Capitalism Makes Me Sick by Ina P.

Ed.’s note: The following was delivered at the Rail’s “Rant Rhapsody Redux: Missives from the American Fall” on October 16 at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Alice Walker told me recently that writing is so organic to her

nature, so essential to her being—such an inevitable flow—that she finds

people criticizing her work as silly as criticizing a wisteria’s

growth. And that’s how I feel about Occupy Wall Street. I love it

because it’s not making claims or demands in a way that feels like one

more assault in the endless war of ideas and name-calling between

political factions, not just another engine belching away in the noise

factory that makes up our politics, with everyone talking so much nobody

is ever really heard. It just is, taking root and growing everywhere.

People are inhabiting their cities and their stories, sharing their

real untriumphant, non-heroic lives in a way that’s real and meaty and

intimate, not 140-character smartassisms, not Facebook updates that

reinforce some fictional persona meant to impress. Just being real

people, rooted in place and time. Here. Present. I love that.

So I’m going to just be my real self here, too, shaped by capitalism

like we all inescapably are. I want to tell you how it’s affected me and

why I care that we start healing. Why the Occupy movement feels like

spiritual medicine for everyone who encounters it with an open heart.

The current system is so monolithic it’s hard to remember that it’s

just one more mirage like all power, another set of illusions, like

advertising and pornography, whose functions are to generate fear and

desire and keep us mesmerized, inert, debilitated by self-doubt. Telling

us our souls feel empty or in pain because we don’t yet have this or

that, him or her, and that the people who do are better. That there’s

something out there you can buy or achieve that will finally stop the

fear, the aching inside that tells you you’re nothing until you have it,

and that everybody knows.

I’ve never told anyone except my husband and a couple of very close

friends what I’m about to tell you, not my comrades in activism for whom

I would have died at times, not my girlfriends or my kiki gay

boyfriends or anyone. But I’m tired of hiding and I just want to be. I

want to follow the example of everyone down on Wall Street, of everyone

around the world today who has thrown off the fear and judgment for

being unemployed, or underemployed, indebted, disabled, disrespected,

and otherwise low status in our society.

I take such strength in being reminded that that’s practically

everyone. And that if we can stop hating ourselves because the system

devalues us, if we can start loving ourselves exactly as we are, and

loving each other, the world will simply be radically, gloriously

different. The illusion of power we suffer, which makes us enslave and

oppress and hurt each other, will simply cease to be.

So here’s my American story.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_image/image/8731/parker-web1.jpgPhoto by Zachary Garlitos.

Capitalism makes me sick. I’m not just talking about moral revulsion,

nor speaking metaphorically: I am actually sick. I spent my first 30

years in a near constant state of economic terror and the traumas that

came with it. And now I am in pain almost all the time, pain brought on

by the stress of trying to survive in this system.

My mother was abandoned with two babies, chronically depressed, always

broke, deeply traumatized by all kinds of wild shit she did as the ’60s

wound to a violent, madcap, drug-induced close in L.A.

By the time I was three and my brother was six months old, I was her

only support and became her shrink and confidant, her helper, the bright

shining girl who she needed to think could withstand anything and bring

light back to the darkness.

She must have been too afraid of ending up like her sisters—one a

violent delusional paranoid schizophrenic and the other a junkie—to ask

for help from her parents, and had nobody else to turn to. She had no

illusions that becoming dependent on welfare would do anything but

worsen our prospects so she worked like a dog at menial jobs and tried

desperately to keep her head—our heads—above water as best she could. We

went without a lot—we ran out of food sometimes but she’d scare up a

bag of rice or take us to a bar with free happy hour snacks and we’d

make it through. She tried to make our homes beautiful without spending a

dime. She tried very hard, never, ever gave up, never took a vacation

or a break in 20 years. But she was partially broken by it all and the

system didn’t ever quite work for her.

Money was always a problem.

She couldn’t afford childcare so I went to my aunt and uncle’s after

school. My aunt would turn tricks in the bedroom for drugs. My uncle

would do coke and heroin and smoke pot at the living room table with his

penis out while I played on the floor. He would masturbate with my hair

while I tried to eat dinner or draw or do my school work. He’d pick me

up and touch me. He’d watch me playing with an intensity and a fury that

I knew could boil into extreme violence if I crossed him. I shut down. I

escaped into fantasies of being a princess who accidentally ended up

here and would someday be rescued. I confided only in my imaginary

friends, and thought I had to keep taking it because I feared for my

little brother and cousin if I didn’t.

At school and on TV, the emerging ethos of

the Reagan ’80s told me that poverty was a moral disease, that drugs

were evil, and that abnormal sexuality was a spiritual sickness

affecting the wicked and the weak. I didn’t know that I wasn’t complicit

or to blame for what was happening. Some would say it was a matter of

liberal cultural decay brought on by the sick, destructive radicalism of

the ’60s. My parents and aunt and uncle were disillusioned, burned-out

former hippies, distraught over the course the world was taking, left

behind by the system, and I believed it all. Since I came from them, I

thought I was all of those things too.

I was smart and charismatic and ended up testing into a magnet program

in a wealthy elementary school. The kids made fun of my unkempt

appearance, my wardrobe. The one time they saw my dad they spent a week

telling me he looked like the janitor. I was always ashamed of myself

for not having what they had. I thought I was horribly ugly because I

looked nothing like Christie Brinkley or any of the well-groomed,

Guess-jeaned girls in my class.

I blamed myself for my circumstances, and became adept at hiding them.

I’d get dropped off in front of strangers’ nice houses and then walk a

mile or two home to where we really lived. I told people my dad was off

on daring adventures or business when he was really a homeless meth

addict by then, hooked on the working man’s drug in his own nightmare

cycle of working to feed an addiction to keep working to feed the

addiction. He lived in his truck, he showed up every few months or years

to violently explode at my mother, to scream about her and me and my

brother sucking out his lifeblood in the form of child support which he

was always far behind on.

I fantasized that he’d show up healed and rescue us, but for years

actually expected to hear he had died every time the phone rang. If only

we didn’t cost so much money, if only I could provide for myself, my

dad would feel better and come back and love me, my mom would have time

for me, I’d be as good as the kids at school, and they would like me.

It was just a matter of money.

I was terrified of the other parents at school. I was scared of my

teachers who treated me like trash, said underhanded things about my

mom’s non-participation in PTA and field trips and bake sales in front of the other kids. The DARE program

told me to turn in any adults I saw using drugs but they were so

prevalent around me I knew my brother and I would be taken away if I

told, so I kept silent, became a master of revealing nothing of myself

or my life.

I knew I was bad and to be blamed because I couldn’t bear to think it

was the whole world, that it was the system we lived in that was mean

and dangerous. The system seemed to work for everyone else so it must be

me. I wanted to thrive someday. I had to have hope to survive. I knew

that I didn’t stack up but I hoped someday I would.

When I was 11 I exploded in hatred and pain and told my mother what my

uncle had been doing. She called the cops and I had to be interviewed

twice about all the sordid details I could remember, carefully

protecting my mother’s complicity so I wouldn’t lose my home and my

brother. But she was overly honest with them and because of her felony

conviction and her admission that she and my uncle were drug buddies now

and sometime lovers in their “wild years,” she was deemed an unsuitable

witness. It would be a kid against a grown-up, me against my uncle

whose father had been a big lawyer in town, who knew people, whose wife

and friends would stand by him. The cops slunk away, the case was never

prosecuted. The system deemed my victimization worthless; we were too

poor, too damaged to count. I thought it was a judgment on me. I thought

I would have to work very, very hard to become a person of value, to

deserve to live and to be safe.

My uncle wasn’t ostracized. My grandmother, the closest person I had

to a protector, constantly reminded me that my uncle was at least a good

provider—he had a union job at the docks and put food on the table—and

so was a much better father to my cousin than my own father was to me.

Money, it always came down to money.

Human value was defined by money, the same lesson over and over. I was

told to buck up, kiddo, that others had it worse than me. And by now I

was going to school with kids who probably did. In order to go on, I

focused only on how lucky I was. At least I hadn’t been raped. At least

my mother wasn’t shooting drugs and turning tricks. I needed to place

myself somewhere up from the bottom of the scale because I didn’t know

the difference between my real value and what the system deemed it to

be.

My dad once told me his parenting philosophy was summed up by the song

“A Boy Named Sue,” and for years I thought that twisted lesson somehow

seemed fair, that everything that happened was only what was best for me

because of who I was, how low I’d started, because of what I deserved

to endure in order to become something better.

I wanted to join the system because it was my only hope of escape. I

got straight As, perfect test scores. I sunk myself into ballet classes

six days a week to avoid going home, to have a silent, voiceless,

structured form through which I could express myself yet reveal nothing.

Perfection was the only possibility, anything else was failure.

I was always stressed out and on the verge of tears but I wasn’t

allowed to cry or show weakness, especially not around my mother who was

too stressed and stretched thin to experience it as anything but

another burden. I had debilitating pains in my belly. They happened at

school once and an ambulance took me to the emergency room. My mother

was furious for costing her the money. The stress got worse, the pain

got worse, and I swallowed it down. Someone like me can’t afford to be

sick. It was my fault for being weak. My fault for being flawed. Work,

accomplish, escape.

It was all going to come down to money.

When I was 17, the L.A. riots broke out. I

was going to one of the toughest schools in the area—4,500 kids, drug

dogs, metal detectors, bullet holes in the classroom ceilings from

flying shots outside. And the school exploded in a race riot. I saw one

kid get his brains smashed out of his skull on the pavement. The cops

were everywhere swarming and arresting my schoolmates. But they ignored

me or smiled at me, asked me if I was okay, urged me to get home safely.

For the first time ever, my white skin became my defining feature in a

way I hadn’t noticed before—I was on the more powerful side of the big

struggle simply by virtue of my color. I had privilege in a way I’d

never realized and that meant power to do something useful. I was on the

wrong side of justice, not a victim of the system but a beneficiary of

it.

It made me sick to think I was complicit in anyone else ever feeling

the way I had until then—worthless, alienated, shamed, abandoned,

humiliated, deprived, terrified, discriminated against for an accident

of birth. I had wanted to be a dancer or a filmmaker, but decided art

was an indulgence someone like me couldn’t afford until I made the whole

world just and fair for everyone, made sure no little girls ever felt

like I had again. Then I could indulge in dreams. Then I would deserve

to follow my bliss. I found left politics and became a true believer. I

would save the world in order to be of adequate value to be worth saving

myself.

I moved to New York because it was as far away from home as I could

get. It was anonymous and I could start again, take hold of my

bootstraps, and pull myself into something better without my family

weighing me down. I tried to work in documentary film—a version of what I

actually wanted to do that I could justify to myself—but by economic

necessity accidentally ended up working my way up in leftist publishing

and non-profits as a publicist or press agent or whatever you want to

call it. I was a professional manipulator of language, a professional

co-dependent for the leaders of the left. I hated it but because of my

background I was a natural, and at least I felt useful.

I worked extremely hard. I was very good at shaping myself around the

needs of others. I never said no to anyone or anything who needed my

help. I derived all my value through helping other people’s dreams and

aspirations, causes and careers. And my job constantly reinforced my

second-class status, even in the movement. I was never the center of

anything, always a facilitator off to the side, so it felt familiar.

Like I wasn’t asking for more than I deserved.

I did a few things I’m proud of, hopefully did more good than harm.

But on balance nothing was ever an accomplishment of my own. I knew that

my labors were only ever a cover for the fact that I was starting from

so far behind the mark. Every hard sprint forward only got me to the

starting line. Any victory belonged to whomever I was working behind,

never to me. My voice counted for nothing but everyone else’s was

critically important and I could express what I thought through them;

with my help they would be heard and things would get better. Then it

would be my turn to be somebody, to do what I wanted to do.

Inside the institutions of the left, like all institutions that exist

within capitalism, I discovered the same reverence for the rich and

powerful as everywhere else. Almost all the executive directors and

publishers came from wealth. There were family dynasties whose children

were guaranteed access, guaranteed to start out as people whose voices

did count.

I knew I couldn’t be better born and I was never going to make real

money working for hard causes and non-profit institutions. I began to

wonder if I’d taken the wrong road, if I could have done more good and

gained more respect, more value, if I’d focused first on making millions

on Wall Street and then turned to philanthropy. There were millionaires

who lived lavishly off the dirty fruits of others’ labors, either

“earned” or inherited, but whom everybody fawned over for their bravery

in coming around to the good cause, for hosting great parties, for

giving big money. They got the awards, the accolades, the invitations. I

was just the help. I began to get cynical.

It turned out that it still came down to money. Capitalism was everywhere, inescapable, and corrosive.

I was stressed out all the time and became very resentful, very hurt

by small slights, gutted by what I experienced as betrayal of the

unspoken contract in my head: that if I supported everyone else, they’d

finally make me feel valuable, treat me that way, pay me on time, say

thank you. So I worked harder, thinking it all might come true someday

if I just tried one more time, did it better, put more into it. I was

still trapped in the calculus of capitalism: if you work hard enough you

will earn your place at the table.

I ran on pure adrenaline. My back started hurting all the time. I was,

miraculously, happily married by now and we wanted to have kids but I

was infertile without explanation. I worked on, ground on, ignored the

pain and the symptoms—figuring I didn’t deserve what I wanted anyway. I

didn’t stop to go to the doctor. No room for weakness. I self-medicated

in order to work: exercise, pot, Xanax, Aleve. All of it overtaxed my

adrenal system further and the hormonal response got worse.

My memory declined—I couldn’t remember entire conversations, books I’d

read, films I’d seen, ideas I’d had, appointments or commitments I’d

made. My reputation started to slip. At the same time, old memories I’d

suppressed in order to function started flashing before my eyes in the

middle of the workday and the night. I got scared of other people and

what they would think of me if they saw me like this and I had to

explain what was happening. I stopped attending events. I stopped seeing

friends. I hid.

And yet I carried on at work, because there was no stopping. There was

no going without a paycheck for two weeks, or losing my business

through which I paid my health insurance and that of my husband and

employees, no losing whatever ground I’d gained on the road out of where

I’d come from.

It came down to money, there was no way around it.

My left piriformis finally spasmed and hardened, which pinched my

sciatic nerve. Then the hardening and spasming spread to my glutes,

hamstrings, IT bands, hip flexors, outer obliques, shins and calves, all

my spinal muscles, and the muscles between my ribs. The muscles pulled

on my spine and a disc slipped. I was paralyzed in bed and couldn’t roll

over or move without excruciating, blinding pain for two weeks.

I thought I was going to die and told my loving husband to leave me

because I didn’t want to burden him. I didn’t call any friends to come

help me. I was gutted when I ran into a former activist comrade one day

while I was trying painfully and slowly to get down the block and into a

physical therapist’s office; instead of offering to help me, which I

desperately needed, all he did was tell me about some project he was

working on, how I could help, and then leave me standing there, alone

and scared. It reinforced what I’d always suspected: that nobody cared

about me, only about what I could do for them. That the system was total

and inescapable, a reflection of human nature like the right had always

claimed. I hit the bottom of my despair.

And then, for the first time in my life, I just let go. I stopped

struggling against it. I stopped worrying what it would mean to our

finances. And even in pain I felt an immediate, blissful grace in the

powerlessness of surrender, the peace of being fully in the present,

totally in my body, just being. The pain was a gift: a thunderbolt

directly to my nervous system, a literal pain in my ass manifesting

itself from spiritual pain, telling me I had to stop trying to earn love

and just be love. And in order to do that, I had to love myself first.

It was time to occupy my own life, value my own gifts, go forward in

faith instead of fear. No more sacrificing my life to be part of the

system, or to reform the system, or even to fight it.

And no matter what, no matter what work I ended up doing, or what path

I took, my value moment to moment would have nothing to do with money.

The typical personality type among chronic pain sufferers is someone

who can’t say no to taking care of everyone around her, someone who

bears the stress of financial and emotional support for her family,

someone who suppresses her needs so she can be of service to everyone

else instead. Selfless, self-sacrificing. In other words, the typical

American woman.

It is a disease of capitalism. It tells us we’re worth nothing unless

we somehow make the system work for us and our families—to get all the

things for ourselves and for them we think makes us all acceptable,

worthwhile, attractive, lovable. We negate our own selves and our dreams

in a futile attempt to become people of value. We don’t realize that we

already are from the moment we’re born. And all the odds are stacked

against the system working for most of us—there’s not a mainstream

economic indicator that shows anything but rapidly consolidating wealth

for a tiny few and losses for everyone else. We kill ourselves to

achieve what is unachievable, and blame ourselves and each other for

failing. For being “losers.”

Economic deprivation and stress beget trauma, trauma begets deprivation,

cascading down through generations. It’s the only real trickle-down in

our economic system. And if you look at all the other diseases of

capitalism—obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness,

addiction, and so on—we are nearly all sick and suffering from it in one

shape or another. It’s killing us all.

And it all comes down to nothing: to dirty, filthy, illusory money.

I’m sick and tired of writing manifestos in my head to make sense of

capitalism, to reform or to fix it. I’m sick and tired of justifying my

physical presence in the world through my labor value or my political

value. I’m sick and tired of waiting for a future where everything’s

better and I can finally be my whole, real self.

For all our sisters and brothers who can make it to the occupation sites

around the world and the many more who can’t, it’s time to not just

occupy our cities but to inhabit our own bodies and minds, our own

stories, and our relationships with each other in truth and without

shame. To stop measuring our own value and everyone else’s by how much

we have or don’t have. To stop hating ourselves and each other because

we are rich or poor, because capitalism insists we are nothing more than

inadequate accumulations of possession and accomplishment, never

stacking up against the fears and desires it perpetuates through

illusion. I’m tired of living in fear.

I’ve decided to live. I’m going to do whatever is as natural to me as

the wisteria’s growth is to it, one moment at a time for the rest of

this short, beautiful life I’ve been given. I’m going to create without

feeling I have to justify it economically or politically. I’m going to

join everyone else basking in the sunshine of fellowship and love down

on Wall Street and around the world in just being myself in all my

flawed reality. I’m going to remember that I deserve to exist and to

thrive, just like we all do, just like every living thing does. To

occupy and inhabit my own self in love, my community in love, my world

in love, and to have faith that that is enough, that it will spread and

take root and grow everywhere.