Pain by iProzac. Creative Commons License
This tragedy isn’t played out on stage or on screen. It’s about a human who finds themself relying on substances to exist in the world. That doesn’t sound healthy. Yet they’re scared that if they don’t numb themselves sufficiently, they won’t be able to sustain existence. They constantly reflect on the balance of self compassion and allowing their mind to breathe while not repressing emotions entirely. They can’t go back to that level of depersonalization. Their physical world continues to shrink. Wondering—dreading—what happens next. Wondering what kind of hellish life is this to live. Wondering when the suffering will come to some terminal state.
They want to share the gravity of these circumstances with people. The words get deleted as quickly as they are composed. We are all suffering. Who are they to add onto the collective pile. What are they looking for? Empathy? Solidarity? Yes they can find that within their communities, but we’re powerless. So we try to speak out to share our stories.
We make progress, though still decades behind. We start being tolerated. Still an eternity from being accepted, but at least we can come into the light. They have people who love them for the human they are, without needing to explain or defend themself. But the acceptance of their existence means that the systems of oppression must acknowledge that their arbitrary forms of hierarchy and dichotomization are not inherent. They are illusions to centralize and maintain their control.
To maintain their call. Their call to bring light and salvation. To culture those different than them. Deemed less than them. To acknowledge the beauty of the diversity in front of them would require breaking through the greatest hubris of all—that their history of being the white knight is correct.
When intersectional identities and groups see through this façade, they threaten systems of oppression. None of us are free, until all of us are free. We are more aligned than misaligned and are stronger together. Fearing the breakdown of oppositional and hierarchical systems of othering, the system does what it knows best. It degrades and dehumanizes those who are different. It seeks to cast them out from society—to break the connective threads of intersectionality. They threaten the same for other groups if they don’t provide fealty—though they have no obligation or intention to uphold their promise in the end.
So we unite together in our sorrows. We will not be erased or silenced. We exist and that remains true when bigotry comes for us and for those after us. As Audre Lorde once said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained.” We will persevere. Our existence has been and will continue to be persistent.