Deconstructing The Lulz

February 27, 2012

cacophonouschoas:

feeltherevenge:

Social anxiety isn’t cool.

OCD isn’t cool.

Bipolar disorder isn’t cool.

Depression isn’t cool.

Cutting isn’t cool.

Phobias aren’t cool.

Trauma isn’t cool.

Sleep disorders aren’t cool.

Eating disorders aren’t cool.

They’re real things, they’re scary, and pretending you have them is just fucking obnoxious and an insult.

as someone who has been legitimately diagnosed with two of these, I fully agree. STOP PRETENDING TO BE UNWELL. It’s offensive and a lie.

Ok. Here I go to feed the trolls and argue where arguments should not be had.
I am of the belief that it’s completely okay to appropriate these things in your own life as ‘cool’ within your own existence. If you have to live your life with some kind of a cray cray disruption from whatever people construct as the ‘norm’, why not do so in a way that lets you think it’s rad and quirky as opposed to a way that makes you feel fucked up?

Let me tell you a legit little story here. I’m going to visit the grad program of my dreams this week. My entire future, in many ways, hinges upon the success of my performance. This triggers my anxieties and depression in a terrible, terrible way that hinders the quality of my existence. Instead of sleeping last week, I found myself on many nights in a somnambulant state of cleaning and organizing. It’s not even in my memory most the time- things I didn’t even notice I was doing, until the next morning when my kitchen has been reorganized, or my bathroom smells like bleach, or my socks are organized by colour and thickness. It’s exciting, exhausting, and bizarre.

I don’t need to go to a shrink to get validation for my identity as a survivor of ongoing struggles with depression and disordered eating, or having anxiety that is triggered by many social situations.any more than I need a professional opinion on being queer, geeky, or a brunette. I’m not looking for ‘help’ or repair- I’m not ill, I’m not broken. What I am is totally dope- and I’m sure as fuck allowed to love my quirks and love myself. If they were any more debilitating, I’d be allowed and encouraged to seek treatments and management and STILL FUCKING LOVE EVERY BIT ABOUT ME.

Living is an adventure, and I think it’s downright cool that I have phantom magic cleaning sprees. It’s like if Memento was about Martha Stewart. I’m a badass. And I think it’s cool that I feel emotions really hard- even if that comes with dips. It influences my art, it’s a large part of my memories and identity to have struggled and to continue to be tempted by the shadows in my skull. I think it’s cool that I started a cooking blog to hold myself accountable for eating- because nobody else does. My disappearing scars, and the years that pass as they fade, are cool. The fact that I found an outlet during some of the hardest years of my life is cool- even if I no longer self-harm. The goosebumps and lack of ability to breathe, the cold sweats and even the panic attacks that I am challenged with in some rooms is cool- to watch my flesh and feel my chest physically react in a very real way to social situations that affect me strikingly. It’s part of what being alive means for me, and I’m grateful for it, and what I learn about self-care as a result.

There is no ‘tl;dr’ here, and I’m not apologetic for taking up dash space. I’m going out on a limb and sharing some secrets, some things that are not your business in any way shape or form, because I am cool enough to do so. In the end, I hope everyone who finds themselves challenged and overwhelmed in the way their mind and body take in the world can find a way to live and to love these parts of themselves as something. There’s enough chaos outside of my skin that I will never be able to make peace with. I am very much in touch and identified with the chaos that is in this physicality of mine, and just like the rest of me, it’s fine as hell.

Reblog the shit out of this, if you want.
I think my opinion’s worth something on this one.

-A

^ True dat

Leftist critiques can’t hold both that psychiatric and medicinal fields partake in forms of ‘biopower’ (i.e. that their constraining definitions of what a mental disorder is generally - or the more rigorous ‘symptoms’ that typify a specific ‘disorder’ - regulate forms of power in society by making certain actions inherently ‘other’), and that individuals can’t self-diagnose with mental disorders along a grey scale of what makes up the substance of those disorders.

It’s either that self-diagnosing along a grey-scale of symptoms is ‘ableist’, and detrimental to the lived experiences of people who ‘actually’ have those disorders (thus negating the proper ability to critique regimes of power that exist within the practice of medicine), or we critique, destabilize, and deconstruct those relations of power that exist within psychiatry and medicine, and thus clear the space for self-diagnosis on that grey-scale. You can’t have both sides of the coin at the same time.

(Source: hopelesssly-imperfect)

8:36am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZAjNTyH7ib9r

(Notes: 45,190)