frustrated

I am not a news hound but there are items that catch my attention and hold on for good.

A couple of weeks ago, a Toronto Police officer shot and killed a mentally disabled black man on the streets of a residental neighbourhood. He was being held at a nearby hospital for a 72 hour assessment and somehow escaped and was found roaming the area in a hospital gown, no shoes, holding a pair of scissors in each hand. Those were his only weapons. There was an outcry, a vigil, but still no answers as to why the officer reacted the way he did – three shots point blank at a lost and disoriented man. After he had been fatally shot he was tackled to the ground and restrained. Read the article if you like.

Not weeks later, another mentally ill man went missing from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. This man, George May is white, has been convicted of murder and institutionalized at the above. It was not his first time escaping from a psych facility and both times, an alarm went up, police were involved, and he was returned presumably unharmed. The police involvement however differs in that when May went missing the police were called in to help find him and bring him back.

I try not to call racism unless I have really thought about it but RACISMRACISMRACISM!!

more later when i am not so frustrated

text to bff re: will power

In the spirit of honesty, I just wanted to share this message I sent my darling friend sm. They are my most strident supporter and are always encouraging me to post/publish more of my meandering thoughts. so much love.

Trigger Warning: addiction

Almost a whole bottle of wine and  craving cigarettes. The lure of blinding intoxication is thick, both weighing me down and speeding my heart beat all at once. Suddenly all of the sherrys, ports, flavoured liqueurs bought for guests and french cooking have become glass goblins. They jeer and beckon with sinister merriment, advertising a good time. I want to resist but all of the bottles are open and my inner demons are thirsty. I feel electric and dangerous like a vampire queen flush and in heat. Aching for ecstasy but the warmth from my groin has died. Loins dried from inattention and fear, my brittle petals have fallen and been crushed underfoot.  In this darkness, in my shroud of despair I see in the distance a sparkle. A flicker of light reflected on amber glass – filled with the distilled, aromatic balm. A remedy for remembering. I stand poised above its surface, daring myself to dive.

catching up: Asking for Help

There have been a few unposted-posts over the past few months that, in my hiding never made it here.

Here is the first one: this is a note I wrote to friends when I first really began to ask for help with building a sustainable and loving life. A lot of what I heard back ( I was surprised and tickled at the response I got) was that this was an important message for us in activist, oppressed communities to learn in order to practice taking care of each other, and to reaching out to get that support (unedited):

**swearing, ableism

Hiya, so most of you know that I’m a sicko, recently I got my “official” fibro diagnosis – whatever that means. It puts some medical validity to what I have been experiencing and self-advocating for two years but of course doesn’t change the truth of my body.

I know so many fucking fierce crip warriors and am pretty much the luckiest for that. But right now, I am on my couch where I have been all day. And I am weeping.

There are days when it feels like I can manage my ten million responsibilities and commitments, but more often than not I am just pushing myself too hard, setting myself up for a crash. I am feeling really vulnerable and aimless and without resources right now.

In lighthearted moments I can joke about becoming a member of the fibro club and laugh with my friends about crip life but it fucking sucks and there is no other way to put it.

For the past two weeks I have been fostering this amazing little dog named Adam. He was shot and left for dead at the side of the road, but was rescued and rehabbed and now is a spunky love monkey in a wheelchair. I felt so connected to the idea of fostering/adopting a crip dog for pretty obvious reasons and I have fallen in love with his guy. I know very deeply, down to my marrow what it is like not to be loved and I don’t wish that on anyone. I just wanted to love up these dogs that people thought were worthless and to convince them they are not. Aside from the realities of taking care of him, which turned out to be a bigger task than I was informed of, I hadn’t really anticipated how fucking triggering it would be to be out with him and have every single person who walked by frown and pout and say “awwww poor guy” and then proceed to ask really invasive questions about him, his history, health and other things that just weren’t their business. A few people have even made comments about how shitty it must be for me to have a dog like him. And every time, I feel it two-fold. Once for him, for how little people expect of him because of his disability. And I feel it for me, because they are the same invasive inquiries I get when I am out with my cane. Adam LOVES his wheelchair. Every now and then he goes over to it and licks it for a while, and whenever I am putting him in it, or even bring it into the room he loses his shit because it makes him so happy. Like my cane, his device makes it more possible for him to participate in an ableist world. But it still stings.

I feel aimless, because the dreams and fantasies I have had about my life are getting smaller and narrowing into “needs” instead of “wants”. 

Everyday I am tired/sad/sore and sometimes that can be a hard combination to plan around.

I want to go to Iceland and walk all over the black rocks and mountains and drink vodka with bjork until 6am, I want D and I to go to Scotland and wander around the country looking for sheep to pet. I want to build my own house somewhere and fill it with cats, dogs, goats, bees, pigs, cows, children, lovers. How on earth does that happen when walking the 6 steps it takes to get into my apartment leaves me winded?

I work for a great mom who hires me to take her baby out for a few hours so that she can stay home to sew and nap. When I head out with the little guy I am always a little jealous that I can’t be home doing the same thing.

My loves are my writing my art and my people. It is very painful when my body and brain won’t allow me to do the simple things that make me happy.

So, how do you do it? How do you find ways to sustain yourself through sustainable effort without amping up the burnout?

Things I want to do:

finish my quilt

start another one

apply to grad school

go to grad school

write a book

write another book

perform and talk words and feelings with people

fuck with frequency

find my purpose

Things I do now:

pushpushpush

collapse

repeat.

I hear and appreciate it when loved ones tell me to slow down. I know that it would probably, well maybe, be good for me. But how can I slow down and keep up with the basics like food and shelter? Add in all of the other elements that make me who I am and it doesn’t leave a lot of room to just rest. In my dreams I wake up refreshed every morning; feed the cats; feed the dog(s); feed myself. Spend slow time outside walking my pup letting her sniff whatever she wants because we aren’t in a rush. Then I come home and spend the day writing/reading/sewing/napping/eating. I have a magic job that pays enough but doesn’t suck my soul or fragment by body. I have time and energy for community, in all the ways that can look like. With my magic job, I can get sick and not have to choose between taking care of myself and staying out of overdraft.

I’m not looking for a quick fix or a spell to make things fine. I have a lot of love in my life that I couldn’t live without. But in terms of practicality – I need help and the best way I know how to ask for it is to reach out.

I’ve made myself very vulnerable just now and ask for your compassion and respect around responding (if you choose to) and sharing any info with others.

Thanks for reading this far.

xo

coolname

It’s An Injury

**trigger warning: language around non-consent**

“What’s wrong with your leg?” he called with a drawl I couldn’t place. I claim injury and push forward on my three legs. Harmless really, just an invasion of privacy. From then, I feel each stare and pause more acutely and wait, wondering if another brazen passerby will push their enquiry into my intimacy.

Hair and makeup. Bright red lipstick to match my nails. Blue and red on the sparkly dress I wore to feel beautiful. Blue and red on my sparkly cane I wear because, because.

My cane. I tried to get the prettiest one the store had in stock at the time. An accessory is an accessory, mobility device or not.

Maybe if I hadn’t had it tonight more people would have wanted to dance with me. Or would have looked at me with friendly recognition instead of something between confusion and pity. But I did, and people kept their distance. I danced anyway.

I tried not to notice throughout the night how the bartender was looking at us. Me and Mango being beautiful and happy together without the need of his gaze.
He touched my arm to give me my drink; to tell me he thought my phone had fallen out of my purse. Ignore, try to ignore.

The music was house which wasn’t for me so I readied to leave after downing my vodka tonic. I reached for my sweater and I saw him come towards me. I didn’t want or need anything else so I readied to say no thank you.
He came in close. Closer than he needed even though the music was loud.

“Can I ask you something?”

Ok, I guess.

“Why does a fine young thing like you have a cane? What happened?”

One question at a time. I straighten up as much as I can, stick out my chin try and being strong and reply that I am young and fine and have a cane.

“But why?” he pries further, the heat of his breath still too close to my face. Behind me, a cement beam and I am not sure where else to back up to. “Is something wrong, I mean you’re young and all so did something happen?”

You don’t deserve my story I think, throat running dry and my eyes blur at the startle of emotions and words not to say. I fumble, mumble “injury”.

He didn’t hear me, asks again.

“It’s an injury!” I lie, yelling over the bass competing for real estate in my pounding chest.

Unprepared I turn to burning stone when, without warning he swoops me into some kind of embrace; like this confidential exchange requires even less space between our mouths to continue. Pressed against my ear I can feel his close-cut stubble on my face. His arm is around me in a half hug and all of my synapses are firing too loudly for my voice, my body, anything, to protest.

“Well the good thing about injuries” he says gayly “is that they get better”.

After dispensing his sage wisdom he pulls away, perhaps expecting more conversation or a “You’re so right! Thanks for the hope, Brother!” from me.

Instead I nod curtly, I think I say something. One word acknowledging that I heard him in a tone that says – we’re done now.

Turning away, my grip on the handle of my aide tightens and I don’t even know if I can lift it to help me get away from him. It is matter of steps back to my seat, I don’t make it before my cheeks dampen and I crumble, sobbing that I need to go home.

Not many minutes before, an enthusiastic, gorgeous, fag-tastic boy beauty crouched down to inspect my cane and exclaimed with admiration that my cane matched my dress. It was charming. It felt good.

Next I was crying into bare, caring shoulders. Arms embraced and hands patted my legs. I let go of my cane and turned away from it, not wanting to look at this object that could at once uplift, lift, hold me up and then next mark me as Other in addition to my skin my gender my sexuality. His untethered questions confirmed the whispers of feelings I had had all night trying to dance: I would be cute/hot/confident but this object pushed people away who don’t want to take the minute to see the all of me. And now, I just do not want to be the all of me.

He reminds me, shakes me out of my euphoric California daze. In the microcosm of my life filled with queers and crips and enchanting differences, my sitting, limping, cane-leaning self is all part of the package that gets loved.

Oh but out here in the looming largess of oppression I am still made to feel less-than. And I remember that it is still I fight we have to win. And I’ll fight, and I’ll write, and I’ll yell and yell back. But for now, I am going to let these tears fall.

I should not have to work this hard, and I should not have to be this brave, just to be.

Reflections Before Spring (04/09/11)

*written from the airport*

All week I have been muttering under my breath “I hate traveling, oh I hate traveling” as the anxiety of departing for this day, this trip, came looming from the depths of my chest upwards and into my whole body. But here I am, on the second leg of my trip and I am managing pretty well.

Today, I am headed, for the first time to California. I will be visiting dear ones and attending workshops and performances in and around San Francisco. Now I am waiting in the Buffalo airport after talking a bus at too early an hour. Unfortunately I have to transfer in Chicago’s giant and cavernous O’Hare airport before I get where I really want to go but, at this moment, sitting in the sun at a virtually empty airline gate – I feel fine about getting where I am going.

There are so many things I have wanted to post about in recent days/weeks but have been struggling. Up until recently (and a little after) my mind was consumed with the surgery and fund-raising initiatives for my cat Sydney. Community, people, community. It saved us both and I am worlds of grateful.

Other things that have been going on in the past weeks are that sadly I found out that I did not get into my applied for grad programs. Major disappointment! The first rejection I got was from the program that I had really wanted, and had previously applied (and been rejected) to. Maybe before I didn’t feel as ready to dive headfirst into the melange of post grad education but this time I really was. This is what was going to make the difference in my life, in my days, in how I saw myself and perhaps largely how I was seen by others – particularly my family.

Since I have gotten sick and stopped working “steady reliable jobs”, my family has become more and more vocal about their concerns for the direction my life is headed. I haven’t yet been able to discern if the concerns themselves have evolved or just the urgency of their delivery.

It is a sticky wicket; in my day-to-day life I feel strong in claiming my queer/woman of colour/disabled/poor/mentally ill identities. Maybe not “strong” everyday, all the time but I feel like there is a space for me to work out what those words mean in terms of how I am or am not able to navigate a capitalist, patriarchal and otherwise oppressive society.

To my family however I am: adequately educated, ambiguously housed/employed/healthy and not making much of anything.

Going to grad school felt really important to me for these reasons. If I got in and got a degree in the one thing I have always wanted to do (creative writing) it would validate both my choices and my art. But that ship has gone sailing.

Now, as I begin to shake my bones of the ice of this winter and lie myself in spring’s warming sunrays I wonder, what now?

I have always been a writer. A truth about myself that I often forget, especially in the face of rejection or, often depression. However recently during a visit with my grandmother, she offhandedly reminded me of all of these poems that I had written for her and other relatives when I was younger. And she kept asking if I had any poems on me that I could show her ( that was really sweet). She dug up one of the ones I had written when I was about nine or ten years old. It is accompanied by a handmade giftbox, small in size and empty. The poem is about the love I have for her and how I put it in this box to keep it safe in case she ever needed it. Cute.

As I have discussed perhaps before, my grandmother is a magnitude of inspiration for me. When I told her through tears that I didn’t get into school she said, “Ok, now what are you going to do?” That set me off all over again of course. She continued saying that there was always another way to get what I wanted and that if I wanted that star badly enough eventually I would be able to reach it. “Put your life in a hat, and shake it” she said. So that is what I am doing now, vacating my worn grooves for the wiles of another city. Taking in sunshine and new friends and space from the walls I climb every day. When I get back to this life, after what I am anticipating will be a magical trip, I will take all the bits and pieces of me and shake it around until something settles that feels good all the way down.

And then I’ll wear the hat.

m-

Party Hermit (and one year later)

It’s Saturday morning and I am awake before the sun has thought about rising. I like the quiet and darkness of this time of morning, especially this morning when there are a multitude of snowflakes falling from the clouds and muting the normally loud awakening city.

Some mornings I am excited and proud of myself for waking up early, getting a good start on the day (or something like that). This isn’t one of those mornings. Waking up this early means I got something in the area of five hours of sleep, which isn’t enough at all. Another reason for being slightly disappointed at waking up so early is that last night, I was hoping to go to a party – stay out all night, come home both excited and tired and then collapse into bed for many hours of much needed sleep.

Well I didn’t make it to the party. Disappointing but not unusual. After I had decided not to go, I had what felt like hours of argument and analysis with myself about what it meant that I wasn’t going. I wanted to be at the party but I didn’t want to get there. This morning I awoke to text messages on my phone asking “are you here yet?” and “where are you?”. It was a friend of a friend’s house party, someone who I imagine I could quite like and be friends with. Most of my close friends were going to be there, as well as those I have wanted to see but haven’t been able to recently for one reason or the other. I quite wanted to go, really. But I didn’t, why? I spent most of yesterday looking for places to sit down or lean against as I navigated public transit. I started work earlier than I’m used to and finished later than was expected, so I was a little tired.

But really it came down to how much pain I was in and if it was little enough that I could: imagine walking the five snowy blocks to the bus that would take me there; the two blocks from the stop to the party; and risk the possibility that there wouldn’t be enough seating once I got there and I would have to make due with leaning against walls or people while I tried to focus on the conversation through the burning and aching in my body.

I began to fret: what if this “taking care of” by body (read – never wanting to go anywhere or make long term hang out plans) begins to isolate me further because I am not putting in enough time into my social relationships? I worried that at the party people would ask if I was coming and someone would say “maybe not she doesn’t really come out anymore”. And then the cycle of not getting invited to things would begin and I would be walled away into my own small space of comfort, into the category of friends not to invite because they’ll probably say no or just not show up.

Rational worries? Perhaps not but there they are.

This month marks a year since I began relating to my body as one that could be labelled disabled. I haven’t “come out” as such but it is a word I identify with and, when in the right crowds, feel safe enough to name out loud.

I have no specific medical diagnosis, just a myriad of theories and empty test results. A year ago, when my body began behaving in a way that prevented me from living a life I was used to I thought: that’s fine, I’ll just get diagnosed with something tangible and go from there. Now of course I realize that there is so much more to it than that and it just isn’t that easy. It has been an exhausting twelve months of invasive, painful, dehumanizing testing, sceptical, callous doctors, over-prescribed medications and having to relate the same story, set of symptoms, habits, family history over and over again.

Twelve months of having doctors throw their hands up and suggest that although they don’t know what “it” is – that I shouldn’t be optimistic of a cure, and that I will probably suffer this way for my entire life.

Twelve months of medical professionals subtly or glaringly suggest that, according to what they can put on paper – have I thought that it could all be in my head?

Of having jobs, leaving them, living on EI, living poor, lying to my family about getting better and looking for jobs.

Of increasingly turning down more and more invitations because – there are no chairs, it’s too far to walk, I can’t bike today, and transit is expensive.

But! It is not all bad, sometimes it sucks and is hard but not all the time. Since I began accepting and living in my body as it is I have been lucky to meet and welcome as friends some pretty amazing allies in both the queer and disabled communities. I am stronger for those connections.

So now I am reflecting on where I was and looking forward to where I want to be. No answers yet, but I’m working on it.

xo