I got really depressed when i lost something worth about $600 dollars. I lost my phone. It may seem like “its just a phone” But it simply is not. First of all i can hardly afford a phone of that much and have not been able to for many months/years now that when my other phone died – waterdamaged and i was just too tired of not having/ not having enough.
Based on my meritocratic, ableist, patriachial upbringing i have been faced with and struggling with my choices in spite of what people might say about me attempting to acquire access/power and resources and pRIVILEGE to what ends besides my immediate apparent/seeming power that does not nothing to deconstruct the world/system of domination we live in . I dont fucking know all i know is maybe i would be more inclined to listen to, maybe even consider what these people were saying if they themselves even in the fight/revolution were not already enjoying life aka middle class/upper/ class.
Meanwhile like good scrambling immigrants me and the one poor friend i have, who both have MUST survive below the so called fucking poverty lines. I choose i shiny new, black and blue slider phone with the qwerty keyboard for my one handed self. I was thinking about what it means to have a MAN around, about how easy, how practical it seemed to have someone there to half the bills, to buy groceries, to HELP OUT, to put up pictures in my apartment, to help me when i grocery shopping, to carry all the bags into the apartment, to rub my back to offer me care,to deal with the euro immigrant priviledged bastard super who really wants to fuck me, to shield me from the victimizing, over sexualizing gaze of the the “super”, TO HELP and to support. For these things, for these reasons i have chosen to stay in relationships that were toxic to me, that i was unhappy, that i allowed myself to believe that the care that i recieved in thier hands when i was ill, which i often am indebted me to be loyal, ssubservient afterall they had bore the bore the burden that is me with smiles, with creativity and had even welcomed it. Who the fuck would not welcome such fucking care so that one that infantilize and make monstrous the disabled, victimized body.
Out of this reality of my life, out of the knowledge of how hard i work unceasingly, persistently, how many times i drag my ass out of bed to exist in a world that was not made for me, my kitchen hostile, bathroom, i slip and fall, i hide the bruises, fucking everything hurts ALLL the time, whether i talk about it or not, whether i look it/perform it (as in wear dirty ragged i dont know exactly what the fuck the ableist construction of looking in pain/damaged it…ask them) or not. iT is always there. My tears flow freely as i write this and my cat has come to sit beside me, Ihave been thinking about what it means for me as young disabled woman to live alone, to choose to live alone, to choose to not engage at my expense with people that are indeed damaging to my spirit while telling myself that i was getting “CARE”
This has always been my soft spot getting “CARE”, anything to fucking do with CARE. True i can be persuaded to do almost anything for you, lick your ass figuratively speaking and otherwise (OK i am a FREaK and generally love to lick the ass hole of the right man or woman as a sexual practice thats meant to get me going..BIG TIME) But as i was saying most of the horrifying painful relationships i have been in have been about that CARE. I was either looking for someone not to love (too romantic and often unpractical plus really is a construction that i may/may not manipulate all to say that i never really allowed myself to love, be love, didn’t know it was possible, didn’t comprehend it as possible untill my last two relationships the marriage and the poly one that i started to really exercise my heart willingly if you will. i have always adopted my mothers attitude to love: it is not neccessary, it is a distraction (maybe thats why she let him beat her her for so long she mortgaged her health and youth for her life now….)
For me i may fall in love with you but it means nothing..i can/ am supposedly strong enough to deal with heartbreak. What matters, has always mattered but is starting to be crystal clear is what you do for me and this is tied to do you care for me. Because if you care then you will keep it like a factual piece of information, like my eyes are brown that this my pain is almost always in constant, i dont get how people can forget????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????I dont get how people can forget how it is that i supposedly have one hand and a stump. I usd to think it was my internalized ableism, used to blame myself thought that al i could do, if only i’d just make the stump unapologetically visible then they couldn’t forget, then they couldn’t blame me for forgeting. But that is such BULLSHIT. To be more elaborate it is a power sustaining/reinforcing /maintaining, blame the “victim, downlaod responsibility, hide frpom your own actions while pretending to help the lesser than poor oppressed ..it is in my own understanding colonizing , oppressive, dominating horseshit. It should be obvious why …but in anycase i was too busy trying to be visible, reproducing my own internalized ableism that i was distracted and contradicted and questioned my own understandings of what was going on so often that i dared not, and often chose not to speak them, they often came out in explosive burst or till i could really no longer deny then untill i chose to let them out in fuLL force well as full as i could muster. Whats worse even in face of my presence, visibility, they still forget, people will willingly ignore what is in front or claim top forget anyway but not when they have decided that you cant do the dishes without getting water everywhere cos you have a disability or watch you and wonder at your cooking in the kitchen or how it is that you are so brave? so powerful? so ALIVE? so angry? how is it that you inspire so much fear in them? makke them so very unconfortable at diffrent times? The very act of forgeting is indeed not forgetting, it is no innocent, something they just did, cant be blamed for meant to disarm the rge you position towards then. FUCK NO, that so called forgetting is “active, persistent..dare i say tenacious” ERASURE, it is a very consistent, insistent will to always remember to forget, erase, construct as deemed fit. It is a shamelesss act of power, fear and control.
In the times that yes i have wickedly refused to play the game burning myself in the process no doubt it has become clear that that is really all there EVER was to it. In all my relatiionships, couched in all the so called CARE, affection is POWER. MOstly i play along until i stop thinking its worth it, until, basically they buy thier own hype and bullshit and they they are actually in control of a system that i merely colluded with. I’m not a bad ass, i merely have choice. I am not afraid of being seem as amoral, unetthical what does all of that mean to something who has had to lived with the construction of a monster anyways? All of that aside it hurts, it hurts and hurts like HELL. The shock never fails to mark me because somewhere along the line i believe/d unquestioningly. i felt thier warm two hands ease the pain in the small of my back, i felt felt held as i slept and rested my tired body, i ate food that they cooked, clothed myself in clothes they had washed…they had kept my lonsely self company many a night and day becase they wanted to. And they desired me and i desired them. At some point regardless of all this theory stuff, regardless of my convictions about power, hierachy and the ways in plays out on my body, the ways that i choose to interface..i allowed myself to be there, to be present, to find and appreciate and yes to grow to be committed to them untill it starts to hurt too much that i would rather very much rather be alone again. Its like slow poison, like smoking cigarrettes, you get your high and wake up one morning with cancer knowing all along that you choose to pay, seek after every cigarette you ever smoked. Its kinda like that.
The care thing, the courage to heal, stigmative and construct survivors as “survivors aka permanently damaged monsters” would dictate that i blame this apparent vulnerable as a direct result of the lack of care, attention, that i did not recieve from parents, families, loved ones in my childhood. iT is true that in my teenage years that kin of nurturing was not really part of my reality. mY my parents being the ableist igbo christians that they were loved me very much. Infact, i have only started to admit to myself and my family that i am indeed something of a favorie daughter, recieved too much attention compared to my siblings, but it was too often poisoning with thier abliest view of what is neccessary to raise a disabled daughter, that they were so easily able to let me go that they have indeed been able to let me go but i was “CARED” for. I was hugge, kissed, finiancially NEVER allowed to want, sheltered constantly that i remember rebelling against my mother and learning to wash my own clothes. I remember being 11 and sending my bed sheets home from boarding school to be laundered and returned all this with fuel scarcity. I was also forgotten many times, sent far way from home none the less i was thought about so much more and prioritized in my house. I know that from hearing my sister speak, from my other siblings.
As i write this i think about how people have tried to twist, manipulate to use the information that i have offred and shared with them about who i was, what i had lived through and how i thought about myself. How sad that instead it had all turned into a hatefull, hurtful exercise but not a waste for me though, it has forced me to dig deeper, search for myself, understand, reason and see for myself and then to decide, confidently and with convicted for myself. i dont know if it has made me stronger wiser etc perse not that cliche bullshit no but it has shifted, moved and offered me more of me which i have grudgingly accepted. Somethngs hopefully will never change and i dont want them to ever change for me, that i am number for me, straight up. Cos really and trully who else is meant to be number one
Yeah so you see why i thought i was going to lose to lose my mind when i lost the phone? whyi was totally depressed cos i thought that surely the gods were indeed punishing me, that surely i was meant to suffer, that surely i was not to know my place to not aspire to thing such as an slider phone 
? Ah..but the power of capitalism… is real very real for me, i do not see an alternative to change, dont know where it will come from, dont trust that something better will evolve. I’m not sure i want to save the world, i’m not sure i believe in saving the world or thinking that i am sort sort of knowing better than everyone else elitist also fucking delusional view that i am part of a revolution/leading…not sure. Everything i continue to do has not addressed what iactually want it to address, has not focused in any meaningful way on what i actually want it do which really is my country, my community, my family. Nationalist, tribalistic, bio family focused and specific is really at the bottom of it all what i am about. It is not about asking for acceptance but seeing myself there, challenging, speaking to the active erasure and remembering to forget in my family life is what i really think of everyday…but the tools i need, the words that i have i fear are borrowed from communities, cultures, westernized schooling and domination reinforcing knowledge production, i know this much is true….now what? I continue to try to wrap my head around it all
