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!!

worries/anxieties…theoretical musings of a “fronting” postmodernizing de-colonializing kind..still

More and more and more these days i really worry. I worry that i’m on the right path, i worry that i am one of those who don’t know what the fuck resistance looks like but will gleefully participate in armchair activism and theory without walking that talk. I worry that my live is fully invested in systems of domination and oppression. I worry that i have completely bought into systems of domination and oppression.

I worry so much that i am completely invested, shamelessly and apologetically in privilege status acquiring knowledge production and ways of making sense and meaning of the WORLD that I KNOW can feel in my gut in ways that send me to the fucking bathroom with the run…speaking of nervous condition of all sorts maybe daramgemba was on to something..besides the ableist pathologizing, i mean.

I want this degree so bad, i want my masters and phd not neccessarily cos i think i’m so good that i will change the world but i enjoy 1, its the only think i think i can do well and i want the social status and prestige but what about the adoption of ways by which whiteness has maintained its “expertise”, dominion and maintain its supremacy eh..how do i reconcile the two?

theories Mbembe and Irele (in praise of alienation) on alienation even hooks (postmodern blackness) on the creative forces of liminality help not much here, because i think it is the only forward because want the privilege and access that they have gotten used to …cop out alert bottom.

As an aside i feel like bitch slapping all the so called black diasporic feminist who COMPLETELY ignore the fine fine work that RECENT african feminist female scholars are doing on the the black body as subject as african as nation….SERIOUSLY, go pick up a fucking book and realize….

I think the key is to continue to examine Mbembe’s (african modes of self writting)notion of what it means to continue to engage in negotiation simply for power to be utilized for domination (which i fit very well ) with the master..not a study of whiteness and constructions of the authentic black person BUT really the feeling, and intracacies and nuanced instances of servitutude.

Because in spite of my my ambition for the accrument of what can only be borrowed power , the degrees, i feel like a SERVANT, i feel like one in servitude…talk about nervous conditions, talk about living in bondage someone needs to do a postcolonial/post modernization theoretical analysis of classical nigerian nollywood movies and the ways that they address the irrational logic of the postcolonial state and was of conceptualizing the african subject..now that would be a fun paper not this shit i’m churning out like i CARE…bS…neways but i will forever understand living in bondage differently…word

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!

my everyday monsters – disability, love and capitalism

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

nightmares…rambles/theorizing away monsters

Omo! if you see the sweat that i woke up in this morning it was fucking unbelievable. I must note for the record that i am RARELy ever so greatly disturbed by dreams that they have my physically shaken, up to the point where i cannot sleep and kneeling in feverish christian prayer (well i said the hail mary). I was reading BUtler: The parable of the talents when i fell asleep, i like the novel way better it was definitely a neccessary sequal to the parable of the sower. I was touched by what i was reading. i fell asleep i try not to do that too often. Quite conciously i try to get up, shut off the lights, take of my glasses, maybe have a cigarette which i have quit these days thanks to the nagging phlegm and smokers cough i was developing (not very comfortable and attractive). I’m vain and i like comfort the doctors insistentence did no t help either so i have quit unless i find fools/enablers/kind people in this day and age who will still offer to a clear smoke bum like me, then i actually hang out/walk longer/socialize with them just so i can get a smoke. Absolutely pathetic. Another thing, since i cant get lasik eye surgery anytime soon, i am getting new glasses, its been a number of years now and my glasses are FUCKEd, as in majorly scratched, bent thoroughly out of shape….i’m bent out of shape.

School classes, but no money, i have anxiety about a lot of things, i’m starting to feel “useless” even my healing work i’ve mostly put aside, have no real goals gotta work on that. I’m killing one of my plants..i look at them they remind of who i used to be and i refuse to water them, refuse to give them food, its bad. I will water them today. I consciously give my cat food, water everything she needs including touch and attention. I can be mean. I dont want to be mean to powerless things. I watched “monster” the hollywood movie of with charlize theron and christina ricci. It was a good hollywood movie but i was disturbed. Not by the apparent senseless killing of the men, but by the way i shifted, started to think of her AS a monster (this is even as i was highly ware and criticized as much as i could, every step of the way the ideological, “blame the victim”, ignore race and class and worls social history and hollywood, americanized simplication and seduction) Still there i was screaming at the screen, calling her crazy then slow then just pissed.

The argument this movie made was that : because of her class – she was poor white trash, who was raped from the age of eight and then started hooking at the age of 13 after she gave up her first baby for adoption. Shit why didnt they make a whole movie about that? About the classsism that makes it ok to thief poor ppls babies in a capitalist, god bless america of a united states? About her rape by her fathers friends since she was eight? There were no real images of these things happening….they could be forgotten, EASILY in the face of the murders she committed. Anyways the argument which was a very effecient and fast one delivered like an aggeessive assualt on your senses was that she was shaped, could only be a monster, was DAMAGED, severely damaged by everything she had gone through, this damage was not positive, it cannot be positive, She was therefore irrevocably damaged and she looked it. She was a sociopath who chose madness cause she could choose no other, she had no other options. Christina Ricci, her pathetic, underachieving sad excuse of a lesbian was younger, cleaner, forgiven because of age and her privileged background. At the heart of this argument what REALLY felt like deep blow to me, that i felt in my gut and released a tense tightening, not to mention RAGE throughout me is HOW pathetically unjust?no how it had ruined the lives of people who have suffered or survived and LIVED through truama, it offered them no possibilities, denied them humanity as a reward for thier courage to stand as a testament to the truama they had lived, it caged them within the truama that had been imposed/inflicted on them..i should say us, ME. ONe can theorize that this is as a result of general xenophobia, anxiety and cowardice of human trained to fear who/what they do not understand, do not want to remember, be reminded of death…the function of the alterity inherent in the ostracization of the assualted/abused and lived/survived as “other”. They instantly become “them” IT SUCKS. Like every other domination, the others, the good ones, the priviledged “owners” of what it is to be human, sane, safe and good which i might is a constantly shifting category defined by those who feel entiltled to exclude,priviledged enough to exclude or indenial enough to exclude. NOnetheless, it is all justified because they try to help….the directors, writers, producers everyone but the victim to stop such atrocities..THE HORROR! It is an argument of the privileged or those in denial.

Let me state the obvious, just because one suffers, has been raped, fucked up the ass or vagina with strane objects, sexually tortured, even during ones most formative years, that person is still human. For fucks sake it is thier god given inalienable right, if that doesn’t work well how can a human being because they are human, weak, been abused, raped, torturerd and ALIVE, LIVED why should they be punished and locked in a cage labelled monster. Why focus on then on not on those capable, of inflicting such crimes…why insist that contact with “evil/diomination” is irrevocable. They hhave ALREADy proved resistance, they lived through it. I lived through it. I have to stop now. I should write about what i have lived though, i really should. I think it is time… tired now will continue later..it should be about the courage to live  not heal

themes:

• Larger than life SNAKE
• People pretending they are my family but are not
• running away to safety
• protecting my self and family
• THE HOUSE****
• food (lots of it in a gathering/party type situation)

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.

quick notes to self: resisting monsters

One must remember at all times, as you offer your critique or even tell your truths to resist, cease and desist  from EVER constructing the OTHER whomever they might be as monstrous, subhuman, evil and therefore neccessarily inferior to you or lower than you. OR present them as empty vessels while you are superior and more FULL  in any way than “them.” If you follow this approach no matter who they ARE, or choosing to late themselves on the matrix of domination then you are FORCED to insert yourself and speak from your centre, it is humbling and prevents the “unwitting” and dreadfully regrettable paradox of attempting to achieve transformation and resistance while only instead reproducing and reinforming, reinforcing structures/systems of global capital order of domination.

YEs, it is easier said than done and infinitely complicates EVERYTHINg but have you not realized by now that it must be done?

how can i be a feminist when i periodically will not eat? (pt 2)

Rachel Said:

I am a feminist and I still struggled with an eating disorder. An eating disorder isn’t about food or weight or how one looks; it’s a psychiatric illness, a way of coping with other unresolved issues in life.

On another note: I’m conducting an anonymous survey of bloggers who blog about eating disorders or eating disorder recovery in partnership with a clinical psychologist for joint research and publication purposes. I’m hoping our survey generates lots of responses so that our findings are well-rounded, inclusive and convincing. If the scope of the study pertains to your own experiences, I invite you to participate by taking it.

More information and a survey link can be found here.

Thank you!

Rachel Richardson

Hey Rachel,

Thanks for dropping by and commenting by your comment made me squirm, to be frank.

Yes, it is good to know that there are other feminists, besides me, out there that struggle with eating disorders. I can think of quite a few that i know who bike everywhere they go cos its “cool”and secretly they know it keeps them “fit”, who like being vegan/vegetarian for other reasons that saving the planet, less fat apparently, who are obsessed with walking, exercising and other fitness stuff for these reasons as well. But who also will not eat or eat and through up or who will over use diuretics/laxatives. But we never talk about that at dinner parties or while training young women at self esteem/body image lifeskills workshops.

My point is i thought of the following questions?

1. Given that the medical and psychiatric/psychological/medical industry has a history and managed to succesfully construct a field of expertise based on the pathology and othering of human characteristics without dealing with the socio-political factors involved while maintaining an objective and superior stance, how is your surve/research going to be “inclusive” and address this reality while refraining from further contributing to the “objective” marginalization, othering and pathologizing of women/people?
2. Since when did feminism start to embrace the psychiatric medical industry, what went wrong? Self help books and other random psycho lingo and counselling/therapy that is not neccessarily from the women are thier own experts anto establishment, mad pride stance have become a staple of some the people that are activists that i knew, myself included (it all started with the courage to heal). As we continue to pathologize and call our selves and willingly label ourselves as ill..blaming ourselves and letting the social, economic,political system of domination and oppression of the hook so that it becomes “a psychiatric illness?”
3. My intention was the highlight the places where in choosing not to eat because i wanted to look cute, look powerful, i was failing to address and resist oppressive images and lookism against fat women like myself, when i should be concentrating on feeling sexy and attractive regardless of my size. That is my understanding of my choices not to eat sometimes or to overeat at other times. PLUS i really resent the term disorder especially when all these anorexic bitches who are accessing skiny priviledge get to claim “disorder” and then if you are fat then it just helps and maintains the fatphobic thinking that you have a disorder.
4. I prefer to find a way to centre my own experiences with language that comes from my own experiences and not download constructed psychiatric mumbo jumbo and the authority that comes with that as i attempt to comprehend my “issues”