Shock

What really shocks me, and it still does, is how you absolutely failed to assist me. It’s been more than a year since I fell over on your unstable, dangerous path, and I still feel the effects of those injuries every day. Ankle, ankle, knee, hip, tooth. I have pain, inflexibility of movement, and my balance is still, STILL compromised. It’s fair to say that I am likely permanently affected by the damage done to my body as a result of falling on your path, and the hard reality of that is that it has made me horribly vulnerable to future falls, because of the way my balance and proprioception has been damaged. I’m now staring down several decades of my older life when serious, life-threatening falls are a real risk to my wellbeing and survival. And during that year, I have been actively excluded from assistance. I had a doctor’s appointment booked at one point early on, specifically to have my injuries reassessed. I could not attend that appointment on that occasion, because I literally did not have enough money to pay. And being a compensable appointment, I should not (legally) have claimed any Medicare benefit for it. This is what you have done. I am still, even now, shocked by this. I am shocked that I am embedded in entire living, breathing organism of people, a “community” of persons whose existence and wellbeing are dependent on how well they look out for each other, who know so very much of every detail of my life, and yet no assistance was rendered. I have had to fight every day, on a personal level, to push through my pain and, yes, my trauma and despair, to move my body sufficiently to claw back my ability to walk in a normal-seeming manner down the street. (Normal-seeming because I’m only ever a short uncoordinated, unbalanced stumble away from another fall. I can’t even dance properly, I can’t step or spin or travel across the floor because it’s a constant risk of toppling over). And yet nobody, in all that time, has leaned in to offer advice or support on how to go about claiming monetary assistance, compensation or god forbid, actual specialised rehabilitation? I am still shocked by this. I am shocked by the absence of care, of the most basic gestures of empathy and support. The psychic damage of this to me, sustained every day when I wake up and confront the reality of what has happened, is enormous. How could you allow this to happen to someone in your midst? What game plan can this possibly serve? Injuring me, in the first place, either with your carelessness or your careless-seeming engineering, and then utterly failing to step in with an appropriate after-response? It’s not OK. I am permanently altered. My life, my fundamental physical being has been changed, damaged permanently. And yet you are content to allow this to be done to me, without ensuring I have the wherewithal to recover? I do not intend to go to an early death. But without a full recovery, that is what is at stake. And since basic survival also requires monetary resources, when those are withheld, so too is my welfare and wellbeing. 

How much harder to you intend to press down with your steel-capped boots? It’s fair to say they have already left an indentation on my face. 

I mind

I mind very much when I have no discretionary lifestyle choices because my finances have been constrained.

I mind very much when it’s payday and we already have less than $400 to get us through the fortnight.

I mind very much when my husband finds himself within a very small subset of persons who are required to travel away for days at a time but brings home exactly $0 in allowances for his troubles.

I mind very much when I am required to be subjected to a set of circumstances again that were unacceptable the first time I was subjected to them. 

I mind very much when you lie to me, and when you make out you have planned for contingencies that you clearly have no qualms about neglecting. 

I mind very much that I won’t have sufficient funds to get through the next week, and that there will be attendant social and health ramifications for me that result in cumulative long-term damage to me. 

I mind very much that you are willing to pour resources into maintaining a pretense of looking out for me, but you are unwilling to pour any resources into actually looking out for me.

I mind very much that I’m required to suck all of this up with dignity and discretion, when what you really deserve is a torrent of verbal approbation. 

fortnight

I would like you to understand this: my anger does not represent some kind of mental unravelling due to the large assaults I have endured these past months, but it is a justifiable reaction to the small ones. The small daily, weekly, fortnightly assaults of repeated denials and exclusions and the daily effects of that on even the most basic aspects of my life. 

It was “payday” just a few days ago. I have not yet bought medication, nor shopped for the main part of the fortnightly groceries. We now have little more than $40 remaining in the bank. That won’t cover my medication, which is about to run out, and it’s not enough to pay for food for the next two weeks. This is not a result of my inaction or mismanagement, but rather the cumulative effect of all of the circumstances that have been artfully designed and systematically implemented for several years, while denying me access to all the normal mechanisms of seeking income and addressing financial issues with the main thing needed: money. 

So, go ahead and read the rest of this blog. Linger over those posts that have descended into crazy sweary rage-fuelled ranting. Consider what you know about me, if you know me, who I am and what I have done, for you and for other people, and then consider the depth of my anger at being so deeply under-resourced and unsupported for such an intolerably long time. Now consider your own role in allowing this to occur. At what point did you lead me to believe I would be OK, when nothing about this situation is OK? And then ask yourself whether you could or should have acted differently towards me, then or now. 

You might decide you have nothing to answer for. Maybe you are content to allow someone in your midst to be so badly treated, provided your own interests are looked after. But imagine it’s you who has only $40, and your fridge is about to be empty, and your medication is going to run out so you will start feeling pretty awful, and you’ve got nothing of value to sell, and there is every indication that none of this should be happening. Wouldn’t you be angry? Now ask yourself how or where or to whom you would express that anger, especially when your situation keeps getting worse? Because that is what is happening here. No amount of resilience or excellent mental health or personal transcendence will change it. Even if I manage to scrape through this fortnight, I am facing the same essential lack of necessary resourcing next fortnight, and the fortnight after that, on and on with no foreseeable improvement.

So, please do go ahead and read the rest of this blog. Be as hurt and offended and insulted and whatever else you like when you see what it is I have written here. But remind yourself that your grievance is perched atop Maslow’s hierarchy, while I’m down here at the bottom of it trying to figure out how I’m going to get medication for my basic wellness and how we are going to eat for the next fortnight. And then think about how many fortnights it's been and how many fortnights of this are still coming and everything else that has been and will be displaced from my life. Yes, I am still angry. And I will direct that anger wherever I fucking well like. 

apparent

 

          it is apparent you

          have no care for the wreckage

          left in your wake

friendship

 

          you brandished our friendship

          like a weapon but then you

          dropped it like an old toy

Struggle

 I struggle with this …

It’s after 4 am

and what’s keeping me awake is…

Anyone else got any shit to fling in my direction?

Honestly, this is so overwhelming. It is coming at me from all sides. Where is the help I need? Or is this just *another* life situation that I'm required to struggle through on my own?

La pendue

 I guess this means I’ll be going nowhere, fast.

#again

Reflection upon some really awful events in recent years

There is a sizeable commentary that I could invoke, here, in writing, ... 

When I am a landlord

When I am a landlord, I carry out my responsibilities properly. 

Is this the way of it?

Is this how it goes? Every time? Always the wound but never a salve for it? Even the calmest among you must know this is wrong, it is deeply wrong, it is as offensive as it is obvious. An even in that there is no skill or honour. There is only a lie, laid deep, that continues to cost me ever more and more. And where are you, person who laid down trust as the sacred agreement between us? Where are you now, as this latest blow lands upon my most vulnerable organs? I have seen how you thrive even in the midst of this sustained assault against me and mine. I have seen your smiling confidence broadcast like a false promise of a reprieve that never comes. Your line of sight is worth nothing to me while it continues to witness these acts commissioned against me in full view of the helpless law. Your smug, secret knowledge multiplies the price I pay while you stand passively by, allowing the unthinkable to happen, again. There is no honour among thieves, and you, it seems, are proud to rob me once again. 

CONCLUSION

It has only taken me 50 years or so, but I think I might finally be on the verge of arriving at a conclusion.

poetry

 your ridiculous

fuckery gives me pause to 

vow never again

Perhaps

 

Perhaps you haven’t put enough effort into understanding how angry I am, and how angry I am at you, and why I am so angry. 

In the darkness, I can only see anger

 

I

am

too

angry

to

sleep.

You are literally killing me. 

On excessiveness

Yes, it might seem that I have a lot of crazy stored up, or maybe not even stored, maybe just spraying copiously in every direction. I certainly can understand why, if you were reading this, that you might form such an impression, based either on this content or its prevailing themes. There is a certain excessiveness to everything I’ve written here, and well there might be. Imagine, for a moment, that you formed an undertaking, in which you agreed to a whole lot of stuff on the understanding that you would be supported in that, and then you weren’t. Imagine that, instead, you were actively excluded, undermined, refused assistance, misdirected, and denied resources and support. And then, imagine that this went on and on, not just for months, but for years. Imagine that this became so entrenched a state of affairs that you realised it wasn’t just an undertaking anymore, it was now the permanent prevailing condition of your entire life. Wouldn’t you, too, feel utterly betrayed? Moreso if the parties to that undertaking were the kinds of persons who are commonly understood to be held to the highest levels of accountability, and yet they have behaved in deviously dishonest concert to fuck you over comprehensively? Yes, I know this is only one telling of an entire marvellously complex story, and that there are very many alternative tellings as well. But this isn’t just a story, is it? This is my actual life, as I must live it, as I have lived it for weeks, months, years. And until this story is confronted by actual evidence that disproves this particular telling, then there is no reason why I should protect the vile deceptions that have been enacted in the arena of my everyday existence. Until there is evidence of real support, of undertakings being met in both the spirit and the law in which they were formulated, then why should I pretend otherwise? Why should I act like an ordinary person whose life follows the established order in which agreements are kept and effort is rewarded? Why should I debase myself further with the mockery of pretense? This retching bitterness permeates every moment of falsehood that I am forced to live through by your multiple and repeated failures to fulfil even the most basic of your responsibilities towards me. And no, I will not pretend otherwise, not even if that means I blog like a crazed, raving banshee foretelling my own doom. Because, if only this is true, it is true: my right to pure expression of my absolute rage at the liberties you have taken against me will be guarded and respected as absolutely sacrosanct, or I am already doomed, and so are you. All of you. Therefore nothing I write here matters, and everything I write here matters more critically than anything else that I do, or have done, day and night, for years. This is not the fragile thread that holds up my universe, but it is the thread that holds up yours. 

If I ever started writing

 

If I ever started writing down what you have done to me, really writing what you have really done, I don't think I would ever stop. It is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how the power would only ever go out at our house, and a few other houses that were mostly vacant. I remember how that was never important enough for you to really do something about it. I remember how dismissive you were at the time. I remember your name, and your rank, and you wife's name, and the colour of your car parked in your own well-lit driveway, and the breed of your flatulent dog and I even know a bit of the reason why your dog suffered such acrid digestive issues, and this too would comprise part of the very, very long tale that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how you preened in front of that tall blonde who really was not at all interested in you, and how you skated along the edge of a harassment charge for years, and the only thing that saved you was getting old, so that they shuffled you off to your well paid retirement in a manner that was easy, much too easy for someone who has victimised so many with your rigid, inattentive vanity. I know that it was you who supplied negative commentary about me, so that it held me back at a time when I was ready to proceed, how your irrelevant "behaviour targets" were a manipulative tool you routinely used to keep the very best candidates down while you pushed your own flunkies ahead. I even know that we are distantly related, by marriage of course. I remember all of this. Perhaps you are lucky, then, that I choose, at this time, to not start writing down what you have done to me. Perhaps you are lucky that you slunk away into oblivion when you did, as the after-effects of your victimisation began to finally recede from my own life. Perhaps you are lucky that, thanks to me, your flunkies now know what you did and why that was wrong and why that will never be the end of this story. Perhaps you are lucky that I know this is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago and so I will not gouge you, personally, in retribution, and anyway that's not really how I roll. But you should know that I can and do remember, that I can and do see clearly what it is that was done, and how all those other people enabled it and set it in motion. And if I ever started writing it down, really writing it down, with all of the details, I don't think I would ever stop. 

Around about now

 

Around about now, I meet with you, in a pleasant social setting. 

I miss you terribly. You know that. 

I meet you, and I look you in the eyes, and you know the depth of my feeling. 

Then, I throw your ring at you, and walk out. 

This is what happens... except that you never actually bought me a ring, did you, you exploitative lying pieces of shit. 

It continues, unabated

Why should my mood have softened, when after all this time, you have not amended your ways towards me? Why should I redirect my anger, my frustration, my fury, when you have not redirected the course of your actions? Why should I moderate any aspect at all of my responses, when you have not changed the manner or extent of your willful mistreatment of me? And why should I give even the merest benefit of the doubt, when you have not given me even the tiniest margin for success?