MAD, BAD or SAD?
Dr Tulika Jha
Once you have seen it
You can’t un-see
Yet the survival in this state
Takes up all your energy
They tell you, you are mad
Some support maybe?
From the very people who are trying to oppress
Really?
And you better not get angry
Because then you are acting like a child
Emotional Intelligence
Something you need to try, try and try
Until you learn to silence
What your anger has to say or
You will be silenced
Because that’s no way
For a lady to behave
And lady of colour at that
You are then deemed “bad”
Excluded and shamed
Because you can’t be tamed
Made to believe
Your fundamental aim
Is to deceive
But once you see, you cannot un-see
The ones who look like you mainly
Do not have a voice
Those who do
Have got there by
Years of gagging it
God forbid, if they speak
Their precarious positions will shift
Then there are some like my boy
Who just wants to believe
That people are not treated badly because of the colour
Of their skin
He wants to preserve
That safe place in his heart
This is the only country he knows
And he wants to believe
That his homeland can contain him
His skin, his parents’ protests and his grandparents’ compliance
After all he says, each generation faces less
Racism
No one calls me a Paki at school
It’s really not like that
And I get irritated
Flesh and blood of mine
Would rather believe in the goodness of the oppressors
Than I
What I later realise
That my boy and some friends of mine
Are turning a blind eye
Not because they are bad people
But because they don’t want to be sad
To contaminate security, even if it is a false sense
It’s importance for their existence
It’s a PPE against enormous pain
That annihilation, betrayal and repeated oppression tends
When you are being abused
You don’t want to admit
It shames you for letting yourself be
A victim
By this point
I have crossed the first two stages –
Mad and bad
Now they say that you are sad
This one you cannot deny
You feel it in your heart, soul and body
Sadness- so much easier for all to point
It doesn’t have the force that anger can afford
Because the fire has been suffused and now it burns out
Self- care they say
Self -care
You can’t pour from an empty cup
But my cup you filled with poison
That you made me make
Stewed over days of betrayal, exclusion, micro/macro aggression
My cup is not empty
It’s very much full
Now you want me out of your face
Because it makes your guilt feel responsible
Go spend time with your ‘loved’ ones
That’s the most important thing
In life
Even hubby says it’s not important – this fight
And I surrender my phone to my boy
Who doesn’t want to believe that racism exists
He wants his mummy back
Whilst at work they breathe a sigh of relief
The voice that holds them to account has ceased
Mission ‘sadness’ achieved
3 steps of Activism complete
Mad, Bad and Sad.
I wrote this poem in free association style without making any changes. The audio recording is unedited & there in lies its cathartic potential.
The poem looks at the relationship between mental health / activism/ intersectional oppression (racism/ sexism/ disability) in medicine and links the personal (lived experience as a seniorMH professional with racial trauma leading to depression ) to the political ( how services are provided for mental ill health, how they are bound in hierarchy and the impact of this on MH professionals and therefore the persons that they serve)
Throughout my medical career ( 25 years) I have tried to make sense of the emotional whirlwind we get exposed to with no insights from the vast creative world of arts available to us. Through my poetry I wish to challenge medical culture and training for the wellbeing of its staff, for equity, for sustainability and for respectful co creation of care with the people that we serve.