Okay, so, there’s some stuff I wanna talk about, but I don’t really know how to, and this is gonna be a continuing conversation, so please be patient with me as I try to get some words together, and also, please talk about this stuff as well, with me or with your friends or with the internetz or with your diary, or whatever… This might not be eloquent, it’s kinda scattered and long, but here we go…
You may or may not have heard of To Write Love On Her Arms. Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of TWLOHA, recently came to the University of Guelph to talk about the history of the movement. When I went to their presentation on Saturday, my knowledge of To Write Love On Her Arms was pretty basic: I knew they were an organization that talked about self-injury, and I knew of the annual date on which people with histories of self-injury literally write LOVE on their arms (a visible declaration of a history of self-injury, or a way to mark oneself as safe(r) to talk to about depression and self-injury). I remember hearing about them back in 2006, when they had just started up, and they remained on my periphery but I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to them. According to their website, “TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also invest directly into treatment and recovery.”
The short story is that To Write Love On Her Arms was created shortly after Jamie Tworkowski met a woman named Renée, who was struggling with drug addiction and couldn’t decide whether or not to look for help, cut the words ‘FUCK UP’ onto her arm, on what she said would be her last night before seeking treatment; when her friends brought her to a treatment centre the next day, she was declined treatment and was told to come back after she had spent one week clean. (It’s not uncommon to be denied treatment or simply treated like total shit if you have recently self-injured, in case you haven’t figured that out on your own yet.)
I wanted to believe that this organization could be a good thing, and that I would in fact leave feeling inspired and, um, less alone (whatever that means). I told myself to try to ignore the fact that yet another dude was telling a woman’s story from her, when I would rather hear her own voice and her own perspective. I even tried to ignore the twenty-minute set by some boring dude on an acoustic guitar singing about Jesus and making weird gay jokes between songs. But after the presentation, I felt like I had learned absolutely nothing about depression, self-injury, addictions, or suicide, and hadn’t had a useful conversation at all. Instead, I felt like I had sat in on a seminar on how to name-drop musicians who almost got famous five years ago, and how to market t-shirts. It was a disappointment, to say the least. I don’t remember the speaker even talking about mental health, or talking about who struggles with addictions and mental health, who commits suicide and why; he mostly rambled on about clothing companies he used to work for, and made a lot of pop culture references that went right over my head.
There is, of course, a major part of me that is really into supporting an organization that raises awareness (I dislike that phrase but don’t know how else to put it, and also tend to be critical of so-called “awareness campaigns” in general, but that’s another story for another day) of mental health conditions and encourages us to have conversations and tell our stories; I’m just not sure that this is an organization I want to support – at least, not with my whole heart (certainly not with my cash). Even after spending the evening quietly critiquing every word, and sitting through the most awkward Q & A session ever, I still caught myself considering buying a t-shirt; it seemed like just about everyone was already wearing one when they got there, and they all bought more. It wasn’t because I wanted to advertise for them – I don’t. But the t-shirt struck me as one small, simple way to wear my scars on my sleeve so-to-speak, an indicator that x, y, and z are happening in my life and I want to talk about it. I can understand how wearing a t-shirt might work as a conversation-starter for some, a way to finally be honest about their stories and quit hiding; but I just wouldn’t feel like myself in it, wouldn’t feel real or safe.
Also, can we talk about the god-vibes going on in that space (Yes, I said god-vibes, not good vibes)? I was prepared to be uncomfortable, at least; I mean, with an organization like this, they might as well just call the campaign TRIGGER WARNING, am I right? I just wasn’t prepared for all the God bullshit.
As we waited for the presentation to begin, the logos of on-campus groups sponsoring the event were projected onto four large screens behind and above the stage. Aside from Guelph Queer Equality (who called out the dude with the acoustic guitar for using queerphobic lyrics, and it was awkward and wonderful), and some health-related groups that I’m not familiar with because I’m not a student, the sponsors all seemed to be related to faith and religion; controversial topics, certainly, and also potentially alienating and anxiety-inducing. This was something else I tried to ignore, another bad sign, but, especially during the Q & A session, god just kept creeping up on us. Rather than ask a question when given a microphone, members of the audience would simply thank “The Lord Jesus Christ” for… still being alive? I don’t know. I wondered if these were genuine people who just wanted to let everyone know what was currently helping them with their own depression and didn’t mean any harm at all, but the paranoid side of me (and I am referring to actual paranoid tendencies, not making a clunky and cruel mental health analogy) wondered if they were part of the campaign as well, “audience members” paid to stand up at every presentation to stand up and let us know that god would make sure we’d be okay.
I do not like it when people try to tell me that whatever is working for them (whether it be religion, medication, meditation, daily walks, therapy, writing in their journals, painting, expensive fancy organic produce, whatever) will also work for me. What’s working for me right now is writing & drinking lots of coffee & getting lots of sleep & watching squirrels from my bedroom window, but those things aren’t enough to keep everyone – or even only me – alive; they’re just what’s working for me at this time. It might be different tomorrow. Seriously, when you’re talking about mental health conditions, it is necessary to speak from a place of understanding that there are no cure-alls, the are no guarantees that a, b, and c will work for everyone (otherwise, we wouldn’t even be depressed, right? Because you’ve already discovered the magical cure?); and that goes for religion and spirituality, too! When I feel lost and want some kind of guidance, I read my Tarot cards, but I don’t recommend this to everyone, because for a lot of people, those cards are absolutely meaningless. And that’s okay.
Ramble ramble! There was one thing I liked about the To Write Love On Her Arms presentation, and since I like to try to find the little things that make me happy and the positive sides of all the dark stuff, I will share it with you: After we learned how to market t-shirts (design a nice logo, talk about them on the internet, get your friends in bands to wear them onstage), we were encouraged to simply tell our stories. And y’all know I’m into story-telling and sharing ridiculously personal information. So yeah, the silly text-only video with the cheesy inspiring and triumphant music they played toward the end kinda made me wanna go home and write more stories, wanna stay alive to create more stories. As TWLOHA told me, I am living a story; I am a living story. True enough, I can get on board with that (the ‘board’ reference is only funny if you were there to listen to this guy talk about surfing – well, talk about the brand name t-shirts that are marketed toward surfers – for, like, an hour).
TWLOHA’s latest campaign asks us two questions:
What is your biggest fear?
What is your greatest dream?
My biggest fear is dying in an accident caused by somebody else’s clumsiness before I’ve had a chance to write a million books and stuff, and my biggest dream is to write those million books and actually pay my bills and whatnot with it. This breaks down into smaller fears and dreams, like being scared to ride my bike because people in cars keep almost accidentally killing me as they roll through stop signs, and like writing non-stop all day everyday because I have too many words and stories to get outta me to ever be able to stop. What about you?
Overall, I guess this is just another example of not being able to support a specific group in good conscience, not being able to organize under a name created by somebody else, because we’re bound to have such differing opinions and experiences, that to be associated with a name created by somebody else for their own ends, their own method of “creating awareness” ,could potentially be just seriously embarrassing and gross, and every time that group’s name came up (like, if I wore a TWLOHA t-shirt, and somebody commented on it), I would have to ramble along this epic disclaimer of my true feelings about the whole thing, and it would be exhausting, and detract from other conversations I’d rather be having. So yeah, while there is a lot of shit we need to deal with, a lot of conversations we need to keep on having, a lot of ways we need to learn to take care of ourselves and our friends and our communities, I’m choosing to do this under my own name, and I highly encourage you to do so as well. I can find tiny bits of inspiration in the TWLOHA project, but it’s not enough.
Lovingly & fucked-up-ed-ly Yours,
P.S.: I still want to write LOVE on my arms today. We’ll see.
P.P.S. This seems like an appropriate time to re-share something I wrote about a year or so ago on oppressive language; specifically, the word “crazy”. Mostly because people keep using the old crazy analogy for anything and everything in conversation with me, and I don’t know how to talk about it in the moment, so I’m just gonna passively link to it on my blog instead. If you wanna keep using the word “crazy” unnecessarily and inappropriately, you can keep on doing it, but if you could try to at least not use it around me so much, that’d be rad, thanks. (It triggers me and then I tune out and miss the rest of your story.)
