the nearest complicity, we need look no further than the mirror.

You. Me.

We have turned blind eyes to comparatively minor violations of freedom that paved the way for incrementally larger ones. These have occurred piecemeal over decades, sometimes in secret, but usually, largely with America’s approval as citizens exchanged freedom for a sense of safety.

We trusted President Obama not to use his new power – to execute or detain US citizens without probable cause – against us. We believed the TSA’s promises that their disregard for due process is necessary for our protection.

We allowed the NSA to surveil and record innocent US citizens as long as they kept the terrorists at bay. We turn blind eyes to the FCC as they censor public speech. We were convinced by our leaders that curfews and martial law were the only way to catch the Boston Marathon bomber.

We’ve been lulled into complacency over the violations of our rights and privacy for years…until we get a glimpse of the repercussions of letting go of the Bill of Rights. We watch in horror as a fundamental shift occurs, from our government and its citizens together facing an outside enemy—to our government facing its citizens, who have become its enemy.

And it was inevitable. For when people voluntarily relinquish their human rights, abuses naturally follow.

Let Fergusun be a lesson. We must be vigilant. We must be active. Freedom is not something to take for granted. Let this tragedy be the wakeup call for us to protect each other’s rights from the ever-reaching arm of power. The government can only be of the people, by the people, and for the people if the people maintain that balance.

The Bystander Effect in the Global Economy

The bystander effect is perhaps the most insidious of human faults. From the many Germans who didn’t speak out as those around them were taken to concentration camps to the folks in New York City who closed their windows and turned away as a Kitty Genovese was murdered by a serial rapist on their street, the tendency for people to ignore something happening to others has produced some of the most bone-chilling stories…not so much from the atrocities committed, but from the realization that the vast majority of people are willing to let it happen right under their noses.

We like to believe that we live in a fairly moral society—that the crimes that happen, especially the predatory ones—are committed by the amoral few while the rest of us wring our hands in distress until they are stopped. But the reality is that, when it comes down to it, we’re more likely to ignore violations against others as long as it doesn’t feel likely that those violations will come upon us, even more likely to do so if those violations have the potential to benefit us.

I’m sure I’ve already lost some of you by jumping straight into Godwin’s law. Now I’m going to take this in a direction that will no doubt seem melodramatic, but I ask that you hear me out (or read me out).

One of the largest collective bystander effects that I see continuously unaddressed in the U.S. is with regard to corporations. Naturally, the things that might come to mind the easiest are the seemingly “small” injustices that could fit within capitalism in an arguably “healthy” way (though I wouldn’t argue that position myself)—things like low wages for workers, the bullying of others within the market, and tax evasion. It would be nice if that was all that our bystanding as consumers had been overlooking, but consumer bystanders have been overlooking far more than that. Let’s take a look at a small list of some of some of what corporations have been involved in or linked to over the years.

• Animal Cruelty
• Dangerous Working Conditions
• Worker abuse and neo-Nazi ties 
• Illegal Pharmaceutical Usage
• Water Contamination
• Child and Slave Labor
• Environment destruction
• Water exploitation
• Agricultural exploitation
• Genocide

Even when corporations are caught, as Tyson was with animal cruelty or Amazon with the neo-Nazi security company (linked above), they might get a slap on the wrist, perhaps a fine, maybe even an outcry from customers…

…then sales resume as if nothing happened.

It’s as though consumers are more angry at the fact that they were forced to become aware of an ethical problem than about the actual problem itself, sending the clear message “keep your slave labor, abuses, environmental destruction, and cruelty out of my sight so I can consume the products you acquired through those means with a clear conscience.”

Is paying a MacDonald’s employee less than a livable wage on par with ignoring the murder of someone in front of your eyes? Maybe not (though you might want to ask the low-wage worker how their lives are effected), but we are smart enough as Americans to know that that’s not all that is happening behind the scenes of these corporations. We just don’t care enough to dig to find out what atrocities we are complicitly paying for along with our “cheap” goods.

So in this instance, I think it is neither melodramatic nor unreasonable to remind us of Neimoller’s famous poem about World War II

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

As authors are quickly discovering with Amazon, corporations aren’t just willing to attack the “other.” They’re even willing to turn on the ones they claim to value if it means more money is in it for them. How close to home does it have to get before we finally decide that it’s not okay for corporations to abuse the world anymore?

Releasing the Kraken: Breaking Silence on Abuse

Not long ago, I broke silence with my parents about my sexual abuse. I’d been preparing for the moment of disclosure consciously for a little less than a month, but it was a move that my subconscious had been preparing for my whole life.

On many levels, the aspect of myself that I’ve been most afraid of encountering has been that little girl abandoned twenty years ago into a nightmare of silence and pain. To see her meant that whatever illusions I was clinging to about my childhood would have to be revealed for what they were. I couldn’t tell whether she or I was more afraid of losing those illusions.

But this summer, I reached a point where I no longer wanted to be silent. It was a familiar feeling similar experience to when I came out as bi—the moment of knowing that it would cost more to stay in the closet than to risk the pain of rejection from those I loved.

My Underworld Goddess, for that’s how I’ve come to see this 5-year-old me, lost her fearsomeness. I knew she held a world of pain that I would have to feel in order to reunite with her, but it no longer seemed like a punishment she was waiting to inflict on me for having left her buried for so long. There was relief, as if she’d been waiting for me to decide that she was worth more than the preservation of the “rules of engagement” I’d picked up within my church and family that “things like that” don’t get discussed.

The aftermath of breaking silence has taken me by surprise…but then again I’m not really surprised at all. I wasn’t prepared for my own loneliness. I would have thought that breaking silence would have made me feel less abandoned. And to that thought, my Underworld Goddess gives a bitters smile of knowledge beyond a child’s years.

Of course I feel abandoned. The real question was never whether my mom knew about my abuse or not. The real question is, How does a five year old child get slapped with that kind of secret pain and no one sees?

I could answer that question academically, speaking about power dynamics, authoritarian/patriarchal cultures, unspoken rules of a cult, confirmation biases, etc. etc. etc., but it doesn’t really answer the question.

I doubt there is an answer that would help a five year old understand how something that shattered her world couldn’t even cause a blip on the radar of others.

I’m terrified of being abandoned again. I say “again” because I have been terrified of being abandoned so many times before. It’s one of those fears that hasn’t always made sense, striking while I’m surrounded by dear friends or in the arms of my partner. However illogical it is doesn’t matter, for it’s primal, a lesson I had ingrained in me so well that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to unlearn it.

“Once they get what they want, they won’t love you anymore.” “Once you speak the truth, they won’t love you anymore.”

Did someone ever say those words explicitly to me? Not that I can remember. But children are experts on picking up on what’s left unsaid, especially in abuse.

I say “again” also because I realize that in all of the abandonment I have experienced, it was the moment of abandoning myself that hurt the most. I don’t think I could have broken silence before now without it actually hurting my healing more than helping it. But there’s a part of me that realizes how absurdly long it took me to stand up for myself—to face my Underworld Goddess. Now that I’ve done what she asked me to do, I wonder, “What next?”

I get no answer, and that is where my greatest pain lies. My fear of abandonment comes to rest at its root. Twenty years of grief have finally been set free, but the child of grief is nowhere to be found. I have accumulated a host of archetypes within myself to whom I can turn for support in almost any given moment…except in this moment, when all I can say to myself is, “please don’t leave me here alone.”