Random thoughts

Bizarre things come into my head while reading.

* As researchers, are we eating ourselves, or eating each other?
* Is sex an object of violence? A subject of violence? A means of violence? A catalyst to violence? A resistance of violence? [I have trouble conceptualizing it as being entirely unconnected to violence except in theoretical situations]
* Is self-injury repeated rape of the self? [I derive this from reading too much into symbols, with a blade or flame being a phallic object that repeatedly penetrates the body]
* Are experiences of violence socially constructed? Or is making such an argument a violent erasure of experience?
* I think, therefore I am. What about when I'm meditating?

Self-injury, and TEACH

*TW for mentions of self-injury and sexual assault - but nothing graphic*

Why is self-injury such a closed topic at TEACH? I know full well that many of us do it, or have done it - yet there are people who are too self-conscious to wear short sleeves at meetings. Even people who tell most of their friends, who don't give a damn when rude strangers stare at their scars, and who are upfront about other parts of their lives.

Most of us have been through a lot. But yet, we don't share the aftermaths of our experiences. A few other volunteers know that I was raped in high school, but only some of those know that I struggled with PTSD and depression for years afterwards. Even fewer know that now, much later, I still have my bad days, my sleepless nights.

In our stories, we bravely bare the truth about our parents' reactions, bullying, and the violence that we experienced; sex; masturbation; first kisses; broken hearts. TEACH volunteers have stood in front of countless high school classes to discuss issues of race, sexism, media, politics, and sex changes - including some rather graphic details. But I have yet to hear someone discuss mental illness, although it is prevalent in the queer community. We vaguely touch on suicide and the social circumstances leading up to it, but usually leave out that this internal emotional turmoil has a name: depression, anxiety, personality disorders, PTSD, eating disorders...and the list goes on.

We have discussed occasionally how queer people are stigmatized by psychiatry, as diseased due to our sexuality. It is time for those of us who have experienced mental illness to name it. I would describe my experiences of mental illness and my sexual orientation as two people running from a zombie: they are separate, but sometimes they trip each other up while trying to save me from themselves.

Bandaid solutions...

I wrote this in 2005, and just found it now. Kinda sad, now. And less real now.

I can feel it here. On my arms and shoulders, not in my head where the memories hurt, or the rest of my body, or anywhere else. Just here.

It’s easier like this – bandaids, blood, long sleeves. You can’t put a bandaid on your memories to make them go away; they haven’t invented that kind of brain surgery yet. You can’t bandage up my mouth to make the bad taste leave it. But you can clean up your arms, take care of yourself. Weird, just attacking myself more, but it’s the only real way to live my life; let it leak out with my blood, then smother it in a bandaid until it isn’t even real anymore; it’s not emotion, it’s matter. It’s blood. And it’s leaking out of me this way. I can talk like this for hours, because it isn’t really me. It’s a haunted voice in a bleeding broken body without a future. The real me went down the toilet with the bloody towel that I didn’t want anybody to see. The real me isn’t here anymore, this voice isn’t mine. The real me went somewhere, one day, into another world where it can enjoy things, and it left this flat and fractured soul in this bleeding, broken body on the earth to suffer but refuse to feel. Maybe the real me will come back to that body once the scars have faded away and the stars come out to replace them.

Jumble

April 24th, 2004

Sometimes there are defined lines
Of where the pain stops and starts
And sometimes there aren’t.
All I know is, when there isn’t a line,
I draw it,
Carving upon the scars
Of yesterday’s sorrows
Drawing a bold red line
To remember tomorrow.
And hating myself
For what I’ve done to myself
And hating the world
For what it’s done to me.
And wishing that somewhere out there
Somebody could really see
All the things that chase
My vision into a whirl
And just understand I’m sixteen
But still just a little girl.
And I want to run around
In my multicoloured shoes.
Knee hits pavement,
Tears are shed:
The only tears I’d lose.
Cover it up with a Barbie band-aid,
Kiss it, make it better.
Now it’s not so concrete,
Never really better.
My head hurts from the noise
My stomach from the turbulence.
Supposed to fall in love with boys
But I don’t, and nothing makes sense.
And I wish people knew
That I want something real
Or else I might drown.
Nothing’s there, nothing’s under me;
I shut my eyes and just fall down,
Spiral through dark tunnels
Roller coasters through my mind.
Take the wonder out of Wonderland;
It’s not so grand
When you’re left screaming
In the haunted houses in your sleep.
And a veil shimmers over me,
Black as death.
Falling, falling
Half in, half out
Of a dreamlike haze;
Two contrasting worlds
Confusing my gaze.
No stories to tell,
No heaven, no hell.
Waking up with vampire bites,
Eating myself these torturous nights
In half a dreamland
Where my memories dwell.
Trapped beneath the ice
Memories die hard.
I shine my light
But nothing’s there
Under the shell of my mind.
***

Poison

Another thing for writer's club. I didn't share this one with the group. It would freak out the teachers. I don't want it to be tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I just don't.

The pain is always here, no matter what I do, no matter how I try to hide from it. The memories whirl by me in an instant splash of colour and noise, and then they’re gone, leaving behind just a dull ache that tugs at my heart, and the inevitable red cuts, slices in a loose cross-hatch, that cover my body.

I hurt. My confused brain can figure out almost nothing more than that it is hurting. Someone hurt me, and now I feel pain. A simple cause-and-effect model, but I just can’t understand it too well. And I can’t model it. It just doesn’t fit into those neat little charts from history class. Simple my ass.

I can feel the pain before it hits me, like the energy brewing before a storm. It starts as a prickly tingling, moving through my neck and ears, chilling me before moving into the core of my head. It chokes me, crushing out every sense of happiness I’ve ever felt, and replacing it with my most painful memories. And then it has me.

It’s like being possessed. Possessed by only my fear, hatred, and helplessness, by my memories of sheer agony. A train rushes through my head, turning off every light of hope that was ever ignited there. I am nowhere, falling through a perpetual hole of my nightmares.

The smells hit me first; sweet and sour odours that I twist my head to avoid by cannot escape from. I writhe, often falling, trying to banish the smells that define my memories before my other senses are captured. My efforts are purely futile; there is no way out. My other senses succumb to the memories until it has me fully in its grasp. The memory surrounds me, until it is more real than reality.

I come out slowly, like a baby being born out of hell, only to find itself in a cold, lonely world. I can feel the pain sinking from my head down into my gut, where it stays. My head grows hot, until I feel like it might combust. And still the pain stays.

I can’t keep the pain as part of me for too long. This kind of pain is too hard. I cut. It starts off as a single mark, then grows into a wild jungle that poisons my skin. But this is a different poison. It’s pain that I can feel. It is real. I can’t hide from it, but it can’t sneak up on me.

These are my Battle Wounds

April 2nd 2004

These are my battle wounds
Bright crimson, like the juice
Of a crushed rose that has been
Pierced with its own thorns.
Faint lines – story lines
Blending in with my freckles.
Scars of sorrow that fade into
Joyous summer memories.
Contrasting stars on the surface
With the echoes of sadness
Emerging beneath them.
They try to fade back into the woodwork
But like tiny rips in the starry sky
They never go away.
These are my battle wounds.
***