diasporic located self/pain and family

You know that feeling of when  it hurts so much you feel like you are always crying, in your heart, with your body everything is dripping tears…thats how i fell today, thats how i been feeling all week. I guess that’s why it’s called sorrow. I guess that’s why it’s called heartbreak.  I guess that is why it’s called growing pains….

Growing pains because i’ve decided to continue to live my life for me, to dream up how  i want to be living, where i want to be living, who i envision myself with, what i envision myself doing and to actively struggle, work for and fight for it…i feel threatened that people will attempt to take away my dreams for my family, for myself…more and more i think of my brothers and sisters and the vast difference in quality of life that we’ve had and how i represent so much of what the western world is to them(i should say western imperialism at the expense of others while asserying thier superiority as if it is “right”, all the while claiming justice, freedom and equality )…and their ‘progress’. My family sacrificing and deterring their dreams just so i can be here and have continued to now for years and will continue to.

Yes, its complicated with my family from the times when all i did was caretake, from the time when that was all i was constructed as the evil/oddly demanding must caretake and therefore be taken care off..its a weird arrangement where folks in my family felt/feel guilt and other emotions that compelled them to either justify the ways that i was not normalized or centred in the family to centre me in other ways..especially in relation to abuse/rape/trauma…sometimes my brain cant handle everything all together and i think ignore that for now….

And yet, it sit at the back of my mind, i any case, all that aside where it is true that i was not a powerful position in my family in the past, that has shifted radically, i have the most earning potential, the one with western arrogance and entitlement that feels i can change my world around me and shape my world around me as i see fit, the one with non practical/strategic dreams when my mother in her late forties is still thinking in terms of what is practical/strategic for the family and not in what would satisfy her personal desires and needs…apparently she wanted to be a writer and has volumes of journals bound up just waiting for someone to read…or do anything with. her story locked down on paper, my mother. The rest of the family, most of the family i have watched attempt to navigate this push and pull, i mean extended family and most of them have eventually settled on taking of care of their own nuclear family. And i cant blame them, that is why i can/could have gone through the times i was eating at the foodbank, living in shelters, walking with my Achilles in the snow to school and work after just so i could take care of my lonesome without falling back on an abusive exploitative situation where i was extremely vulnerable: i mean without entering partnerships/friendships etc where i was extremely vulnerable to abuse due to physical, mental, poverty condition…

In the last 7 years only one of my aunts has given me even $1, i ‘ve had noone and absolutely no one in my family to even think or consider asking for support. It continues to break my heart. And so i don’t want my family to say that, i continue to support my brothers and sisters when i can, even if its fifty dollars here and there just so that they know, that they have the security that comes from knowing that when if they should need $50 quick, i will be there…. that brings a smile to my face.

So i;ve been planning/scheming, all  of it has been keeping me up at night, knowing that i need to position myself for the betterment of my family, for the betterment of myself, that the ways that i sacrificed..it is two way…my darling sisters have lived without me for the past ten years in the sameways that i have had to live to live without them, its been a two way street and i think of it and ask myself WHY? Because we are African? Why all this suffering everywhere, all over the place?I know i’m not the only one suffering and that makes it worse..noone to say oh let me lean on you because you are really enjoyin…no everyone has their cross to carry.

I guess I have resentment because when i was leaving 9ja, the teenager that i was,, i thought i was coming to bE with my extender family they would provide and care for me as this was my initial experience staying with one of my uncles but after that initial experience, this was no longer the case….

Perhaps that is the only left over hurdle from immigrating unexpectedly without really knowing what i was in for..but then again how much could i know, i was a teenager. How much do i know now STILL..very little as this reality scares the hell out of me, i will have very many learning curves, steep ones at that before i can be well adjusted, perhaps that is what well adjustedness is about? In anycase i plan.

I am tentatively, anxiously making all these gutt wrenching plans about my livelihood, my lovelife, my spiritual life, my physical person, my character, my skill set..everything is being carefully crafted…knowing just how much there is at stake, or at least i’ve convinced myself that there is indeed so much at stake..what am I saying, there is so very much at stake….MY Life!!

dear diary #4

Its 3pm, i strolled into work @ 12 pm …another fucking benefit of living with a disability (Ok so i’m very bitter about all my ablebodied so called friends and every other fucking bitch ass disabled or not that even thinks that the fucking argument of taking advantage of “fucking accommodations makes ANY sort of remote sense..WHY ? go read a fucking book: check under the normalizing, dominating, oppressive, position of the ‘’healthy/fit/normal body and the ridiculous unearned privilege and entitlement ” thats the most i can do for your ass….)

Point is, i’m feeling drained, stressing about money, stressing about the people/lack of healthy/supportive relationships in my life, stressing about how i’m supposed to live my life as i’m surrounded by albeit unwitting agents of domination??????

I think most importantly i’m heartbroken…people are assholes, JERKs, unfeeling self centred, egotistically beings thats how we think we neeed to survive. I’m just so distrusting and fearful of everyone around me right now….EVERYONE…i might be losing my mind.

Can someone be ableist and love me? I cannot let myself that someone who cannot admit that they are ableist is NOT ableist…the first step towards not being ableist is to admit that you are…

To watch ppl be like you need counselling/help/support: WHAT the fuck is that shit about? Its slimy nasty to me its like a fucked up way of silencing/pathologizing that allows people to refuse to deal/engage with you…demanding individual western individual health/ways of being – talk to your counsellor not to me…

I’m trying to work….take my mind of this shit, what am i expected to do?

In friendship/lovership: you gotta develop your standards for how you want to treated… i’m sure i’m recreating the wheel, i need to find my ‘magickal’ friends/hope that those i already have with embrace the magic of our relationship…either way i need to find supportive folks/peer s around this shit…

its called being assertive not selfish: notes on living with truama + relationships…

1: identified pattern: saying I don’t want to do something and doing it anyways..communicates weakness and allows people to take advantage, communicates that they can get it from me anyways, if I don’t care enough about how I feel not to do it why should they? I’ve got to learn to totally put myself first not them and its called being assertive not selfish

Yesteday’s counseling session was good for me. I got my ass kicked by my counselor and it felt good that and the fact that I took advil followed by four shots will make anyone feel good I imagine J (yes I’m fully ware of my escapism) Anyways, we talked about what it means that I have a pattern of abusive relationships and follow them one after the other, that I end up somehow communicating that it is ok for me not to get my needs met and therefore permit the abuse to happen. where and how I learnt this behaviour is written all over my childhood. As a woman living with a disability I was raised to put EVERYONE and everything else before myself, I was to ALWAYS come last if I was to be a good woman, if people were going to forget that I had a disability and perhaps look kindly at me and let me in the rant and all of my childhood abusers forced me to put their needs first. Even when I got raped I’ll never forget my mother telling me that I need to basically NEVer tell anyone if I was going to succeed in life and by that she really meant get married which I did and fucked up (by her standards anyways) so 1 for me, 1 for mom.

As an aside I really like jack..emotionally he actually takes care of me, I don’t feel like I have to struggle and fight for my needs to be met sexually and emotionally just financially na im be the prob. In fact he encourages to state my needs and tries to anticipate and meet them. With all my other lovers I feel like it’s a constant battle where people just want to take from you and will take as much as they can whether you are willing or unwilling. This makes me so fucking sad and angry at the same time because then it means they are being dishonest and don’t really give a rat’s ass…they have no real integrity. It also means that they are lieing if they say they care for m or at least what caring is to them is not what it is to me.

I was thinking about all of this because of red and my ex husband and his complete disregard for me and my needs, even the sexual/basest of needs. It looks like the same pattern is about to rear its ugly head in relation to red, I’m starting to get that feeling that I’m not good enough.unworthy and its such an alarm in my head: but it is immediately followed by double talk on my part, self doubt and hyper critical ness..(I’m like, no I know she is not him but we did have a relationship that was fucked in its own way but that I tried really hard to save from descending into the very abyss of hell, and it is the same me that she is dealing with post ex husband…) in reality I’m not used to putting myself in the centre of my own relationships with people and when I do then I feel totally and completely ill at ease..literally.

Red says that she wants to have intimacy cuddle, kisses, touches, caresses, no fucking, I told her from the beginning and have consistently let her know that I want to be more than friends but I can live with being friends..i want her in my life. I’m not sure about all that intimacy that goes no where. But she goes back and forth and in that process according to my counselor I’ve communicated to her by cuddling with her anyways and leaving the door so wide open (by making it abundantly clear that I want a relationship with her no matter the cost, I’ve pretty much said this to her- actual words) that I’ll do it anyways even though that’s not what I want making it harder for me to get me needs met when she can get all of her needs met. And at the same time get to FREAK out that we are having a not quite lovership type of relationship. I’m not freaked out at all, I’m like that’s the end game…I don’t know what her end game is. All I want is to have her (and she is presently a stand in for most of the relationships, future and presnt )in my life under the best and most long term conditions.

So it’s looking like it will be hard, hard to set up boundaries, hard to actually refuse to do the things that I say and know that I do not want to do, I feel fearful, that if I do not do these things or act the way that people want me to act then I’ll lose them. Isn’t that the way life is? I mean that’s basically what I learnt from the collective, that’s what I’ve learnt from most people in my life but LORD knows I’m working hard and trying to get to a place where I can be who I am and fully welcome and invite people into my life trusting that they will appreciate me for who I am, that regardless of what they do or are willing/unwilling to do I will have my boundaries solid and firm.

That’s what my fear, really is about that if I don’t do what people want or say then I wont have them in my life, it makes it hard for me to even acknowledge my needs/ wants and by the time that I do its too late. I wish I could have helped out EVEN more and did this with my ex-husband that’s someone else that I did love so much that now I’m not even willing to let him hurt me anymore, I want to protect some of the good times that we had, the warm fuzzy moments that get eroded by every nasty thing that he does, the same with red, I’m fighting to hold on to the moments where I feel I actually experienced what it means to be/ feel loved and to share that with someone. That’s all love really is, isn’t it?

dili and chi (recount..contd )

I am not sure when this happened so i’m not sure about the age but i think i’m about 5-6-7 years old.

My time markers are: this was the year that my grandmother moved to agboju market and we started spending a lot of time there. I especially spent a lo of time there refusing to go home and even going to school from there. There were some perks…my parents were constantly fighting or should i say my father was busy beating my mom so she too was sometimes at grandma’s “resting” and its not like i spent a lot of down time with her, and her shop was close ny on ojo road so under the prext of wanting to learn how to sew sometimes the driver would drop me there….that came in my early teens as more frequent behaviour before they closed/sold the shop.

Anyways in my bid to avoid okafor i started to spend a lot of time there, at my grandma’s i was allowed to HELP out in the kitchen, go to the market, fetch water..all these things distracted me they were a welcome escape. i would spend days in her t – shirts which she called blouses and she would bathe me at night and cover me with talc powder and dusting power. I was so happy there, i started to tell my mom that i wanted to move to agboju….

Then mama started going to the market and running errands and left me more and more with okwi. Okwi and i were co conspirators, he wasn’t much older than me and he’d encourage me to ask mama for milk, sugar, money for suya anything most things that she wouldn’t on if it was just him and her. He was her brothers son and his sister would be coming soon from the village. We played with makeup, he dressed me up and would wear makeup, my aunts heels and we would both me “madams” one day he got caught and they beat the living daylights out of him. I was not sympathetic by then i started to feel sike at the memory of him.

Anyways one day he invites me to his room, i never go into his room he shared the same room with my aunties, that room was huge with two queen beds in it and they were away at the university so he had thier wardrobe at his full disposal. Untill then i stayed in mama’s room and did not venture near that room cos my aunts had warned me to stay away.

So i went with him, he said he had storybooks for me to read and i stayed there and read them and then he showed me papa ajasco and hints magazine and read them to me, he kissed me and touched me on my nipples, sucked them and asked me to play with his penis..well he put my hand on it. it was soft, softer than okafors and browner and smaller. I started to cry, he begged me to stop crying.

This memory is so fucking fuzzy that i hate to remember. Anyway one day he was in my uncles room right by the parlour, i think i was sleeping or something. I noticed how quiet it was..that weekend my brother and sisters were there with us…cos one of our uncles came back from abroad. I heard voiced from his room i thought there were hiding eating all the candy, biscuit that my uncle brought back and did not want to give me any so i started banging and knocking on the door.

Okwi came out of the room with nothing on he was covered in powder and my sister/brother were in the room with chioma they were all naked, lying under the sheets and giggling? I was mortified. I knew what was happening so i asked them to get out of the room immediately, my brother, my sister. They said that they were only playing but i beat them, slapped them hard and told them that if i EVER found them playing that kind of play they would be sorry.

***more significantly, i have a displaced memory of feeling, sucking and tasting along with the overwhelming scent of talc powder okwi’s small penis**** i can’t seem to place it.

Okwudili was easy to forgive, i think one day he asked me for forgiveness….after that day i never talked to him, hung out or anything. I avoided him like the plague…i was cleaning my fathers bathroom when he came upstairs to say hello he was in secondary school by this time. So was i but he was a senior and very tall and handsome. His voice got shaky and tears welled in his eyes and he said he was sorry. I didn’t ask for what, i didn’t ask why. I was happy that he’d apologized, i had respect for him, though the disgust didn’t really go anywhere and that was it.

We lived around each other but were never close again.

****it is important to note that my brother went on to continue to “play” i suspect with my sister, myself with my sister, my cousins and brothers at diffrent points in my life. If not for anyone else’s sake i MUST remain anonymous. This stuff, thee stuff that i cannot blame on anyone, the things that i remember doing like a zombie indeed, the things that i felt compelled to do when okwi, okafor and everyone else is what haunts me because up untill i became a teenager…i perpetuated the cycle. Even as i wished that they would stopped what they did to me i did not think/it did not occur to me that what i was doing was WRONG, would create hurt, would do the same to them

Psychology has explained away this phenomenom with relativity, the attempt to normalize ones psyche, life and what one has lived through by passing on the pain. The theory of domination/power/ is simply a way of achieving balance by stealing power from another person and therefore becoming the dominator. I dont know how to forgive my teenage self or my young self for the things that i continued to do to other people, to other children even as i had managed to stop the abuse in my life.

Worse i have found little or no resources for talking about this, people have threatened me, lost all respect for me, attempted to call me a monster, attempted to blackmail me for things that they themselves had done, once they have found this out about me but the reality is that this is me. If i am to fry for it one day then i shall fry. I am doing all this now, saying all this now because i have to find a way to free myself. I am in “bondage.”  I remain bound by the pacts of secrecy that existed/exists among all of us. I want to live my life, i need to give myself permission to live and mean it.

AND it must stop. IT MUST STOP. IT MUST STOP. this bullshit that has been going on in my family, that has touched us, someone must talk about it, i will not live in fear that one day i will touch my kids or that i will be blind while someone else does or that someone else will because i am too busy hiding anything to do with sex from my children, it must stop. Starting with me.

I think that is why the whole way, current and very popular method of conceptualizinf “healing” and survivors must be reconceptualized…because the present explanation of coping/learnt behaviors does not address the fear that i am trying desperately to debunk: that since i was touched, licked, kissed and tasted and consumed by the tainting damaging hand of EVIL, torture and abuse then i must have changed become deformed, ugly and equally monstrous..that i learnt this is no consolation AT ALL because i am now and will forever remain condemned as monstrous…+disability and theoretically the vision/story is not much of a leap..doesnt take people long to make the connection, this i can see in my life. It has manifested itself before me…like a monstrous shadow that i cannot hide/run away bury my head in the sand as much as i wish…it is thier preconcieved notions of me, they give it breath, it is created before my very eyes and it takes on a life of its own….

What to do with the monster/ghost: either we vanquish it for all eternity or we simply live with it…normalizing it, acknowledging as she is transformed and we are transformed recognizing shared connections/similarities till we cant help but start to see ourselves as ugly, familiar, monstrous as the monster/ghost….not sure that made any sense..not that anyone is reading REALLY!

Oka…(recount)

Okafor came to our house in lagos at the time from the village..i remember hearing everyone describing him as a village boy who was ugly. He shared a room with one of my uncles, all the uncles shared one room, it smelt like them, the room was lit with a yellow bulb and was full of boxes of paper. Looking back it smelt mostly like aftershave and old paper.

He used to bathe us, well me and my brothers and sisters.  When he was bathing me his hands always lingered around me nipples and too long in my vagina, i complained once and he told me that i was dirty i needed to be clean down there and thats what my mother told him to do.  That is how it all started. Till today i wonder if he touched or did anything to any other of my siblings. We had come to agreement much later on when i was eight that he would use only me and that he would in turn get full cooperative access to me.

When i was three (i calculated how old i was from the year we were still in our first family house before we moved to our present family house in lagos) I was three.

I used to dance to ABBA really loud while he cleaned for some reason that day i was home alone with him. He had finished cleaning for the afternoon and watched me danced to dancing queen. I flounced around the room imitating my mother, my aunties and then i noticed that he was watching me closely. I moved to him and started to dance for him, I remember twisting and rubbing myself on the wall and looking at  him to make sure i had his attention and he was staring.

later that afternoon Okafor took me into his room, it was dark, he was sweating profusely, there was no light and he was naked. he asked me to come to the bed he kissed me for a long time..i didn’t feel anything…cannot recall the image i just know that i kissed him, i remember his lips..i remember thinking that they were so big and so black compared to mine. he smelt of saliva and sweat…i sat on top of him  lay naked beneath me and he was rocking, moving, my head was stuck in his armpit and my whole lower body was covered in white stuff…i fell asleep.

I never went to his room again. I avoided him, no more dancing to abba, no more dancing, no more skirts/dresses if i could afford it. When we moved into the new house it was harder to avoid him, by them he was the master houseboy and we had other househelps that deffered to him, so he would insist on bathing me, insist on making my lunch, insist on lifting me up when i came back from school so that in front of everyone he would stick his fingers into my vagina and then put me down but by then i was often in tears. Okafor was beloved by my parents, they said he was honest, no girls around him, worked in the shop, didn’t steal and he was learning the trade very well.

Whenever he was bathing me he would stick his soapy fingers into my vagina. I told my aunt and my mother once that he had put his finger into my vagina with soap and that is why it was paining me. My aunt called me aside and begged me to be sure of what i was saying because they were going to beat okafor and send him away. (now i look back with a clear conviction that she knew but instead sympathized with him or was the power drug denial and her hope that it was not true that led her to encourage me to sympathize first and foremost with him and everyone else but myself ) So i never mentioned it again. At other times he would force me to play hide and seek by following me around and i would run and hide, trying to escape and he would corner me behid the curtains, under the dining table, behind the couch and play with my vagina. Sometimes i got wet, i felt aroused…i didnt understand. He would smile and tell me to stop pretending that i liked what he was doing. Over the yearsi simply gave in, would let me do as he pleased and when he took me to his room in the boysquarters, whipped out his penis, I did. all i remember was his hair, the coarse hair, the smell of his sweat and com. He always smelt like onions.

When i was 9yrs old i travelled to london england for christmas and there as another girl touched me and her brother confronted me and asked me if she had touched me and told me that she had touched/touches others i realized that it was all wrong. He gaved me words to think about it all. I started to hate myself, hate the fact that sometimes his mouth on my nipples felt good, that he gave me extra eggs in the morning or whatever i wanted, I hated him. When i got back from england he chased me down the house and i fought back, i threw a can of baked beans at him and he stuck his fingers into me by force, i bit him hard..he enjoyed it. I withdrew i wondered why nobody noticed. I still do.

Then one day i took the kitchen knife that used to cut green sometimes and i told him that i would tell my mom and dad and that i would cut him the next time he tries it, i cut him, not hard enough..that day he was even rougher.

So i stayed away, slept in my aunt house and i started to steal so they’d blame it on him, i stole perfume money and it worked. Then one day i closed the glass divider, i was playing. Okafor heard a car at the gate and ran to open it, he ran straight through the glass. I was happy, he bled everywhere, they took him to the hospital, his face bore numerous scars from the stitches. He never touched me again. After that incident he came back for a little while but they settled him.

The next time i saw him i was 12, i came back from church and there he was in my living room with my mother in a white caftan and his new wife from the village. He said how beautiful and all grown up i looked, my mother said i could make abacha now and wouldn’t i make some for him.

I oversmoked the oil, the abacha was hard, dry and burnt. i served  it to him and his wife. My mother said that it was strange, that my abacha is usually good. He said it was perfect he and his wife ate it. When i came to collect to plates, he stared i picked them up and took them to the kitchen. lost in thought, i was so angry that he had the audacity to come back and pretend that everything was ok…the tray dropped from my hand the glass, the plates they’ used to eat were broken.

I was glad i didn’t want to wash the utensils and dishes that he’d used to eat.

** i try hard to black the images from my head, i wont let myself relive them to the fullest cos they were painful, they hurt, i felt taken advantage off, i felt left alone. I have been told later on in my life (boundaries, promiscuity, lying, cheating, stealing become coping behaviors, this view HELPS ALONg the survivors are monsters theory that i thoroughly despise and disagree with, to state from obvious i could have learnt picked up these behaviours from anywhere as a young girl growing up in lagos or anywhere else in the world for that matter) that i learnt very many disturbing behaviours from everything that he did to me the emotional manipulation, the abuse, my present eroticization of fingers.., i have not oVERCOMe anything, i Have not become more than anything because my lived experiences are a part me, the same way i cannot/will not overcome any day soon the pain the small of my back, okafor stays**i used to feel consumed in a way by his fingers like they blotted out every thought in my head, squeezed out everything that was me – displaced in my own mind/head.. this is really what i’m battling. From Okfor to everyone else that has attempted to utilize my body/ embodied self for thier own purposes.

protecting myself/spirit/voice is hard sometimes

Mostly I am happy, happy that I am starting to hear my own voice clearly in my head and the more I listen to her and do exactly as she says no questions asked, the more I feel free about debating her just to make sure that she has thought things through, the more I trust her, the happier I am about listening to the decisions that she has made, often it is as simple as getting dressed up pretty or taking extra care with what I am wearing that day at other times it is about getting stuff done, writing clips or soundbites that flow through and I am content. I am pleased so pleased with myself because there was a time that her voice was barely a whisper where I hoped and strived to hear her speak to me and met only tears or rage, times when all I heard was cold silence followed by fear and desperation as I felt lost. Now the louder, the clearer I hear her the easier it is for me to simply move knowing that it is only me that is guiding my movements, now she comes through clear enough so that I can literally feel her stifle and her choking when other voices, outside of me attempt to shout or scream her down or bully her. I can feel her pain. I can feel my pain. I can feel where it hurts and me? In response I shine back harder, louder, brighter than before and I am content because I am learning her, I am learning to give her space to grow I am learning to nurture her, feed her and ultimately treasure, protect her because now I know that she really is all that I have. She is should be my true love.

 

And when she makes mistakes when she wants to play with danger, when we get hurt I and make mistakes when we desire toxic interactions, environments and situations I attempt to be compassionate. I strive to learn to protect her while offering her room to play to find joy in a wicked. I try to give her what she needs when she needs it. I do not question her virtue or her morality. I make sure that she is first and foremost safe and secure. No one can take that way from me, noone can take her away from me without my consent.

There is power in her words, there is power in her voice, there is power in her movements that the vibrations that flow from her, our core. that is becoming unmistably clear to me, I continue to learm, my ain is to master it, to cultivate it, to harness and guide it and move it and utilize it when necessary.

soundwaves and frequency

  She is my guide, she is my strength, she is my fire. She is an awesome chick. She is blessed. She shall be and remain well. I Will love and cherish and treasure her for she is my heart. She is strong and she is stronger and stronger, I watch her grow, evolve with a mothers pride carefull that she does not fall. Now I begin to understand why so many have tried to bring her down, she will continue to be surrounded only by people who will give her height, continue to allow her to rise, continue to give her space toi grow, continue to nurture her strengths. Everyone else around her, may they receive what they have wished her tenfold, may them become intimately acquainted with the process which they try to stifle in her for their ill meaning will meet their waterloo, may they never see her in her goings and comings, may the divine creative forces of our universe continue to guide their daughter, continue to move their path in her life, continue to shield and bless her abundantly till her cup floweth over and may she continue to to grow and move forever beyond and out of their reach.

i’m a hardworker. I aint lazy and that don’t make me a capitalist whore either!

 

I am a VERY responsible person, and a VERY persistent person. I work HARD. I had work HArd for everything for things that most people take for granted. That is part of the way that my own oppression and domination take place…so excuse me when i chaff at the bit. All this month and from about half of last month I’ve been deconstructing the messages that I’ve been bombarded with all my life which is that I am LAZY.

See the story is BECAUSE of the fact that I have a disability I should be already and willingly and should have long since made peace with the fact that in order for me to achieve, succeed or get to be “normal” or have the things/access and privileges that “regular” “everybody” then I should already know that I HAVE to work harder, I HAVE to be stronger, I have to BE soo much more and hence the super crip, overachieving and most importantly passing disabled me was formed, reinforced and reaffirmed.

remember when I started to actively read and think the “feminist anthologies”: Susan Raffo, Eli Claire and other writers living with a disability that critique the super crip phenomenon but most of it is a simple stop resist and reject the super crip stance. This stance in reality is VERY VERY DEADLY for a person who is not white and middle classed and generally has a safety net of privilege to land on should they choose to reject the super crip phenomenon.

I have worked hard and I have always worked hard all my life. I say this with grave bitterness, most of the people who know me are familiar with this bitterness but it is a good bitterness, it is a good rage. If I didn’t have it, I would be worried because it would mean that somewhere deep inside of me I no longer can gage, I no longer can tell within myself the way that things are and the way that things should be. I would have nothing to look forward. Disabled people and trauma survivors of which I am both have suffered and continue to suffer a lot of hostile and violent STIGMA simply because they are who they are and they have this bitterness and this rage. I am not a friendly person, I am not nice, feel free to call me a wicked person, feel free to even call me a monster.

Anyways, the point of all of this is working hard is tough and it makes me weak, it makes me vulnerable to affection and care received from other people because I feel like they care and I am so deeply affected by a show/gesture of care and affection that might not mean as much to them as much as it meant to me, nor SHOULD IT, if I wasn’t soo tired or weakened or in so much pain in the first place. (it shouldn’t be that way to state the obvious, in a good equal world people wouldn’t say dumb and hurtful toxic destructive garbage meant to humiliate, embarrass and dominate crap like I wish I was disabled so I could get befits or its unfair that disabled people get special advantages that that they then turn around and take advantage of ..there would ALREADY be policies, structural practices and a general cultural understanding that these things are only the beginning in addressing the unequal ground that we exist in, THEY WOULD ALREADY BE IN PLACE< IT WOULD ALREADY BE UNDERSTOOD people would not have to be constructed as lying and cheating even as their labor worth and existence are being exploited for the power and dominance of more powerful others…. Like DUH!!)

it is in explaining this little fact and the share unfairness of the situation usually brings me to tears. Big time. It hurts, it a dagger through my heart and back BECAUSE why? Because it affects literally my quality of life, it affects the kinds of conversations that I can have, my feeling of security with others, my safety, my security, my confidence and assurance in others perception of myself….it breaks my heart when it come from people whom I love and have loved dearly. It seems to make loving, living, sharing with them of any kind almost impossible. I need help in this respect; I need help when it comes to finding ways to build alliances that are honest, respectful, and not harmful in this regard. I’m working through that.

I’m learning to work for myself and to offer myself care because I am realizing that when able bodied people and non trauma survivors offer care/support that they so within an ableist framework given that this is what they operate within on a daily basis. This therefore means that they are operating from an at best, questioned and slightly critiqued place of pity and save the monster or upliftment of the handicapped place where they unspokenly EXPECT you to be grateful or like they’re actually like really and truly saving you when in reality they are being patronizing, condescending, oppressive people only interested in sucking the little passion, resistance, fight you got in you when they insist that you affirm their dominance and power and my dear people that Is when, as in it is in those moments that I hold on tight and hold on to that precious feeling in your gut and NEVER let go. Those are defining moments…those are moments when you find out where and how and why the lines of power and colonization and the way that the colonization takes place. Those are indeed colonizing moments.

Most of the people in my life have tried to tell me that I was lazy, not fully there, not doing something right and generally and there is nothing like self validation, there is nothing like recognizing something and affirming your own power within yourself which is what I have to do and these days even as I work a 9-5 come home and work again, I remind myself that at least I am creating a life where no one else can exploits the fruit of my work especially when they do not even begin to comprehend what it means for me to live my life the way I do, or how much I have to work or how much I have had to learn in order to have things the way that they are.

So yes, I am in the process of working hard but it is because I think that I have little time, now that my body can handle it I have to do and do as much of it as I can and that’s cold comfort in and off itself. So that when the time comes and I’m chilling then I’m chilling.

I was saying before that a person living with a disability I cannot be fucking around talking about how I’m resisting super crip while the able bodied people achieve I think that one can do this with an awareness that we are existing and living within a capitalist, individualist system that working within it actually causes disability as a physical and social phenomenon and makes disabled people work harder by creating a system where their labor is exploited which is by the way what the save the handicapped people end up doing my undermining and devaluing the value and worth and quality of the work that their disabled friend by calling them lazy and irresponsible stuff that is not critically reminiscent of the disabled serial killer monster stereotype, but don’t you dare mention that cos you’d be pushing their guilt buttons which you MUST do to take advantage of them because that’s the only way your disabled self could have succeeded and gotten so far in your life, see cos you really should be in institutional care somewhere (what a mind fuck). Those are my thoughts for now.

this wonderfull idea of being “centre”

I think that in my life, the most influential theoretical idea that i continue to attempt to practise, they say practise makes perfect is one of being centre: This has been/should have been the disability movements response to the social model and it pretty much has been with varying success in terms of practise but it really is changing my life and has guided/mis guided most of my decisions in the last couple of years  especially when i remember.

This weekend i put out an anonymous as a black, BBW on her period looking for “casual sex”  and problem of being horny, not feeling sexy, going clubing to find someone etc: DONE. I got so many replies and i am happy to say that my stable of dicks to service/for servicing has been replenished to the fullest and theses are men that usually have thing for what i am so no need to worry about fatphobia at least not in the ways that one would expect.

The first guy was very very lean but was sensual and downright pleasant to be around, and wanted to chill and hangout FOREVER.  All in all it was a healthy, mature , sexual experience for me: which is really all i was looking for.

I’m still working on the female side of things but noone seems to be responding on that front,  we’ll see

to be continued….