tired.
Since everyone wants to act like I’m constantly hiding something and being purposefully aloof rather than contending with the reality that I am just existing and not constantly performing for their comfort, here is me being truthful.
Truth: I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the summertime, rather than the winter.
Truth: I am, and have always been, passively suicidal/ideative.
Truth: I had a really scary, acute, and active episode of ideation last weekend.
Truth: I have spent much of my adult life trying to re-wire my brain to believe that I matter, am worth showing up for, am worth protecting.
Truth: while I watch everyone move on from and ignore the ongoing pandemic, it becomes hard to believe that.
Truth: I literally cannot afford the consequences of being sick.
Truth: I take carcinogenic medication to keep my autoimmune condition under control.
Truth: I grew up in a house contaminated with radon, and remember that fact when I’m reading a chapter on environmental racism in a book about the toll racism takes on a person’s health.
Truth: the woman in the chapter died of cancer.
Truth: my childhood cat died of cancer.
Truth: my mother died of cancer.
Truth: me keeping myself alive means actively and consciously choosing to raise my cancer risk in the future to prevent my syrup blood and body that attacks itself from heart attack and stroke now. I hope I can kick the can down the road long enough.
Truth: my body and my mind are trying to kill me.
Truth: meds for my body and brain are what keep me alive.
Truth: I am constantly fielding harassment from strangers, cis men in particular, for wearing a mask in public, or for standing up for someone else, or for not allowing them to Generally Terrorize.
Truth: I am constantly having to listen to how meds are a scam for the weak.
Truth: I am constantly asked to yield protecting myself to protect someone’s ego.
Truth: every time I see an invisible arm reach out of someone’s body to pat themselves on the back for putting on a mask when interacting with me, I feel like screaming.
Truth: I have a front row seat to my partner’s grief as his respect for and commitment to protecting me takes precedent over many situations, which doesn’t stave off the loneliness or isolation it creates.
Truth: I know I am villainized and categorized as the controlling problem because the idea that he could care that much about someone like me is unfathomable.
Truth: social media is a window into which circumstances and people qualify me as expendable.
Truth: I am trying to convince myself that all this work to stay alive is worth it.
I missed my meds one day last weekend, and the sea of Pride weekend maskless photos and a shitty horror movie (the IWTV essay is coming, I promise) sent me into a tailspin and these were the result.
I have a lot more writing and art I should be working on, but staying alive right now is taking all my energy.
I’m selling these cause I’m broke, and I feel confident that other people who feel similarly would want them.
If we want people to stay alive, we have to make them a world worth living in
.