Silver Spoon

Godparents gave a silver spoon to a baby at baptism in 16th - 18th century aristocratic Europe. Gold was considered too ostentatious for daily tableware whereas silverware was expensive, refined, and practical. A silver spoon came to mean purity and quite literally being fed by wealth from birth. Silver spoon implies inherited advantages beyond money, like the soft power of class - but, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I received it later though not much later on in life - age four or five. So just later enough to always know the difference, and live a life always aware of this difference. When people ask why I exhaust this point I'm reminded suddenly that this mode of thinking is a type of self-inflicted torture. It’s a dangerous train of thought if you begin to deny yourself in order to compensate for privilege - which, though I have never wanted to admit it - I have done. It obviously achieves nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet it is the one true connection I have managed to maintain in this world: the knowing that I know nothing; the knowing that no matter how hard I try to heal what’s outside, I can only ever truly heal what’s on the inside. Therefore, I gave in. I gave in to my triggers. To my worst nightmares and demons. I thought I’d left the beasts behind but like a magnet there were more monsters that came and clung and clung and clung until I couldn’t breathe anymore. It was like being cornered constantly. I want boundaries, the world says you can’t have them. I want freedom from violence, the world says you can’t have that either. I want respect for who I am, and to be who I truly am, and people treat that as though it’s a magical fairytale, so beyond my reach. I always laugh through the pain because if they tell me I can’t have it then what they’re also saying is that they can’t have it. So no one actually won.

That the world is like this is not a revelation. Those of us who are predisposed to suffering and feeling pain at the injustices in the world are not saints. Maybe because we end up realizing that the suffering and pain is futile. Maybe. To have become debilitated, to be sick so that years turned into days, is the biggest indicator of the silver spoon. That’s what I told myself and others, particularly my sister, suggested also. It isn’t wrong. It’s safe to assume and wonder had I been in radically different circumstances would I have been able to afford being mentally ill? I tore myself apart over this. To shreds. It was the perfect excuse to kick myself whilst I was down. But then came in the voice of reason: sure, my circumstances have enabled me to have the means and privilege to do everything I’ve done in my life so far, aside from being mentally ill, but doesn’t it also then follow that my mental illness is a direct consequence of my life circumstances, mixed with my choices, as well? I mean truly what good does it do me or anyone else to compare my life to that of a deeply impoverished community who are not mentally ill and go - they aren’t, so I should definitely not be? It does no good whatsoever. They didn’t begin moving at the age of five to different countries and schools and people and homes. They didn’t have my family. I’ll make it simple: no one else is me. I am so jealous of people who haven’t been affected by the things I have, who aren't in pain, who have not suffered, so on and so forth. People in my exact circumstances, or as close as possible, don’t have the same emotional reactions. They’ve managed to use their silver spoons to their best possible advantage - as per the rules of the world - as they were expected to - and no one is going to arrest them for it because it isn’t a crime. It never has been and never will be.

Then why did I criminalize myself? Did I? The world hates a female victim even though it creates them. We hate it. We can only tolerate it if there is a heroic turn, otherwise it’s always “stop playing the victim card” or “surely, you have more agency than that.” Had I predicted I’d go into this state that made me dysfunctional for years? No, I had not. Did things happen that made it obvious it would be likely? Sure. If your emotional canvas is expected to endlessly expand and you are to make new shades and hues and fill it in after some time it may be plausible that in reality your silver spoon is kind of like a double-edged sword. You gain, and the gain is rightfully a gain, but it cuts you, so the price is pain, and it continues this way so that as much as you gain, you always pay the price in pain. No one wants to hear it. I don’t even want to hear it. The Silver Spoon. I really hope this is the last piece I’ll write on this subject for a while because I’m sick of it and you must be sick of it too. But I intend to finish this piece today. The Silver Spoon - what do I tell you about my silver spoon? It’s only as silver as you feel it is. Not all silver spoons are made equal. And without true lived experience no one can fully comprehend the psychology or darkness. You assume a position in life and you become aware that you must maintain it and whilst that is the natural course and order of how things should be the silver spoon is not some immunity blanket. It’s not a castle in the sky filled with gold and riches and an endless feast. Having rejected or rebelled against the spoon, disdained it by placing all the faults of the world on it, I did come to realize something that I probably knew all along: the spoon isn’t actually the issue. Not really. We will never have perfectly equal societies. There is no Utopia that is waiting to be enabled by the destruction of all silver spoons. I wish that solution existed. Then we could just say, ready, set, let’s go. Do it. Done. World Peace. No excuses.

Except that’s not it either. The answer is unsurprisingly simple yet frustrating. The silver spoon isn’t the problem - not inherently, anyway. It’s what you do with it, not what it does to you, that eventually makes all the difference.

Not everyone has to survive their silver spoon. I have had to survive mine. And as naive as it may be - it’s in the writing and sharing of that survival - that I feel I can begin to make sense of it. It’s arduous. My God, I don’t even blame anyone for not reading all of this, or at least not for sighing hopelessly while they do. I dug my grave, buried myself in it, and now I’m digging my way out.

I’m using my Silver Spoon to do it.