Everything, I mean—everything—after trauma from mental illness becomes therapy and rehabilitation.

As you might already know, I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, major severe depression, anxiety, CTPSD and pMDD with agoraphobia, Anhedonia, and social phobia, It translates into hyper-vigilant, warrior mentality, even when every threat is only perceived or imagined. It also means that I don’t know others as others–but as objects to be used or therapists to be used, and hobbies to be done for the sake of keeping the brain as agile as a broken mind can be. Meanwhile, I hate myself and wish I could simply delete myself.

The problem is that I never can connect with others. I don’t trust or like myself much. The trauma to my brain (physical) and to the mind (metaphysical) has taught me that false snobbery and grandiosity are the only ways to boost my sense of self-worth and not get rejected again. Others can’t hurt me. Going into social settings without expectations, I won’t ever get hurt. 

That was the lesson I had learned but should have caught on earlier. Now with CPTSD intrusive thoughts of my childhood abuse through what we deem now as reprehensible Old World mentality, and from a decade of being bullied at school, music school, Sunday School, Christian camps, Pentecostal Crusaders (a quasi-religious club for boys and girls). More recently, it’s been from online chat rooms and forums.

I noticed how when I initially got ill, my first boyfriend became my therapist. I wasn’t entirely self-aware enough or I would have made an effort to stop. My classes at night school and university became places of learning and healing, at the expense of the betterment of others. To some I appeared self-centred. To others, co-dependent. If they were generous, they’d treat me as “a special case” or giving out a stray word of encouragement, such as “just take it easy,” or “don’t be so hard on yourself.”

The Canadian Federal Liberal Party in 2024 almost gave us the option to kill ourselves through suicide by medical professional. It’s called MAiD, or Medical Assistance in Dying. It became abused through negligence and oversight of the hierarchy within the administrative structure. From Government Ministers to medical staff, they did not educate and sensitize the staff to dispense of the suicide-by-doctor service with a conscience and  with compassion. Veterans, who fought in our wars and came back disabled, would complain again and again that their wheelchair ramps haven’t been built to get accessibility to hospital buildings for half a decade. So, some lackey hospital staff counselled that MAiD was always an option. They didn’t want to hear out the complaining vets, or didn’t want to know, or didn’t care.

In Canada, there was close to half a year to eight months when disability groups rumbled on TwitterX that this MAiD “option” was eugenics, until the Trudeau Government got fed up and pushed back the moratorium until March 2027 before they reinstate the law. 

What is the pending law? It is that any person regardless of the state of physical health and no foreseeable incurable, impending terminal illness, could commit suicide by doctor even if their sole reason is that they had mental illness. This could be seen as a way to rid the gene pool and general social economy of troubled people, eradicating a good chunk of their deficit, which, in part, actually could be better spent on Ukraine or car battery manufacturing in Ontario.

The Trudeau Government, however, tried to sell it as the ultimate act of compassion. We fucktards are fucked for life anyway. There’s no known cure and no sizeable and supportable population of doctors going into the field of psychiatry these days. R&D is drying up. They must think outside the box. The plan is perhaps a brilliant one, no doubt, in their minds. Identifying myself with my Sun sign Scorpio, I just wished them ill.

Ah yes, and I wrote a lot of tweets, which on TwitterX has now stopped. The powers that be didn’t like my calling out on how people in power and influencers disrespect the mentally-ill by calling us “incompetents” or comparing themselves to whom they called derogatorily “crazy” in their tweetings. My account got deactivated; I lost access; and I lost all 400+ followers, 99.5% of whom were strangers whom I earned organically by dint of putting in the work. If they can’t beat you, they’ll silence you.

THAT, was the Liberals’ way of silencing us by introducing MAiD. However, the Progressive Conservative “leader”, Pierre Poillievre, champions right-winged Christian values and rides on the wake of failed Liberal policies. Mr. Pollievre seems to think all he has to do is the opposite of what the Liberals did and failed at, and he’d look competent and virtuous enough to win votes.

What most of the public doesn’t notice or question is that that this same Conservative leader of the opposition also said he would cut off all OAS and Disability Pensions. His statement that got him a raucous applause in the House by his fellow Conservatives was simply, “The mentally-ill don’t NEED our help.”

But he also promised he’d ban MAiD permanently for the mentally-ill, the saint that he is. This is an unethical, impractical, cruel non-sequitur. Because what will happen? Poillievre, who is poised to become the next PM seems to believe in asylums. But given the track record of human nature, this would be disasterous.

Human nature takes the path of least resistance. Poillievre already stated he won’t give the pensioners money for food, rent, clothing, heat, or medicine. No pensions. Zero income. So, in his own wisdom, he might refurbish old asylums or places where cheap asylums can be shoddily put up. Then he’ll lock up all the mentally ill, from the highly functional but problematic, to the forensic, under one roof, with “nurses” who become jailers, and deprive us of food, water, warmth, safety, and medications.

Meanwhile, PM Poillievre and his cronies lock and throw away the key as they laugh all the way to the bank. “Look Ma, no handouts!” and also no more mentally-ill in common society. It is a long road of starvation to full eugenics in a Conservative Canada.

Life under the Liberal’s Christy Clark or Rich Coleman would be no different. Their tactic would a bit more subtle. Keep rates as they are and keep ’em in poverty. Eventually, we fucktards will starve or be motivated to find food. The sex worker and porn industries may be appealing to the vulnerable. It might seem reasonable, but the intent is similar. It might be respectable…if only the attitude of “The mentally-ill don’t need our help” wasn’t present. It is present. Loud and clear, yet unspoken. Just satisfy those fucktards with some doggy treats and the majority of the public will think of the Liberals as clean and virtuous.

I worked hard at volunteer positions and paid positions over a 30-year period. I started volunteering with cognitively disabled adults in my area at the age of fifteen. It was always pure joy to see happiness in their faces whenever they saw volunteers and medical staff because, back then, the disabled were treated genuinely well.

My paid work positions rarely lasted six months. I had schizophrenia by then. When I would work three times as hard as the next colleague, the bosses would fire me once the jealous coworkers “dug up the dirt” on my history.

When stressed, I’d go psychotic and try to kill myself. Finally both my psychiatrist and the Gastown Vocational Institute, which used to rehabilitate unemployed psych patients and those with persistent multiple barriers (God bless them), put their foot down. First the GVI told me after I tried to suicide after a stressful two weeks of rehabilitation and volunteer work, that I could not work gainful employment but could only volunteer with seniors and children, if I had supervision. I inwardly flipped the bird and applied for a couple of paying job positions. I figured there was no chance in hell I’d be getting any further at GVI since they wouldn’t release me to gainful work officially.

Both interviews failed. One interviewer chummied up to me to coax out of me my diagnoses, even though she wasn’t supposed to ask, and then let me down gently. The second interviewer stood up and brusquely escorted me to the front door saying, “I don’t know what your mental diagnosis has to do with getting a job here.” She then swiftly locked the door behind me. Oh, the irony.

My psychiatrist then put his foot down and said, “Don’t ever work again. Look, you’re nearly 48 and halfway to retirement. Try to go easy. Maybe consider yourself semi-retired and work on some hobbies.”

What neither of us knew or admitted openly is that after being a high achiever with early entrance into university, and then getting ill, froze me at that age. I was 18 and in second term at high school. I had been doing nothing but homework and sleep, sleep and homework, until I cracked. My brain and emotional development got stuck there. I had, because of schizophrenia, what I finally know to be impaired pre-frontal cortex development, or simply very underdeveloped PFC. I have been 18 for all these decades.

He gave me a note at my request saying his professional opinion that I was not to do any competitive employment. So I have been languishing since from dearth of purpose. I can’t even keep house. My toilet is always filthy as is my kitchen. I manage to do some household chores like washing dishes and doing laundry. I hate showering because I find water traumatizing. And yes, I suffer from persecutory and suicidal ideation. I am convinced out there in the netherworld that something wants to get me badly. They could be spirits or people. Or both. 

I’m not someone I’d want to impose my own company on. I wouldn’t even date me if I were an eligible male. I know what I need is talk therapy. I know too that genuine love heals. There just isn’t any of either. Once the cat gets out of the bag that I’m diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the door slams. 

Doors had started slamming since night school. As soon as I had said those words, previously open, friendly women, who said they’d add me to their contacts, suddenly wouldn’t go out for coffee with me.

One American was friendly enough to refer to it as “your depression” and jibe a bit about only drinking high octane coffee. But he was a bit apprehensive. Making gruff and awkward jokes was the only way he knew how to socialize with me—an Unknowable Undesirable.

Now that I’m in my sixth decade, I know rationally that’s all I can expect of others. It’s not that bad as far as things go; men are simpler in motives and machinations than women. But the reason I love Disney is because there are always friendly people, loyal I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-are-diagnosed-with critters, and, most of all, a world of positivity, humanity, kindness, and hope. 

Why write about all that when I stated my theme as what the mentally-ill really need is therapy? It is to show you how government, societal institutions, and a toxic work culture, fail people like us.

Is it too much to ask for you, the public, to show more understanding towards us? More mercy? More consistent friendliness and compassion? Even if you have good and legitimate reasons not to want to understand us fully? Can we agree we are human and not the exception to the rule while still being expected to work when you say we are indeed the most problematic exception to the rule?

The late great Einstein said, and I paraphrase, “What I want to really know is whether the universe is friendly.”

I’m open to that. But I want to know whether the universe is friendly to us.

by Veek Young

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