::hugs:: thank you. I don't think our culture really tells people to their face that they had any impact, so it's really important to me to hear that.
It really started with going into an asylum and meeting other people both there and on the street that were severely mentally ill and yet were also now my peers, and we were alone together against the world that hated us. That helped me stop seeing myself as separate from anybody. And if I'm in an asylum, that means I can no longer think hateful things about my father without also applying them to me. I had to give him grace if I was ever going to give myself any.
Going inside an institution, prison or asylum or shelter or group home, you are suddenly peers with your fellow inmates more than you are with anyone on the outside. You are forever marred in society's eyes with that stain of impurity. So you kind a have to rearrange how you think about everyone on the inside, really. I ended up there because I ran from domestic violence--ran for my very life. And what did I get for "doing the right thing" and asking for help?
So that really shattered a lot of illusions I had about justice and authority, and about myself and my place in the world, and about my father and my relationship with who he was. I learned that I had to learn to forgive him, because he was no longer just ONE person I knew that was schizophrenic, or used drugs, or had been arrested/in jail. That was also a whole bunch of other people, people who were suffering and being tormented the same as me, who I saw did not deserve it and were not benefitting from any of it. And I'd seen the truth of who actually did the abuse, too. I'd met truly awful people, I'd actually had my human rights and dignity violated and I had seen it done to others.
My father was not a monster, not like I used to think he was; because now I've met monsters, I have been in the maw of the terrible machine that traumatised my father his whole life. I understand now.
I know it's cliche, but like, a huge part of this is tied up in my dad and who and what my dad was, both to me and to other people. And there's a vast difference between recognising the humanity and the human rights of everyone and saying they've never done anything to harm others. But there's no such thing as purity and there shouldn't be a sense it's important to have never done wrong.
The person who tries to wash the blood off their hands is more trustworthy than the one who has no blood there to wash. Because the latter will never TRY.
And as long as a person is alive they can try, they can strive, they can change.
Even dead, a person has human rights that are inalienable. They can be oppressed, they can be violated, but they can never truly be taken. That's what inalienable means. If you do not have shelter, that does not mean your right to it is being taken--it means your right to it is being violated and oppressed.
And if a corpse has rights, then I do too. If I say a person who has committed harm still has human rights, then what a hypocrite I am to say I alone do not have human rights! If the worst person on earth still deserves their human rights, then I must also.
It isn't truly about "deserving". I had to dismantle the structure that sorts everyone into "deserving" and "undeserving" and start thinking about rights, which are not contingent upon your behaviour or the content of your character. They are dependant on whether you are a human fucking being.
And that lifted such a burden off my shoulders. I do not need to make sure I stay "deserving", I do not have to "earn" my rights. There are simply rights that I have, and rights which are being violated. There are humans, who are part of a greater ecosystem community, not good people and bad people, or lazy people and hard working people. There are just people.
Because the attitude that you, uniquely, are fucked up and fucking up and undeserving and therefore should be punishing yourself all the time with neglect and other forms of abuse because you aren't perfect and all that matters is whether YOU are is a very Protestant structure. It's selfish, it's self-centred and plays into the exceptionalism. Nobody is alone. No one acts alone. We are a community. The way I treat myself is the way I treat my neighbours. The rights my neighbours have are rights I also have. If I violate my own rights that is not taking them away--not even I can take away my rights, they are inalienable.
That doesn't mean they go away.
They are human rights, not good person rights, not hard worker rights. H U M A N rights.
