It takes more than medication to heal mental illness

CN: I discuss suicide, and depression. If you need someone to talk to about any of those issues, please don’t hesitate to PM me, or contact the excellent helplines available.

I’m not extremely good at talking about my feelings, or at least not in a way that I find productive. I have a tendency to find captive listeners (captive, not captivated) and repeatedly tell them the same stories. Maybe I have a need to return to the same things, rehash the same ideas, consider the issue from multiple angles, before I ever find ‘peace’ with it.

I’ve been diagnosed as Bipolar, and I think I really try to rationalise all the ways my mentally ill behaviour could actually just be my personality, so that I feel like a normal person. But I’m not. Though I do wonder what normal is, and how we can define mental illness without defining typical mental health. 

I am very critical of my own behaviour, to the point of self-abuse. I think a lot of people do this, but I genuinely and truly believe I deserve it. Except when I’m (hypo) manic and think that no one is as smart as me or as attractive or talented or whatever it is that I’ve fixated on as a measure of how ‘good’ a person is. Then when I inevitably realise that I’m actually just a person, not some insane savant celebrity rockstar, I hate myself for believing that I’m anything other than equal or less than everyone else. 

I live in my brain and the future, past, never present, constantly stressed about a prior wrong or future problem. I think people hate me, even when told I am loved, and I constantly wonder why their behaviour doesn’t match up with my perception. I feel alone in roomfuls of people, in relationships, in life, because I don’t trust that anyone understands how truly shit I am. This makes it easy for me to get into relationships that are very toxic for me, because I literally ask to be told I’m not a good person, believing myself not worthy of positive affection. I am desperately trying to fix this, to heal myself, to scramble around sewing up my open wounds and recover from a childhood which has truly wreaked havoc on the way I see the world.

There is, as they say, a statute of limitations on blaming your parents for your problems, and I don’t really, not anymore, but I think the subtext there probably needs to say more clearly that you also don’t need to transfer that blame to yourself once you’ve moved away. My problems (I try to tell myself) are never my fault, but the way I handle them and use them in relation to other people is something I need to constantly reevaluate. It has taken me awhile to admit to the things which have scarred me, to call them by name and attempt, by doing so, to limit the power they have over me. 

I will not discuss a lot of what I feel has happened to me here, but suffice to say that it is the way that I responded to these things and continue to respond I am most concerned with. I was taught as a child that what most people consider great was just what was expected. (Straight As: ‘Well that’s what you should be getting’, etc.) I saw my peers getting praise and felt very maligned, but became pathological in my need for demonstrable success. This ended up turning into a battle between perfectionism and coasting on as little effort as possible and seeing what I could get away with. Boasting, insinuation, outright lying- I’ve done it all in pursuit of appearing as accomplished as possible, and as sane. 

I regret a lot of that, because my unwillingness to dedicate myself to one area fully (for fear of failure, or lack of what I deem success) is a difficult habit to break. I have gone towards music, performance, academia, science, and turned my back when it got too hard or meant I would have to do more than the minimal effort. 

Lately I’ve been very contemplative about this, as I struggle yet again with medication and psychiatric care, and my theory on the holistic nature of mental illness. It seeps into all aspects of life, and rips away a sense that happiness can really ever be achieved. I tried to kill myself in January and found that desperate place wherein I think to myself that no matter how much work I do to erase the guilt for things I have done in my past, it will never get better.

It is hard when the narrative, so frequently, is that one bad action makes people ‘bad’ forever. Cheating, lying, stealing, even moments in relationships where you say something manipulative or abusive, if they happen once and then you grow and learn and apologise and forgive, they’re not a sentencing to forever being defined as ‘bad’. It’s far more subtle than the black and white good bad story we tell ourselves. Also, if one terrible action is enough to mark someone as bad forever, why is one great action not enough to mark someone as good forever? The discussion seems to be very negatively oriented in that regard.

But I have cheated. And I have lied. And I have been the toxic person in relationships. But I also received toxic and controlling behaviour in those relationships, and while I pour apologies and weep guilt and try to build myself a healthy foundation of love for the future, I do not expect or even believe that those who have maligned me much in the way that I have maligned them should have to apologise or feel badly. It’s partially lack of self-respect, certainly, but I also think it’s the fault of holding myself to an insanely high standard. I only wish the people in my past the best, and hope that the ways I have interacted with them do not create impermeable scars. I watch, hopeful, because if they are happy then hopefully the mistakes I have made were not truly so horrible that they could not move on from them. 

But that’s not helpful or healthy or productive either. I remember when I started cognitive behavioural therapy and started drawing up the charts about events, feelings, reactions, and the advice you would tell a friend, my psychologist told a little story. He said if you’re walking along the street and you step in dog shit, there are different ways people respond. You might get angry, furious that someone would let their dog shit in the street and wanting to find the owner and hit them. You might be self-abusive, telling yourself how stupid you were for stepping in shit because you should have looked where you were going. Or, he said, you might say, at least I was wearing shoes! Events and how you feel about them or react to them shape your cognitive response, and the more often you think about an event and thrust yourself into feelings of guilt and sadness, the more easily it comes every time. And I might have taken the shit in someone’s path once or twice in my life, (and I apologised, unlike most dogs) but I can also choose to accept that shit happens (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I don’t have to keep thinking about the times I’ve been awful and trying to analyse the behaviour of others to interpret how they felt or how they are feeling, because it’s not really helping me grow. The first 30 times, maybe, but after that it’s just to diminish my own self-worth.

I do it with small stuff too, and I still struggle to accept that I am allowed to not be a perfect person 100% of the time. I have, however, learned that I don’t need to seek out attention from people who are poorly equipped to give it to me, and that I do not need to stay with people because they want me to, and I do not owe anyone my time or affection unless I want them to have it. I make mistakes. I try to tell myself it is fine.

This stuff hurts. It hurts tremendously when someone has to cut you out of their life. It hurts to not be seen as hurting. It hurts to ache for the love I could have given or received. It hurts to be so vulnerable. It hurts to need so much attention. It hurts to realise how little self-regard I have. It hurts to know I cannot control my mental illness all the time. It hurts to know I control it so well that my struggles are ignored by my partners and friends. It hurts that I don’t let people in. It hurts that I let people in who are not the right people to confide in. It hurts that I want so badly to treat everyone with dignity and respect and affection and I can’t. It hurts that I don’t know what’s best for myself. It hurts that I have to learn to be strong. It hurts to cry so often. It hurts. It hurts. It always hurts. It hurts to have to take medication just for being a little bit different. It hurts that it doesn’t help erase years of conditioning. It hurts that I still don’t believe I have a mental illness. It hurts. It always, always hurts. It hurts to know that there is so much hurt that is so much more serious than mine. Not because I want mine to be the worst, but because I want no one to suffer. It hurts that I suffer. It hurts that I made people suffer. It hurts that I have been made to suffer. It always hurts. 

I am struggling. I have been struggling for a long time, but most recently since September. I have had struggles with my depressive side, sinking into a deep sadness which has not really lifted other than brief respites, plunging down and up and mainly staying just below the surface. I have struggled to feel like I belong in my MA course, because I still feel like an imposter in my degree, since I wasn’t interested in it until later on in life and even now it’s not particularly my greatest passion. I have struggled to accept that I cannot have expectations for myself in the degree because I find it too stressful, even though my normal effort is actually significant. I have struggled to make clear how much I downplay the time and effort I put in. I have struggled to do work, but I have struggled to not. I do not know how to feel like I am recognised, valuable, important. I cry whenever someone is told how significant they are, how much effort or work they are doing, because I long for someone to recognise how much energy and time I put into everything that I do because of how much I struggle and how much I hurt. 

But I don’t want to tell anyone. Because telling someone how much I do feels like I’m giving up on pretending I am capable, confident, happy, and fine. It’s easy to pretend, safe. Hiding behind a shield of capability is easy. But it’s also incredibly hard. And I don’t want to have my efforts go unnoticed. Not anymore.

Everyone deserves the right to be heard, and not just heard, but listened to. And I have felt very alone because I don’t let myself be heard or listened to, and I hate it. 

I am crying now, and hoping that someone will read this and maybe understand a little bit of what I carry with me. 

'You and Me and the Devil Makes Three': A Review

It struck me, as I entered slightly late into the London Theatre (where I saw 'You and Me and the Devil Makes Three' before it makes its move tonight to the Bread & Roses Theatre in Clapham) that this tiny space, which the venue proudly states is the smallest purpose built theatre in the UK, was not very full. It is my belief that new writing needs audiences to really develop, so that new pieces of theatre can be created and appreciated. 'You and Me and the Devil Makes Three' should be seen.

The Peasant's Club's 'You and Me and the Devil Makes Three', written by Chesper Harland and Charlie Wolf, focuses on the relationships between Tig, Chris, and Roo. Chris and Roo's relationship struggles following the birth of an unplanned child, while Tig, an old friend who has been forced by his circumstance to live in their flat, serves as intermediary. Another old friend of Roo's, Lottie, has a long standing crush on Tig, but he brings a new partner into the flat, the mysterious Maria, whose appearance sparks the action of the play.  The struggles and secrets revealed while Maria toys with Chris, Roo, and Lottie, brings the tension bubbling between these characters to boiling point.

The show's writing, which makes promising inroads to the ambitious and varied political topics of mental health, gender expression, parenting, relationships, domestic violence, and even housing, is unfortunately the weakest element of what was ultimately an engaging and enjoyable piece of performance. For what was only an hour long piece of theatre the focus was muddled by the preponderance of topics, and the abrupt ending came at the expense of truly exploring the depths of the characters and their relationships, and also led to some inconsistency in character development. The use of bigotry against the Roma people as comic relief also felt hackneyed, though it did produce a lot of laughs for the rest of the audience. There was a huge amount of promise in the exploration of Chris' character, and a show which focused solely on him might ultimately be the better one.

The acting on a whole was excellent, with a compelling performance (and excellent singing) by David Walker as Chris centring the show, alongside the strong and nuanced performance by Amy Melley as Roo. Ruari Cannon also had great commitment as Tig, including a good sense of timing, and the ensemble was well rounded out by the comedic portrayal of Lottie by Mai Elphinstone and the imperviousness of Maria was presented well by Alexis Han-Holdren. The ensemble as a whole made the show.

Considering the small budget, the squalid flat setting designed by Alys Woodhead felt believable and enhanced the sense of claustrophobia present in these characters' lives, and the direction of Phil Bartlett clearly gave great space for the performances of the actors to develop.

While 'You and Me and the Devil Makes Three' might be let down by its somewhat convoluted writing, it is an engaging piece of theatre and worth seeing, and worth further development.

***

'You and Me and The Devil Makes Three' is at The Bread & Roses Theatre from 24.11.15-28.11.15 at 7:30pm. Running Time is 75 minutes. Tickets £10, £8 concession. It is produced by MSP.

Fun Home, or why this musical made me cry before I have had a chance to see it

Fun Home, merely by virtue of its presence in the mainstream, means so much more to me than people might think.

I have always been a tomboy, and for a lot of my life that fit in with the activities I pursued (sports, being 'obviously a lesbian' according to society's odd ideas of sexuality), but it definitely never fit in with my love of performing musical theatre. For a while when I thought I wanted to be an actress, I grew out my hair and started to lose weight. I also wore very feminine outfits to auditions. This was entirely unquestioned by a lot of the people in the theatre industry whom I encountered, and in some ways encouraged. I don't blame them for this, because the message from all sides is that the only roles for women in musical theatre (and really, theatre in general) are for women who fit a very limiting aesthetic. It felt like the choice I had was to either give up who I loved being to do what I loved or give up doing what I loved in order to be who I loved being. I chose the latter, and I don't necessarily regret it. I certainly enjoy my academic pursuits and have even started writing my own musicals.

But that joy, 'the thrill of the greasepaint', felt entirely out of my reach just by virtue of preserving my sanctity of self. The discussions that actors and actresses have, asking each other what their dream roles are, were full of tension for me, who felt more comfortable with male characters and male clothing than the female characters whom I was limited to playing. There was no room for me or women who looked like me onstage. It hurt, when I had so much love for the musical, for singing, for acting, to feel ostracised. Unwelcome, uninvited. I know there are other actors and actresses who bravely and boldly continue on, even knowing they either have to obfuscate who they are or hope that certain roles will come up. I am not that brave, or patient. Maybe I didn't 'want' it enough.

I have since discovered that there are many other places and ways that the alternative body can make its way into the performance lexicon, but it's not immediately obvious, and in any case, there shouldn't need to be specialist study done in order to discover that theatre has room for all.

And once I had settled into realising I could put or write butch characters, alternative characters, characters for anyone at all to play, into the work I was writing (including a musical which I cast completely gender, and its range of expression, blind), there came Fun Home. I read Alison Bechdel's graphic novel in the first year of my degree in drama, almost two and a half years ago. It was a gift and I cherish it. When the musical first started making waves (I first read about it on the Slate article that Jill Dolan mentions in her more insightful blog entry) I was shocked.

It was the first time I thought, 'Wow, that's a role I could play'. I had never seen 'me' onstage before. I went from have no genuine dream roles to two (Medium Alison and Alison) even before I'd heard the music, and hearing the music made me cry deep, heavy tears about what that representation meant to me. To quote 'Changing My Major', "Overnight, everything changed. I am not prepared. I'm dizzy. I'm nauseous. I'm shaking. I'm scared. Am I falling into nothingness or flying into something so sublime?"

That Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron have won Tonys, and that Fun Home has won best musical, seems to have answered Slate's question: 'Is America ready for a Musical about a Butch Lesbian?' with a resounding yes.

I didn't even know how to think or what to feel, but my answer was yes, too. Yes to feeling represented, yes to feeling hope, and yes to participating in a musical theatre that has proven it won't be impossible to write dream roles for everyone to play.

On Accepting Weakness.

So I haven't posted in what, over a year? And there have been many, many things that have happened, both personally and politically, that I could have blogged about during that time, but I kind of abandoned it.

There are of course compelling things occurring all over the world that need discussion and examination, but right now I feel like being more introspective and personal.

One of the things which I tend not to do is either a) admit my faults, or b) share them. I spend a lot of time examining my actions, and like most people with self-esteem issues I tell myself how awful it was for me to do such things and how I could have or should have done something different. Some of the time I am right, and it leads to productive change, but other times I am wrong and it just leads to self-abuse.

There are a few faults that I would like to discuss in this post, and the first is my tendency to emotionally detach from most people. More specifically, my tendency to hold everyone at arms length unless I decide they are the privileged few who get to see me at my weakest. I don't frequently let people through that barrier and when I do I often push them back out and throw it up again. This prevents me from dealing with my issues in a lot of ways, because erasing one's own support system is not exactly the wisest choice when you're struggling with emotional issues.

The specific story I'm dancing around here is that I was in what was a very powerful relationship for me two years ago which shook me up and spat me out and left me behaving in a pattern I can only call 'crazy ex'. I don't really support calling people crazy so for the purposes of this blog I'll stick with intrusive and inconsiderate, because I see quite clearly the negative results of my behaviours. I don't know if we all go through this at some point, but I was somewhere in a rabbit hole, so desperately in love and unwilling to admit my hurt that I basically steamrolled over a lot of people in attempts to pretend that I was fine and had closure. It was not pretty. I lied, I used people, I purposely tried to stir up trouble, and I ended up doing what I had so often judged people for in the past- I rebounded.

I rebounded so hard that I'm still surprised the WNBA hasn't offered me a contract (Excuse me, I have to use my bad sense of humour to diffuse this).

And in the process I hurt someone whom I had no right to hurt. She had no way of knowing the depths of my attachment, and though she ignored some major hints, it was absolutely my fault for lying through my teeth about how I felt about my recently ended relationship, and the level of contact I continued to have with that person.

There is a chance that if I had not been holding most all of my friends, who are lovely, caring people, at arm's length, that I would not have maligned someone in attempts to soothe my emotional wounds.

As a side note I should say the reason I'm telling this publicly is that I think very often we tend to assume people who are generally 'good' cannot also behave poorly. And that we assume, quite often, that the reverse is also true; that people who have made mistakes and behaved in a reprehensible way in one aspect of their lives must therefor be reprehensible in all aspects of their lives.

Part of the reason I've struggled with this is because of my tendency to assume the latter, in fact, and I have wondered quite a lot if I still have the right to call myself a good person, but I think part of the process of being good is reflecting on what we have done that is not 'good' so that we may learn from it.

Part of the reason I think it was so hard for me to understand that what I was doing was so unquestionably bad is because of this theory of absolutism. I'm a generally good person. Sure, I talk about myself an awful lot, but if I get extra change I give it back, if I find someone's lost property I will find a way to return it to them, I speak up about injustices when I see them happening around me, and I make a concerted effort to respect most people.

But there I was, disrespecting someone. Someone who saw me doing good things, being kind, listening, caring, but being very, very selfish. The juxtaposition was not a good one. I waited a week between being broken up with by someone I was very much in love with and then going on a first date with someone who I did end up loving, albeit badly. That alone speaks volumes.

I'm not sure now how I thought that would go, or how I was so far in denial that I assumed I was fine to start dating, but it happened. And throughout this new relationship I would converse with my prior partner and make unfavourable comparisons in my head. I spent a long time googling what rebound relationships looked like in order to irrationally rationalise my way out of being in one. When I started actually realising what was going on and caring about what I was doing, I tried to end things (multiple times) but I did it in a terrible way. I tried to make her responsible, rather than admitting to myself just what my culpability in the situation was. I would break up with her, then feel that sweeping sense of loneliness, and desperately ask for her back again. I used her as a life raft.

This is not to say that there weren't some parts of the relationship that were enjoyable, or that under better conditions we still wouldn't have been in a relationship, but rather that under the conditions I was experiencing, I created a relationship that had no choice but to become toxic. How does one go about apologising for instating an emotional reign of terror? It's not really like you can find someone you dragged through your emotional crap for a year and say 'gee whiz, I hope you can forgive me', because they don't have to and you don't really deserve their forgiveness.

On the other hand, you do have to forgive yourself. Self-forgiveness, however, doesn't mean you tell yourself you were justified in your behaviour or that what you did was totally a-ok. It means you recognise your behaviour was bad but rather than dwell on the past choose to use the lessons you learned to become a better person in the future. Self-forgiveness is what allows us to be productive. If I incessantly beat myself up into shreds over my actions I would become a much worse and more warped person. Letting go of that indulgent feeling of guilt means I can spend more time improving myself and preventing these sorts of things from happening again. It also stops making what happen about myself. Guilt, in a way, is very selfish. You do something bad and hurt people, and guilt (which I define differently than remorse) is a way of saying 'my pain at doing this is worth more of my mental effort than addressing what pain they feel'. You can feel remorse for doing something without allowing it to become the centre of your focus.

And because I allowed my own feelings of guilt to take over my emotional landscape, I lashed out and made negative choices with both of those people, amongst others. I alienated people I cared deeply about because I was being so incredibly selfish by not forgiving myself, and by not seeking support from the correct sources. When you focus on yourself, you cannot open yourself up to the other person, and you cannot see what they need from you.

This is why I think it's critically important to accept your own weaknesses, because you better yourself and your relationships with others when you deal with what makes you vulnerable. My learning curve on this has been incredibly slow, and continues to be slow, but I am learning, finally.

I can see that these people I have hurt have incredibly complex lives which my guilt erased. When you assume that your actions are the worst things happening to them, when you indulge your guilt by thinking how you must have ruined their lives and shattered them and how awful you are, you're forgetting that most likely they have other things going on. When you forgive yourself you become able to care about them wholly rather than as how they relate to you. And that is the basis of real apologies, when you put what matters to someone else first, rather than what matters to you.

Which is why, painfully, I cannot simply say sorry- because in certain situations you're just inserting yourself where you don't belong, and the best 'apology' is putting the other person first.

The Gossip on Gender Roles in the Metro

So I'm not always the type to quibble about small things, but I was reading today's Metro (a free morning newspaper in London), and one of the 'Guilty Pleasures' articles was about Beth Ditto's recent marriage to Karen Ogata.

Of course, I am always grateful when marriages between women are covered in news outlets without being mentioned as blasphemous, but there is a major misconception within the article about the nature of woman-and-woman relationships.

While talking first about Ditto's Jean Paul Gaultier dress, the author then decided to also include a bit about what her bride was wearing. I don't know if the intent was offensive, but certainly the effect is.

'Hawaiian native Ogata proved she wears the pants in the relationship, opting for a white tuxedo jacket and shorts combo.'

This is a British paper, so I'm wondering if they know something about what lingerie Ditto was wearing (or not?) that I'm missing. Ogata was wearing shorts, so neither of them were wearing trousers. So why this talk about pants? I'm sure the question that everyone really wants to know is who wears the socks in the relationship. It's very important and so frequently overlooked!

Alright, enough of the snark. I just find it frustrating that people think it's alright to decide what the roles of women are within a private relationship, especially one that is predicated upon its lack of a 'man'.  Hate to burst your bubble, but some partners can function without a power imbalance.

Now, I'll spare you the lecture on how same sex couples operate very differently in their relationships and just kindly ask you to read this fascinating article.

I'm going to attempt to filter down Tiffany Wayne's message even more and point out that not only do same-sex couples prove women and men can function in any role in a relationship, the gender display of the couples has nothing to do with what roles they fill.

I am somewhat 'butch', perhaps, in my physical manifestation of gender, what with my short hair, tendency to wear men's clothing, and somewhat blocky stride, and yes, my partner is somewhat 'femme', but I don't presume to hold any power over her in the sense that 'wearing the pants' would imply. Now, to be fair, the phrase was developed to address women who had somehow taken on the dominant role of a man in a heterosexual relationship, but that would further mean it has very little relevance in discussions of homosexual marriages.

Really, though, this issue boils down to the belief that most people seem to have of the homosexual community sticking to traditional gender roles. Newsflash: we don't. We may have in the past, and perhaps a select few of us still do, but for the majority of couples wandering around with matching gender identities and mismatched clothes (or even matching clothes, which seems to really give people a whirl), gender roles aren't given a second thought.

I think what's most offensive about this is the implication that people somehow know the dynamics of the given couple's sexual and emotional relationship by appearance. They can't, and frequently don't.

Again, I will reiterate, I look masculine, but I'm probably the more submissive partner in most areas other than planning dates. That being said, she and I usually split the bill or take turns treating the other, so even that doesn't end up being an expression of dominance. We consider each other equals, and we deliberate appropriately.

Also important to mention is that these roles are potentially damaging. Men and women should be able to feel free to express themselves in dress and personality no matter what 'gender' they belonged to originally. Men deserve to express love and sensitivity, and women deserve to express dominance and sexual desire, even though it's not 'traditional'.

Perhaps Ditto and Ogata both wear the pants, perhaps neither of them do. I am, however, positive, that assuming someone has a certain role in a relationship by what they wear is patently incorrect and obtrusive.

Maybe next time the Metro could say something like 'Ogata chose to wear shorts, which was a bold change from the more traditional tuxedo jacket pairing of trousers, but appropriate for the weather of her native Hawaii.'

A Eulogy, of sorts.

I started going to Cazadero Music Camp when I was 13, awkward in my pubescence and somewhat concerned with what was coming next. I'm still awkward, though that is no longer due to the horrors of puberty, and I'm still concerned with what's coming next, but high school was a lot different than I thought it would be, so I suppose it's kind of silly to worry about the future because it never really turns out how you'd expect. This post isn't about the future, though, or even the present, regrettably, but about the past.

There was always something special about being in the redwoods each summer, whether it be the magic of the sunlight filtering down hazily through the green branches or music echoing raucously through the canyon; sweet strains of march melodies and some big romantic classical piece being performed far more beautifully than most people would ever expect out of a group of young children. The environment of camp is obviously a fantastic one, what with the bucolic setting and passion of the participants, but the employees also make it unique.

A group of individuals collected by audition and interview to work for one of the most grand summer experiences in California by definition must bring something to the table, and they do. Never have I met a more vivacious, outgoing, caring, and utterly talented group of people who share in the joy of bringing music and fun to children. Impressively, the staff who do not work directly with the kids are also hard-working, industrious, friendly, and eager to help, throwing themselves into jobs that might not be glamorous but certainly are required to make the camp run.

Aside from all that, though, what every camp truly needs are the personal touches. Memories and ideas and little friendly details that create a setting that cannot be forgotten. One of those things, for me, was this little black and white dog, Jazz, who belonged to the Camp Director, Jim, and his wife, Anita, the Head Chef.

My first summer I remember trying to pet Jazz, along with the rest of the campers, but also finding her collar on the rec field with a couple of my friends. We eagerly collected our prize of a few 'Mazz Bucks' each, but I kept mine instead of using them to buy candy. I still have one, tucked away in a corner of my room at home, and I'm glad I held on to it. She was always loyally following Mazz around on his journeys surveying the camp, and often could be found lingering in front of the Dining Hall, waiting patiently for someone to drop something or Anita to emerge.

When I started working in the kitchen, I found out one of her favourite places to relax was on the steps leading to the storage room. She had a view into the cooking area, and could watch Anita as she worked. Eventually, Jazz and I developed a rapport, probably because I was willing to scratch her behind the ear for hours at a time. Okay, not hours, but at least 20 minutes. In any case, I was enough of a sucker that if she rested her head on my knee and looked at me expectantly, I'd begin again, if ever I had the audacity to stop.

I suppose it was sort of naive to believe she'd always be there, resting her head on my knee or trotting around the grounds like she owned the place; which she did, in case you had any doubts, but considering I haven't been 13 for a while I might have seen this sad day coming. Jazz recently left to get scraps from the spectral Cazadero, but she will be sorely missed when camp commences again this summer.

I don't know if I can imagine a camp without her little half-cocked ears or wet black nose, but I will live with the memories, fondly. Thank you, Jazz, for bringing joy to so many of us.

Fairy Tale

In another daring escapade,
The princess claims the prince,
And he is hers.

Not unlike when she saved
Him from the vision of
Normalcy that resides
Amongst this (society).

The princess needs no
Prince.

He doesn't pursue, he is
Pursued.

The moral is not to assume
I guess, but in the end,
The girl got the boy.

Not
The other way
Around.


Maybe it's easier to write a poem about expectations and roles when it comes to relationships and 'ownership', but I think the whole idea of 'gender-swapping the patriarchy' is really fascinating when it comes to art. Perhaps it could even be vital for the creation of theatre and literature, because if characters couldn't swap genders without seeming strange, then they haven't been fully created so much as copied.

I also have spent a lot of time recently thinking about this idea of 'the guy gets the girl', as if she is an object to be won and thus incapable of 'getting the guy'. Even movies and books that center around a female protagonist have a tendency to put the male character as the 'owner' of the relationship.

Maybe it's because women (in the eyes of current and previous societies) have no claim to their bodies. They are merely there to be consumed by men and are sexualised as commodities rather than treated as individuals. I know a lot of men don't think like that about women, but some do, and it's incredibly negative and reductive for everyone.

I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is that it's important to determine if the things you say could hold up regardless of the receiving party's gender (and wherever they fit on the spectrum). It's also important to consider whether what has been said is reductive in its treatment of gender, because creating and following patriarchal conventions by continuing their use is negative to the cause of equality.