Before I start this off, yes you read that title correctly. There are no typos or wrong words, that is what this is about. There ultimately not one main story in this, there isn’t going to be a specific topic I’m going to focus on. This is for the people who are angry and don’t know what to do. For the people who are angry about things, they’re told they should just let go. Well, I’m going to let go. Let go of the feelings and reactions I have to various things here.
“One thing the gay rights movement taught the world is the importance of being visible.” – Charles M. Blow
There was recently a special on TV during my Spring Break. It was called When We Rise and it was one of the most amazing things I have watched in my entire life. If you have no idea what I’m talking about or have not heard about it, go watch it. It will change your life. It starts off in the 1970’s and goes all the way into 2016 and talks about the struggles that the LGBTQIA community faced when it first started campaigning and continues to face in our modern day society. This is all based on true stories of a boy named Cleeve Jones who became the leading activist for LGBT, Navy Sailor Ken Jones who became an organizer for African American communities as well as being an activist for the LGBT community, Roma Guy who surged through the Women’s Right Movement and split it in half by joining the Lavender Menace, and Celia Chung who became a strong Transgender Activist and an even stronger Woman in Power. This show starts with the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and continues into the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and keeps storming through into Bill Clinton’s presidency of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as well as the Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage Equality and leaves off with the current struggle for Transgender Rights and the threats of current government administrators. This show made me want to take up a sign and riot. This show made me angry that I had not done enough for this community; that I only displayed compassion but had no direct actions for it. I feel that modern day society has so many people talking about the change they want to make, or about how angry they are that something is happening, but no one does anything because either they don’t care enough, or they’re too afraid of the reactions that could come from it. So watch this show. Watch it if you want to become educated, watch it if you want to feel empowered to do something, watch it if you want to develop compassion for those in the community, watch it if you disagree with everything about it. Just watch it. Because for the love of everything, MAKE THE STRUGGLE KNOWN. ONE STRUGGLE. ONE FIGHT.
“Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.” – David Levithan
This one is going to touch on Mental Illness in a different way in which I have not spoken. If someone is going to talk about Mental Illness, I would expect this person to either suffer from one, know someone suffering, or be educated. If someone is speaking about Mental Illness with no education or experience with it, let me be frank here. I don’t want to hear it. You wouldn’t trust someone without a medical background to diagnose you with cancer, would you? Then why the hell, are people listening to others who have no education or experience with Mental Illness and taking that as the Gospel to follow. Let me also ask this, who do people think they are telling someone what to do when they have no experience with it? If I could have a dollar for everytime someone told me to “Get over it” or “Just be happy” then I wouldn’t be taking out a loan for my loans right now. It is absolutely ridiculous how people deem themselves the right and proper person to talk about something that they have no idea about. Especially in a society where Mental Illness is still looked down upon and not taken seriously. Oh, society has come leaps and bounds from where it was before, but this does not make it okay. People in society still believe that people with Mental Illness are faking it, or just need to move on with their life. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of having people pretend to know what they’re talking about, I’m tired of people pushing others around because they think they’re superior because of mentality, I’m tired of people who look down on others with Mental Illness, but mostly, I’m tired of people who try to invalidate one’s mental illness. If you have ever done this, how dare you. How do you manage to speak without any empathy or understanding for anything but your own life? There are so many resources out there for people to educate themselves on every topic, so there is no excuse for your ignorance and unkind doings. Ask questions, look topics up, increase your knowledge. Do something for crying out loud instead of just sitting there and making people feel bad for something they can’t control. Don’t look down on someone who can’t get out of bed to do anything one day, don’t look down on someone who you don’t know. If you’re so concerned with everyone else’s decisions and lifestyles and have a negative opinion for everything, do you have a life of your own that you’re living or do you just assume that this is your own world and everyone else is just living in it?
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale
I have been working on myself lately, and I have vowed to start making more of a difference. To start taking a stand and defending my own points of view. To start fighting for rights that are not there. If I can help one person in this world, then I have made one difference for someone. I’m tired of being sad, I’m ready to be angry. This isn’t to say I’m not still going to be sad because that’s just how Depression works and I can’t remember ever not being sad, but I’m going to be angry as well. There are going to be my days where I can’t get out of bed and where I can’t think of any thoughts other than negative ones, but for the days where I’m doing okay, I’m going to start doing something. I’m going to bring up points in class if I disagree with something, and I’m going to go to protests and rallies that are planned because nothing is getting done with everyone being afraid of offending others. Go out and do something, make a donation, volunteer, educate yourself, protest, rally, march, call your Senators if something upsetting is going through the government. The time for people to be angry is now. We have the means to change and the amount of compassion to act, we just need to actually do it. If you don’t see any injustice in the world, then maybe you need to look in the mirror; because you might be apart of it.
Argle-Bargle & Blatherskite 