“…and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
– Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival
Flat affect. Disorganized thinking. Brain fog. Fast-moving shadows, critiquing whispers, inescapable paranoia. Schizoaffective disorder.
I am a high-achieving Black woman, and I grew up as a high-achieving Black girl. I was your Student Council president, your community leader, your fellowship recipient, your Truman finalist. I applied for everything, was awarded most things, and I was often the youngest in the room.
I represented my community with grace. I did not slip up, I did not show weariness, I put on a brave face. I knew my place. I was often the first of many. I checked every box, and I was your token. But what happens when the boxes we are placed into no longer fit us? What happens when the token stops shining for you? You loved me until I stopped making sense to you. And believe me, I’ve stopped making sense to many.
I live with schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder is the combination of schizophrenia and a mood disorder, such as depression or bipolar disorder. Since my early adolescence, I have struggled with depressive and psychotic symptoms that often felt too big for my body, and I’ve been in and out of psychiatric institutions, therapy programs, and on and off various psych medications since age 14.
To be a high-achieving Black woman with schizoaffective disorder is to be released from the psychiatric hospital, return to work the next day, and be questioned by supervisors for my flat affect. It is to be tone-policed, to try to fit into boxes that will never bend for me. It is to be invalidated during crisis, yet doubted for dreaming. To live on the brink between wellness and illness is a cage that I have never been able to free myself from. To know that I am deeply capable of creating a meaningful life for myself, but never truly knowing if one psychotic episode can make the life I am trying to create suddenly disappear, sometimes feels like too big a burden to bear.
You would never know that this is who I am or what I live with. So when I hear you on the news, you think you’re not talking about me because I, of course, am your token, right?
In September, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade boldly stated on national television that unhoused people with mental illness should simply be executed. “Just kill them,” he said, in response to a conversation about social support, housing, and how (or if) to meet the needs of unhoused people who refuse to accept such services. Kilmeade has since publicly apologized, but the harsh implications of his words have been echoed decades before and continue to be broadcast throughout our media and society. If you cannot get in line, you must be eliminated. I have spent my entire life trying to get in line for my own protection. I have tried to be a societal token, but I no longer want my legacy to be one of obedience. Audre Lorde told us that our silence would not protect us. So when this country routinely chooses to discard people like me, the shield of compliance becomes suffocating because it not only fails to shelter, but it erases who I am in the process.
My token is done shining for you. I have been a high-achieving Black woman, a token you could point to as proof of progress. But I will not be the token for you anymore – I no longer want to allow my worth to be defined by those who will never truly understand me or my community.
I am learning to live without the weight of your gaze, and when the token stops shining, I will finally be free to glow for myself. But here’s the truth: it’s not enough for me to be free. If we are to truly change, we must shatter the systems that demean people like me and countless others. Kilmeade’s statements were not a slip of the tongue. They were a reflection of the deep-rooted and systemic violence we endure.
Kilmeade was talking about the marginalized people who are rendered invisible, whose humanity is erased, and whose lives are deemed disposable because they cannot get in line.
This is not just about me; we are all intertwined in the fight for justice, and this fight must be collective. Push against the complacency that allows these dehumanizing narratives to flourish. We were never protected, anyway.
My token is done shining for them – is yours?
This blog was written by an alumni of the Internship Program who requested anonymity.