In low fields by the sea

Like barley bending

In low fields by the sea,

Singing in hard wind

Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending

And rising again,

So would I, unbroken,

Rise from pain;

So would I softly,

Day long, night long,

Change my sorrow

Into song.  

~ Sara Teasdale

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. 

endured too long

  

Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground
With fallen leaves so thickly strewn,
And cold the wind that wanders round
With wild and melancholy moan;

There is a friendly roof, I know,
Might shield me from the wintry blast;
There is a fire, whose ruddy glow
Will cheer me for my wanderings past.

And so, though still, where'er I go,
Cold stranger-glances meet my eye;
Though, when my spirit sinks in woe,
Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh;

Though solitude, endured too long,
Bids youthful joys too soon decay,
Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,
And overclouds the noon of day;

When kindly thoughts, that would have way,
Flow back discouraged to my breast; -
I know there is, though far away,
A home where heart and soul may rest. 

Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,
The warmer heart will not belie;
While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine
The smiling lip and earnest eye.

The ice that gathers round my heart
May there be thawed; and sweetly, then,
The joys of youth, that now depart,
Will come to cheer my soul again.

Though far I roam, that thought shall be
My hope, my comfort, everywhere;
While such a home remains to me,
My heart shall never know despair!

The consolation ~ Anne Brontë

in Poems for a world gone to sh*t 

what nourishment is this?

I've spent some time, these past few days, looking over my recent writings, here and elsewhere. And what I see, besides a raging torrent of anger/grief/despair, is that my underlying circumstances have not improved during that time. And yet, I am finding a new distance from that outpouring of unbearable emotion. The situation has not changed, but (miraculously, mercifully) my relationship with all that has been (and continues to be) unacceptable has shifted. 

And the situation has not changed. In some ways it is worsened. My teeth again need repair, as if scraping together the barest wherewithal for the last dental repairs had never happened. With that comes pain and discomfort. My health, despite my earnest, focussed efforts, remains precarious. My injuries linger, untreated. My finances are in ruins, and following on from that is an eternity of days in which I cannot go and I cannot do that which I need and want to be doing. More than the lack of necessities, this comprises a kind of theft of days of my life, and an eternity of opportunities that I relinquish, week by week, as the days, months and years of my life tick past, undone. 

There is a fuller realisation, too, of how these more recent circumstances sit nested within a longer span of similar, but less acutely confronting circumstances. It is as if someone has looked over my life, and identified all those things that were problematic, and amplified them in very deliberate ways. Turned up the dial on things that I managed and overcame, with varying effort, for years beforehand. And looking now at those circumstances, I wonder how it is that I remained so buoyant, so resilient against the constant grind. We have had so little, for so long, and oftentimes what we've had has been whittled away in patterns that are not evident in the lives of those around me. Strangely enough, even in the face of all that, I always believed I was surrounded by abundance, when the reality is we had so little, and often not enough, and yet I made a kind of art out of doing without. I adopted a kind of boho earth mama sensibility to smooth the rough edges from having to rely on second-hand, cheap, homemade things, because we simply did not have the money to buy what we needed. That works, for a while, when you are young, and have your health, and you can spend your time filling the gaps left by not-having enough. But I am no longer young, and my health is less assured now, and I have not the energy left now to transform the shoddy cast-offs of other people's lives into something I can pretend is nice.

More recently, I had to turn to charity for food. This is deeply embarrassing to me, and it was shocking to my family when they found out. Because the assumption is that we are doing OK, and if we're not doing OK, then there's a universe of people we can turn to for help before we need to seek the impersonal assistance of strangers. But it never occurred to me to ask my family for money for this most basic of things, food. Because, for years, we've scratched by with the most meagre of supplies, and I never asked for money then, either. We've shopped with a calculator and gone without many, many times before. But what's different now is I cannot eat the very cheapest food anymore without endangering my health. I can't cook a packet of pasta or rice or beans and dress it up with condiments and the last of the vegetables and eat that and then stir an egg into the leftovers and cut it into pieces and fry it and serve it again like it's a new meal anymore, because what's at stake is my eyesight, my kidneys, my fingers and toes. So when the fresh food has run out, and so has the money, and I need to buy medication, and the car needs petrol because I'm required to be places, then food comes after everything else. Because no-one's going to pay for medicine or petrol, and the debt collectors will still take hundreds of dollars every fortnight even though you've stated quite assertively that you cannot afford it, but you can turn up, brittle with embarrassment and need, and people will give you food, at least a small amount, enough to stretch whatever you have left, at least for a while.

Perhaps this provides some insight about the incandescence of my rage at all the other circumstances that have unfolded, usually in contravention of well-founded, reasonable expectations. The cunning subterfuge of my mother's domestic partner, in concealing her death to spirit all her possessions away before we were even given the space to grieve her loss. The affront of institutional non-response which prevented me from seeking therapeutic care for my substantial injuries following my fall. The trenchant refusal of multiple organisations to grant me job interviews, even when my resume is dripping with a vast body of highly relevant experience. And a plethora of denials, refusals and withholdings of other types of access and support that have been hinted, offered and even overtly promised to me by many people, as I have traversed the half-dreamed other-life that provides the only explanation for the bizarre manner my life has careened off the rails of normal cause-and-effect into this other non-sensical, repeating farce. There is a shape and form to this other-life, and it is peopled by those who have, smilingly, proffered loyalty before slinking off to attend to their own interests with nary a second glance in my direction. That I am absorbing all this loss is immense, that I am absorbing it all without even the most basic material sustenance is unfathomable. And yet it continues. 

My younger self would stand fast in her steady belief of existing in an abundant universe. But this circumstance is not abundant. Not because the universe has changed, but because the underlying abundance has been systematically stripped away before it can reach me. But I am open, Always it seems, to generosity and foolish hope. And I do not wish to suggest here that I have been a wholly passive victim of what has transpired. I have rallied, many times over, tried and re-tried despite the cautious urging of my intuition, which has, it seems, the measure of my reality even better than my clever, rational self. Nothing is what it seems here, and hasn't been for a long time, and yet I am not ready to cede defeat. Even when I have been swamped by my own rage, anguish and despair, I have not laid down arms. And in a non-sensical realm any response is appropriate, and I am aware that I have enjoyed some successes, even when the whole of my trajectory has appeared to be one of impossible dead-ends. But the end result is I do not have the money I need to be living the life I should reasonably expect at this time, and that blunt instrument slugs me on a regular basis in real ways. 

My mother was extraordinarily preoccupied by a narrative of monetary denial, and it pains me that my recent life has been tarnished with a similar-seeming obsession. But obsessed,  I am not. I am merely confronted as anyone would be, in the same circumstances. And it belies the reality that I am an extraordinary person, that I have contributed value to the world well beyond the scope of my ordinary-seeming life, and that I will be remembered for a legacy that few can yet know or guess at. But for all that, I cannot pay to fill the tooth that now gapes, jagged and half-vacant in my jaw. I do not have the means to travel to see my family and friends, while all the big and small occasions of their life pass without me. Is this worth it? Is any of what I have undergone worth what I have lost in the process? This is not something I can answer, even now, because too many parts of the broader whole are hidden from my view. There are too many ambiguities, unmet potentialities, and even future disappointments for me to be able to cast my opinion one way or the other. What I do know, though, is that I cannot seal myself away from the inevitable tides of this existence. I am in it, even when I think myself to be entirely self-directed in my actions. It is what it is, and it has not finished with me yet. 

Anger, then, cannot linger here forever. It burns too quickly and consumes too much. Perhaps the idiotic longevity of this situation has deprived my rage of the oxygen that first caused it to flare. Because this is true: this has gone on for too long, well beyond any sensible reckoning, well outside the parameters of even the most rigorous planning or forecasting. It has stubbornly persisted well beyond even my capacity to survive it, and so I have not, and I have not survived it for so long and so absolutely and even that has caused no cessation and no improvement so the only option left to me is a kind of paradoxical calm. Or maybe I'm just having a good week. Maybe the relief of having been able to buy a few groceries again flicked the PAUSE switch on my still-seething psyche. Maybe I am so burnt out now that my standards have been reset impossibly low, so that even the sun shining for an hour or the prospect of a single job interview is enough to restore me to a giddy sense of wellbeing. What nourishment is this? Whatever it is, it is a welcome reprieve, even though it comes from within and not from any obvious improvement in my fortunes. 

Mixed feelings (in a mellow moment)

It would be both misrepresentative and inaccurate to infer, from my more heated writings, that I spend the majority of my days in a state of ranting, steaming fury. Yes, fury has been a companion to my days for some time, and for good reason, and this is something I have been living with, but it doesn't comprise the fabric of my everyday life. 

I have more mellow moments. I reflect upon my actions, and the manner and form I have chosen to express some of my stronger feelings, and I do not apologise for that. There is a depth of complexity to my life that is not apparent to the observer, and that place of complexity is one of disempowerment, and loss, and an entire spectrum of entirely normal emotional responses. And yes, those responses include anger, and it is proportionate to the  scale of that which I have borne. But anger is not socially acceptable for women. Instead, people plaster over the reality of the very real assaults and injuries that we experience with a thin veneer of judgment which questions our stability, our sanity, our capability, as if fury in the mouth of a woman is always born out of our own personal weakness. And some of you reading this (if I ever decide to give you access again) may already have made that judgment about me. There's not a lot I can do about that. But here, in this space, I am not going to censor my anger. I am not going to pretend that I have not been angry, and that my anger has not been an expression in response to very specific circumstances, which if known would prompt similar responses in anyone else. Nor I am going to assume that you, reader, are incapable of developing a more nuanced understanding of the fuller state of mind that lies underneath my spitting vehemence. Nor will I apologise if my anger provokes your own, for any reason, but especially if you feel that my anger towards you and your actions is misplaced. If nothing else, understand that the depth of my distress has at times overwhelmed my sense of the calm benevolence of my relationship with the world and the people in it, and I have encountered instead an indifference and absence of care that belies the undertakings that people have given me about what to expect from them. And that looks and feels like betrayal, and I've worn the real, practical consequences of it in entirety across multiple spheres of my life for a very long time. So suck up your discomfort, sweetheart. It ain't a patch on what I've been subjected to. And I reserve the right to express that, calmly or hysterically, rationally or passionately, accurately or with all the colourful exaggeration that the strength of my emotion demands, here or anywhere else. 

I might choose, at some future time, to soften the harder edges of some of my words, in recognition that what I have written is only a piece but not all of my experience, that it reflects one aspect but not others. I might, one day, write more about my hopes, about the good I aspire to bring about, about the privilege of living this crazy, unfathomable life, about the joy of sharing it with multitudes of strangers and seeing the unimaginable take form. I might, in a more mellow moment, reflect more fully on my own agency in bringing about what has occurred, the good and also the awful. I might even acknowledge the sense of unseen support, of small, momentary kindnesses, the encouragement that I've taken from near and far, and the very deep respect, affection and gratitude I feel for the people who have given it. None of that outweighs the mad, bad, sad that has been my lot, but it is something that sustains me and it has helped me enormously while staring into the existential maelstrom of my powerlessness. And I am aware that some of my anger has been directed at the same people who have been that source of strength to me. And I will not apologise for that either. Because it goes to the heart of the complexity that has made everything so difficult for me. But neither can I pretend that no strain has been placed on those relationships, or that people I care about might not turn away from me, burdened by an undercurrent of unresolved feeling. But I hope not. I hope they can find the same strength in themselves that they've helped me to find in myself, and that our care for each other is matched by our courage to express it. 

What I am trying to work out

 

What I am trying to work out

- and this is a sincere question -

is why or how (or even when) it is 

~or ever would be - OK for me to be 

so drained financially, in every sense, 

that we cannot afford to buy food.  

How does that represent an OK 

outcome of your planning, your plotting, 

your scheming? How can this be the 

outcome you sought? And yet it seems, 

yet again, that this is entirely the 

desired effect. Look, I’ve pulled the exit cord, 

I’ve signalled in every way at my disposal 

(and some that are not, but I used them 

anyway) that I’m done with this repeating

cycle of penury and lack. And yet still you persist 

with your outrageous misuse of my life. 

What should I do? A member of your

number is hungry - and will be sick, very sick, soon

with that hunger. That hunger has arisen entirely

as the inevitable consequence of all of your

corrosive mendacities. How is it OK - how

was it EVER OK - to treat me like this? 

Yeah, you better believe I am calling

this out - and loudly - and my noise will find

its mark, so that your amused indifference

is revealed for the disgusting sham that it is. 

And every person who willingly allowed this to 

occur, once, twice, or the third 

time now, will be denounced amongst their

peers, yes, this and every time, until

this mode of my suffering is erased 

permanently. And even then your names 

will fall from my parched, worn out mouth 

until nothing is left but the marks of

your crime seared into the shadows 

of the earth.

perhaps

perhaps...