Soul Sailing

Dissertation: Proposed

Vaccination: Completed

Qualification Studies: Initializing

Therapeutic Interventions: Productive

Sense of Self: Heightened

Motivation Level: Enhanced

Cumulative Life Experience: Integrating

Energetic Centers: Aligning

Heart Light: Activating

Pathway: Clear

Interpretation: Fun

Limitations: None Detected

I get my feelings from a factory

they say it’s safer than the natural me

taking drugs to stay sober

I have manufactured emotions

and I’ll never know my own truth anymore

they say my energy has a chemical imbalance,

when I see the situations and cycles that flip me like a switch

lock me in a room and let me fester in a worsened wound

no therapy or decency

inject me with an array of manipulations

a delicate system forced under a pen

open my legs and veins to let the prescriptions in

asked to trade my kidney, liver, thyroid, lymphatic system, metabolism, blood sugar, sleep cycle, stomach, skin - no negotiation

if I ask questions I am non-compliant and deserved to be punished for hesitaion

help without hands, believing in me, they wouldn’t take a chance

treating the symptom to worsen the cause, always ask what but never why,

the medical oppressionals hit you where it hurts and leave you dry

Remember, pills are the laziest treatment a healer could provide.

asked for hugs got drugs instead

asked for sleep and got taken out of bed

I needed a healer not a drug dealer

Il ne m'a resté que mon corp, en je n'ai plus que ça, je n'ai que mon âme. Pas mal de n'avoir que mes rêves parce qu'elles sont mon cadeau. Les médecins disent que j'ai une imbalance chimique mais je sais bien que c'est une manque de justice et un surplus de persistance, de peur, de sensibilité aux énergies, des yeux qui voient entre impasses, qui me rende moins calm et stable et qui me pousse hors du corps. La vérité se couche en silence, elle dors dans une monde sans questions, et elle se réveille toute seule tout au coup chaque ans à cause d'une breve association mentale - un son, un mot méchant, une question politique, une date. Mais, sans doute, il ya a des inverses. Il y a des réponses aux priers oubliés en moments beaux. Il y a des contracts signés en âme sans papier. Il y a des entrances aux risques avec confidence. Il y a des pertes que je ne veux plus. Il y a des amours incroyables qui m'emmènent aux joie. Il y a des dieux et de la musique et de la magie, en qui je trop crois, ils disent. Ils me font acheter mes sentiments d'une usine, elles sont illégales en moi quand elles sont sans limitations.

So when I was going through manic psychosis, I felt that I was physically transforming due to the phsyical symptoms like sudden drastic weight loss, tremors, shaking, and feeling like i was being raped by a ghost or that my vagina was turning inside out. I thought maybe I’m becoming involuntarily transgender because my family is cursed and that my transgender cousin was taken by the same aliens that are taking me to mutilate me and take me to Mars. Because my name is Caroline and I’m “down to Mars,” according to Outkast anyway.

But the whole time for weeks I thought that my concerned and stressed friends and the voices in my head at the height of psychosis were trying to pass me through the veil into the next world where my body was being created. I thought that the twitching in my eyebrows and all over my body were these spirits trying to trace over my form to recreate it in the next realm. I thought my friends were stressed that I would move and mess up something and that I’d be missing an essential organ or that my hands and face would be jacked up. They told me why don’t I write or draw to ease my racing thoughts, but when I opened my notebook I found decade old math equations and drawings of my own body parts. I thought that my friend was offering to do my make up and help me take a bath so that she could trace my features and send the info on to the other side / aliens. I thought that the “angels are aliens” and that it was like the rapture, we’d all be moving on soon because of covid and global warming but instead of passing on we’d be moving to Andromeda. I thought that I was always being asked questions to gather information and prepare my next form.

If someone has chronic bronchitis, no one forces them on cough medicine even if they can't work full-time because of it for months. Cough syrup suppresses cough and wouldn't cure the fact that I was living in a rat-infested apartment because that's all I could afford as a grad student.

Now, I have bipolar, and I can't safely get off the meds I was forced on. I could have been helped getting to sleep like I asked instead of being got out of bed to go to the ER by colleagues who never even had a real conversation with me in my life. Apparently I’m supposed to be grateful because I “couldn’t function” at work for a few weeks. Oh no, never that. How dare I need a break during a pandemic.

My life is a hell because of what I went through in the hospitals. I am constantly conflicted. I have gained 10lbs from seroquel and have skin rash from Lamictal. But that’s ok, because I’m such a burden, I deserve to suffer.

Who really gives a fuck about feeling happy on psychiatric drugs? They don’t make me “feel better,” they just help prevent me having a crisis. Which honestly, I think surviving sexual assaults is a perfectly fine reason to have a crisis and need help from human beings but apparently none of them are capable of helping. So here I am, poisoning myself because thats’ the best care I can get in this society.

Every pill I swallow is destroying my body slowly. Oh sure, I might have made some progress in my career or blah blah blah. I want my body back. I want my bodily autonomy. If I wanted drugs to heal, I would have asked for them.

Vein rape. Brain rape. And I can’t get off of it without consent of the rapist.

Remember people holding onto each limb in the air and injecting me with drugs in the mental hospital. Pinning my arms behind my back to the ground and spreading my legs and injecting drugs into my thigh. Blacking out. Happening all over again. Declaring me “not a threat” at 60lbs and unaware of my location because I kicked one of the men on my feet in the balls.

Feel like I’m a criminal for needing help. Fuck me if I ever need help again. Apparently I deserve to be hit when I’m down by the “mental healthcare professionals.”

An alarm for when you are loosing to something in your brain, when the poles are pulling apart. My own rosary.

I had a prayer for when the icicle dripping up from the north pole to mars became too thin. I thought that the ice dripped over a rope of my roommate’s braid. I though that fairy tales were in her braids, because she was a fairy tale writer. I thought the fairies might live in these long braids and would drip into my mind’s meadows. A darkness that sews the divine, the mortal, and everything twisted in between to either blue or green.

My Lithuanian teacher’s friend Agnes lives in Estonia, close enough to the top of the world. I thought if I prayed to Aunt Agnes she could help me. I prayed for ice packs, ice facts, ice vax... to ice over the slitting world, to find out the facts about the children imprisoned on the boarded as I was imprisoned myself, and the covid vaccine.. I feared that I had been tested for the vaccine by aliens when I was sexually violated in the hospital in Jiujiang, about 5 hrs from Wuhan the same week the pandemic hit, this week 7 years ago. 

I also sputtered out the pen name of my Icelandic friend, flörbláur már (might have spelled it wrong. It means purple blackbird and I imagined that he was a beautiful glowing purple butterfly fluttering down from the Arctic to help me. He is a person who sends love to me.

I also listened to a lot of Dance Gavin Dance in the pandemic and love the song Chocolate Jackelope, so I’d think of my boss’s taxedemied Jackelope in the office and think, jacke-nope... and then, hope, it was like taking a detour in my mind’s highway.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. This is why I believed when I learned I’m bipolar. Studying the slavery in the Arctic by the Soviets during George Floyd’s death and aftermath was really unsettling to know how much slavery affected this planet in time and space. Also seeing the world come together in outrage over attacking an innocent man at his chest made me realize that the attacks I survived alone were unacceptable too, but that I never trust anyone enough to be open about my pain. It also seemed that my pain was being addressed on a global scale, which led to the grandiose sensibility. 

Čia yra mano feministės dienoraṧtis. Aš prisimenu kai keliavau Kinijoje, prie Lí Upės. Kadangi mano studentai tikrino egzaminus, atostogavau į kalnus, tik aš. Visas kitas anglu kalbos mokytojas mieste turėjo darbą kaip kasdien, bet aš buvau laisva, todėl aš nenorėčiau būti namie. Tebebuvau Kinijoje, todėl norėčiau žiūrėti daugiau. Vieną vakarą, kada keliavau Europoje, mielas vyras autobuse sakė kad man reikia važiuoti į Guilin kalnus, jeigu aš būčiau kada nors Kinijoje, nes jie yra gražiausia ir įdomiausia kalnai pasaulyje. Aš prisimenu, kad keliavau su traukiniu iš Jiujiang į Guilin per septynioliką valandas! Kaip ilgai! Radau valtį kelionę ir susitikau jauną moterį. Vakare, radau bendrabučius ir po to, radau lovą. Tikrai, lova ir valtis yra viena žodis kinų kalboje - įdomu! Kadangi miegovau su žmonėmis, susitikau jaunus kinus žmones. Mes buvome apie dešimt. Kalbėjome angliškai ir kiniškai, sakome kad mes norėtume ateiti į miestą rytą, per visus dvylikas mylias!

Rytą, pusryčiaujome kartu ir aš prasidėjau su dvi jaunais vyrais. Gatvėje, žiūrėjau į gražų vabaliukų, kaip aš niekada nežiūrėjau pasaulyje! Kokios spalvos! Klausėmės upę, žiūrėjome į aukštų ir apvalų kalnus. Ėjome per upę ir prieš mažus kaimus. Vakare, upė tekėjo greičiau negu diena. Mes negalėjome keliauti per upę, nei būti mieste naktį. Mums reikėjo miegoti kaime, lauke pagal lietų ir mėnulio. Miegojome lauke mokykloje. Nebuvo restoranu kaime, todėl mes ėjome pas seną moterį ir mes davome jai pinigų. Ji virė didelę puodą sriubos. Mokykloje, per naktį, man reikėjo tualeto, bet radau tris didelių ir baugus vabalas! Radau akmens, ir po to radau kraują. Nežinojau, apie tris minutes, iš kur kraujos atėjo. Kai žiūrėjau į mėnulį, žinojau, kad buvo tik aš, nei vyrai, nei gyvūnai su žaizdais, bet moteris sveika, rami, laisva! Aš prisimenu visas senas svarbas istorijas knyguose apie didelius karus pasaulyje, apie svarbus ir stiprus vyrus, bet aš buvau panaši, ir ramesnis ir laimingesnis pamėnulyje! Laimėti yra turėti šypsotį naktyje, kada nežmonės negali nežiurėti, ir būti negėda. Rytą, žinojau, kad vaikai žiūrės į kraują ir manės apie drakonų, ir žmonės tikrai nežino sveikatos ir istorijos moterų.

Here is my feminist blog. I remember traveling in China, by the Lí River. Because my students checked the exams, I was on vacation in the mountains, just me. Every other English teacher in town had a job like every day, but I was free so I wouldn’t want to be home. I was still in China, so I would love to see more. One evening when I was traveling in Europe, a cute man on the bus said I would need to ride to the Guilin Mountains if I were ever in China because they are the most beautiful and interesting mountains in the world. I remember traveling by train from Jiujiang to Guilin in seventeen hours! How long! I found a boat trip and met a young woman. In the evening, I found dorms and after that, found a bed. Sure, bed and boat are one word in Chinese - interesting! Because I slept with people, I met young Chinese people. We were about ten. We spoke English and Chinese, we say we would like to come to town in the morning, all twelve miles!

Has anyone else been sexually harassed in a mental hospital? Spent over a week with a man who kept asking for lap dances and to take me home to train me as his exotic dancer in his basement. The staff wrote in their notes that I am “scared of men.” They said if I can’t handle one man I can stay in a room with 15 men, some who are violent offenders. I spent the whole time cowering and had to be hid in under a desk because of rape threats. No way was I going to recover in that place.

trigger warning for sexual assault

When I moved to Paris in 2012, I was having a hard time getting adjusted. I couldn’t call my parents because they didn’t have internet. But I called my childhood friend and she told me to stop being so scared to talk to the guys in the streets who’d approach me. I was nervous that my accents would reveal how vulnerable I was. I knew no one. School didn’t start for a week. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for a week. I went to the dorm kitchen to make my first real meal. I could feel a cold coming on. I decided to make a nice vegetable soup, because I was a vegetarian. I started talking to a man from Magreb in French. It was my first French conversation outside of a classroom. He invited me to have tea while our food simmered. He locked the door behind me. I asked him to open it, and he did. I became uncomfortable and went back to check my soup. He was talking fast and I kept saying “uh huh” but I didn’t catch it all. I was not really interested. Suddenly he touched my hair, and said in English, “You are a very beautiful woman.” I was wearing sweats and a turtleneck sweater. I said thanks and piled dishes and knives onto the cutting board, the board onto the boiling pot, and left the room to eat alone. I wanted to eat in the kitchen, but not after that. I was walking away when I saw him exit. He was quite far away. Then I heard him running. He grabbed me from behind and squeezed my boobs and kept groping me while laughing. I was frozen and couldn’t defend myself without dropping boiling soup and knives on my shoe-less feet. I stood in disbelief and said, “excuse me” in the meekest way imaginable trying to sound angry when in fact I was terrified. I opened my door, put my food down, and climbed into the corner of the bed. 

I sat there for hours. I didn’t look at anything or listen to music because I didn’t want to feel. I was numb. I did not cry. I did not move. The curtains were orange, the windows had bars, the room was small like a jail cell.. No one in all of Europe knew me. No one from home asked about me. I didn’t know what to say or who to call. No one at home could help me on another continent. No one at home knew how to survive in France. My parents would always say that I am too smart to be assaulted. I felt stupid. I realized that telling my family might make them encourage me to come home, but I wanted to start my life as a traveler. And I had a $10,000 scholarship to study as part of my own school abroad, Columbia University. I was the first in my family to go to college, and this was the only college I applied to. I had no other options. If I quit school in Paris, it would be the same as dropping out. I thought of going to the police or hospital, but I just had bruises. I didn’t want to speak French about it. I heard stories of women not being believed in France because groping might not seem like a crime there.

I remember the first day I entered Ireland. It was about 9 years ago last week. I flew with a friend and a friend of a friend from Paris to Dublin. I was approaching the passport check when I noticed the signs. In huge letters, arranged in ways I’d never seen before, in any language. It was nothing like French, Spanish, German, English.. any language nearby. i mBaile Átha Cliath. I had no idea how the m could stand like that in front of the B. And I realized I had no idea what kind of place I was entering. It was not some mere neighbor of England, there was something powerful underneath and up above the signs. So I asked myself in wonder and a bit of fear, “What kind of place is this?” I didn’t expect an answer, but inside my mind came a thunderous reply, “This is your last place.” “Uh,...” “You’ll go no further.” “In...in this life?” Like a review of the message, it continued. “In this life, you will go no further. This is your last place.” And like a phone in my head it hung up, and my friends beckoned to me, “Are you coming?” I looked ahead and ran up to the gate, my first step in a lifelong adventure.