“Mental health” means the ability to adapt to a fundamentally insane world.
“Mental health” means the ability to adapt to a fundamentally insane world.
―
Atrona Grizel
“Therapy,”
“coaching,” and “productivity” systems all claim to heal or optimize the
individual, but deep down, these systems and institutions exist solely to
reintegrate the “broken” individual back into the very machinery that “broke”
them in the first place, in order to make them “functional” within wider
society.
―
Atrona Grizel
If one can’t
sleep, they give them pills—not because of sleeplessness itself, but because it
is inconvenient for the work system. If one has “anxiety,” they are told to
meditate—not to rethink their life, but to perform better at their job. A monk
in voluntary seclusion might be diagnosed with “social withdrawal;” a visionary
poet prescribed “mood stabilizers;” and a child who questions their teacher too
often may be medicated to “focus.” A free mind that refuses to have a job may
be taken to a psychologist and, through that process, transformed into someone
who wants one. Because, even if the system itself is rotten, it is stuck in
that rottenness; it cannot be moved or changed. The only thing that can be
changed is the individual, which results in a subtle tyranny that has an
endless appetite for conformity and “productivity.”
―
Atrona Grizel
Traditional
values such as success, contribution, status, fame, and legacy are endlessly
repeated, so that people tether their happiness to them. That is, to foster
dependence on the outside. They themselves have become the outside. They cannot
break away. Those swallowed by society will do anything to preserve this
domesticated dependency, which they rename “being part of humanity.” But
actually, they are babies that do not know how to live without others.
―
Atrona Grizel
I govern myself;
at school, I’m commanded to learn from others. I create cosmologies; at school,
citizens are what they want to manufacture. I reject fame; at school, token
medals and certificates fly through the air. I prefer stillness; there, an
endless rush and scrambling reign. I am independent; at school, rules and molds
try to keep me within certain labels. I am free; at school, goals and
expectations are piled on until they’re internalized. I see “education” itself
as fundamentally filthy; at school, they regard learning as a “source of
knowledge.” I recognize the inner world as the only authority; at school, I am
expected to fear the officials. I yearn for genuine connection; at school, there
are only social games and gossip. I see originality as a sign of reality; at
school, difference is a sign of “concern,” resulting in the “interventions” of
guidance counselors. I am as deep as the ocean floor; at school, my headache
grows from the endless giggling over hollow topics. I am sworn to individualism
and the revaluation of values; at school, only primates exist, having copied
family and social values wholesale. I flourish with love; yet at school, the
environment is institutional, a place where even the smallest action can have
serious consequences. I worship silence; at school, there is only noise and
sound, and the longest silence in an entire day lasts at most ten seconds. I
admire art and philosophy; at school, suffocating mathematics and even useless,
boring chemistry facts are drilled into you like a parrot’s chant. I dream of
nature; at school, fluorescent light drills into my eyes, and flat, colorless
concrete walls mock my creativity. While I sing praises to being without a
profession, in school there is no question asked except “what will you be?”
Because my inner world is richer than the outer one, the outer world becomes
unreal, yet at school they try to force me into that type of person who is
“social and outgoing.” While I cloak myself to prevent my passions from being
stolen, at school, every spiritual feeling is turned into a career and made
material. While I think about how to escape compulsory schooling and military
service, at school, nationalism and patriotism—the only allowed ideology—are
instilled compulsorily. I am obligated to hear again and again knowledge at
school that I already learned years ago by myself, while everyone stares
blankly at it as if seeing it for the first time, and whoever grasps even a
tiny portion of it is considered the most knowledgeable. I learn freely, yet at
school I am seen through limiting lenses such as “visual learner,” “auditory
learner,” or “social learner.” I see myself as stateless, yet at school nothing
is offered outside the portrait of the country’s founder and its flag hanging
at the head of the classroom, and a crowded swamp of theory entirely set by the
state’s wishes. I overflow with abstract and inner insights, yet at school only
heaps of concrete and physical facts are recited again and again. I am forced
to act as though I take seriously this dump of ignorance where neither a person
nor a thing speaks to my interests—this is the ground from which my lasting
emotional and intellectual disappointment grows. And countless others…
― Atrona
Grizel
School is, for
me, an existential threat. There, all my values are systematically insulted
from morning to evening, turning what most people call “everyday life” into
something exhausting for me. School is the place where, simply because of official
obligation, I endure its noise all day as if in a kindergarten full of unruly
children, leave as if wounded from a battlefield, and return in the same way. I
am not complaining about homework or teachers being “unfair”; I am saying that
the entire structure violates who I am at the deepest level. That’s why every
time I go there or whenever I remember that place, I’m accompanied by shallow
breathing and heart palpitations—not because of “shame,” “worry,” or “fear,”
but because I’m stuck in a state of readiness for threat. If a bear were right
beside me and I ignored it, I would die there. My brain has carved school into
its memory as exactly such a bear, for my nervous system has encoded the
institution as a predator. Others learn to numb themselves, but I refuse, so
this vigilance stays raw every day. How have I endured this, staring back at
endless hours that never seem to pass, throughout my entire youth? “I haven’t
endured,” perhaps; I’ve only been forced to kill a part of myself with my own
hands. For a chainless spirit, school is nothing more than a place to test
one’s ability to survive. Why didn’t I go somewhere else? Because even though I
was living monotony to the marrow, I was also in immense
astonishment—astonishment at this: were the things I was seeing truly real?
Something like a dream or a hallucination cannot be changed; if it were
changed, that would lend it reality, which would make it even harder to bear.
Besides, my situation is not with a specific building or the specific people inside
it, but with an entire age and with humanity itself. If I had gone elsewhere,
the same scene would have been there too. As long as there isn’t a school
designed “by and for individualist intellectuals who have proudly severed all
ties with society”—which, by its very contrary nature, does not and will not
exist—every school I go to will feel the same to me. Lucky are the sleepwalkers
who can see changing schools or dropping out as a kind of salvation. If my
peers were in my situation, they would have lost their minds—quit school, maybe
even looked for legal action if that were possible. Because they always think
they’re something special, and since their entire self-perception is built from
social relations, they cannot live without them. But I am not “my peers.”
Leaving me among ignorant, inexperienced kids who have never even heard a
single word spoken by a serious, seasoned, and profound elder—that’s exactly
how I feel among those my own age. And this feeling isn’t about circumstances;
it’s directly tied to existence itself. That’s why I quietly wait for my
backward mind’s body to grow, just to be freed from this cursed youth I have
fallen into.
―
Atrona Grizel
People take my
silence as their victory. Yet my silence is my own victory, always—even if I’m
the only one who knows it.
―
Atrona Grizel
It does not
matter how long one lives, nor how one lives.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even if
everything I owned were taken from me—if I were left friendless, penniless,
homeless, scraping by on the streets—I would still carry a pride as hard as
steel. Because this pride—not vanity—is not external or physical; it is inward
and existential. Naturally, only I myself can undo it—if I were to want to.
―
Atrona Grizel
All this human
noise assaults my mind. My desire for silence, of course, will never be taken
seriously—why would it be? If they were to take my wish for silence seriously,
they’d also have to confront their own addiction to noise. If I were to ask,
“Would you please be quiet?” they’d answer, “So what should we do then? Just
sit here and stare at each other?” And I could never tell them that yes, that
is precisely what they should do—because they would never understand that I
actually mean it.
― Atrona Grizel