I’m Sorry, Sinéad

On October 3, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor tore a picture of Pope John Paul II into pieces after performing a rendition of “War” by Bob Marley on Saturday Night Live. In 1992, I was not alive. My parents would meet about a year and a half later—both raised in New Jersey in Catholic families—getting baptized, receiving communion, and getting confirmed. My father was an alter-boy, going to the church on his lunch breaks at school to help with mass during the week. (He was always agnostic, but he played his part in the ritual).

I grew up vaguely Catholic. I was baptized, went to CCD, and right before my First Communion, my Jersey-Italian mother with a correspondingly strict Catholic upbringing pulled me out of the Catholic Church in favor of a church under the Presbyterian denomination. I was happy to be freed from sitting for hours weekly in an old classroom that smelt like dust and had crucifixes of a nearly naked, bleeding, emaciated Jesus hanging from the walls. I made my first communion casually, without a white dress or formalities. I lined up in the sanctuary and ate a little cracker and drank a little wine (grape juice, probably) and walked back to the pew, my mom with tears in her eyes, likely because of the importance of the first communion in her upbringing, which I didn’t understand at the time. I thought it was just prayer with snack.

Even though Sinéad O’Connor ripped up that photo nearly four years before I was born, I remember the controversy still present in my family when I was young. Her name was spoken in hushed tones, and I don't think I had ever even heard her sing. It felt sacrilegious to even mention her in conversation. As a child, I never knew what she had done, but I knew it had to be something horrible—something so wretched it rendered her name unspeakable. I grew up making assumptions based on silence and hushed conversations, like many children do.

On October 3, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor tore a picture of the Pope into pieces to protest child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. This was nine years prior to Pope John Paul II publicly acknowledging the abuse within the Church—a now commonly recognized issue, and even the butt of jokes by many mainstream comedians. But O’Connor, a pop singer and a survivor of abuse herself, was blacklisted by the media (and in turn, by many Catholic families like mine) for speaking the hard, vile truth. She was not acting how a pop princess with doe-eyes and a pretty face should act. And her resistance was punished.

Sinéad O’Connor’s death was announced this past Wednesday. Upon her death, I had never heard a song of hers—maybe a part “Nothing Compares 2 U” on the radio. (I know this might seem unexpected from me based on the other musicians and bands I listen to: i.e. The Cranberries, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Alanis Morissette, 4 Non Blondes, etc.) I never explored her music because I always thought that she had truly done something horrible. Reading the articles about her postmortem, I realize that her major controversy is that she was brave enough to call out child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. To think that this person was blacklisted by the media, booed at public events, left without support by other entertainers (not you, Kris Kristofferson), and made out to be the villain because she was advocating for the safety of children is beyond contemptible.

On Thursday, I put on The Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad’s debut album. The 1987 album is named after Psalm 91. I am immediately met with regret. “Jackie” starts the record—her voice rings like a siren and I have chills down my legs. The album continues, exploring relationships and sexuality, society and injustice, and religion all while maintaining radio-friendly musicianship. I feel nauseous because I missed out on loving her and her music while she was still alive.

For He will give His angels orders concerning you, To protect you in all your ways. On their hands they will lift you up, So that you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will walk upon the lion and cobra, You will trample the young lion and the serpent.

—Psalm 91:11-13

I see myself in Sinéad—except I’m far less brave. I wish I could say I am as brave as her, but a lot of the time I get so anxious at the prospect of being perceived that I am frozen in fear. I don’t even know if I could perform one of my songs on SNL, let alone protest arguably the most powerful institution in the world when the cards are so obviously stacked against you. But we both are queer artists, musicians, lyricists, and writers with fibromyalgia, borderline personality disorder, agoraphobia, and misdiagnoses of bipolar disorder.

Early last year, her son Shane passed away due to suicide. I don’t mean to speculate on the cause of her death (which has been unannounced), but I know based on my family’s own experience that suicide within the family is something you never really recover from. My two uncles (my father’s older and younger brothers) both committed suicide. Todd died in 2014, the day after his father was buried. Keith died in 2018. Both had multiple attempts, and none of them were easy on our family or close family friends. We tried at support, at rehabilitation, at recovery—but ultimately, it was futile. None of us were ever the same afterwards.

“You praise her now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you.”

—Morrissey

Sinéad, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. The world owes you an apology, and I’m sorry that you could not witness that in this lifetime. The media led a campaign against you, egging on the public to crucify you for doing what a true artist does: being a conduit for the unadulterated truth, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the audience.

So many women are revered in death after living a life of shrouded in criticism and condemnation. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Britney Spears—the list goes on. The media are way more than complicit; they are a huge, if not the main, reason that we see lives and reputations destroyed until it is tragically too late. Then upon death, like the flip of a switch, we see the media completely change its tune. The very people who wrote the articles perpetuating the narratives that turned these women into villains and pariahs are now the people writing eulogies and in memoriam think-pieces for clicks and ad revenue on their websites.

Sinéad deserved better. Artists do not have to be tortured to be artists. As consumers of media, we have the ability and a responsibility to think critically, practice media literacy, reject dangerous narratives, and stop torturing artists. It is a privilege to witness art. Artists deserve better.

Mental Health and Social Media Panel at Stanford University (Transcription)

Note: This is a transcription of the presentation given on February 1, 2019 at Stanford University on the Mental Health and Social Media Panel/Discussion.

My name is Cori Amato Hartwig, also known as @manicpixiememequeen on Instagram. I make memes about lighthearted topics like mental illness, the patriarchy, capitalism, relationship issues, and the increasingly complicated navigation of modern society. I started the account in March of 2017. At the time, I was a junior at San Francisco State, and I had just been through a yearlong rollercoaster ride of trial-and-error psychiatric treatment in an attempt to find a medication that worked for me, and the month before starting the account, my uncle attempted suicide. Sitting in my bed sporting my new trademarked Mental Breakdown Haircut, I created a new Instagram profile called @manicpixiememequeen, partially out of boredom and partially out of my desperation to channel my personal turmoil into something that felt productive.

Originally, the account was anonymous and existed more as a “finsta” rather than a cohesive meme account, but as the account became popular and went viral, I took ownership of the account and I personally came into the character of @manicpixiememequeen as a public persona. Over time, I wove a narrative around my own mental health issues and personal life through creating memes, and I shared my content with an audience who shockingly, understood my narrative in their own personal ways.

Currently, I have over 97,000 followers on Instagram, which is absolutely wild. Clearly, I’m not the only person in the world struggling with mental health issues or having some difficulty navigating our weird and absurd world. While my brain loves to tell me that no one else really understands and then I perceive isolation, the evidence against this is in the numbers—my audience, the engagement on the posts, the hundreds of messages I receive from people across the globe telling me that they relate so much to my page and they’re grateful for the content I make.

@manicpixiememequeen subverts the mainstream Instagram narrative. On our personal Instagram accounts, we curate the perfect pictures with perfect captions, highlight our most impressive achievements, share our most FOMO-inducing adventures on our stories, post pictures with the right filter at the right angle at the right moment. We present very tactfully constructed versions of ourselves; these illusions are just as hyperbolic as the persona of @manicpixiememequeen. It’s just swung the other way. Instead of presenting myself as perfect, happy, and successful, I present myself as a chronically neurotic, anxious, and unhappy character. In turn, people relate to the point that they feel comfortable enough to openly discuss aspects of society or their life that aren't so perfect or picturesque, and they have the opportunity to connect with others on my page who are going through similar issues.

Ironically, social media was intended to connect us and then it brought about this pervading sense of isolation, toxic comparison, and competition. But as I’ve seen with my experiences running @manicpixiememequeen, there’s plenty of opportunity to use social media for authentic community and connection. I can actually witness it in the comment sections on my posts—people relating to each other and reaching out, asking questions about mental health management that they may not have had the opportunity or the confidence to ask if the post didn’t make them understood or safe enough to do so.

Last September, I was interviewed for NYLON Magazine about the benefits of mental illness memes and the effects of social media on mental health. The journalist asked me multiple times if I thought mental illness memes were actually detrimental, and I consistently wrote back saying no. If anything, using humor as a vehicle is helping generate some conversation and awareness. Then I made the comment that what actually is detrimental is silence and stigma surrounding mental illness and the widespread lack of access to comprehensive and affordable mental healthcare. Unsurprisingly, that comment was not included in the published interview.

Overall, social media can and does have effects on mental health. However, we have to consider the ways in which we’re using social media, interacting with others, and understanding the messages that we’re being presented with. As we grow increasingly digital, media literacy needs to be prioritized as something we teach people, especially young people during their formative years. We need to make sure that everyone understands that the images and content you see online is no accident. It did not come from a vacuum. Digital media is constructed, purposeful, and generally trying to sell you something that you don’t need. Most of us were thrown into the digital age without a roadmap for understanding or even the concept of media literacy, and I think if we were given more tools to understand at an earlier age, we’d see less of those negative effects that Baby Boomers love to read about, ironically, on websites constructing their own content and media.

Dear Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Me Too.

Trigger warning: sexual assault and violence.

“But nothing actually happened to her. It was just an attempt.”

I stood in front of the television in the living room, hearing my eight-four-year-old grandfather speak these words with such impersonality. The screen blurred. The rest of his speech hit my eardrums and registered as the muffled dialogue of an audience awaiting the movie to begin at the theater. The film began.

Standing projected on the screen of my mind: an image of me, nineteen years old, commuting over an hour to my community college. Tired after an hour and a half commute and a three hour night class, I stand waiting at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. The black display in neon red letters reads: “DUBLN/PLSTN…13 MIN” and I slouch over slightly, defeated at the anticipated wait time. The commute home—including the wait, the train ride, and the car ride home—equates to approximately an hour and a half, door to door.

I decide to stand despite the weight of my schoolbooks in my backpack, insisting on standing instead of sitting next to strangers on a concrete bench that has likely been pissed on more than once. I remember reading an article somewhere about BART seats having trace amounts of feces and cocaine on every seat, no matter the efforts of the maintenance employees. I do not sit on the benches.

A man approaches me. He is asking me a question, I presume. I take a singular headphone out, prepared to give him directions, let him know which train to catch. The Downtown Berkeley stop has a characteristically disorienting way about it, as both sides are insufficiently labelled and look nearly identical in seemingly endless brick. I prepare to tell him which way to Richmond, which way to San Francisco. The San Francisco trains do not run at this time of night.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

“Thank you.” I try to put my headphone back in. Take the compliment as a compliment and leave the compliment there. If I am nice, he cannot be angry. If I am nice, he cannot be angry. He cannot be angry. He cannot be angry, right?

“What’s your name?”

I reply with a name that is not mine. I fidget with the neckline of my T-shirt and zip up my coat to the collar to hide the nameplate necklace that reads, “CORI” in script. He makes a canned response that’s supposed to impress me about how beautiful my fake name is. I am not impressed, but rather, increasingly anxious. I immediately forget what fake name I am using, and consider the fact that I am trapped in an underground tunnel with a strange man who is definitely not asking for directions. I do not know what he is asking for, but then again, I do. I just want to go home.

A glance up at the screen, neon blood lettering, informing me that the train is nine minutes away. My options quickly whittle themselves down to, “Just be pleasant with him and make sure people can see you.” I actually walk and take a seat in between a man and a woman who are seated at opposite corners on the concrete bench. I do not consider the urine, the traces of cocaine, or human feces. I sit between the two people. This man continues speaking to me. He sits between me and the woman.

I do not remember the conversation. I recall glancing at red lettering, seeing numbers, praying that the train would appear faster than numbers dictate and that I would slip into the train-car gracefully, anonymously with the name that is not mine, and be on my way home.

The conversation was like dismantling a bomb, but time moved in the opposite fashion. When you’re dismantling a bomb, you pray for more time and less wires, but in this case I needed more wires, more routes of conversation, more lies, and infinitely less time than the lettering scrolling down the digital boards. His eyes were red like an animal photographed in the dark. Bloodshot. The lettering mimicked it. I do not remember his face, but his look is burned into my mind—a look not belonging to a person. A desecrate expression set out make graves, but not to kill.

Hold your breath. Hold your breath. Hold your breath. Hold your breath. I remember a self-defense class in high school, mandatory only for the sophomore girls. Something about the palm of your hand, their nose, a bone lodging itself into their brain, leaving them defenseless or dead—allowing for your escape. I examine the woman seated on his other side. She is on the phone, but I see that she is not actually on the phone. She is speaking into a dead receiver. She makes conversation with herself, mumbling small-talk too quickly for an actual person to reply. A defense mechanism I am all too familiar with. Talk to yourself on the phone and pretend it’s another—pretend it’s a man. The presence of man, imaginary or not, is still more powerful than the actual presence of a woman. They do not teach these things in self-defense classes.

The train is two minutes away, which means it is perfectly reasonable to stand up and wait for the train at the designated yellow platforms, according to BART etiquette. I am relieved. The train is approaching—safety is coming.

“Where are you going?” he asks as the sound of the Dublin/Pleasanton train echoes through the tunnel. I am familiar with the echo and anticipate its arrival in approximately ninety seconds.

“Castro Valley,” I lie about my stop.

“No.” He mutters a name that is not mine, whatever fake name I had given before.

He grabs me. I feel his nails in my forearm through my long-sleeve shirt and coat. He moves his grip down to my wrist and presses tightly, beginning to dislocate my wrist. I hear the train approaching and assume someone will notice this man grabbing me—but people begin boarding the train without questioning him. I begin to yell.

At this point—the memory becomes a dream—a nightmare. A nightmare in which you yell and yell and yell and no one can hear you. It is hazy and foggy and I can only see open doors of the train leading back to safety and my home. I turn back to the man, faceless in memory, and continue yelling and dragging his large body in the threshold of the train-car as he tried to drag me out. No one does anything, despite my yelling, my clear physical struggle of my post-anorexia body pulling a large grown man away from me. I cross the threshold, his grip still firm, higher and tighter around my arm as he attempts to pull me back into the the station. The sound for the door closing dings and he jumps in, solidifying my fears, and I immediately gain a sense of absolute terror that drives me to push him on the chest using my opposite forearm back into the station while keeping most of my body inside the train-car. The door closes on my palm. I slip it out quickly and he is trapped behind the glass and metal of the car. I take a seat and no one asks any questions, despite the many seated passengers who witnessed me shoving a strange man off of me with all of my might while yelling for help.

Because “nothing actually happened,” I never reported it. Even though he had approached me, made advances at me without consent, grabbed me without consent, and began to use physical violence—I considered my experience so much less serious than what other people had gone through, so I told absolutely no one. And then I “forgot about it.”

What I thought that I had forgotten about turned into a period of agoraphobia that sent me to a psychiatrist’s office for almost two years. It turned into skipping seventeen out of thirty-two lectures in a semester for a single class. It turned into me contemplating how I could use a vintage metal lunchbox and a Hydroflask as a self-defense weapon if necessary. It turned into not listening to music so I could stay aware of my surroundings but keeping my headphones in my ears to avoid unwanted advances. It turned into silence. A dark, brewing silence—tea left to steep for too long on the counter. Bitter and cold. Silence.

“But nothing actually happened to her. It was just an attempt.”

I transported back into the moment with my grandfather. Suddenly something burst within me. That man’s face was still fuzzy but the pressure on my wrist was palpable. I yelled. I screamed an experience to my grandfather that I had never uttered before—an event that was so extremely repressed and blurred into the edges of my psyche that I did not even believe that it belonged to me. He asked why I never reported it. I said I was afraid. I ran up the stairs.

I did not feel valid enough in that attempted violence to report it, so I never did. And now, as I sit with these testimonies fresh in my mind, and the numerous allegations now coming out against brett kavanaugh, I wonder if that blurred face of a man had gone from grabbing me at that Downtown Berkeley BART station and had gone to some other place to grab another girl—

And then it wasn’t an attempt anymore.

Just because “nothing actually happened” doesn’t mean that the intention of violence was not there. And then, there was probably a future manifestation of violence that met some sick and twisted patriarchal criteria of validity.

And statistically, that girl still wouldn’t have reported it.

Without Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony today, this memory would have remained repressed in the depths of my subconscious forever, unless something even more threatening had brought it out. Without Dr. Blasey, I do not think I would have felt valid in my own experience with intended sexual violence. Without Dr. Blasey, we would probably have a second supreme court justice who does not stand for justice at all. (I’m looking at you, clarence thomas).

I am jealous of the men who can comfortably fall asleep on public transportation. I am jealous of the men who do not have to look into compact mirrors or selfie cameras or car mirrors or reflections or shadows to make sure no one is following them home. I am jealous of the men who can listen to music instead of a creeping, threatening silence to make sure that no one is breathing down their neck or making kissy noises or audibly obscene gestures at them. I am jealous of the men who can walk down a street in basic clothes and not have words thrown at them like bullets from a sawed-off shotgun. I am jealous of the men who consider safety a given.

If the unhonorable brett kavanaugh gets his seat on the supreme court, you can catch me and every other single woman who has been giving fake names chaining themselves to white house fences like Alice Paul in 1917, because after one-hundred-one years, we’re still in gendered purgatory.

Fordham University Mental Health Speak Out Speech (Transcription)

Note: This is a transcription of the speech given on September 20, 2018 at Fordham University.

Thanks for coming out tonight to Fordham’s Psych Club’s first ever Mental Health Speak Out and Open Mic Night. I’m super stoked to be here and help be apart of providing a safe space for people to talk about their mental health experiences, raise awareness, and break down stigma.

My name is Cori Amato Hartwig and I’m a writer, musician, editor, and mental health activist. Along with my impressive resume of being an unemployed recent grad—I run the weirdly viral mental illness meme account on Instagram, @manicpixiememequeen. I started the account started in March 2017 after I had the worst manic episode of my life to date, and I was overwhelmed pretty much every aspect of my life. So naturally, I started making memes and posting them for strangers on the Internet to see. Originally, it was just a place for me to shout my feelings and experiences into a void, but the account started gaining traction, and then I realized: “Holy shit. Other people get this too. It’s not just me.” And now the account has 70,000 followers or something absurd. My previously perceived sense of isolation because of my mental illness has completely dissolved in this community built around finding solace in humor and through sharing my experiences openly.

Recently, I was featured in NYLON Magazine; they wanted to interview me about mental illness memes and their potential benefits and pitfalls, and to me, I really could not name a pitfall. The interviewer asked me if memes are “normalizing the negative behaviors and mindsets that come along with having a mental illness,” and I told her that memes are not the problem. Silence is the problem. Silence is not strength and it never will be. Silence is poison. We need to normalize mental illness and the experiences that come along with it. We also need to normalize treatment for mental illness.

Of course, that part of the interview was not published—along with comments I made about the accessibility of treatment and healthcare for mental illnesses.

The day that I sent that interview off to NYLON, Lizz contacted me on Instagram asking if I would come to Fordham and be a guest speaker. Honestly, I am totally honored that she’d even extend the invitation. Then I realized that this is so much bigger than just me making memes about mental illness. It’s not about the memes at all, actually. It’s simply about having a public platform—whether that be comedy, writing, music, or art—it’s about having a public platform to safely express and share experiences and create a dialogue, because the mainstream media isn’t doing it. So it falls on us to start talking and keep talking.

We’re all here tonight despite the stigma, despite the guilt, despite the lack of dialogue, despite the pain—despite it all, we are here tonight.

Unfortunately, there are people who are not here tonight.

In January, I was in the hospital at risk for a cardiac arrest due to anorexia. Luckily I had access to professional care, even though my parents had to pay up the ass in copays and medical bills in order to save my life. Without them and without treatment, I would be dead, and I would not be here tonight.

A month after my own brush with death relating to mental illness, my uncle killed himself. It was not his first attempt, and Keith was not my first uncle lost to suicide. In June 2014, right after I graduated high school, my uncle Todd took his own life.

My family is incredibly open and we’re all clearly afflicted by mental health issues to some degree or another. We have bipolar, depression, anxiety, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addiction, eating disorders. We’re like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in the form of a family. Growing up in this large, vocal, and mentally ill family helped me realize where the shame part of mental illness fits in. The answer is it doesn’t. I’ve excluded shame from my personal narrative; I refuse to carry it. I have enough shit to carry otherwise. But we’re subjected to silence so frequently that we start thinking that we should be hiding and that we should be quiet and that we should carry shame.

So tonight, we’re going to do the opposite of that. We are not going hide, we’re not going to be quiet, and tonight—there is no shame in this room. We’re going to leave the stigma at the door, and we’re going to have the most fun and supportive session of group therapy that you’ve ever been to.

If you feel safe and able to do so, share your story, share your experiences, share your art. Tonight this space is ours, and I want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and no one feels pressured. So, whether you are here because you want to share or if you’re here just to listen, all I ask is that we keep this space respectful, unassuming, compassionate, and supportive. I also want to make sure that what is shared here is respected with the confidentiality that everyone deserves.