All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
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Mental Health issues
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[ 7 minute read ]
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Some people call it 'Getting out of bed the wrong side'; some people call it 'A bear with a sore head'; some people call it, 'impatience' and some people might call it, 'discrimination'; I call it, 'being in a new alternative world'.
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A long time ago, I was in Tesco buying cheap T-shirts. There was a pink one in my size. 'Oh No! i can't wear that one because people will think I am gay'. At the time, it bothered me if people thought that about me. At the time, I was also learning how to be more comfortable with myself and more importantly honest with myself, because I recognised that being honourable means having a solid starting base from which to work.
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In Hamlet, Act One, Scene 3, Polonius says to Laertes:
"This above all: to thine own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
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Oscar Wilde said: "The truth is rarely pure; and never simple."
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It was a challenge to be true and upright that I just could not shy away from. Not least, because I thought that there is something else to see. William Shakespeare summed it up for me, in Hamlet, Act One, Scene 5:
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HORATIO: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
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HAMLET: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in Heaven and Earth.
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I felt that I needed to discard duality; shed falsehood; and see with fresh eyes, because I wanted to see strange things.
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I bought the pink T-shirt in Tesco, a long while back. People probably did think I was gay. I was definitely biased at the time, because I didn't want to be roped in with gay people. I had to buy the T-shirt because I had to wear it like a hair-shirt. It must, I vowed, keep causing me discomfort until it does not. I thought that when I feel that gay people are just like me, like any other person, I can stop wearing it. In any case, if gay people suffer because they are gay, I want to at least taste some of that pain, even if it is discrimination. Two things may have prevented me noticing any homophobic discriminatory behaviour towards me: I was a very well muscled, 6 foot 1 (1.85m) man, and there was a Rugby team that played in a pink strip on the television.
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Of course, that pink T-shirt eventually stretched and wore out, so I bought another one, and another one. While I had been wearing the first pink T-shirt I became comfortable 'being gay'. It didn't matter one way or the other, and I quite like pink. It really doesn't mean 'gay'.
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I colour matched a pink T-shirt with pink socks and today and wore black shorts with them; the actual Rugby team colours as it turns out. I am pleased to say that it is, for me, not the colours that are important; it is the smartness, the matching, that is paramount.
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I suntan really quite easily and have thick skin so I really do colour well. The looks I get from strangers are more sustained and frequent in Summer than in Winter. Perhaps it is because I am so handsome and magnificent and they are jealous. I think we should really be thinking the opposite though. I can't help thinking that I am living in someone else's country, like I am a trespasser. I even feel guilty and move towards meekness. Meekness is great if you want to be meek, but as a defensive attitude it doesn't really sit well with me.
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I was in Aldi this morning, wearing a pink T-shirt and pink socks. My skin colour matched the man paying at the checkout, immediately before me. He had many facial attributes that suggested, to me, that he possibly has an Asian heritage. I don't care about that. I had a little chat with him about packaging. Our skin colour matched the checkout attendant's skin colour, who may have South-East Asian relatives. We three shared a few words, but did not delay any progress in the shopping/paying process.
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All I had to buy was a single tin of Tuna, and the woman behind me placed a large multi-pack of toilet paper first in her queue of items; effectively hiding her view of my tin of tuna.
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This woman, behind me, rearranged her chosen items on the conveyor belt. I could see that she moved the crush-able items to be the last that would be scanned and so be placed back in her basket on top. Now here is the rub: I always make sure the crush-able items are last in my queue of goods as I unload my basket, because it is important. I suggest that if someone does not do this at the outset, but then later changes the order to make it so after three or four minutes, it is because they were not thinking and were on auto-pilot and then snapped out of it because there occurred a strong enough thought to bring them from their secret alternative world into the 'here and now'. This 'here and now' has a gay Asian man impeding her progress, who seems to know the man paying because they are talking and have the same skin colour, and this gay Asian man will not advance along with the man paying; you know, past the checkout till.
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The woman kept pushing her items forward and rearranging them. She alternated between doing this and giving me long looks. I think she was trying to tell me something like: 'Look, gay Asian, I am next; will you move so I can be attended to?' I am only guessing, but I don't think she was including. 'Please'.
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I am only guessing. I suppose some may say I was making an educated guess, but that is a bit of a misnomer really, isn't it? In any case, I felt certain that she would very soon realise at least one of her mistakes. A mistake that fomented her impatience which came about by being woken from her alternative, secret, dream world, which heavily relies on her using heuristics to navigate the real and mundane tasks of everyday life.
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Shopping, for me, is never boring. It is never dull or mundane. There are always people who are in alternative worlds around. They are blind to me; they are blind to you; they will never remember you or me. You and I do not matter to them. Effectively, we are beneficial to them; a hindrance to them; or indistinct in every way.
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If a person enters into a fevered state; angry, impatient, or discriminatory, they are most certainly in an alternative world to one they more often inhabit. It is as though the kind family-oriented person has swapped places with the domestic-abuser who also has road-rage. I think illness can be like this. People do recover and their kind persona comes back, just as their irascible persona flees back to another world.
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By the way, I am not going to say whether I am gay or not. Not because I am proud one way or the other; quite simply because I couldn't care less (Could care less, in American English).
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I will say though, that when I first experienced racism directed at me, I was hugely surprised. I had no idea that I come from another country, or have relatives outside of Europe. Thanks for opening up a new line of thinking for me. That first hit was twenty years ago and it still hurts. 'The first cut is the deepest'.
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