The Safe Space

In class, we were learning about experience, about phenomenology. I understood that with our experiences we add in our senses (taste, touch, sight, hearing). I was honestly stumped on what I could talk about. I know that I have many different experience as a woman. But then I started to think about a specific place that made me feel safe…

As a woman, I feel the constant stress of my body. But I’m not just any woman, I am a brown woman. The pressures of having to keep my grades up or being the perfect brown daughter who lives up to her parent’s expectations. Where would I go to decompress my feelings of doubt and anxiety? Where could I go to make the world go slow for a moment of peace and quiet? The Women’s Center. A home away from home. I can imagine the structure of the room as my safe space. You enter a room filled with posters of colorful affirmations, handouts of mental health awareness. Seeing the names and faces of those who work in the center makes it all that encompassing. I am always greeted with a welcoming smile by the wonderful staff who are ready to care for you. I see a prayer room for those who have no place to go, another for mothers to feed their children. I look to my right and see the many forms of aid. Did you get your period? Take a tampon or pad. As many as you need because your body, your UTERUS, is cared for in this center. Are you sexually active? Go ahead and take some condoms for protection because no one wants any STDs. Coziness is an understatement as you walk further into their center. The round table, to sit and do work or to relax while playing with a fidget toy from the fidget bowl. The hugging of many bookshelves enriched with stories of colored women, LGBTQ+ personas finding themselves, and in those books, a voice that comforts you. A “You are not alone” “You are accepted for who you are” here and there is what you’ll find. Towards the back of the room, soft couches for you to sit down and relax your aching womanly body. My curvy body type just melting away into the cushion, holding me and letting me rest. Are you hungry? Take a bag of chips from the food shelves. No one’s going to judge how you eat or how much. You won’t be judged for being a skinny to thick body type. Every woman is welcome here at the center. I was always scared to enter this environment not knowing that it was so peaceful.

 Why didn’t I take the risk of pushing that door open my freshman year? Maybe it was the fear of other women judging me because they felt it was their own space. Was it was the unknown territory that frightened me to my core? Or my shyness because of the people who worked there could see me grabbing feminine products. But now, it has become my home, my safe place for the rest of my college experience. Of course there are other places I consider my home, sometimes it’s not even places. It’s people. My boyfriend is my home, my comfort. He makes me feel imperfectly perfect. But then I begin to wonder, What about men? Where are their safe places? Do they not have a safe space because it’s uncommon? I wonder these things when I walk into the center. Of course men are welcome inside the center, but maybe men are intimidated by the space. I feel like they are intimated by those bold lettered words above the entrance of the door. Maybe they feel like they would be judged for walking in and taking their own time to decompress. I started to think about the people I met in the center, the conversations I’ve had. There was one girl, I’ll call her M, she had Nigerian parents, we had a 20 minute conversation about the freedoms being a woman in college. We talked about relationships, how her parents wanted her to date her own ethnicity. She wished her parents allowed her to do anything. But just because she was a girl, she wasn’t able to go out, even past her driveway. I honestly am happy that I had parents who trusted me even though I was young developing woman in a very dangerous world. She too had came to the center to clear her head. That was the first time in a while that I had been confident enough to start a conversation with a stranger. But being in that environment helped me bring out my extroverted side. I also think it was just the fact that I am able to talk so comfortably to women. I would encourage any woman to go there for any needs they desire. Whether it be to get a tampon or pad, or a place to relax. I hope that anyone who reads this knows that there are places to go when you are feeling down to no energy. So don’t be shy, don’t be afraid to step into that center, you won’t regret it 🙂

I am medicated for mental illness (and that’s OK)

My entire life I have been hearing a narrative that antidepressants, (a category of drug that includes things like SSRIs, SNRIs, TCAs and MAOIs,) are intrinsically bad or indicate some kind of personal failure. People have used different arguments, saying that antidepressants never work or that they work too well and cause people to become emotionless robots. I’ve heard people imply that it’s insulting to even suggest medication as a treatment for mental health issues. Personally I disagree with these assertions and I would argue that the bad rap mental health medications get is born out of bad personal experiences, ableism and misunderstandings of how psychiatric medications are prescribed. (I am going to mostly talk about antidepressants here because that’s what I have the most experience with and knowledge of, but similar principles apply to other categories of medication as well)

I started taking antidepressants over a decade ago, as a treatment for a laundry list of mental illnesses and neurodivergences that started presenting from the time I could speak. I would have severe panic attacks and meltdowns on a daily basis, each lasting for hours at a time, complete with kicking, screaming, and endless sobbing. Eventually after several failed attempts at holistic treatments I was prescribed Citaloptam, an SSRI (a type of antidepressant), to help me manage my emotions and prevent panic attacks, as well as benzodiazepines to take as needed when my panic attacks became out of control. Prescription medication was not the first choice treatment from my doctors or parents, no one wanted to have to give a 9 year old benzos, but it was necessary in order to keep me safe, stable, and calm when I would otherwise be a non-functional mess. I would go on to try a dozen different meds before the age of 15 before settling on the cocktail of drugs that I’ve been taking for the last 5 years or so, which is a combination of an SSRI, an NDRI, and a medication classified as an antipsychotic that is also used to treat anxiety and depression. 

Of course, meds alone don’t cure mental illness, that’s not how that works. Therapy, in the forms of group therapies, DBT, CBT, and individual talk therapy have all been parts of my treatment regimen over the years, and they have helped me immensely. Gaining accommodations, correct diagnoses, and removal from environments that exacerbated my mental health issues were also important steps in my journey. But the antidepressants and other meds I took were instrumental because they lowered my baseline level of distress and made me capable of participating in my treatments and helped me be able to access the resources at my disposal. I cannot stress enough how much antidepressants have improved my quality of life.

But that’s just my story, and my experiences are not universal. Not everyone needs meds, and meds don’t work for everyone, especially on the first try. If your mental health issues are mild, not severely impacting your day to day functionality, and not causing you significant distress, psychiatric medication may not be right for you. In that case maybe talk or behavioral therapies would be better suited for you. Even if medication is right for you, it’s quite possible or even likely that the first one or two or three that you try won’t be effective. (Often psychiatrists will cycle patients through several different SSRIs, despite the fact that they don’t work for everyone, before trying other forms of psychiatric medication. This is because SSRIs have been found to be the safest and least addictive type, as well as having the least significant side effects compared to the other types of antidepressants. The fact SSRIs have the fewest adverse effects make it an appealing first choice for doctors, but I digress.) Psychiatric medications are unfortunately not an exact science with a one size fits all solution.

But that doesn’t mean that antidepressants don’t work for anyone, in fact, for some people like me they are as necessary as any medication for any other kind of chronic condition. When people imply that the suggestion of antidepressants is bad, or that antidepressants never work and aren’t worth trying, it reinforces the stigma around them and mental illness in general. I fear that this narrative could prevent people from seeking professional mental health treatment, or cause people who are already on medication to feel bad about it, to hide that fact or stop taking their meds altogether. Taking psychiatric medications is not ‘taking the easy way out’ or a sign that someone hasn’t tried hard enough to treat their issues on their own, it’s a morally neutral act. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

“F*ck your disorder”

Photo by Darya Sannikova on Pexels.com

A few weeks ago I had a difficult bipolar/autistic meltdown that spiraled me into a dissociative state. I say bipolar slash autistic because the criteria and symptoms for both disorders overlap so much that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart within my own body at this point.  I wasn’t able to attend some of my classes for two weeks because my mental state was feeling immensely guilty about using my accommodations. Every time I typed up another email to a professor, saying that I once again had to rely on my disability accommodations, I felt my chest tighten with anxiety and guilt, as if I was doing something wrong by needing my accommodations. I didn’t want my professors to think that I was lying to get out of class to go out with my friends. To be fair I did hang out with my friends and try and do stuff during the time I had class, but everything we did was an attempt to pull me out of the dissociative state I was in. As someone who has heard numerous times that they don’t look “autistic” or “disabled”, I am aware that this is a judgment that many pass on me, and I was aware that my professors may think that as well. Perhaps out of guilt, I sent an email to my professors, explaining that I had bipolar disorder and was struggling to pull myself out of a rough episode that left me unable to even read and comprehend the readings for any of my classes. Most of my professors answered with supportive statements, validating my disability and granting me as many extensions as I needed. One professor emailed me back, ignoring the fact that I had just opened up to him about my identity, and demanded I turn in my work within 48 hours, because the accommodation guidelines offered a 48 hour extension as an example guideline. Evidently, I was not able to get my work in, because I am not able to pull myself out of a dissociative episode on command; to make it worse, when I finally returned to class the following week he spoke negatively about bipolar disorder in class, leaving me stunned and panicked. I made the rather obvious assumption that I wasn’t his favorite student. Rather than fighting with him every step of the way, I decided to withdraw from the class, postponing my graduation from this December to May. I was devastated telling my parents that I would not be graduating as soon as they thought, and I was even embarrassed, knowing that if I pushed myself I could have made it through the class. But just because you can do something as a disabled person, doesn’t mean it is worth it. I was reminded in a somewhat blunt manner that not everyone will accommodate your disability, and sometimes it’s better to give up, then to fight for your right to take a class. 

The emotional labour it would have taken for me to fight with this professor every step of the way, just to most likely pass with a C in his class was not worth it for me. Personally, I am proud of myself for knowing my boundaries and how far I can push myself. He made me feel weak and made me hyperaware of how people view me as someone who is bipolar and on the sepctrum. 

Subtle ableism is so present in today’s world that it goes unnoticed by most, unless we are directly affected by it. For me, this was an example of direct ableism, someone who would do the bare minimum to accommodate my needs, and refused to do anything more. It was dehumanizing, but it also reminded me how lucky I am to not be faced with people like him, and ableist challenges on a daily basis. Our world was not made for disabled bodies, whether it’s expectations at work, to campuses being not accessible, to the general population applying certain stigmas to disabled people as a whole. As a physically abled person who is usually able to mask their disability in public, I don’t have to constantly worry how I will make it to class on time, or if the elevator will work today, or if I will be able to make it up the hill to my building for class, and that gives me a certain privilege. The dialectic of both being disabled and abled is an interesting limbo to live in. I can’t imagine how it would be if I had to worry about physical disability on top of my ever present mental disability, still, I can’t help but wonder if I would have been treated better by that professor if my disability had been more visible.

“You’re Really Good At Taking Everyone’s Sh!t”

Whose Fault Is It?

Emotional labor is the act of “regulating or managing emotional expressions with others as part of one’s professional work role”. For the context of this blog post, I will also be referencing emotional work as well, which is the role people use in any social context.
RANT: Every post, YouTube video, and link that I looked at typically focused on the emphasis of how women have been the brute focus of emotional work and often, labor. WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?!
BLOG: Ideally, men have been the focus, but in our current generation, I am starting to wonder if men are becoming the scapegoat for blame. There are good and bad things to this, but I can only share my experiences. From growing up in a household as an adopted child to working in hospitality at some of the best hotels in the Houston area, to coming home and being expected to “clean up everyone else’s shit” (one of my ex’s fathers literally told me this and suggested I work for some type of plumbing company) to experiencing my own version of emotional labor is…exhausting. As a recommendation, if you’re dealing with being the emotional laborer of your family or workplace, I suggest counseling, good friends, hobbies, and money.
Now that I have your attention, the emphasis on emotional labor during this period of the class was for women. Honestly, I love that. Often, the strongest women in my life have carried the emotional labor of EVERYONE in the family. My Grandmother (capital G, because she truly is a G), and my Aunt (who raised me, God bless her soul) have not only raised multiple members of the family but have guided others and influenced people for generations to come. I can endlessly explain what they have done for everyone, including my impaired brother (this falls into the disability category of the past few weeks, but I decided to not go in-depth with these issues and instead focus on emotional labor…anyway) My Grandmother has done amazing things as a widowed woman, and when my grandfather was alive, what I recall of him, he was a remarkable man, veteran, and overall generally good person. In order for him to be that he needed to have an even stronger woman there to not only support him, but to motivate and guide him. We so often focus on a certain gender, but I think its vital to focus and include everyone because we cannot physically do it all on our own – even if social media suggests that we do.
When it comes to emotional labor for myself, as an older male, I grew up with the family vibe of “you want it? Do it yourself” This mindset has its own version of toxic masculinity and it worked for a time, but as I have grown older and started practicing gratitude, meditation, and fitness, I have learned that kindness is the key to growing. However, that is also the curse of being easily manipulated and being the scapegoat out of a lack of emotion – if you allow yourself to be. When working as a hotel supervisor, I found myself taking on the emotional verbal abuse of people that travelled so far and attempted to check in, but one minor inconvenience (Well…one time there was a major inconvenience, we sold out and by the time they got there…the people didn’t have a room… and they were diamond members which is equivalent to being a traveling version of Karen) set them over the top, and I had to apologize profusely, make up for their issues by giving them a free nights stay at another hotel, etc… all while keeping a smile on my face. So dumb, but it was vital in learning how to maneuver around people when they are angry and teaching myself how to stay calm in the face of disappointment. That’s an invaluable trait and lessons/memories that I am grateful for.
I don’t know, I am a believer in the idea that everything happens for a reason. Maybe I should allow myself to be the gatekeeper of my own “shit”, to be more selfish and selfless at the same time, and to lack the attempt to understand everything and everyone around me but I cant do that shrug. In essence, I think all of us must have some type of role in emotional labor, but please, don’t forget to take care of your mental, physical, and financial well-being. Your family, friends, and pets will thank you for it. (I will always choose to be kind and thank you to all of the people in my life, wouldn’t be me without YOU).

Existential Ballet

Black and White Stock Photo of busy pedestrians in an urban city.

Bent, Bashed, Broken… I am nursing my own wounds.

I am stretched out wide but still I am shrunken & overlooked.

Sitting on a throne above the heads of many yet I look each of them in the eye.

I wipe their tears & I hear their cries.

They all want to know the secret of my dances.

Why choose to survive when oppression’s vice grip breaks my bones?

Why does my heart continue its dances?

How do I keep up when the earth never stops spinning while dancing rewinds the clock on my face?

The dances that define my divinity burn within a soul that sings the songs & rule the time.

In that time, wherever I stand that space is mine.

It’s there where the dances are done, & in that space my soul’s songs are sung.

Spinning and Swirling I reach high with hopes of experiencing a new feel & don’t worry, I will.

A remarkable existence if I must say.

An adaptive sway for the intimate encounters that pass by my way.

These are the same dances done by the fire’s flames.

I waltz the same waltz that puddles waltz when it rains.

My tears are called resilience & my beads of sweat are named endurance.

You can master the secret of my dances. Watch me give you reassurance.

The messages might escape you but it’s not of your choosing.

The secret to my dance, is to just keep moving.

“You give really good, solid relationship advice.” “Thanks! It’s cause I’ve ruined all my relationships.”: Perhaps better off alone

Most people see being told they give good relationship advice and are very considerate to the other people in the relationship as a good thing, but I can’t help that it feels like the bane of my existence currently. It’s like I’m helping people study for relationships and communication 101 and they proudly show me their A with the attached “thanks to your help!” while I shuffle on with my F and backlog of assignments.

How Covid Destroyed My Family’s Life

I am an immigrant but I came to America at a young age. When my family first came everything was great. Back home my parents owned their own business and they were doing pretty well. They had built a house from scratch with land they bought and I was daddy’s little girl. I got whatever I wanted and my closets were decorated with dresses of all sorts of colors in the rainbow. My sister and I went to a private school and we had our own taxi take us back and forth. Needless to say, I was living in a fairy tale, so I thought America would be no different.

At first everything was fine, then suddenly my life around me started to turn into a nightmare. My father became more and more distant and soon very scarce in my life. The man I had seen every day of my life was now a stranger to me. My parents divorced and my mom had to start from rock bottom. There were moments where we slept in her car, and had no home. My mother would scrape up everything she had just to get us food and sometimes there wouldn’t be enough for herself. She worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant and that took such a toll on her body that she ended up having to go into surgery to remove masses from her stomach. She worked at this job for 10+ years and made less than 25,000 dollars a year. But during all this, she made sure my sister and I had a good life.

When I started college, she went back to college and got her Nursing Degree. About 5 months before Covid hit she officially became licensed as a Registered Nurse. She called me on the phone so proud of herself saying how we were going to finally be able to do the things other families get to do like go on vacation. All her dreams had turn to reality, and again, like before her life suddenly turned into nightmare. Her job failed to give her PPD, leaving her at the mercy of covid, and unfortunately she caught it. Immediately we knew something was wrong. Her symptoms became more severe over time and she was not able to work anymore. The woman I had seen go through so much was defeated by a virus that no one was taking seriously. As I went to sleep I could hear her cry in her room because of all the pain.

During that time she talked about very bad things and it worried my sister and I for her safety. No matter which doctor she went to everyone would say it was all in her head. Or that she is old. She went through more than 8 doctors during quarantine and none of them would listen to her. As a black woman she felt betrayed by the health care system. I thought about this when we had discussed in class the issues with the health care system.

My family is back at square one. My mother had plans that she may never be able to fulfill, and I now have no motivation or hope for the world. I find it hard now to take school seriously because seeing everything my mother went through, will any of this ever be worth it? The stress, the anxiety, the late nights, not knowing what kind of job you will get when graduate college, the debt all seems like such a high price to pay when you might just end up exactly where you began.

“I’m okay”, “I’m tired”, “No worries!” and other lies I tell: An ode to my failing mental health

2020 was a train wreck, a dumpster fire, the roller coaster we weren’t allowed to get off, and it doesn’t take much looking to realize everyone is fed up and burnout from the pandemic, over a year of condensed trauma (whether you or someone you knew got sick or not), incompetent people in power, social justice at the forefront of everywhere, up rooted and cancelled life plans, the world is a dart board with every inch covered in things that will decimate your ability to keep going. But 2021 seems to show that 2020 was just a prelude to what our everyday life will be like from here on out.

Content warning!! Candid mental health talk, sucide and suicidal ideation, and open talk about trauma responses (NO details will be given about the traumatic events).

When Failure is Radical.

Affirmations from an unreliable drop out –

I have failed to work with a system that prioritizes productivity over personhood.

I have chosen moving forward over suffering

I will accept myself to spite a value system that does not want acceptance – but always striving for “better”. If I internalize it, that I am always striving for “better”, then I build a comfortable place for the belief that I will never be enough, to rest upon. Instead, I will build space within myself to be less than ideal. 

Exposed (TW: OCD, Perfectionism, Bugs)

If anything has debunked the mind-body split for me, it’s living with OCD. My obsessions are felt as deeply as they are thought. Every day I physically feel my compulsions begging for my submission. In resisting them, my body is flooded with a deep, gnawing unrest.

The normalization of perfectionism convinced me that my OCD was good for me. I looked good on paper – but I see no paper in my skin, my blood, my brain, my bones. I have learned that to save this body, I cannot give everything my best. “Just right” can never be achieved so long as I am the judge. The goalpost moves too quickly to register.