On the Limits of the Phrase “Mentally Ill”
I wrote this after the Atlanta spa shootings last year, mostly as a way to process what happened. It’s part of an ongoing multimedia project, “Asian America”, about confronting and understanding my identity. The idea that a bunch of strangers on the internet will see this is kind of gnarly, but I think it says as much about me as anything else on this site. I hope you read it, and if you do, I’d love to talk about it with you.
The news said that the shooter was “mentally ill”, which is what they always say. They also said he had a “bad day”. That’s new. I guess it stands to reason. You would have to be mentally ill to want to kill people. This guy said he wanted to kill “all the Asians”. That’s me. You’d have to be mentally ill to want to kill me. Or at least that’s what I’d like to think. I’m polite. I hold the door open for people. I visit my grandma every Sunday.
Maybe I’m the one who’s mentally ill. For letting my anxiety skyrocket spending all day thinking about how many more people hate “all the Asians”. If there are enough of them. All the Asians is a lot of people.
Maybe I am mentally ill because all I have done today are irrational things, like throw away my jar of kimchi, or change into blue jeans halfway through the day, or look at buying a gun on the internet.
I call Halmoni and ask her not to go to the grocery store. I tell her I’ll go grab whatever she needs, just send me a list. I’m not sure if she understands. I wonder if it’s on Korean news. Halmoni doesn’t really watch TV, except for her 10-minute aerobic classes that she makes me do with her. I try to imagine why someone would want to hurt her.
In class, one of my professors starts to stutter. “I know I should have said this earlier”, he says, “But, uh...I just want you to know I stand with you guys.” I click through the screens of blank faces on Zoom. It’s just me. I’m “you guys”. I would like to disappear.
A couple days later I ask this professor if I can have an extension on one of our assignments. I tell him I’ve been working on it but just don’t feel like I can get done in time. I tell him it’s been a stressful week. He says it would be “impossible” for me to turn something in past the deadline.
I call Alex. We talk for a second. “I don’t know man,” he says. I can almost see him scratching his head and avoiding eye contact, looking out the window. “I guess, like, I just don’t know whether to care.” He takes a deep breath, “No, that’s wrong.” I can hear him get up and start pacing back and forth. “It’s just, I wanna know how much I need to worry.” His voice cracks. “My grandma lives by herself.”
On Friday, we grab In-N-Out. While we’re waiting for our food, a man walks in. He’s wearing camo pants, a black tank top, military boots, and that red hat. The cherry on this vanilla sundae. He has an AR-15 strapped to his chest. It’s legal here. Sam wants to walk out the other side so we won’t be near him. Maybe it’s dumb and masculine and just a bunch of dick-swinging, but I won’t. I walk right past him. He doesn’t make eye contact. His wife is bouncing a baby on her knee. I wonder if he feels safe.