an essay [in abstraction] on disability & care <3
learning to love mysel(ves): standing taller, thinking, speaking deeper, clearer – not without loss, tremendous, something like scaffolding falling away without warning but with clamor & clash – underneath: coagulated deep sadness, disrupted. clotted grief, wounds where roots will someday grow – i have, of course, self-propogated.
5 years ago – in the middle of some deep chocolate-covered-womb-work, basement blessings to turmeric stained skin, i wore cheap black velvet in the backyard to sweep the outside clean of something stagnant, curiosity piquing young around me, under a cancer moon (years later, i hide in that same blessed basement, and in between your borrowed bed, my neck lustbruised post-survival, tomorrow a parking lot of promise, edges stained by hypervigilance, i learned to make mindfulness happen in that kitchen, of course i eat lentils in every green room, and herbs drying, where did you go?) – and so anyways, i broke down fully back then, but not by choice – attempting to pause conflict with my right knee, back, unprotected, spine aching, unhelped, held beyond & swelling, shattered against the autumn ground, calling off the dreams poised to be delivered, and i recognize now that was some sweet offering of pause, to be called into rest, into depth, into knowing + honoring mysel(ves) as is, into community, into care, into suspension of time as the world around me calls it, like a singsong teasing straight and linear and something i would never understand. yes, i was pushed to gravity, called into love, some hand i can’t bite pushing my hair forward in that cute way that makes my teeth sweat in wanting, to swallow an acceptance for the parts of me that carry need
(intermissive, awareness – the madness, the one who makes words along an edge, the storm in the front of my brain – they are the same, in this bed and in this sentence i make space)
—to unlearn, god, the theme of now and really what was started with that knee sliding off kick in my back and injured – the expectations of fullness, the urgency and optimizing, someone’s idea of pulling through to “better,” body as a finished product or place to arrive, the rest was inevitable, pivotal – in stillness i started to open my mind.
with every aspect of physical healing, poked, prodded, trained over decades and at this time it sent me into maybe 9, 12 appointments a week, more patient than person i would see and say at one point later, awakened into revolt, but we aren’t there yet – see, at this past-time, yes years, every space to which we sought to bring answers or solace we ended up first evicting some traumatic knowing, some basement name and numbness that had curled up in that cozy muscle, joint, organ, system, hiding, remembering, staying high & holding court. physical healing cannot begin with that many ghosts still trapped in the spiderwebs stretched too thin to really count as connective tissue anymore – so much of this journey, momentum of being, has been about excavation.
—and so i settled, sort of, learned to put my asks in a group chat of femmes and non-relatives, aware already of who i couldn’t show this rawness to, this case of being human and soft enough to need. and it was me, on the couch, for weeks and months, opening my mind and heart and underworld to everything i’d been or thought or shuttered up to manage someone else’s storms and let mine get windswept tight between my ribs and toes. i was discovering, and eager to continue. in rest alone, i began to understand myself as something real, with needs beyond the ones i filled my wounds with, those of others that kept me undetected as one who feels. it was in the rest and quiet, that i simplified, that i met my genderless Self, shed synthetic fibers, saw this mirrored pool of truth in which i could dive in, underwater running towards who i knew myself to be – and away from those who pinned me to perceived identity, fixed, like a case-bound specimen, slightly north of mummified – they are the ones i grieve, now and still and ongoing.
and so – this pain was, clearly, a catalyst of becoming, shaping, clay of who you are now doubtless – and you have to rip the shame out of your skin, over and over, it is something that holds tighter than a scar, it is the cellophane that marks you as new or for purchase. now I KNOW – the pace that keeps me well is not one that matches the mainstream, is not one in which i am able to or even will or want to stay amidst a culture of burnout. over years the sides of my eyes and entire perception have witnessed while bracing as others spin and spiral, enraged to watch a rested one rise, to watch a person soaring soft enough to meet their needs and slow down. we are mirrors, with some trapped in and against, believing they can change what they see by denying it exists, by screaming until they shatter the glass, pretty broken things we all are, luck is what you make it.
5 years – today i celebrate, today i honor how much it hurts, and stay in my soft grey bed with a soft grey cat and lineages of wisdom bookending, literally, taking belly breaths across sobs and timelines. a rainy mourning breeze moves breath through my room and almost-equinox air through open windows. there is light, and peace, and not much clutter, and goddamn it i am feeling and it means i am no longer this steeled curtain who can take it, take it, take it all on behalf of those who can’t, won’t, who, terrified by truth at all turned away with some illusion of keeping peace (whose?). now – each surface is an altar, around and on mysel(ves), and in between everything is growing – because i’ve learned that rest is sacred, and i am sacred too. it feels right to be nothing more than what i am today in spite of or especially since the pressures of being are presently pushing up on all sides in a way that’s seemed to halt creation (pause, pause, just enough to learn – i am in the deep end after all, have dived, submerged and not yet floating). i am here, with volumes of care models, and lots to look forward to – impatient as ever in this fragile vessel waiting for my water-propagated-roots.
so i sit in this softness, seducing self-grace, noticing how necessary and delicious it feels to be, and hope towards someday, when i could let someone(s) see me here, loving mysel(ves) like this, like the wind, as is, as is, a puddle without permission, and maybe in that someday i let them love me too.
TIME—- yesterday, on the phone to plan our tree retreat, writing imminent, i couldn’t hide my grief (you didn’t ask me to.) i wanted to celebrate you fully, and rushed through my own recent achievements as if they were crumbs i was brushing off, unable to quiet the nagging stabbing question of if i was offering enough to you, who lets me be – these sharp reminders like broken ribs, piercing lungs to tell me that really i need you and others and again find i am human. in the subtext of my wild mind i compare and critique the presence-layered-madness that i offer which feels like nothing, but i’m told is an invitation to the artists in others to be to be seen to rest to create to take space and i guess that my living unchecked like every day i’m trick or treating is permission enough to some, i am just glad to be alive together writing love.
y más tarde, me dejiste que mañana (ahora, hoy) estarás celebrando un día de independencia – y siento ahorita como sí – es de mi también, que celebras por todos, siempre tan generoso. y entonces – one conversation closer to raw already, i am grieving openly across the phonelines, across the pipeline. it is less a matter of permission now than it is Actual Intimacy as we’ve nurtured care, collaborated dearly. the truth is i am healing, and if i do it quietly, i perpetuate the pain, i become the harm, and so i cry.
today i continue to offer this something of value, this thin veil of why, by being vulnerable, restful, messy. i know it by the way my body settles, by the peace i tiptoe into as i breathe and stay in bed. i call as if to confess, to one, two, three who respond with support and i am tired, eyes droughted, soul something open moreso and ongoing.
this, these – peace, inspiration, the b-side to rest, illuminating openings to pleasure, stability, something more. i call you into awakeness for today and cry and choke on attempts to ask, stumble into receiving, make you late for work, sit with the investment you see like it’s already alchemy, it is.
someday i will be in this bed, peaceful and knowing, in fresh pjs, and order takeout because i can. someday i will be comfortable because of the work i rest for now, the art i rest for now, the way i make space & access through nothing but pause. someday i will be a resource again, but better, with boundaries and clarity and time. someday i will be held here, by someone(s) who value my learning, by someone(s) who love me the way i love me, with rest and paradox, with time and space, with stillness, root vegetables, roots somewhere, and as a mess.
i will never be yelled at again in the home i make myselves, i promise me this. i will never ask them not to feel, will never make them be quiet within me. breathing when it is hard, collectively, i listen, and the madness gives way to making each time – in wisdom, love, and knowing. i keep dark chocolate in the fridge first for mysel(ves), salt and aftercare always, and as i do it for me it is also for you, for someday, now, tomorrow and for us.
midnight, i wake aware that comfort is the answer to creating space for change – comfort, to be here with you(all) there, one, two, three, i confess to no longer wanting to do this alone, confess to celebrations through togetherness, noting i will look fierce regardless of where. today, 5 years, forever – made gentle now – it is, we are, enough.
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