Open Letter : 2015
"We are here to shift the dream of the Planet" - Imaya's Modalities
Starting with a section from the book Women of the Beat Generation, by Brenda Knight, with a forward by Anne Waldman;
This is highly relevant to our current situation but I know it is changing:
"A woman from the audience asks, Why are there so few women on this panel? Why are there so few women in this whole weeks program? Why were there so few among the Beat writers?
and Gregory Corso, suddenly serious, leans forward and says, There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the 50's, if you were male you could be a rebel but if you were female, your families had you locked up. There were cases, I knew them, someday someone will write about them."
-from Stephen Scobie's account of the Naropa Institute tribute to Ginsberg, July 1994
I was 14 years old when that statement was made, and yes, I certainly will write about those female rebels!! I speak of the reactions to my own life of rebelliousness, and the standing, standard reactions to women who speak out of turn, act in ways that shock, that distort reflections of what it means to be feminine, human. There could be consistent and confusing refusals to fit into the molds handed to us, or maybe an inability to fit into them, even if we wanted to, and that alone, is considered threatening. If we threaten that which is established and accepted and expected, there is little left for the authorities to do, according to them, than to restrain, to control, to sedate, to take freedom away.
Here is a Description in an Open Letter format from a Contemporary Woman Rebel Poet (based quite closely on a true story) Feel free to comment after reading.
In her words:
When I was an inpatient at a "Health care" Facility, in Oakland, CA. , I felt on some level, I was some sort of political prisoner. In this letter, I will outline the reasons I had for feeling and thinking this way. I am certain that my rights have been violated on mental, physical, spiritual and emotional levels.
I am a multidimensional being. Others may relate to that idea, feeling that they are as well. I was sexually assaulted numerous times, by different people, in the last few years. Further back, I was violated as a teenager, more than once, and by different people. I attempted to go on with my life and to keep this short, I found a therapist in the past 2 years and worked through most of the results of that trauma.
The most recent facility I dealt with in Oakland, CA, intruded upon my freedom and human rights, in a number of ways. In one huge way, they were attempting to force me to think of myself as a mental patient, with an affiliation with the DSM, further associating me with the multi billion dollar industry of pharmaceutical "medicine". At different points in my life, I have agreed to take pharmaceuticals for reasons that are simple. They have helped me sleep at night. I struggled with insomnia, on and off, and of course, this was trauma related.
Noticing that certain drugs make my mind more clear and able to articulate my experiences and thoughts, that does not mean the effect of the drugs confirm what the professionals around me infer and imply and decide and name and attempt to control.
My symptoms until now, are consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This was confirmed by the therapist I worked with for longer than any other professional. P.T.S.D is a name for a hugely varied set of experiences and subsequent behaviors. My case is no exception. People close to me have called certain periods of time "altered states" for me, and that has seem to fit for some of the time.
At other times, I have shown such drastically different sides to me, that people who know me say I was "not myself". Perhaps this has merit, or perhaps the "self" is way more complicated than the versions of me known to the people in my life. Of course this would mean others are consistently more layered and complicated than what they have shown to others. Some will agree, some will inevitably argue.
I happened to be in states that were considered "altered" but might be results of buried and unprocessed emotions from trauma, which would indicate I have no inherent mental illness in my condition but that in my case, my behaviors and outbursts were and are consistent with the repercussions a person faces internally after having been abused in the ways that I was. This is not just specific to me and how I have been dealt with. It has and it will apply to many, many other people, in cases that might not mirror but might well overlap with mine.
Our society has become so adept at victim blaming, that when a person exhibits deviant or what is considered abnormal behaviors, the knee jerk psychiatric or psychological response is to classify this person as unwell, the source of their sickness generally associated with the bio-chemical theories of DSM popularity.
I will not demonize all people in the fields of psychiatry, psychology and other counseling. I am too clear thinking and rational for such broad sweeps. I am aware that there are people in these fields who want to make a difference, who have some level of compassion for clients. Many though, have none at all. They love their paychecks, not much more. I do wish to point to the often swept under the carpet facts of individual cases, such as mine, that truly require more refined and observant inquiries than is anywhere near normal for any person in "the system".
This unfortunate system usually consists of revolving doors of unhelpful, and certainly re-traumatizing experiences at hospitals, to doctors that slap on labels that a person often feels too defeated to fight, and medications that might make things worse, or briefly better but in the long term, the pills wreak havoc on the liver, and on and on.
I write this with profound compassion for, and insight into the lives of those considered sick, and labeled so for their entire lives. I have written protest songs dedicated to all of these vulnerable people, detailing how strongly I feel, because I have had my freedom taken from me, due to my inability to contain the pain of what I endured.
Yet, I was treated as the one with the sickness. In fact this is clearly a matter of the sickness of the people who hurt me that put me in a place of not caring what happened to me at different points, not some inherent bad brain chemistry.
I must mention the history of treatments for those seen as ill have been horrific in the past. The past conjures images of padded walls, drooling zombie patients, straight jackets, and countless years wasted for people staring at walls when there were then and there are now, alternatives to this hasty, sloppy, deeply saddening and inhumane treatment of actual human beings.
A therapist who read over this story pointed out poignantly that in fact, these images of "treatment" centers and the like, have actually not gone away. She is right, I have seen them in the past few years, draining the lives of these people in meaningless, insipid routines and "medicinal" dosages that render most or all of these folks essentially unable to advocate for their vitality, for their freedom, for a possibility for themselves that would liberate them from this horrible, maddeningly depressing environment, which after a certain time, seems so familiar, they are sucked in so thoroughly, they cannot imagine, life "on the outside".
In America, this is not at all unlike jail inmates, overwhelmingly people of color and poor whites, who learn all there really is for them from the "system" is a jail cell and a life of revolving doors going in and out of jail or prison, becoming hardened, and this revolving door in and out of jails might as well be hospitals. Perhaps the main differences are the type of drugs illegally obtained in jail versus the prescribed types of drugs that hospital inmates or "patients" are legally given for their recognized labels which afford them the hook up.
What was done to people in the name of "treatment" in past eras, contrasted with what is done now, does not get us all off the hook because the situations in hospitals and "treatment centers" are supposedly so much better by comparison. We are a long way off of truly humane, collaborative, caring, thorough and thoughtful health care for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
This brings me to the lack of funding for the field of mental health services, which in itself is shameful and must change. However, the overhaul of this system must include a great many fundamental changes that will take much more time and thought than I have right now to include in this open letter. I will be writing more and the next phase of writing will be solution oriented, so I urge you to stay tuned, if any of this landed in your mind as real, urgent, necessary as dialogue.
and then there is:
the ache of remembering
like a thorn in your side
pray you have nothing to hide
release it all to the moon
it will be in the past soon
so let go the memory
burn it clean in the moonlight
try not to fight
how simple that it does not serve
the greater good
so release
and move on
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