Excerpts from Mickey´s Updates
Mickey De Valda wrote a regular column for the Hearing Voices Network Magazine and here we provide some examples of his writings and the issues that were of concern to him:
Hearing Voices Network Magazine, December 2003
What I want to write aboput here is less of this update and more a bit of personal experience, but it´s so important to me and I truly believe others will find it important also. Basically it is about the unfairness of the system. When I was a kid I remember that I was a bit stupid and did not mix with others very well. I have always thought that I was a strange kid and perhaps a bit daft! I expect that´s why I ended up in psychiatry.
However, a kind person, not long ago explained my life to me in a way that made me change my mind about that. My step dad was black, and racism was rife in the 1950´s. So the kids kept away from me and I didn´t learn how to mix, I had no social skills whatsoever. When other kids noticed that I didn´t react like them, things got worse and worse and I got stranger and stranger. Thanks to that kind person I now know that I am not daft, merely unlearned, and that´s got better and better over the years, so that I now mix in quite well. But here is the horrible bit! Those professionals know all of this and they don´t tell us what they know, they just call us schizos.
Incidental interactions in these societies are cruel and damaging and those who have knowledge don´t give it away freely. This may seem fair enough given the priorities concerning money and class but ot causes so much unnecessary suffering!
So look at your life and the things that have held you back. Maybe you are not a schizo or manic or whatever they have said. Maybe your Dad was the local jailbird or something like that. Maybe you didn´t have a chance. Once you know there´s nothing really different about you, you can start to work your way back and out of the mess that you´re in. I know that this makes sense to me becasue it is so real to me.