Dreamer Depression

They will serenade me soon

Reminder that fat disabled people can be queer. They can be bi, pan, lesbian, gay, ace. They can be trans. They can be loud and provocative, or gentle and soft. Fat disabled people can be desired and can also desire. They can be saucy, and flirtatious. They can feel at home in their own bodies, and they can make love to themselves. Fat disabled people can be seductive, and surprising. They can attract men, or women, or any gender beyond, combined, or in between. They can enjoy what they look like in the mirror, or in risque clothes.

Fat disabled people can love the feel of their body pressed to another's, or be turned on when their partner writes a smutty text to them. They can be bold or inhibited, they can be coy. Fat disabled people can feel sexy when they move from their mobility devices to the bed. They can feel hot in their sex swings, and on their wedges, or using their canes. They can feel sexy when their partners fingers sink into the flesh of their thighs, and bellies, and buttocks. Fat disabled people can be kinky. They can be dominant, submissive, or switch.

Like a billion universes expanding

Or the electricity of new lovers longing to embrace

So enormous it feels as if I need to shed my skin

and release my soul

I'm a ball of emotion swirling and churning

Each feeling struggling for the surface

I can't connect them into a cohesive flow

Each one dominates for a fleeting moment before the next takes over

I want to express my inner experience with words

My queerness

A gift buried deeply inside

Those around me tried to destroy it

They taught me it was something to hide

For years I wasn't sure it existed

It was something I tried to deny

But I carried it with me forever

A gift buried deeply inside

I believed that love was important

I didn't want others to feel this shame

So I put on the face of an ally

Pretended the gift wasn't mine to claim

I went through all of the motions

Pretended I was average and whole

But the emptiness pervaded reality

A life of playacting took it's toll

Strong was this gift that I carried

It fought against my attempt to control

I cried, and I anguished, was harried

The gift's edges were tearing a hole

In the place where I grew my compassion

For others, the world, now my soul

Time passed and this box that I carried

became so heavy, it caused pain

I couldn't hide the gift any longer

I began to accept the joy it could bring

The freedom of living unburdened

Of knowing who you're truly to be

The voices of the church grew quiet

I hear them less as I begin to break free

I pull carefully on the end of the ribbon

Tied tight to the gift buried within me

I loosen it's box from the trappings

Of sinew and muscle and bone

Queerness hiding for more than two decades

The twisting pain creeping through my body

Upwards to entangle my mind

I want to press the words to the page

Like my trauma presses upon me

The pressure so great

I want to make the paper feel all the things I feel

But the words won't come

How do you speak truth through the pain

How do you make the words dance on the page when they are sharp fragments unable to be organized

When each time your hand grasps the pen a hundred tiny fragments cut your fingers

When the depth of meaning you need to convey is too great for language to encompass

And you feel pain from this too, the trauma has taken away your self expression only adding to the distress

I want to share, to assuage, to commiserate but the pain refuses me the task

It was dystopian, a freeze frame from a horror movie-- it was cinematic. This was real, I was suddenly projected into reality that I only experienced through characters in film and fiction. But this was my reality, this was my dystopia.

As time went on the powers at be tried to remove these reminders that we were living through something unprecented, they began to push the narrative that it was all over. No more false attempts at togetherness, no more collective unity, this was over. Everyone go back to work, go back to normal. Meanwhile more and more people are suffering. They're getting evicted, they're being denied care, doctors and nurses are quitting in droves--but the signs are gone. So if you're not evicted, suffering, sick, or overworked, you get to turn up the music and pretend the world is perfect from within the confines of your car.

Before you know it a cop is breathing down your neck baton in hand--you run--adrenaline screeching through your veins. You didn't know you could go this fast, your chest hurts, every breath becomes a struggle. Your lucky to get out of the cloud of gas without total incapacitation. But they're still on your heels, no time to rest.

Then abruptly they stop running. It's some sick cat and mouse game, most of their intent is to attempt to reassert their power over you.