Dear reader,
I apologize. My PC got a virus, I believe. I only use one of my computers to access this blog because, as you may know, I am a paranoid schizophrenic who still cannot quite fathom that shady organizations or legitimate government organizations are NOT monitoring this blog and my IP addresses...which makes this computer the only trusted computer to blog from (sometimes I just follow paranoid practices because it is almost instinctual, I could be wrong but frankly I don't intend to check this time).
Perhaps you have forgotten about me, that strange paranoid schizophrenic woman who claims to be a law-abiding graduate student determined to end discrimination against the mentally ill. I never forgot about this blog, I just could not access the internet until today. During this time, I have been successfully continuing my studies in the Master's program (well, except for data structures, a computer science class, which I am most assuredly failing going into finals), posting updates all over facebook, and reading the news.
The country is experiencing social upheaval.
There has also been a lot of media around social justice issues lately (i.e. Garner/Ferguson). I will take this time to express my solidarity for ending police brutality against Blacks and Latinos. My city (where I was born and raised) has a high population of poor Blacks and Latinos (and I grew up on welfare to an unmarried Latina mother--yeah, I am that baby all grown up). I sympathize with the protesters and my city has a long list of slaughtered drug dealers and alleged gang members who never got to a fair trial, they just got 'smoked' (as the newspaper quoted one of the living witnesses as hearing a police officer talk about how he smoked the guy).
"You give us the cards to play with and then bust us for gambling." ---Malcolm X
Society, rich people, housing zoning committees, whoever decides where people get to live, tend to approve of minorities living beside other minorities--and not by them. I grew up across the street from million dollar homes owned primarily by Anglo-Americans with white-collar jobs. Across the street from this ideal, police-patrolled neighborhood was a big street upon which dozens and dozens of cheap and ill-maintained apartments were crammed beside each other.There, the front lawn of the nice house across the street was larger than the inside of the entire apartment for three (though, if there were three rooms, there were most likely six or more people living there because the only other place would be the homeless shelter). I grew up down a tiny side street, an alley, really, where cops didn't go patrol unless they got multiple calls insisting they come arrest somebody for domestic violence, assault, child abuse, whatever. This was in the 1980's- 1990's when my city still had not created a special police tactical unit for hunting down alleged gang members (who may or may not be actively committing crimes), holding them up to search them and their families' houses, and to arrest them and anyone present.
Now there is a tactical unit for patrolling the high crime areas in my city, but they still don't go into my old neighborhood street. I know because I obsessively return to see if anything has changed. It has not. I drive in my 2000 shiny black sedan into streets where few drive due to high rates of poverty and DUI charges and watch as the neighborhood people watch me as I drive past. They don't go to college. They have criminal records. They are on social aid programs. I know this because the cul-de-sac was so jam-packed with apartments that everything that happened next door, or downstairs, or in the next apartment, was fully audible to me from my bedroom. This was the one place where landlords would accept tenants with criminal records, evictions, and terrible credit. Not all poor people are criminals, but those who are hold the rest of us hostage and the police just spend their time patrolling the nice neighborhoods to protect the rich from my neighbors, while pretending like there was no need to secure safety for those of us in the bad neighborhoods. Everything is a mess. One of my psychiatrists once asked me if I really thought I was being paranoid or realistic in my neighborhood when I thought someone gave me a weird look or they were about to lose their temper. "Is that really your sickness or is it just the situation," he asked. I shrugged. I always associate schizophrenia with the feelings I got living in that crappy neighborhood. I spent a lot of time indoors (i.e. all of it from age 5 to age 15) to avoid the pull of gangs and crime and just general shadiness. That is a lot of time to spend feeling fear and thinking obsessively about death and crime.
There is some evidence that schizophrenia is genetic but that there can be environmental stress triggers that increase or spur on mild or latent symptoms. I highly believe that. My brain is naturally suited to believe that you are thinking about robbing and assaulting me as I walk to my apartment because of its schizophrenia. Add to that the daily crime rate in that tiny block-sized cul-de-sac of crap apartments, and you can see how my brain wound up getting totally fried by paranoia and fear. Despite this, I really do attribute my ability to escape that neighborhood mostly to my paranoia about keeping six feet away from anyone, even as we pass on the side walk. My paranoia came in handy in that environment. My crazy also worked to keep an air of "keep away from that crazy b&^%$" around me at all times so that my neighbors did not ever EVER ever rob me or jump me or assault me or anything except on bad days when they mocked me for carrying books or dressing all in black like a little poor, Mexican-American goth.
I got out. I have a Bachelor's degree from the University. I am a graduate student. I own two cars, both post-year 2000. My credit score is 640, not too shabby considering the person who I was raised by had a credit score below 350. I am out. but the issues are not over. Should I just go mingle at the cocktail parties with the surburbanites? Is that not the American Dream? I would love to. I really would love to just mindlessly drink cocktails and chat about the stock market. My heart, my soul, my paranoia, they are all still in that crap neighborhood where I spent ten years hiding indoors to avoid crime. I do not want that for the kids there. I see them on my weekly (sometimes nightly) drives into the cul-de-sac to revisit my childhood home. They stand in the doorway behind screen gates, sometimes they even wander around in what would be adorable little packs if it were not for the knowledge that they are likely being apprenticed in crime by someone older. The men stand around in the shadows wearing baggy pants and gang colors. They drink forties and smoke blunts. They stare as I drive by slowly. I always have my marijuana pipe handy for that trip because it makes me look like I just pulled into the neighborhood to smoke discretely. This might sound horrible, but it is for my safety, so I am allowed to drive through the neighborhood and out of the neighborhood without anyone approaching or yelling something at me. It works. There is some code, or social etiquette, that I am familiar with which allows me to enter the neighborhood without being seen with distrust (i.e. a snitch, a lost driver). Yes, it is shady, it is a criminal hang-out, why would I go back? It is home. The crime in the air is as much a part of my childhood as McDonalds or Barbie. If you don't understand that, you will never understand the protests for Garner, Ferguson, Rice, etc....society has allowed for class and racial segregation in housing, not only that but they have crammed these segregated communities into cheap apartment complexes which the police sporadically patrol (unless the cop is out for action, in which he WILL drive down the little alley street into our neighborhood). Seriously, 'Merica, what did you expect? Crime is bad. Executions are also Bad. Fair Trials are good. I say YES TO FAIR TRIALS!
I will write again tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to pop in to say that I am here, alive, going into finals in my graduate program, and I still have immense gratitude and utter curiosity for those who venture into this blog to read, I know this ain't no Sunday morning reading! :)
#FergusonSolidarity
#FairTrialsNotExecutions
