8:53am July 18, 2014

➸ A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Freedom - Catherine Odette, 1998, Lunatics Liberation Front

In order to understand why this story is so hilarious, you have to understand how dehumanized you are in an institution, and how acts like this allow you to reclaim your humanity in ways that nothing else can. I know this isn’t everyone’s thing, but I will never see an institution inmate as ‘bad’ for doing something like this, given what has been taken away from her, and what she is getting back by doing it. My own methods of reclaiming my humanity were much more violent and usually involved slamming chairs through walls. Or one time I stole a restraint and smuggled it home with me. People who haven’t ever had every trace of humanity pressed out of them may have trouble understanding why these acts are necessary for survival. But they are. People literally die without the ability to do things like this, because being treated as an unperson will do that to you.

As usual with LLF links, content warning for anything and everything related to psychiatric institutions. And LLF people tend to prefer non-psychiatric words (“crazy”) to psychiatric words (“bipolar”) so if that bothers you, be careful of that too.