As I have said many times, solving the mental health issues that plague the US will involve a lot of hard work, difficult conversations, and measured steps to create positive impacts for all of us. Adults need to be adults and have mature discussions about how to help as many suffering people as possible.
What we’re seeing from our government now is anything but adults being mature.
As I said, that’s the good news. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be abused any more than a woman asks to be sexually harassed on the street or a minority asks to be discriminated against, and there wasn’t any action you took to cause it. The decision to abuse was 100% on the abuser.
I also understand that this is bad news. Some people decide to hurt others based on their desires and ideas. There is no other reason and no promise that it will be just. It isn’t easy to let go of that ideal when it’s been drilled into us from an early age. Letting go means a complete reinterpretation of the world and our place in it. It’s hard work to figure out how to live our lives if something we’ve clung to since childhood isn’t true.
It’s disheartening to think that I’ve spent over 20 years in the online survivor community advocating that we believe survivors and act on accusations of abuse only to wind up here. This feels like we’ve gone back to the days of sexual violence being unheard of because no one would dare talk about being a victim. It’s enough to make you want to quit. I felt that way last week. As I watched my wife’s hope for women across the country leave her body while also being overwhelmingly angry at people who voted for a criminal and a rapist, I wanted to walk away and shut myself off from the world.
Instead, I stepped away for a few days and reminded myself that there will be innumerable victims of sexual abuse who can’t talk about it and need to know that they are not alone. There are growing numbers of survivors who will be losing their families and friends and need to know that they are not alone. We will all be looking for community.
If anything, the importance of staying online and continuing to talk about child abuse, sexual violence, mental health, and supporting vulnerable people is higher now than it has been in the entire time I’ve been doing this. Now is not the time to walk away; it’s the time to fight for survivors.
Most of the time, we don’t know what people are dealing with, but even when we do know, they may react to trauma and stress in ways that don’t make sense to us.
That’s life. That’s being human; being mature means accepting and being comfortable with it – not trying to fill in all the blanks yourself.
I failed to notice that the restaurant only offered pickup orders until we sat around, wondering why I hadn’t gotten any notification about our food being on the way. It had been sitting there, getting cold, waiting for us to pick it up for at least 20-25 minutes. We quickly hopped in the car to get it; all the while, I apologized over and over to my wife, berated myself internally for not noticing and screwing up our dinner, etc.
When we got there, I ran inside only to discover that the restaurant only had one meal, not two. Part of the order had gotten cut off, and no one caught it until I got there and asked about the second meal. The manager made things right very quickly, apologizing over and over.
My response?
“No worries, it’s all good. We’ve got our food, and that’s all that matters.”
And then I got back in the car, telling myself that this whole mess could have been avoided if I had handled ordering correctly in the first place.
What is wrong with me?
When I think of the famous speeches of Dr. King, I am always reminded of this fact. We have always seen certain groups of people as less deserving of the rights we willingly claim for ourselves. Be it blacks, immigrants, prisoners, those with mental health struggles or disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, or addicts, it is far too easy to look at them with judgment and disdain. Maybe even fear. They’re different than me. What happens to them is not my concern. They probably brought it on themselves anyway.
Those are all too easy to say. The hard work is in looking at people who are different from us, who live different lives, make different choices, and recognize our common humanity. That’s what Dr. King was talking about. Not being blind to our differences but being aware that we are all human and deserve respect based on that. So when a black man is lynched, or a prisoner dies from a lack of medical care, or someone struggling dies from suicide without access to mental healthcare, or because their own family won’t accept them for who they are, we fail as a society. We fail to see human life as human life.
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