Shards of Reality

i guess while i'm here i
might as well share another insight
i've come to

chronic pain
is something that i deal with
excruciatingly

there are times
when it will come up on me like a tide
cresting
and wash over me with a hurt that comes
from nowhere

in times like these
there is little that i can do but curl up
into a ball
on the bed
and wait for the wracking full-body pain
to stop

i think of all the symptoms of my disability
this one is by far the most debilitating
the most disabling
and the worst

recently i had a revelation:
i was born in
not an unloving home
but a very very dysfunctional one
with a father who was emotionally abusive
and never more than one fuck-up away
from becoming red-faced and violent

when i first started using ketamine
and in noticing that it seemed to affect me differently than it did my friends
i remarked to one such friend once
"i think i'm just naturally dissociated!"

i had no idea how right i was

for years later
after years of dissociation
multiple personalities
depersonalization
derealization
and all the other hallmarks of dissociative identity disorder
it has only really hit me in the past few years
that most people don't spend the majority of their time
in a broken haze

and i wondered to myself very recently
"could this have anything to do with the pain i experience?"
if
having grown up dissociated
having never known what it was to not be dissociated
and
only just starting to learn how to really feel in the past couple years
could it be
that i am experiencing a level of feeling
of being in touch with both my emotions and my body
that is more intense than anything i've ever felt before in my life?
and if so
could it be
that what i am experiencing as 'pain'
is simply 'feeling' but in the realm of way, way too much?

all i can do is breathe through this
keep breathing
in
and
out

when you take a look at your life
and examine it and what's working and what's not
and
after a couple bad experiences-
not even necessarily bad experiences just not especially good ones-
i think it's become apparent
that i need to go
on a long long ketamine break
(i.e. in the range of several months-
until summer solstice in late june)

let's face it-
that shit's expensive
it's easy to drop 30 or 40 dollars
and have it only last one day

at times in my life where
i was really getting a lot out of its use-
mind exploration, treatment of depression,
a desperately-needed moment of relaxation-
this kind of expenditure was well worth the money that it cost

but after the last few times i used it
it just seemed to vanish really quickly
at at the end of the 2-3 day session
between both me and my lover
i was left at the end thinking
that was a hundred and thirty dollars?

i mean
$100 in pot lasts me two weeks
(and it`s time for me to start thinking about reducing my usage of that too)

quitting an addiction is hard.
hard hard hard hard hard.
and if i didn't have my beloved fiancée ava
i don't think that i would be well enough to do it
but
i'm at a point in my recovery now
where i've healed some of my worst pain
and i've learned to cope with a lot of what i've lost and
i'm learning new ways to live and new ways to pass time

and it's time
to let go
of my crutches
and take
my first few
tremulous
steps
without them

[trigger warning: sexual assault]
wow it's been awhile eh?
four mounths
it all happens so slow
and then it's gone so fast

i came here not to scrawl an update on my life
though it is quite exceptional

but rather i need to vent something that happened to me the other day

i was at a party
sitting around
drinkin' a screwdriver
havin' a pretty good time
when this guy i know sits down next to me

i'm pretty sure he was probably rolling
as he slings his arm around me on the couch and sits next to me
and proceeds to tell me what an awesome person i am
('cos i am)

but then he starts going on into
'y'know when i first met you i didn't really know what to make of you' [as a trans person]
and
'i don't want to have sex with you but i just want you to know you're really pretty' (ew imma lesbo thx)
and then
the asking me if he could kiss me
and getting turned down
and asking again
and getting turned down
and asking again
and again
until i let his unworthy lips grace my cheek just to shut him up

and of course
it's hard to know what to do in this kind of instance
where he's showering me with complements
innocuous at first
that get progressively more and more pervy
until
he reaches past me for some reason
to rub my shoulder or something
and his hand just surreptitiously
grazes my breast
and oh look
now i feel violated
and there's a party going on all around me
and he keeps talking to me and i don't want to talk anymore but i'm starting to dissociate

someone came by
and saw me in distress
and asked me if he was bothering me
and removed him tactfully and forcefully
thank goodness

but once the cracked consciousness of dissociation breaks
it's hard to get it back together

by all means the night otherwise went awesome
i and ava had a great time
with many happy memories

it's amazing how one violating graze can weigh as much as a nighttime of love
and how it can get into your mind
barbed
like a fishhook

it is 10 days
that ava and i have been living
together

these are the best days of my life

so it turns out that
a year ago as of yesterday
actually was the day
i got my acceptance letter

which means that yesterday
the day that i wrote about taking stock
saying a year ago today this a year ago today that
just happened to be the one-year anniversary
of the day i felt like
i have a future again

what timing

a year ago today i was dying

a year ago today i was starving to death
i had no food and no means to acquire it
and i was being whetted into nothing
by a system that subtracts and
subtracts and never adds
a system that says
it will be there for you
and when you fall it isn't
and when i fell it wasn't and
i panicked and worried and vexed
i cradled myself back and forth for days
for weeks for months for fucking months

a year ago today i didn't know how much i wanted to live
my apartment reeked of mould and it seemed as though
i was being torn apart by two uncomplimentary loves
august two thousand thirteen was a bad
bad bad bad time for me
it was a time of torture
of slow death
starving while you watch
and knowing that the love i was losing
was on the side of those who can sit and eat and wile
with a clean conscience while the archetypal street kid
sits on the street with a sign and an empty stomach

a year ago today i didn't know who i was
i didn't know what i wanted and i
certainly didn't know where my life was going
a year ago today i got my acceptance letter
from odsp saying that i had been cleared for coverage
and began the slow crawl of time
waiting waiting waiting so i could eat again

today
i am rebuilding the rubble of my life
picking up the bricks of this and that
counting what i've lost to mental illness
counting what i've gained in love

today
i look forward to starting a new life
with my fiancée in our new home
the deposits are paid
the keys are ours
the first of our things
are beginning to populate inside
i look forward to starting our new life
today

a lot can happen in a year

[tw: r*pe]

i got fired from the vapour lounge

for refusing to accept rape jokes
and thinly veiled transphobic insults
not even thinly veiled
openly blatant fucking insults

for saying that
as a survivor and person with mental disabilities
i could not work in an environment
where i was being severely triggered
an excessive number of times
per shift

for not accepting being paid $5/hour
as a "training fee"
when today my "training"
included leaving me alone
to run the place myself
for two hours

for saying that
all of the maintenance the physical labour
all of the numerous small tasks and detailed instructions
all of the customer service and dealing with rushes
was ok
but that i couldn't do it
while half of me is reliving my rape experiences

for this i was fired

#ineedfeminismbecause this is not okay

so uh
i was going to the dispensary the other day
to pick up my medicinal marijuana

they have a vapour lounge upstairs and
though we didn't have time to stay and smoke
i took a minute to pack my vape before we left

while we're talking this guy dave the manager
tells me a few times i should come more often
and then asks me if i want a job

the place looks like an awesome rave den
i can smoke up at work
and they pay in pot (which will save me $200/mo)

soooo yeah
now i work at a vapour lounge
and it's fucking awesome :D

except for this one thing:
they have 'comedy nights'
saturday through sunday

by 'comedy'
it's more like
the Two Minutes Hate

people go up on mic
make racist sexist cissexist homophobic and ableist jokes
and joke about r*pe

hah so i guess we'll see
how long i can stand working there
before i start tweaking

i lost my shit on my first shift
when this guy joked about loving transsexual porn
and talking about how "having a dick is the dirtiest a woman can get"

at the end of the night my manager went out there and
tried talking to him gave him a warning but the guy
just didn't fucking get what he had said wrong

so he goes and tells the fucking joke again
right in front of me
and i fucking lost my shit

i interrupted him mid-story
and shouted
"i am not a dirty fucking woman just because i have a dick!"

"whoa sorry
sorry miss- sorry sir
i didn't mean to offend anybody"

bullshit
bullshit
stop smirking as you say it and maybe i'll believe you

but the benefit to working for a private company
is that i don't have to be super accommodating (like at the youth centre)
and if i get pissed i can fucking voice it

so yeah that's my job now
sell people lighters and papers and maintain the lounge
and crack some cis shithead heads

sometimes you have to stretch for blessings
and snatch them up as quick as you see them

or at least
this is my reasoning
for taking an apartment mid-month
on next to zero notice
after having briefly seen it
once

so
with my moving date moved up
from the 31st to
sometime in the next week
i've been a little
crazy

but on the plus side
ava and i
are moving in together

which is going to be awesome

:D

it's the cat that drives me the most insane
he's really really lonely and is desperate for physical touch
but i'm devastatingly allergic to him and
i can't be the one to do it
he sits outside my bedroom door and just
howls
to the point it's starting to get really creepy like
he's started yowling "he-rrow?" [hello]
really loud and lost and sad
and it makes me feel so bad
but if i pick him up and play with him
or sometimes even just rub his fur
his dander gets all over me and i choke and suffocate
he runs under my feet when i'm in the hall and
every time i'm in the kitchen he yowls for my attention
and rubs aggressively against my legs
he's so lonely
and it's so sad to watch
'cos it's breaking my heart
but at the same time the
constantly tripping me and running under me and
weaving between my legs and rubbing up against me
is driving me nuts
i don't even go in the kitchen unless i have to anymore
and that's usually 'cos i'm starving from hiding out in my room for so long

i fucking need to get out of here