Nearly four and a half years ago I had to choose between driving into a telephone pole or allowing myself to be taken to the psychiatric section of a hospital. Although this was far and away one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make, there have been many more that required far deeper introspection, risk, and personal loss. All of these times have involved life and death, gender identity, and the Beast of mental illness that coexists in my being.
In an inpatient psychiatric hospital ward there is a total loss of autonomy. It is the relinquishing of one's freedoms, including the right to sleep without observation, or have shoes or shoelaces. Then watching those shoes get relegated to a locked closet until a supervised group walk. Sitting at a table, working on a large coloring page [many years before the "adult coloring books" became popular for stress relief] and going to the nurses' station to have your colored pencil sharpened. Why? Because electric pencil sharpeners might be hazardous to your health. And the loss of control of what you, what I, could eat, could wear, when and where conversations were allowed, and even when and what television programs could be watched.
It was and still is soul crushing. And it was and still is sad. And when it was over, when I returned to my normal life, there were years that passed where I still wondered what happened. There are voids in my memory. There are gaps in my timeline. And I continue to consider how many different ways the story could've gone. In the end, my reality will always be altered by the madness of Bipolar Disorder One, Anxiety, Depression, Mania, and neurochemical wiring and firing that continues to blast holes through the memories within my mind.
Of course, there's that whole Gender Identity Disorder, transgender/transsexual piece of my life. The added complication of mind and matter, of a mental gender and a physical sex that do not align. A divide between who I am and how the world sees me, then and now.
I am a man, but I am also a transman. I am a person who has lived in both genders. I have thirty years of life experience being treated as less than because of my biological sex and my gender presentation. I have another twelve of being seen for who I am, being treated as better than I am, yet always remembering what I was. It is never as simple as boy or girl, even when it is.
But why now, so many years after my committal into that place, is it in the forefront of my mind? Why I am ruminating on this time in my life? Is it a distance or a near proximity to the places and events of 2012? Or is it related to the current political reality show that has become the United States government? Certainly, the attitudes and legal battles that have been given new venomous lives, are causing anxiety within me, within all of us who know what it means to fear for our own safety because who we are.
But, I believe that it has to do with something far more subtle than a global ethos or a cultural zeitgeist. It is a more nuanced thing, more fluid, like gender itself, that has brought me to this place of contemplation.
It was gossip about a person who had battled some form of mental illness or addiction as having "been in the psych ward," rather than taking appropriate care of their children. A hand was raised to the side of the mouth when the words were uttered, signifying a tidbit of information too private to speak at full volume, but too juicy not to share. It was as if the damning nature of such a fate was like an accident scene that one doesn't stop for, but cannot help but gawk at as it's passed.
Shh, don't tell, don't say the words that might make me sound crazy. Keep them hidden in the recesses of shame, stigma, and silence. Keep quiet, keep still, pretend that it doesn't happen to people "like us." Ignore the gut-wrenching pain of the unmerciful torturers, the beast of mental illness, and the judgement of a world that makes you the beast.
The irony I suppose is that in all of this, the transgender part of me had little or nothing to do with the medical and psychiatric care I needed. It wasn't my gender that was the problem, it was untreated Bipolar Disorder One, a disease that doesn't distinguish or care who you are, or how you are viewed. Indeed, it really doesn't care about sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliations, age, or anything else. If you are mentally ill, it is a sickness in your brain, not in any of the packaging.
And for the week I was inpatient, my gender identity was disclosed by me to only one other person, who also happened to be transgender. Surprisingly enough, that person was there for neurochemical reasons too, and the transgender identity was as irrelevant to their treatment needs as mine.
Of course, being transgender, when labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder for treatment purposes, i.e. hormone therapy, surgical procedures, etc. is by definition a mental illness. And with that, many people are in psychiatric facilities for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts because of that designation. Yes, being transgender can cause you to wind up in a psychiatric setting, but it doesn't mean that it will, or that it should.
And there's the crux of the issue. If and when I disclose my mental illness and my gender identity, they become inextricably linked for people who understand little or nothing about either one. I end up inhabiting the fear that my credibility, or that even my value as a human being is diminished by these coexisting forces in my life.
Simply put, do people think I'm crazy because I'm trans, or I'm trans because I'm crazy?
I don't know, and I probably don't want to know.
What I do know though, is that right now, the juicy gossip, the truth, the lies, and the inaccuracies about all of us who are mentally ill, or are transgender, or are in any way different is affecting us daily. Anger/Fear at the "other," and at each other is nothing new, but the ability to spread it so fast and so far is. Words can be emissaries of love and hope, or violent harbingers of physical harm to come. With technology and media that travel at the speed of light, it is often difficult to know if the threats are real, or are merely the rantings of a scared and lonely person, suffering in their own state of depression.
Either way, our anxiety rises, our rational selves erode, and our love for our neighbors is relegated to theory rather than practice. We cannot even see those we disagree with as our neighbors. It is safer to keep them as enemies, risking degradation of us all, rather than a little bit of humanity for just one person. That is crazy.
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| The author in blue. |
Thank you for always being there on this legally crazy transgender, and sometimes psych ward filled journey with me.
Be well, love your neighbor as yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.
- Ari
