Smallness, Marriage, and the Asylum
Society teaches us that some rituals mean belonging.
Marriage is one: you are celebrated, crowned as normal, accepted.
The asylum is its shadow: here the label mentally ill makes you excluded, hidden, erased.
But beyond these public rituals, there are the private ones at home.
I learned early that safety meant being small.
If I shrank myself, if I stayed cautious, I was tolerated.
But if I dared to stand tall, to feel powerful, even to imagine myself a goddess,
I was beaten back down — reminded that I must remain little, helpless, invisible.
This is how control works:
the world lifts you up with one ritual, crushes you with another,
until you no longer know whether your worth belongs to you or to them.
But worth does not come from marriage,
nor does shame come from diagnosis,
nor does smallness make me safe forever.
Maybe the first act of freedom
is to see that these labels and punishments are scripts —
and scripts can be broken.