Once a Silent Minority Member
by B.J. Morganti
Reprinted from Cal Net Gazette, 2:3, May 1999.
The Silent Minority are people who are still resigned
about not being a part of society. They don’t speak up,
can’t be real and have accepted the scraps and leftovers.
They don’t have relationships, decent housing or
quality of life. They’re resigned about being alive.
The losses are too great. I know because I was once a
member of the Silent Minority.
Somehow, the core of who I was had been taken. The mental
breakdown left only vulnerability and darkness. A whole
world had caved in along with devastating losses of
friends and profound hopelessness. The experience of being
interacted with by others was worse; stay away from her,
don’t talk to her, be afraid of her.
The inner world is a whole different life. It used to
be an abundance, an exuberance of laughter and then there
was only a deadened place, a place of walls; in a way
a refuge, a safety, a place where you couldn’t be hurt.
The system had documented me with labels and information.
I’m a book, a code, a diagnosis, a specimen — the painful
furtherance of a non person. My fate was sealed by buying
into not being a part of the world.
Then something happened. Slowly, gradually, enlightenmnent
through study and seeking help from people without being
stigmatized. Loving people, people who appreciated me,
and looked beyond the symptoms and saw the person, the
presence of a human being. The acknowledgement of the inner
core, the inner goodness. People believed in me before I
believed in myself.
We can’t just manage symptoms, it keeps people
who are stuck — stuck.