Que pena… Que triste…
Often I struggle with receiving kindness, often I struggle with trusting kindness, often I struggle to believe I can ask for kindness or compassion…
I’m used to pity.
Many years it was used against me to fuel the egos of others as I was seen as a charity case.
Some say charity is a power play much different from care, which places equal value to both parties.
I started using the term “Mutual Aid” in hopes to build on these kinds of ideas as I truly believe we all have inherent value in all given circumstances. It’s easy for me to express that to others who want to help but feel powerless or to those who need help but like me are struck with fear and shame to ask for their needs to be met. For me, I have little to no grace to offer the same words.
I’ve been in hiding for at least a week now. Tonight the plan is to record a new video for my YouTube channel to be ready for my “hump day posts and streams” but as I can’t even think of have security in my near future I struggle.
What happened…
When I was actually able to create something I was elated, energized and excited – quickly my brain took subtle experiences to tell me “no one cares, why bother, you’re wasting time, you’re wasting space” immediately. I woke up scared to even talk about the video. Maybe because I was trying to promote an event I’m a part of in February. I felt guilty as if I was “using” the event to gain some selfish goal. Oddly enough it’s a “charity event.”
Coming off the heels of feeling like a burden, feeling like a person who’s always been kind to me was “really just pitying me” it was incredibly hard to make my posts to talk about my creation. There was probably a layer of shame and impostor syndrome in the mix too as I had done a cover of a “real musician’s” music. My extherapist used to butter me up and try to sell me on an idea that my music is “too progressive” to be popular and easily consumed. One hears the idea often that an artist ahead of the trends is overlooked and under appreciated. She claimed that the world hadn’t caught up to me and my heart or my spirit. Honestly, I believed her until I sat with the powerful lyrics and beauty of AURORA’s lyrics and musicianship. Her music echoes my deepest creative innards and knowing how she’s “made it” made me feel smaller and weaker and out of place.
I’m a trained singer so I have no delusions that I “suck at singing” I by far don’t think I’m perfect and I will perpetually be growing as a creative but the placating and platitudes that my extherapist fed me burned deeply. It reminded me of TAM building me up to burn me down to be at the mercy of his opinion of me on a whim. The reality is I have always had my own sense of self even as he claimed I was a “super model” to later diminish me with side ways put downs because I could physically never live up to his “ideal woman” the goal might have been to make me gain their skewed perspective about me but really the result was a complete loss of trust in anything and everyone especially myself. Was this what they call love bombing?
How could I trust kindness from anyone? How could I trust myself to walk into another open trap? I can’t accept good because of the turbulence that now lives in my bones. My logic never saves me, my sense of self is lost at sea even with “cold facts” to back me, sadly I just have to bear down through the storm and hope that what is left of me afterwards is enough to rebuild.
I sang “Lucky” feeling beautiful and powerful and quickly I was brought to my knees for it. My mind takes any “hint” of my lack of worth or value to run with it. Any content creator will tell you how difficult it is to push through the numbers, to create despite endless silence, unseen beauty, unheard messages. What they can’t say unless they’re a survivor of Childhood Emotional Neglect is how it stabs at your core wounds and leaves you bleeding.
On my birthday I had two different friends calling out to the universe “It’s Sabi’s birthday,” one noted on my server in words I can’t remember past the gesture, “Sabi has a special stream for her birthday…” another shared. It felt like a dream come true. Soon enough I just wanted to hide away again.
Emotional flashbacks and devastating and even as I share about how crippling it is in my life I feel my internalized ablism seeping out to drown me. I’m not broken enough to dare to ask for things like mutual aid. I’m not disabled enough to claim that doing the full time work of caring for my disabled mother and holding a full time normie job is too much to keep me safe from myself. So I lay immobile watching the days pass as more and more I need help to survive and more and more I hear people saying this isn’t sustainable while I see others in my same situation making it work as they self advocate.
I wish I could fight that hard. Breathing while awake is the hardest thing for me to do right now.
I pushed last Wednesday, I made a little Instagram reel trying to be cute and fluffy and something other than what feels like “a beggar.” Never had I fought so much to feel like I’m doing enough. Am I enough to keep alive? Am I enough to keep safe? Am I enough to keep fed?
I pushed last Wednesday, I took all my energy, all my strength, all my capacity to hide the shame I feel when I look in the mirror, me new dark passanger “ugly” ready to devour me and painted my face, shame poured on me a familiar voice “slut” ripping open my wounds, “forgettable” started gnawing at my guts as I had some odd narrative that a comfortable presence would forget about my stream unless I said something and I dare not remind him, it would burn more if he still couldn’t be there no matter the valid reason, my demons take their pick to eat me alive… Then my friends had set backs and I had to start the stream late. The weight of “forgettable” pressing down on me with “useless” teaming up to snub me out.
I was conditioned to be small. My truth to power, I am small but mighty. I collapsed from the pain. Ended stream early. Wept alone wailing into my pillow scared that I would scare Mom or worse awaken her nurturing heart that longs to comfort me but even in the face of my own mother’s care I recoil.
I hide in plain sight. One friend checking on me post stream I ran away to shower giving tiny bits of hlaf truths to avoid any idea that my life might be in danger.
I hide in plain sight. Another friend asks about our usual hang out where I distract myself from my brain as much as I can. He asks about my stream I feel like a liar but somehow blurted out that it wasn’t the best…
“What happened?”
I happened, my trauma happened, my suicidal ideation happened, my need to run away and hope to never be seen or heard again happened because all I want is to be a light and bring life into this universe but I feel like a blackhole of suffering and poverty and despair.
Pity…
I’m doing everything I can and it’s not enough to cover my basic needs…
The system is broken. The system is built on generations of people who deny reality and dismiss their pain and project their shame onto others… The scapegoat, the cycle breaker, the truth sayer is the one carrying all the weight. Can you blame us when we just need to rest?
I told the story of my guitar Rain before. Often I don’t make room for the story behind why I wanted Rain. Why a bird means so much, why a phoenix drew me in so closely. Most of my life I felt like a caged bird “sing this way or not at all” said the church, “be pretty when I want you to, when it’s convenient for me on my terms,” said my father, “lock yourself away, you can’t be trusted” said sexism… I wanted to be free.
I’ve died to myself many times again and again, in self harm through destroying my creations, chunks of my spirit gone forever, in self hatred convinced I don’t deserve a place in this world, in self gaslighting carrying the narratives placed on me by my abusers. Suicide and suicidal thoughts arr taboo subjects… Some think that talking about it will push those of us contemplating or idealising the contemplating or imagining a world without to step over the edge and let go, give up, succumb to the despair.
It’s my small but mighty light that rises from the ashes to keep trying to try every time I open my eyes and face another day. It’s my small but mighty voice that I choose to use to scream into the void knowing you are there needing me as I need you, as we are all connected. It’s my small but mighty spirit glimmering to pierce through the lies and fear and shame… I rise again and again until I cannot rise anymore. My tears are my Rain.