It was a breath of wind from the wings of madness. Perhaps it was more like a gust of wind that knocked me off my feet. “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” (- Frida Kahlo) Unconventional Frida: she dressed like a man for family photos; she read and wrote about revolution; she lived authentically. She rejected mainstream norms and in her paintings revealed a truth about an inner reality. I see something in her that I have, or I wish to have, in myself. I want to participate in creating social change. I am tired of the oppression and stigma that paralyze innocent people in our society. I heard that a wise prophet once said to a paralyzed man, “Pick up your mat and walk.” Can change be that easy? The oppressive forces in our society do not allow one to pick up and just go. How can we create change and fight invisible forces like stigma, power and oppression?
I have a reality that I am allowed to keep hidden because I look white and female and “normal” to the outside observer. But, the truth is I have been diagnosed with a mental illness. “Bipolar disorder” is the label they gave me, stuck on me, and will forever stigmatize me – but only if I let it be known. I can choose to keep this hidden and avoid judgment. Yet, I want to live authentically and I want to fight for change.
Even though I’m mentally/emotionally paralyzed, I want someone/something/some power to heal me. I want someone to tell me to pick up my mat and walk. I want to love others and create change. But, I don’t want the kind of change that white missionaries (or white settlers or Euro-Americans or Europeans everywhere who are obsessed with “saving” and changing others) try to make. I don’t want to create more oppression. I want oppression everywhere to end. And I cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
How does one fight against oppression? How does one fight for revolution, for an end to racism, stigma, judgment, and power? Lois Beardsley, a Native woman, writes:
“There is no way to know in advance. Racism, stupidity, hatred, hunger for power – they do not come with road signs. They do not come with billboards. They do not come with flashing lights. They do not come with blaring horns, attention-grabbing sirens, GONNA HURT YOU written backwards so we can see it in a rearview mirror. Abusers do not necessarily come in a different cloth from the common man. They do not necessarily come with their intentions posted on their foreheads, etched upon their long toothed trickery, which is unspoken in the silent beckoning motions of their hands. Abusers are born of tradition, tradition of history, tradition of eminent domain, manifest destiny, slave holding, low-wage-paying, advantage taking, murdering, homesteading, let’s not forget.” (p. 8, The Women’s Warrior Society)
How do we fight a hidden, silent, difficult-to-recognize enemy – a “meme” – born of tradition and history? Ability/Abilism. Race/Racism. Class/Classism. Sexuality/Gender/Sexism. I feel a brewing, a burning in my heart. I feel a frustration, a discontentment, and a deep longing that I am afraid of because I need to take care of my mental health but I also can’t be mentally healthy in a society like this.
I remember a time…time in the psych hospital. I felt so free there for a moment. I let my hair loose. I wore no make-up. I danced and laughed and cried whenever I felt the urge inside me and all expressions of being were ok in that place; that psych ward in the hospital. I was “crazy” after all and could do or say anything I wanted. My only punishment was a lifelong sentence - a diagnosis. And now? Now, what have I become? I take my prescribed dose of medication every day. I fix my hair. I carefully apply make-up in the mornings. I am married to a good, middle-class man. We might as well have a white picket fence outside.
The world can be open and wonderful, expansive and has room for everything under the sun. And I don’t want mainstream, banal, submissive life. I want color and music and love and diversity. I want my children to grow up with role models and examples of all different ways of being. I want more from life than the mainstream. I feel as though I have almost everything – and want none of it. There is a force inside me that is bucking like a wild horse; there is within me a breath of wind from the wings of madness.
