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kaberettThis ended up rather bleak. Content notes for victim-blaming, trauma, etc.
I can't remember ever feeling safe: not bone-deep certainty. School wasn't ever safe; home wasn't, really. (Though perhaps I have had glimpses -- my hair, brushed and plaited every morning. The Advent calendar that wasn't chocolate, wasn't cardboard: was a notebook in which we recorded the good things I had done that day. On the cliffs by the Marconi monument, above the gorse and the spray, and no-one within a clear half mile except the cows. In the attic, curled up in the armchair, with a storm howling around the corners of the house outside and a mug of hot milk and newspaper down on the carpet with Mama painting my toenails pink.)
-- and after all that (years after I had learned that school was not safe, and neither was home, and the best I could do was the solitude of the cliffs), I was painstakingly and thoroughly taught to be afraid. Don't walk home alone at night. Don't walk across the commons. Carry your keys between your fingers, like claws. Cross the street to see if you're being followed. Scream "fire", not "help", because it's more likely to get attention. Always, always, always know the closest lit and busy places.
-- and after all that, I realised I was queer and trans and disabled, and now I live in a country with a government that might feign contrition if I died but certainly isn't willing to do anything to stop it.
Like pain, fear is something you can learn to live with. It fades from awareness, only recalled if you are paying attention, or if it burgeons out of the ordinary. I can't spend my life in terror: there is too much that needs doing. It is duller, more distant, and it grinds at me. Let us be clear: I am not trying to shock; I am not trying to paint my life as miserable; and I am most certainly not exaggerating. I am happy, and I love my job, and I love my life, and none of that means I am safe. But: I am resigned to it, you see, and most of the time I notice it not at all.
And it breaks my heart to watch someone learn what it is, to live like this: because I wouldn't wish it on anyone, and because I am bitterly envious.
In all of this my havens are the clifftops and the inside of my head; and it's only recently that the latter has become any kind of haven at all.
My piano teacher once told me that knowledge is one thing that nobody else can ever take away from me. (In a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.) Self-knowledge is the one thing I can do without recourse to anyone else.
The least we can do is make sure their schools are there for them, we say, in Lashings, of LGBT+ kids, in a pair of songs that left me crying uncontrollably the first time I heard them; because, you see, we can't guarantee them anything else, but they can't all wait for tomorrow - so we have to give them their tomorrows today, and this -- if this is all we can do, then for at least some it might be enough.
I have fought for every scrap of my self-knowledge. I have cried myself hollow and screamed myself hoarse and beaten myself bloody and this, this, is what I have won, against the howling of a world that would drown me out. I am afraid, but I am not alone, because you, o my siblings -- many of you have walked this path too, and for all that we could not see one another we were stumbling side by side.
And this is why the least you can do is to respect people's identities: because we are afraid and we are tired and in all probability we cannot ever win ourselves safe -- not even for a while -- but you can make our roads a little less broken, a little less lost. You can give us one less voice to fight against when we assert I am queer, I am trans, we are multitudes, I am ill, I am mad, I am here, I am whole, I am, I am.
for our roads may be golden or broken or lost
but we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
we won't take our place on the shelves
it's better to fly and it's better to die
say the wicked girls saving ourselves
I can't remember ever feeling safe: not bone-deep certainty. School wasn't ever safe; home wasn't, really. (Though perhaps I have had glimpses -- my hair, brushed and plaited every morning. The Advent calendar that wasn't chocolate, wasn't cardboard: was a notebook in which we recorded the good things I had done that day. On the cliffs by the Marconi monument, above the gorse and the spray, and no-one within a clear half mile except the cows. In the attic, curled up in the armchair, with a storm howling around the corners of the house outside and a mug of hot milk and newspaper down on the carpet with Mama painting my toenails pink.)
-- and after all that (years after I had learned that school was not safe, and neither was home, and the best I could do was the solitude of the cliffs), I was painstakingly and thoroughly taught to be afraid. Don't walk home alone at night. Don't walk across the commons. Carry your keys between your fingers, like claws. Cross the street to see if you're being followed. Scream "fire", not "help", because it's more likely to get attention. Always, always, always know the closest lit and busy places.
-- and after all that, I realised I was queer and trans and disabled, and now I live in a country with a government that might feign contrition if I died but certainly isn't willing to do anything to stop it.
Like pain, fear is something you can learn to live with. It fades from awareness, only recalled if you are paying attention, or if it burgeons out of the ordinary. I can't spend my life in terror: there is too much that needs doing. It is duller, more distant, and it grinds at me. Let us be clear: I am not trying to shock; I am not trying to paint my life as miserable; and I am most certainly not exaggerating. I am happy, and I love my job, and I love my life, and none of that means I am safe. But: I am resigned to it, you see, and most of the time I notice it not at all.
And it breaks my heart to watch someone learn what it is, to live like this: because I wouldn't wish it on anyone, and because I am bitterly envious.
In all of this my havens are the clifftops and the inside of my head; and it's only recently that the latter has become any kind of haven at all.
My piano teacher once told me that knowledge is one thing that nobody else can ever take away from me. (In a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.) Self-knowledge is the one thing I can do without recourse to anyone else.
The least we can do is make sure their schools are there for them, we say, in Lashings, of LGBT+ kids, in a pair of songs that left me crying uncontrollably the first time I heard them; because, you see, we can't guarantee them anything else, but they can't all wait for tomorrow - so we have to give them their tomorrows today, and this -- if this is all we can do, then for at least some it might be enough.
I have fought for every scrap of my self-knowledge. I have cried myself hollow and screamed myself hoarse and beaten myself bloody and this, this, is what I have won, against the howling of a world that would drown me out. I am afraid, but I am not alone, because you, o my siblings -- many of you have walked this path too, and for all that we could not see one another we were stumbling side by side.
And this is why the least you can do is to respect people's identities: because we are afraid and we are tired and in all probability we cannot ever win ourselves safe -- not even for a while -- but you can make our roads a little less broken, a little less lost. You can give us one less voice to fight against when we assert I am queer, I am trans, we are multitudes, I am ill, I am mad, I am here, I am whole, I am, I am.
for our roads may be golden or broken or lost
but we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
we won't take our place on the shelves
it's better to fly and it's better to die
say the wicked girls saving ourselves
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-15 01:28 am (UTC)or something.
I am so incredibly honoured that when I started following you you followed me back. you have no idea.
[ps: yesterday afternoon, my long time partner and I went to a local courthouse, signed pieces of paper, declined to state gender on anything, and were legally married by the court commissioner anyway. with a smile and an honest wishing of great joy for our lives. tired? yes. hopeful? yes to that too.]
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-15 01:38 am (UTC)And yes to hope, and thank you for sharing yours.
(asd;faklsfjsldkf I AM NOT THAT COOL I SWEAR <3)