LOVER

James FU

Relatives rarely support survivors of familial abuse who are open about surviving it. It's the only way to heal, tho  - refusing to keep it secret defies everything abusers rely on. If I'm not ashamed, I break the chain. As a scholar, I get it, but it still hurts when it's your family.

My brother HATES me for being open about what our mom did to me. He'd rather punish me for telling than her for doing, it's just easier for him. This way he'll never have to lose her the way I did, he doesn't have to face how he benefitted from my abuse, and he has a target for the anger that sits on top of unprocessed trauma. This is how insidious abuse is - I grieve it every day.  Unprocessed trauma is awful! We must tell it, work it, heal it or generations will suffer -

(not saying everyone has to publicly post to heal, but we do have to be fully open with ourselves, our community & in therapy. It's not easy, it's RECOVERY

(I will always love my brother, I know he's just doing what he was taught. And this is why chosen family is so life saving, because my true family? They get me & it feels good xox

growing

I'm so excited to be able to give vegetable growing an honest try. With a lotta help from my friends (the compost was delivered, a gift). It truly matters, when we help each other. The food I grow will be shared, flowers that are blooming are feeding the bees and bugs and birds. The thread is golden real, connected. The labor is medicine, the fruits of labor are medicine, the communication is medicine. Leaning on my shovel, talking to neighbors, inhaling the rich fragrance of spring, earth, fruit trees blooming, hyacinth, heat. Hands on steaming dirt, hands in earth. Looking up at the early morning blue sky with shreds of clouds, crows calling, doves cooing, a feeling I can only describe as "Michigan" washed through me and soothed my soul. Tears, yes, joy, even more, yes. I did it, we did it, this is what it means for me to be home

"I am sometimes the world that hates me," Alok Vaid-Menon

 

psychedelix

baptized

wade in the water

dharma

"I've been commanded to accept anybody who has a sense of loneliness, a sense of chaos, and at the same time a sense of wakefulness and a sense of bleeding heart, like a ripe fruit about to burst," Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

haunt them

I think I'm in despair
The wind is in the trees
Basically just waiting for something to come along and eat me
Is this future's gate? Where my dreams retreat? And all my memories are just memories of memories?

And folded in a dream
Pitch-black and glowing blue
A raven saying, "I know a way to help you"
I stared into his eyes
Saw my pale last days, said, "What you can't escape, you gotta embrace"

I know a way to get back
This don't have to end
A way to get back
And haunt them haunt them haunt them

Then he wished me plain
And flew away
Said I'd see him coming on that pale last day
And he wished me a plain
Ordinary death
Said he'd be back after I escaped it

Oh I've seen how they are
How they sell their souls
In little bits and pieces, til they get old
They don't make a dent
In indifference

We'll haunt them haunt them haunt them

But I want to go back
If this is the end
I want to go back
And haunt them haunt them haunt them

The Secret Path

4 years

Woke up crying. Trying to pry my heart open just a little bigger than the pain. The grief & isolation are so heavy. I put my hands on earth and pray, turn up to sky and pray

 

singing, still

The heartbreaking thing about post exertion malaise is you go out into the world and it'll be a delicious joy because you hardly ever can. You'll be swept away by how beautiful it all is and you'll convince yourself you can stay out a bit longer, you feel good, you'll be ok. Then you get home and realize it's not ok, you're dying, pain burns thru you like battery acid. But it's too late and all you can do is lie there and suffer and wish you'd done things differently, lived a little less, wanted less, felt less. But you had to try because life's so intoxicating and everything is passing you by - 

And this is why EVERYONE'S advice for "exercise & cognitive behavioral therapy" as a treatment for this is so fucking infuriating. It DOESN'T WORK. Culturally, we have to make a massive paradigm shift on how we treat and think about chronic illness, wellness, what makes a meaningful life. Especially as millions of folks are newly disabled by Long Covid and its PEM. But who in this world that created the problem has the guts to face it? They'll only do it if we make them, and we can't lift our heads because we dared explore the riverbank 15 minutes longer -

Those of us living with disabilities have to run psychological gauntlets just to not feel like total failures, to not shame ourselves with internalized ableism, to feel even THIS LIFE is worth living. It's an endless rollercoaster of exhausting work to manage being so exhausted. While you still contain all your passion, visions, lust for life. And just outside the window birds are flying with your dreams in their wings, dissolving minor key songs -

NOW

Every day, every way. Trans liberation is indigenous, black, queer, disabled's liberation, every oppressed person's liberation. Transphobia is a manifestation of patriarchal misogyny and white supremacy. It is anti earth, anti creativity, anti life. None us are free til all of us are free, ALL. No debate. 

And while drag is not trans, the fascist laws being passed to criminalize drag are a not-so-covert way to attack trans folks. Drag artists must also be protected - drag is joy, healing medicine, political resistance, radical, empowering. Drag has saved me from the deepest despair; drag artists, trans & queer folks have loved me til I could love myself.

The only predators I've known are cis het men & women, and they are mostly white. My mother who beat & terrorized me, my father who abandoned me, my rapist who tortured me, priests who shamed me, colonizers genociding, the endless parade of men who've harassed & assaulted me at school, work, play - all cis het & white. 

They come for our freedom cuz that's who they are, what they do, have always done. Don't be surprised, don't wonder if they know what they're doing- they know. And they forget how every assault only radicalizes us. It takes a toll - yes - but in the end makes us stronger, cuz it unites us. So I will keep being my authentic self - queer, non-binary, indigenous, disabled, free - and I know millions of my kin will, too. We will post, make calls, write emails, talk to community, be there for each other, hit the streets, do the damn thing, keep living. Cuz that's what we've always done. If you need me, I'm HERE. Onward, in solidarity and love

Art by @artsandwitchcrafts