I’m a clinical social worker. For the uninitiated, that means I’m a masters-level mental health clinician. Basically a counselor but more versatile, or a psychologist but cheaper. More often than I would like, I am at the helm of the Ideological State Apparatus as it fumbles through the Suez Canal of the lives of some poor folks who never asked to be subjected to the whims of the state. When I got into this field four years ago, I didn’t know how pervasive or expansive the ideolgocal state apparatus was — or would become. The past two years have clarified the extent of state intrusion into our lives — and expanded it.
I was a borderline CPS kid growing up. When I say “borderline,” I mean that on several occasions representatives from Child Protective Services showed up at my slovenly house to take photos, rang up my pre-school/elementary/middle/high school teachers to have polite chats, or sent subpoenas to child psychologists to examine the drawings I used to express my inner workings. But they (perhaps) luckily never overstepped the fine line between “investigating concerns” and whatever comes after that.
We were never sure what came after the middle class white woman asked her questions. My brother and I, as kids of a Black mother who’d grown up on the spatial and temporal borderline of Jim Crow, just knew it would mean more upheaval, instability, and chaos — and less TV time.
My mother was born to mixed-racial parents in mid-50’s urban Kansas. We just knew it was probably a bad thing when terms like “counseling,” “mood stabilizer,” “mandated reporter,” and “out of home placement” came up.
My mother is a woman I have now come to realize is more Borderline than just when she was born, where she grew up, and how often she could pass for White. Her florid Cluster B traits were, in retrospect, a big driver behind my current professional trajectory.
But I digress. Back to the present.
In the past couple of years I’ve seen the powers of the state expand like a creeping mold quickly infiltrating the sodden walls of a flooded home. I’ve signed my name, with those terminal initialisms attached, as the ideolgical state apparatus moved ever closer to the goal.
Some days it’s a just another shift in the flurocent-lit, climate controlled office. Others are surreal; like an Ionesco play. I wake up and laugh, just laugh outloud through my mask, and wonder: “How did we get this far?”
I’ll tell stories about this process, in real time, through the lens of Red Pilled critial theory. And you’ll come away wondering how on earth we’re all still alive.