(Just in case you had any doubts, dear reader.) In all seriousness, though, I think this song by Marina and the Diamonds has an important message, much like Horton Hears a Who‘s “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” I come having discovered this song on the eve of yet another diagnosis related to past trauma. Listening to this, too, I think of the recent controversies involving mosques: in Bridgeport, near Ground Zero, and throughout the country.
Sometimes, people can be cruel. The levels of human cruelty can seem unimaginable sometimes. Sometimes, I think people forget that other people, no matter how different they are, are just people too, and people have feelings. Upon trying to find out more about my most recent diagnosis, I came across cruel, stereotypical statements from people who obviously didn’t understand it or desire to understand it. Most of all, they obviously did not consider that it is most often the result of child abuse and neglect. In fact, remembering my own college days as a Psychology minor, I hesitate even telling others about this diagnosis because I remember my professor telling us what miserable people those who have this diagnosis are, and that there’s not a lot of point dealing with them because they’re never going to change (actually, according to my research, that’s not true).
Guess what? I’m not a robot. I have feelings. I have problems, just like anyone else. Mine might veer into suicidal crises more than some, but that doesn’t make you any more human than me. When you want to make fun of someone because of the way they are or the way you think they are, consider why they might be that way. Then, maybe, consider what caused you to not be that way. Why do you not have this specific mental illness? Why are you not Muslim? The answer is never “because I’m better than x.” The answer is “because y didn’t happen to me,” “because I had z support system,” “because my ancestors were Christian Europeans and this is what my family knows to be normal.”
I am rubber; you are glue. Anything you say about me says more about you than it ever will me.
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