ISSUE 1

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2 3
 CONTENTS

7. Editor’s Letter 60. 

Untitled (Intimate Black Hole) 114. Untitled 141. The Worst Part of Depression
Megan Brandenburg Herikita Is Not Realising You Have It
8.  She’s Lost Control
Séamus Gallagher
Claire Biddles 66. Just Let Me Be Sad 116. Notes on Psychosis
Lil Ashton Mike Scrase 144. Treat Yo Self: An Open
10.  Swimming Against the Current
Conversation on Capitalist
Joanna Cifredo 67. On a Very Loud & Tiring Brain 120. A Woman Possessed
Consumption and Self Care
Emma Frankel illustrated by Lil Ashton Gloria Endres de Oliveira
14.  Gradually Then Suddenly
138. Your Feelings are Your Feelings
Mia Castiglione 68. Ghost Photographs: An Interview 124. D
 on’t Confuse Laziness with
Eline Van den Broeck
with Angela Deane Depression and Vice Versa
16.  Going Crazy Over This Costume:
Bethany Lamont Mikael Hattingh 151. Call For Submissions
Halloween & Mental Health
Sarah Rudston 74. Bad Day 127. My Mother Keeps Calling Me
Carla McRae Oyin Olalekan
20.  Wiping Away My Tears
Mey Valdivia Rude 78. Beauty Against the Grain 128. Heroines: In Conversation
Cat Smith with Kate Zambreno
22. Mental Health and the Model
Bethany Lamont
Minority Myth: In Conversation 81. Malfunction
with Kristina Wong Erin Geary 134. Four Poems
Victoria Uren Pavana pvn
82. Growth
28. Suicide in the Age of Renee P 136. Inheritance / Recipe for the
Mechanical Reproduction Cleansing of the Mal De Ojo
84. A Carpet Bag Full of Gloom?
Bethany Lamont Diamond J Sharp
Old Age and Depression
31. Talk Talk Jenny Walker 138. Listening to Kanye:
Hannah Moitt The Mental Health Files
88. On Living With Anxiety
Latoya Peterson
34. My 21 Tips on Keeping it M. Conlin
Together During Depression
90. The Coven – An Interview
Rosalind Robertson
Bethany Lamont Cover artwork by Valerie Choi
40. Mourning Diaries
96. Unruly Bodies
Caroline Christie
Cath Read
42.  How Long A Note on Content Warnings
98. The Little Things
Charles Bane Junior
K. Emilie
44.  Today To ensure that Doll Hospital is a positive place These content warnings are printed in
100. Runaway Passengers
Ruby Etc.
Lydia Says for its readers the following subjects (when red on the first page of each piece, in the
45. The Choice of Children explored explicitly, and potentially triggeringly) top left-hand corner. Of course, as this
105. In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive
Esme Wang
and You Were Full of Joy are provided with content warnings: is a journal on mental health, all articles
56. Finding Comfort in Death Tavi Gevinson highlight difficult topics to a certain
Ashton Kesler
106. The Sad Ghost Club’s • Rape degree. If there is a particular subject you
58. P
 olicing: Self-Care as Guide to Not Being Sad • Suicide feel needs a warning in future issues, or
Benevolent Exploitation Lize Meddings
• Transmisogyny if any of the current pieces in this issue
Ashlea Allan
108. I Wish There Was an Easy Way Out • Disordered Eating require additional warnings or content
59. M
 ental Health in America: The Land of Aidan Mitchell
• Ableism notes, please let us know and we would
The Free But Not The Free of Mind
112. How I Became a Writer • Anxiety be happy to include it.
Judith Jones
Emily Dibble
• Self Harm

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 Hi! Hello!

So um this is happening? Wow. Cool. If a publication is a house then

I guess the editor’s letter is the welcome mat, so yeah, welcome! I’m
seriously so happy you could make it!

The inkling baby brain cloud of Doll Hospital came about when I was
struggling with suicidal ideation in my final term at Oxford. I was sick
of the trauma-as-link-bait model of so many online publications, sick of
tweeting about killing myself, sick of the sad white girl trope, which was
GRAPHIC DESIGN Maggie Webster
an embarrassment to everyone (white women included). There needed
to be an alternative. There had to be an alternative. If we have to go through
EDITOR IN CHIEF Bethany Rose Lamont
this shit every day we should at least have a place to talk about it, right?

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cat Smith Doll Hospital is neither a doctor’s pamphlet nor the false promise of a
Cassie Osei celebrity’s ‘it gets better’ YouTube video. It is a collection of art and writing
Eline Van den Broeck created by people dealing with mental health struggles with a story to tell.
Ginger Lockhart The work spans all mediums and backgrounds because there is no ‘one’
Hannah Moitt story on mental health, or even one publication on mental health! This little
anthology is certainly not the final word on the matter! Not even! But if it can
All art, images and writing published maybe make one person feel a little less lonely then I think it’s doing its job.
are the copyright of the authors cited;
all contributors retain ownership of Big thanks and warm thoughts, good vibes and pleasant adjectives to
their work and it has been published Eline, the first DH bb to join our team and whose hard work and general
with their permission. gloriousness is responsible for making Doll Hospital an actual legit thing,
and not like an extension of my tumblr, or something embarassing like that.
Maggie, our A+ graphic designer, who is responsible for this thing of beauty
you hold in your hands – isn’t it beautiful? Yeah, that’s all her! Cat, for being
a hard working, smart and all round brilliant story editor. Ginger, whose
perceptiveness, sensitivity and vision has helped us so much with story
editing and submissions. Hannah, whose creativity has fuelled the ace content
of this journal. Cassie, for helping us stay true to our vision of intersectionality.
Ashley, for all our 1am Facebook conversations on anything and everything.
Nicole, whose support at The Toast helped us to reach our goal on
Kickstarter. And you! Yes, you! For being here. You’re awesome. High five.

But enough about me, let’s get started! Are you excited? I’m excited!

Love Beth
X

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 SHE’S
by Claire Biddles
Sometimes I feel like the bottom half of me
is dissolving into nothing. I feel a physical
sickness, a sense of being about to fall
from a height, but for days and months – like
being at the highest point of a perpetually
broken rollercoaster, looking down.
One of the worst things about the
clinical depression from which I have
suffered since I was a teenager is that
my life, my work – and my control over
both of them – stops temporarily (I always
hope) until it’s over. There’s no way for
me to do my day job, or make work (I’m
an artist) while this is happening, and I’m
powerless to change that. I feel nothing,
so I can make nothing. But every single
film, or song, or book, or painting about
mentally ill women tells me I should do
the opposite, tells me that this is my most
fertile time. That I should be Winona
Ryder in Girl, Interrupted; Sylvia Plath;
Amy Winehouse; Natalie Portman in
Black Swan – that my mental illness is
desirable, something to strive for in order
to achieve creativity. Which makes it even
more difficult to live in this space of no
feeling, threatening to fall, to lose control.
8 9
LOST
In the film Black Swan, Natalie Portman
plays Nina, a ballet dancer who has
been cast as the Black and White Swan
in a New York City Ballet production
of Swan Lake. She is initially deemed
too “frigid” to play the dark and sensual
Black Swan, and is only viewed as good
enough by the company director Thomas
(played by Vincent Cassel) when she
has experienced “madness” first hand,
and channelled it into her performance.
It was a difficult film to watch. The film
perpetuates the idea that mental instability
is the best way to deliver an authentic
“performance” – an idea which prevails
in presentations of “tortured” artists,
portrayed as willingly “suffering” for
their art. There’s no confidence in the
artist, in the performer. No confidence
in her skill and experience. The only way
she can convince is to live the exact
same experience as the character she
is portraying.

The women in the film –
including go-to “crazy girl” Winona Ryder
playing the once-lead ballet dancer who
has been replaced by Nina – are all
coaxed into being OUT OF CONTROL
CONTROL
throughout by Thomas, a typically in-
control man who is shown to be in control
of his sexuality, in control of his mental
state, and – crucially – in control of the
women who are all presented as a result
of this control. He tells Nina that the only
way to achieve the artistic perfection that
she seeks is through “letting go”, through
losing control.
But what is it to be in control? Control
of self – one’s own life and image –
seems to be tied up with this construct
of the Strong Woman. Should this be
the aspiration of the woman suffering
from mental illness, the woman who
feels nothing, the woman who wants to
be able to create again? Is the Strong
Woman the opposite of the wild, crazy,
out-of-control girls (never women) who
apparently create with their madness
and misery? The out-of-control girls –
are almost always white, skinny, pretty:
Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted;
Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia; through to
Emily Browning’s songwriting anorexic
beauty in 2014’s God Help the Girl (all,
incidentally, directed by men). And in the
presentations of these women, their loss
of control allows them to create. Their art
is a direct result of this binary orientated
position. But, surely the pressure on
women to be in control and creating
is just as bad as the pressure to be
creating when they feel a lack of control?
There is no allowance to just BE. To feel
nothing. To create nothing. No allowance
from those who perpetuate these ideas
of women, and no allowance from the
women themselves, the inner voice,
mounting on pressure from within.
When I’m depressed, I don’t feel
crazy, I don’t feel wild. I don’t feel that I
could be strong, either. I don’t feel that
aspiration. I feel nothing. I can’t feel. I’ve
learned control. I go through the motions
of it, in order to carry out the most basic
tasks. I perform. But I can’t do. I can’t
create. I’m not having an authentic
experience because I don’t feel like I’m
having any kind of experience. I’m on the
edge of control. n
TRANSMISOGYNY

by Joanna Cifredo on more than one occasion
growing up. I don’t say this
for pity because unfortunately
my story is not an uncommon
one for girls like me. I didn’t
learn about improper fractions
or proper punctuation — just
ask my bff Juliana who edits
my blogs — because I was too
busy learning about survival.
Early on I learned to pick and
choose my battles, and that
when backed into a corner I
had to fight as though my life
depended on it, because it
did. I learned that I inhabited
a world that was hostile to my
very existence, that walking
down the sidewalk was enough
to have a soda can thrown at
you. I grew so accustomed to
harassment. I came to expect
it — and, worse, I came to
believe I deserved it.
am, how does one develop
enough agency to assert one’s
rights when those rights have
never been afforded to you in
the first place?
I live in a world that was not set
up for girls like me, that over time
has developed a system — vari-
ous systems of oppression — to
deal with “my kind” so that we
know clearly where “our place”
is in this world.
“Are you gay?”, “You walk like a
girl!”, “Faggot”, “sissy boy”, “is
the little girly boy going to fight
back?”, “You’re suspended”,
“I’m sorry you failed”, “get out
of my house!”, “Why don’t you
get a fucking job” “I’m sorry
we’re not hiring”, “the posi-
tion has been filled”, “you’re
not qualified”, “you don’t have
enough experience”, “look it’s a
tranny!”, “Dude, that’s a fuckin
man”, “do you still have ‘it’?”,
“This bathroom is only for ‘real’
girls, get out!”, “Why don’t you
have a job?”, “I’m sorry we
don’t have any vacancies”, “we
don’t have enough beds at this
shelter”, “this shelter doesn’t
allow ‘men’”, “how about I just
give you twenty”, “’sir’ you are
under arrest”, “we don’t cover
hormones”, “Need a place to
stay? Get in you can stay with
me. I’ll take care of you”, “Why
was she with that guy? She
was killed because she was
looking for trouble”. These are
comments trans women hear
from kindergarten to beyond
the grave. They represent just
a few of the many situations
where we as a society have
failed the most marginalized
among us. These comments,
and the ideas they represent,
create a snowball effect de-
signed to oppress and keep
women like me believing
that we are less-than, inferior
and illegitimate.

I ask you; how does one figure

Growing up I often felt alone
and with little guidance. Don’t
get me wrong, I had my mother
to tell me right from wrong and
a grandmother who always
told me to look both ways
before I crossed the street;
but they could only go so
far. I recently disclosed to my
grandmother that I often fell
behind in school and missed
out on whole chapters of my
education because I was too
busy dodging pebbles that
were being thrown at me
walking to and from school. I
was picked on and ridiculed
almost to my breaking point
out when you are being har-
assed, taken advantage of or
discriminated against when all
you’ve ever known has been
harassment, violence and dis-
crimination? In a country where
in 34 states I can be fired, lose
my housing or have service
denied to me in a restaurant
just by virtue of being who I
artwork by Ashley Ronning

10 11
 How do you stake your claim
when you’ve been told your
whole life you don’t belong?
Eventually you begin to give
in and believe it, it becomes
your truth. When traveling such
a dark road with such rough
terrain anyone’s tyres become
frail and give out rendering one
incapable of moving forward.
You grow so weak from con-
stantly swimming against the
current that you give in and let
the wave throw you around.
I was raised to be a fighter.
I come from an island with a
12
proud history of boxers, and
in my veins I have the blood
of Taino Indians and African
Slaves that for generations
had to battle a system built
against them. I was raised by
women that navigated a foreign
land that was not designed
for them; women who have
dealt with sexism and racial
discrimination for years. So
fighting is in my blood, its part
of who I am. But why should I
have to fight just to belong, or
to have access to healthcare,
to get a job, a home, to walk
down the street and not be
harassed or turn into a victim
of violence? No one should
have to fight for those things.
I’m a fighter but I’m also tired
of fighting. We shouldn’t have
to fight to live.
Disrupting these systems
of oppression will be a long
journey; one that will require
many conversations, legisla-
tion, advocacy, empowerment
and allyship. Social justice is
working in collaboration with
one another to dismantle
these systems of oppression
to uplift the most marginalized
in our society. Recognizing
that although we may all have
been created equal we all did
not start the race at the same
place; that all of us have not
been granted equal access or
have been afforded the same
opportunities is key to achiev-
ing equality. Next time you see
an injustice like this occurring
ask yourself, will I be part of
the solution? Because until
we live in a society where all
of us can live without fear of
persecution, and be free and
able to achieve his or her full
potential, we will never be a
nation that truly lives up to its
founding principles. n
artwork by Tara Violet Niami
13
DISORDERED EATING
by Mia Castiglione
The thing about eating disorders
is they attach themselves to
every aspect of your life.
You start to do things like walk
around grocery stores looking
at all this food you really want
to eat but you’re unsure you
should eat because you might
not like it right in that moment,
and you do this for hours and it
feels normal, it’s like something
you think normal people do,
but you get scared people
are watching you eye all this
food, scared they’re judging
you for even thinking of eating,
so you leave without buying
(or stealing) anything only to
end up in the grocery store
across the street. Half of you
14
is screaming, “I’M STARVING,
FEED ME,” and the other half
is calmly saying, “we have to
find something worth it,” and
you listen to the calmer half
because giving in to demands
feels like losing. So you walk
around this grocery store for an
hour and realise it’s the other
one that sells the sandwiches
you like, so you go back. And
it doesn’t have the sandwich
you like and the deli isn’t open
(wait, it’s 10pm already?) so
you can’t ask someone to
make more of them. You walk
around more, up and down the
candy isle, the snacks isle, the
drinks isle. There’s a crazy kind
of thing that happens when
you have an eating disorder
and you finally allow yourself
to eat, but you can’t find the
one thing you want to eat: your
world falls apart.
For me this was an extremely
common occurrence when
I first made the decision to
Beat The Eating Disorder and
Take My Life Back, but I never
imagined that I would still be
going through the same thing
some two years later. When
you can’t find the food you
planned on eating, you allowed
yourself to think about eating,
you planned on allowing yourself
to ingest a certain number of
calories, ingredients, and you
can’t find that food, or there’s
something extra on it, or god
forbid, something is missing,
you wish you were alone in
your room to cry and throw
things. You want to scream
at the top of your lungs about
how this was going to be it,
this was going to cure you,
this meal, this instance, and
now it’s fucking ruined. The
world is suddenly out to get
you. Everyone knows and no
one cares, everyone knows
and everyone wants you to fail.
There have been times in my
life where I lost all sense of
control and the only thing that
brought it back was writing big
blocks of text and throwing up
my food. I think this is one of
those times and I don’t know
how to write anymore. I try
and I try, but every time I open
up a blank word document or
pick up a pen (writing with a
pencil is useless, it all smears
away after a while) nothing
worthwhile comes out, no
characters are formed in my
head like they used to be. I
miss staying up until 4am with
a headache writing down every
single thought in my head, I
miss looking back at things I
write and feeling good about
writing them. I miss the me I
was before anything happened.
How sick is it to miss the me
that threw up five times a
day, how sick is it to miss the
me that didn’t talk to anyone
about anything, how sick is it to
miss the me that fell out of her
clothes, that worried everyone
around her, only saw beauty
in her collarbones.
The thing with eating disorders
is they attach themselves to
every aspect of your being and
it gets really tiring shaking them
off all the time. It’s like having
an arrow through your gut,
every twist hurts, and you’re
scared that if you pull it out
you’ll bleed to death, but if you
leave it in, you’re sure to die.
And you don’t want to die. n
15
 HALLOWEEN AND MENTAL HEALTH
by Sarah Rudston
I was doing a bit of reading online when
I came across this story. In 2010, the
National Alliance on Mental Illness in
America made a complaint against a
theme park in Ohio for running a haunted
house called “Dr D. Mented’s Asylum
for the Criminally Insane” and a music
show called “The Edge of Madness:
Still Crazy”. The Alliance stated that
they believed the attractions promoted
negative stereotypes and misinformation
about mental health. Originally, the park
defended their attractions and refused
to change the names, saying that the
rides “do not depict real life” and that “no
one else has complained”. However, this
year the park apparently had a change of
heart, renaming the rides and stating that
16
as “a few people were offended, we’re
changing them”. They “certainly weren’t
trying to disrespect.”
The rides at the theme park in Ohio
depicted blood-spattered ‘patients’ in
hospital gowns, dummies with Hannibal
Lector-style masks, and signs warning
patrons to ‘beware of patients posing as
physicians or medical staff’. A realistic
depiction it ain’t, but it’s still enough to
make me feel a bit sick. Depicting what
is essentially a psychiatric facility (albeit
an overblown, movie-style representation)
as being a frightening and possibly
dangerous place to be doesn’t seem
like such a great idea to me. Psychiatric
units do exist in real life. People do go
to them as patients to receive treatment
and turning them into sensationalised
places of horror is a pretty tasteless
thing to do in light of that. There was the
predictable backlash against the protest,
with people claiming that the protestors
were being too sensitive, that the rides
weren’t supposed to be realistic and that
“if you don’t like it, don’t go” , as if the only
concern of NAMI was their own reaction
and not the impact on the general public’s
reaction to mental health issues.
I could sort of see where the backlash
was coming from. Theme parks are pretty
much as far from real life as you can get;
that’s why people go to them in the first
place. I wouldn’t dispute that. However,
while witches, goblins, vampires and
zombies are most definitely not real,
inmates of mental health facilities most
certainly are. That, I think, was NAMI’s
point: it’s not the depiction of the ‘asylum’
that’s in question, it’s the depiction of
mental health at all. Unfortunately, this
story is not unique. Last year, another
amusement park in North Carolina had
an attraction called ‘The Asylum’, and
in Philadelphia, ‘The Pennhurst Asylum’
was a Halloween attraction that sparked
controversy as it was built on the grounds
of an actual hospital that had closed years
before. The original plans for the attraction
included actors portraying people with
intellectual and developmental disabilities,
a fact that former employee of the
hospital, J. Gregory Pirmann, called
“offensive beyond belief”. When reading
17
 the story, I couldn’t help but be reminded
of people in the 17th century who were
able to pay a fee to look at the inmates
of the local asylum for entertainment.
The whole thing left me feeling angry,
unsettled and confused. Have we really
not come far enough to realise that mental
health issues shouldn’t be sensationalised
like this?
artwork by Séamus Gallagher
18
I haven’t come across any similar
stories in England (which I was pretty
thankful for), but there are some things
I’ve noticed that have made me uneasy.
The sale of ‘mental patient’ Halloween
costumes for one thing, where you can
buy a fake strait-jacket or orange jumpsuit
for a fancy dress party and go along
foaming at the mouth or something…
These outfits are still sold in stores and
online, although I think there’s possibly
less of them now than there has been
before. Protesters have put their foot
down on several occasions, including the
case of the ‘Anna Rexic’ girl’s Halloween
costume, supposedly a ‘joke’ (concerning
a mental illness that kills thousands every
year). In reality, it’s a cataclysm of bad
taste that simply beggars belief.
So what’s the damage? I’m really
interested in what affects people’s
feelings towards mental health issues, and
I can’t help but think that, while silly and
over-the-top, these Halloween themes are
promoting a harmful message to people
that mental illness is both something to
be feared and mocked in equal measure.
NAMI in America put out a message in
2006, pleading with people not to exploit
mental health issues in their Halloween
celebrations by sticking to ‘ghouls and
goblins, trap doors and tombstones’ and
leaving out ‘psychiatric wards, insane
asylums and the bloodthirsty killers in
straitjackets’. All in all, I think it’s a more
than reasonable request.
However, simply turning our back
on tasteless Halloween attractions may
only be the tip of the iceberg. After all,
they’re reflecting a wider media culture
concerning the fear of the mentally ill.
If somebody puts on a strait-jacket or a
mask as a Halloween costume, they’re not
directly mocking the mentally ill, but rather
portraying a view they’ve seen in films or
on TV. This is why Halloween attractions
and costumes like this are still sold:
because it’s often the only identification
people have with mental health issues:
that it’s OK to fear or mock them. In a
recent survey undertaken by UK mental
health charity, Time to Change, they found
that half of the respondents indicated
that they had seen violent “mentally ill”
characters in TV or film. Then, when asked
what characteristics define film characters
with mental illnesses, two of the top
answers were “violent” and “likely to kill
violently”. Of course, the link between
what people watch and what they believe
is difficult to prove. But given the amount
of stigma that still surrounds mental
illness, I think we’d do well to start looking
at alternative representations. Aside
from a few notable exceptions, there are
few films or TV programmes that portray
characters with mental health difficulties
without resorting to stereotypes like
violence and comedy. The longer we keep
these stereotypes in place, the harder it’s
going to be for people to live their lives
free of stigma. And that is something that
genuinely frightens me. n
19
SUICIDE
W I P I NG
AWAY
MY
TEAR S
by Mey Valdivia Rude
I’m lying in bed, crying, trying to not think
about the first time I thought about killing
myself. Really considered it, not just had
a passing thought. I was in middle school
and had just gotten in a fight with my
mom. I had even yelled at her, “do you
want me to kill myself?” A part of me knew
I was being dramatic, but a part of me that
was just as big knew that I meant what I
was saying.
That definitely wasn’t the last time I
thought about killing myself. In fact, things
became much worse over the next ten
years. I don’t talk about this much, but
I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts on a
regular basis for much of the last fifteen
years. When I got really serious, I googled
how many of my anti-seizure pills I would
have to take to overdose. Then I went
into the bathroom and counted out that
amount and held it in my hand.
Now, my family has some history of
depression, and there are many other
factors in my life, but I think there’s no
denying that my refusing to admit that
I was transgender or queer for so long
20
contributed to my mental state of affairs.
But for much of my life I was deep, deep
in denial, about my both my gender and
my mental health. I thought that for sure
I couldn’t be trans because everyone
thought I was a pretty “normal” boy.
Similarly, I thought that for sure I couldn’t
be depressed because no one thought
I was “sick.” Maybe a little strange, but
nothing to worry about.
Society was telling me that when
a child was queer, everyone could tell,
there would be plenty of visible signs.
But no one ever questioned my gender or
sexuality. Society was telling me that when
a teenager was depressed, everyone
around them would describe them as a
“quiet kid, one without a lot of friends.”
But that wasn’t me in most situations.
Basically, because everyone around me
reinforced the idea that I was straight,
cisgender and mentally healthy, I assumed
I must be all those things.
When I finally stopped paying so
much attention to what other people
thought I was like, and who other people
thought I was, I realized that I wasn’t as
“normal” or “healthy” as I had assumed I
was. And this was a huge relief. I finally
understood all the feelings of isolation and
misunderstanding that I was having.
One thing I know for sure is that
coming out was not just good, but great
for my mental health. When you already
feel like you’re drowning, it doesn’t make
sense to tie weights around your neck.
It bothers me to think that one of the
main reasons I didn’t get help for my
depression or suicidal thoughts was that
I wanted to keep my queerness hidden
away, even from myself. I had a specific
idea about what trans and queer people
were like, I didn’t think I fit that idea and
I didn’t think that I wanted to. Not only
was I feeling the shame that’s too often
attached to mental illness, but also the
shame that society often wants us to feel
because we’re queer.
If we could just, as a society, get rid
of both of these stigmas, can you even
imagine how many more people would
come out or get the help they need?
Now, I’m lying here thinking about
the last time I seriously thought about
suicide and it’s so recent that it’s making
me uncomfortable. I’m listening to the old
Stephen Foster song, “Hard Times Come
Again No More,” and it might be too much
for me. My iPod then shuffles to “Crying at
the WaWa” and I’m hoping with all my body
this silly hope that somehow this Apple
artwork by Ruby – rubyetc.tumblr.com
product is trying to send me a message.
Since I started hormone replacement
therapy, I definitely cry more than I used
to. But those tears aren’t the same kind of
tears I used to cry. I used to cry because
I thought I would never be normal,
because I thought I would never be happy,
because I wished I was dead. Now I cry
because of beautiful songs, touching fast
food commercials, and yes, sometimes
because I’m sad or upset.
I also trust myself more than I used
to. I trust myself that I know what my
gender is and how I want to express it.
I trust myself that I know what thoughts
and feelings I have and that those
thoughts and feelings are valid and
should be listened to.
I’m wiping away my tears, and I think
that tonight I’ll be okay. Although I still
struggle, at least I sort of
know what I’m struggling
with. And although I’m still
depressed and I still have
gender dysphoria, I know
some ways to help me deal
with them. I’m transgender,
I’m queer and I’m
depressed. I’m not hiding
anymore and I’m not in
denial anymore, and surely
admitting that I’m queer
and admitting that I’m sick
is more normal and more
healthy than anything I
was doing before. n
21
 MENTAL HEALTH AND THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH:
IN CONVERSATION WITH KRISTINA WONG
Interview conducted by Victoria Uren
Kristina Wong is an A+ rad writer
and performer, who is best known
for her solo theatre works such as
Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Her new show ‘The Wong Street
Journal’ is out in 2015 and we’re
super excited about it. The always
perf Victoria Uren had a chat with
her about mental health, social
justice and Asian-American identity.
VU: So, one thing I think we should
talk about is the intersection between
mental health and Asian-American
identity in your work, because that’s
really what a lot of it is all about –
that crossover.
22
KW: Yeah, I mean, there is unfortunately I
think this “miss” of what diversity should
look like, in that, we all go “Yay! We’re all
the same!” – but the truth is we’re not all
the same. Especially, you talk to public
health people, you can’t shy away from
saying that certain ethnic groups or races
or genders are considered to be more at
risk for disease, or high-cholesterol, or
– in the case of Asian-American women,
and people of color – depression. And if
we go about just treating everybody the
same, which is sort of what “diversity”
has done, you go, OK, look at Asian-
Americans, they’re so successful, and
happy, they go to good schools, and you
abide by the model minority myth, we’re
going to ignore that there might be mental
health issues.
Culturally, I think it’s unfortunate that what
seems only to be offered as a solution
is a western model of therapy and that
eastern modalities of healing or other
cultural modalities of healing are sort of
shelved as “not real”, or more exotic. The
western therapy, which is what’s available
on campuses or available on health
plans, is very taboo – it’s not something
that people of color, specifically Asian-
American people, are accustomed to
understanding, “OK, so, what, I’m going
to sit and tell a stranger my story?” You
know, or explaining to older relatives, “You
have to go into this room now and tell
this white person all your secrets” – you
know, they’re not going to do that. So,
we have to think, in diversity, we have to
understand where everybody is different
and that it’s about, you know, giving
people the equal access to things and
understanding where there are deficits
and where things are different that we
don’t understand, and how to recentre
a conversation so that the people on
the market, people whose voices we
hear the least, are the ones who are
inside these systems that have always
excluded people.
VU: I mean, because a lot of your work
is based on social justice and forming
new models of how we think about
mental health and culture, I wanna
know how you balance the activist side
of your work with being an artist? Did it
come from an original artistic impulse?
KW: I think for me it changes a lot, this
impulse –I think about what I’d like to see
that I’m not seeing out there already. For
me, Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
which is easily the most popular show
I’ve done in all the five, six solo shows I’ve
made – it’s the one that keeps coming
back – and it says a lot. It’s also been
the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You
know, I think it was a show that I wish I’d
seen when I was younger – cause I felt
like, when I was growing up, if I were to
express that I felt depressed that everyone
would be, like, “What’s wrong with you?
You’re a weirdo!”, and, you know, this sort
of culture of, “Just stay in line!”
I think also I got into the myth of, like, all
these Asian-American women are so quiet
and seemingly content, so I’m just the
one who’s nuts, right? But it’s just sort of
this culture of silence that’s happening.
So, I think I’ve gone from doing shows
like that, that are, “well, so what do I want
to see” to, what do I want to live with,
in terms of a show, and how do I want
to push this creatively so that it doesn’t
feel like I’m just reenacting trauma. What
can I transform this into, and how can I
make this enjoyable for me to perform
and enjoyable to watch? And “enjoy” is a
very broad term. This new show is about,
like, you know, we need something more
mellow – how about global poverty?
VU: Yeah, “mellow”!
KW: I know – this new show, the Wong
Street Journal is inspired by – well, I
went to Southeast Asia, and took a first
dedicated vacation that turned out not
23
 really to be one. I think I just was raised
to be an extremely hard worker and I
never took breaks. And so, I saved up a
lot of money – or, you know, enough to
go abroad and travel by myself – and it
was just really kind of confused by the
economy in Cambodia, which felt like I
was being fed poverty porn – you know,
like “We’re going to walk through a poor
village! You’re going to see a poor village”
and like all these villagers would come out
in their native dress.
And it was interesting, because I’m a
performer and I’m whoring around this
depression story for years, and then I go
to Cambodia – and this isn’t to say that
there’s an exact parallel, because it’s so
completely different – but this is where I
think I felt a strange connection to them is
that, in this weird way that the story of the
Khmer Rouge has created this autonomy,
for small sectors like tuk-tuk drivers and
tour guides and the beggars who hang
around the killing fields, and it was just so
strange to me, this idea of being in that
close proximity with something that was
so traumatizing as a source of income.
I just had all these moments where I was
really curious about the mini-industries
and bigger industries that erupt around
suffering and poverty. But also, just in
general, why are some countries so poor
and why do we have so much? I think
that the lesson I’m learning is, a lot of
eradicating poverty is getting off this
mindset and seeing that these are people.
And it’s something I’ve echoed in Wong
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – I didn’t
want to create a show where they’d go,
24
“Aww, all Asian women are depressed!” art and performing it helps you – or The truth is, like, we are always the people
If you don’t know any Asian women, maybe, considering what you’ve just who have to have our own backs –
personally, and then you start going on said, how it’s not been so helpful. especially as women. The narrative we’re
and on and on, “not only are they quiet always fed is that someone rich is gonna
and pretty, they’re depressed!” There KW: I think performance is healing, and come marry us, or something like that, and
are other shows out there that’ll get the art is healing, but it should not be a will fix it – and believe me, for many years
statistics, but for me this was really about complete replacement for therapy. And I was like, can some rich person come
the idea that nobody is talking about it, I think, there’s acknowledging who’s fix this? And that person never came. At
because this culture of secrecy, this need wrong but there’s also acknowledging
to save everybody, or the need to do it that there’s something to be said about
all – which is something at least I grew up figuring out where forgiveness happens.
with – and I really can only own up to me You still have to live with yourself at
at the end of the day. the end of the day, you still have to
work on yourself, you still have to make
It was really hard because it took a big
process, it took a few moments of telling
stories that were a little autobiographical
and feeling completely uncomfortable
with having shared it with an audience, I
was like, I can’t tell people this every day.
And especially with shows, because you
have to cut out facts for the sake of time.
So, half the show was me teaching the
audience how to watch me, but it’s also
a lesson in “how are we viewing Asian
women?”And how to understand the
narrative of what we can see. The premier
of the show was visceral. In ways it’s
shifted my practice – I don’t know how
much more pain, at least, I could ever
relive again and again in front of people.
VU: Well, I mean, it’s interesting that
you talk about how difficult a process
it was because I think I remember yourself happy – OK, you’ve laid all the the end of the day I have to be the one to
in your essay for XOJane ‘I thought blame, you’ve played out all the people take action and say, stop, no, I’m going
Being Miserable was part of being a who’ve screwed you over – now what to make a new show, and I’m going to
Chinese American’ that you spoke are you doing about yourself to make it take steps to making that new show and
about performance as a big coping better. That’s the hardest step, and that’s nobody’s going to put stuff on me. I mean,
mechanism, and so I wanted to ask something that every human being has people have put stuff in front of me, but
you about how the process of making to deal with.
25
 nobody’s going to hand it all over. And
they shouldn’t, right? So, it’s hard, and
I feel like that’s the challenge of people
who are working with autobiographical
material, is, OK, so you’ve let it go, now
what? What are you doing next about it?
VU: Something else I wanted to look
at is Asian-American heritage and how
that history affects you in your life, but
also why you choose to address it in
your work and some of the specific
aspects about being Asian-American –
which is different to being Chinese, or
Japanese, or Korean – affect your work.
Can we talk a bit about that?
26
KW: I mean, I can tell you about how I
grew up, even though I don’t want to be
the “emblem” for a whole group of people
– I’m third-generation Chinese-American.
My grandparents came as immigrants.
As far as I know, I don’t have any close
relatives in China, so I’ve actually never
been. I’m not bilingual – I have made
multiple attempts to go to Chinese
schools, but it just came out like a little
shot glass in my brain. I mean, I think it’s
interesting that I’m the only artist in my
family – everybody else that I know from
my family – at least from my generation,
or my parents’ generation – they’re just
super-focused on making money, and
saving for retirement, and working for
good companies. And that’s the standard.
I think that was the hardest thing, was
settling into the economy of how artists
work and all these unpaid hours that we
work. Like, how all our friends from high
school are taking two weeks off or going
to all these company picnics, and we’re
just, like, hanging out at home, still trying
to structure our work lives and hawk
essays, you know, whatever. So that was
really hard, and it put me in sort of an odd
place in my family – especially with my
parents, who were just like, “What are you
doing? What are you doing? What are
you doing?” And just, like, really worried
about me.
I think I talked about this a little in my
XOJane essay, but that idea that there are
a lot of secrets in my family, and I’m like
this person where like, anything personal
I have I go, woop, going in the show. I am
jealous sometimes when I meet Latino
people, or African-American people, and
they talk about their grandparents telling
these stories about these ancestors.
I wish people would share that with
me in my family. I don’t know what that
means. I’m confused because we left that
narrative so quickly – it was like, working
class immigrants really quickly started
working in offices, and, just, like, get more
money that you can. I mean, it’s not, like,
Wall Street capitalist, but they want what
a lot of people want, which is security. For
me I question where that security comes
from or whether I can have that sense
of security and also have emotional joy,
or spiritual joy, or creative joy, and that’s
what I’m always trying to figure out.
VU: In that same XOJane story you
mention how difficult it was not having
other women who had shared their
stories, and that you wish they had told
you that they had these experiences
– you sort of talk about the power and
limitations of silence – and so I wanted
to ask, given the chance, what would
you like to have been able to tell your
younger self?
KW: So many things I would have told
my younger self! So many people I would
have been, “do not date!” You know, I
am deep into my thirties now and I feel
like I finally have the self-esteem that I
professed to have as a young feminist in
my twenties. I finally feel like I can say,
yes, I’m doing this, I’m awesome, I’m hot,
you don’t want it? Fuck you!
You know, I feel like this persona that was
sort of a character then is really more
embodied in me now, and at the end of
the day nobody came to save me. I had a
lot of allies and supporters along the way,
and I had people who did not support me
along the way, and I wish I had cut them
out earlier. I might describe how all of the
people in my family, who work at jobs and
stuff, they work at things that exist already.
And everything about what I do, and what
it took for me to own, is that my job as an
artist is to make things that don’t exist, exist.
The thing is that you have to just say, as
a person – it doesn’t matter if you’re an
artist or not – the economy could collapse
tomorrow – it has collapsed, right? –
everything in our world is there because
we made it exist. Someone thought of it
and made it exist. You know, this is very
deep, and my younger self would just
be like “Shut up!” but, all this energy
that you’re putting towards worrying
and worrying that you’re not doing what
everyone else is doing and worrying that
you’re crazy somehow for pursuing
this, or that you’re wasting your time, is
energy that’s not really well spent. It’s
much better spent doing the work of
making something that was never there
before, happen. n
You can see more of Kristina’s work at
her site, where you can buy the DVD for
her Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
which you totally should because it’s
awesome: kristinawong.com
27
SUICIDE
SUICIDE IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
by Bethany Lamont
Playing with a pet is not enough, and
perhaps you don’t own a pet. Or I don’t.
I don’t know. Taking a walk is not right
either. I don’t have a lawn to trim, and if I
do, I do not care to. Suicide is a long-term
solution to a short-term problem. But if
executed properly it can be a short-term
solution to a long-term problem. That
makes no sense, but stay with me. What
depression needs is a little death (a
28
little suicide). Napping is a little death,
staying in bed all day is a slightly bigger
little death, falling asleep in a bath with
the lights out is a little death. Sometimes
self-care does not work; you (I) just need
to die. But that death does not have to be
of the ugly kind. Make it a little death. And
then come back like Christ. They can poke
at your absence if they like, and they will,
and that is not a bad thing. Not the worst
thing. I have died a lot of little deaths to
avoid a big one and when I sleep my bed
is a little grave and daisies come out of
my mouth. It is very nice, much nicer than
slitting my throat like a pig and making
people sad. I would not like that so much.
My suggested searches are ‘how
much prozacs does it take to…’ and the
genie off Aladdin has just killed himself.
Tweets saved in my drafts include: I
really want to kill myself but I also really want
a sandwich. Also why is my bus so late.
And: I will literally pay someone to
murder me in my sleep.
I do not post either, I post one that
says: ‘Candy Crush has taught
me a lot about the inevitability of failure’
I play Candy Crush on the bus to
work five minutes after I find out that the
Genie off Aladdin has just killed himself.
I fail at level twenty-three of Candy
Crush for the twenty-third time. I have
just turned twenty-three. (I have had my
manuscript, Christ the Wolf, rejected
considerably more than twenty-three
times). I was hoping all that would add
up to 666 because that would be sort of
cool I guess, but it does not. Facebook
notifies me of that boy I’m friends with
on Facebook who’s not actually alive
anymore is a member of Freecycle and
that I should join too. In March I wrote a
four-thousand-word essay on some other
dead people I knew, it’s now July so I
guess that’s not getting published. Shrug.
I think I want death more than I want
success. But I’m not that good at either,
so it’s whatever, I guess.
Tweets that I have published include:
- If anyone wants a ted talk on
maintaining a kooky internet
presence whilst chronically
depressed/suicidal, I’m here and
100% available.
-My blog is less of a portfolio, more of
a museum to the rapidly deteriorating
state of my mental health. And I am
100% okay with that.
-I thought my skin had a seam, like a
jacket, or a pair of jeans, I remembered
it didn’t – and started to cry.
- I’m not happy. I’ve never been happy.
But maybe happiness isn’t the point.
- The banality of mental illness, unchecked
to do lists over literary epics.
- My theme song is Sean Kingston
singing the word ‘suicidal’. On
repeat. For all eternity. I’m fun.
And the internet is a sort of eternity,
black hole, deep sea, I once said the
internet was like an ocean and all the
fucked up shit in the deep web was like
those David Attenborough sea monsters,
and ppl looked at me like I was smart or
something, but idk. It is a loop. A spiral.
And that essay I wrote on being a survivor,
on being a Woody fan girl, keeps looping,
keeps on linking to my blog, and those
film stills of Woody talking shit about
Sylvia Plath, suicide and the college girl
mentality keeps looping on tumblr.
I fail again at Candy Crush and the
sweets keep pulsating and I’m looking
at them like ‘what do you want from me
man?’ I post on tumblr: “i have nothing
to offer anyone anymore, not that anyone
wanted anything i was offering then but u
dont wanna turn up with no bottle even if
no ones gonna drink it anyway i just want
to die at this point”
29
 Maybe not the best thing I wrote
(Christ the Wolf is the best thing I wrote)
but I’m still writing and that’s something
yeah? I actively resent that the whole #kill-
ur-self agenda hasn’t worked out for me
yet. And I write a note about the throbbing
beans on Candy Crush, I think I can use
it in an essay or something (I don’t). And
I think about the Maurice Sendak quote
that goes something like ‘I hope I die
before you die so I don’t have to miss you’.
Too many people have died, I know that
to be true, but who was I thinking of in
particular? I forget. I forget a lot of things.
Maybe it’s the meds. Or maybe it was
the drugs (I miss drugs). I don’t know. I
do know that missing pet posters are the
saddest, that when you die young you
don’t stay pretty you just become a corpse
faster, that I’m technically both a genius
and a retard (two words that have lost all
meaning by this point) and that I’m really
fucking bad at Candy Crush. I go to sleep,
I go to work, I eat breakfast, I get the bus,
I clean my teeth. I want to die. But maybe
not necessarily in that order. n

Artwork images taken from The Incredulity

of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio, 1601 – 02

30 31
 artwork by Hannah Moitt

32 33
 MY 21 TIPS ON KEEPING IT
TOGETHER DURING DEPRESSION
by Rosalind Robertson
1- Know that you’re not alone.
Know that we are a silent legion,
who every day face the solip-
sism and judgement of Happy
People Who Think We Just
Aren’t Trying. There are people
who are depressed, people
who have been depressed,
and people who just haven’t
been hit with it yet.
2- Understand that the Happy
People are usually acting
out of some genuine (albeit
misguided) concern for you,
that it’s coming from a good
place, even if the advice feels
like you’re being blamed for
your disease. Telling you these
things makes them feel better,
even if it makes you feel terrible.
(If they insist on keeping it up,
see #12.)
artwork by Lulu Healy
34
3- Enlist the help of a profes- 5- Pick up a paintbrush, a
sional. See your doctor. You pencil, an activity you got joy
need to talk about the ugly stuff, from in the past and re-explore
and there are people paid to that. Or, sign up for the thing
listen and help you find your you always wanted to try.
way to the light at the end of There is a long history and
the tunnel. link between depression and
creativity. It’s a bright light of
this condition, so utilize it to
4- Understand that antidepres- your best advantage.
sants will only do so much.
They’re useful, they’ll level you
out and give you the time you
need to figure out your own
path to getting well. They can
be helpful. There are lots to
choose from. They may not be
for you, and even if they are,
they take some time to kick in.
Conversely, they may not be
for you. Work with your doctor.
35
 6- Eat nutritionally sound,
regular small meals. If you’re
having trouble eating, try to
focus on what you’d like to
eat. I went through a whole
six week episode of tomatoes
and cream cheese on a bagel
twice a day. Not great, but it
was something – helpful con-
text: I’m a recovered anorexic.
Conversely, if all you want to
do is scarf down crap, try to
off-ramp it by downing a V-8
and doing #9 for 15 minutes,
and see how you feel. Chucking
your blood sugar all over hell’s
half acre is going to make you
feel worse.
36
7- While you’re doing #3, get
some bloodwork done. If you’re
low on iron or vitamin D, or if
your hormone levels are doing
the Macarena… these can all
contribute to zapping your energy
or switching your mood to Bleak.
8- If you’re in bed and the
“insomnia hamsters”, as I like
to call them, are on the wheel
of your head, watch Nightly
Business News on PBS. This
has the effect of Nyquil. Swap
out your coffee for herbal tea.
If you just cannot sleep,
try the next tip….
9- Learn how to meditate. Start
by focusing on your breathing.
Not sleep, not thoughts. In
through the nose, out through
the mouth. Meditation is focusing
on being present in your body,
not careening around in your
brain. It may not be as good
as sleep but it will give you
some rest and recharge you.
10- Face a window as
often as you can – at work,
at home. Look out into the
world. Watch. Observe. Try to
find something you find pretty
or interesting to focus on. And,
handily remember that one in
five of those people out there
feel the way you do.
11- Cry. Better out than in.
Sometimes it’s not convenient
or career-enhancing to cry, so
find a private place as best you
can and let the tears go. Carry
Kleenex and face wipes and extra
concealer if you wear makeup.
You can always claim allergies.
12- Any “friend” who reso-
lutely believes that your
depression is because you’re
lazy, because you’re not trying
hard enough, who blames
you for not bootstrapping out
of it – that friend needs to
be cut off. Polite (#2) is one
thing, but there is a limit. You
don’t have to explain, you can
just not respond. You feel badly
enough, you don’t need their
“assistance”.
13- Limit your time with people
who drain you. You know who
they are. Often you don’t have
a choice – but you can put the
meter on. And, subsequently,
be aware of what you’re asking
of those close to you.
14- Everyone has stuff they’ve
got to deal with. What you
have been saddled with is
your stuff. Recognize, just
as you’re not alone, you’re also
not unique. The grass may look
greener, you may be jealous or
envious of others who don’t have
to deal with depression, but you
likely do not know everything
that’s going on with them.
15- Let go or be dragged.
This is an old Buddhist say-
ing. It’s a very useful way to
frame aspects of depression.
Betrayal, anger, fear… letting
go is a process – often a painful
and difficult process – but it’s
ultimately going to show you
the path out of this terrible
place. Repeating the mantra
can help when you’re feeling
gripped by these feelings.
16- Wear clothes that make
you feel confident. It takes
as much time to put on nice
clothes as it does to put on
sweatpants. You will want to
wear the sweatpants. Fight the
urge. The whole “look good/feel
better” campaign isn’t limited
to cancer and chemotherapy.
Or women.
37

17- Avoid fictional drama and
tragedy like the plague. No
Grey’s Anatomy, no to The
Notebook, or anything that
won a Pulitzer prize. You’ve
got enough going on In Real
Life. Comedy only. Or trashy
stuff. Old episodes of Wonder-
Woman? I’ve got the box set.
Mindless drivel, like the latest
CGI blockbuster. Or clever, funny
books. David Sedaris. Jenny
Lawson. Fiction exists to elicit
emotion, and the emotion you
need to express most right now
is laughter.
38
18- Simple exercise, if you
can. It can be something as
simple as taking the stairs up a
flight, or walking around the block.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate, it
doesn’t have to involve climbing a
mountain or running a marathon.
Baby steps.
19- Depression will lie to you.
Depression will try to tell you
what others are thinking. That
you are unloved and unwor-
thy, that others think little of
you or don’t care – or even wish
you harm. You are not a psychic.
Keep repeating that. “I am not a
psychic”. Repeat. The only way
to know what another person is
thinking is to up and ask them.
This list will not cure you. This
list will not flip on the happy
switch. God, I wish it were that
easy. The theme here is to not
unknowingly sabotage your-
20- If you are well and truly losing self. All these little things? Like
this battle, reach out to someone.
I’ve been the random friendly- your blood sugar, or watching
but-not close person who has
fielded the occasional outreach. nonstop episodes of House, or
I like to think I’m not judgemental
and geneally resourceful, and endless Try Harder lectures from
others have thought the same,
so they called and asked. You your Perpetually Perky sister?
know someone like me. And
they will help you.
They all make dealing with de-
21- Forgive yourself. I’m writing
out all these tips, and I can’t pression just a tiny bit harder
always muster the strength to
even stick my nose outside, than it needs to be. And it’s hard
or walk up the stairs, or eat
my vegetables. Today, I got enough, all on its own. n
outside for ten minutes. I will
try again tomorrow. And I will
try again the day after that.
39
 M O U R
by Caroline Christie
Everyone always tells you about the
stages of grief. Anger, acceptance,
aggression and then some, but it doesn’t
come as a neatly packaged holiday like
a shuttle bus picking you up for an all-
inclusive trip to hell and back. The eternal
feedback loop of detachment, dejection
and recovery emerge when they’re least
welcome. In the same way that a once
sprained ankle might ache in the cold or a
bout of food poisoning labours a lifelong
weariness towards late-night takeaways,
the muscle memory of grief is a mental
sports injury – abruptly acquired and
adamant on staying.
My father died at home. It wasn’t
sudden, but we weren’t expecting it. He
had been ill for all my adult life and my
most intimate moments with him were
spent either in a consultant’s waiting room
or in intensive care. Despite having a head
start, the first few weeks of his death were
an emotional sinkhole.
In Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary,
a series of diary entries made after his
mother’s death, the theorist displays
a sense of weariness against making
literature of grief; turning someone else’s
endnote into prose feels like plagiarism.
But death doesn’t just happen to you, it
happens to everyone else around you.
In an entry on October the 27th
Barthes says, “As soon as someone
dies, frenzied construction of the future
(shifting furniture, etc.): futuromania.” The
phenomenon of confronting the future
40
N I N G
whilst trying to fill the gap that someone
you’ve loved has left behind leaves you
with a strange relationship to the space
around you.
Although the recently bereaved are
dutifully handed a free pass to behave
as erratic or as upset as needed, no
one really abides by it. Tenterhooks and
awkward silences become the norm
as you emotionally freewheel through
funerals and family gatherings, trying to
hide the extent of the strange habits you
accumulated in order to process the
enormity of what’s just happened.
I slept on his deathbed surrounded by
boxes of photographs. I drank beer in my
dressing gown at 11am and stayed up
all night listening to Bruce Springsteen’s
Thunder Road, staring at the carpet stains
his last hours left behind. I had sleeping
tablets from the doctor, in an attempt
to relieve my mind from dreaming of his
decaying body up against the radiator,
but all they did was sedate me and the
midnight hour slowly swallowed up the
rest of the day.
The initial stage only lasted a month.
Four weeks of being launched into
mental instability resulted in a trail of odd
behaviour. My newfound emotions felt
displaced and I found it hard to articulate
emotions, followed by an inevitable
offshoot of paranoia. A paranoia that
I wasn’t doing it right. That my new
routines were scaring my flatmates. That
I was capable of both breaking down
D I A R
and carrying on, neither of which were
showing signs of emerging.
Public transport terrified me. I
hadn’t done the whole breaking down
crying thing so I had visions of myself
uncontrollably sobbing on the top deck of
a night bus. I didn’t have a car and cycling
increased my heart rate too much, so I
ended up walking everywhere.
Another side effect of bereavement
is admin. Phone calls to the coroner’s
office, chasing up bank details and
cancelling accounts became my new
social interaction and at least I could
have those difficult conversations whilst
walking. Strangers caught glimpses of
conversations, consisting of ‘has the
pathologist determined the cause of death
yet?’, ‘yes, I am his next of kin’ and ‘did the
undertakers accidently take his passport?
Because I can’t find it.”
Somehow, in my early twenties, I
went from being a writer fresh out of
university to the girl taxi drivers would look
sympathetically at, telling me I needed an
older brother or generic male figure to
sort this shit out for me.
A guy could hold the fort whilst
the local antique dealers entered the
house one by one, asking each other
if they’ve found anything good yet. As
bank mangers came over for home
appointments, peacocking investment
opportunities and five-year financial plans,
and as estate agents prodded the walls of
my father’s bedroom complaining about
I E S
the décor – a man would have been able
to hold himself.
Instead it was the youngest daughter
who cleared the house by throwing
mattresses out of the top window into
skips below, moving beds, dining room
tables and chests of draws of the house,
replastering walls and painting each room.
By the end of the four months, family
friends would comment on my weight loss
by grabbing my arms and pulling away,
realising I had muscle definition instead
of strips of skin and tendons. The new
physical strength and tone I acquired from
a combination of brute labour and the
process of moving on.
The hole he left, left me with a greater
sense of competency. He was never well
enough to teach me how to lift a manhole,
change a fuse or sand down a wall but
after his departure I was forced to learn
these things. Perhaps a man would have
had a greater sense of presence, but by
the end of my futuromania the scar tissue
had healed, my anxiety-laden arteries
relaxed and my muscle memory overwrote
the injuries caused by his death. n
41
 artwork by Ruby – rubyetc.tumblr.com

42 43
ABLEISM
I have not wanted, or even considered,
having biological children for over a
decade. Now in my 30s, I find myself
frequently on the receiving end of
unsurprising “news.” Where once the
announcement, “We have news!” from a
heterosexual couple almost inevitably meant,
“We’re getting married!”, the statement is
now followed by, “We’re pregnant!”
Though most of those closest to me
know exactly why I am not having children,
and exactly why I am not considering
adoption, either, I’m still asked by those
who know me less well if childbearing
and/or childrearing is part of my life plan.
If I barely know the person, I say
something vague about having a severe,
genetic medical condition, and leave
it at that. If I really want to get into it,
or if pressed further, I talk about the
medications that I take, their potential
detriment to a fetus, the complications
that are likely to ensue postpartum, and
the genetic lottery of passing my disorder
onto my child.
And there is also the question posed
to me by folks who seemingly cannot bear
the idea of my not having a child in my life:
“But what about adoption?”
What I want to say is, “I have
schizoaffective disorder. I was
psychotic for half of 2013, and it’s
only September, so I have a good few
months left to get sick again. I don’t
want to put a child through having me
as a mother. Good-bye.”
Once, I did want biological children.
Words and Photographs And then, hours after pausing in front of
by Esme Wang a children’s clothing store in San Jose,
44
California, I did not. I’d watched women
purchase tiny peacoats and miniature
blouses with Peter Pan collars, with my
own shopping bags hanging at my sides.
Later I called my then-boyfriend, now
husband, and said, “I was at Gymboree,
and I thought of you.” Though he’d spoken
several times of wanting to have children
with me, this was the first time that I had,
however vaguely, returned the sentiment.
He was quiet. “I talked to my mom,”
he said.
I didn’t understand.
“She said that mental illness is genetic.”
“Oh. Never mind, then,” I said. “Forget
I said anything. I didn’t mean it.”
At the time, I had been diagnosed
for years with Bipolar I disorder, formerly
known as manic-depression, and primarily
characterized in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV
(DSM-IV) as a combination of alternating
manic and depressive episodes.
Symptoms of mania include a week or
more of the following: grandiosity, such
as believing one has magical powers;
severely decreased or a nonexistent
need for sleep; flight of ideas or racing
thoughts; risky behaviors; impairment;
in some cases, psychosis. Depression
is characterized by two weeks or more
of symptoms, such as depressed
mood, diminished interest or pleasure in
nearly all activities, fatigue, and feelings
of worthlessness. However, no textbook
description of bipolar disorder can match
the experience of the disorder itself.
Kay Redfield Jamison, MD writes, “There
is a particular kind of pain, elation,
loneliness, and terror involved in this kind
45
 of madness.” I was diagnosed with bipolar
disorder immediately prior to my freshman
year at Yale University.
I read in the New York Times that the
child of a parent with bipolar disorder is
thirteen times more likely to develop the
disorder than that of parents who do not.
A piece in the online magazine Salon
about madness and motherhood, written
by a woman with bipolar disorder, evoked
the following reader responses: “I grew
up with a bipolar mother, and it made
my childhood nightmarish”; “I know I’m
supposed to say I’m glad I was born but
[as a bipolar child of a bipolar mother,
I] am not”; “Someone who is mentally
unstable enough to require psychotropics
should NOT, under any circumstances,
even consider having a child.” I read all
sixty-eight comments. These, I remember.
In the back of the chorus of these
Internet commentators is my mother,
who knew that she had a family history of
mental illness when she became pregnant
with me. At first she was reticent about
the breakdowns and suicides; she didn’t
even tell my first psychiatrist, who’d
specifically asked. As I grew older and my
symptoms worsened, my mother at times
expressed deep remorse and guilt at the
46
fact that she had passed this “suffering”
on to me, and presently tells me that I
would be better off not having children.
There are two issues here: one being the
act of passing on a genetic burden, and
the other being my ability, as a bipolar
woman, to be a good mother.
At Yale and at Stanford, where
I later transferred, I commonly saw
advertisements for egg donors
in the backs of the Yale Daily, the
Herald, and the Stanford Daily.
The advertisements promised
thousands of dollars for eggs
from what was presumed to be
good stock; I frequently met the
SAT and GPA requirements,
and occasionally met the ethnic
requirements as well. To see me
in the flesh and look over my
curriculum vitae, one might be compelled
to inquire after my eggs – my potentially
flawed eggs, sure to be rejected with
the advertisements’ clauses asking after
“healthy” donors.
To return to the mall scenario, neither
Chris nor his mother were being cruel
when they brought up their concern
about my genetic and emotional fitness.
That year was particularly bad. I became
manic; went a week without sleeping
more than two or three hours a night, or
without sleeping at all; couldn’t hold onto
one thought without racing to another;
scrawled ungrammatical nonsense in
class; punched trees on Cross Campus.
After the manias ran their course I
became immobile, depressed, suicidal.
I was hospitalized twice for a total of
twenty days. I had threatened to take an
overdose once, actually had taken an
overdose on a separate occasion, been
physically restrained to a bed in an ER,
and cut and burned myself innumerable
times. The university put me on medical
leave and I was never permitted to return;
Chris and his mother were merely thinking
about further consequences that I,
surprisingly, had not thought of.
Six years later, in the spring of 2007,
the clinical director at Camp Wish, who
was also my coworker at the Stanford
Psychiatry Department, told me that my
experience with clinical interviews made
me an excellent volunteer for a youth
bipolar camp. We were standing in front
of the office elevator. I smiled and told her
to send me an application, but I didn’t tell
her what I really thought.
As I stepped into the elevator, I
envisioned seventy-two hours with
nine-to-eighteen-year-old kids with
bipolar disorder. They might be having
hallucinations. They might have multiple
diagnoses, including Asperger’s,
Attentional Deficit Disorder, Attentional
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Pervasive
Developmental Disorder, and Oppositional
Defiant Disorder. At their worst, they
would be shouting, screaming, crying, and
possibly violent. At their best, they would
want to – here I gave an inward, cynical
shudder – play with me.
I am aware that my alleged dislike for
children, which originated shortly after the
incident at the mall, is probably rooted in
self-deception. I used to eat sweets, too,
and after I decided to cut back on sugar
for dietary reasons, I learned to say, in lieu
of a more thorough explanation, “I don’t
like dessert.” Now I don’t put sugar in my
coffee; at times I find fruit too saccharine.
No one who has met me in the last
ten years knows that I once gorged on
cheesecake and caramels. And so I avoid
playing with children because I’m afraid
of awakening a biological and emotional
drive. I don’t say “I don’t like children,”
but it’s what I’m thinking every time
someone tries to hand me a baby.
It’s what I tell myself.
Yet I couldn’t get over the concept of
sixty kids with the same diagnosis getting
together to have a good time. To have
this disorder means that you can end
up wrapping your car around a tree in a
manic frenzy or spending your life savings
on socks because you think the Ice Age is
coming, or shooting yourself because the
pain is just that bad, and very few people,
except the estimated 1 – 2% of the
population who share your diagnosis, will
understand. Children with bipolar disorder
may have a different form of the disorder,
but their lot is just as bad as that of their
grown-up counterparts, if not worse
– according to the National Alliance on
Mental Illness, “[Pediatric bipolar disorder]
appears more severe and with a much
longer road to recovery than is seen
with adults.” I wanted to help the kids at
Camp Wish, but I turned in my application
to Megan with an ulterior motive: I also
wanted to feel less alone.
Aaron was stocky with close-cropped
blonde hair. He rarely smiled and liked
to play football. Julian frequently smiled
and wore a green bandana around his
neck. Mark wore the same clothes every
day: a white t-shirt, cargo shorts, and a
backwards baseball cap. He collected
things like toy planes and small rocks to
47
 put in his pockets. Alex looked a lot like
Julian, except for the green bandana.
Stuart, the smallest of the five boys, was
short, thin, and perpetually had his shirt
tucked into his shorts, with tube socks
pulled up as far as they could go.
As head counselor of our four-
counselor, five-boy cabin, Chris, who
was at that point my fiancé, carried with
him a massive blue binder comprised of
surveys. These surveys, painstakingly filled
out by the boys’ mothers prior to coming
to Camp Wish, covered the basics:
comorbid (multiple) diagnoses, severity
of bipolar disorder, food preferences,
hospitalization history, medication
regimen, and so forth. The surveys also
covered smaller, though still essential,
details. One boy could only sleep at night
while listening to his iPod; all of the boys
had bedwetting issues; they all enjoyed
playing sports (which I dreaded).
A question that I found particularly
poignant in its frankness was the
following: “How do you and your child
deal with the onset of rage or mania?”
48
Camp Wish was established in 2005
as a “typical” summer camp for bipolar
children and adolescents who would
have problems in a standard sleep-away
camp setting — these problems perhaps
being one of the reasons that the camp
only lasts for three days. The setting is
bucolic, with coursing yellow hills and
lots of trees. A family foundation donated
its grounds to Camp Wish, and were
you to happen upon the camp for a few
minutes, you might overlook the signs of
severe bipolar disorder in the morass of
nine-to-eighteen-year-olds in favor of the
sight of the plush cabins, expansive dining
hall and vast recreational areas filled with
young people doing things like macrame
and basketball.
Bipolar disorder has yet to be
fully understood in adults, and is even
more mysterious in children. Those
with pediatric bipolar disorder have
less distinguishable mood states
that can fluctuate rapidly, making the
illness difficult to diagnose — is a child
who acts out in class suffering from
Attentional Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,
Oppositional Defiant Disorder, a manic
state, both, or neither? Other behaviors
associated with pediatric bipolar disorder
include hypersexuality, hallucinations and
delusions, suicidal behavior, violence,
agitation, and impaired judgment. The very
existence of pediatric bipolar disorder is
controversial to some who believe that
children are too young to be diagnosed
with such a weighty mental illness, or
think that diagnoses such as ADHD
and ODD, in combination with unipolar
depression, are more fitting labels for
the kind of irritability and rage that often
manifest in said children.
The foundation that sponsors Camp
Wish believes that pediatric bipolar
disorder is a real and terrible thing. Their
website – touching upon a commonly
referenced statistic – mentions that it
affects approximately two million children in
the United States. Chris and I went to camp
with sixty of them in the summer of 2007.
At six o’clock I watched Stuart eat.
He was on a restricted diet and seemed
sullen about it. The other boys chatted
about their first day, which had been fairly
normal – some aggressive behavior, mild
arguing, and a few mood swings here and
there, though running around after the
boys had not been as bad as I’d feared. In
fact, I’d been quite cheerful looking at the
wild turkeys with Julian while the others
played soccer. But I worried about Stuart.
“How many liters are in a gallon!”
he suddenly said in a shouted,
robotic monotone.
The boys looked at him, confused.
“Point two-six-four! What’s the
largest dinosaur?”
Aaron snickered.
“Argentinosaurus!”
“Why are you asking us trivia
questions?” Alex asked.
“They’re not trivia questions,” Stuart
said stonily, “they’re science facts.”
Both Mark and Stuart had pervasive
developmental disorders alongside their
bipolar diagnoses. The most well-known
pervasive developmental disorder (PDD)
is autism; all PDDs involve delays in social
interaction and communication. Mark
had Asperger’s, commonly referred to as
a more high-functioning form of autism.
Stuart had PDD-NOS, or pervasive
developmental disorder Not Otherwise
Specified. Mark, however, was far more
high-functioning than Stuart, who seemed
unable to carry on a conversation unless
it involved shouting science facts or
reciting, in savant-like detail, the plot of
the Harry Potter movies. Aaron was the
first to point this out.
“Stuart’s a retard,” he sang out as we
bussed our dishes.
“Stop it,” Stuart said, reddening.
“Isn’t he a retard? Retard, retard. And
a crybaby.” Most of the temper tantrums
that day had been Stuart’s, usually due
49
 to a spat over game rules. He enjoyed
playing games, but exploded whenever a
rule did not act in his favor.
The other boys, sensing that Aaron
had become the alpha male, joined in the
mockery. We counselors jumped in —
hey, that’s not cool — but it
wasn’t enough, and even
as unprepared and unskilled
as I was, should have done.
We counselors operated at camp
with — like most, if not all parents — little
to no training and, though it pains me to
say it, not much supervision. Because we
were adults, the administrators at Camp
Wish assumed that we would act on
our best instincts. If we came across a
situation that we couldn’t handle, they told
us, we should contact someone higher
up. In the afternoon, after a fight at the
pool table, Chris took Stuart on a walk to
cool down. Stuart told Chris that he had
no friends at camp. His mother had told
him that he would be able to make friends
at Camp Wish, where the other kids were
just like him, but things at camp were the
same as they were back home — and we
had no idea what to do about it.
“I’m your friend,” Chris said.
“You’re not a kid friend,” Stuart replied.
“I just kept thinking about what school
will be like for him when he starts middle
school in the fall,” Chris said to me that
evening, when we were finally alone. “He
said he’d never had a friend in his life. It
was just so goddamn sad.”
I spotted a hummingbird near the
low stone wall outside of the infirmary.
When I pointed to it, Stuart shouted,
50
“Hummingbirds flap their wings at fifty
times a second!”
Around eight o’ clock in the morning
each cabin traipsed to the infirmary.
Campers were required to be on
medication, and so everyone, from the
eleven-year-old boys and girls to the
eighteen-year-old young men and women,
would line up and take their pills.
There was a wide variety of pills,
kept in plastic bottles and baggies in
tubs: mood stabilizers like Tegretol and
Depakote and lithium; benzodiazepines
for anxiety; antipsychotics; even
antidepressants. I had taken seven kinds
of psychotropics in my lifetime and was
taking four that summer. Because I didn’t
know if I was permitted to in front of the
campers, I didn’t take my medications at
“meds time,” instead opting to visit the
infirmary later in the afternoon. I watched
as a battalion of kids took their pills
unblinkingly and without embarrassment,
and then said good-bye to the nurses and
reemerged into the fresh air. More unifying
than camp songs, I thought. Stuart
wandered off in search of hummingbirds
beating their frantic wings.
“Retard,” Alex muttered, and the boys removed alongside Stuart and assigned to apprehensively, but Chris reluctantly
pointed, snickering. be his personal minder. Although Alex had brought him outside, and I stood at the
Chris had been speaking to Megan bitten and kicked Chris, leaving a bruise sidelines, where I watched Stuart quickly
and the administrators regularly about that would last for weeks, and Julian was make a touchdown. I brimmed with
Stuart since the teasing began. Eventually suffering from constant hallucinations gladness as he cheered and pranced
the bullying became brutal enough for that remained despite medication, Stuart about the field — even the other boys
the administrators to decide that Stuart needed the most care. cheered his excellent footwork. But
needed to be moved to the other preteen As Chris and I prepared for the move, then one of the other boys accidentally
boys’ cabin. Chris and I gently informed Stuart peered out the window and saw bumped into him in the middle of the
Stuart, alone, that he was going to go to Aaron, Julian, Mark and Alex playing game, which caused Stuart to scream.
the next-door cabin, where things would touch football outside. “I want to play,” he Chris brought him off of the field as he
hopefully be better for him. I was to be said. Chris and I looked at one another hollered and flailed. The other boys yelled,
51
 “Crybaby! Crybaby!” after them.
Chris and Stuart came into the cabin.
“We’re moving you now,” Chris said, trying
to sound upbeat. He’d told me earlier
that Megan and Dr. K. had recommended
moving Stuart at a time when the other
boys were distracted. ‘They won’t notice
that Stuart’s gone, and probably won’t say
anything if they do,” Megan had said. “They’ll
be too involved with their own business.”
So I brought Stuart and his bags
to the other boys’ cabin. Stuart looked
nervously in my direction — he couldn’t
make eye contact, a common symptom
found in PDD — and I sifted through the
game box, looking for something for us
to do that would cause the least
likelihood of a tantrum.
Then I heard the other boys come
back to their cabin. “Hey, he’s gone!” a
voice cried. “The crybaby’s gone!”
“Finally!”
“Woo!”
An eruption of yelling and cheering
spilled from our former cabin. Chris and
the other counselors shouted for them
to stop. Nauseated, I looked at Stuart.
His face twisted. “Stuart,” I said. After
the other cabin finally calmed down,
Chris called Megan on his walkie-talkie
and insisted that someone come speak
to his boys.
“It’s time for dinner,” I said at the pool
table, which was unfortunately located
directly outside the dining hall. “We can
play pool after dinner.”
Stuart whacked the balls with the
back end of the cue, batting them around
the table. Eventually another camper
approached, watched for a few moments,
52
and finally said, “You’re playing the game
wrong. Look, you’re using the wrong end
of the stick.”
“I don’t care!” Stuart screamed. He
balled his fists. “Leave me alone!”
All of the other counselors were
already at dinner. Panic fogged my guts
as I searched for my next words; the sight
of him, anguished and darkly frenzied,
reminded me of my own agitated states.
“It doesn’t matter,” I finally said. “It’s time
for dinner.”
But he didn’t stop until after dinner
had already started, when he eventually
got all of the balls into the pockets, and
I hadn’t dragged him into the building. I
hadn’t tried to reason with him about the
importance of being on time. Instead I
led him into the dining hall with my hand
resting at the base of his neck, the way
my mother had when I was small.
In my absence, Megan visited Chris’s
cabin and spoke to them about bullying. It
turned out that all of them were bullied at
their schools back home.
Life in the new cabin improved for
Stuart. The new boys were far more patient
with his social difficulties. Though he still
had tantrums, and stalked off the field
during another game of touch football, I do
recall one thirty-minute session of Connect
Four between Stuart and a particularly even-
tempered camp veteran. I do not remember
who won or lost.
Stuart was also quite funny. Upon
being lowered from a ropes course that
he wouldn’t continue climbing, he joked
with no embarrassment about feeing like
“a ton of bricks on a construction site.”
He tended to conclude all jokes with a
loud bark of a laugh: “HA!”
Chris covertly organized a get-together
at the pool between Alex and Stuart, which I
co-supervised. They played without incident
for hours. “Look at how cute your fiance is
with those boys,” another counselor said
to me. “You must look forward to having
children with him someday.”
On the second and final night of camp,
Stuart began to suffer from some sort of
respiratory problem. The only complaints he
had were that his “spit [had become] thick”
and that he “couldn’t breathe right.” “This
always happens,” he sobbed.
I brought him to the infirmary. The doctor
on call gave him his medication and inhaler
and told him to go to sleep; I accompanied
him to the empty cabin and he climbed into
his top bunk, tears streaming.
“It feels so bad,” he whispered.
“I know,” I said. “Close your eyes.”
I was barely tall enough to reach the
top bunk by standing on my tiptoes, but
I stood as tall as I could so that I could
see him. “It’s okay,” I whispered. He
shuddered with discomfort, squeezing
his eyes shut and periodically wiping
tears away with the backs of his small
hands. I told him to try and relax. I stroked
his bangs with the palm of my hand. I
hummed Chinese lullabies, and the longer
I stood and stroked and hummed and
whispered, the stiller he became, until he
was asleep. At one point I saw, out of the
corner of my eye, Chris’s face looming in
the window of the cabin.
Later he told me, “You would make a
good mother.”
“It was one night,” I said.
The next morning, during closing
ceremonies, the camp leaders instructed
the cabins to go around the circle and
say something about our Camp Wish
experience. The preteen cabins had had a
chaotic breakfast — Aaron, who’d mocked
Stuart for much of camp, curled up in a
corner of the dining hall and refused to
move, and one of the boys in Stuart’s new
cabin started screaming and crying about
his need to go home, immediately.
In the circle I sat in my folding chair
and listened as each camper spoke about
“making friends.” and “belonging.” Then
it was Stuart’s turn. He stood with his
53
 hands stuffed in his pockets. “At first, I
didn’t like camp,” he said, not making eye
contact with anyone. “People were mean
to me. And I didn’t think I would make any
friends. But then I had fun and I made
some friends. And I want to come back
next year.”
I was glad then that I’d worn
sunglasses, because I started to cry.
Would bipolar disorder preclude me from
being a good mother? I was fine at camp.
I took care of the boys, and after I was
removed from my first cabin, I took care
of Stuart. But I hadn’t been suffering from
a mania or a depression then, and I can’t
imagine that I would have been allowed
to care for someone else’s children if I
had. And since then, having developed
schizophrenia-type symptoms that
transformed my bipolar disorder diagnosis
into schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type,
I’ve seen myself forget to feed my dog.
I’ve seen myself remember, and then not
care enough to do it. Sometimes, I can’t
even say more than two words, move,
or be sure that my husband hasn’t been
replaced by an identical robot.
My friend Amanda’s mother has
bipolar disorder; she was hospitalized
one Christmas early on in Amanda’s life,
54
and Amanda has hated Christmas ever
since. My mentally ill great-aunt neglected
her baby son so badly that she could no
longer hold custody over him. She died in
a psychiatric hospital. One of my aunties
tried to kill her husband with a chef’s
knife. Could I be one of these women?
Then again, mothers act badly all
the time. Let anyone open up to you,
and she’ll probably have a few doozies
about how her diagnostically sane mom
restricted her food intake because of
weight issues, or got too drunk and
hit on her boyfriend (I’ve heard both).
Perhaps the bigger issue is that bad
parenting is the problem, bipolar disorder
or no. I might damage my future children
in a way that has nothing to do with
mania, depression, or psychosis. I might
compensate for my neurological defects
by being an especially good mother, one
who reads stacks of parenting literature
and educates her children early on about
odd behavior that might come up at home.
Stuart’s own mother came to pick
him up alone. She was a spry, cheerful
woman who spoke to Chris and me of
Stuart’s riding lessons.
By interpreting some of her
comments, Chris and I later guessed
that she was a single mother working
to give Stuart the best life that he could
have. When she left to gather Stuart’s
medications and paperwork from the
infirmary, Stuart immediately entangled
himself in an argument over table hockey.
“Let me play,” he said to two girls who
had just settled down at the table.
“We just got here,” they said.
“Maybe you can watch them and then
take a turn when they’re done,” I suggested.
“I want to play now,” he said, voice rising.
And this would be the reality of being
with Stuart, or any child with a difficulty.
It would be for twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, three-hundred-and-
sixty-five days a year. Not a day at camp,
or three days, or three weeks. A lifetime.
Stuart’s mother eventually returned with
his things, hugged him, and told him that
it was time to go. Stuart did not say good-
bye to either Chris or me. He just left, and
we haven’t seen him since.
On the drive home Chris and I were,
at first, quiet.
“We could have a child like that,”
I finally said.
Tied up in my mother’s remorse and
guilt is an invisible, additional question
that I have for her, that being: Would it
have been better if I’d never been born?
Despite the fact that I’ve made my parents
proud, I can’t help but wonder if that really
outweighs watching me break down over
the years. Perhaps if she’d been able
to choose my genetics, she would’ve
rearranged some things. I would have
been someone else entirely.
For all of my fears about constantly
watching over a child with mental illness,
or any other severe disability, the very
reasons that I thought I didn’t want
children might be the very reason that I
would change my mind. I was surprised
by my love for Stuart. Yes, he was smart
and hilarious, and knew a lot of fascinating
trivia. He and I also shared a diagnosis,
and perhaps that, most of all, is why I had
patience for his tantrums and oddities.
“We could have a child like that,” I’d
said — and indeed, we could.
I think of Stuart’s eyes slowly closing
as I touch his hair.
After I had my intrauterine device
permanently removed for medical
reasons, Chris and I began to discuss
more permanent forms of contraception.
We talk about tubal ligation, Essure,
vasectomies. And yet I insist that I don’t
want a tubal ligation, or Essure. I tell
Chris that vasectomies have more of a
possibility of reversal. When I ask myself
why I care about a possible reversal, I
realize that I don’t know.
I had abdominal surgery a few years
ago. There was a giant cyst on my left
ovary, and it needed to be removed; it was
possible that I would lose my ovary along
with the cyst. When I woke up, the first
thing that I remember asking the nurse
was, “Is my ovary okay?”
She nodded. “Your ovary is fine,” she
said. And then she added, “You already
asked that. When you first came out of the
general anesthesia, those were the first
words out of your mouth.” n
55
SUICIDE
FINDING COMFORT IN DEATH
by Ashton Kesler
My friends love to talk about their battle
scars; how many bones they’ve broken,
different hospital visits, and assorted
injuries. I don’t have much to add to their
conversation – I do have scars, but not on
the outside. I don’t know if it’s because
there have been a few times that I could
have died, or if having depression makes
you more in tune with your mortality.
I have a mild fascination with death.
I spend time reading about people who’ve
died in bizarre circumstances. Things that
other people find creepy or scary –
I find comforting. I enjoy knowing of ways
I could die, somehow it makes it easier for
me to accept. Death is just a part of life
for me – it’s inevitable.
I try and look at it in a methodical way.
Preparation is a key component for me.
I tell my husband he has to make sure
that I am dressed before taking me to
hospital as clothes are always optional in
our house. I have spent too many times
nearly injuring myself on the stairs to not
have a back up plan. I remind him what my
final wishes are every once in awhile; to
donate my organs, be cremated and have
a tree planted in my honor. I just want
to leave a little bit of good behind, like
the hebrew phrase, “tikkun olam” which
means “repairing the world”. I hope that
when I do go that I will leave it better than
I found it.
artwork by James Gaunt
56
My depression still follows me around,
always in my peripheral vision. It’s there,
just waiting for the perfect moment to
come back and knock me out. I try and be
vigilante about checking in with myself.
It’s the guilt that always gets me, making
me spiral farther and farther down. I work
through my feelings slowly. I can’t afford to
ignore them, or it will become a bomb with
shrapnel hurling at everyone close to me.
Even though I find comfort in death,
it doesn’t mean that I want to die. I have
just accepted my life for what it is, and am
hopeful for a possible afterlife. Even if there
isn’t one, at least I know that I have spent
my life doing what I want. Having a sense
of mortality makes you appreciate things
more. I say “I love you” more often, I forgive
easier, and I try to be a better person.
Sometimes I think about what will
happen after I die; what will happen to
the people that I love and care about? I
want them to be happy with or without
me. What I want most, is for my husband
to find someone who will take care of him.
He’s spent his life taking care of me, and
he deserves to be taken care of. All I ask
in return is that he has a marker where my
tree will be that reads, “She died as she
lived: without any pants on.” n
57
 POLICING: SELF-CARE AS BENEVOLENT EXPLOITATION
by Ashley Allan
I’ve started to become very nervous
when someone tells me I need to
do self-care. I know it means they
don’t at all plan on being involved in
my process. I know it means they’ll
quickly mutter to others in the group
that I won’t show up for a meeting
or two, but that they still have work
to do. I guess I’m not quite good
enough for the big kid table when
I’m cycling in my depression, had my
PTSD triggered, had a night terror,
or am feeling especially anxious one
day. Unless I can contribute in a way
reflective of ableist norms, I’m not
useful, and therefore not wanted.
What people seem to mean
when they tell me I need to do self-
care is this: “We need you to go
away and deal with your problems,
because you’re distracting the rest of
us as we do Serious Work.” In a way,
my self-care is for them. Managing
my disabilities is not a community
concern, and so I need to be isolated
when doing so. Anything happening
to me is not priority because I’m
seen less as a person with needs and
more as an interruption to the space.
I don’t believe I can speak
seriously if I overlook how this
structure of self-care screams
respectability politics, whiteness,
58
and capitalism. Be productive. Do
self-care because we need you to
be productive. Don’t show your pain
unless it works with this event we
coordinated. If you want to be seen
as truly revolutionary, you need to be
a rugged individual who relegates
their hurt to the weekends. You must
be impervious to pain in the public
light. Appear innocent. If you show
too much when it’s not “appropriate”
or “necessary,” then we’ll find
someone to take your spot.
Why does participating in
a community suddenly sound
so much like a job? How come
everyone sounds so expendable
and replaceable? When did activist
spaces become so dehumanising?
It’s astounding to me, yet entirely
unsurprising, how many activists I
know who will talk endlessly about
Marx but miss the connection
between their spaces and a
dehumanising labor structure. How
can anyone seriously claim to be
revolutionary when they’ll throw their
own community off a cliff?
How can we call such
people anything but opportunistic
and exploitative? n
59
 UNTITLED (INTIMATE BLACK HOLE)

by Megan Brandenburg
artwork by Valerie Choi

I feel like an orphan in a movie when

I’m at the hospital. I can feel the eyes of
all the old, cancer-ridden adults, wondering
why I’m here and if I’m here alone and if
they could adopt me. The guy next to me
gets off the phone with who I can assume
is his daughter (“just wanted to make sure
you got to Katie’s safely!” Only fifteen-
year-old girls are named Katie) and out
of the corner of my eye I see him hesitate
whether or not he should say something
to me. He looks up and back down, leans
forward then readjusts. I like being in this
role. It makes me feel like the “Earth’s
Child” instead of the reality of the situation,
which is that my parents work too much
and I want to pretend to be an adult and
handle doctor’s appointments on my own.
It doesn’t help that I look twelve years old
and when I sit it’s with my arms wrapped
up around my knees and my head buried
between my legs.

60 61
 Being at a cancer hospital means
you don’t have to wonder what’s wrong,
just how bad it is. It’s at least a little bad,
probably worse. I see an adult couple
embracing in front of the elevator and I
cry. I text a person and tell them I miss
them and they respond “please stop.” I
need someone to take care of me. I am in
hell and act like a child.
I stop crying two hours later, after I’m
taken into a small private room to prepare
for my PET scan. I stupidly sob into my
oversized velvet sweater as the nurse tries
and fails to find a vein in my arm for the IV.
There is no parent or loved one there to
soothe me and tell me to relax and to let
him do his job, no one next to me to shush
me and pet my head. The way children are
similar to domestic creatures and need
attention and their heads rubbed and ears
scratched and someone to feed them, I
am the same. No one is there to fulfill this
62
role so I just cry in front of him, he never
stops because he has a job to do but
does say “I’m sorry I’m so so sorry” under
his breath. I am your worst nightmare. He
finally finds a vein in my hand and leaves,
and I sit in a room by myself for one hour
and cry into the lens of a security camera.
The female nurses say to me “why
are you here you’re so young you’re just a
baby” and they call me sweetie and I ask
them for graham crackers and they wipe
the tears from my face when I’m secured
down to an MRI table and can’t reach
them myself. 21-year-old infant. Being
surrounded by swiftly dying old people
will make you want to run the other way
really quick. Cancer brings them closer
to death, but for me it regresses all self-
consciousness and emotional maturity
I’ve developed as an apathetic twenty-
something. Aging backwards,
disregarding the linearity of time.
63
 After the PET scan I ask the technician
for water and something to eat and she
brings me a huge cup of ice water with a
giant kid-friendly straw and a handful of
crackers. She sits with me and asks me
questions like you would ask someone
not well-versed in the English language,
a child or a foreigner. She says to me,
“ooooh, I like your purple coat! Very
nice! Where did you get it?” I respond
appropriately, filling my role as Vulnerable
Small Person. She is no more than five
years older than me. She says, “when
you are done resting I will walk you out.
No rush, you’re the last patient of the
day. I can’t let you leave alone!” Does
she feel bad for me? I feel bad for myself.
My transformation to stupid weak baby
allows me to take my time and relax and
cover myself in cracker crumbs without
feeling self-conscious. I don’t worry about
coming off as a real person who has their
shit together and doesn’t cry in front of
strangers, or about whether or not she
wants to get rid of me.
I want to stay so I do.
64
The wallpaper on the ceiling is as if
one was laying on the forest ground and
looking up at the trees and I think about
how I want to live in or around it; in my
vulnerable state it successfully instills
peace in me. After about ten minutes I
get up and walk to the technician and
tell her I’m ready, and we walk down the
hallway together. She asks me how old
I am and where I go to school and what
I’m studying and I tell her the truth but
I feel like I’m lying. She still responds
to me like a baby though she knows
I’m college educated and normally this
infuriates me but now I just want someone
to fucking coddle me and I am genuinely
disappointed when we reach the door.
On the way home I get takeout because I
can’t make food for myself and I eat it on
the train, first with chopsticks but then I
drop one so I eat it with my hands. I think
about what it means to be an adult and
how I will never be one. This thought is
not unique and that’s not a comfort but
an annoyance. I don’t feel connected with
anyone because of it. I am predictable. n
65
 artwork by Lil Ashton
artwork by Lil Ashton words by Emma Frankel

66 67
 GHOST PHOTOGRAPHS: I first discovered
AN INTERVIEW WITH Angela Deane’s ghost
ANGELA DEANE photographs on my tumblr
dashboard, as I quietly
Interview conducted by debated whether to delete
Bethany Lamont my own face from the
blogosphere. I have made
mood boards of her work
alongside Junot Díaz
quotes on child abuse,
and linked them to friends
as a light relief. Because
her pictures span all that,
encompass all that, they
are funny and sad and
weird. They are comforting
in the way all old photos
are. And unsettling in the
way all photos are. Is that
a contradiction? I don’t
think so. They are maybe
the closest thing you can
get in art to that day in
June when I was revising
in the library and found
out a childhood friend
had died on Facebook.
And was then reminded
of his 23rd birthday a few
months later. (Thanks,
Zuckerberg). I spoke
to Angela about grief,
Disneyland and family
photo albums. Because
whilst we can create
endless stories on these
mysterious images it’s far
more interesting, more
necessary, to let an artist
speak for themselves.
68
BL: In your artist statement
you raise the question ‘how
important is happening
versus happened?’ could
you expand on this idea
some more?
AD: I find that to be a constant
struggle – how to hold, how
to cherish the past. Do I do so
by revisiting photos, by shar-
ing anecdotes, by letting my
dreams take me back? With
the present always in motion
and the past always just a lost
present how do we judge what
“real” is, what “happening” is
you know? There’s not much
of an answer to this question
but I love contemplating it,
ideally out in the desert look-
ing up at a star-riddled sky. It
probably all points to mortality
and the idea of once we’re not
“here” anymore are we still,
well just, still?
Have you ever watched the
movie Six Degrees of Separa-
tion? It’s pretty fantastic. At
the end Stockard Channing
disrupts a polite dinner party
outraged at how a special
experience has turned into a
humorous anecdote to tell to
friends over drinks.
She hit the nail on the head –
how do we keep the meaning
of what happened to us in the
past intimate? Just because
it’s not occurring anymore is
it less important than what
I’m doing right now? And
maybe we just redefine what
occurring really means anyway.
You know?
BL: Is the place of painful
memories important in your
work? For me this evokes the
act of suppressing abuse and
trauma, rewriting personal
histories and disassociation.
I’d say there’s a big place for
good memories that never
happened, which isn’t so
much about trauma but the
pain of what was missed,
what could have been.
AD: The youngest of three kids
by about a decade, the family
of my brother and sister was a
different family than my own.
They were born in New York
City, and I was born in Florida. I
also lost my father at ten when
both my siblings were already
away at college. So half of my
childhood was pretty much just
me and my mom and I would
look over photo albums all the
time sort of inserting myself
into the memories of a time
before I was born.
I think this personal narrative
of wishing myself into the past
snapshots has been slowly
becoming uncovered the longer
I work on this series.
69

BL: Can you explain the
place of nostalgia in your
work? Like when I look at
your photos I feel a sense
of homesickness for a place
that never existed, missing
people you’ve never met….
AD: Oh yeah, I was always
wishing I could go back in
time. For instance, my mother
immigrated here from Italy as
70
a teen. Out of a family of eight
children only three surived to
adulthood. I’ve always wished
I could have spent time with
her brothers and sisters that
passed so young. Even with
people not related to me, you’re
right, oftentimes standing in
front of portraits and paintings
from centuries past I imagine
spending an hour in the after-
noon with someone. Just to
see and hear what they did.
BL: You work with found
photos, have you ever been
interested in using your own
childhood photos?
AD: No. My family keeps asking
me too and I find the idea of
that too morbid. I thought as a
joke to do a couple of my old
softball team photos as a kid
but haven’t been able to bring
myself to do so! The idea of
painting over my own face or
my mother’s seems like asking
for trouble, like a bad omen
or something. When I don’t
know them they become less
the person and more of the
moment itself. Make sense?
BL: Can you explain the
purpose of anonymity in the
photos? Of course there is the
literal anonymity of painting
over the photos. But I also
think of the fact that there is
a certain collective memory
of family photo albums. Did
you purposefully work with
this idea in mind? Is this
idea of interchangeable
memories, interchangeable
pictures interesting to you?
Did you try to reflect this in
your work, and if so how?
AD: You’re right, there is this
collective memory of family
photo albums, of vacation
snapshots. And we’re perhaps
on the cusp of losing that! I’m
actually about to order prints of
all my postings on various social
media etc and put together an
album. I haven’t put an album
together in over ten years and
I’m missing it. Of course this
one will be just a handful of
family or friends and mainly
quieter stills of travel and daily
city walks, of things I see and
capture myself, of things others
capture and share.
So yes, the idea that we all can
relate and sort of interchange
all these things appeals to me
greatly. As we move towards
this Tumblr age the idea of
ownership is changing. Not to
say it goes to nil, people are still
seeking out authorship and I find
the compliments and support
to be wide and far, but maybe
the idea of the owner, of the
maker, is becoming less rigid,
less grand. Still beautiful and
inspiring but less untouchable.
BL: You speak of open and
shared experiences, firstly
I thought of shared cultural
memories, the pop culture and
tv memories that connect us
all, those corny tumblr posts
that say things like ‘reblog if
you miss the 90s!’ but does
this idea also connect to the
idea of collective trauma?
AD: Oh yeah, definitely. If we
can work through and actually
talk about grief together, we’re
moving in the right direction.
BL: Your images of Disneyworld
seem particularly poignant,
in terms of constructing (in
hindsight) images of a perfect
childhood, a perfect happy
world that never existed.
Was this your intent?
AD: Yeah, Disneyworld is
such a strange place. It’s
sort of wonderfully artificial
yet to children all out magical.
There’s something to these
photos knowing how different
the adults and children are
experiencing that place, plus
it’s so colourful and wonderfully
kitsch, particularly back in the
seventies and eighties.
BL: You speak of the idea of
found photos being removed
‘in both time and space’, how
did you try and reflect this
in your work?
AD: I actually think a photograph
always reflects that. It’s this
evidence of a moment.
The evidence can be coveted,
displayed, moved about, last
decades, maybe longer.
Art to me is always removed
in both time and space.
71
 BL: In your artist statement
you write ‘we become the
ghosts of our everyday’;
could you explain this?
AD: I think of my yesterdays
as ghosts of me. Relationships
of the past linger as ghosts. A
shared smile with a stranger
remains as an imprint; a pale
presence. So ghosts are not
harrowing, not dead souls
walking, rather expired moments.
This idea both comforts me and
terrifies me and ultimately points
to death.
BL: Do you think you can
be possessed by a photo?
Like a ghost or demon in a
horror film?
AD: No. And I hope I am never
proven wrong!
BL: Bodies of water are
a recurring theme in your
photos, is this intentional?
AD: Well, this series began
a couple years ago while out
in New Mexico and there’s
that big blue open sky, add
that to me being from Florida
originally and I’d say water and
blue in general is like home to
me. Aesthetically too it’s one
of my favourite colors to both
paint with and wear and it just
offsets the white of the ghosts
so nicely. People respond to
them really well too.
72
BL: You talk about projection,
I guess that works both ways,
we project stories of our ‘ideal
self’ when we’re the subject,
but when we are the viewer
we fill in the gaps, project
our own narratives, right?
What was your intention of
the viewer’s projection onto
your ghosts? What did you
hope they’d feel, and did
you notice a discrepancy
between your wish and the
ultimate outcome?
AD: I wanted them to feel
both amused and lightened
and also just a bit unsettled.
That is exactly what most takes
seem to be.
BL: Tourism is another re-
curring theme, for me this
evokes the idea of being an
unwanted tourist in another
person’s life, what about you?
AD: Hm, that’s interesting. I
probably think more of being
a wanted tourist. I know I want
tourists in mine – strangers are
some of my favourite relation-
ships to have! Living so long
in New York City the moments
with them are neverending and
surprising; as real as longer
relationships, or, as important
anyway.
BL: Your ghost photos,
particularly the one’s in
big groups, feel so lonely!
Is loneliness an important
theme is this series?
AD: Yes! You are right to notice
the big groups appear the
most lonely.
Probably a true reflection of
real life, right?! That old quote
about being the lonliest in a
big crowd. I don’t suffer much
from lonliness but I love being
alone. I am happy spending
a lot of time alone, travelling
alone, even though I have
a ton of friends. Loneliness
doesn’t always have to be
sad like the love songs – it
can be enlightening, rich; one
can lose oneself in that losing
and find a deeper knowledge
of the self after all.
The film critic Andre Bazin
talks about photos as being
a modern equivalent to em-
balming the dead, like with
mummies in Ancient Egypt.
Do you think this applies to
your work, does painting over
unknown people preserve
them or erase them?
Hm, I guess it does both. It
obscures their identity but
preserves them as a secret
underneath, the only ones who
really experienced it after all,
and then by erasing them on
the surface we all get to share
in that afternoon, that moment
by the lake.
Now you’ve exhibited your
ghost photos in their own
show, how do you intend to
progress with this project?
Well, I keep thinking I’ll be
done with them but it hasn’t
happened yet. Maybe I have
another year of it in me? I can’t
say! I do other work alongside
it though. My progression for
the ghosts are to share and
sell and show more with the
world, maybe put them out
in a book.
Okay kind of random last
question, but when you speak
of the memories of others I
think of this Shintaro Kago’s
‘The Memories of Others’
drawing (we can’t print it
here but you can google it!)
what do you think?
That image feels heavy as if the
memories of others are like an
invisible wall of great pressure
closing around her. Which is
what it would feel like if we
really absorbed them, egad!
Good thing we’ll stick with
our own mind, interpreting and
projecting and romanticizing
them. And with our lovers For me I think of reading. Read- You can see more of Angela’s
and friends, listening to the ing is such a cool way for our work on her website and
stories and imagining them voice to mingle with someone on her tumblr:
in our brains… and with films, else’s. You are forced to span angeladeane.com/home
taking them in as intimately as time whereas with an art piece ghostphotographs.tumblr.com
we would “real” memories and it is up to the viewer how long
stories. Books, etc… to interact. n
73
 artwork by Carla McRae

74 75
76 77
 by Cat Smith
I was a pretty good kid, standard-issue
teenage grumpiness aside, and when
I think back to my youthful forays into
rebellion, they came almost exclusively
in the form of how I chose to dress.
Looking back on my clothing choices
now, they seem quaint, bordering on
adorable. Wide-leg purple corduroys
(yikes!), too-tight band t-shirts (they only
came in one size!), armfuls of plastic
jewelry, half a stick of black kohl round
my eyes. The usual “I’m from a small
town but I’m unique and have feelings,
Mum!” uniform. But it was also my first
attempt to stand out from the crowd in a
way that I controlled myself as a young,
visibly disabled woman in a society where
inclusion and acceptance of difference is
hard to come by.
As I got older, I realized that I didn’t
go about this in the most positive way.
My ethos as a teenager straddled the line
between “if they’re going to stare anyway,
I’ll give them something interesting to
look at” and “maybe they’ll see me as a
freak instead of the disabled girl” (let’s
not get started on the history of the word
“freak” here, or this essay will turn into
a dissertation). It was only as I reached
adulthood and became interested in
disability as a social and political issue
that I began to see how problematic
these thoughts were, and started to
78
think about things such as body image,
fashion, self-presentation and the way
these interact with my disability in a more
thoughtful and critical way.
Clothing and fashion are often seen
as frivolous things to be invested in.
Paying attention to your appearance
is considered by many to be vain and
pointless. What those who make this
claim this fail to consider is the way in
which our clothes are a marker of our
identities, and identities are nearly always
political (unless you are fortunate enough
to have a “naturalised” identity, i.e. white,
male, straight, cis, abled, etc.). We
cannot deny that clothing is political in a
world where people are profiled, abused,
attacked and murdered because of the
clothes they wear, whether they are mini
skirts, hoodies or hijabs. Our clothes
form and reflect societal attitudes around
gender, class, race, weight, nationality,
religion, and ability, and can be a source
of both pleasure and anxiety for us all.
One of the things that is rarely
considered in discussions of disability is
the emotional exhaustion that can come
from it, part of what academic Donna Reeve
calls the “psycho-emotional dimensions”
of disability. Constant negotiation of
dominant ableist discourses can have a
lasting effect on a disabled person. We
are essentially invisible in mainstream
culture, and representations which do exist
are nearly always along the inspirational/
tragedy binary. We are subjected to
constant surveillance (whether it is through
medicalisation, our appearance, by being
stared at, or being told our behaviours are
inappropriate), and negative stereotypes
(the tragic, sexless disabled person, the
bitter, resentful cripple) can be internalized
and wreak havoc on our self-esteem.
I am currently undertaking a PhD
which explores the relationship between
clothing and identity for women with
mobility impairments, along with an
examination of representations of
disability in the fashion industry. I chose
this topic partly because of my own
experiences and difficulties in buying
clothes, but also to try and find some
answers to the questions I’ve been
pondering since becoming engaged in
disability activism. Why are non-normative
bodies considered less worthy? Why do
so many people feel that there is only one
way to be beautiful? Why do I struggle to
think of more than a handful of beautiful,
accomplished disabled actors or models?
Why is disability nearly always considered
a bad thing? And, most importantly, what
can I do to challenge this, for my own and
for other’s wellbeing?
79
 Being able to wear the clothes I
choose, and to express myself through
my appearance is one of the ways
I choose to explore and challenge
dominant discourses and stereotypes
surrounding disability. Even today,
it is rare to see disabled bodies
represented as anything other than
medical curiosities. Most disabled
people are taught from a very young age
to “normalise” themselves, to conceal
what makes them different, to not stand
out any more than is necessary. As
Reeve suggests, this can be exhausting.
To dress in a way which makes me
feel good is a form of self-care, it
reminds me that my body has worth
and is deserving of being made to look
beautiful, whether that is by painting
my nails or wearing my favorite pair of
shoes (bottle-green Dr. Marten boots, in
case you were wondering).
I am less concerned with the
skinniness of my legs or my knobbly
knees when I’m wearing an amazing skirt
and cool shoes. The right outfit can give
me the confidence to face the stares of
strangers on the street. Red lipstick can
protect me from patronising attitudes. My
clothes, like my tattoos, are a “fuck you”
to a world which would rather I hide away.
And for some disabled people, who may
rely on assistance for many day-to-day
activities, such as bathing and dressing,
clothing can also be a way of regaining
80
autonomy, of making an all-too-rare choice
over what happens to their body.
I think back to my attitude as a
teenager. In many ways it saddens me
that I had internalised so many of the
negative attitudes surrounding disability,
but I also look back on myself then with
the sort of fondness that only time allows.
I admire the fact that I never thought to
shrink away, make myself inconspicuous;
an attitude I have carried over to today.
My sense of style may have improved
(I hope), but I still want to express
myself through my clothing. I’ll never be
inconspicuous; I’ll never blend into a
crowd, especially now that I’m perched on
top of a sixteen-stone, bright red electric
wheelchair most of the time. And why
should I be inconspicuous? I deserve to
be seen as much as anyone else, as does
anyone who doesn’t fit in to the stiflingly
narrow views of beauty and acceptability.
I can’t single-handedly change the
way I am perceived as a disabled person,
but I can do what I can to create my own
narrative. I am influenced and inspired by
the people I see, online and on the street,
who go against the grain, proudly and
determinedly. It is the resilience, creativity
and beauty of these people that I think of
when I get dressed in the morning. n
1-Donna Reeve (2002) Negotiating Psycho-
emotional Dimensions of Disability and their
Influence on Identity Constructions, Disability
& Society, 17:5, 493-508
81
 artwork by Renee P – laughingbear.us

82 83
 A CAR PET BAG FU LL OF G LOOM?
OLD AG E AN D DE PR ESSION
by Jenny Walker
artwork by Lil Ashton
Western society sees old age as a
depressing state of being, in and of
itself: a time when use, purpose, beauty
and meaning inevitably dwindle. After a
certain age, perhaps 65, or 70, lives are
shelved away to gather dust. We don’t
know what else to do with them. We
don’t want to confront the fact that this
will be us some day, our lives shrunk to
the size of an armchair, the telly flickering
in front of us to distract us from our own
mortality, lingering crankily behind the
living room curtains and scoffing at our
crochet patterns. Of course, old age
84
does not in any shape or form have to
be this way. The way society treats the
elderly may indeed lead to a sense of
purposelessness or isolation, but these
feelings do not arise as a matter of course
along with the first white hairs we notice
in the mirror.
The assumption that being elderly
brings with it a bulging carpet bag full of
gloom runs the risk of ignoring genuine
mental health problems. As early as 1910,
Emil Kraepelin, the father of modern
psychopharmacology, referred to old-age
depression as ‘involutional melancholy’.
In other words, it comes as part of the to be a result of the careful monitoring
package. Do go gentle into that dark and interviewing process that the study
night, because it’s all you’ve got. entailed; even this modicum of attention
Old age does often come with factors and focus lifted the mood of people who
which make people more vulnerable are often ignored or forgotten about.
to mental health conditions such as A poem found among the possessions
depression. Physical health conditions of an anonymous woman in the geriatric
may limit mobility and make the everyday ward of a hospital after her death, entitled
tasks, hobbies and work that people once ‘See Me’, recently went viral. In it she
enjoyed arduous. The death of family and pleads with her carers to treat her not
friends, particularly spouses, means that as a ‘crabby old woman’ but as a real
more elderly people tend to live alone and live person who has lived and loved and
may find their social circle diminishing. struggled. The fact that she does not want
The onset or threat of degenerative to be seen as ‘old’ shows that this label
illnesses such as dementia – conditions is not merely an innocuous, descriptive
whose symptoms, such as confusion term. Rather, it implies a certain lack
and memory loss, can manifest as similar of humanity, a difference. People past
to depression – may in their turn trigger a certain age are seen, if not quite as
depression or anxiety. another species, then as a different
However, there is considerable subset of society, a conglomerate.
evidence that the obscure place on the
sidelines which elderly people
are automatically slotted into by
much of society is a major cause
of mental health problems. The
change in structures of care-giving
and the family has meant that
more and more elderly people
are institutionalised. According to
the Royal College of Psychiatrists
depression affects 1 in 5 older
people living in the community, a
figure similar to depression rates in
society as a whole, yet a striking 2
in 5 who are living in care homes.
Depressed older people living in
nursing homes have been found
more responsive to the effects of
a placebo drug than the general
population. This is considered
85
 It suggests that those past retirement
age become a different kind of person,
with different needs and rights. At what
point does this occur? Is it on the date of
purchase of your very first sweater vest,
or does it crackle in with the gradual
tuning of the radio over to Classic
FM? Of course, there is nothing wrong
with these tastes in themselves; every
generation will have its own prevalence
of preferences, habits, ideologies. But
it is highly reductive to assume people
have anything in common with each
other based solely on the fact that they
are in their seventies, eighties or nineties.
The complexities of elderly people are
often ironed out of existence.
86
People are far more susceptible to
developing depression when they are
isolated from others, when they do not
have a voice, when their experience
is denied, when what they can do
and what they know is not valued.
Depression is absolutely not a natural
state of mind for elderly people. Cases
deserve to be taken and treated just as
seriously as they would be in anybody
else. Yet changing the way we see and
relate to old age could avoid propelling
people unnecessarily into positions
which are especially vulnerable to mental
health conditions such as depression. n
artwork by Tara Violet Niami
87
ANXIETY
ON LIVING WITH ANXIETY
by M. Conlin
I’m the kind of person who
hates crying, I’m not a crier. I
don’t really express anger all
that much either and I think
that’s one of the key reasons
why, in my mid-twenties, all of
these unexpressed emotions
boiled up to the surface in the
form of overwhelming anxiety.
Levels of anxiety and depression,
particularly in young people, are
increasing (every year 1 in 4
artwork by Herikita
88
of us in the UK will experience
a mental health problem say
Mind, the mental health charity).
Statistics like these are pretty
concerning, but also make me
hopeful that there is room for a
healthy dialogue in our society
about mental health issues
like anxiety and depression.
Particularly as they start to
become seen as more, dare
I say, ‘normal’.
To reduce social stigma and
increase the amount and qual-
ity of services available I think
really comes down to a few
things: 1) Us; how we relate
to and support one another
2) Government policy, which I
hope is going to be influenced
more in the future by research
from 3) Charities in the mental
health sector like Mind and
ReThink.
When I was going through a
particularly rough patch I found
the most comforting stories
about others’ experiences of
Anxiety in an article featured
in The Atlantic called ‘This Is
Anxiety’, which I highly recom-
mend. The stories in this article
are heart-warming, funny and
most of all beautiful – they made
me realise that I’m definitely
not alone in this.
I know that lived anxiety is
rarely fun or beautiful (although
looking back it’s been helpful
for me to see the funny side
of some of my anxious quirks).
Anxiety for me is a constant
whirring. Flitting from room-
to-room or home-to work like
a hummingbird. It is, as my
favourite writer Geneen Roth
says, ‘like sitting in a rocking
chair all day thinking you’re
actually going somewhere’.
It often feels like walking through
life as a sleep-starved zombie,
but your brain just shut up. Too
tired to function normally and
too anxious to rest properly,
this vicious cycle eventually
landed me in my GP’s office
with a sick note and a strong
recommendation to go and
recover (sleep) at my parents’
house. I kindly refer to this time
now as my small break down,
something that I think had to
happen in order for
me to take my anxiety
seriously, look after
myself and eventually
get better.
After some much needed
rest I decided I wanted
to get this anxiety out
of me like a spirit that
needed to be exorcized.
So a few weeks later I’d
made my first appoint-
ment with an integrative
therapist at a local low
cost counselling service.
It wasn’t quite as simple
as I’d initially hoped of
just ‘getting better’ or
‘getting rid’ of my anxi-
ety; these things are often a
big part of who we are and
nothing to be ashamed of.
We all have difficult patches in
our lives to work through but
sometimes it’s not quite that
clean or clear cut. Therapy,
particularly longer-term therapy
can be messy. I had to learn
where the root of my anxieties
came from, dig down deep to
some big and painful experi-
ences and know that I could
handle feeling and expressing
these difficult emotions – firstly
in front of my therapist and
then outside of the therapy
room in the real world.
I hadn’t quite prepared myself for
the up and down rollercoaster
of therapy, but as my therapist
told me from her own experi-
ences, all this hard work can
be truly transformative. Four
months after our first session
and I feel much less anxious
and happier in myself. I am ap-
proaching our final session next
week – I feel like I’ve developed
a wonderful relationship that
allowed me to be genuine and
gave me the space and time
to examine my anxieties and,
most importantly has taught me
to not be so hard on myself.
A lesson I’m trying to put into
practice every day.
I believe now that anxiety
is a part of who I am; it
can be tricky when it gets
intense and can make life
a real grind, but it can
also be worked with and
treated with kindness.
If I could pass on one
piece of advice to anyone
it would be that: Be nice to
yourself, you’re doing the
best you can with whatever
life is throwing at you.
Sometimes the bravest
and hardest thing to do
is just acknowledge that.
From then, wherever you
go is up to you. Therapy
worked fantastically for
me – but everyone is differ-
ent. Stories, like those in The
Atlantic article and those in
this journal, are a great way of
sharing our experiences and
supporting each other. We’re
definitely not alone. n
* names have been changed to
protect the individual’s identity.
89
 THE COVEN
We are inspired by a lot of different FAVE COLLECTIVES
things. Lived experiences, walking The Bunny Collective
around, going on trains, buses or long bunnycollective.com
Interview conducted by Bethany Lamont journeys. Going to libraries to investigate HAG
female artists and theorists. Visiting hagcollective.tumblr.com
exhibitions and overhearing conversations, The Le Sigh
We started The Coven around July 2012. We were inspired especially between boys. The strength of thelesigh.com
performance artists and the gaps in the TART zine
by the flickr generation of young photographers who used the history of art where artists of colour seem tartzine.co.uk
to not exist even though we know they’re Girls Get Busy
internet to kickstart their careers and wanted to create a space out there making the coolest shit but we girlsgetbusyzine.tumblr.com
just don’t even know it. The Pulp Zine
like that for feminist artists who worked in mediums other than Stuff we listen to includes female thepulpzine.com
fronted punk, Ruff Talons, Sloppy Jane, 50s Mend My Dress Press
photography. As a young curator and artist I wanted to promote and 60s girl groups, Kanye, Lana del Ray, mendmydress.com
Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush and Bjork.
up and coming artists whose work I loved and find a way to get

our names out there and start collaborating.

The Coven was one of the first names I
thought of and Laurence and I kind of set
it aside at first. Hours of brainstorming
later we came back to the name and
the more we thought about it the more
it made sense. A coven is a group of
powerful women who, when working
together, become even more efficacious.
That’s how I like to envision our collective
and our coming together; an amplification of
already potent individual voices and visions.
We are always looking for people
who have varied points of view and
experiences and who make work that
reflects that. We are interested in works
with strong conceptual visions as well as
people who work with themes that relate
to femininity, identity, gender, girlhood and
overall structures of power.
We’ve had a lot of great support
from other people, especially young
women, on tumblr. We have found that
some of our work encounters a sort of
generational gap; older viewers don’t
seem to understand or relate to our work
as much, which I guess can be expected.
These older viewers are more taken aback
by some of our use of traditional feminine
imagery and the color pink and see it as
a prettying up of feminism instead of a
reclamation and re-imagining – however,
I think our younger viewers get it. Overall
we owe all our support to the internet
and especially to the other feminists and
artists on the site.
Rape Culture Alphabet (In Progress) by Chloe Wojewoda

90 91

Anxious by Charline Batille
Some writers/poets we enjoy are
Sarah Jean Alexander, Hannah Black,
Lauren Cook, Gabby Bess, Chelsea
Martin, Mira Gonzalez, Maranda Elizabeth,
Susan Sontag, Neely Bat Chestnut,
Amber Dearest.
Some artists that inspire us are
Ana Mendieta, Lorna Simpson, Annette
Messager, Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo,
Eva Hesse, Ellen Gallagher, Kara Walker,
Hannah Wilke, Angela Washko.
One of the main themes that we work
with, some artists more than others, is
Girlhood, namely reapproprating and
reclaiming it. Personally young girlhood,
the terrible twos, the preschool ages, is
the girlhood that inspires me the most.
This is when young girls have the least
social conditioning while are still blooming
into their personality. These girls are less
afraid (I say less because lets be real,
social conditioning in most cases starts
92
A lot of the work we do is about turning
the hyper-personal, the confessional even,
into something that is universal.
For You by Erin Baillie-Rutter
at birth) to be bossy, to be inquisitive,
to be careless and brave. I would argue
that most everyone still has this girl ego
state within them, however frequently it is
oppressed either by the self or by society.
Girlhood should be a time of
innocence, of self-discovery, of
exploration, of growth, of carefreeness,
however Girlhood can be damaged
by such things as sexism and ageism,
the idea that being a girl and aligning
oneself with “girly” things makes one
inferior. It can also be damaged by a
racist world which projects maturity
on young girls of color. It also can be
broken down and destroyed by abuse:
sexual, physical and emotional which
stem from these issues as well as other
intersecting hierarchies of oppression.
Untitled, Colours by Laura Rokas
93

Untitled by Luna e los Santos
Because of this we feel it is important to
create spaces and work that gives us a
second chance to reap the benefits of
innocence and childhood.
Some people who view our work
find this take on reclaiming girlhood as
infantilizing and creepy, but they would be
missing the point entirely. It’s really about
removing the male gaze from our girlhood
#2, 6x6 ft oil on canvas by Laura Rokas (and post-girlhood), and reveling in it for
ourselves for the first time, as much of
girlhood is concerned with the views of
men, be it our fathers, our crushes, or
our male peers. Reclaiming girlhood is
about taking what others see as weak and
turning it into a weapon, a weapon thats
power comes from its complete and utter
self-indulgence. For once we are doing
things for ourselves, not to please those
around us, the way every little girl was
taught to behave.
94
A lot of the work we do is about
turning the hyper-personal, the
confessional even, into something that is
universal. In this way it makes it less scary
to reveal intimate experiences, because
the response allows you to see that within
the kind of collective consciousness there
is a lot of darkness and pain that everyone
is equally afraid of. Releasing it back
into the world in a tidier, more beautiful
package can be very cathartic, like a kind
of exorcism. It’s exactly like what Janet
Mock says about owning your trauma and
making it radical and your own, but it goes
beyond that, it is about sharing your piece
of a collective story. I think in this way
community comes into our art.
Yes, our pieces are about our specific
experiences, but they are also about
human, or in a lot of our cases, female
experiences. Once you accept that
one piece may mean one thing to you
but another to a viewer, you are free to
expand on all of the meanings that may
lie dormant in your work. Having this kind
of mindset allows for easier collaboration
within the arts, because you are forced
to abandon your “ownership” over
the way your work will be interpreted.
For example right now Samantha and
Laurence are working on a project where
Laurence takes pictures and Samantha
pairs them with her own work and
text leaving Laurence’s photographs
up to Samantha’s interpretation and
ultimately the interpretation of the
viewer. This forces Laurence to in a way
give up authority over the meaning of
her photograph and release it into the
comprehension of the audience. n
95
SELF HARM, DISORDERED EATING
Ever since I was born, my
body has been unruly. It has
never done what bodies are
“supposed” to do. From a
newborn, my body has always
rebelled against the world
around it. From allergies to
everyday baby items like soap,
lambs wool, and lanolin which
left my tender skin covered in
eczema and hives to the big
birthmark that graces my thigh,
I was untidy from the get go.
Through childhood when more
allergies had me a sneezy,
snuffly, itchy hayfever sufferer.
I was never the kid that could
run fast, it took me forever to
learn to swim, I couldn’t catch
a ball, and have always been a
klutz. Then puberty hit… and I
became fat, the thing consid-
ered by society in general the
unruliest thing of all for bodies
to be. As well as being fat, and
allergic, and uncoordinated, I
96
had a head full of enormous
hair that has never done what
I wanted it to. I couldn’t afford
cool clothes, but even if I could
they are denied to fat people.
From my teens I started doing
all sorts of things to myself
to try to get thin, which my
body rebelled against even
further. Years of disordered
eating, exercise bingeing and
ridiculous diets wreaked havoc
on my body. In my 20’s I went
through stages of self harm.
Everything I did to myself to try
to make my body conform to
what I was told it should be,
just made the problem worse.
Yo-yo dieting gave me stretch
marks. Purging damaged my
teeth and my skin. I scarred
myself as punishment for be-
ing fat and unworthy and to
escape the emotional pain.
The more I fought my body
to be tidy, neat, contained, the
more my body fought back.
Of course, by the time that
one is 35, most people see
the signs of aging. The body
continues to be unruly. Hair
starts to go grey. Wrinkles
and lines appear. Collagen
reduces allowing gravity to do
it’s job. So the body continues
to be unruly. And again, I’m still
fat – the unruliest thing of all.
It wasn’t until I was 35 that I
stopped fighting my body. I
found fat liberation and feminism,
and realised that my value is
not in my appearance, that it
is in who I am as a person,
and no matter what a person
looks like, they are worthy of
dignity and respect.
Part of fat liberation is finding
the way to appreciate the
unruliness of your body. It is
finding the power in your body.
It is seeing the unruliness as
the history book of your body.
I look at my body now and
the very things that I once
loathed are the things that I
am finding are my strengths.
The soft warmth of my round,
generous body. A small child
once called me “The huggiest
lady in the world!” because
she enjoyed cuddling up to
my big body. The strength
that I have at my disposal
just by putting my weight into
movement. The space I take
up, full and abundant. I see
smile lines, scars that tell of
great adventures, stretchmarks
that tell of changes I have lived
through. Soft skin that is a
canvas for beautiful art. Even
my enormous, untameable
hair is a pleasure now – I just
dye it hot pink and let it go
crazy. Sure I’d love to get rid
of the allergies – but they are
a small price to pay for a big,
soft, warm, bountiful body that
carries me through life.
But another thing happened…
I started to notice that while I
had all these things about my
body that were unruly, untidy,
awkward, there are also a lot of
things about my body that are
amazing and have always been
there, I just never appreciated
them when I was spending
so much time focusing on
the things I couldn’t change.
While my hair may be big and
wild, it’s also thick and shiny.
My body is fat, but it’s also soft
and warm. I may have allergies,
but I’ve also got a fine sense
of smell and taste.
I learnt that instead of focus-
ing on what my body is not, I
need to focus on what it IS.
And what it is, is wonderous.
Flawed and weird yes, as are
ALL bodies, but also amazing.
Why must women be small,
tidy, contained, unobtrusive?
Why must we spend our lives
trying to disappear, be invisible,
to not take up any space, to
keep out of everyone’s way?
Why can’t we inhabit our bodies
as they are, find comfort and
joy in them?
Let’s start here. Before we
go further, I want you to sit
up straight, or as straight as
you can. Put your shoulders
back. Lift your head up and look
straight forward. Take a deep
breath and expand your lungs,
and then let that breath out.
Take up the space you inhabit. n
97
98 99
 by Lydia Says
artwork by Phoebe Summers
The way I view mental illness/
being depressed/being anxious/
being obsessive/just having
an annoying little glitch in my
brain, etc. is like a train. It’s like
everyone else’s train stops for
a while in the emotional area
of anxious, sad, angry, etc. and
then moves on. On the other
hand, my train seems to be
that one that breaks down all
the time with the faulty brakes,
because whenever my mental
train pulls into the vicinity
of Can’t Breathe Because
Everything Could Go Wrong
or I’m Useless, I’m a Waste of
Time, that’s the exact moment
it chooses to break down and
I’m stuck there for the next
however many hours, waiting
for the stupid thoughts to take
me somewhere else. If you’ve
ever waited in an airport lounge
for a delayed flight, you know
how after about an hour, you
become liable to completely
flip and turn a table over. Now,
imagine waiting around com-
bined with thoughts telling you,
in these tones of doom, that
you’re worthless and stupid
and you’re never going to
do anything great and you’re
coming close to what it’s like for
me when the glitch in my brain
is acting up. The Giant Airport
100
Lounge of Doom. And you don’t
even get a games arcade.
By the time I was thirteen, it had
become obvious that my brain
seemed to be working badly
sometimes, and so the trips to
therapists began. There seems
to be some weird optimum
time of year to be diagnosed
– it always seemed to be be-
tween January and May. And
it seemed to happen almost
annually. Fourteen: Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder. Fifteen:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Sixteen: depressive tendencies.
And my birthday’s in April, so,
getting each of these diagnoses
once a year, was like a really
screwed-up version of a birthday
present. Here’s the label for this
illness that will hang over your
life forever. Happy birthday to
you. And you can’t do what you
normally do with those gifts
you don’t like – grin politely
before rolling your eyes and
shoving it to the back of the
wardrobe. When you’re stuck
with a mental-illness gift from
the universe its like some kind
of badly-knitted jumper that
you have to wear FOREVER.
To be fair, I do have an amaz-
ingly understanding family
and a supportive school and
great therapists and friends.
But then, occasionally, you’ve
got to deal with someone who
thinks that mental illness is less
“something really difficult that
doesn’t ruin your life but you
do have to deal with it” and
more “some cool funny little
quirk that just enhances your
creativity and makes you more
interesting.”
Thanks so much for that, Per-
son Who Clearly Has No Idea
About Mental Health.
I remember one time I was
walking out of class (I had one
of those passes in case my
brain started making me freak
out and I had to leave) and I
remember someone turning to
her friend and saying “Wow.
She gets to be really clever.
It’s so interesting, I wish I had
a disease.”
The worst part was that I think
she genuinely meant it as a
compliment.
You can probably imagine
what I was muttering under
my breath (I won’t repeat it
because it would just bring
the tone down). But there’s
that whole image, that you’re
a super-special snowflake
because your brain tells you
you’re worthless, or makes you
count over and over, or goes
up and down like a yo-yo, and
101
 so all the gifts you get as a
result are totally worth all the
therapy and medication and
everything else that you have
to go through.
I don’t think I need to point out
what’s wrong with that way of
thinking. You can be talented
without being ill. You can be
ill without being talented. You
can be talented and ill and
have the two not link. Because
mental illness is an illness. Not
something that makes you a
quirky little snowflake.
And medicating yourself is
not “ignoring your talents” or
“clouding the issue.” Because
that’s one more thing that, to
put it frankly, gets on my wick.
Because I avoided medication
for years.
Literally, years. That’s not
exaggeration. I refused to
take stuff to help myself for
years. And then I started
taking it and I can’t describe
how much it’s helped.
Now, obviously, you don’t take
stuff without it being prescribed
to you and talking it over with
your doctor and everything.
But the thing is, I had it being
recommended by my doctors
and everything. And why didn’t
I take it?
102
One. I was scared it would
impede my creativity. No,
seriously. Because I got so
much writing done when I
kept having to backspace
and constantly rewrite words
because if I didn’t, I might not
have a future career as a writer.
(THANKS, OCD.) This ended
when Internet hilarious-person
and cool writer-and-blogger
Mara Wilson, who also has
OCD, posted on Twitter that
medication actually helped
her creativity flourish because
she was no longer constantly
impeded by anxiety.
Two. I’m a perfectionist. A big
perfectionist. And that’s part
of my OCD. I have to be in
control. I have to be perfect. I
have to get every detail right.
ON MY OWN. (I once burst
into tears in class when I was
nine because I only got 90%
on a spelling test. And I didn’t
have pushy parents or anything
like that. I was so annoying,
I’ve no idea how the teachers
refrained from throwing my
precious spelling book out
the window.)
So because of my OCD tell-
ing me I had to be perfect, I
refused to take medication to
help me, which resulted in my
OCD getting worse, which
made me think I had to be
perfect – yeah, you can taste
the irony.
And then the last reason. God,
I hate this one.
People telling me I shouldn’t
take medication.
Not my family or my friends,
who were fine with it. But
other people.
People who went on about how
“You’ll get addicted” (nope),
“It’s weak not to try and deal
with it yourself” (No, seriously)
and my personal favourite “All
you need are positive vibes,
you don’t need to introduce
negative toxins into your body.”
(I actually feel kind of sorry for
the person who suggested
that one.)
But I’d internalized all this
stuff – I’d call it bullshit but that
would be indelicate. Instead,
I’ll call it “stupid opinions that
you don’t need to listen to.”
Because I’m smart like that.
Thing is, though, with mental
health, your priority has to be
yourself. This is one of the
times you get to be selfish.
In fact, it’s required. You have
to put yourself first, because
you know yourself best. If you
feel you need medication – to
be really intelligent about it
– screw what everyone else
thinks. Ask for it. And listen
to your doctors. And not to
the opinions of someone who
you might like a lot but who
doesn’t know you as well/as
well you as you do. (Hint: don’t
waste your time on anyone
who thinks that therapy is a
waste of time and that they
have the right to drill into your
ears with all their reasons on
why your therapists are wrong
and they are right. They don’t.
And I wish I was there just so
I could tell them exactly why
they need to shut up.)
But finally – and this is way
longer than I expected – your
therapists are there to help you.
They’re not demons, trying to
make you talk through your
feelings to upset you. They
are trying to help. That’s their
job. Just make sure you find
the right one for you. When I
was a kid, back before I was
diagnosed with anything, my
parents took me to one because
I had huge sleeping issues, and
his suggestion was that when
I was screaming and crying
because I was terrified of the
dark, they just lock me out of
the room. Unsurprisingly, they
didn’t take him up on that or
make a return trip. I have no
idea how that guy got to be in
the position of giving mental
health advice to other people
– if he honestly thought that
was the best way to deal with
an anxious kid, he might need
some himself.
But now, I’ve got great therapists.
I’ve got one who does CBT
with me (basically confronting
the OCD fears and telling them
to do their worst, I’m not giving
in, etc. It’s more sophisticated
than that). And I’ve got one who
advises me on medication and
checks up on me and both of
them genuinely get to know
me. And my parents. And
they give everyone a chance
to speak. And they don’t get
ratty if you ask them to explain
again. They see me as Lydia,
who has issues that she needs
help with. But they don’t just
see “This big case of OCD
that needs to be treated.”
They see me as me, not as my
issues. And that’s the kind of
therapist I need.
And one of them talked about
headbanging and rock music
with me, which was just cool.
So, yeah. I’m not saying that
if you’ve got a mental health
problem, it’s going to be easy.
It really isn’t, at times. There are
going to be days when you feel
you suck and the world sucks
and everything is painful and
103
 hurts and there will be days
when you feel like you don’t
want to be here anymore. BUT
LISTEN. If you don’t hear this
from anyone else, ever, you’re
hearing it from me,
now: I want you to
live. I want you to
keep going. Yes,
you. I want you to
keep trying, even
though it hurts, to
do what’s best for
you. And I know it
doesn’t feel like it
now, and I know
you probably don’t
believe me. But
there is a way to
be happy. There are
helplines. There are
people you can talk
to right now, if you
need to. I’m not a
counsellor or any-
thing. I can’t talk you
through Ten Steps
To Happiness right
now. But I can tell
you to call someone
who can.
And I can tell you that, whoever
you are, I want you to keep
going. Because I’ve thought
that the world would be better
without me and that I would
be better off not in the world,
etc. But I’m still here. And life
can actually be pretty cool.
104
And don’t miss out on that
because your mind tells you
that there’s nothing out there
waiting for you. Because there
is. I know it doesn’t feel like that
right now but there is.
And you know what, one day,
your mental train will get its
gears in order again. I’m not
saying that’s the last time it’ll
go wrong or break down.
But it will move you out of
the Cul-de-Sac of Despair
and Loneliness and you will
move on to the Great Open
Theme Park of Happiness and
Excitement. Or even
just the Park of OK-
ness. Because you
don’t have to go from
0-10 straight away.
Sometimes, just being
OK for a while is an
achievement. But you
will eventually get to
10. Even if it’s just for
a while. And if your
train breaks down
again, there’ll be a
way to fix it.
And anyway, I’m
rooting for you. And
everyone who works
on this amazing little
zine is rooting for you.
Because we’ve been
there. And we’ve
got through it or are
getting through it.
And we know you
can, too.
So, go forth, little train pas-
senger. Go forth and get the
help you need. And forget what
everyone else thinks. Because
you deserve to live a life. Keep
hanging on to that. We’re right
there with you. n Playlist by Tavi Gevinson
Artwork by Leona Fietz
105
 artwork by Lize Meddings

106 107
 I haven’t figured out my gender yet, but I
know I like people using him/his pronouns
for me and when my partner proudly tells
people I’m his boyfriend.
I get really down on myself sometimes
because I “give in”. But I also get down on
myself for “making things hard”.
For example, I wear a suit to a dinner
party. My mom says I’m asking for it. I should
know better. And I like to wear dresses
sometimes, so why not now? Why not just
make it easy on myself?
I go to a different function. It’s a dinner
party, but this time I’m in a dress. I get lots
of compliments and told what a “good girl”
I am. My mom says, “See that wasn’t so
hard”. But it was.
On a good day, if I’m dressed how I
want nothing brings me down. The more
people hiss at me the more powerful and
visible I feel.
Or if I’m blending in a feel like a spy. A
fabulous drag secret agent infiltrating from
inside the system.
But on those bad days, every choice
weighs heavy on me. I feel exhausted. Unable
to make a good decision and follow through
by Aidan Mitchell with it. It’s like I have no skin and anything I put
on myself rubs at the raw and open wound
that is my identity.
Clothes, hair, makeup, shoes,
accessories, are often seen as frivolous. We
all know the importance of appearance, but
we should also not be so concerned about
it. That whole “effortless” idea.
I want you to know that even though
people come up to me all the time to tell me
they wish they could get away with what
I do. I don’t. I cry over whether I should
wear my glasses or not and if my shoes are
108
practical and whether I’ll be made fun of and
more harmfully, discredited and not listened
to because of what I’m wearing. I’ve sat in
doctor’s offices and not received proper
treatment because my gender has gotten in
the way. That’s not what’s wrong with me! I
want to shout. Me being targeted, harassed,
and in more rare but extreme cases,
followed, threatened. That’s the problem.
That we treat people as unworthy of help if
they are fat, or poor, or do not fit the gender
assigned to them, or are not white. Or worst
of all, more than one of these things.
That we blame people for the way
others have systematically hurt and
oppressed them.
That’s the problem.
My appearance is both a crafted
armor that I love and something I wish I
could exist without. Existences are not
easy or effortless. I don’t want mine to
ever seem that way. I am telling myself
over and over again.
• Existence is not easy.
• It is okay to struggle.
• Progress is not linear.
• Try not to punish yourself for what
Capitalism already has.
I want to buy into the Capitalist dream.
To have the perfect, easy, successful, but
humble life. Then I chastise myself for
wanting this. Then I go back to wanting it
because not fitting in is so so hard.
Since corporations are recognized
as people by our government here in
America, but trans people are not, I
often find myself fantasizing I’m Target.
I wish it a lot, actually. It might sound
silly, but I think of Target as smart and
approachable. Good at knowing how to
109

set boundaries. Target brings fun food to
parties, and doesn’t have to worry about
money. Target has a cute pet and a clean
home. Target is good at laughing off
mistakes instead of replaying them in their
head over and over again.
Most of all, Target is someone who
isn’t punished for existing. As poor, as
sick, as trans.
The other day at my desk a co-worker
asked me why I wear flats and I said
because heels hurt my feet too much.
She gave sort of a disapproving noise.
I try so hard to be a “good girl” at work,
it feels like the easy way out, but it isn’t
easy. Several times my co-worker and my
supervisor have bonded over their love of
heels and I wish I could join in. I’ve tried.
it didn’t work.
So then I’m in Target waiting on my
prescription, and I see clearance heels
that look so perfectly office lady, I get
them. Something in me pressures me
saying, those will help make you into the
perfect office lady. Better at your job, more
likeable with your co-workers. It’s not really
110
artwork by Phoebe Summers -
psgsummers.tumblr.com
about fashion anymore. It’s about fashion
constructing a lifestyle I wish I had access
to. I debated in the store for thirty minutes,
painfully, before I buy them. It’s two weeks
later and I still hate myself for getting them,
and at the same time wish I had gotten
them in more colours.
I had been trying not to buy anything
appearance related for thirty days
because I make pressured stress buys so
frequently, but I only made it eleven.
It’s hard. I’m sorry I don’t have answers
friends, but I know people who think it’s
easy for me, and it makes them even harder
on themselves. If only they could be like me.
If only I could be like Target.
There is no easy way out. It can
be hard to remove built-up guilt and
shame from spending money, from
eating, from, well, being.
But even when it feels like you aren’t
doing anything right, it’s okay. You’re
doing it. You’re doing great.
I recognize you. n
111
RAPE
by Emily Dibble
I’ve resisted calling myself a
writer for a long time. I remember
9th grade, sitting in front of my
computer, instant messaging
a friend and writing, “I’m not
really a writer.” He was a nerd
boy writing a self-insert fantasy
novel. I was learning how to
draw and trying not to roll my
eyes. I think maybe I was right,
that I wasn’t a writer then. But
I’ve become one now.
The really long multi-text mes-
sages I send my friends that
spill and spew out every idea
I’m thinking? You’d have to ask
my friends what those mean.
However, neither the grades
on my school essays nor my
obscenely long text messages
have made me a writer. Honestly
you can say my writing comes
from my love of reading. Or my
love for language. Or from my
dad. But really it came out of a
artwork by Natalya Lobanova necessity to be heard.
112
I’m a writer because I have
sent too many goddamn emails
about the assault that I have
faced. I learned to write the
perfect words, in a way that
feels almost surgical. I detach
myself from the pain by writing
down exactly what happened.
Detail by detail. I can say it in
a sentence now. Practiced,
precise, clean, and easy.
It took me a long time to use
the exact word to describe
what happened, but it’s a word
that feels the most true to me.
The emails that I get back when
I write about my experiences of
sexual assault are rarely what I
hope. The first email I sent out
asked for help from a student
activist on his campus. The
student activist replied with a
series of links to articles about
all the ways his university fails
survivors. It was a start. I tried
calling his school, and they
never called back. Eventually,
I got an email. This is when I
became a writer. When you
become a writer, you stick
to facts.
People like to ignore the things
that I write, because what I
have to say is inconvenient.
Besides, who wants to take
the disabled lesbian with four
mental disorder diagnoses in
her chart seriously? It’s easier to
dismiss me then hear the truth.
The last thing the man who
raped me ever wrote to me
was “I may not have worded
my thoughts as cleanly as
you did, but as you know I
was never a strong writer.”
I am a writer because of him,
but I really wish I wasn’t. n
113
 UNTITLED

25 milligrams of imipramine in the morning

and 25 milligrams at night,
250 milligrams of valproic acid in the mornings
and 250 milligrams at night,
25 milligrams of clozapine in the night for an anxiety disorder that I have,
caused by an abstinence syndrome.

I know all these terms after investigating on the subject a while ago,
I also know about dog diseases
artwork by Herikita I know names like
gastroenteritis,
There must be a scientific explanation, tinnitus,
or at least psychological, pyodermitis,
I’m feeling too old for teens, too young for the adults. sciatica,
my friends mock me when I say these words.
I was old,
then I was young, It is hard isn’t it?
then I don’t know what I was,
then I wanted to be young again. To sit down and write, I blame my lack of reading.
Take me home; I have my life in a suitcase.
I say a lot the word fear,
Invention, the mother of all needs, but I still think I am brave;
I collected my stories in diaries, drawings and eggs, I have to deal with my fear almost every day,
or at least the ones I could because they are actually a lot, doesn’t it make me brave? n
I am 30 percent tears,
20 percent anger,
20 percent fear
and a 30 percent desire to be better,
I think that I lived very fast and afterwards I was just tired.

by Herikita
114 115
SUICIDE

NOTES ON PSYCHOSIS
by Mike Scrase
artwork by Eline van den Broeck
When I was 21 I thought I had
to save the world. As it turned
out, I didn’t, because at the time
I was in a psychiatric hospital.
I’d just finished a film degree,
was busy writing a comic book
series, and was living with my
dad and my sister in Bristol. It’s
common for people to think that
the mentally ill are imagining
or even faking their condition.
Often they’ll say dismissive
things like “get over it” or “I
don’t really think you have a
problem” or “you just need to
look on the bright side”. Even
so, those people would have
a hard time making a case for
their argument based on my
story. I’d experienced chronic
depression for several years,
but it was around Christmas I
was noticed acting strangely:
having outlandish and unfounded
theories about quantum me-
chanics and The Settlers of
Catan. All of a sudden it felt like
I couldn’t know who to trust. As
far as I was concerned I was
just having a bunch of great
ideas and people’s adverse
reactions were simply because
nobody ‘got’ me.
The New Year never came for
me. I don’t remember it. Appar-
ently memory loss is common in
cases like mine. In more ways
than one a psychotic episode
is like an abstract nightmare:
time seems to work differently,
the absurd seems to make
perfect sense, and although
I couldn’t make up my mind
from moment to moment, at
points I believed I was in hell.
Literal hell. You know the one. I
was convinced that there was
something sinister about almost
everyone around me, especially
my nurses. In movies, psychos
are scary. In reality, they’re like
spiders: probably more afraid
of you than you are of them.
Friends and family would try
to remain composed around
me. I couldn’t understand
how they could be so calm.
The only explanation I could
think of was that they’d been
replaced by doppelgangers
or simply been brainwashed.
I would mistake people I saw
around the hospital for people
I’d met throughout my life. And
with chunks of my recollec-
tion missing, time seemed to
stretch on forever. All I was
consistently sure of was that
the world was in danger, and
I had to escape to rescue it.
I would creep out of my room
at night, attempting escape. In
times of desperation, I would
try to kill myself to prevent
nurses from getting information
from me. I didn’t know what
they wanted, but I wouldn’t
give it to them. Although I’d
studied psychology before
my hospitalisation, I can re-
ally see now why it’s so hard
for researchers to pin down
what causes mental illness.
I’ve forgotten what led me to
many of my thought processes
now, as well as some of the
things I said and did. I have
my own hypothesis that my
experience was something
akin to an emergency drill,
inflicted upon me by my own
subconscious, because of all
the urgency I saw where there
was none.
After a two-and-a-half month
stint that had felt like eternity,
I got to go back home. The
psychotic episode just kind of
ran its course. I was kept on
drugs that would stabilize my
brain’s dopamine levels for a
year after that, as well as having
a team of psychiatric nurses
check up on me every month
or so. The strange thing about
it is that, with so little known
about the brain itself, no one
knows for sure what causes
psychosis or how to treat it.
They can only look at what’s
worked in the past and try to
repeat that. Solid diagnoses
can’t be made without multiple
episodes, and that’s something
my nurses were trying to help
me avoid. They didn’t even really

116 117
 have a name for what I’d gone
through beyond “psychosis”.
That’s how big of a mystery
this whole field is to basically
everyone. If you think you’ve got
the human mind all figured out,
it probably means you don’t.
I’d met a guy who lived in my
city in an online forum. We’d
spoken casually a few times
before, mostly about comic
books and bemoaning the
plights of being broke. He
was around the same age as
me, and living in shared ac-
commodation. We’ll call him
Victor. One night he came onto
Facebook and started asking
me questions about suicide.
He told me he was staying in
a hostel because he’d been
evicted by his housemates,
who’d found drug paraphernalia
in his room.
Intuition had told me he didn’t
have many friends. I knew that
in the past I’d been suicidal
when I didn’t have anyone
close to me to talk to, so I
pressed him to determine if
he was serious about it. He
was. I called the police. I made
sure to relay as many details
as possible to them because
I was concerned they might
not take me seriously.
They arrived at the location
118
he’d given me, while I kept
him talking to buy them time.
But he wasn’t there. I worried,
perhaps they’d missed him
because I could only give
them a description based on
photos I’d seen. I’d only really
ever spoken to him a few times
from behind a computer screen,
and so there wasn’t much I
knew about him, which didn’t
help when the police wanted
to know any details that might
help track him down. I had to
think fast.
I tried to get his IP address with
embedded script on a webpage,
which the police could use. But
the one I managed to get hold
of indicated that he was using
his computer in another part
of the coun-
try, which we
were pretty sure
wasn’t true. So
I tried covertly
interrogating
him, looking
for clues to his
whereabouts.
I masked my
interrogation
by trying to
make it sound
as if I was just
talking to him
about our gen-
eral interests.
Keeping Victor
talking was the only way to
learn information that might
be helpful, so I didn’t want to
spook him into going offline.
But then, that’s exactly what
he did. For hours I wouldn’t
know if he was dead or alive.
Neither would the police.
They came to my house at
about 1am, to ask me if I knew
any friends of Victor’s. I didn’t.
He was essentially a stranger.
I was running out of ideas, but
the cops wanted people who
knew him. Since people on
social networks tend to call
everyone they’ve met since
preschool a friend, it was hard
to tell his acquaintances from
the people closest to him. So
I took to extreme Facebook
stalking, eliminating
causal friends from
the close ones,
wondering if I’d
already failed. I
had no idea how
close I was getting,
and as the hours
went by, and my
communication
with the police
became less and
less frequent, it
seemed less and
less likely that he
was okay. But I
kept trying because
he could have eas-
ily been me. People
had ignored my
problems in the
past. I wouldn’t
ignore Victor’s.
At 5am the police
called me. As I an-
swered the phone,
I didn’t know if
I was about to
hear good or bad
news, and I waited for it with we might both be dead now. coming serious is what they
baited breath. The officer on may well, in fact, do. We may
the phone spoke. They’d found These kinds of experiences are be nowhere close to unraveling
him. He was getting help, and very internal until they become every mystery the mind has to
a new house. Often those who serious. It’s hard to talk about offer, but my own experiences
grapple with suicidal tendencies because in society seeming have made me conscious
aren’t taken seriously until they unhappy is almost seen as of the damage that trying to
actually do it. I try to remember rude. The trouble with that ignore those thoughts can
that ultimately, if I had killed model is that if these internal really cause. n
myself before I met this guy; thoughts remain internal, be-
119
 A WOMAN
POSSESSED
by Gloria Endres de Oliveira
A few weeks ago I was noti-
fied that TUB, the short film
I’d recently completed, would
be screened at Macabro Film
Festival Internacional de Cine
de Horror. At no point during
the writing, shooting or editing
did I intend for it to be a hor-
ror – or a specific genre film
– at all, but rather a feminist
exploration of its inspiration;
Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Hans
Christian Andersen’s The Little
Mermaid and the treatments
used in 19th and early 20th
century asylums for women
diagnosed with hysteria (and
other conditions of the mind),
which included hydrotherapy.
However, given the ominous
atmosphere of unease that I
had tried to evoke with the
film, TUB did not seem like a
bad fit for a horror festival at
all. And, as an avid fan and
defender of the genre, believ-
ing in its potential to convey
complex representations
of the human experience, I
was very happy about my
film being shown alongside
retrospectives of filmmakers
such as Lamberto Bava and
Jan Svankmajer and screenings
120
of some of my favourite films,
such as Eyes Without A Face
(dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
and The Innocents (dir. Jack
Clayton, 1961). Upon browsing
the festival’s website, I noticed
that TUB would be shown in a
section called “ESPECTROS
Y POSESIONES” (Ghosts
and Possessions). This, I found
interesting – I certainly didn’t
consciously include or suggest
any kind of ghost-like entity or
demonic activity in my film.
While experimental and open to
interpretation, I had thought of
TUB as relatively transparent in
regards to its theme of mental
illness, patriarchal oppression
and escapism.
“Demonic” or “ghostly” pos-
session is not recognised as
a psychiatric diagnosis by
the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders
or Chapter V of the ICD-10;
‘Mental and behavioural disor-
ders’. However, some Catho-
lics, such as blogger Joseph
Geloso, disagree and claim
that, “those human conditions
which psychiatry has given
names to under ‘psychiatric
disorders’ are manifestations
dissatisfied with her marriage
to Mark, who is often away on
autobiographically reflecting
Zuławski‘s own marriage trou-
demonic entity, driven not only
to abandon her husband and
extended (and mysterious) bles at the time. Anna displays child (thus, gasp! forsaking her
business trips, leaving her clear symptoms of mental motherly duties and betraying
alone in their drab West Berlin instability and depression, her feminine nature, turning
of demonic activity in those hu- flat to take care of their seven including suicidal tendencies her into a monster herself),
man beings, demonic activity year old son. Even when Mark and self-harm - which manifest but to a triple homicide as
which the human being has no
participation of will.”
After pondering this for a
while, it occurred to me that
the categorisation of TUB as
a “possession” film is in line
with a theme that runs rampant
through film (and while not
limited to, is prevalent in the
horror genre): Female mental
illness being symbolised by
or equated with (demonic)
possession.
One of the most obvious ex-
amples is the aptly named Pos-
session (dir. Andrzej ŻZuławski,
1981), a film which has seen
increased hype and a cult fol-
lowing in recent years, not least
because of cinematographer
Bruno Nuytten’s iconic shots
of Isabelle Adjani – dazzlingly
beautiful in her disturbance –
which pervade Tumblr and the is present, Anna is bored by themselves through a tenta- well. At one point, Sam Neill’s
like in the form of stills and gifs. their sex life and, any romantic cled, Lovecraftian monster character Mark tells Anna, “I
feelings for him having disap- that she ‘conjures up’ and think of you as an animal, or
In Zuławski‘s film, Adjani plays peared, she tries to separate subsequently lives and has sex a woman possessed…”, es-
Anna, a dysphoric young from her husband, leading to a with, in a secret, squalid flat sentially dehumanising her for
housewife. Having recently blood-, tentacle-, and pus-filled she moves into after leaving her own reasons, showing how
given up her vocation as a bal- 120 minute allegory of divorce Mark. Anna is painted as be- in the eyes of a man, these
let teacher, she seems deeply and its interpersonal horrors, ing possessed by this ghastly ‘unwomanly acts’ of desertion
121
 are equal to her possession.
In what is arguably the film’s
best-known scene, Anna, return-
ing from a shopping trip, has
some kind of violently disturb-
ing seizure in an underground
station, with blood, slime and
pus oozing out of all orifices.
During this painfully long and
viscerally performed sequence
(according to an interview with
Zuławski, Adjani really hit her
head against one of the walls
during shooting, producing a
gnarly thud that can be heard
in the scene, but that, in his
words, “she never felt anything”
because, at least in his opinion,
she was “in trance”), Anna’s
spasmodic convulsions are
very reminiscent of the Arc de
Cercle, the backwards arching
of the body that was identified
as a symptom of ‘hysteric’ fits
by 19th century neurologist
Jean-Martin Charcot.
While browsing through reviews
and blog posts about Posses-
sion, the word frequently used
to describe this episode in
the film, is, of course, hysteria
(which, I never tire of pointing
out, stems from the Greek
word for uterus). One of the
treatments for severe hysteria
in the 19th century was hys-
terectomy – which could be
ordered in court by a judge. It
122
was even medically believed that
hysteria stemmed from faults
with women’s reproductive
organs. When Anna convulses
in the underground station, eyes
rolled backwards, mysterious
green slime streaming out
of her ears, blood and slime
flowing out between her legs,
this particular scene proves
significant to my argument,
in that it combines prevalent
depictions of demonic pos-
session with stereotypical
signifiers of hysteria. This
conflation is reflected in the
dialogue between Mark and
Heinrich, Anna’s lover:
 einrich: There is nothing
H takes over, recording Nell, the
to fear except God, what-
ever that means to you.
Mark: For me, God is a disease.
Heinrich: That’s why through
a disease we can reach God.
The film, however, seems very
conscious of its references to
hysteria and frequently com-
ments on potentially problematic
depictions of women. As Megan
Kearns of Bitch Flicks puts it,
“Women with mental illness are
often silenced, invisible from
the media aside from victims
or villains in horror. When
we do see them on-screen,
they instil fear as they are
depicted as violent, volatile
and uncontrollable.” I would
argue that Possession, while
indeed reproducing certain
problematic stereotypes about
mental illness in women, mainly
utilises the theme of demonic
possession in order to com-
municate that the real horror
is interpersonal – that human
beings are the monsters in
each other’s lives.
Daniel Stamm’s The Last Exor-
cism (2007) seemingly sets
out to be a mockumentary, but
turns into a Found Footage
horror film when the diegetic
director of photography loses
control over the camera, and
an unknown (demonic!) entity
ostensibly possessed teen-
age daughter of an alcoholic
Southern farmer. The footage
depicting Nell’s self-destructive
outbursts and seemingly
demonic fits becomes all the
more haunting once the viewer
recognises the probable reason
for her ‘possession’ – grave
mental instability. Throughout
the film, it is revealed that Nell
grew up in a fiercely oppres-
sive household, abused by a
father who would rather chain
her to a bed than to allow her
to act, in his eyes, improperly
– Nell wearing a pair of Doc
Martens is already considered
scandalous by her father. Nell,
as played by Ashley Bell, is
portrayed as the meekest, most
submissive of characters. She
never expresses her opinions
or feelings in any way, for fear
of offending and enraging her
father – making her pain simmer
deep in her subconscious, until
it starts to boil up in shockingly
violent attacks, revealed on the
footage that the crew finds in
the morning.
Another, more fraught example
is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist -
a film whose credits include
researchers dedicated to fields
including “misogyny”, “anxiety”,
“horror films” and “theology.”
Charlotte Gainsbourg plays
the female protagonist, a
woman being treated for
severe depression. Von Trier,
who converted to Catholicism
at the age of 30, was inspired
by his own struggle with his
mental health. The director’s
female protagonists can invite
feminist readings and appre-
ciation, as they are usually
infinitely more complex than
von Trier’s male protagonists
and can be read as versions
of his inner self. This theory is
expressed by Caroline Bain-
bridge, author of The Cinema
of Lars von Trier, who claims
that von Trier’s controversial
female characters are “expres-
sions of him, an expression of
his internal life … He’s even claimed
that he feels himself to be as a powerful symbol for the
feminine to some degree.” inner ‘demons’, if you will, that
can plague (female) sufferers
On the other hand, von Trier, of mental illness. However, I
while constantly denying any think it is worth critically exam-
misogynistic tendencies, states ining this trope whenever it is
that in the name of cinematic used, because, as written by
entertainment, he “had to turn s.e. smith in an article for Bitch
to some mythology about the Magazine titled Sick of This:
evil of women” and found it “in Mental Illness in Pop Culture:
the traditional, primitive view of “There are some deeply root-
witches”. Witches, of course, ed social attitudes involved
are another example of women in the treatment of women
whose otherness and deviation in Hollywood who are la-
from social norms – perhaps belled as ‘mentally ill’…
due to mental illness – has For those of us with mental
been linked to Satanism and illness(es), pop culture can be
demonic activity. In a promotional a constant reminder of the fact
interview for Antichrist, von that we are considered both
Trier, in voicing his opinion that scary and public property,
“female sexuality is frightening objects of curiosity, fascina-
even to the female”, reflects the tion, and revulsion.” n
harmful trope of the mentally
unstable woman whose lack of
control over her impulses and/or
emotions is a frightening satanic,
demonic force.
There are countless other films
and TV shows in which female
mental illness is equated with
demonic possession, such as
Rosemary’s Baby, Ring, Twin
Peaks, Gothika, American
Horror Story: Asylum, and, of
course, The Exorcist. In and of
itself, this conflation does not
have to be problematic – it has
the potential to be utilised, like
the horror genre as a whole,
123
SUICIDE
I am lazy. There’s no two ways about it.
If people really knew what filled a
typical day for me, they would probably
be appalled. For instance, I’ve never held
a full time job longer than two months in
my whole life. Currently I don’t have a job
at all and I don’t intend to get one. Neither
DON’T CONFUSE do I have a driver’s license, or any savings,
or a ‘life’ by any standard. I’m also getting
fatter and heavier by the day – so much
LAZINESS WITH so I can barely recognise myself and I’m
spotting new stretch marks on my shape-
shifting body on each occasion I take a
DEPRESSION AND shower. And yet I’m apathetic. I’m 24 now.
Oh, and I live with my parents.
I’m a creative person but even then I
VICE VERSA don’t create nearly enough to truly warrant
wearing that badge. Sure, I have a few
‘achievements’ to show for myself – some
drawings demonstrating skill, folders full
of attempts at poetry and short stories,
a pointless film production degree, a
moderately successful short film that’s
won an award, some scripts and a film or
two in the works, the ability to edit videos
and tell effective stories through montage,
the odd painting, a few songs. Some
might even look on all this and fall victim
to the illusion that I do ‘so much’!
Nope.
For the past six or seven years its
been impossible for anyone to gain a
proper understanding of just how lazy I
artwork and words by Mikael Hattingh am simply because I don’t allow myself to
124
be seen. I’m not on facebook anymore. I
refuse to buy credit for my phone. I reject
event invites and now I no longer receive
any. I’m never around. Because for years
I’ve hidden myself out of sight in a stinking
hot bedroom, ruminating in depression;
living as a recluse, a ghoul, emerging only
in the odd and unpredictable times I‘ve
felt brave enough to polish up my face
and show it to the outside world.
And throughout my growing and
changing relationship with depression
I’ve battled with the question (kind of like
a ‘chicken or the egg’ thing) of whether
or not I’m lazy because I’m depressed or
depressed because I’m lazy.
For some this is probably a no-brainer.
And maybe I have no brain.
Maybe if I just got off my butt and
went to the gym, lost this weight. Had
myself a daily dose of endorphins and
learned to like what I see in the mirror.
Maybe if I sucked it up and got myself a
job – a shitty job – and gave myself that
regular routine, no matter what it was.
And then I guess I’d have more money
and an overall ‘higher standard of living’
than what I’ve acclimatised myself to with
the dole. Perhaps the thought alone of
‘earning my keep’ will instil in me a sense
of pride. And maybe if I just bit down on
my social fears and went out and tried to
make friends – maybe it could actually
produce a friend? Friends are good?
125

Maybe if I just dedicated myself to my
creative endeavours. Whole-heartedly. And
drew every day. All day. And wrote every
day. And turned these scripts into films.
These sketches into comics. These guitar
riffs into songs. These ideas into reality.
But this one thought finally occurred
to me the other day, which put me at ease,
at least a little.
Laziness may be a symptom of
depression – but depression is not
necessarily characteristic of laziness.
That is – laziness in itself does not
directly result in a damning disbelief
in yourself or lead unswervingly to the
demonising thought to hurl yourself in
front of a train or slash open your arms or
find some other violent way to kill yourself.
Laziness doesn’t bully you into not
enjoying yourself (your time or who you are).
It doesn’t strip away your desire to socialise
and be with friends, doing the things that
give pleasure. Rather, by nature, laziness
encourages pleasure. Laziness doesn’t
demand that you focus your thoughts on
the things that bring you zero pleasure at all
and place you in the corner away from the
others like a bad child.
In other words, laziness does not
equate self-hate.
So as I have beaten myself up with
the thought that ‘I need to do more’ in
order to be happy, it’s been depression
that has told me not to move. It was
126
depression that smothered me if the
thought to move ever flickered in my brain.
It was depression that worked tirelessly
to slow me down to a halt at all times and
humiliated me whenever I gave it a try. It
was depression that ever fed the thought
that I was a lazy, no-good-for-nothin’ bum
in the first place.
But all this being said there have
been periods in my life that I haven’t been
followed around with depression.
I remember one such time last
year on an afternoon I wasn’t feeling
quite as ‘chirpy’ as I had been. And as
I almost slipped into confusion as the
familiar feeling of darkness threatened
to encroach I had to tell myself ‘Don’t
confuse laziness with depression!’ Then it
was an easy fix.
Laziness is curable. Simply do
something and it’s gone. Depression
isn’t so simple.
And so now the problem remains
more or less the same. Nothing changes
the fact that for nearly a decade I’ve been
depressed. And that doesn’t change
the fact I’ve been lazy. And these two
problems will continue to fuck like an
incestuous family of maggots in my brain
until something entirely fresh and new
comes into the equation to make more
sense of it. n
by Oyin Olalekan
My mother keeps calling me, and we take turns rotating topics.
In the spaces of her measured speech
I hear the muted bellow of a question mark. She cannot see me,
so she sends her love across the country, groping for me in this hole
I am content to curl in.
These days, I find my words ring hollow,
ring echo, ring not mine never mine. And I am tired.
I am flesh bound, flaking at the edges—a prayer curdling at the core
shaking with lust; tongue lapping at the rind of wisdom.
I am rage and spite, I am floating specter. Heart clenched in fist
to fuck and fuck up, spirit sharpened to an edge.
Psalms soured in mouth, spine coiled in submission.
I am lost.
Where is your home training? Where is the bite and scratch of immigrant dreaming?
What is to be done when it no longer seems worth fighting for?
Forgive me Father for I have sinned. Forgive me mother, brother, sister, friend
I am tired of repentance, or rather remorse. I cannot afford another sorry.
Can you feel them? The way they press against my skin
pound against flesh come spilling through cracks leaving me spent.
I am tired of the crumbling
the tearing the tearing the tearing I have had enough of the tearing.
And my mother keeps calling me
So I tell her my favorite lie, everything is fine.
My favorite promise, I’ll call you tomorrow (morning afternoon evening)
when I have something to tell you that sounds nothing like
the sputtering engine hearts of my generation.
In Ford, and Jobbs we trusted so don’t ask why I feel entitled
to my passions.
What a strange melancholia this is. The way it wraps me up in night,
makes certain I can tell no one Silence is hungry here.
And who knew? Who knew shame could be so bold?
Could wet its lips with my hymns, settle in bones
make a home of my joints so every step I take is creaking with insecurity.
For the first time, tomorrow has lost its magic.
And all the while my mother keeps calling me.
I do not know how to tell her I have lost the girl she sent me with. n
127
 H E R O I N E S :
IN CONVERSATION WITH KATE ZAMBRENO
interview conducted by Bethany Lamont
Kate Zambreno is the author of a bunch
of smart stuff including the novels
Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O
Fallen Angel (Chiasmus Press), and
the experimental non-fiction books
‘Heroines’ (Semiotext(e)’s Active Agents/
MIT Press) and The Book of Mutter
(Wesleyan University Press, October
2015). As a professional rejection letter
receiver, and mentally ill muse for creepy
boys the word over, I thought it would
be cool to have a chat with Kate about
these weird tropes in writing. Because it
can be confusing to be an author if you’re
already a character y’kno?
BL: I was so struck by what you said of the
“lovely madwomen wives or mistresses
who became their fictitious creations”, that
you brought in Jeffrey Eugenide’s Virgin
Suicides, in your interviews, which in turn
makes me think of Alison Lurie’s critique
of Fitzgerald. Lurie argues in her text ‘Not
in Front of the Grownups’, that Fitzgerald
presented women suffering from mental
health troubles as fairy princesses locked
away in a high tower awaiting rescue. And
whilst these authors can be damaging –
Heroines shows the damage they did so
clearly – I think there’s also a danger, as
girl-type people, of writing these stories onto
ourselves? I mean I basically thought I was
Cecilia Lisbon for the good part of three years!
KZ: The character of the depressed or suicidal
girl is often in the contemporary written by male
128
authors. But Virgin Suicides was a huge influ-
ence on me, growing up, I remember seeing
the book on a table at the Mount Prospect
Public Library and after reading it knowing that
I wanted to write books like that. Although the
Lisbon sisters remain ciphers, muses, without
their own subjectivity. I don’t think I’m trying to
note in Heroines as much that these modernist
authors are damaging, but what is the cumulative
effect of not reading, in school, literature written
by women featuring female characters? Even
yes, damaged female characters. I know what
you mean – about Cecilia Lisbon — I thought I
was Esther Greenwood for a long time — and
this was a critique I got with Heroines, with my
quite depressive, almost luxuriously depressive
narrator — but I think as writers we should write
the truths of our existences, and the truth of
tiny subjectivities, of the human abyss. And a
truth of our existence too is that we are heavily
formed by these other narratives. Literature
does not have the onus of having to write
empowered characters — think of modernism,
everyone’s a nervous wreck.
BL: Yes, I am so not into the strong woman
archetype, that we have to be empowered,
that we to have our shit together, I love
messed up awful characters! What I am
critical of is the plagiaristic literary model
that uses the archetype of the ‘mentally
ill’ woman as muse which in turn prevents
their own work from thriving as they were
repressed so violently. What you were saying
about Zelda, about Vivenne....
KZ: Of course. I think the only attempts really examples of women writers – or women who
of plagiarism I focus on are Fitzgerald’s tak- wanted to be writers from that era – who were
ing liberally from Zelda’s diaries, for This Side attached to the Great Men, but were some-
of Paradise, and then drawing so heavily on how disciplined and kept from writing, within
her speech and her life for the later novels, their marriage, but also within their repressive
especially Tender is the Night. Perhaps we can societies they lived in.
think of it more than anything as a sort
of spiritual plagiarism. And surely many
literary partnerships are collaborations,
this is not unusual in literary history,
the wife being the eager and brilliant
midwife, such as Vivienne Eliot was
of her husband’s poem “The Waste
Land,” helping to edit and adding
lines here and there, also working
as his secretary. But in Heroines,
the unnamed narrator, who is
an unpublished writer, and feels
haunted by these other narratives,
begins to wrangle with the danger
behind these myths of modern-
ism, these myths we have of the
madwomen muses, because
these women, more than not,
wanted to be artists in their own
right, and this was dismissed,
demonized, and disciplined in
their lifetimes. So, Zelda began
to write her own version of
her breakdown, which is a
novel called Save Me the
Waltz, the obsession with
dancing, the fragmentation,
and Scott threw a fit, and
enlisted the doctors and
authorities basically to
prohibit Zelda from writ-
ing in the first-person,
until his novel was done.
There are all of these
129
 So something else the narrator is obsessed
with in Heroines is, say, Jane Bowles’ lifelong
writers block, which came after Paul Bowles
wrote the mad wife in Sheltering Sky, she
became spooked and convinced she wasn’t
the real writer, or how Tom Eliot manuevered
it so that Vivienne’s nascent writing efforts in
The Criterion under a set of pseudonyms would
cause her to be ostracized. Something else I
was really obsessed with was this idea that the
male writers of modernism were allowed to be
hysterical or psychotic in their texts — Flaubert,
Eliot, Fitzgerald — often channeling women, and
were also allowed to be hysterical in their lives,
because they were seen as geniuses, but the
women of that era who were closely connected
to them weren’t allowed to be the genius tortured
artist, they were often institutionalized, and it
was also seen as a sign of moral insanity (cue
Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles, Vivienne Eliot,
Zelda Fitzgerald) to be too consumed with
creative or intellectual work. I was also really
interested in the contemporary — if Zelda and
Vivienne are still demonized or dismissed as
basketcases, not seen as women struggling
or brilliant women or at least potentially bril-
liant women — for genius is not born, I really
don’t believe, not literary genius at least, it
takes so much labor and permission — then
how does that still infect writers who want to
take up the pen?
BL: Failure seems so intrinsic to the im-
age of the novelist, the romantic loser, the
outsider. But in so many cases it seems
all an author wants is to be recognised? I
think of Jean Rhys’ “it has come too late”,
Joyce who was so desperate for love, for
an audience, “who did not want an audi-
ence, he wanted hostages”, who was a
sort of mad woman himself I guess. And
130
Alan Bennet’s “all literature is by losers,
for losers, all literature is consolation”. But
failure, rejection kills an artist (it kills me at
least); I struggle to piece this together. And
I’m not sure if great artists are really losers
or just an imagined (extremely productive,
widely published) idea of a loser?
KZ: I think when Jean Rhys said “It has come
too late,” upon the prizes and the attention
after Wide Sargasso Sea, she is saying she
doesn’t want to deal with that sort of publicity.
I think obviously not all novelists and writers
fit the same model — perhaps the writers you
and I are interested in are outsiders or romantic
losers, but certainly in mainstream publishing
today in the States or the UK the successful
novelist is supposed to be the opposite of the
outsider or a loser. Certainly being a writer
who writes literature as philosophy is about
desiring witness and recognition — but also
feeling alienated, outside, and, like Rhys, feeling
resistant to publicity while desiring it. That sort
of ambivalence is what I’m circling around in
my next book, a novel, which is about literature
and community.
BL: To expand on your point on ‘successful thinking through things. Some of my favorite
novelists’, of MFA’s and impossibly thick I think ideas of success and productivity are contemporary American writers (and friends)
books, what I’m interested in, as someone extremely tied to capitalism, and living these are very slow writers, they write a slim book
who struggles with mental health so much, highly functional lives, which I don’t believe every ten years, and I think what allows them
is dealing with this notion of ‘productivity’; has to always be the onus of the artist, thank- is that permission, which is more the mindset
I remember that was something you wrote fully. There is the current model of the writer of being a poet. It is important to know – not
about in your essay on Kafka on your blog, who is supposed to write, write, write, who that you have to struggle with mental health
this idea of being a parasite, of being a writer is supposed to churn out a certain amount problems to be a writer – but that the history
who does not write anything. This question of words every day, perhaps this is the func- of great writers features many many writers
of dealing with these expectations of having tion of MFA programs, I teach at two MFA who struggled with nerves, their moods,
to be productive, successful, when dealing programs, and I try to encourage writers to be depression, feelings of paralysis. This goes
with chronic mental health things? Especially less bound up in productivity, to think about along with basically sitting in a room, in that
when there are already so many invisible seeing, about slowness, about reading, about solitude, and attempting to create something.
barriers keeping marginalised voices out.
131
 And always, of course, worrying whether they
are productive enough. As William Gass writes
“Writing. Not Writing. Twin Terrors.” By that
extension, perhaps being a writer isn’t the best
vocation for one’s mental health. But anxiety
and dread and rejection – it’s all bound up in
being a writer, and trying to publish, and one
of the most important things to learn as a
writer is how to *be* a writer, how to live and
also write. This is something I circle around in
Heroines – the unnamed narrator worries she’s
just a depressed person, because she’s not
writing. But I think this has to do with perspec-
tive and naming. Yes, she is depressed, but
she is also obviously a writer, and what we’re
reading is what she has written. One of the
crimes of the modern era she documents is
it convinced some of these women that they
were sick, when what they were suffering with
was, yes, mental health problems, but also the
unbearable fatigue and depression of having
to fight against what they wanted to be and
do in a nonpermissive society, and the nerves
and agitations of writing, which their husbands
suffered from as well, but did not pathologise
themselves with, although they pathologised
their wives.
I think it’s very difficult to be a writer and be
considered successful in our culture – a
culture that is often hostile to art unless it
makes a great amount of money – so I think
one needs to have different ways of viewing
success while being a writer, and realising so
much of writing is about failure, because I think
anything dealing with taking beautiful risks is
about failure. Kafka is a great example – he’s
big in this new novel, somewhat inspired by
that essay I wrote – but Kafka formed his
own definitions of success, and was a writer,
132
focused his entire life on writing, because that
is what he wanted to do more than anything.
He certainly wasn’t always productive. He often
felt that he failed, but he tried again, always.
I don’t know if being an artist is about being
always productive – I think it’s a way of seeing
and considering the world.
BL: Death operates differently online,
partly I suppose because time does too.
Even how we talk about death: the idea of
“suiciding” your blog, an idea of which you
have spoken of before. I personally think a
lot generally about my position as a very
suicidal person with a small, but very public,
corner of the internet to deal (or not deal)
with this stuff on. The question of maintain-
ing a ‘kooky’ internet presence alongside
nervous breakdowns (which goes with the
idea of being “a novelty not a novelist”.) I was
wondering as someone who has spoken
about internet culture, of platforms such
as twitter and tumblr and blogger before,
if you had any thoughts on this?
KZ: I think the Internet can be great for
community, but not great always for mental
wellbeing. When I had a fairly small and
intimate readership, the blog I write to at the
end of Heroines, that space was one of this
really beautiful and fruitful communion with
other writers, and where I felt comfortable
writing of my breakdowns, of my moods and
my days, this sort of generative diary space
where I also engaged with literature and ideas.
When I began to realize I was receiving lots
of attention, post the publication of Heroines
– negative attention, positive attention – and
reviews even quoted my blog, or overempha-
sized how much the blog went into the book
(answer: very, very little), the space didn’t feel
my own anymore, I felt like I was surveilled,
and that I was supposed to perform, on the
blog, on Twitter, this sort of authenticity, that
I was supposed to write rawness, that that
was my thing, and I didn’t feel comfortable
anymore writing online if it meant performing
a persona, or attempting to advertise myself.
Plus since then so many of my friends, poets,
who had online spaces, quit that world. It was
too much for them.
BL: We’ve spoken of cruelty and girlhood
before, of mental health and girlhood, I’m
interested in how this intersects with con-
structs of race, of colonization? Whether
that’s Miley Cyrus or Maureen Peal I see the
spectre of whiteness in all different girlhood
characters! And mixed-ness, colonization
and border policing seems to cut through
conversations surrounding mental health.
This idea of being out of control. Say in
Nella Larsen, or The Wide Sargasso Sea?
And for me this all ties in to the idea of
horror, of ghoulish tricksters, and grotesque
girlhood, of abjection, all of which I know
is an interest of yours?
KZ: Yes, I’m really interested in the grotesque,
in abjection, and in terms of Kristeva’s idea
of the abject as crossing boundaries or be-
ing formless. I think the horror of mixedness
as represented in literature definitely ties
in, certainly Rochester’s hysteria towards
Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea,
and the paranoia of a Nella Larsen heroine.
I would love to read what you write about all
this! I definitely think whiteness has a lot to
do with our ideas of femininity, and girlhood,
you see this so astutely with Toni Morrison’s
The Bluest Eye, and it is why I made Ruth in
Green Girl this idealized blonde, I was trying
to say something about representations of the
girl in film, in literature. But we definitely need
in our literature more narratives of the girl that
complicate the dominant image and narrative.
BL: And on a final note are there any books
or authors, poets and picture books, or
even like really gross, really weird horror
movies, you would recommend, that could
bring comfort on difficult days?
KZ: I wish I read more or watched more interest-
ing films when I’m having difficult days. How
about, books that have brought me pleasure
recently or have been extremely successful in
the past at this? Of course I love depressing
books, that make me feel quite joyful actu-
ally. So the novels of Jean Rhys, the novels
of Nella Larsen, Kafka’s journals, Sontag’s
journals, Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina, David
Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives, Robert
Walser’s The Walk, Elizabeth Hardwick’s
Sleepless Nights, Rainer Maria Rilke’s The
Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Shulamith
Firestone’s Airless Spaces, Herve Guibert’s
journals. Those are all works I’m finding great
pleasure with, rereading and thinking about
now for new work. In terms of contemporary
poets and writers – Claudia Rankine, Bhanu
Kapil, T. Clutch Fleischmann, Renee Gladman,
Suzanne Scanlon, Amina Cain, Valeria Luiselli,
Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson.... the list can
go on and on! n
133
 FOUR POEMS

by Pavana pvn
Never undress
your wounds
for those who
have none of
their own, for
they will only
You will become strip you of
a graveyard your skin trying
of all the women to understand.
you once were
before you rise
one morning
in your own skin.
You will swallow
a thousand
different names
before you taste
the meaning
held within your own.
And so what if you don’t belong?
A fish will only grow to fit within
the borders of its confinement,
but that does not mean it is small.

Remember this,
you were made for greater things.

You do not belong because

Everyone has a past, you cannot find your place in this world,
remember this. but because the world is too small
to fit the universe that is you. n
Each one of us
carries cemeteries
beneath our skin.

134 135
 by Diamond J Sharp
The knocking in my head was cooked
in the womb. (Mississippi folks say that
the remedy for madness in a child is
caused by the mother’s backchat). John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s brain blasted from
behind the week my mother’s mother
left her newborn shielded from Chicago
winter beside a west side dumpster. (The
poor girl couldn’t bear the chatter of her
family). The doctor asks whether it runs
in the family. Is losing your mind a family
heirloom? I will answer, I don’t know. I hope
that it is a consolation for survival.
artwork by Ashley Ronning
136
MAL DE OJO
for Silvia Galis-Menendez
1 pinch thyme
1 pinch rosemary
1 egg, broken
rose water, blessed
1 cuban cigar
1 glass of water, a tincture
1 rosary
We are on St. Marks, somewhere between
Phoenix and the tattoo parlor. You said I had
the mal de ojo. This is before the final fall.
Before the hospital. Before I learn that my
brain plays tug-of-war between melancholia
and mania. (It might beat me, before I beat
it). My day dreams have become wishing to
wake up dead. I want the quiet. My brain is Pray the rosary. Pray the rosary. Pray conversation. This is not something you
a motherfucker. the rosary knowing that you are really say in polite conversation. This is the week
praying to Orishas. afterwards. After the hospital. Before I read
Sprinkle rose water on the afflicted. about the monoamine theory which means
Pray to God (or Shango). my melancholia resurrects in the spring - a
Strike a match, light a cigar. Smoke until coup between my receptors. Before I know
only the tip is left. If the afflicted coughs, the fluoxetine has been sabotaging me.
hurry with the ritual. They are truly cursed. We’ve been doing this since the slave
In a glass of water, put a pinch of ships reached the new world. That is what
thyme and rosemary in. Crack an egg. your grandmother has told you.
Drop it into the water. If the egg is cloudy, I’ve been told I’m too beautiful to be
pray the rosary again. so sad. As if my brain will stop double-
On Essex St, I decided I wanted to dutching because of how I look. I’m
swim in my own blood. A lethe of sorts. certifiable, nonetheless.
This is melancholia. Wanting to eat yourself Pray the rosary. Pray the rosary. Pray the
whole. I think about dying. This is a thing rosary even though you are praying to Oshun.
you can not say in polite conversation. Even with prayers and lithium, one day,
This is something you can not say in polite these poems will be all that is left of me. n
137
 LISTENING TO KANYE: THE MENTAL HEALTH FILES

by Latoya Peterson

Went through, deep depression when my momma passed/

Suicide, what kinda talk is that?/
But I been talking to God for so long/
And if you look at my life I guess he’s talking back

-Kanye West, “Clique,” Cruel Summer

As often as Kanye West talks about the state of his mental health, one
would think that we’d be having a national conversation on mental health
– kind of like the way we had a wave of conversations about domestic
violence in the wake of the Chris Brown-Rihanna incident. Yet, in the years
since Kanye began talking openly about the depression related to the death
of his mother and the dissolution of his romantic relationship with longtime
paramour Alexis Phifer, the conversations have continued to be one-sided.
A search for “Kanye West and Depression” brings up surprisingly few
articles and discussions. There’s a sterile AP article describing his initial
comments, Cord Jefferson advising Kanye to go to a therapist on
The Root, an MTV news article on his path to recovery, and Tom Breihan
in the Village Voice distilling 808s and Heartbreakdown to “emo
bellyaching” and an “album-length tantrum at his ex.” While Bassey Ikpi
later argued to have some compassion for Kanye, it was one small plea
in a sea of indifference and condemnation.
After years of being open about pain and vulnerability, I’m starting to
wonder if society will ever really hear him.
Back in 2010, Renina Jarmon did some great analysis around 808s and
Heartbreak, trying to understand the backlash to the work. She wrote:
The more I listened to the album, the more I realized that this cat was
in a lot of pain, and trying to articulate it.
To say that he “sounds like” T-Pain misses the point by looking at just
the sound, but ignoring the content. T- Pain ain’t never said anything
that made me think about nothing. Whereas,808s and Heartbreak,
helped me with being in reflection mode last week. [...]
Listening to the album and hearing him describe those post-break up slug
penetrate moments, I came to realize that he was being both vulnerable
artwork & background by James Gaunt

138 139
 and in pain and in our culture that is a no-no for men and antithetical to
Black manhood. That is if you believed what you saw in hip-hop.
It was then that I realized that the only acceptable emotion for Black
men to publicly express and still retain their masculinity is rage.
Kill a hundred fools? Cool.
Murder, stab, rape? Fine.
Sad over losing our ex? Blasphemy.

It’s this same disinterested attitude toward mental health that leads us
to swallow our tongues when it comes to connecting the painful dots. As
Joan Morgan wrote in When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost:
As a black woman and a feminist I listen to the music with a
willingness to see past the machismo in order to be clear about what
I’m really dealing with. What I hear frightens me. On booming track
after booming track, I hear brothers talking about spending each day
high as hell on malt liquor and chronic. Don’t sleep. What passes for
“40 and a blunt” good times in most of hip-hop is really alcoholism,
substance abuse, and chemical dependency. When brothers can talk
so cavalierly about killing each other and then reveal that they have
no expectation to see their twenty-first birthday, that is straight-up
depression masquerading as machismo.

So what stops us from having the conversation?

Do you think I sacrificed real life/ For all the fame of flashing lights?/
Do you think I sacrifice a real life/ For all the fame of flashing lights?
There is no Gucci I can buy/ There is no Louis Vuitton to put on /There
is no YSL that they could sell
To get my heart out of this hell/ And my mind out of this jail
There is no clothes that I could buy/ That could turn back the time /
There is no vacation spot I could fly/ That could bring back a piece of
real life/ Real life, what does it feel like?
I ask you tonight, I ask you tonight/ What does it feel like, I ask you
tonight/ To live a real life
I just want to be a real boy
They always say Kanye, he keeps it real boy/
Pinocchio story is, I just want to be a real boy/
Pinocchio story is to be a real boy
– Kanye West, “Pinocchio Story,” 808s and Heartbreak n

artwork by Séamus Gallagher

140 141
142 143
 TREAT YO SELF: AN OPEN
CONVERSATION ON CAPITALIST
CONSUMPTION AND SELF CARE
Eline: Let’s talk about TREAT YO
SELF not being all that great (I talked
about it on my blog and I know you
agree, I forgot to reply but I loved
your thoughtful message so much
and it meant so much to me that you
understand SO MUCH!! I think that
topic could be researched more — like
on the one hand it is a quick fix for
feeling better, not necessarily a short
feeling either (if you buy something you
know will last) but it’s something that’s
extremely tied with capitalism and you
know capitalism is inescapable, let’s
be real, and sometimes it’s fine, you
know? But it also means that people
like us, who grew up working class,
at least have guilt about it or more so
(when they haven’t outgrown working
class). It’s point blank unattainable
and that really, really, hurts especially
considering this ‘treat yo self’ mentality
is being repeated all online and has
grown a lot and isn’t, like it was in
the Parks & Recreation show about
one day in a year you could spend
whatever, but literally all days in a year
you could spend whatever, that’s a
really dangerous trap to fall in, rich or
poor in my opinion.
Beth: Yes, yes, yes! I think it’s got
to the point where the blogosphere
in general is pretty much intrinsically
144
linked to capitalist consumption –
and whilst I’m not a clueless idealist
or some anarchist punk dude lol –
I don’t think this is a very nurturing
or healthy environment.
Eline: It’s true a lot of the
blogosphere I seriously link to
capitalism, I’ve noticed a huge change
in myself and my feelings of WANT
when I stopped reading fashion
blogs regularly and I’ve even stopped
reading most blogs now and still
notice an even bigger chance of want,
my wanting is a lot more individual
and I think it would be interesting to
explore those feelings – exploring that
or cutting out blogs forever might not
stop any or all want in general, though;
it’s so normal in our capitalist society to
want and to consume and maybe that’s
okay sometimes too, maybe we should
accept it sometimes too because
there’ll be no stopping of capitalism in
our lifetime you know? But it gets to a
point where it can be really damaging
and the blogosphere can be just as
damaging as reading 200 ads in Vogue
every day you know? And maybe
even worse because there’s still this
supposed feeling of some kind of
“authenticity” and attainability ppl get
from the blogosphere. I also notice a
lot of ppl asking me and a lot of online
friends who also blog outfits or fashion
regularly how they can afford so and so
in REALLY intrusive or just straight up
mean ways! I GET that feeling, I’ve felt
that but it’s really damaging to yourself
to let yourself feel jealous
of something like that.
Beth: Yes! Blogs become a kind
of window-shopping and window
shopping is fun on like a Saturday
afternoon every month or so, but every
morning? Not so much. And self-care
when intertwined with that ‘lifestyle’
model of feminism bell hooks criticises
in ‘Feminism is For Everybody’ has the
potential to cause harm. But how can
we be critical? This intersects with
the question of jealousy. Am I being
critical or am I being a hater, I think of
girl hate particularly. Because in terms
of criticism of other girls, especially
in regards to lifestyle feminism, and
split second judgements of bloggers,
re: the attitude of ”I demand u tell me
everything about urself you must be
stuck up, privileged etc!”, it’s important
to realise when the illusion of being
critical is used as an excuse to be
jerks. Not saying that is what we are
doing!! But just generally I think it’s
good to centre questions of how
women are conditioned to relate to
other women in discussions. Like I
have seen women dismissed as “basic
bitches” and “Nice Girls Who Like
Stuff” for vlogging about make up and I
think that’s gross.
Eline: Shocked and appalled tbqh,
I’ve never either noticed or seen this
kind of criticism! But this is a really
interesting point to point out and
should be discussed!
Beth: Yeah, like are jealousy and nasty
feelings the point of this sort of image
culture, it really feels like it sometimes!
Eline: Yes I think it 100% is. Images
have mostly been like that in the
west…. starting with tapestries, then
oil paintings etc. they were all a sign
of wealth or class. Then magazine
illustrations for the bourgeois came
up and there were a whole bunch of
cartoons laughing at all sorts of other
ppl like you still have today…
Beth: Ooh another thought! Everyone
likes someone familiar with academia,
Marxist dialect, keeping Foucault on
one’s book shelf and consuming the
revolution and what not. But they don’t
like poor people. As a culture we like
vague discussions on class, but we
do not like the ugly side of poverty
(i.e. my family background).
Eline: Yeah whenever i talk abt being
broke online ppl are just silent or shrug,
maybe it doesn’t fit my flashy colourful
#positive image? Fellow Doll Hospital
contributor Ginger gets it though, like this
comment that she posted on my blog:
“As a card-carrying member of the holy
order of the perpetually broke I feel
you about money/worthiness. not only,
like, in general/ as a person, but also
as somebody who blogs about their
clothing, i always feel less relevant
b/c i lack buying power. in reality, i’m
most innovative with clothing that i’ve
145
 had for years or got for free, but that’s
the satisfaction of craft & intention vs.
the glamour & novelty of a new thing —
sometimes you just need/“need”/need?
the thing on the rack that takes your
breath away, if even for a moment.
“To be alive is to treat yourself to
something you enjoy.” is a perfect line
b/c it’s something that our mothers/the
beatles/inspirational fridge magnets
would tell us is false (all u need is
love, u can’t buy happiness, etc. etc.),
but it feels actually quite painfully
true on some weird exuberant-yet-
insecure level that (i suspect) has a
lot to do with being young and a girl
on the internet (i mean, everybody is
influenced by capitalist rhetoric, but
there’s a particular way that it works
on the Internet Girl i think)”
Beth: Omg this comment is so
good! “I feel less relevant because I
lack buying power” Yes! This idea of
money/buying stuff as power, even
with self-care, mental health is at the
core of what we need to unpick. And
“the glamour & novelty of a new thing”,
this is the weird idea of shopping
as transformation, reincarnation,
of newness, rather than making
something beautiful of what you have,
of escapism. I mean blogging did not
invent want, it is just a new medium for
want. Capitalism is unavoidable but
how we relate to it is. And sometimes
I feel like every part of me online is
an advert like I’m not necessarily
advertising clothes (because my clothes
146
are shit) but I’m promoting cultural
consumption, education as a capitalist
machine, it goes beyond shoes, it’s in
my fave books on pinterest, the quotes
I reblog on tumblr it’s everywhere,
patchwork propaganda.
Eline: Yes I feel this is true, but I think
in a way/in a capitalist society we
all end up being a commodity, and
everything we do is consume. We
should be critical of how we consume,
but can we stop being a commodity?
I’m not even sure I understand
myself at this point but I feel as if it’s
impossible to completely by-pass
capitalism because not only do we
need to consume (whether it’s food or
books!) we also need to create, and
those creations get consumed! People
are voracious beasts and consume
everything in sight! I kind of like that,
it can get overwhelming but I enjoy
focussing on one aspect (currently
sci-fi) and consuming everything I
can find of that! But as a blogger?
As an outfit blogger I definitely feel
that I probably end up influencing
others in shopping more, but I talk a
lot about how to curb those feelings,
it’s confusing, life is confusing?
Probably in general we need a
much more mindful attitude when
we consume; we need to choose
thoughtfully and take our time?
Also consuming is only actually
dangerous when it’s on capitalist
ethos? I don’t know, I think I mean,
when it’s fast, fast, fast, and always
bigger bigger, bigger, all till we’re
oversaturated. That’s the word I want:
oversaturated. That’s the word we
should try to be aware of, should try to
avoid. Also want to say as someone in
a capitalist society I actually become
a consumer, to do that I need to get a
job and sell off my labor and eventually
fall into an endless circle. Damn it
these were thoughts before I fell
asleep last night hopefully they’ll come
back to me!
Beth: *basks in the wisdom of
everything u just said* Also um any
hash tag that lets white people say yo
is doomed to failure before it’s started?
Eline: Oh god I didn’t rly link it to
AAVE (?) to now but i always felt pretty
bothered about this, there’s a lot of
white ppl tagging just #yoooooooooo
on tumblr posts??
Beth: I definitely think it relates
to AAVE, as the original character
purporting this idea was a black
woman, and white people, and non-
black people of colour, love mutilating
AAVE lol, ESPECIALLY ON TUMBLR.
I think the treat yo self as self care
idea on tumblr however was very much
spearheaded by the Untitled Mag
(which is specifically for communities
of colour and other marginalised
groups i.e. poor working class
communities) but has got a little lost in
translation.
Eline: Yes, it makes me think of the
idea of undermining the idea that poor
people do not deserve nice things,
which is a good thing… but on the
other; since when is self-care all about
spending money? Literally self-care
is caring for yourself, and to me that
is making sure I eat enough, drink
enough water, don’t go overboard on
coffee, sleep…. you know stuff that
will actually end up making my mental
health better, or at least keeping it
level? Buying makeup is fun and great
and i love it but it is not self-care for
me, I’ll look pretty and fabulous and I
deserve the product but it should not
be seen as “self-care”???
Beth: I think self-care means different
things for different people but in
this rhetoric of you are worth it/you
deserve it, your sense of worth doesn’t
necessarily have to hinge around
buying things? Whilst with working
class people (particularly people
of colour) I get that we have to buy
nice things for survival sometimes
(see Tressie mc’s essays ‘The Logic
of Stupid Poor People’). Because
disposable income operates differently
in our communities, and I hate when
privileged people try to shame our
spending habits. Plus if I turned up
for an interview in some weird thrift
shop dress for like a $1 I realistically
wouldn’t get the job, or people in work
might not respect me as much (like a
man at work thought I was a ‘hoodlum’
trying to break IN to my office the other
147
 day, it was so humiliating and made me
want to cry/break stuff). However, in
that model of consumption I don’t think
I have much (or any!) say in it. I’m an
unwilling participant. So I don’t get the
nicer dress for work because I’m ‘worth
it’ but because I’m worthless and
people will think I’m some Dickensian
orphan trying to rob them otherwise.
This is generally why I have a problem
with the whole thrift shop mentality
of self-care, it is only subversive or
empowering on certain bodies.
Ginger: Love it! Something that I’ve
been thinking about lately is that P\
people act like if you’re happy you
shouldn’t want anything. Like, say
you’re in love, or like you have really
great friends and you, like, idk, have a
lot of ~NATURE~ around you to frolic
in and you’re doing work that you (are
supposed to) think is valuable? You’re
supposed to be totally full up with
those things, totally content, hashtag
simple life hashtag blessed, but tbh
when I’m happy I want everything I love
– I had a beautiful morning and the sky
is perfect and there were pancakes
for breakfast, so i want a coffee too
because it feels good in my hand, it’s
this warm soft reward for being alive.
There’s this thing, on the flip side of
TREAT YO SELF, this romanticized
notion that if you have something good,
if you’re in a good way, you shouldn’t
want to dress yourself eccentrically
or need/want to put on makeup, or
even eat sometimes (ALL I NEED
148
IS A CRUST OF BREAD AND A
THIMBLE OF WATER BECAUSE I’M
BASKING IN THE LIGHT OF LOVE/
FRIENDSHIP/WHATEVER) but it’s still
something you instagram on yr iPhone
6 like “here let me show you my glorious
sunset, the one i had and you didn’t”
Beth: Oooh yes that is such a good
point Ginger, because equally the idea
of money doesn’t buy you happiness
is bullshit when you can’t afford bus
fare to leave the house y’kno? (i.e. my
life rite now as I was made redundant
last month and am currently on the job
application grind) To say we do not
need material things in ---***---insert
Madonna voice here--***--- a material
world is a joke, and the sort of thing
some kind of upper middle class hippy
would say! And yess whilst I am not
able to impulse buy cute clothes I will
never not buy myself a little flapjack,
or a cup of tea, or something like
that, because it brings colour to a
Wednesday morning y’kno? Perhaps
the question isn’t why do we greedily
horde beauty and comfort like magpies,
coz hey that’s human nature. But how
can we widen this definition to include
the coins at the bottom of our bag and
the holes in our shoes y’kno?
Ginger: Yeah, I guess thinking about
“treat yo self” is rly complex for me
because the way I do it is to get myself
warm cafe drinks, either to help drag
myself through existing when it’s
rough, or because, yeah, color to a
Wednesday morn. It’s a bad habit, and
one of the only ways I’m not frugal,
but it’s survival, this silly overpriced
paper cup ... and ultimately is a big
part of why I’m never able to save for
“something real,” because I fritter my lil
paycheck away on a petty luxury that
feels like a necessary warmth. “I can’t
afford this” I think, haha, as I pay. If I
were good at being broke, I’d save the
money I spend on coffee and tea until
I had “enough” (to get out of debt?
to treat myself on a more luxurious
scale? enough for what, idk) and I’d
never be too tired or anxious to cook
myself something healthy and filling
and cheap after I got off of work. It’s
exhausting to know you’re “doing it
wrong” but it feels nigh on impossible
to “do it right”, i guess?
Beth: In my opinion there is no
right way to be poor, to be working
class, to be broke, at least from my
experience, my personal background,
my family background. Whether in an
encouragement to spend (à la treat
yo self), or an encouragement to save,
the myth is that if we did something
right we could save ourselves-which
puts the blame onto the people
struggling in these systems not the
systems themselves; we are still, in
so many cases, unwilling participants
in a system set to fail us. Instead of
debating whether or not a hot drink
is appropriate (something I will never
apologise for ever, as even without,
I still will never earn enough, save
enough to repay my debts, unless I
like become the next Rebecca Black
over night or something!). Rather
it’s necessary for us as like a ---**---
society---**--- or whatever to open up
conversations that get to the root of
the problem, critically evaluating what
a living wage is, how poverty impacts
mental health, why unemployment is
so high, why cliches like the ‘cycle of
poverty’ are very real and very shitty,
how these factors live in conversation
with race, gender and disability, and
hopefully even make practical actions
to changing these things in small ways.
I think then we can truly get an idea
of how these quick capitalist ideals of
self-care exists within broader issues
surrounding class, poverty and mental
health, and work to actively change and
challenge them.
Doll Hospital fam! This
conversation is literally endless
and these are just our vague
thoughts on the matter, not the
final word, not at all, not even!
What do YOU THINK? We want
your thoughts! We need your
thoughts! You can email us at
dollhospitaljournal@gmail.com or
drop us a submission or ask on our
tumblr. We’d love to hear from you. n
149
 YOUR FEELING ARE YOUR FEELINGS

by Eline Van den Broeck

“Sometimes I feel so stressed my body doubles over and vomits for

absolutely no reason, and…” The person who I am telling this interrupts,
“What gives you the right to be stressed? I have a full-time job, a house
to clean…” At this point I get up because there is no more reasoning; this
person compares and contrasts and has their own hierarchy of pain, one in
which I cannot be included.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Sometimes though, you are the one crying and before I stop and think I can’t We would be honoured to include your work in
help but say, "but what about me?" and I hate myself for it.
ISSUE TWO OF DOLL HOSPITAL!
But there is no hierarchy of pain; what you feel is what you feel. A silly fight
with a lover over a messy house is easier to take than losing a loved one, We are looking for all kinds of submissions from
but if it hurts you in some way, it hurts. Your hurt is your hurt. An other’s hurt comic art to collages, short stories to poetry. In
is hurt, too. No matter how simple, how little. Our hurt grows if the outside short, all mediums, genres and styles are welcome!
world rejects our feelings because it makes us somehow not valid to feel.
We need to communicate our pain to others, in ways that are constructive,
in ways that will not cause more hurt. We need to learn how to empathise You can find out more about us at our tumblr:
without fetishizing or pitying, we need to learn how to listen and when to
stay quiet, we need to learn about each other. And the way to do this is to dollhospitaljournal.tumblr.com
listen and unlearn our habit of compare and contrast, we need to unlearn
binary thinking that’s been stomped into us by (Western) thinking.
And you can send us submissions
Stay quiet and enquiries via email to:
Stay calm dollhospitaljournal@gmail.com
Listen
Do not retort
Let the other speak
Hope to hear from you soon!!
Try to understand

By listening to others, maybe we’ll learn more about our own hurt this way
too and how to heal ourselves. n

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 Doll Hospital is an art and literature
print journal on mental health.

We believe print is the best medium for

this project – a refuge from toxic comment
sections and constant link skipping.
Something tangible to slip in your
book bag and read on the bus.

Something still, something quiet.

Something just for you.