Remember that I love you

I hated myself so much and felt so much shame for the state of my own head until I stepped back

I stepped back.

I stepped back.

I stepped backed and crouched down on the floor - “no no no don’t touch me!!!”

A security guard grabs me

I am flung onto the bed

It’s okay!! Don’t worry!!!

The nurse called for help!

3 or 4 more assisting -

They must hold me down you see

By my limbs and my head - You see -

The nurse directs their grip -

Up my nose and into my throat…

….

I am silent.

I am silent.

… I can hear them.

But I..?

..I am silent.

“You have to breathe eventually!!”

I’m holding my breath and refusing to swallow.

(I don’t want a tube up my nose and in my stomach)

(I don’t want to be touched I am cold and I am exposed and they are hurting why are they hurting me)

(I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I need to die. But who would want to be here??)

…

…

Okay folks, it’s time to lock in your answers!!

WHO AM I?

WHERE AM I?

WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

Genuinely - I am asking you.

..What? did you forget?

…This isn’t a dream.

This is real life this is a game and I am your host; Mr Beast, WELCOME TO THE BEAST GAMES!!!!

Now, remember!!

WHO IS THE PERSON BEING HELD DOWN?

WHO IS THE PERSON BEING HELD DOWN???

Who is the person being held down?

…

…

I step back and I turn on the tv.

… (who is the person being held down)

I step back and I focus on something else.

…

Australia was colonised in the 1700s and now we lock up the kids they couldn’t kill -

BABE calm down.

Progress is slow. This is normal.

…I think someone is held down?

…

The TV -

In 2002 some human rights activists broke some asylum seekers out of indefinite detention in the desert in Australia.

I paint. I paint.

In the 90s it was legal to rape your wife - SMILE!!!!

I love my dog I love my cat and most of all; I love.

I love (the person being held down) -

…who was the person being held down????

Blueberries grow beautifully here.

… be grateful, don’t forget say thankyou.

In the 00’s report a raping abuser for stalking

Cop thought that bitch reporting it should know it’s illegal for teenagers to have face piercings.

… clutch your pearls who would keep us safe without the police???

I don’t know my neighbours, I’m a renter.

The right to housing simply does not apply!!

…smile and BE GRATEFUL

Focus on something else.

Was there a person being held down?

You need to breathe.

Focus on something else, nobody was held down.

The asylum seekers were depressed, anxious and suicidal. So the people broke them out to save their lives.

…don’t watch the news. Don’t read a book. Not a study, do NOT camp.

Must you scream?! We’ve all broken our backs before you aren’t anything special - signed Brickie of 30 years to his son the first time he falls off…something high.

BE GRATEFUL.

….

Who is the person being held down?

Did you guess?

A patient at a hospital near you receiving “life saving care” for Anorexia Nervosa.

.

Don’t worry.

This is real life. It isn’t a dream.

Stay still for FUCKS SAKE!! If she hits or spits on anyone CHARGE HER!

…You have to fuckin’ breathe eventually.

I stepped back.

My great great grandmother was institutionalised, lobotomised and survived.

My great grandmother join the military in the absence of her mother.

My grandmother was sent to Australia to marry a man she barely knew.

My mother left an abusive father but was never really believed.

…anyway.

I stepped back

Oh my heart

I stepped back

I fell -

I am so relieved I fell into my mothers.

The creeks babble

as the rivers run -

So too does the blood in my veins

I am honoured.

I can breathe.

Careers and lives

I am exhausted of fighting to survive your career progress.

I am exhausted of fighting to survive your apathy because you consider yourself too well educated to be required to listen and think before acting.

I am exhausted of screaming inside but having to be polite and soft toned as I ask you to please help me for the 100th time.

Even though I know you likely will just find a different reason to not help me again.

I am exhausted of reminding you that you are paid to be here, that you get to go home at the end of your shift, that you get to walk, dance, run, sing, laugh

While I can’t eat or drink enough to sustain my body in my hospital bed.

I am exhausted.

When you are me one day, I hope I am alive to be by your side.

I hope I am alive to show you the compassion and dignity you deny us.

I hope I am alive.

I hope you live too.

I hope you will start showing up for us now so that we can make sure we can show up for you too.

Because we will.

We will.

Rocks

Before I was ever medicated, I was creative.

I felt strongly and passionately, I had strong sensory preferences, and I created from whatever I was surrounded by.

Rocks in a river, sticks along a pathway, shells at the beach, food, paints, pens, shapes, textures.

I have never responded positively to control or rules without a why.

I have always needed to process how I feel and find the words from my thoughts through movement that flows with the patterns they make in my head… in my Brain Groove.

When financial stress and relationship hardship  happened, I was the least medicated I had been in a decade. That is beautiful and devastating.

I pathologised my worries and fears and how my humanity needed to process those feelings because I was raised in a society that has taught all of us to pathologise ourselves and to pathologise one another. Just as society did to me, I did to myself, others did to me, I did to others, and so the societal values of compassion, unity, and care are perverted by Power and Ideology.

I recognise our shared values; I see them in my neighbours, my friends, my family.

I see them in the cop, the doctor and the security guard.

The judge, the politician, and the real estate agent.

I see the power they wield in these roles and how that power and thus - the power imbalance - is applied to the lives of people without degrees, without shares, without property, without equity, without food, without water…without. Without privilege - without equal power.

The less power we have, the more disabled we are likely to become. Poverty is disabling. Poverty is a human invention.

War is an expression of power struggle, and only rarely necessity. Treatment orders, lock ups and prisons are expressions of power struggle that harm us all because they require us all to uphold the power imbalance.

I see your humanity. Please take off your badge, lower your taser. Please put down the gavel, the clipboard. I see your humanity, please see mine. I am not seizing power, I am healing from a lifetime of being told that my very Being is not acceptable…That my way of being needed to be chemically altered forever.

Before I was ever medicated, I was creative.

Before I counted calories, I was counting all the different ways I could paint a memory of a feeling I hadn’t voiced before.

Before I placed stickers on poles, I was placing my grief and sorrow with my guilt and shame of a society that so easily perverts our humanity to uphold its own power.

Before I was an illness, I was human.

I am sorry. I am sorry for every way I have upheld the same colonial, imperial societal values I now denounce. I am sorry it has taken me 32 years to get here. I am sorry you are going through it too, I am sorry for the isolation from one another we all hold because of it.

The more I listen to my values and allow myself to Be, the more I question Power and believe myself and believe the experience of others, the patterns and movement flow.

I cannot separate from this ever again. It is my humanity. It connects me to every other human that is, was, or will be.

It connects me to every other being, every flower, every petal, every bird, butterfly and fish.

• - - - - - -

Individualism is isolating and hurts all of us. It allows us to hurt one another and then absolve ourselves of communal understanding and healing.

We go to the doctors office instead.

/ on capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, psychiatry, climate change, and plutocracy.

This Year

I am not queer as in happy and prideful, I am queer as in Fuck You! - I will not be placated!

The river rages, thunder cracks and the skies erupt

The climate is changing, she is changing because we demanded it of her -

She told us she needed to be free and so we stole parts of her heart to lock in slabs of concrete, bottled her tears and told her we do this because we love her.

She raised her voice in defiance;

The skies heard her screams and open her eyes; she wept.

Her tears met the stones of the river bed and her sorrow could not be contained -

What have we done? She asked herself, what have we done? She asked herself, what have I done?

Her tears kept falling, the river extended her hand to hold her heart but she could not find it.

The river grew quiet and still.

We called it peace.

Queer liberation is rooted in our shared grief, sorrow and rage.

I am not queer as in happy; I am queer as in Fuck You.

I am queer as in

Free Palestine.

I am queer as in

All cops are bastards.

I am queer as in

Never again means never again for everyone.

I am queer as in

Domestic violence is domestic terrorism.

I am queer as in

Capitalism is cancer.

I am queer as in

I love your authentic expression of who you are - in your grief, sorrow, rage, compassion, and love.

I cannot be placated, I rage because I love you.

I am but a stone in the river bed.