Is RUOK day OK?
Let’s just put it out there: it’s not a good look to heap crap on RUOK day.
It’s nice. It was started by nice people, people who lost a beloved friend, people who wondered if they could have saved him. It’s a genuinely beautiful act from friends in terrible grief. Many of us have lost someone to suicide, and if you can’t bring them back, then maybe the next best thing is to do something meaningful to prevent another one. I get it.
RUOK day's origins are genuinely beautiful, admirable, and
understandable. And I really, really don’t want to say “but”.
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BUT…
*****
RUOK day is a classic of its genre. It’s a day for people
who don’t suffer to try to fix people who do. It’s a day to try to “spark
conversations”. It’s a day for “champions of change”. See also: White Ribbon
Day, the establishment of Beyond Blue.
What it isn’t, is a day that was asked for by those of us
who suffer, often threaded through our entire lives, from mental illness,
trauma, and persistent distress. And this is kind of at the heart of the
problem.
And, of course, I am one of those people. I spent my first decade
in a home where the moment my father walked in the door, everyone stiffened. Most
of my earliest first memories are of violence and fear. While I now know that
this is at the core of almost all of my endogenous pain, it took twenty years
and the death of my dad to really open up that box and look at it. It also took
most of that time for science to catch up with the obvious fact that a child
should never be raised in a state of fear.
And before I did that, nobody really knew how to solve the chasms I would tumble into ("the well" was always my image, because for me, unlike some, it usually has a floor). I sparked a parade of acronyms and long and difficult words, marching along my timeline in step with the science.
First there was “major depression”, when therapy was out of fashion and SSRIs were IN, baby. Then there was “bipolar 2”, because my moods were erratic, even though I was never psychotic or actively suicidal - that carried some serious medications, which were later dropped (spoiler alert: I’m not actually bipolar). They worked because those drugs would calm anyone the fuck down.
Then came the cluster B personality disorder. Then complex trauma.
And now, in a very 2020s move, I’m trying on neurodivergence. It fits ok.
It's safe to say that I hold diagnoses very lightly. But I know that what I feel,
and that the mind I ended up with, however I ended up with it, is sensitive and unusual. I know how hard it is for me to
love and be loved. I know how hard it was for me to let go of my conviction
that I was at my very core a grotesque, defective, awful creature. I now know that
is not the truth. It’s a small, but essential, blessing.
My mind, however I ended up with it, is also miraculous. I can remember all my childhood phone numbers, and my grandparents' (unfortunately this also extends to the phone numbers of my exes). I can read upside down and backwards. I have a mobile DJ in my head which is currently, mystifyingly, playing the theme from Insiders, but which sometimes makes jokes at me (during a particularly difficult period with an egotistical work colleague, the song "everybody wants to rule the world" was on high rotation). And I can hold a 200 page piece of legislation in my mind by imagining it is a building.
*****
“Are you ok?” is a question I do not like asked except by a
few special people. And it is absolutely not a question I want asked in the
workplace.
Work is the last thing I let suffer in my life. I have
worked for money since I was 12. I have always had my own career and my own
capacity to make decisions and walk out any door. Work seriously matters to me.
Work is where I am not an abused or awkward or terrified child (mostly). Work is
where I can sit up in an attic away from everything and work out puzzles that
aren’t my own. I love my work. But my home life, my personal life, can often be
seriously NOT ok. Nobody in my family got out without scars.
I am probably more open than other people like me, but if
there is the slightest sign that this knowledge could be used against me, I do
not share. And I have had a LOT of workplaces like that, in my twenty year
professional career.
I currently have a wonderful workplace. The work is hard,
but the support is absolutely solid. Unfortunately, from experience, I am under
no illusion that it will remain so. But for now, I am bathing in my own gratitude
for a place where I am respected, understood, appreciated and supported. I am
unconventional – this is no small thing.
Right now, I have a manager who knows exactly when to ask “Are
you ok?”. It’s when I’ve chosen to disclose something very difficult to him, because
it could affect my work. It could be that I’ve run into a friend of my dad’s,
and they said something ignorant, and it will take me a couple of days to pull
all the parts of me back together again and find the ground. It could be that
one of my children is struggling. It could be from the demons who sometimes
visit overnight, just to let me know I shouldn’t get cocky.
And I have a couple of colleagues as well, who I’ve known
for a long time. And that’s all.
Today, one of the lovely young people in my area reached out
and asked if I was ok. It shook me. I usually have a pat answer ready, like “as
ok as I ever will be”, or “I am now!”. But this time I found myself saying “I
find that question hard sometimes, but I appreciate the thought.”
The poor kid. He left that conversation feeling a bit bad
for himself, and probably very bad for me. But it’s hard to lie.
Similarly, my friends are generally divided into those who I
know I can answer honestly (whether good or bad), and those who I just don’t
want to open up the box for. Because the whole exchange ends up as as pleasant
as poop in a hat. I get so much more joy from telling someone I’m well, even
when my world feels like it’s falling apart for the eighteenth time, and I can’t
work out how it’s happened again, or what other avenue could possibly help me,
after all the years of getting help.
Sometimes the simple answer is to just lie, and say “Yah,
pretty good.”
And if you are a friend of mine reading this, please know
that I haven’t shut you out by lying. I’ve embraced you and leant into the warmth
of the question.
Those people, the ones who I need in my life, they don’t
need reminding. Just like I don’t need reminding.
The people who need reminding are the ones I worry about,
actually.
*****
Whenever RUOK day rolls around, I would look at the socials
and see so many confused and difficult responses from people who struggle to
ever feel like life is smooth sailing. The wonderful Dr Shane, from my favourite
science show on community radio, hates it. Another of my favourite humans, a
fellow journeywoman of early trashing, tends to try and stay positive, to shape
it.
My response is an odd sort of combination of “what the hell”
and “screw you guys”: I get on the socials and the texts and I change the
letters to “UROK” and announce it “You Rock Day”. Then I spend the little
pockets of the day between work, sleep, and stuff (like writing this) sending
out tributes to the people who have made a difference in my life that year, and
proclaiming the ways that they rock.
It started as a bit of a joke, but now it’s actually
something I truly look forward to. Because it’s the best of me being the best
of me. It’s bringing joy to the people who carry my burdens with me, whether
they know it or not. It’s heaps of fun.
But however we respond, I know nobody on this rollercoaster
of the mind who wants to be asked whether they are ok without any context, or
relationship, or permission. Many, ironically, take a sick day and stay at
home.
I’m not speaking for everyone, and I cannot. If you love
RUOK day, and you feel seen, please go with my blessing. Soak it up, you
deserve it. But I can’t think of anything more likely to make me burst into
tears at someone at their most awkward, vulnerable and well-intentioned moment.
*****
The central concepts at the heart of the UN Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities are dignity, autonomy, and participation.
These have been enacted into various laws across the country, but mostly in
Victoria, where these concepts have been embedded into legislation affecting
people with mental illness and cognitive limitations. The Victorian Mental Health
Royal Commission took this one step further, and insisted that all bodies
overseeing, advising and governing the mental health system in this state must
have persons with lived experience of mental illness at the highest levels.
People with disabilities and mental illness demand
participation because there has been such a long and damaging history of
disenfranchisement of those who are strange, different, hard work, frightening,
truthtellers, clowns, promiscuous, not straight in any way… the list goes on.
And much of this disenfranchisement happened at the hands of
people who were convinced that they were doing the right thing by those who
were estranged, and if not, by their long-suffering families.
This is at odds with the concept of human rights, which
demands that we recognise not just the equality in the hearts of all people,
but their entitlement to speak and be heard about the things which affect them.
And sometimes hearing their voices is hard. Giving them power
is even harder. It’s messy, and it’s difficult. But that’s the work of human
rights. It’s not “set and forget”. It’s “make space and listen”.
*****
I’m sure RUOK day has advisory committees and bodies now,
who assist them to make the experience of the day more sensitive, the
activities more targeted, the funds put towards effective programs and responses.
I’m sure that’s the case. These are good people.
But much has been done with the best intentions of good
people. The best people can hold onto that truth and painfully shine the light
on themselves. And if RUOK day is still one of the most difficult days of the
year for so many of those it is trying to help, then maybe it needs to change.
Maybe its power should become a bit messier. And maybe we need a new name.
I look forward to “YOU ROCK” day. It’s very Victorian 😉
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