Until All Whom We Love Are Free

By Justin / Summer 2021

TW: suicide, mental health

Dear Justin,

It is the summer of 2017, and you are in pain. It is a pain that takes place inside the body but cannot be fully described through mere physicality. I remember how it felt, like your insides were rotting, like a reoccurring metaphysical kick to the gut. You could never trace the pain so instead you just got used to it, albeit not consequence free. Your freshman year of college was rough—I think that’s something we can very easily agree on. Your untreated and undiagnosed mental health issues spiraled into substance abuse and complete isolation; holed up in your room alone for days at a time, continually teetering on the edge of something much worse. And unfortunately for you, these functional impairments were going to come at a cost: academic disqualification and dismissal. Your shot at this fancy private school was blown and all you had to show for it was $14,000 of debt and an undeniable stain on my academic history. You were embarrassed and ashamed; what would your friends back home think? What would your college friends think? And your parents? Your tumultuous relationship with them was only going to get worse, and it did. It felt like I had been rejected by the system, chewed up and spit back out. It felt like I wasn’t meant to graduate, not meant to find a job—not meant to survive.

I still remember that summer very vividly. I was filled with despair and regret, like no matter how hard I tried I was destined to crash and burn. I remember the fights with my parents, the substance abuse, and self-harm. It was the summer I tried to take my own life.

More than four years later I still face many of the same struggles, but the perspectives and understanding of myself and the world around you has radically changed for the better. I have come to recognize that there is strength and liberation in the acknowledgement of your struggle. We live in a world full of contradictions that we cannot rationalize through the limited reductionist paradigms of modern western society. I promise you, Justin, that we do not have to settle for the hypercompetitive, hyper-individualist, heteronormative, and violent world we live in.

There is privilege I recognize in the efforts my parents made in bringing me and my sisters to the well-funded school district we attended, but the type-A, cut-throat, and hypercompetitive nature of your high school and early college experience are the result of an economic, political, and cultural system that does not have your best interests in mind. It is a mindset built around this false notion of scarcity; that we must tear each other down, outcompete our peers, and exhaust our mind and body through unfulfilling exploitative labor. It is a system that drives people to desperation and greed, oppression, and violence; a system that does not want you to exist.

Justin, you will soon learn that your experiences and struggles have always intersected with the way in which you identify yourself in this world. Your educational experience that has been historically rife with academic “failure,” in reality reflects a hyper individualist economic and cultural model that in turn perpetuates an educational system that places an emphasis on test scores rather than meaningful knowledge and learning. Your mental health struggles and diagnoses you received have given you a new lens to perceive the world; one that recognizes the systems and structures of power that actively make the world harder to live in for disabled and neurodivergent people. Your family’s immigrant story has given you the understanding about the harsh realities of being a brown immigrant in America; one too often characterized by poverty and xenophobia. And finally, your queerness has allowed you to explore not only yourself but the world around you on your own terms, free from the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality and the limited binaries of society’s expectations of gender expression. It is my own experiences that have reaffirmed that my identities meet at the intersection of oppression and liberation. I am no victim, for these struggles have taught me how to be strong and persevere, to value humanity and justice. It has taught me the importance of solidarity in recognizing that all of our struggles are uniquely interconnected and that to be free, we all must be free. It will allow you to love, flourish, envision, and build a world free from the oppressive binaries and contradictions that too many just accept as inherent.

Think back to your educational experience, Justin. I still vividly remember the month college acceptances were getting released during my senior year of high school. There were whispers, rumors flying around about who was going where, who got rejected, who got the full-ride scholarships, etc. I remember you ditching school the days the UCs released their admissions. You couldn’t stomach all the talk. I thought if I didn’t get into x-y-z college I would be labeled a failure, a loser. Looking back, I can recognize how these mentalities were informed by and meant to perpetuate the neoliberal order. As George Monibot explains, “Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency” (Monbiot 2016). From here we can recognize how far entrenched these neoliberal ideals are in our educational system. Instead of a system that values holistic, equitable, and meaningful learning, our educational system has been designed to churn out a complacent workforce, with the few exceptional students being funneled into managerial roles for the ruling class. We know that this system does not work. It allows poor and students of color to fall through the cracks. We have abandoned the communities that need the most support and instead created a system that perpetuates disparities in education and economic outcomes among marginalized people (Richmond). The school-to-prison pipeline creates a permanent class of incarcerated youth made up primarily poor black and brown and disabled students (Chiariello et al.). And despite it being more than half a century since the decision was made in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate schools, schools are more segregated than ever (Richmond). It was the reason I felt so much pressure to perform my first year of college; to jumpstart my career and to outcompete my peers. It was the reason you burnt out and struggled with severe mental health issues. This neoliberal notion of existence did not fit your own, and to simply realize this offers you the first step towards liberation. Soon you’ll attend community college, and you’ll recognize the joy and passion that learning can offer once you reclaim your value outside the lens of our hypercompetitive, capitalist society. It was at community college where I learned to make my own path, and to take however long or short I need to be where I want to be.

The mental health challenges you have and will face may be deeply painful, but as such they also offer you a chance to grow and heal from these difficulties. While to this day I still struggle, and some days worse than others, my diagnoses no longer feel like a curse, but a validation to my emotional, physical, and spiritual experiences. Part of the reason I sought out an autism diagnosis was to understand my chronic and mysterious depression I have struggled with for most of my life. It was only after many years of trying almost every known medication under the western biomedical sun did my psychiatrist recognize my treatment-resistant depression. I have wondered at many points if it's just because people with autism see the world for how it really is: a trauma machine pumping out trauma. The contradictions and lies of our society stand in direct opposition to the very existence of those with physical or psychological disabilities. In our neoliberal society, healthcare runs on a profit incentive. Paired with a cultural notion of value tied to our labor output, disabled and neurodivergent people do not meet the demand of our insatiable economic system. We are cast aside and often left to die, both systematic and through patterns of interpersonal violence and discrimination. Neoliberal policies have gutted our social safety net, disproportionately harming the marginalized people that need it most. The American disability system forces the disabled to stay in poverty, while simultaneously denying the claims of the disabled for merely appearing too “happy,” as if our disabilities relinquish our ability to feel joy in our own humanity (Barbarin). The COVID-19 crisis has only highlighted the disparity that exists within our healthcare system. Poor black and brown working-class people bear the brunt of this pandemic while the rich continue to exploit them (“Wealth Inequality in America.”). Disabled people can see firsthand through this pandemic how our lives are not valued. The anti-vax conspiracy that vaccines cause autism is rooted in this deep hatred for disabled people, that our bodies are incapable of being lived within. We are viewed as problems; that there are innate deficits in our humanity, when it is society that has chosen to view us with indignation and disregard. This pandemic has shown us how even our healthcare system, which supposedly operates under the Hippocratic oath to serve all, continues to marginalize disabled people. For example, during the height of the pandemic many hospitals had triage and ventilator rationing guidelines, many of which favored able bodies over our own (Chen & McNamara 4). There were even policies set in place to remove life-supporting ventilators from disabled people with a “lower quality of life” to give to others (Bagenstos 3).

As a first generation Filipino and Mexican American, the histories of my family have ultimately shaped how I view the world around me. My mother left the Philippines in her early 20s to find work, yet it was not the United States where she first found herself. She would find her first job in Saudi Arabia. Yet her story of being a migrant worker is not unique for Filipinos. There are over 2.2 million migrant Filipino laborers, many of whom face human rights abuses and exploitation abroad (“Statistical Tables on Overseas Filipino Workers.”). Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and now American imperialism have left Filipino society unimaginably unequal, while corrupt and fascist comprador politicians continue the exploitation of our people and have waged genocide on our indigenous communities (“What Is Imperialism, and How Did It Get to the Philippines?”). My mother came to the states after meeting my father and since then she has worked tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings. I have recognized how caretaking is ingrained into our family culture. My mom and many of my relatives are nurses. They provide care as their profession, only to return home and continue that role for their family. On my father’s side, my Mexican heritage has forced me to reflect on the violent and racist immigration systems in place meant to deny citizenship to anyone that isn’t white. My father grew up in poverty in South Central LA with just his mom and four other siblings. He’s spoken to me about the riots, the homelessness, the crime, and the overarching shared pain that exists within these communities. As parts of LA become more and more gentrified, I must stand in solidarity and fight for these communities—my communities. And at the intersection of my Asian and Latino American identities I can recognize the work that needs to be done within our cultures; the homophobia, toxic masculinity, and anti-blackness only serve as further barriers to our liberation. Similarly, I think of my paternal grandmother, born and raised in central Mexico, and the histories tied to this homeland. American expansion into the west and a doctrine of manifest destiny resulted in genocide and war. It displaced and continues to displace Mexican and indigenous people who had known and lived on the land for generations, only to become “illegal” in their own homes (Paddison). I am inextricably linked to the struggles my ancestors faced and I must continue to struggle until we are free.

Finally, I often look to my queerness as a source to envision our liberation. Accepting who I am as a queer person means envisioning and working towards a society in which I can thrive. I do not have to subscribe to conceptions of masculinity and gender that make me feel alien inside my own body. Recognizing myself as a non-binary person has empowered me to control my own existence in a world where we can often feel powerless. Compulsory heterosexual throughout my youth had left me feeling confused and empty, coerced into preconceived notions around love and relationships dictated by a violent patriarchal society. It was coming out to myself that led to me discovering the joy and radical love that can exist in queer relationships and communities; reinforcing the notions that love cannot coexist with abuse. However, despite this joy, I am often reminded how this part of me can sometimes clash with the others. The thought of coming out to my extended family only results in a painful realization, as antiquated views on gender and sexuality still prevail, yet I know I am not alone. Where my blood family falls short, queer friends become my family. And while there are often moments I still struggle to express myself over fears of discrimination and homophobia, I refuse to exist any other way. As a queer person, I must stand in solidarity and fight for my community. I must stand and fight not just for liberation for myself, but for my trans, lesbian, and gay family that face so many of the same struggles as I.

Envisioning a more just, equitable, and free society requires us to look deeply, to reject the prevailing notions of that status quo that we know does not serve us. It requires us to recognize how all our struggles are so deeply intertwined and linked to each other. Only then will we be able to stand in solidarity with all those that are oppressed and marginalized in our society. While conflict and disagreement may be an inevitable part of human society, it is how we decide to engage in these conflicts that determine how just, fair, and equitable our society will be. Radical change is needed in America, a revolution. And I say revolution not necessarily as one created through war and violence, but one that occurs at every level of society; one that creates systems of solidarity, compassion, and mutual aid as an alternative to an oppressive state.

It’s been more than four years now since the moment you decided you wanted to take your own life. Your fears about college and graduating are no more as I begin this new chapter of my life. As I write to you from the second half of 2021 the depression, anxiety, and struggle continues but you are stronger and more well equipped for these battles. You’ve learned to recognize these systems that dictate how you navigate the world and are actively pushing against them. You see the world through a lens that confronts our despair and pain for what they are: products of an inherently unjust system; a system that I now feel empowered to end and struggle against until all whom we love are free. I am proud of you.

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