These transcripts deal with themes of mental illness and trauma
The conversation took place in Ariel’s apartment over a plate of cookies, some made by Ariel, some made by Cassandra’s grandmother*. Ariel and Cassandra met in a queer group six years ago and have remained friends since then.
Okay. So I’m going to be looking down at this just to make sure it keeps recording. It’s never stopped recording, but I’m really scared that it will (both laugh).
Honestly, sounds fair.
So please state your name your age and your gender identity and presentation.
My name is Ariel. I am 23. My gender identity is female and I am speaking very low. (Cassandra laughs) I will try to speak louder.
It’s like your voice got lower for this interview.
This is me when I’m calm and trying to be cool and thoughtful. It’s actually a lower tone than my normal volume. I try to be soothing when I’m destressing people.
So calm, so thoughtful. Okay, so gender identity and presentation.
Yeah, female.
Female. Okay. Um, so have you been officially diagnosed with a mental illness and if so, with what?
I have been officially diagnosed with a mental illness, I think technically? (Both laugh) Um, one day I asked my therapist if I had a formal diagnosis because my mom told me that I had to have one. Um, and she told me that she doesn’t really believe that much in diagnoses. That diagnoses are just categories that help insurance cover you. Um, but I think she wrote it down on a form one time and it was panic disorder and a mood disorder, but no formalized depression.
So unclear on that? So why don’t you tell me what symptoms do you manifest?
Um, symptomatically, uh, when I’m not on my medication, I have really intense mood swings, pretty much like three or four a day, just like… not mood swings but like, cyclings of moods, often hitting really, really low points. I’ll have… weeks where I don’t… really have any energy to do anything. Or if I’m doing something and I’ll be working so hard that I forget that I’m a person and forget to eat and… I have struggled in the past with like, self harm and suicidal ideation and all those symptoms that pop up with depression.
Um, so you’re… you’re currently seeing a therapist?
Yes.
And you’re, uh, taking medication? It’s a like an antidepressant or what?
It’s Welbutrin. It’s a mood stabilizer.
So you… do you feel like it’s helping?
I’m the kind of the person who…. you know, those type of people who like to test if their medication still works by going off of it every so often? (Cassandra laughs?) Yeah, that’s me. Trust me, it still works. Um, (Ariel laughs) just to be clear, it’s a very… I still falter here and there. I’m not really good at taking medication regularly, but…
So for you, both medication and therapy have been fairly effective.
So the first time I did therapy for a first really bad bout of depression, I did it without medication. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and I… am very happy to have a mix of things now. I was on a medication that didn’t work for a long time.
So that’s kind of like… that kind of addresses a little bit of the treatment you’ve gone through. So this is going to be a very broad question. (Ariel laughs) Um, I’m warning you… and people have spent two minutes answering it and people have spent two hours (Cassandra laughs) just this one question. So it’s up to you how much you want to give. Um, but if you want to sit and talk through your entire life, I will be very happy to hear that. So the question is, what’s your personal history with mental illness? So basically from when symptoms started manifesting to now, how has it changed? What have been the major turning points? What have been the major elements of it?
Um… okay, so I was… I guess it’s not weird that much anymore because now we’re talking about it more. But guess when I was 11, I started manifesting depression symptoms. I… was just in a place. I was interested in a few boys and I got rejected by this one boy that I was really good friends with and I was also figuring out sexuality at that time and everything kind of came to a head and I just got in such a bad place. Um, I started self harming. I… had a friend who was also not very happy at that time and we would just talk and talk about how unhappy we were. Um…
So kind of like… like an unhealthy way of like building off of each other or…?
In a little bit of an unhealthy way, but in a little bit of a, “this is what I have right now”. Yeah, no, it’s both. We developed a love story for the ages, no big deal (both laugh) Um, that later. But eventually I… one of my friends found out that I was self harming. Um, someone told the guidance counselor because I was technically a harm to myself or others. Um, therefore they had to call my parents. That was… a time. I was put into therapy immediately because my parents and I then never talked to the guidance counselor ever again. So that was maybe not the best call on their part and maybe not the most supportive of super depressed children who are 11. Uh, but yeah, so I was immediately almost forced into therapy. I say forced because I really didn’t want to go. And as a lot of people know, when you try to force someone to get help they and they don’t want it, it doesn’t work. And so we then, a month or two of I was “magically cured” (Ariel laughs).
For the record, she is doing heavy air quotes.
Heavy air quotes I would say. So yeah, I left therapy. Um, there were a lot of family things going on at that point. Um… yeah, lots of stuff with my weight and body image issues and just all around not good things. Um, seventh grade I found out I was bi and started coming out to people and had my first like, technical girlfriend and was super, super unconfident about who I was. And so I like tried to go back into the closet. It was interesting.
Just sneak back in there (both laugh).
Just sneak back. Uh, and then it all is kind of a blur until like eighth grade I… I don’t remember what exactly, but I know it’s really not good place. And I finally went to my parents and I was like, I think I should be back in therapy.
What made you more willing to accept it at that point?
I don’t know. I think I was just in… I think I was in a bad enough place. I… I mean, I had not… it had appeared that I had stopped self harming. I had not, um, it was really, I just remember not really being able to do life. I was not… I felt like I was lying to all my friends. I felt like I didn’t get along with them. Like we had nothing to say. Like they didn’t really know what was going on with me. Um, and I just, I think I hit a breaking point. Um, at that point I was like enough suicidal, but I was, you know, I think that that was, uh… one of the like last ditch efforts and I was very lucky to have parents who took me very seriously at that point. Um, and so I started going to therapy again. I started seeing my therapist that I see now. I still see her. And that worked for awhile. I went through a friend breakup in ninth grade, which really shook me.
Was it with the girl you were talking about before or…?
No, it’s a separate thing. Um, the girl that I was talking about before was the one I dated in seventh grade and sort of… kind of, it’s complicated (both laugh), but, uh, we just… became friends and stayed that way on and off, pining for each other, but… (both laugh).
Just gay things.
Just gay things. Uh, but no, I went through a friend breakup where all of a sudden my best friend stopped talking to me, which was awkward because we were in the same carpool. (Cassandra makes a sound of distress) Yeah, that’s fun. Uh, and I… felt really, really alone and felt… like I had nobody, cause all of my friends who I had been friends with, were not really talking to me and I realized I wasn’t really friends with anymore. And it was much more complicated than that. But I mean it was a combination of things, but it was realizing that that feeling I was feeling in eighth grade where I was like, I don’t… my friends don’t get me. That’s probably true. And we probably didn’t get each other. And so I had a few other friends. I started hanging out with them a lot more from that point on.
I like to think of my… almost my depression in two different ways. Like I think pre… up until that point it had been like a very suicidal ideation heavy thing where I really… I mean I was still getting good grades and I was… but I just like could not physically see a future for myself. And I think that after that I could see a future, but I was…that was me… I mean post that it was trying to figure out how to live with this thing that kept on coming back, that… to a point, I remember talking to my therapist and being at some point, like I was kind of feeling happy again some time around 9th or 10th grade. Um, and I was like, I’m scared, I’m scared it won’t last. And that’s a really terrifying thought when the idea of happiness is so foreign to you that you don’t want to get tricked into it or suckered into having it and then losing it.
Um, but I mean, my friends at the time and mainly, I mean… (insert name of mutual friend) was incredible. I would flake on him all the time, be like, I’m sorry I can’t leave my bed. And he would be like, “no problem boo, take care of you”. And I don’t… I don’t know about his history with mental illness and I don’t really… I mean… but I know that he… even if he couldn’t understand, he was always someone who was super supportive of what I was dealing with and never asked too much of me and never like, blamed to me. And that was, I mean, incredible to have that. Yeah.
Um, as I was older, I obviously met more people with depression. I could talk about it more. I felt more comfortable. I was still very, very sad. I’d get dips and… bad parts. And yeah, I mean obviously met you along the way. Yeah, that was fun. Um, senior year was really hard. I think that with… the discovery of… so I had obviously done the whole like sexuality thing already, but I hadn’t really been exposed to much of sex and to me, uh, I had always been someone who ended up punishing myself for feeling… making bad decisions or choosing something not good for me when I was very much in a sad or bad place. Um, and I think with the beginning exposure to partying and to like, sex and trying to figure it out, I, uh… I mean and this continued onto college, I made some not great life choices. I mean, that carries me into… that was like just me knowing that I probably shouldn’t be doing things if I’m not ready for them or not able to… care for myself or have someone care for me. Um, that carries me until freshman year of college where I… then… was… I enrolled in a poetry class, well, a nonfiction class, but with my poetry professor who I took many poetry classes with after, um…In the middle of that class, which was already doing a lot to help me like, reflect on my life and what was… what was all about, I lost my virginity, uh, which was technically… That was a long story as you know. Um, but uh, and then…
Do you want to talk about how you felt about it? You don’t have to say much, but if you want to say anything?
No, I can talk about it. I um, lost my virginity to a man that I did not know at the time. Um, I had met him at a night out and I think at that night I just had decided that I needed to have “fun”– liberal use of air quotes there. And so, I met someone, I made out with them on the dance floor. I went home with him and that was kind of it, I mean, then I found out that he was friends with all my friends. And that we had just somehow never met each other. Um, and then he spent the next four months ignoring me, which was fun. We were in the same room a lot. Um…
How did that play into to kind of how you were feeling?
Oh yeah, no, super not feeling great. I was… (Ariel laughs) yes, I forgot. It’s connected back to how I’m feeling. Not just tell stories about my life (Cassandra laughs).
I mean I like hearing stories about your life.
But yeah, I mean I that did not put me in a great place. I was not… I mean freshman year is always hard on people. It’s finding new friends, finding new people. I mean I found great friends my first semester, people I’m still friends with to this day, but… I was super not happy with my body at that point. I never, I mean I had starting… I started having body image issues when I was 11 and up to that point I had never really dealt with them and it was a big part of my constantly feeling… I mean what plays in depression more than like self image issues? Um, I had never felt comfortable in my body.
How much did that… or how did that interact with kind of the weirdness that was happening for you around physical intimacy at that time?
Well… I didn’t learn about sex in the best way, like in like… like get introduced to it. I mean, the first time I went to a party, I got blackout drunk. Um, and I don’t remember much of it, but I hooked up with a girl and I was… she was trying to take me to her room and then my friend was like, “I’m taking her home”. And the girl was like, “don’t worry, I’m big on consent”. And my friend was like, “I’m still taking her home”, um, and he took me home. And… but that was like the first time I had hooked up with someone at a party and that was like my first party that I went to. Uh, and I mean… the first time besides that… that I had… I mean, so that like leads into like I hooked up with someone else around there, but, and then I hooked up with my friend (Ariel laughs) and… and her ex, uh, right before I went to college. Uh, and that was, I definitely, as you know, felt a little weird about that, but I felt really comfortable with you. I think men always make me feel really uncomfortable. And I think part of that is that I don’t trust them very often. Mainly because I don’t know them very often. I like, don’t tend to get into very close friendships with men.
And so… I mean, a lot of things were building up to the fact that like after I had hooked up with… after I had lost my virginity to this man, I was feeling really bad. Um, mainly because I didn’t know why he didn’t want to talk to me and I was left feeling really bad about myself and my body and everything. And he also was very, very thin and I was like, I feel huge. And… all of this came to pass that I just was feeling really sad one night and really not in a great place. And I hooked up with this guy who I knew I didn’t like and I knew it would be a really bad idea. And yet, you know, when you look at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, you’re going to do this thing… turns out that’s not a good idea. Like 80% of the time (Cassandra laughs). Um, yeah. So it was not a good idea. Um, I went home that night, uh, and I was so… I was… I was, I mean that’s…. there’ve been many rock bottoms in my life. That was definitely one of them. I went home, I like hopped in the shower. I turned on the water pretty much as hot as it could go. I’m really surprised that I didn’t burn myself. I was not okay. Um, and I went in the next day and I couldn’t stop crying and I went to go talk to my poetry professor who was at that point my nonfiction professor and I was like, hey, I really fucked up last night. What do I do? And she was like… she said, “you have to start learning how to forgive yourself for things”.
Uh, that has never left me because I mean the entirety of my adolescent life, I was incredibly, incredibly sad and did a lot of things I was not happy with. I treated people… and I mean, I like wasn’t super nice to my parents. And it wasn’t super forthcoming with them. And that may have been for other reasons, but I was hiding a lot and I was being secretive and… yeah. So at that point, I decided to stop drinking. I decided to stop hooking up with people. Uh, I decided to stop going out and I decided to start taking care of myself… and I did that, which is crazy, for around like six or seven months. I was just trying to focus on me. Turns out, I also made bad decisions after that (Ariel laughs). It doesn’t stop here. Um, I hooked up with that guy again. Um, I feel like it was maybe some way for me to like reclaim things, but it wasn’t… it was a bad idea. Um, and so that saga ends there cause I was like, Ariel, you dumb hoe, again? Um, so I… that was at the end of my sophomore year. Um, and so I like went back to trying to figure my shit out (Ariel laughs).
Um, I was… I mean this is… this is mainly an exploration of like, depression and sex and intimacy. And that’s because for me, they’ve never been separate. Um, up until that point, I had never really felt… I had a lot of conversations with my friends where it’s like, your friends love you and you know that and you want to feel happy because you know that they care about you and you want to feel supportive and you want to feel all of the love that you’re throwing at you. And me and my parents, as crazy as they are, um, loved me and cared and were trying to be supportive, but I… had never… it’s very different to be, to have someone tell you that you’re great and you’re beautiful and like that you deserve love and that you’re… great… than to experience that. And so I was feeling very angsty (Ariel laughs) about never having been in a relationship. Um, that wasn’t like… I mean, I love my friends and… my friends and I have very intense relationships and very caring relationships, but I think at that point I was… I don’t know, just not feeling great.
Um, and then I tried… I like tried to pursue one of my friends. It didn’t end up working. I mean, we hooked up once, it just didn’t… it wasn’t a thing. He went away for a semester. And I don’t know what happened…. I can’t explain this. I really cannot. But apparently all of the work I had been doing in therapy– oh, spoiler: I had been in therapy this entire time. So I had been always working on myself and it would be various spikes of shitshowness and not shitshowness. Um, but… yeah, um, apparently all the work I was doing had been paying off and I started being like, hey, I don’t hate my body all the time. That’s crazy (Ariel laughs). Yeah, that was weird. It was a weird like… and I wish I had known how to… how it happened because I wish I could impart some knowledge or advice, but… a shit ton of therapy and work… like self reflection, realizing that most of my issues about how I looked and my self confidence and weight were almost solely… just internalized bullshit, I don’t know. But I decided that I was comfortable. I don’t know how, but it happened.
Um, so I entered my senior year feeling really confident or somewhat confident… mildly confident, let’s go with that. Um, and… I fell in love. It was a very long process. It wasn’t a long process falling in love. I was probably in love with him a lot earlier than I admitted it, but it’s fine. Um, but yeah… um, it was the happiest I can remember being. Senior year was, I mean, to be clear, it wasn’t all perfect. I was fighting with everyone (Ariel laughs). Um, and that was really hard and uh, there were lots of troubles along the way, but… it was insane feeling cared about and desired and taken care of. I… I mean at that point I was dealing with insane, insane levels of anxiety. As you can tell, probably, when you get closer to graduating, you get really anxious, especially when you have experienced depression and when you have experienced, um… thoughts of suicide. Because… especially for an extended period of time… because you truly never believed that you would get there.
Specifically to graduating college as kind of like a marker?
Well, I mean, when I was in middle school, I didn’t think I would… I didn’t think I would survive high school. And when I got to high school, I really didn’t think I would be alive past graduation. So I never really thought that… I would have to make the choice of my career. I mean, that’s a crazy thought, like not… like I was kind of planning for the future, but I wasn’t really planning for the future. So I was there and everyone was like, “what jobs are you going to apply to? What are you going to do? You’re going to take the MCAT? What are your future plans?” And I was like, I’m still shocked I have one. Please let me deal with that first. Um, so I got really, really anxious. I got kind of sad. I didn’t know what to do. But I graduated and I’m at a point where I think I’m doing good. I mean, I’m in a post Grad life, so it means that I constantly think I don’t have enough friends and that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life and that I’m constantly freaking out about it. But if… nine years of therapy has done anything for me it’s that I know not… to feel hopeless about it. And I know that I’m going to figure it out, probably.
Um, I don’t… I mean, as I’ve grown up, I’ve grown out of feeling… I mean I’ve grown out of a lot of the intense, intense lows. I mean, I also started medication around Freshman Year of college. I was on a medication before. I was on an SSRI. Um, and it just… I didn’t know it wasn’t working until I realized it was not working. Um, which is really hard with antidepressants. You don’t realize… you’re like, oh, I think I feel better. But you don’t realize that things are so much different when you find a medication that actually works for you. And yeah, I just don’t feel… I feel like I am… I’m very, almost hesitant. I mean, I am kind of… I do science, so I like to be scientific, but I also try to always underestimate my… stuff. So I typically… I know that like I have a past of struggling with depression. Um, and I think I always feel like it was further away than it actually was. I mean… the last time I was really not doing okay was less than two years ago. Um, less than… yeah, less than two years ago.
What’s in all… all this… this journey… (Ariel laughs)
Sorry that was long.
No, no, no. Do not apologize. As I said, can take as long to answer any of these questions as you want and I’m very happy to listen to your story cause it is valid and important. Um… what is the thing that you’re proudest of?
I’m proudest of the times I’ve actually reached out for help. I think that that… those were the hardest moments because the urge is to just deal with it. Everyone’s just dealing with their lives. Um, and to kind of just be like, oh, I feel this way, I’m just going to keep on feeling this way and then I’m going to die one day. And that’s just… (Ariel laughs)
Y’know (Cassandra laughs)
As one does and it’s not… I don’t know. There have been moments where I… in my life where I’m like, I’ve known I should reach out and I haven’t. And then it… you come to a breaking point. And I think that… hm, the reason I’m still okay and still here and still doing relatively great is that I had a lot of really good people and really trustworthy people in my life that I… were always like… always there. And I mean I have a lot of friends also who experience mental health issues. And so… what was really hard was negotiating when you can’t be there to help someone. Uh, my friend and I had a really good system where we would just like, let each other know. It’s a weird concept to be like… we had this system where we just told each other things, but we really tell people when our friends are… and are really struggling when we are also struggling and we can’t be there to help them. But we would always be like, “I’m not in a place where I can help you, but I can help you get to someone you need”. That was also really closest thing.
You’re premeditating some of my questions (Cassandra laughs)
Sorry.
It’s not something to apologize for (still laughing), I was just thinking, I was like, yeah, these are going to…this is kind of answering…
It’s just gonna be you reorganizing this interview (Cassandra laughs) I give you permission to do that if it makes more logical sense (Ariel laughs).
I’d be… I’m still gonna ask the questions to see if they bring up something else. But I apologize if some of these questions are redundant for things that you’ve already said…
Obviously, your questions are really on point. Clearly.
Um, but so if you were to point to… kind of the thing you’re struggling with most… most in this current moment is it kind of like dealing with post Grad life and like, kind of the weirdness around that or what would you…?
I mean… it’s dealing with the systems I’ve put in place and how to keep the like, okay… so postgrad life, it’s really, really hard. You’re not around your friends anymore obviously, and you feel like you’re flailing the entire time. (Ariel laughs) Getting excited yet? (Cassandra makes unhappy noise) Um, but… but as someone like, who experiences depression, I have always made sure to take care of myself, give myself downtime. I know that I can’t spend too much time with people or I will be very cranky and not good. Um, I… but now that it takes effort… and also like, effort is a thing I can’t like, expend too much effort on things, but when you now have to put in a ton of effort to see people on the… if you want to see them after work and it’s like, after an eight hour day, you have to go see more people. You have to go take a train to go see someone to spend the money…
You have to keep doing the thing? (Cassandra laughs)
Keep doing it over and over again. I don’t know. It’s really… really hard. It’s been really great having a partner in this. Um, mainly because when I’m not… when I’m feeling down or feeling like I’m not achieving anything or like I’m never going to succeed or whatever. Um, I have someone to go to and he may not be physically here, but it is good to have that. And I mean, I always have people around who I… I know would be very much willing to listen to me complain. Um, but yeah, I mean it… it’s really hard trying to both maintain the structures I have in place to care for myself and my mental health and to work those into having a full time job and trying to be social and like, I haven’t written poetry in two or three months just because I was out trying to find a job and interviewing and blah, blah, blah and doing this and doing that. And like that’s something I’ve put in place so I can process my emotions like those… that’s how I deal with things and… it to not… to having not done that in awhile, that freaks me out.
What about poetry makes the processing of those emotions easier?
Poetry is not about… details. It’s not about explaining, it’s not about… having someone see something exactly as you saw it, but it’s about… saying something unsayable and… or… communicating that in any way you can. And… I think that poetry lends itself much more to the processing of emotions. You can say, “I was feeling sad”, but you cannot explain necessarily the experience of it except in this weird, muddled, non grammatically correct mix of things. Um, I mean I don’t… I started writing in sentences recently. But I normally don’t mainly because I… write in what way feels kind of more natural, which is to me personally, which is… blips of images, blips of moments of… experiences that are intense and indescribable. And maybe it’s just a smell that I can maybe get across or… a vision, but it feels like also giving it a shape if it’s not… if it’s on a paper or somewhere away from me, it is not trying to eat my soul (Cassandra makes jaw snapping gesture. Ariel laughs) Exactly.
Um, so people have different ways of conceptualizing of their mental illness. Um, and for more like.. depression and anxiety, like maybe you conceive of these differently, but it’s like people come up with a bunch of like, metaphors to describe how they feel. Um, I think these are really useful because they help explain how people position themselves in relation to their mental illnesses. Whether there’s something that’s more external being enacted on them or whether they see them as more like, internal personality traits. Like what… what do your mental illnesses feel like to you?
So… I majored in neuroscience as you know. Um, and so I can’t really separate… that from the way I conceptualize mental illness. Because it’s kind of indoctrinated into me. So… I kind of constantly see it as internal. Um, but I can see it both in a physical and internal way… you know… you know, when you can’t physically get warm? Um, I don’t know… that’s how I conceive of my depression, but it’s also like… depression, if you look at a thermo map of depression patients, typically they look fairly different. Um, lower temperatures. It… I mean… it physically alters your chemistry, which I think for some people freaks them out, but I think it comforts me a lot. Um, but I mean that also doesn’t help when you… are in a horrible place and you feel like someone has literally scooped out the inside of your body. Um, which is also how I see it from time to time. Um, I think it really depends. I think… I try to resist simplifying depression to a single image or a single… anything because it always is different and the symptoms are always weird. Like, I mean some of them are the same, but.. I mean I think every bout of depression from anyone who like, has it cyclically knows that It’s… it’s uh, incredibly different thing… which is why it’s crazy that we often try to treat it the same way cause it always feels… fairly like a different disease almost. Um, but I don’t know, I guess I don’t really…I think I used to think of it as a… uh, you know, image all encompassing. But I think as I’ve… not in a weird way, stopped trying to categorize it and just kind of let it be a thing that happens and the thing that I now have like more of a… arsenal to deal with. So yeah, thing… thing is what… (Ariel laughs)
It’s a thing!
I think it’s a thing! That’s what I really have to describe it.
Still picturing like a thermal map of…
There are them. You should Google it. It’s really cool.
Is it um, of their entire bodies or…?
I think so
Interesting, I didn’t know that it affected…
I think so. If I’m getting it right… it might also be cocaine use (Both laugh).
That’s a little bit different.
Cocaine use does… okay, no, the thought of cocaine to like former addicts of cocaine physically lowers their body temperature. But I… I am pretty sure I saw a thermal map of depression. You should Google that, I should Google that… we should Google that after this interview.
Okay (Cassandra laughs) well even if it’s not true, like using that way to describe like the way it feels, is still true to you whether or not like that is a scientific… but that’s really interesting. Okay (both laugh) um… moving on! Um, so what are the specifics sorts of situations that tend to trigger the worst thing of it? It seems like intimacy in specific forms is a very big one.
Yeah. I would say a lot of mine have to do with either… with intimacy… I’m very big on fully committing myself to people in… pretty much most ways. Um, I just like to be all in, in relationships. Um, whether they’d be romantic or not romantic, uh… which means it’s particularly painful when other people are not as willing to be all in. Um, so that is definitely a big trigger. But I think that I spent a lot of time in my life… frantically trying to figure out how depression starts. Like what triggers it, like why, and… I dunno. I think there are so many other factors, underlying things, things you don’t realize. Things that have been sitting with you your entire live that maybe something painful happens like a rejection or a breakup or something. And it feeds off of the things that you’ve had and all of your doubts and fears and everything you’ve kept throughout your years and haven’t dealt with, haven’t talked about, and haven’t sorted through so you could find some sort of peace with it will get devoured by this like spark of sadness.
It’s like people have amplifiers for different emotions of a situation according to like their history, sort of?
That’s my thought. That’s my view of it. I really… I, yeah, I think that every… every, I mean it’s why I’m such a big proponent of dealing with all the shit you have.
What a concept.
What a concept. But I mean… it’s why I… personally, so I hope to one day be a psychiatrist and my theory, so that maybe colors my… my thought a little bit, but I think that everyone could do with some therapy. I think that mental health would be…
Even people who are neurotypical like, just a little bit of therapy.
But that’s the thing. I think that you are neurotypical until you’re not. And I think that… the things that we don’t deal with, our baggage that we carry that one day might… light up in flames. Um, you know, like I… I don’t know. I also think that everyone needs to learn with… learn how to like be alone. Those are the… like learn how to love themselves for it. There are lots of things that I believe. (both laugh)
Ariel’s list of life lessons?
I mean… a little bit, but I… I don’t know. There are some things I like to know, which is that… I know I can be alone, which means when I choose be with someone, it’s because I love them and not the idea of being with someone and… I’m not trying to constantly run toward… like I’m not trying to constantly run away from something. All of this baggage that I’ve stored. Instead I know that what I’m running towards is something that’s worth going towards.
So on the note of kind of like, navigating these sorts of things, what… what are like the actionable things that you do on a day to day to make yourself feel better? It kind of sounds like… negotiating the time that you spend and the way you spend time with other people, writing poetry… what are some other things that just kind of… you do to make yourself feel better?
Um, I’m a big believer in… calmness or like…
Tea? (Both laugh)
Yes. Tea is clearly one of the…um… tea…
Let the record show that I have never come over to Ariel’s and not drunk tea (both laugh).
I’m very big on pushing tea on people. I like baking. I got really into baking when I was super stressed, uh, when I was applying to college and I… yeah, I watch jeopardy. In large amounts (Cassandra laughs). I think that added it to… my friend and I were not in a great place on a day, on a specific day. I like, avoided going to house… My house was having a dinner for us. We were having house dinner and I told them I couldn’t make it… my room was off the kitchen. I was hiding in my room (Cassandra laughs). I physically heard them making dinner and I like texted… I said that I wasn’t, so they thought I wasn’t there. So I walked out to use the bathroom and they were like, “what?” I was like, yeah. And they were like, “what?” And I was like, no, I couldn’t. But… one of my housemates came home later and I was like, we need to do something. And she was like, “we need to do something”. And I was like, we need to watch jeopardy.
Why jeopardy?
It’s so monotonous and calming (both laugh) there’s like… nothing you have to do. It’s like you’re not expected to know any of the answers. You just need to watch people who know them cause they weirdly studied for it. Um, but… it was just something to do and have in the background and focus on and having no stakes in it. And surprisingly at that point there was nowhere you could get jeopardy. So we had to illegally find jeopardy. It was really, really funny. But, um… I’m glad they added it to Netflix. I have not finished it. I’m saving… I save it for days when I’m not in my best mood. Um, I save… Nailed It, the cooking show for days when I’m having panic attacks. Um, so I have shows that are good ways to deal with things. I have… books and crosswords and friends I call when I feel weird and on my walk home. I… give myself a lot of outs of plans.
Um… I try to make sure I’m not hiding myself away too much. Also, I mean there’s making sure you’re not exhausting yourself socially exhausting and yourself in the world, but there’s also making sure you’re not… making yourself truly alone and you never want to be reliant on just one person because that’s exhausting for them. Um, so… making sure that I reach out to the people I care about and even if I’m not just… writing about them, thinking about them, knowing that there are important people in my life…
You are important people.
Wow. Stop it (said affectionately).
So this… is one of the questions I think you already answered, which is how much the people around you know about your mental illness and what do those conversations look like? Um, just do you have anything else… you feel like you want to say.?
I do have a few other things, which is that… I think most people… it’s hard. I changed friends a lot so, and by the time I was in college I wasn’t really… as bad as I have been. I have had… I have had very bad times, but it was nowhere near a constant thing. Not something that I couldn’t… kind of hide if I wanted to. Uh, most people know cause I’m pretty open about talking it about it. But there are very few people who know I’m on medication just because like no one… asks or thinks to ask or maybe like they don’t expect…. I don’t know. We’ve never… I’ve never had a conversation with that. Um, I think I drop it casually that… you know, when I was depressed… back in middle school… I think I talk less about current or very recent things mainly because the recent things are too close.
So it’s more retrospective?
I… everyone knows, I think that I experienced depression when I was a child and that really shaped who I was. Um, I don’t know how many people know that.
How much do you talk to your family about it?
That’s really hard (both laugh).
Like you… you’ve talked about, like… mentioned your friends and like clearly you had to talk to your parents about it at some point.
So.. my parents are not super clued in to most of it… a decent amount of it. They clearly know about the younger stuff because it was a requirement. And then I went to therapy and they obviously have been knowing that I’ve been in therapy for the last few years. Um… but I think it’s really complicated. We have a very complicated relationship. I… ever since they found out that I was super depressed and self harming and they didn’t know about it, they weren’t even suspecting it, I think that they’ve had huge, and by that, I mean really… I mean my mom had fears about missing it.
How much does your mental illness color your interactions with other people? So this is kind of a… there are two ways of looking at this and you can answer both. One of which is like, how do you internally approach… um, social interaction. The other one is, how do people treat based on either knowing about it or seeing symptoms of it.
I think it’s hard because recently… most people have not seen me in a horrible, horrible state of depression mainly late cause I isolate the shit out of myself if I’m feeling bad, mainly I cancel everything and I stay in bed and… I learned early enough that… if you don’t act upset people will normally think you’re fine even if you’re a little weird. And… those are defense mechanisms that I’m constantly like, constantly trying to pull down. I… like just got to the point last year where I like, cry in front of people. Before that, like only one or two of my friends had seen me cry in front of them and I was like…
I don’t know if I’ve seen you cry.
I cried a lot this past year. A lot. Almost everyone has seen me cry um, in the last year. But before that, I didn’t really like… I’m finally getting to the point where I’m comfortable enough with like, the people around me that I loosen up a little bit. I’ll let people come into my room. Like Emma once or twice has come into my room and I’ve been sitting in the dark and she’ll like, climb into my bed and she knows not to turn on the lights.
Let you… let you wallow in the dark.
And it’s what I kind of have to do for a little bit. But… I mean… so I don’t know if this question… sometimes I wish that people would give me easier outs because they know that I have experiences with depression.
Like outs of social interactions or…?
I feel like I don’t cancel that often, but when I do cancel, it’s really never for a simple, straightforward reason. It’s not like I don’t want to go. I like save my canceling for when I really, really don’t think I’m going to get up. Like I can’t get up. And sometimes I… junior year, second semester, I was insanely, insanely not doing well. I spent so much time in lab though. I spent almost every minute… I was pulling all nighters once a week or I just wouldn’t sleep. I was… I wasn’t sleeping very much actually. I… because I was avoiding sleep. I’ll… update: when I’m super depressed, I don’t like to sleep. I just like decide I don’t want to do it. Which is weird. Sometimes I go to sleep because I’m too depressed to be awake, but like… it just depends on the mood. But… I was incredibly depressed. Sometimes I wish that people were a little bit more accommodating, mainly because I’m used to my friends being great about it because they also either have experiences with mental health or… so normally when I’m like, I can’t get out of bed but you can come join me in bed.
Yeah, that’s the… I was like… I don’t think I asked you where we were meeting today because I was like, we’re meeting at Ariel’s place. That’s where it’s going to happen. Like…
Well also I mean it’s a convenient place, but I… I do like having people in my space… in ways that like, I can control and I really like when… I don’t have to make an effort to go… do something. I don’t like doing things… I like doing things, but I don’t like when I don’t have the energy to, I’ve really can’t fathom going in public and going into crowds or doing something that actually takes energy.
So it’s your friends that have mental illness generally tend to kind of understand that and negotiate it more?
Yeah.
So that… that is the next question, which is how do you interact with other people with mental illness? And so I think you’ve talked about this in both like positive and negative ways.
Yeah. Agreed.
Um, I don’t… I don’t need to make you go over that again. Okay. Um, so we’re gonna shift gears and the same way you gave a personal history about mental illness, gonna ask you to give a personal history about your experience as a woman.
Oh my god (Cassandra laughs) Exhausting.
So like we covered parts of it with the mental illness with like the… sexuality…
The sexuality of women. Yeah. Yeah. Gender is a hard concept. I don’t really get it (both laugh). We had this conversation earlier. What is womanness? I dunno… I used to wear a lot of makeup as a child. I mean, no, I start getting depressed and I started wearing eyeliner, um…
As like, the sort of like… this is what femme depression looks like?
This is what femme depression looks like! Yes. Um, and then I started kind of seeing a woman and that was… I was super not okay with people knowing about it. Even though I came out first. It was weird, but I like essentially ignored my girlfriend in public. (Cassandra makes sad noise) I know it was really bad of me. I was bad. We made up… a year later after we spent a year not talking to each other. Um, but… yeah, I mean I… at that point I also wasn’t dressing very femme. I would wear like, jeans and a sweater. I would kind of look like a potato (Cassandra laughs) if you imagine like… a middle school potato.
With makeup.
With makeup, that was me. But I guess like, I’d always had long hair. Um, I was always… kind of femme-y… think I was trying to be less femme-y but…
Why?
I wasn’t really comfortable with my body.
And did… buying into more stereotypical femme presentation mean to you kind of like… that that conflicted with your image of your body?
Kind of. I felt… I think that when people think of femmeness, it’s like owning your… like owning your body, owning your like, curvaceousness, and like being sexy and sensual. And… that wasn’t what I felt… that wasn’t… I was like, don’t look at me until I wore giant sweaters and was like, don’t look at me. Um, which was a fun time. Uh… then at some point I decided I didn’t like pants (both laugh). This is a crazy fact. I decided I did not like pants and so I didn’t wear pants for four years. I just bought tights.
I know that you meant that you found other alternatives but I do like the… (both laugh)
Oh the idea of just me not wearing pants in public all the time? Um, yeah. I mean I changed to wearing dresses all the time and tights and I would only wear heels. And…
Do you know what caused this change in your opinion?
Yeah. I didn’t like buying (Ariel laughs)… I didn’t like… it was… this is another thing that had to do with body image. I didn’t like… shopping because I didn’t like sizes because I didn’t like… figuring out what fit on my body.
And so it was a little easier with dresses?
And so dresses, you can just buy… and buy like a medium and tights are like, you can buy like, a medium small or a medium large, and then you have an outfit. And… but I mean, I started wearing heels, which always made me feel very like, powerful and like, rhythmic (Ariel laughs) and like just, I dunno, it made me feel kind of sexy. Um… uh, yeah and I stopped wearing makeup around… actually I wore makeup almost every single day of high school until I hit… like 11th grade.
I was like (Cassandra laughs), you paused with, “I hit” and I’m like, where… are you finishing that sentence?
Oh yeah, no, I hit… I hit like 11th grade and I was like, I don’t want to wear makeup anymore. Now I only wear makeup, when I’m like, really having a bad day.
Why? What’s that… correlation?
Um, I think one, I don’t want people to look at my eyes. It’s probably counterintuitive…
Like, “oooh, look at these distracting things around my eyes”?
And two… I do not wear waterproof makeup and so I think that physically I will not cry if I have an incentive to do so. So I would wear makeup on days that I felt really bad so I wouldn’t cry in public.
There’s some logic there.
There was something there. I still do that and sometimes I just need to take the time to put makeup on like to… it’s like very methodical and very… you have to focus and sometimes that’s a good distraction. Yeah. I mean now I wear pants, but my body has changed so much that it’s weird. Um… I wear pants, I wear clothes, I wear dresses. I’m… I used to not at all feel comfortable being naked and now I am. I don’t know. I… I think womanness is hard for me. I don’t really understand always what it means.
That is actually the next question, which is (Ariel laughs) how do you… I don’t… I don’t know if it’s just because we’ve talked so much, but you’re doing a really good job of predicting the questions that I’m going to ask because the next question is, how do you define your being a woman? What does it mean to you?
Well, I just spent the last like… 10 minutes talking about clothing. So…
So presentation is part of that.
So clearly I think presentation’s part of it. Um, I don’t know. I’ve read… obviously you’ve read The Argonauts and I’ve read The Argonauts and hopefully other people have read The Argonauts if not, read The Argonauts (Cassandra laughs).
To the universe reading this transcript…
Read The Argonauts. But… I think womanness is just a confusing idea. We were talking earlier about when you argue about gender, you’re having two different arguments. One is if gender is fake or if gender is real…. it’s fake. Um, and the other one, what makes gender? So like, what is gender and like what is… what is made up. If gender is fake, does gender exist?
If gender is fake, what are people identifying with?
Yeah, and I think I kind of just… like the parts of… like pick certain things out of gender. I identify as female but I’ve never thought to identify as anything else because I’ve never felt strongly enough about a gender like… a gender or gender in general. Like I’ve never felt strongly enough to identify as nonbinary mainly because I just don’t think about gender enough. I mean I clearly think about gender inequality and gender violence and like, transgender issues.
That is actually something that’s come up in a lot of interviews is that a lot of… people who are afab and now kind of identify as more non binary or trans express sort of like… they identify very highly with… lived experience of being a woman in this society that is very shitty to women. And so for a while they struggled with not being cis because they kind of felt like it was almost… a betrayal or like, how do they associate themselves with woman’s experience but also don’t feel like they’re a woman.
I… this is going to be shitty. I’m going to say it anyway. I think I feel most like a woman when… I am experiencing some sort of hardship of being a woman. I think that… I feel most like a woman when society’s reinforcing the fact that I am a woman. Whether it’s through like, being objectified or like, cat called or like, whether it is feeling lesser than or… being treated shittily by a boss.
So is that negative association with feeling like a woman or as part of it also kind of a reaction? Like, “I feel woman in a strong way” or is it like a “fuck you reaction” or is it both?
I’m just like… generally I’m just annoyed (both laugh). Generally, I’m like, this is so annoying. What’s the point? Why are you so angry? Gender is fake. Like most of the time I’m just screaming that gender is fake. But like, clearly I don’t want to like, not acknowledge the experiences of other people and like, feeling woman. I think it also… is a big part of it is that like I don’t like the idea of… birthing children. I do not like the idea of… like…
Elaborate more on that (Ariel laughs)
Okay. So you know those quizzes that like… that’s like… I think I had to take one of these quizzes cause our school signed up for them, but it was like about like, body dysmorphia and like blah blah blah. But it was like how, “how much hostility do you have towards your period?” Or like… and I was like a lot, like a lot like… I’m very inconvenienced by it. My mom had to get a hysterectomy and I was like, can you take mine out as well? And she was like, “that’s not funny”. And I was like, yes it is (both laugh). Um, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just… I don’t see myself carrying a child. I think it’s weird. I don’t think my body was meant to do that. I don’t want it to do that. And I… babies are weird. They’re small and they’re squishy. Oh, I actually do have something to talk about about that. That’s really interesting. I work with animals. Um, I’ve worked with rats and I’ve worked with mice and one summer I had to do mouse neuron cultures which are… taking… you have to take away just born fetus… the… not fetuses, um, rat babies from their mother. So you take them all out and the mother’s there, she runs around and she screams because you took away all of her babies and she cannot find them. (Cassandra makes sad sound)
That sounds so upsetting
Which is upsetting until you realize that they like, cannibalize their young sometimes. So like, um… I mean it’s still upsetting. Um, and I think that’s the most… I’ve ever empathized with like, a pregnant and like…mourning…you know, like I… I think that seeing that was a big experience in like… motherhood. I don’t know why… but…
I guess you were taking like an active role.
It was extremely, extremely distressing, um, in the way that you like… you’re like… separating children from their mother is bad, let’s never do it. Then you realize that government’s doing that and you’re like, ah, this is a bummer.
Except not to rats
Not to rats, to humans. But… I dunno. I… I think it’s hard to define womanness without looking at the concept of motherhood… but also they’re different…. but also… gender gives me a headache. I think that’s my final thought, is that gender gives me a headache. It gives me a lot of contradicting thoughts.
Do you want to talk about your experience being a woman in STEM?
Oh yeah, sure. Men are shitty. (Cassandra laughs) Update.
Do elaborate.
So I got into STEM really young. I… started to working in a lab in high school, uh, was one of the best experiences that I’ve had in science. And I am so grateful for it because there are so many ways that it could have gone wrong, mainly because I now know how shitty men can be in science. I worked at an all male lab as a… 15 year old. So… I think what I would… I think they had women occasionally when I was there, there were no women. Um, but… my mentor was great and the postdoc that I worked with was incredible and he was so supportive and… so always trying to make sure I knew what I was doing. It… it felt good and like was it science, which was awesome. Um, and then I went to college and… no one had ever said anything about me… not like being able to do science or not being smart. I mean men obviously like ignore everyone’s opinions except their own but whatever.
Just gonna slip some shade into there.
There’s always shade mainly because look, I’m so… I’m so here for people being like, “okay, that’s not me”. Whatever. Yeah, sure. Fine. That’s not you. As long as you’re constantly thinking about whether or not it’s you. Like, if you’re going to be the type of person who thinks your opinion is more important, you have to constantly realize that you’re… you think that your opinion is more important and like… own it.
Be self aware…
Be self aware. Like, if you… know that you… I will probably respect you a little… fractionally more if you think your own opinion is more important and you know that versus if you don’t know it.
Just speak over everyone and don’t realize that you’re doing that.
Yeah. Fractionally (Cassandra laughs), that’s not my point of this. So I went to college and I… started doing science. I was premed. I am premed. Um, and…. I joined a lab my sophomore year. Oh wait, no, the story doesn’t start there about shittiness of men in science. The story starts earlier.
(Piece omitted)
Mainly because science is structured in a way that you need the people you work for. If you spend a year or two of your life doing something in science and you want to go somewhere, you need that person as a rec, which means you can’t burn them in any point within those two years that you’re working for them. Which means… and also you don’t want them to like… I don’t know, I heard this from a few grad students. You don’t want your boss or your boss’s friends to freeze you out of projects. So they have so much power and there’s no regulating body. I’ve heard of PIs who scream at their employees and their Grad students and who are so… so mean and unethical about it. And they just can because there’s nothing that anyone else does because you’ve committed… I mean, Grad students, especially if you’ve committed like, five to seven years with one person, um… it’s just like, how are you going to… you can’t really switch unless you want to waste like, another four years. Um… so it’s really a lot.
It’s… I’ve learned that there are very strong communities of women within science who look out for each other who are there to give you information. Um, there was a panel that someone had at our school. I know that and uh, they were like, don’t… they had a bunch of people up there and the man, actually the one man on the panel– they had one man which was nice, um, actually like stepped up and was like, “hey, just so everyone knows, this professor is a sexual predator and you should not work for him or be involved with him in any way and you should be careful and talk to me after, or talk to pretty much any woman in science here and they’ll tell you”, which was awesome. It was really… My friend was on that panel and she was like, “it was the most amazing thing to hear because it was also a message for the men in the room that was like, “don’t let this man succeed””
Like, “hey, there are people watching and holding you accountable for your actions”.
It’s like if, if the administration won’t, like we have a network of students that kind of maybe… will… but we can’t get to everyone. I think that… there’s a lot of gate keeping that happens in science. There’s a lot of… belittlement that happens with women of thinking that their science is fake and it’s… but it’s also like even your boss and your colleagues and anyone, there’s just no… there’s no structure to make sure, like there’s not even a rule that you can’t like, hook up with your own students because they’re technically of age, but like, the power dynamics are so different and so big. And this is someone’s like, life. And, yeah, I mean, I know people who won’t work with men anymore, they just don’t trust male PIs.
Which… I’m sure is limiting.
It is. It’s super limiting. Um… super shitty (Long pause).
Um… this question is super redundant, but it’s… is there anything specific about femmness or mental illness that you’ve struggled the most with?
With Femme…
Femmeness.
Femmeness. I was like, feminists?
People have heard that before and I’ve had to… I’ve had to correct them. Like… no no no.”Feminists? All your struggles with feminists?”
I struggle with feminists every day (said jokingly, both laugh). Um, yeah. I mean…
You don’t need to repeat anything that you…
People don’t take you as seriously. I think when you’re… I mean, I think that’s subject… that’s a subjective experience. In my experience, people don’t take me as seriously when I’m very femmed up.
In terms of like expressing your emotions or more intellectual things or…?
I’m talking… I think I’m talking about more intellectual things. I think people think I’m… I think when I’m dressed more femme, people think I’m dumb and just like… which is annoying, clearly but especially annoying in very professional settings. Like, I was presenting at conferences and I’ve had men essentially completely… ignore me or like ask who did the work or like, I’ve seen people do crazy things at conferences, but I think one was like, “which one of you is Ariel?” I was the first author on a poster… or not first author, first presenter on a poster. Um, and one of… someone else was a man and they were like, “which one of you is Ariel?” And they were like, “Ariel?” and I was like, “Ariel”. And they were like, “oh” (said dismissively). I was like, “Bruh, come on”.
I had… at the game convention, I was running the game that I designed and I was like, passing out papers and I had a guy come up to the table, look at me, look at… the guy who’s a person of color and look at the white guy. And he turned the white guy to ask him about the game. And I was like, I am literally….
“I am here”. And I think that that’s… I mean, I hate not being able to dress how I dress and not be taken seriously. I… and I like being femmey. It’s fun. I… I enjoy it personally and I just… I’m go… trying to go into a profession– medicine where… (Cassandra laughs)
Just to clarify, in case it wasn’t…
Yeah, I’m going into a profession that… you need to be taken seriously by your… and you need to be trusted by your patients. Uh, and it’s really hard to feel like… oftentimes white, straight cis men are not going to trust you as being an expert in your field. Um, which…
Why is it not an acronym yet? (pause)
There must be (both laugh). Someone must’ve made this.
I was thinking that… I was like, the phrase is used so often
Is it used that often or do we use it very often (both laugh)
Queer women use it a lot.
That’s fair. Yeah. Yeah.
So it’s kind of like something you’ve had to come to terms with?
It’s something that I have to figure out. Um, my mother’s clearly figured it out. She’s a high powered lawyer, does things and is one of the best in her field and she…
Just casually, you know.
I mean she just… decimates men on a regular basis (both laugh). I think people think they can push her over and she’s like, “absolutely not”.
Um, so the next question is a totally leading question, but it is also the entire thesis of this project (Cassandra laughs).
Give it to me (Ariel laughs)
Do you feel like your gender identity and your mental illness have interacted? (Cassandra laughs) For the record, Ariel is eating a cookie with a very pointed look on her face.
This is like one time I went to a poetry reading and somebody who was like… it was Dawn Lundy Martin, who is my favorite poet, um, somebody literally asked her if her race influenced her work (Cassandra laughs) and I think she said something to the statement of like, like… it was very, very nice of a statement to say, but the subtext was all, “did you even fucking read my book or like… are you stupid?”
Yeah. I think it’s been very obvious in the things that you’ve said.
Yeah, no, I’m not calling you stupid. I promise (both laugh). No, I mean I think that… absolutely. I think, not only do they interact, but I think they accentuate each other. I think they… heighten the experience. When you are… I think so… first of all, I think that being a woman very much can heighten your depression because you have so many expectations, especially bodily expectations and just like expectations about yourself. They just make you feel really shitty. Especially for young girls, like preteen, teen girls. But I also think that the ways that women experience depression… can often make you experience… womaness more, mainly because it makes you kind of withdrawn and… not able to like, interact and be as like friendly or be as warm and like the… I mean the ways women get depression. I mean, especially thinking about postpartum depression, there’s an expectation of you being warm and caring and there and like, caretaker who like, works really hard and juggles all these things and you can’t do that with depression. With depression you have to sit everything down and like, put it down and work on yourself. There’s really no… option.
I… I think that also, and this is a huge, huge problem in medicine in general. Uh, yeah, female pain is not considered valid. As much as medical professionals try to be like, “no, we evaluate the pain of everyone”. I mean it’s… it’s just not taken seriously when women are like, “this is an actual problem”. Um, and so… sometimes women aren’t getting the help they need. Sometimes they… don’t even realize that they need a diagnosis. Sometimes they don’t…. know it’s going on and sometimes they’re just not taken… I mean, it’s so hard. I can’t imagine what it would be like to ask for help… and be immediately shut down by like, someone who is supposed to be in charge of taking care of your health. Yeah. I mean, I think that everything plays a… I mean there’s some things that play in more to mental health than other things, but like gender, sexuality, race.
Well so the next question… (both laugh) Goddammit Ariel, is um…
This is this… this is just an interview with me preempting your questions. They’re obviously good questions (Cassandra laughs).
Um, so yeah. So the next question is… what other identities of yours do you feel interact with either one of these two identities? Um, so… if I were to list out, like whether you want to talk about like Jewishness, whether you want to talk about like, the medical issues that you’ve dealt with. I don’t like any… I almost feel weird kind of like rattling off like, hey person, these are your identities (Ariel laughs). But sometimes people struggle with… a little bit with like, “what do you mean my other identities?” I’m like, well, here’s some examples.
Uh, sexuality is a huge one, mainly because… in my experience, almost all of the queer people I know have had a mental illness (Cassandra laughs). And that’s just because they have so much shit to deal with. Whether it’s unaccepting family, kind of unaccepting friends, weird friends, love lives that are not… you’re not able to talk about in high school or whatever. Just the feeling of figuring yourself out and not knowing who you are and feeling unsure and feeling like maybe it’ll change one day and then realizing that it won’t and then you realize that you’re different than everyone else and you’re like, “what is going on? Does it… do I have to?” Um, so I think there’s a lot inherent to sexuality.
I also think that on a different hand, race has played a huge part, mainly the fact that I’m white and have… am incredibly privileged in the realm of mental health. Um… I mean, when you’re white you’re privileged at almost everything. And I think acknowledging that privilege, like yes, mental health, it’s hard to deal with, but like acknowledging the fact that like, if I go to a doctor, maybe they won’t believe me because I’m a woman, but like… I don’t know…. that like I have white privilege wherever I go. So… yeah, I think that’s important to acknowledge, especially in the mental health sector.
Um, so is there anything you want to talk about that hasn’t quite been covered in any of these questions?
No, this has been a pretty comprehensive interview.
Um, well, so it’s very important to me that these are more… conversations than interviews. And so… here’s the thing is that you know all my opinions on everything (both laugh), but um, I… I still would extend the offer to you to ask questions to me because you’ve sat with me and been vulnerable so I would extend the same offer to you if there’s any questions that you do have. Whether turning these around on me or about the project or…
I’m going to solicit all your answers to these at some point so…
I mean, yeah, you can read… if you want to read through my entire fucking interview…
It’s 32 pages
It is 32 pages. Yes.
This… I mean this one’s going to be long…. we’ve been talking for two and a half, like two hours and 15 minutes.
Yeah, which is around the time my interview was.
So, although I think I… I speak a little bit more quickly than you do because I’m just, yeah.
When I’m like trying to describe something or come up with words, I take a lot of time because I try to be really intentional with the words, especially when I’m talking about something as complex as gender because I don’t get it.
*See Mary’s Transcript:https://whatsheswallowed.home.blog/2019/03/05/transcript-03-mary/
The Cassandra Transcripts 