TW: Brief (one line), somewhat graphic mention of past suicidal ideation, brief mention of interpersonal violence
so this is how the night ends:
sitting criss-cross applesauce in bed about to don all my covers
after experiencing a very brief power outage and feeling lucky my powerchair was charged and my hospital bed had an automatic backup battery
after finding out an acquaintance of mine got in a terrible accident, but feeling all sorts of ways about how privilege seeped into even the most tragic event of their life
and realizing that the show People Watching was right when they talked about what life is and what it means when people far enough removed from you experience tragedy or hardship or death and how,
it affects that person personally and seriously, but if you are so removed from someone that they may as well be a concept more so than a being, it is okay to have complicated feelings about how privileged they remain in a situation where you wouldn't be treated the same. Something about tragic accidents and their spectacle that make people feel or care more or better or harder. Something about systemic misogyny and mistreatment and something about the fact that near-death experiences aren't a big deal when it's my friend being attacked on the street or when I needed for full time care after surgery or when I go to the ER in severe pain that almost made me take a rusty razor to my neck.
with prose poems and complex feelings and a little bit of literal darkness mixed in, the flowers of my mind both wilt and cripple like my dear body, as they evolve, as they blossom. Life is full of situations we want to dive head first into, oversaturated with some marred form of care, without ever evaluating the feelings we were taught to repress---so much that in an empty room, we couldn't even say them to ourselves. To be mad or confused when others are in a bad situation and are being treated better than you ever would is not so wrong, nor is eating a cold version of a hot sandwich (that you would typically choose to heat up) at 4:30 in the morning because life, like you and your weird sleeping and eating schedule, is not monolithic. There are still stories to read to our heart's content and stuffed animals to hold and new, clean water bottles to relish. Obligating yourself into mourning is not a requirement, nor should it be; while people flock around others, it is okay to remember your needs that go unmet and the people that you chose to remain close to. Tragedy is a layered experience that is not directly correlated to the level of shock it instills in your peers, and sometimes you are in far too much crisis to consider becoming involved in another just to satisfy some arbitrary level of generosity.
Goodnight to the tragic and the Queers and the cripples, and for a minute, may your minds not be marred by obligation.
origamiaround
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
