3 Seconds of Bulletproof

Trying All the Things in a Secondary Preliminary Posting.

This is going to be audio transcribed to the written word so that you can see and hear at the same time. To see the transcription highlighted while hearing the audio, go to the podcast tab and click “transcription” on the Mad One Media Substack.

Last week we started with a video post that wrapped up my time at Intersection for the Arts residency.

I'm back at Intersection today for an event and I'm going to do a little freestyle essay on the podcast that will be transcribed into the written word.

Yesterday was an event for me.

I was summoned to jury duty.

And I went back to the same courtroom in Redwood City, San Mateo County, California where I had to go in a number of years ago to get some charges dismissed, get some warrants dropped.

And something happens when you're called for jury duty.

They had a large pool of people.

They called the names and you're in this large room with 130 people

You don't really want to be there.

Sometimes people are missing work.

The first thing I'm feeling is I'm just like everyone else.

This is a cross-section of this county, the demographics, the ages, the races, and I'm just like everyone else that is requested, mandatory to miss work, miss what we're doing, to come in and sit there.

And they have us sitting for about a half hour and then they start reading the list of names, of people that will be involved in going up to the courtroom.

And when they are reading the names,

My heart is pumping and I start to get nervous.

I don't want to be called.

I don't want to be involved in this system.

I don't want to be involved in this process.

When they call my name, I say here, I go up to the courtroom, but what I'm realizing is they're calling almost everyone's name and we all go into the courtroom.

And before we go in the bailiff dressed in a police sheriff's outfit, he's giving us some prompts and he's a bit of a comedian, which breaks the ice.

We're all pretty nervous, but he's cracking some jokes.

And he's saying, come to me.

If you have any questions, we sit down.

And the defendant and the prosecutor are there.

The judge comes out and gives us a long spiel about how this is your duty to be a juror.

We've had this process for 200 years in this country, the founding fathers, yada, yada, yada.

And

I started to get nervous.

I'm in a courtroom.

I've been in a courtroom before.

I just went over all my criminal charges from having manic episodes in previous years last week.

And it's triggering me to be there.

I don't want to be there.

I don't want to be in the courtroom.

There is a process where you have the option to write down a hardship to release you from being a jurror.

I write down that I have a mental health diagnosis and then I freeze on the actual diagnosis word, a word, a label that I am not accustomed to saying, something that I have denied in my life.

From about 16 to 31, I was bipolar and I was a bipolar superhero then at 31 through lots of other hospitalizations I became schizoaffective but I don't recognize that term I don't use that term I don't tell anyone that term, and for some reason the legal documentation of that term writing it out in a court of law where perjury is possible

I had to just admit to myself, that this is a legal word.

Schizoaffective is in my medical charts.

That's what it says under my diagnosis.

A diagnosis that I don't believe in.

A diagnosis that I've had to wrestle with.

But then I have to say to myself, if this is how I can get out of jury duty, I'm going to put this down.

And I freeze on the word.

The diagnostic label.

I don't know how to spell schizoaffective.

And so I try my best.

To Sound it out and my whole body is stiff.

The fear of judgment is real.

I finally submitted my paperwork and they read all the names my name came up and they said, you are dismissed.

You're dismissed from jury duty.

And I get up and I walk through that sea of people and for three seconds, I feel bulletproof.

I Have a Label.

And I feel good about it.

I go back to my car and I just want to get out of Redwood City as fast as I can and go home.

And I am completely exhausted from this two, three-hour process.

Go home, eat something, take a nap.

The process defeats me, depletes me that I had to admit in a court of law that I am disabled and that I have limitations, that I'm not able to do a full-time schedule, full-time work.

And

I have to process it.

I've been visiting with my folks for a couple of days.

I, as we do, we go over some of our stories about how six, seven years ago, what it was like to have this illness and go through it.

How far I've come is always a projection of what we talk about.

The Limitations of Being a Citizen with a Disability.

Most people don't build a business of their talents, build a business like MAD ONE Media, ask for donation funds, or try to see what they can do with their content their coaching their projects, and their workshops.

Most people don't do that and I'm doing something that's extracurricular even for your normal Joe just working and trying to find income as a working artist.

And I have to give myself credit.

I've been doing it.

I'm still doing it.

And even though I do believe that love is greater than labels, sometimes you need that label to be recognized as the actual thing you're overcoming and the actual thing you have to live with.

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