I feel like I will never stop trying to explain how deeply self advocacy hurts me. I try to add euphemisms since social media, like the rest of society, criminalizes mental health but ESPECIALLY suicidality at all levels.
Whether it’s a gnawing, daily, aching feeling, a stray idea when pain gets heavy, a contemplation because you’re so marginalized that you want to expedite the inevitable or it’s the moments that agony is so overpowering that you dissociate and wake up in a so called “hospital,” wanting to cease to breathe the air among living beings is seen as something to punish.
Having dire, unimaginable pain and despair – should be punished… At least according to so called “mental health experts” and society as a whole.
Instead of what it really means – your whole system reacting to oppression and injustice that can’t escape in rage because you’ve been conditioned to rollover and let it happen, “this is how life is…” society tells us it means we should hurt more.
So, how do I explain I need help to live, aside from the daily flogging of my fragile mental health that leaves me useless to my community as my, already low capacity, is cut in half? How do I tell you (or anyone) that you asking me to do more than what I’m already doing (making Instagram posts because these little videos and graphics tell my brain that I am being creative) to try and save my family, which already makes me stare at the edge of the cliff without exposing my family to cops via “wellness checks” or absolute death if I get hauled away to a “mental institution?”
How do I tell you, anyone reading, anyone who claims to care about my life, that I’m already beyond my limits?
Going out of my way to ask for help – even with the closest most dearest friend I might have puts me closer and closer to the edge of an irreversible cliff. These are people I trust as much as I am capable of trusting… The longer I am homeless and lacking food and other basic needs the more that cliff disintegrates beneath my feet. Hell, even writing this will probably be like putting a loaded gun in my hand.
It hurts
My trust is fragile. From a childhood getting taught that my needs aren’t just meaningless (as many childhood neglect survivors learned) but also DANGEROUS (be warned I will be detailing abuse…) to a young adulthood that added shame and disgrace to those core wounds, I don’t even trust myself well.
The only human who seemed to value me, my mother – Mamita… In Cayman Islands before I even left her womb she was mourning my grandfather’s death so my father used me as an excuse to beat her to a pulp. I heard this story moons after he left us, in my 20s, but from what we know of CPTSD this marked my body as my shared circulatory system was flooded with cortisol, a month later I was born.
He said her crying would kill me…
When I was a newborn, I couldn’t breathe well enough to eat; this is an undiagnosed sinus condition I still have 41 yrs later. Mom would worry hearing me cry – my father would beat me with a newspaper to shut me up. That’s the earliest memory I have which felt like dreams when I was a toddler. Mom did have the doctor help and they gave me some drops so I could nurse properly, by the way, and that’s why I’m still here. In my teens I told Mom about those “dreams” I had when I was a small child, she was shocked because the house I described in them was the house they rented when I was a baby.
Other things were less drastic but frequent “lessons” like when my body was n severe chronic pain from the AC in the car or the house and Mom would ask my father to consider my needs and he would berate her calling her a piece of shit, an idiot, useless, worthless, lazy, good for nothing and if Mom defended herself it escalated to threats of physical violence.
Another common scenario was the fact that most AFABs who have a uterus like me have to pee more often than anyone who doesn’t – especially in childhood when your metabolism is faster. Dad loved going out to eat, it was the most important outing for him. I’d pee before we left and if I had to pee when we got there, before we got there, while we were eating, or even after (despite being forced to finish an adult sized soda because he used money on it and twice if I had a refill) or ANYTIME before we got home and everyone else peed or pooped (he always pooped after dinner) ALL HELL WOULD BREAK LOOSE. I was branded stupid, capricious, annoying, needy, an attention whore, accused of purposely not peeing when I went to the bathroom and if Mom would explain that little girls pee more than boys – well rinse and repeat the previous story.
Some would say “it’s in the past” but that’s the fun (🫠/sarcasm) part about CPTSD – things that resemble the past flood your system with the same signals and chemicals and responses that made you survive in the past but we have them or relive things from then in the present. We can’t run away from the things which molded us. Helpful then or unhelpful now – they are there. My brain is wired for it and while some cognitive things can help my threshold of tolerance get a little bit bigger – being fucking hungry, tired and ON THE VERGE OF DEATH FROM POVERTY make these cognitive behavioral resources less effective and inaccessible most times. That makes my, baseline, already triggering self advocacy even more dangerous.
So how do I tell you I need help to live… aside from the daily flogging of my fragile mental health… Aside from getting flooded with emotional flashbacks that leave me dissociating into a dark world where I hear my father’s ghost screaming at me to die but he sounds like me?
I tried being low key about it, in my little lonely discord server… But as I said before the desire to die leaves me disfunctional as a member of community even if I’d be willing to have you share my home long term. If I am not sought out I cannot seek you out not even for a laugh or a cry but much less to say “hey, I posted this important thing that is kinda life or death.”
What hurts the most is at that point helping others makes my father’s ghost even louder. Seeing my friends get help that they should reinforces that no one cares about me, in fact I am such a burden that my innocent bunny and my lifetime guardian who now is in constant need from me should be sacrificed to rid the world of the demon that is Sabi.
Helping strangers hurts more and it disgusts me because everything I ever believed in was about mutual support, reciprocal care… Everything that little Sabi wanted was love and light and life… Scarcity is a lie.
For decades I had so much joy in trying to amplify every single brave little light who dared to echo through the darkness of this world. If you go far back enough in my blogs you can find several names, going as far back as my so called Christian days to my most recent adventures on Twitch which ended abruptly when I was evicted more than a year ago. For me being a musician, artist, writer, streamer or whatever other type of creative I was meant supporting fellow creators valuing their voice as much as my own. If I had a platform, even a small one, it wasn’t mine, it was ours, as every light burning through the night could bring us all life and warmth and remind us of our humanity.
If we are not blessed by creation, which is all around us from the dirt we walk on to the clouds that bring us rain then are we even living bones? Indeed, if we can’t find life we are at the grips of the death machine, corpses making gold from babies’ blood.
Those friends behind close doors would say I meant the world to them but each turned their back on me when the rubber hit the road. I never used Instagram after making a page to promote SabiLewSounds after countless pleas for support were met with indifference. I was unemployed, like I am now, starting a small business centered around mutual aid in the form of community care for creatives. I didn’t use those words then because these were concepts that were very foreign to me. Nonetheless, since I became more disabled than I was before the job that fired me in November 2015 I wanted a chance to free myself from the death machine and free others like me too.
Working for corporations that fed the poor to the rich head first for just short of three years made my depression severe and the damn place I was at destroyed my shoulders and made my spine even weaker than it was. I watched them make family after family homeless with predatory loans.
Most of those families who I saw leaving the credit union with joy and hope of new cars or new homes or small business loans came back through three months later in collections, bankruptcies, repo’d vehicles, foreclosures… 90% of them Black and Brown families who worked for the state run college at minimum wage, completely invisible to the young people I worked with in “ministry” who claimed they loved the poor as “Jesus loved the poor.”
We’ve always been invisible to you.
I felt helpless. How could I feed the poor, I barely could feed my mother and Dalilah with a full time job that made me want to die every day. Insipid stories about politicians and wars and health insurance on and on in the break rooms where I watched people throwing away food they brought from home because it wasn’t what they wanted that day and driving off to fast food and heading back to their desks…
I didn’t have a license, I couldn’t afford car insurance, I couldn’t eat most of the time unless Mom snuck food home from her hotel job. They complained about poverty but had partners and families who helped them while also throwing away food and buying new things all the time.
You’ve never understood poverty and misuse the word poor.
I was living in a home with mold and rats and eating once a day and I felt rich. For my entire life in the so called United States I have seen hungry unhoused abandoned humans and other animals everywhere, every day. Some so unseen that their bodies lie crushed by vehicles to rot for weeks on the road side…
Domesticated slaves who seemingly ceased to fulfill their function so they were “set free…”
Dogs, Cats and Rabbits are bred to be our companions and it doesn’t surprise me that you treat your own worse than those innocents.
I spent years fighting for artists who felt no one cared about them because I didn’t have a way to fight for humans who were dying on the street or other forms of systemic violence. Now let me say this now – it’s one thing if you call me friend but don’t jive with my creations – it’s a matter of taste/messages/need but it’s another thing if you call me friend and don’t value my life.
Eventually, I used Instagram when my therapist said it would be good for me to do something for my business everyday. Before then, I used bots to cross post on platforms to avoid the inevitable fight with the cliff of suicidal despair.
I guess for years I’d been wondering why things like Twitch and YouTube meant so much to me. Why it all hurts more than it did at the start. It always hurt to say to anyone “look at this thing I made” and that essentially was the only function of the SabiLewSounds Instagram page. My dreams felt like a big ass joke. I gave and gave and gave for others and was eventually abandoned. I believed people loved me and believed that meant they valued pieces of me even if it wasn’t their favorite thing in the world .
I modded for people like hereisSteve, KaKlick and a handful of others for years. When I was more able I was in every damn stream for them I could to support, add engagement… If anyone of them posted on Twitter or YouTube I went out of my way to share and share… It just seemed like what one does as a fellow creator and even more if they call you friend. I blamed time diffences when they didn’t show for me even though I’d often find them in the chats and streams and comments of more established creators. I figured they had deeper ties with them having been around a tiny bit longer than me…
When I had to pull back, falling apart at the seams, I felt horrid. I failed my friends.
But then… Why did people like them like ResurrectionFern or RosemaryTeal tell me they had nothing? That no one cared? I knew that big channels like GenevaLeigh had better things to do and it was profoundly confusing when everyone tells me I matter but… No one seems to miss me… I disappear and nothing happens. Except everyone thrives without me.
You see everyone cares, everyone cares until it’s more than words that need to be used. I believed them, though, I sincerely felt that they wanted me alive especially StynaLane when they jumped in my DMs the second I was evicted to “help” me. They looked for Hotels that wouldn’t even house my bunny… You’d think that a “friendship” that was from early 2018 to early 2024 that’s centered on disability “advocacy” would care about accommodations for my Emotional Support Animal but nah… They needed to check the “I’m a good person” box because I announced my eviction in their server because I thought that’s where I had emotional support.
Soon enough I noticed they were no different than Fern or Rosemary or Steve who claimed universes of support for me until it meant their hubris and fame or money would take a hit.
Their proposed love for me was buried under a basket where no one could see the dirty little secret as if I were some mistress to a married man.
Why would my “friend” Styna use their 20k following on Instagram or their evn larger following on TikTok to center an unhoused, food insecure Latina and her disabled family? Why would they interact with people posting in their server on my behalf? Why would they do anything but ghost me and post passive aggressive BS from tiktok (a platform I don’t partake in) directly into they Instagram stories (where I always interactd to check uo on them bc they were according to what they were posting, struggling with suicidal ideation) to say I have no longer have access to them and I’m crossing boundaries by interacting with their public media posts.
Thanks for googling a bed and breakfast the size of a closet where my bunny could escape every time I opened the huge sliding glass door that’s the only exit, Styna, while he sleeps in the twin bed that’s actually the couch with Mom and I, you’re such a great friend. Glad I didn’t block you… Wait, I did. I couldn’t imagine an anarchist who doesn’t see their layers and layers of privilege while claiming to be an advocate who doesn’t even give teo rat’s asses about mutual aid unless it’s their White privileged bestie until I met you. When a person who needs no help in getting seen especially being white and otherwise privileged put out music that honestly sounds like any other corporately produced and approachable commercial content Styna launched to the support role. When a Brown, disabled, immigrant, poverty stricken Latina made anything else it was ignored EVEN a desperate cry for help.
Why would Fern ask her extremely generous followers to support a poverty stricken Brown family without badmouthing the largest supporter who helped me in fear of him not giving her white family (backed by well established rich white family and a arich white community) more money for a birthday party she already had?
Instead it was right for her to start shaming me for not forcing my highrisk to covid cognitively impaired elderly mother to “get a job” or shaming me for not putting her in danger daily to “get a job” myself… This after crying on stream after stream after stream that what she (Fern) did is a job?
Why should my streaming and producing music (without a husband who does the bulk of the producing) and making music videos (with an editor who is paid as they should be) and making vlogs (wait she doesn’t do that) and podcasts (wait she doesn’t do that) and album art (wait she outsourced that too) and podcast and freelance marketing and commissions and writing and blogs and emotional support, and cross promotion… (wait she really didn’t do that none of those)…
Why should any of the things I’ve been doing since 2015 while working and later while caretaking (eventually 24/7) be seen as a job? You’re right, Fern thanks for the unsolicited advice, I should get a job. Oh, wait, I’m homeless now and can’t. You’re such a great friend, glad I didn’t block you… Wait I did.
Rosemary chained to coporate USA along side her husband with a thriving small business backed by academia enslaved by dreaded student loans – you see when you’re actually poor you learn that student loans can’t hurt you, lack of food and housing can but beyond that working yourself to the grave will hurt you more because spending funds on wine (when it’s not self medication) isn’t as essential as you think it is and “being broke” is a million miles away from spending thousands on “studio equipment” even if you “need” it… The poor create beauty with rocks and trash if needed. Even I have the blessing of this broken ass phone that many don’t.
Fear makes you kill your own .more than it makes you kill yourself.
The longer you think you have nothing and are powerless the longer fhe Death Machine has you by the ovaries (or the balls, or the everything in between).
You
Let
Them
Eat
Us
A year later all these folx blocked or just erased as lurkers in my Disco Rd (iykyk) server my new friends give from air and live moment by moment, building a new world through mutual respect not just of each other but also of other beings. I have a friend who asks bugs if they can take their photo – they respect the other that much. My lover also food and housing insecure building a following just to put in work to keep my family and my friends alive to the best of his ability even as his family gaslights him as if who he is, is wrong.
I don’t like “holding people accountable” I don’t expect anyone to care enough about how they hurt me to grow new agreements. I have very fickle trust and even as I started writing this thinking of one person I thought was a friend who can’t even see me anymore even when I told them directly “I want to die” they walk away. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go any further than I already am to ask for my lungs to have another breath and every time I see another person helped that isn’t me it stings deeply.
I’m a disgusting hypocrite – because I do care about me but I wish I didn’t. Everyday I wish I didn’t and never cared… Everyone who cares about me bleeds. When I have nothing to give I am discarded.
