The Multiple Manifesto
by the Crisses
Recorded here for your listening/viewing pleasure: https://youtu.be/H4WQUZv7JV0
Here’s to my brethren: to those of multiple minds, those who are communities and communes and chaos and families in a body of one, to those who look at every side of the issue at the same time, who dress like a queen, a wallflower, a whore, a dapper gent, a business person and a jock all before breakfast, to those who look in the mirror and see someone else’s face looking back, who don’t recognize their own hands, who are as surprised as anyone else at what they do or the smart-aleck comments that fly unchecked from their lips, to those who ask rhetorical questions in an empty room and get an answer, to those who sleep perchance to get up as someone else and decide the day is young again and there’s still so much to do and only so many hours to share, whose current identity is obvious to those who know how to look—down to the fall of your hair—to those condemned by science and portrayed as loonies in the movies, mocked as a turn of phrase as the epitome of being two-faced, the victims of a tug of war between the DSM and the FMS and never asked if we give a rats ass if you believe in us because we actually don’t believe in you either.
It’s time to rise up and demand our rights, our rights to getting along inside without fights, our rights to shine as who we really are, no matter how many. It’s time to allow all of our varied voices to sing in harmony and allow a few to sit out because that’s just how they are, and a few because they don’t yet know how to sing. It’s time to realize that if this is who we are, maybe this is how we’re meant to be, we just need a little help getting the kinks out of our system — no pun intended. We can get over the pain and the discord and we can overcome the chaos, but maybe there’s a reason for every facet and every face and every individual we are and maybe we want to stand out, to non-conform, to be outside of the singleton norm, to celebrate our Id our Ego our Anima and our Animus with names and voices and clothes and postures and beliefs and likes and dislikes.
My brethren, it’s time to throw off the shackles of a science less than 150 years old and the unproven theories they use to experiment on us, and perhaps make our own path, one of wholeness and wellness without needing to be one.
It’s time, if for no other reason than that we have had it up to here. But maybe it’s time because health insurance is barely (if at all) covering mental health, if we’re lucky enough to have health coverage at all. Maybe it’s time because the world is going to hell. Maybe it’s time because there’s no magic pill that’s going to make us sane overnight, and it doesn’t pay if they found one anyway. Maybe it’s time because they have us convinced that being sane is the exact opposite of having multiple minds. Let’s redefine sane as functional and helpful members of society who abide by the laws of the land — and regard our multifaceted multi-tasking instantaneous group collaboration and brainstorming potential as a vehicle to redefine genius. We hold our breath for years to be given the blessing of sanity, to please the gatekeepers to that elusive golden calf of being one whole and holy person once more. But perhaps we’ve been through what we’ve been through, become the people we’ve become — yes PEOPLE — precisely for the strengths and the individuality that being multiple brings us.
What if we could be sane without worrying about digging up our past, without being in treatment for years, without worrying about what people think, without giving in, without giving up on ourselves, without hating ourselves, without making the situation worse before it gets better, without twiddling our thumbs for years based on therapies that are inhumane and when you think about it make absolutely no sense. Let’s not hold out on having sanity until the “good doctor” can see us again!
What if we could be sane — GASP — without the sanction of the status-quo gatekeepers of the faith of psychology?
We have the power to unite inside, to form coalitions, to form clans, to form rules, to band together and act as one even if we never plan on becoming one.
Now is the time, because otherwise they’re wasting our time, and time is all the more precious when you have other people to share it with.
Next: "To the Psych Community"
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