This is the why I have chosen to go into the mental health field.
BUT there is a stigma of mental health and whether people who suffer from it can be productive, important members of society despite it.
Given the fact that some may think of "us" (mentally ill) as productive, participating, advancing and important members of the mental health wellness field it is false gives power to the fact that the idea of mentally ill people doing so.
This is a stigma we need to break. I am a victim of trauma. I have a mental illness. I have trauma from childhood that has affected who I am and who I have become. I have HOWEVER chosen my path as a path of wellness and healing and HELPING those who are also traveling the same road but may or may not have the same resilience or strength I have found (however that may be ... genetics, guidance, life events or whatevers)
THIS makes me powerful and in the position of power to use my powers for good instead of wallowing in my own self-pity and make people's lives better. SOME say "hey maybe you should not talk too much about your mental illness ... it makes people uncomfortable"
I say ... BE uncomfortable ... BE aware ... BE not so right with what IS SO wrong with the world and mental illness and trauma and abuse and mental incapacities and then maybe we can have an intelligent, coherent conversation on how to make people well.
THAT is what I want and STRIVE for in my journey in the field of mental health awareness. No more secrets. NO more smoke screens. No more pretending that shit does not exist in our worst nightmares but also in our most vivid realities. This is it. THIS is the end of the stigma. Enough is enough.
The poem was written by me. I have finally given it a title.
Imagination Saved Me.
So once there was this little girl all full of wonder and imagination
Innocent and pure playing in spaces of her own mind
Making extraordinary worlds out of ordinary places
Doing what little children are meant to do
But not because she chose to but because she HAD TO
TO escape the hurt, the abuse
the things she knew was not right
When it occurred to her that these things, these feelings are not supposed to happen at the age of five, six, seven
And beyond or before
These were grown-up things
Grown-up feelings and intensities
Things introduced too early
So her brain protected her
With forts and dragons and fairies
And all things beautiful and magical
In the world that took her away
Until the darkness came again
When the dungeons and the chains and the darkness crept in
That child grew
Despite the hurt
Despite the realization that a small vulnerable body should not or could be exposed to such grown-up feelings
Despite the physical manifestations that a child of mere five should ever feel
And she grew like a flower blooming in a field of weeds
In a field of unfertilized ground to become something that perhaps was meant to be
And therein lies the beauty of abuse that never should have been
~t 2019/10
