This is a submission for the May 2022 carnival of aros on the topic of mental health submitted by AUREA.
You’re a freak, fill in the details later
I suppose I should start with discrimination and stigma. I was a weird kid, had what was referred to as ‘anger issues’ which as far as I’m concerned meant ‘we don’t care whats wrong with you, just stop getting into fights’.
Why did I get into fights? well, because life is like that I suppose, I wasn’t great when it came to socialising and from what I can remember, I was one of those people who it was apparently fun to treat like shit.
So the fact I couldn’t really understand romance, was uncomfortable talking about it, that meant time for some bullying. But I’m not sure if it was discrimination for that identity. I suspect that something else would be found. Whether that was general nerdiness or studiousness, hobbies, who I was hanging out with, being socially awkward in general, how I look. The blunt truth is that there were some people who just were odd in some way. There are also some people who just find it fun to take advantage of that.
I didn’t have the worst of it, but I could see that nothing we could ever do would get us better treatment. Some kids sure tried it, get on with the bullies, do what they tell you. Never worked for long, those boys got the worst of it.
So I fought back, and as much as I hate to say it, if I hadn’t punched a few people in the face I probably wouldn’t be in such a good place now. I wasn’t liked but people who stayed quiet got treated so much worse, I could mostly live in peace, and I had gathered a group of close friends precisely because they knew I would stand up for them.
I got through school, things calmed down as a got a bit older, I did pretty damn well academically and ended up studying physics. Not bad for a freak. But it does mean talking about mental health is something I struggle with.
Probably not the sort of advice I should be giving to young aros is it, ‘hey kids, some people will treat you like shit anyway, crack their skull in, you can’t afford therapy and the adults don’t give a shit about you’.
A good job
One of the other prompts I struggle with is the question ‘Do you have any tips for finding a community that is supportive of your mental health?’.
How do you find that community, well in my experience have a decent job which gives you enough free time to invest in other communities. So I guess you get more shit advice from me, ‘how do you find these communities? just don’t be poor’. The key is having enough free time to build communities so you aren’t relying on the few people you happen to spend most of your day with being the sort of people you want to hang out with.
Unfortunately finding communities needs time, time to go and meet people, hang out together, get involved in clubs or hobby groups.
Same as before when I was talking about school. What would have made things better for me really is going to a better school which did a better job stopping the worst bullying, or one where mental health support was a thing that existed, rather than you have anger issues, once a month talk to this unqualified idiot so we can pretend something is being done.
Everything is awful
I suppose what I am getting to is that I don’t talk about ‘my mental health’ entirely in terms of personal things such as neurodivergence. I suppose I am in some way neurodivergent, or at least, there is a reason I was singled out as a weird kid. But most of my mental health is really about money and the freedom that money provides.
Mental health is about how I fit into society, in this case it is about how much I earn, how much my parents earned and where that left me.
So when I see the prompt ‘Do you have any tips for others who are interested in speaking with a therapist?’ I guess the thought is that maybe there is advice to give about dealing with a therapist who doesn’t know about aromanticism, or worries about whether they will treat lack of desire for love as a problem to be fixed.
Here’s my tip, get political. Fight to make mental health treatment an attractive career choice, fight for the ability to train as a mental health practitioner without being completely fucked with debt. Fight for decent mental health support beyond just therapy. If you are lucky enough like me to live in a country with some sort of national health, maybe push to get some sort of decent mental health guidance that is tax funded and free at access. When and where I grew up the answer to whether you spoke to your therapist about your identity is ‘are you fucking high’. If you are interested in speaking to a therapist, that has to change.
Roboticanary 