Words From Schrödinger's Cat

Words From Schrödinger's Cat

(TW: Mentions of suicide)

 

The mad survivor’s script for this moment says:

 

“I'm so grateful for all this support. I never knew that living could feel good before. I've overcome this crippling depression and I've learned how to ride the waves of grief and memory…”

 

i’m supposed to say that this war inside of me is over, that i conquered the monsters of mental illness – not that i laid down with them and made peace.

This language of acceptance is still seen as surrendering in defeat – So i’m supposed to say that i want a sane, abled life

i'm supposed to wear my survival and diagnosis like removable badges of honor; psych ward wrist bands like medals of service

i could be another poster survivor

Shape my story into a politely motivational poem, one that gently reminds you that we mad people are still People

 

It’s not like it’d be a lie, but all truths become like poison when we only experience a sliver of it so to hell with that script and fuck your comfort.

The uncomfortable truth is this:

 

i will never triumph over mental illness. There is no Herculean success over what has been called the disease inside of me. There are no demons or monsters here – only memories that echo along ravines where time like water, has carved rivers and holes through these bones

 

And what can i really say, about these shadows, except that they define the edges of light, illuminate limitations and somewhere between that light and darkness – is where i exist

 

To be mad is to be a paradox

Held in superposition of alive and dead, my continued existence tied to your perception of this box

And if you never have to open it, you can keep me locked away in institutions or refuse to rent to me without consequence

 

Under this microscope of medicalization i can exist for the purpose of seeking a cure

but i cease to exist when my madness is no longer an individual problem but a symptom of a diseased culture.

If i can't be cured it’s better i don't exist at all, because it's easier to get M.A.I.D. than it is to get housing or a doctor to see your symptoms as anything but evidence of your madness

i’m impossible to ignore when i fail to produce a profit but so easy to blame for being too difficult to accommodate

 

To be disabled and mad is to be microscopic made macro – 

Every micromovement magnified, to be analysed, inspected for the disease. 

Every doubt, every fear dissected for signs of regression, of relapse.

Every smile torn apart and scrutinized for pathological joy, every hope scanned for delusions. 

There is no recovering when the very nature of who you are has been classified as sick, as broken, as disposable – But every day i live with this tenacious will to die 

 

Because even this visceral desire to live begins to attack the body when all it has known is how to fight to survive – and sometimes this desire to live becomes like a caged canary that i stare at in the night, gasping for air while wondering how long can we survive before the carbon dioxide made of all that’s too uncomfortable to say poisons us? 

How many more chances do i have left, at walking away from that ledge before i too am condensed into another statistic? This madness never leaves, it’s encoded in helix strands weaved together by trauma and a culture imbedded with ableism

But there is no shame in a heart that embraces life with the veracity of death

 

i die and i die every spring – drowning in the brilliance of yellow dandelions that dare to grow between broken places

i die and i die with the rising summer sun – my breath extinguished by the beauty of the chicory petals in the morning dew

i die and i die with the autumn’s sighing winds – pieces of me letting go with the leaves that fall from these groves

 

This life is lined with wilted petals that greet the winter with a terror that rises and falls with these tides

i am never certain that spring will come but still i light candles

In the window of my heart

Willing my future into existence the way my ancestors called the spirits of their loved ones home

 

This body is my home, cluttered and lived in

Haunted and creaking, 

It will always be a mix of illness and wellness,

But no matter what season i am in,

This life will always be worthy of life.

 

[Written for and performed at the Canadian Mental Health Association’s annual “Wellness For All” fundraiser in Niagara, 2024.]