Trigger warning for mention of incest
…I love the definitions of stigma and mental illness. They complement each other so well, don’t you think? Kind of like a cocktail, a drink made by mixing various spirits and/or fruit juices…and any hybrid mixture…and any number of different drugs used together to treat a condition. I personally like 1 part stigma to 2 parts mental illness: it has a nice little kick to it. Combine the three and well, whew, you have a real drink here. I – a person – can only be facetious about this. If I wasn’t I’d be blubbering all over this keyboard.
This video is based on intake I did with a therapist at the Institute for Human Identity a few years ago. Another trans person had a good experience with a therapist there, but I got assigned to someone else and it didn’t go so well. A lot of the dialogue from the therapist is verbatim what I remember him saying to me. Only some of my responses are accurate to life, though. I didn’t actually tell him he was a jerk, for example, but I found it rather satisfying to do so in this video.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Winter Hammell. Her first post with QMH.org is an elegant story about pouring her feelings about mental illness into a single portrait.
i drew the #6 sable brush across the canvas with the steady hand of a cartographer, laying down a bold stroke of phthalo blue lightened with a tip of titanium white.
Holding the palette on my left thumb, clutching three brushes between my fingers, and one clenched in my teeth, i could taste the rich, luxurious oils. Drunk on the exotic perfume of linseed oil and rectified turpentine, i stroked and dabbed the canvas of gesso-primed Italian linen.
