mental illness, privilege, opression

I see a lot of posts on social media about the Charleston shooter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/18/call-the-charleston-church-shooting-what-it-is-terrorism/

is one of them.

Some people who post things like this are the people who think my father and mother should be forgiven as they were mentally ill.  I spent many years wishing that my parents had killed me, instead of bating,me, burning, trying to drown, threatening me with a knife to my throat, stepped on my face, punched in the stomach every day.  Every day before my brain fully developed, while my brain was developing.  Some say I should say sorry to my parents.  When I ask them for what,  they say for being bad, dropping out of school etc.  Some say that I went to such a good hight school and scored so high on the SAT’s because my parents were good parents, without knowing me at all.  Some think that i have been a professional artist since the late 90’s with my parents’ help.  Some say that I couldn’t achieve what I did without a safe childhood.  They say that I should pity my parents for what they went through.  I am starting to believe that I should pity them, as I have had psychotic episodes about 13 years ago when I was administered EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing) and it bought up memories that were supressed and I was poor and doing fetish work and I would get into fights, defecate or urinate in public, etc, etc.  It was also about the time when I had my 2nd abortion. I was impregnated by a man 20 years my senior, we were just fuck buddies ;he used the word lovers, then he started to insist that I was his girlfriend after he saw how much male  attention I got when he saw me in events, and started to insult everyone who were my colleagues, saying that he is the cream of the crop, n ot the cream of the crap.  He didn’t care that his teenage daughter knew that he was cheating with his girlfriend who he hadn’t seen in 2 years with me.  Needless to say I was not going to move in with him and have his baby. (He also said I had to work through my pregnancy, to pay rent even if he had a lot money from a rich ex wife and a divorce settlement, and he did not have to work)

So I had psychotic episodes and the anti-psychotics and the ant-ianxiety pills that were prescribed to me made my legs move uncontrollably, hear voices, get paranoid, and sleep for 16 hours at at time. (and that religious organization wanted me to stop doing nude modeling and work as a waitress)

I do feel bad for psychotics.  One becomes psychotic from painful experiences.  What needs to be done is reprogram the brain in safe environments where food and shelter is available.  I have been on the streets.  I have been in that corrupt nonprofit housing for the mentally ill where it was unsafe for me, and also I went hungry because of their corrupt practices.  I am praying for a safe home.  I haven’t gone back to medical and psychiatric care because the therapist stopped advocating for housing for me and the medical doctor brushed off the meth bugs as contact dermatitis from soap or detergent.

So the shooter should get help not justice.  So should all people of color.  For this to happen the privileged will have to pay more taxes, have less disposable income for expensive clothes made by child slaves, artisenal kimchee,  small batch whiskey, $15 cocktails, trips to foreign lands, etc etc.  The privileged will probably think I am nuts that they are helping by posting things online, signing electronic petitions, eating locally sourced things, etc.  The opressors need to give up opressing others to “right” things.

I like the French work “juste” It mans just, as in justice but also correct and fair.  For things to get “right”  those who have benefitted from being of the oppressing privileged must give up some of their privilege.  Paulo Freiire said

 “To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for a fuller humanity; the oppressor, who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle.”

I highly recommend the book “The Pedagogy of the Opressed” whether you teach, want to teach, or just want human and planetary evolution.

My healing has started and accelerate, I want to have a safe place to continue healing and I can go back to independence in a world where I do not have to keep being retraumatized by racism and classism, and I can commit more to helping others.  I have been staying in safe places since mid march, and have not had to be on the streets.  I am grateful and happy.  The only drama I have had recently is arts related, but I am learning to avoid drama by staying near only those who are as accomplished as I am.  I have been staying in a place the past 2 weeks where I am catching up on the sleep I lost between December 2014 and mid May 2015.  December to March was inhaling second hand crystal meth and having 1 or 2 hours of sleep per night, and December until May I have had sleep deprivation due to the meth bugs (rashes from second hand crystal meth).  Before this experience I had only heard of Crystal Meth being a detrimental thing in rural areas, where people are addicted, and homes that produce the substance blow up.  Now I have experience in crystal meth.

I hope to find more stability in life soon.

Its not cute, innocent fun.

Ok, I will get to the healing and yoga part soon. This is another thing that is on paper that I want to put here.  I think I wrote this year. 2014

A few years ago, when I was about 40 years old, a so-called friend told me to reconnect with my parents.  It was at a time when I was living with a boyfriend who I was fighting with every day; sometimes injured by him.  My therapist told me to stay with him because there are no housing options for me.  I wasn’t working because I was only strong enough for my art practice, not to work.  This is what daily verbal abuse and sometimes hitting does to me.  I also had lost work as a teaching artist, (another post on corruption in nonprofits at a later date) because I couldn’t comply with my bosses’ stupidity and got tired of her verbal abuse. (another post on I.Q. another time.)

I only had disability (640/month)* and no food stamps, as I was living in an illegal conversion room for rent, and there were “no such thing as rent receipts”.  So this “friend” let me stay in his non live studio for 3 nights.  He was in his late 50’s then.  This middle-aged white man told me men beating women is acceptable because “getting along between men and women is very difficult”  He also told me to swallow my pride and try to live with my parents.

I told him, and doubt that it was the first time, that I left home at 16 years old and that I was mistreated.

Middle aged white man.  “Didn’t he work to feed you?”

me:   “No he was always dunk.  His mother sent him checks”

MAWM     “But you went to —–” (competitive math and sciences high school that require testing, the hardest at that time)

me: “—- is a public school”

MAWM:    “How did you go?”

me:   “Testing.  There is no tuition in that school”

When I told this man that  I was beaten almost every day from age 7 (when he left his day job to become a full-time artist)**, until 10th grade when I was hospitalized in an adolescent psychiatric unit,  he told me that all Asian parents are like that.

MAWM: “What about your mom?”

me:  “Not every day, but she tried to hold my face underwater in a bathtub.  Knocked me down and put on high heels to walk on me.  Pulled out my hair in tufts.  To punish me for being born.”

MAWM:   “All Asian mothers are sociopaths.  It’s not wrong.”

I also told him that I was often told that I would be sold at 12 years old.  My earliest memory was fingering my mother and holding my father’s penis.  They did the same to me.  It was supposed to be a game.  I also was told later about my panty dancing performances when I was 3 years old.  They used to give me sweet red wine (at 3).  My father also told me to change what I was wearing, and he will watch.  Sometimes he will tell at me to change my underwear too.  This was between when I was 9 till I was about 11.  In fifth grade,there was a time when  it hurt for me to walk.  I think my parents were questioned.  I didn’t see my father’s penis again until I was 15 years old.

MAWM “But that is cute, innocent fun. You have to stop doing this victim thing and swallow your pride.”

I am guessing that this man is not unique.  He looks sane, has worked, is on the board of directors for an arts organization, has 2 sons.  My not communicating with my parents is not a pride thing, it is a safety thing.  I am no longer afraid that i will be beaten up, but I do not want to retraumatize myself more, and receive more verbal abuse.

I am no longer in contact with this man.

*In this city, a single room cannot be rented at this amount of money per month, even in a shared apartment in a bad part of town.

** He rented an artist’s studio in an industrial part of the city  (with what money?  I was told the studio rent was higher than the apartment rent)  But he was more of a full-time drunk. When there is little structure, and cause and effect of economic gains are skewed like in this case, where an adult is dependent on a parent who lives on the other side of the earth, addicts can plummet really fast.