[I've been going back and forth over whether or not I should post this here. At the moment, I've decided that I should. And yes, I am rather fixated on writing about invisibility - there is a reason for that, you know.]
BECOMING INVISIBLE
2002
The difficulty is knowing where to start, what to tell, what not to tell. The difficulty is knowing whether or not to tell at all. The moral responsibility I feel that makes me want to lay it all in front of the world, the pressure to tell what cannot be told, what cannot be heard, what cannot be borne continually nudges at me. But I want to forget what I know, hide it, avoid it.
And so I vacillate, bouncing back and forward nervously on my courage, trying to convince myself that it’s safer, better this way, that I’ll save myself the terror of disbelief. But I am pricked by something inside me that instinctively wants to regurgitate what I know, consequences and cowardice be damned. But where to start. If I think too long I know I’ll never start. So I stop thinking and just jump in. And start with feeling.
The feeling of fingers on flesh. The harshness of the distant clinical touch, the reciprocal revulsion. But that’s no start. It’s too distant, you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? And so cowardice wins. This round at least. So try again.
The insistent hum of the fluorescent lights. The sharp shock to the retinas of the reflected glow off the white clinical walls, the terrified isolation. And that doesn’t work, either. The difficulty is obvious, I’m sure you’ve picked out the flaw already. And cowardice, or its better dressed sister, self preservation, wins this round too. We’ll try again, shall we?
A child stands in the middle of a room. She wears a white gown. She is surrounded by men - well, mostly men, who are also wearing white. They stare, and discuss, and scribble on pads of white paper. The child is staring too, but she is not talking, and can write nothing down. She is almost naked under the gown, wearing nothing but green cotton underpants with white spots. She stands with an unfamiliar rigidity, her body stiff, fear layered on a everyday tension. She tilts to one side slightly and there is less natural movement in that side. She stares, but she is not looking at the men, her gaze is fixed on a spot past their heads. And unlike the men in the room, her face does not hold a confident arrogance that can simultaneously take, assess, and discard its object without a second thought, it is a blind stare that turns in on itself and has no object but escape. The men talk amongst themselves, ask endless questions that are addressed to, and answered by each other, even though the child is the subject of the clinical inquisition.
Every now and then she is ordered to walk up and down the room and they throw around disconnected words and phrases like, ‘spastic movements’, ‘unnatural gait’, ‘inflexibility’. Or one of the white-coats leaves his seat to lift the child’s arms away from her body and hold them in midair for what seems like hours. Or another will ---
But no, this way doesn’t work either, it’s boring, easily ignored. We’ll go down another path. How about this?
You stand in the middle of the consulting room. The cold air from the air-conditioning lifts goose-bumps from your exposed flesh. It feels like you have been standing for hours, your left leg is starting to weaken, to wobble slightly, and it takes every bit of self control you have to keep standing up straight. The doctors stare at you, and talk about you using words you don’t understand. They call you ‘the patient’, and look through you coldly, scientifically. Although you don’t know exactly what they are saying, you know they are picking out all things about you that are wrong, that don’t work as they should. Every time one of them looks at you, they find another thing wrong.
You stand there, shivering, and you can feel yourself becoming nothing more than a collection of broken parts, legs and arms and a brain, damaged and defective. You stand there until you can’t even remember your name, or how old you are, or anything else about yourself, other than what is wrong with you. The room seems to get bigger and bigger, and the empty space around you is endless and unforgiving.
From a great distance the piercing eyes of the doctors continue staring at you, and look right through you. You can feel a series of glass shells surround you, one for every person in the room. They slide around you, one by one, slowly, smoothly, without making a sound. And at the point where the indifferent gaze of each of your observers becomes too much, you can hear a metallic twist and click, like the key in a lock, shutting you off from the world. Until at last, you are surrounded by a dozen of these glass shells. And inside the shells, deep inside yourself, you feel another empty space open up, black and cold. A space filled with the almost unbearable pain of forever being looked at, but never being seen, of always being observed, but never being known. But you will try and pretend for many years that the space does not exist, until the terror of it will cause you to spend a night trying vainly to fill the space with handfuls of little pea-green pills. But this will not work, and you will spend the rest of that night crouched over a bucket painfully vomiting into it the pills, and ---
And definitely not. I am undecided as to whether or not that works, but I have no doubt that it is possibly too painful, too manipulative of my audience, perhaps too unforgivably gratuitous. So I will try out my third and final option.
Mending the flaw in this whole drama, there needs to be an ‘I’, there is a ‘she’ and a ‘you’, but there is no ‘I’. You have been expecting it, I know. But that’s all I know. I don’t know how to put myself into this, I don’t want to put myself into this. I can’t. There is no ‘I’ here, there cannot be. I do not exist, I do not feel, I do not breathe. I am not here, I cannot breathe, I cannot feel, I cannot exist. I am invisible.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Showing posts with label isolation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label isolation. Show all posts
Friday, January 12, 2007
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
"Invisible Lives" - an older piece of writing
[Slightly edited from its original form to reduce occasional incoherence and increase readability - I had only just started getting things down on paper about disability at that time, and was still very new to the social model of disability and to the idea that what I was feeling about my life and my disability wasn't just peculiar to me, and that the difficulties I had faced all my life weren't my fault. So, baby-activism!]
INVISIBLE LIVES
Copyright 2000
Imagine having to justify your existence every day of your life. Imagine having to prove your intelligence to every one you encounter, even your own family. And imagine that intelligence being diminished, ignored and overridden by those whose only superiority to you is their ability to control the movement of their bodies. Imagine that complete strangers feel they have the right to stop you on the street and ask for the most personal details of your life. Imagine that people who have never met you or spent even five minutes in your company think that they have the right to determine whether or not your life is worth living. Imagine that, if you try and protest against this treatment, others have the right to declare you `hysterical' or `over-emotional', and ignore you, laugh at you, or worst of all; sedate you, pronounce you insane and lock you away. Imagine that at the same time as all this is unwanted attention is being forced on you because of your supposed `defects', who you really are is being rendered invisible.
When you have finished imagining this, and have thanked whatever higher power you believe in that this treatment is not YOUR lot in life, I ask you to consider the fact that this is what those of us who are disabled have to endure every single day of our lives.
We are made invisible by the same attitude that makes us public property. By the assumption that our physical and mental disabilities make us less than human, turn us into things for people to stare at and question with impunity, with no fear of reprisal. We are exposed to the prurient gaze of the well meaning public, stripped of all of the basic rights to privacy, our dignity and pride are ripped away, leaving us with only fear and shame, the most cannibalistic of emotions. When we are seen only for our differences, and the difficulties they cause; our humanity and realities are denied, we are not seen as people to love, respect and include, but as freaks, something to be fixed or shoved out of sight.
We are invisible people, for as long as we are only seen as stereotypes and objects of pity, and not seen for who we really are, we are not being seen. We live in a world that tells us constantly we are expendable, the most expendable of any marginalized group in the world. There is not one part of life where we are accepted - with the exception of the charity industry. We are invisible. And we are only allowed to be visible when we try to be `normal', and deny our disability.
Many of us are trapped in an unending exile, and the only help we are offered is insulting and facile. The assumption is that it is somehow the disabled person's fault, that we have to get out more, be more outgoing, be willing to make the first move/break the ice/make people feel more comfortable. Our isolation is blamed on the disability, and the supposed personality defects that go with it. No consideration is given to the view that perhaps any `personality defects' are not part of the disability itself, but the logical and tragic result of being treated as something less than human, that is not worthy of the same respect as someone without disabilities. Or to the idea that it may be that people who reject us, are doing so for no other reason than that we look and act a little different to them.
We are invisible because what is done to us, is hidden, out of sight, trapped under piles of words, excuses, reasons and rationalizations. We are invisible because what is done to us is not seen, and because what is done to us is not quantified and cannot be physically proven. Because it is so easy to say that something that is the result of mistreatment, is really a symptom of the disability.
We are invisible because all the best bits of who we are, and all the things that mean most about our lives, are not the things that are obvious, that can be seen at first glance, they cannot be laid out like a resume, and cannot be properly be put into words.
We are invisible because people refuse to see us, not because we do not exist. People are scared of us because they see in us what can happen to them. They try and make us disappear, so they do not have to be aware of our realities. We are the scapegoats, we carry their fear, we absorb it for them, so they don't have to think about it, so they do not have to feel, so they do not have to be crushed by it.
The invisibility that we suffer from is far more crippling than any disability, and more infectious than any disease. But there is a solution. It requires that you have the courage to acknowledge the fact that our disabilities should not separate us from the rest of society. You need to be able to acknowledge the fact that it is your weaknesses and inability to see us as human, that causes us the greatest pain, and not our disabilities. And it requires that you develop the insight to see as who we really are and and for what we can become.
INVISIBLE LIVES
Copyright 2000
Imagine having to justify your existence every day of your life. Imagine having to prove your intelligence to every one you encounter, even your own family. And imagine that intelligence being diminished, ignored and overridden by those whose only superiority to you is their ability to control the movement of their bodies. Imagine that complete strangers feel they have the right to stop you on the street and ask for the most personal details of your life. Imagine that people who have never met you or spent even five minutes in your company think that they have the right to determine whether or not your life is worth living. Imagine that, if you try and protest against this treatment, others have the right to declare you `hysterical' or `over-emotional', and ignore you, laugh at you, or worst of all; sedate you, pronounce you insane and lock you away. Imagine that at the same time as all this is unwanted attention is being forced on you because of your supposed `defects', who you really are is being rendered invisible.
When you have finished imagining this, and have thanked whatever higher power you believe in that this treatment is not YOUR lot in life, I ask you to consider the fact that this is what those of us who are disabled have to endure every single day of our lives.
We are made invisible by the same attitude that makes us public property. By the assumption that our physical and mental disabilities make us less than human, turn us into things for people to stare at and question with impunity, with no fear of reprisal. We are exposed to the prurient gaze of the well meaning public, stripped of all of the basic rights to privacy, our dignity and pride are ripped away, leaving us with only fear and shame, the most cannibalistic of emotions. When we are seen only for our differences, and the difficulties they cause; our humanity and realities are denied, we are not seen as people to love, respect and include, but as freaks, something to be fixed or shoved out of sight.
We are invisible people, for as long as we are only seen as stereotypes and objects of pity, and not seen for who we really are, we are not being seen. We live in a world that tells us constantly we are expendable, the most expendable of any marginalized group in the world. There is not one part of life where we are accepted - with the exception of the charity industry. We are invisible. And we are only allowed to be visible when we try to be `normal', and deny our disability.
Many of us are trapped in an unending exile, and the only help we are offered is insulting and facile. The assumption is that it is somehow the disabled person's fault, that we have to get out more, be more outgoing, be willing to make the first move/break the ice/make people feel more comfortable. Our isolation is blamed on the disability, and the supposed personality defects that go with it. No consideration is given to the view that perhaps any `personality defects' are not part of the disability itself, but the logical and tragic result of being treated as something less than human, that is not worthy of the same respect as someone without disabilities. Or to the idea that it may be that people who reject us, are doing so for no other reason than that we look and act a little different to them.
We are invisible because what is done to us, is hidden, out of sight, trapped under piles of words, excuses, reasons and rationalizations. We are invisible because what is done to us is not seen, and because what is done to us is not quantified and cannot be physically proven. Because it is so easy to say that something that is the result of mistreatment, is really a symptom of the disability.
We are invisible because all the best bits of who we are, and all the things that mean most about our lives, are not the things that are obvious, that can be seen at first glance, they cannot be laid out like a resume, and cannot be properly be put into words.
We are invisible because people refuse to see us, not because we do not exist. People are scared of us because they see in us what can happen to them. They try and make us disappear, so they do not have to be aware of our realities. We are the scapegoats, we carry their fear, we absorb it for them, so they don't have to think about it, so they do not have to feel, so they do not have to be crushed by it.
The invisibility that we suffer from is far more crippling than any disability, and more infectious than any disease. But there is a solution. It requires that you have the courage to acknowledge the fact that our disabilities should not separate us from the rest of society. You need to be able to acknowledge the fact that it is your weaknesses and inability to see us as human, that causes us the greatest pain, and not our disabilities. And it requires that you develop the insight to see as who we really are and and for what we can become.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
This is how it began...
[I wish I could say that I now no longer have to live with the isolation that I described in this piece, the isolation that I felt when I wrote it, but that would be a lie.]
"THE INCUBATOR"
Copyright 2001
There is a connection between the loneliness I feel now and what I must have felt as a baby in the incubator. I realized that newborn babies have no sense of time whatsoever. Three days must have seemed like three lifetimes and then some. With no awareness of the events that break up time, that separate day from night, hour from minute. No knowledge that care continues. Each feed the first and last, each brief physical contact the only one in a lifetime. And always the desperate aloneness that stretches for eternity, the panic that there is something that I desperately need, that I cannot put into words and ask for. And now I know that because I never had it then, now I can never really have it at all. So the loneliness that I feel now echoes what I felt them, and seems to stretch beyond time, and will never end. But I don't know how it is possible that I have survived this, what I went through when I was younger, and what I am still enduring. I don't think that any human being should have to go through life feeling this fundamental lack, this emptiness.
Enclosed in a bubble like a bug caught in amber, trapped and at the mercy of those whose power far outweighed mine. They had the power over life and death, survival and ..... The only power I had was that of resistance. I could resist their insistence on my lack of value, resist their doom laden proclamations of a worthless life, nothing more than a vegetable (and I always wanted to know - what kind of a vegetable? Carrot, cauliflower, cabbage - what?), and fated to be inferior in thought, feeling, movement. I resisted their expectations that I would lie placid and accepting of whatever they did to me. Scooting endlessly up and down, up and down, testing out the confines of this plastic bubble they condemned me to. I pulled out the wires and needles attached to me, these insulting non-human things that were meant to help me live. I knew I could live without those substitutes for reality. They say that the nurses could never keep a nappy on me, I moved around so much. So I crawled up and down endlessly through my own shit, the only thing in the silence that was me, that was real and human, and didn't beep and hum and pour chemicals into me. I was the one who was in control and I showed it. The nurses nicknamed me `the little abortion'. Three months too early, and very inconvenient.
"THE INCUBATOR"
Copyright 2001
There is a connection between the loneliness I feel now and what I must have felt as a baby in the incubator. I realized that newborn babies have no sense of time whatsoever. Three days must have seemed like three lifetimes and then some. With no awareness of the events that break up time, that separate day from night, hour from minute. No knowledge that care continues. Each feed the first and last, each brief physical contact the only one in a lifetime. And always the desperate aloneness that stretches for eternity, the panic that there is something that I desperately need, that I cannot put into words and ask for. And now I know that because I never had it then, now I can never really have it at all. So the loneliness that I feel now echoes what I felt them, and seems to stretch beyond time, and will never end. But I don't know how it is possible that I have survived this, what I went through when I was younger, and what I am still enduring. I don't think that any human being should have to go through life feeling this fundamental lack, this emptiness.
Enclosed in a bubble like a bug caught in amber, trapped and at the mercy of those whose power far outweighed mine. They had the power over life and death, survival and ..... The only power I had was that of resistance. I could resist their insistence on my lack of value, resist their doom laden proclamations of a worthless life, nothing more than a vegetable (and I always wanted to know - what kind of a vegetable? Carrot, cauliflower, cabbage - what?), and fated to be inferior in thought, feeling, movement. I resisted their expectations that I would lie placid and accepting of whatever they did to me. Scooting endlessly up and down, up and down, testing out the confines of this plastic bubble they condemned me to. I pulled out the wires and needles attached to me, these insulting non-human things that were meant to help me live. I knew I could live without those substitutes for reality. They say that the nurses could never keep a nappy on me, I moved around so much. So I crawled up and down endlessly through my own shit, the only thing in the silence that was me, that was real and human, and didn't beep and hum and pour chemicals into me. I was the one who was in control and I showed it. The nurses nicknamed me `the little abortion'. Three months too early, and very inconvenient.
Friday, December 15, 2006
A Touchy Subject
[Originally written on 10 December 2005]
A few things I've read on the internet today have reminded me of something I've been meaning to write about, but avoiding. Avoiding for years. I think it is time to write about it, but I don't know if I've got the time to go into it tonight
Touch. The lack of. Touch hunger, tactile deprivation, touch starvation.
As with anything, I write about this from my own personal experience, but I know it affects others (and of course, not just people with disabilities), too. It's another one of those subjects, the dance-around-it subjects, the if-we-ignore-it-it-will-go-away subjects.
I don't suffer from my disability - I never use that word in that context, that's something that others assume of me, but I do suffer from some things, I suffer from people's attitudes, I have suffered greatly as a result of my family's abuse of me, and their tacit approval of others who abused and assaulted me. I also suffer from touch starvation.
Living with a disability is to live a life full of contradictions, and this is one of the biggies. On one hand, you are touched a lot - especially as a child - docters and nurses poking and prodding and pulling at you, physiotherapists torturing... ahem, sorry, giving you physiotherapy, family and carers helping you walk, climb stairs, get up out of chairs, up off the ground, etc.
On the other hand - unless you are lucky enough to have family and friends who can think past the prejudices and assumption, and some people with disabilities are that lucky - you learn from an early age that you are essentially untouchable. People shy away from you, literally - I've had people physically recoil from me. We are seen as repulsive, objects of pity, asexual, less than human. Unclean. Some of us can go for months, years (years is probably an exaggeration - even in my case, but oh, it feels that long, sometimes) without affectionate touch from another human being.
OK. This appears to be all I can write at the moment. I have difficulty with this, not because I'm embarrassed about it, but because it is one of the most painful realities in my life.
Here is one of my favourite quotes relating to this whole topic, although I wasn't referring specifically to sexual touch writing the above, it is on the agenda, though. The article the quote comes from is excellent.
"Sexuality is often the source of our deepest oppression; it is also often the source of our deepest pain. It’s easier for us to talk about - and formulate strategies for changing - discrimination in employment, education, and housing than to talk about our exclusion from sexuality and reproduction." - Anne Finger http://www.newint.org/issue233/fruit.htm
I will write more on this, soon, eventually.
[And I did, surprisingly, on 5 February 2006]
My Skin - A Touchy Subject - Part 2
My skin has shrunk into itself
after almost 32 years of not being touched
except to remind me of how untouchable it is
and to remind me of its gaping flaws and wounds that people will fall into
if they come near me
The pain of this leaves me two seconds away from dying
every day
Years of physiotherapy - being pushedpulledstretched
into painful awareness that my body is worthless as it is
So it must be tortured into normal
It didn’t work
I never became normal (Thank God!)
but I tuned out my body
so I didn’t feel the pain
Only time my parents touched me was for exercises that hurt so much I wanted to cry and scream - but I was too scared to.
Huge adults leaning over me shoving my legs into shapes they weren’t designed for, folding up my legs and leaning on them with their full 6 foot basketball/rugby/sports playing weight
Yelling at me when I refused to do the exercises - lazy, lazy, lazy...
Cold eyes staring at me when I came home crying - pushed down steps, tripped up, punched
Sharp words slicing, blaming, condemning
All I wanted was a hug, to feel safe, wanted
Comforted (I can’t say, think or write this word without crying)
“You can’t be in pain, I can’t feel anything”, said my father, smile locked into place with mocking laughter
“Growing pains”, said the doctor - I didn’t know what muscle spasms were until I was well into my twenties
No one told me that they were a normal - but painful - part of spastic CP - not the doctors, physios.
Did they even know?
Psoriasis came when I was sixteen
My skin growing extra layers of hardness
Layers that my heart had not yet developed
Leaving me still hopeful that I would be touched
with gentleness, affection
and for no other reason than to give joy
and comfort
and pleasure
Occasional glimpses of what could be, what I could have
Relationships over before they really began
With men who I couldn’t have stayed with, even if they hadn’t left first
I am glad they left
But I learned why I had a body
And that if I could enjoy sex (and how I did!) then my body was fine, practically perfect
Unfortunately, this is one of the few things I like best when there is another person
I love sex
But I can’t be casual about it
And now only want it with someone I love
and who loves me (Woody Allen notwithstanding!)
My tears dry up before they fall
pulled back inside myself
by a heart that has become a desert
deserted
Words are the poorest substitute for a touch given with awareness
but they are all I have
And, no, a massage wouldn’t help, getting a pet wouldn’t help (I am poor, I can barely afford to feed myself)
The emptiness is too overwhelming
I want someone to look after me for once
And how do I talk about the fact that sometimes, if you have a disability, you don’t get looked after (there is this odd belief that all people with disabilities have someone to look after them - perpetuated by people who don’t know anyone with a disability) - no one ever believes me
It’s true, even if you don’t believe me
Sometimes you get nothing, not even the basics
Cruelty and neglect are equal opportunity - they do not discriminate
Nobody wants to hear any of this
I don’t want to hear any of this
But it is my life
Right now
Today
But please
Not tomorrow
This isn’t a poem, this is the only way I can write about this.
A few things I've read on the internet today have reminded me of something I've been meaning to write about, but avoiding. Avoiding for years. I think it is time to write about it, but I don't know if I've got the time to go into it tonight
Touch. The lack of. Touch hunger, tactile deprivation, touch starvation.
As with anything, I write about this from my own personal experience, but I know it affects others (and of course, not just people with disabilities), too. It's another one of those subjects, the dance-around-it subjects, the if-we-ignore-it-it-will-go-away subjects.
I don't suffer from my disability - I never use that word in that context, that's something that others assume of me, but I do suffer from some things, I suffer from people's attitudes, I have suffered greatly as a result of my family's abuse of me, and their tacit approval of others who abused and assaulted me. I also suffer from touch starvation.
Living with a disability is to live a life full of contradictions, and this is one of the biggies. On one hand, you are touched a lot - especially as a child - docters and nurses poking and prodding and pulling at you, physiotherapists torturing... ahem, sorry, giving you physiotherapy, family and carers helping you walk, climb stairs, get up out of chairs, up off the ground, etc.
On the other hand - unless you are lucky enough to have family and friends who can think past the prejudices and assumption, and some people with disabilities are that lucky - you learn from an early age that you are essentially untouchable. People shy away from you, literally - I've had people physically recoil from me. We are seen as repulsive, objects of pity, asexual, less than human. Unclean. Some of us can go for months, years (years is probably an exaggeration - even in my case, but oh, it feels that long, sometimes) without affectionate touch from another human being.
OK. This appears to be all I can write at the moment. I have difficulty with this, not because I'm embarrassed about it, but because it is one of the most painful realities in my life.
Here is one of my favourite quotes relating to this whole topic, although I wasn't referring specifically to sexual touch writing the above, it is on the agenda, though. The article the quote comes from is excellent.
"Sexuality is often the source of our deepest oppression; it is also often the source of our deepest pain. It’s easier for us to talk about - and formulate strategies for changing - discrimination in employment, education, and housing than to talk about our exclusion from sexuality and reproduction." - Anne Finger http://www.newint.org/issue233/fruit.htm
I will write more on this, soon, eventually.
[And I did, surprisingly, on 5 February 2006]
My Skin - A Touchy Subject - Part 2
My skin has shrunk into itself
after almost 32 years of not being touched
except to remind me of how untouchable it is
and to remind me of its gaping flaws and wounds that people will fall into
if they come near me
The pain of this leaves me two seconds away from dying
every day
Years of physiotherapy - being pushedpulledstretched
into painful awareness that my body is worthless as it is
So it must be tortured into normal
It didn’t work
I never became normal (Thank God!)
but I tuned out my body
so I didn’t feel the pain
Only time my parents touched me was for exercises that hurt so much I wanted to cry and scream - but I was too scared to.
Huge adults leaning over me shoving my legs into shapes they weren’t designed for, folding up my legs and leaning on them with their full 6 foot basketball/rugby/sports playing weight
Yelling at me when I refused to do the exercises - lazy, lazy, lazy...
Cold eyes staring at me when I came home crying - pushed down steps, tripped up, punched
Sharp words slicing, blaming, condemning
All I wanted was a hug, to feel safe, wanted
Comforted (I can’t say, think or write this word without crying)
“You can’t be in pain, I can’t feel anything”, said my father, smile locked into place with mocking laughter
“Growing pains”, said the doctor - I didn’t know what muscle spasms were until I was well into my twenties
No one told me that they were a normal - but painful - part of spastic CP - not the doctors, physios.
Did they even know?
Psoriasis came when I was sixteen
My skin growing extra layers of hardness
Layers that my heart had not yet developed
Leaving me still hopeful that I would be touched
with gentleness, affection
and for no other reason than to give joy
and comfort
and pleasure
Occasional glimpses of what could be, what I could have
Relationships over before they really began
With men who I couldn’t have stayed with, even if they hadn’t left first
I am glad they left
But I learned why I had a body
And that if I could enjoy sex (and how I did!) then my body was fine, practically perfect
Unfortunately, this is one of the few things I like best when there is another person
I love sex
But I can’t be casual about it
And now only want it with someone I love
and who loves me (Woody Allen notwithstanding!)
My tears dry up before they fall
pulled back inside myself
by a heart that has become a desert
deserted
Words are the poorest substitute for a touch given with awareness
but they are all I have
And, no, a massage wouldn’t help, getting a pet wouldn’t help (I am poor, I can barely afford to feed myself)
The emptiness is too overwhelming
I want someone to look after me for once
And how do I talk about the fact that sometimes, if you have a disability, you don’t get looked after (there is this odd belief that all people with disabilities have someone to look after them - perpetuated by people who don’t know anyone with a disability) - no one ever believes me
It’s true, even if you don’t believe me
Sometimes you get nothing, not even the basics
Cruelty and neglect are equal opportunity - they do not discriminate
Nobody wants to hear any of this
I don’t want to hear any of this
But it is my life
Right now
Today
But please
Not tomorrow
This isn’t a poem, this is the only way I can write about this.
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