Zombies Where There Should Be Gardens
November 2024
tw for self harm, abuse, death, homophobia, c-ptsd.
I've been trying to figure out what I want to do with this space and though digital gardens are the closest to what I want, I've been struggling with the concept of learning in public. What if you don't want public when you've known cruel consumption can come right alongside (sometimes within) community?
When I was young, I thought writing would save us. Would save me. My grandma said it like it would.
The dream--the goal--was to write a book and be interviewed for it on Oprah (one of her favorite shows).
The show looked--to a little kid like me--like a place where peoples' lives were put back together. But you grow up not only to realize there are teleprompters and too bright overhead lights and a stage disconnected from the rest of the world--audience members who pay for the change to look up close and viewers at home who pay for the chance to look at all--you also realize it's set inside a stomach. The acid eating away at the disjointed walls propping the scene up. You realize when the red button turns off and the stars return to their dressing rooms, you, ordinary you, you're left holding your own guts in an empty room, in a hungry stomach. And all that's been done is you've shown your insides and now, you have to carry them back out into the world and no one is ever gonna tell you anything excpet how tagic how pretty how deadly how necessary how monstrous you(r) hurt.
The words aren't new but they're still true: I've been trying to mae a living out of a life just so I could have a (false) guarantee to live. There's so much of my writing I regret, not out of who I was but how thoughtlessly I shared that with others. Granted, a lot of those writings turned forever living on the internet's were influenced by the belief that I wouldn't make it past twenty-six (that's when my disabled self would have to prepare to get off my parents' health insurance if I hadn't secured a job by then), and wouldn't have to stick around for the fall out. I was glass-closeted, what doctors tell me is hospitalized on check-in sheets (intensive outpatient) but I just name as humblin and helpful and reminder that I've been unbelievably lucky, and much like my writing: moving towards points that I could never reach. Thank God for that though.
I can't scrub my work from the internet because I need proof that I've worked. I changed names because I'm scared of my abusers following me. I try to find a balance between safety and security, knowing that in these systems that want to kill me (but will simply terrorize me first), it's impossible.
Grandma, I'm sorry but I think the writing tries to kill me.
I cannot understate how many doors writing has opened for me. (Is it a contradiction if several things are true?) Writing got me my lost wages back the year I was underpaid because I'm disabled. Writing got me a corporate job with only a high school diploma. Writing got me onto stages to speak, to interview, to moderate, and to travel. Writing got me out of the closet. Writing allowed me to teach others to advocate for themselves, help others find resources to survive their traumas, and to just make someone smile. Writing got me into theatres, the architecure my heart is modeled after. Writing got me to communities that love and care for me.
But writing has gotten me harassed, outed, threatened, and abused. It's brought me into spaces that claw at my throat and only offers paper to clean up the mess. It's made me regret existing.
I don't think I could live without it. I've tried but I seem to just get worse when I don't do it. I don't think I'm very good at it and it might just stay that way forever. I'm scared I've turned my back on it so much that when I really need(ed) it, it will leave me.
What's the point of a poet if you can't honor who you love? I used to write to the people I love easily. But then, October 2023. But then the guilt of not knowing April 2023. But then the shame of not knowing forever (Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Bangladesh, Lebanon, and more). I can't write when I want to the most.
When I started dating my girlfriend around the same time as those thens, the guilt multiplied because I feel so much, galaxies more than I'm used to, like doors to new universes blossomed in my chest, and I go to tell her with my mouth and I trip. I go to tell her with my writing--surely, this will work--and every anxiety, every doubt, every brain strand weighs down and my pen splinters. All my atoms shame and I cannot reach for her.
I try to lean into the part from The Perks of Being a Wallflower where, after we've spent so much time in Charlie's head, you just think the world has to watch it's step as it navigates the flooding, the pooling of everything Charlie feels. There is no choice but to be stained by the mess of him. But when he tells the girl he loves how he's loved her for so long she says (I'm paraphrasing here), "You have to tell me, Charlie! When you just think it, I can't feel it!" I try to remember I've got to do something so she can feel it! So the memes and the quotes and the little thoughts and the shares and the streaming so I can practice tolerating the sound of my voice, so I can practice using my voice when it's just me and her so I can learn to talk to her without worry of audience without worry that I'll forget how to speak because I hate it so much. And still, the unwritten poems haunt me, my inability to love how I love(d) best mocks me, and I don't know how to tell her, tell people, I'm sorry this isn't better. I'm sorry people are dying and it's preventable. I'm sorry my mind makes me think I'm still being raped and groped and cornered and I cannot unstick myself from the nightmare of it. I'm sorry my lungs threaten delays if not outright closings and the shadow of fear in this, in much more, eclipses me--no, it tears and swallows and houses me in it's insatiable dark. All of this and I love you so much and I didn't think out of everything I'd struggle with this. I didn't htink I wouldn't be able to tell you that simple necessary truth.
Grandma, do you think the writing will come back?
When it couldn't be writing, I said, Here is my body. I could life and move and organize and help and I could seve. I could ignore my lungs like oxygen ignored me and I could squeeze so much work out of my body before my eyes threatened stars.
Here is my body and the hands and the mouth and the teeth and his box cutter that abused it. I cannot say here is my body anymore, it does not answer when I call it. it crawls towards me when oxygen forgets it, so I can never plan a time to meet. There is my body and I am responsible for how it hears heal and returns us bloody.
Grandma, writing couldn't protect me--not in childhood either.
I wrote this to map where I'm lying to myself, to see if I was still capable of telling the truth and surviving it.
I don't want to write for bylines anymore (I'm still waiting for payment on a piece I wrote in May). I'm too scared to write for anything that demands of me because there's always a piece of me in what I write and I don't want to breadcrumb violence to me. I know it's impossible to escape; this is a life. I just don't want violent in the home I've built (I have to keep moving). I don't want to stay here with my back against the far wall and my eyes trained on the door, scream stuck in my shoulder blades, ending gunked in the bottom of my throat. Today, I need this. Tomorrow, I'll punish for the existence. Grandma, was this always going to be the ways we lived?
Please don't mistake me--there is so much light and warmth and love in my life ("I'm not worthy, just lucky" ~Kiki Petrosino). I am grateful. I am terrified. Will I go to heaven? Am I only for punishment? Why do they hurt me? Why do they (not them) love me? Will they continue?
Am I doing this right?
This post, at least the effort that went into it, is dedicated to my grandma who I lost to Alzheimer's years ago. I wish she had kept a record of herself. It's not the same but I hope me keeping a record of myself, help(ed)(s) her do the same in some universe.