struggles

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Bedroom.

A view from my bed [ID: Hazy photograph of a window illuminated by vibrant red and purple lighting. In the center there is an electric candelabra sitting on the window sill, slightly obscured by sheer curtains.]

2011 was the year I began distancing. By which I mean, I began a life lived from my twin bed, fueled by goldfish crackers and electrolyte drinks, seldom able to access the outside world. It wasn’t mine to call home anymore.

I was drowning in conditions that these doctors hardly knew about. I had no choice but to become my own doctor, nurse, and historian. More than anything, I became my own community.

The outside world was stolen from me by sickness, uncertainty, and administrative violence – this world was never built for my survival. Such predicaments were met with constant calls to push through – go into the world anyways, risk it all for a “normal” life. They said adapting to it would make me better. It wrecked my body and my mind. Being bedridden was extraordinarily taxing and painful in a way that cannot be understood by those who have not been fully immersed in it in this way, yet. But I am inseparable from my bedroom life, I am made of soft pillows and the world I built among them. 

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Queer Brokenness: Intersection with Mental Illness

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Image Source: http://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2015/12/south-asian-queer-community-lacks-visibility/  (Artist – Jinesh Patel)

(Content and Trigger Warning: Self Harm, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence, Bullying)

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I often find that mental illness and queerness aren’t addressed properly or constructively when talked about together. So often the public at large would have us believe that queerness is a result of mental illness or that mental illness is the result of queerness exclusively. With this in mind, the queer community will often push back on society’s behavior by talking about the two exclusively from each other, frequently ignoring all the ways mental illness intersect. That’s does not go to say that queerness is the result of mental illness or vice versa at all, but rather it shouldn’t be ignored that many people in the queer community go through both because of the way society has constructed and reacted towards queerness. For example, queerness has often been perceived as a deviant thing, it has historically been punished and worked against in a variety of ways. Continue reading →

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Can you see my oppression?

For a couple of weeks, I have noticed something that has been circling my life, that something is oppression. Continue reading →

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Balancing Happiness With Acceptance

Every child, for the most part, growing up, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, social hierarchy, or where they are raised, are wished success, wealth, and health from their parental units. Only in the F-ed up situations, where the parents are really scummy people, do they not want the best for their offspring, or their adopts. But focusing primarily on the “good parents” or the parents who desire to see their children succeed, it is a unanimous trait to want a better life for their children versus the life that they had. This becomes possible through sacrifice, determination, and patience. With all of this being said, it is a responsibility for the child to achieve so much because of  what their parents are giving up in order for them to accomplish the dreams they have for themselves and the dreams that the parents have for them. Continue reading →

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Dodging Glances on the Train

So today we’re going to talk about my fun times with mental illness, since it’s the reason this blog post is late. Yay.

I didn’t plan on getting too personal for this blog; my list of topic ideas is mostly cultural critique. I’m sure I’ll come back to that list for later posts and even save some of them to put up on my own blog(s) eventually. Right now I need to process some meta before I can get back to doing the thing.

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