I am not learning the lessons from my suffering that those in power want me to. They want me to concoct some kind of redemptive narrative out of all I suffer. I can’t and I won’t. Some of the lessons.

Power is the most important thing. Power and empowerment are the most important thing because they make people who wouldn’t otherwise behave kindly behave kindly. When you are on the bottom you get treated like what comes out of the bottom because people have zero incentive to treat you any better. Most people are good to those who have something to offer but when you don’t have anything to offer their true colors come shining through. I remember trying to get an apartment and all of the sudden my mother was concerned about the noise I’d hear if I lived there. It takes effort to be kind so people slip into their default unkind mode when dealing with people on the bottom.

I can’t experience inner peace without something on a schedule. Religious people opine about how believing in whatever they do gives them inner peace. It never did for me. What gave me inner peace was Ativan which is “addictive” because I go to the indigent clinic, members of my family who don’t go to the indigent clinic have no trouble getting it. This shows that my principle roadblock to treatment isn’t that the treatment isn’t there, it’s that I’m marginalized and there is no treatment for marginalization besides power which I do not have because I have a physical disability and mental illness and am likely neurodivergent.

Disability is unequivocally bad, especially if it’s comorbid with mental illness. People opine about redemptive narratives around disability how it makes you stronger and more resourceful. The only thing my visual impairment physical disability gave me was the ability not to get jobs from interviews and not drive so I couldn’t be the social moth trying to pursue potential friends as they backpedaled. Most people you can’t be honest about things like this because people want to see a silver lining or they dismiss your suffering outright. This is because if you have a visible disability it is incumbent upon you to put others at ease with it. I grew up likely neurodivergent so I learned this fact by trial and error because it’s not something people are honest about.

People can’t wrap their heads around the fact that some of us have little control over our thoughts and emotions. I get gaslit for not being able to control my emotions when bad things happen to me. Upping the medication dose is a blunt instrument that just erases more of the self to give one more control of their mind. Society actually likes it when people are in this weakened state because they can be manipulated more easily. If you don’t have any power over what goes on in your life and you don’t have any power over what goes on in your mind that’s when you know you are heading towards the bottom. Only adding physical pain will make things worse.

The studies that showed SSRI antidepressants not treating actual depression were correct. I have been on SSRI antidepressants twice in my life. The first time they did help my depression some but the bipolar mania put me in the mental hospital and while there they found out I still had moderate depression. And just now I got on Zoloft and it does make me more assertive but because I’m on the bottom I get to choose between being walked over or weathering the blowback of standing up for myself. So now I am depressed from weathering the blowback of being more assertive. Zoloft seems to treat the accuterments of depression like rumination without making one any more hopeful. Rumination was where most of my poetry was born so taking that away from me actually incurs a cost. SSRI’s mitigate stress so you can be a better worker drone, and few would admit this. Zoloft has helped me work harder.

The thing that scares Christians most is the full self of someone who tried to find God but the whole thing blew up in their face. Multiple Christian friends have renegotiated their relationship with my to only stick to surface-level topics. If their god were so powerful I don’t know why my full self would scare them. It’s almost like their god doesn’t exist. The least a god could do would be getting communication right. My life has been a testament to being told all kinds of crazy stuff by the voice of God and sometimes not ignoring it and being sent to the funny farm. Also being an abject failure despite being smart and talented enough not to be is another thing that makes their brains do a backflip.