Post-Traumatic

by Chantal V. Johnson

Vivian flinched. “Do you buy this? You’re really less moral if you don’t want to support people who didn’t support you?” “But lack of support might not be the parents’ fault, right? Like, some parents been set up to fail. Generational poverty, generational trauma. Take migrant families escaping political persecution or gang violence, or like the Black families who came up here during the Great Migration. If you follow debt theory through, then Black and brown Gen-Xers and millennials might have a highly specific and extra moral obligation to the generation before us, because of the immense social and historical strain that generation survived, that we all benefit from.”

In melismatic singing (also found in opera) the voice was at once unbridled and severely controlled, as you had to both master the ability to do quick vocal runs, which takes incredible technical skill, and also have the confidence to be loud, and to expand your chest and diaphragm, which Vivian could not do, because that would constitute exposure, or surrender.

She would have liked to scold them through chastising speeches. The problem was that she was at work. You couldn’t really stand around in the workplace publicly denouncing things while imagining yourself to be a great figure, especially at a psychiatric hospital.

After having him taste the sauce, she would begin to philosophize about the concept of cognitive liberty. She’d explain that freedom of mind is the basis of all other freedoms, that every person has the right to determine whether to alter their consciousness or not, and that the state should not chemically interfere with an individual’s mental state, no matter how wayward, as long as they are not a demonstrated threat to others.