8:12am July 18, 2014

➸ Freedom - Irit Shimrat, Lunatics Liberation Front, 1998

An excerpt (read the whole thing, it’s worth reading, by clicking the link above, but content warning for just about every abusive psychiatric practice there is):

Freedom is knowing that I am a real person, a good person. Freedom is knowing that it’s okay to be “bad” sometimes. Freedom is the room to breathe, the room to expand, to relax.

Freedom is the right to breathe. I’m allowed to breathe the same air that people in suits breathe, because I’m free. I can be loud and full of power, even though I’m female, because I’m free.

Getting out of shackles, getting out of the little box called the Quiet Room, getting out of the bigger box called the hospital, getting out of the zombie haze the tranquillizers put me in – these were sweet and precious achievements. Wherever I go, I am free to put on my coat, to walk out the door. Or to stay. The choice is mine. Having that choice, is freedom. I got out of the hospital by agreeing with everything they said about me. I’ve stayed out by denying it.

The system taught me that I was weak, that I was sick, that my brain was diseased. They taught me not to trust myself. They taught me that I would never be okay again. They taught me that, on my own, without them and their drugs, I did not have what I needed to survive. They taught me to fear them. They taught me to respect them. They taught me silence and shame. They taught me that I was not responsible for myself. They taught me hate.

Slowly but surely, I’m unlearning everything they taught me. Here is what I’m learning. I am learning that I am strong. That I am well. That my brain is healthy. I’m learning to trust myself. I’m learning that I’m okay a lot of the time. I have within me all the capacities I need for survival. I do not fear the system. I do not respect it. I am learning to be proud of who I am. I am learning to be responsible for myself. I am learning love. I am learning that my emotions are just emotions, not symptoms. I am learning that I’m not broken, and I don’t need to be repaired. Freedom, from pharmaceutical poisons, from humiliation, from labeling, from loneliness, from self-loathing. Freedom, from psychosocial rehabilitation, from vocational rehabilitation, from supportive housing, from services, from “special needs,” from those who are paid to care. Freedom, to be a person rather than a patient, to live in an apartment rather than a residential facility, to have a job rather than an employment program, to have friends rather than social programs. Freedom to take risks. To feel strongly. To have fun.

I’ve had more fun since I got locked up than I ever did before. Having had my freedom taken away is supposed to mean that I have to struggle extra hard to act really, really normal. But to this, I just say no. I accept my weirdness. My weirdness is me.

Before I got locked up, I was shy and quiet and hated to stand out. I wore ladies’ clothes and tried to act just like everyone else. For a long time after I got out, it was worse than that. I just wanted to hide. I felt so inferior that I didn’t want anyone to see me. I longed to trade lives with every person I saw, because everyone else was real, but I was just this blob of shame and fear.

But once I finally started getting over it, thanks to friends, and good luck, and the passage of much time, there was no looking back.

Now, I talk to myself in public, a lot. I practise tai chi at the bus stop. I laugh loudly, sing loudly, dance like mad. I jump into the ocean whenever it’s warm enough, and sometimes when it’s not, just for a thrill and to astonish the tourists. I feel free to be myself.

This doesn’t mean I have fun all the time.

Much of the time I should have spent writing this talk I spent in bed, curled up in a little ball, sleeping as much as I could. Full of despair, sure I wasn’t good enough. Sometimes I’d praise myself for taking a bath, or boiling some noodles, or actually getting out to the street to bum a cigarette. More often I’d curse myself for being so useless. When I had to be with people it was awful. I felt like I wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t make myself smile, relax, talk, listen.

Does this make me abnormal? And if I am, so what? Are normal people as happy as I am when I’m “up”? What is normal, anyway? That which, for some people, is imbalance, might just be balance for me.

I hate when I can’t be social, when I can’t be active, when I can’t be useful. I hate when I doubt myself, when I’m lost. Yet, if I could give up my lows, at the expense of my highs? I wouldn’t even think about it.