You've heard of malignant shame, but what about malignant grief?
Malignant shame, first defined by Irish psychiatrist Dr. Garrett O'Connor, is the persistent feeling of shame generally experienced by individuals who have endured oppressive parental relationship dynamics, resulting in a constant sense of guilt. Northwestern University expanded on this concept in 'Malignant Shame and Stereotypes in Irish,' drawing a connection between oppressive colonial governments and the residual effects of shame from colonial rule. Due to the nature of colonialism, which involves psychological and cultural belittlement of those living under siege, the notion is that nothing before colonial rule has inherent importance or goodness, and the victims are seen as being saved.
This is why I can't smoke weed. Every time I do, I become acutely aware of myself and my existence as a person who can die. I can relatively dismiss death as something that lies in the future, but the anxiety induced by weed makes me face the reality that it exists, and I am not excluded from its inevitability. In the reflective haze, I come to a more ominous conclusion: everything I love will one day die.
I think the root of this is colonialism. Everything is colonialism's fault. I'm not alone in this thought pattern. In 'Understanding the Impact of Historical Trauma due to Colonization on the Health and Well-being of Indigenous Young Peoples: A Systematic Scoping Review,' the term 'disrupted attachment' frequently comes up. Disrupted attachment involves the fragmentation of a child due to mass genocide or racial violence. This was first formally observed in Holocaust survivors and proven to be, in some instances, hereditary, contributing to post-traumatic stress disorder. This was later expanded to include Historical Trauma, defined by Evans-Campbell as 'a collective complex trauma inflicted on a group of people who share a specific group identity or affiliation.'
When coupled with the observation of a culture that becomes willfully empathetic or apathetic depending on the cult of public opinion, especially in the persistent belief that human life is overall disposable or at least the framing that it is. The influx of crime television shows or medical dramas wherein people die and that becomes a plot device, and the commonality of death reduced to shallow violence without suffering—all these memetic worlds create a haze where it's easy to forget that death is not as clean as portrayed in entertainment. This is where malignant grief comes in; it is not the realization that individuals will die, but the realization that I will suffer as a result.
The people I love, and I would hope the people you love are individuals that are inherently one of a kind. The comfort, joy, and even sometimes pain they bring into our lives are irreplicable—so when they are no longer here in a physical living form, no one will ever replace them or the feelings they uniquely bring. When I was a child, I thought about this often, as for many years of my life, I was the only child in a house of adults, and I was aware that the likelihood of them passing before me is higher than me passing before them. This awareness followed me like a hound—I call this malignant grief. This feeling has transformed as I’ve gotten older, but this anxiety led to avoidance not just within my family but within friends. I rationalized that if I spend most of my time alone, I can shield myself from this impending grief. Growing in age and maturity, I realized this is counterproductive. However, when I smoke weed, it all comes back. This is why I do not smoke weed, even though I tried when I was a little younger (freshman year of college).
I say this because I wanna coin the term and give everyone something to think about during thanksgiving- enjoy your loved ones but also fuck colonialism.