“There is no activism without despair, no despair without hope. Despair can be as powerful an engine for change as hope.”
Finding Hope in Despair — Borderless
Finding Hope in Despair — my article in Borderless
Tag: #sickness
Weigh Scale
Do you hear it?
Relief sounds like
a girl’s slip
a bird’s wing
your eye lashes fluttering
against your blushing cheek
Do you hear it?
Suffering sounds like
cloth pulled by stick across dirt floor
chalk pressed violent into board
fingers opening blouses raggedly
your chest bone protrudes
more than the year before
Do you hear it?
Felis catus
I didn’t care as much as the blood on the snow implied
it was after all just a horror show
you, with your nimble ways of
poking holes in my armor
you, with your kind smile and sharp knife
twisting screw
letting good drain out with bad
till meaning held no color.
I didn’t blame you at first
it’s a fact … some bite
they are taught to by pain
it’s a refuge, a coping mechanism, a
twist and writhe in slim net
of sanity and pathology
that’s all they know
the feral in their fur
if you try to be kind
they will purr
then go ahead and bite you.
I took my bleeding hand
stuck it in my mouth
to prevent saying the things I wanted to
Then I remembered all the little ways
you’d been before, the bare indifference
how I’d tried. Why had I kept on trying?
What possesses us to be kind
to broken things whose disapointment
in themselves turns to savagery?
At least it gave you an opportunity
to use that tenderness against me
I did feel a fool until I realized, yeah …
maybe you were my enemy all along
in that slow icing way you left me feeling emptied
which may say something about me
and how I should learn to try less
I’m sure you’d say; “nobody else can make you feel bad
without giving your permission.”
But I think I will disagree
that’s a passive-aggressive crock … Psych101
it’s your fault … no one else’s
with your holier-than-thou certainty
convinced you’re above us all
I walked away from the snow and the blood
a little cross at myself for not remembering
you can’t hand feed
wild cats.
eventually even the hypochondriac will be right
odd for the child
to fear drowning
when his life now is so long
stretching like taut ribbon in sun
he imagines like plain moths who drown themselves
in light emanating from dark
his own lifeless body buoyant on chlorinated pool
why he thinks of his death is anyone’s guess
perhaps the morbid humor of an intelligent mind
or the broken mosaic of life, beginning its downward cycle
once he asked his father, if the river levies bust
will I know I am dead before I am drowned or
will I wake in heaven first?
His father, a man who only worried about
whether his mistress was going to leave him for a younger man
did not spend time assuaging the boys fears
and he grew into a frightened soul who possessed
no mistress to sooth his night terrors
eventually even the hypochondriac will be right
maybe not this year
as she palpitates her breast for the forth time
crossing nervous fingers over heart, half prayer half search
malignancy her code red, flashing with every terrorizing headline
who invented social media? she mumbles beneath her breath
it was so much easier when we didn’t have access to all the maladies, we’ll one day die from!
Her hands cramp in late Winter cold, immediately she thinks
MS, MD, Fibromyalgia, the beginnings of CJD, maybe Parkinson’s
isn’t that a tremor? Or just too much coffee?
Her jittering nerves remind her, we are unable to compute
the exact day, hour, minute of expiry
all we know is our eventual death is an assured event
it’s the torment of those who are self-aware yet still ignorant
spinning in place, every migraine a brain tumor, every
sudden sharp pain a sign of pancreatic cancer, when a friend
discovers he has Multiple Myeloma (and he never touched asbestos his wife decries!)
she flicks through medical journals online searching for similarity
it’s not her wish to die, but a desire to live, control fate
keeping her on false tender hooks like owl without prey.
His life has been one of quiet dread, each day he inspects
the parts of him most likely to give out, checking his irregular heartbeat
the soft pounding of worry causing it to skip, feeling for swollen glands
skin cancers, lumps and bumps different from the day before
he knows his is an obsessive ritual, even as it soothes imagined
terrors, he sees the absurdity of living in fear bound to a wheel
perpetuated by hours spent researching ways of expiring
did you know you can develop throat cancer from invisible HPV
who knew love was such a sentence? He tells his eye-rolling neighbor.
If he counted the hours he took from his life
contemplating how he will die, when, what it will resemble
it’s quite mad
yet when he is lying in his childhood bed alone
impending dread crawling up his flannel spine
all he can hear are the waves calling
and then, a strange longing in him occurs
urging him to be done with bloody charades
join the onslaught and be carried out to sea
along with every child’s nightmare
and the stifled hiss of adults pressing their knuckles
closely to anguished mouths
for the pale mint waiting room seems
entirely too silent
an earie unsettled fog about it
waiting …
Bulletproof
(Inspired by reading Cordelia Feldman’s novel In Bloom, reviewed after this poem).
When the rush comes
questions like: Why are you doing drugs? Are you an
unhappy child?
Do you realize how inappropriate it is?
Bad choices lead to worse choices. Slippery slopes. Killed brain cells.
Those questions seem irrelevant
for, that which you have searched
seemingly before awareness, birth, first flickering
is surrounding you and the fucking magic of it
is holding sorrow so far away
you can’t recall the last time you felt its fingers
closing around your throat in possession.
Yes sorrow
misery, self-hatred, dysfunctional thinking, dysthymia
depression, malaise, disorder, horror, they
have long sat at your scarred table
munching on your best intentions
not to throw yourself from a bridge
just because every day is so painful.
Parents show the whites of their eyes
like distrusting horses being inspected
for cavities and you are the hole
they observe without looking
wondering how they birthed
someone so strange, unexpectedly unwell
did we not take enough pregnancy vitamins?
Was it more like my ‘funny’ uncle and how he never
seemed quite right?
Blessed, tainted blood
that’s not it
anymore than sexual abuse or
quiet pinch of undiagnosed learning disorder
when there are cheery-faced celebrities proclaiming
their cured malaise, even as they grew up
in fire
therefore, it is not
the firing, how deeply you set, how many cracks
it is more the knife of life
cutting you open
silence surrounding before
you knew you were alone
a haunting long before words like
‘intrenched’ and ‘affliction’ were commonly nailed
like scarlet blooms on thirsty cacti.
Sorrow, you were flowing in my blood stream
like an unbidden life, wishing to suck mine out
marrow and all.
There’s only apologies
for not being able to be what you want me to be
grieving for the perfect mess made when I was doing my very best
not to cut myself to ribbons
and as self-hate dances with a wish to
pull hard on the string attached to light bulb
and just blink out ….
music and its phantasmagoric wonder
infiltrates darkness with a tender mercy
potent keys of a piano played on an empty stage
seem to possess a furtherment.
You, who sup at the high seat for well-adjusted
cannot really fathom, aside in dusty theory
the every day battle with spirits resembling
skewed reflection and how when joy arrives
soft and cloudy, she is split savagely
by the very strength of your inner tenency
to plunge headlong, when you want to do
the opposite.
Fate lifted me out of the car gently
like I meant more to him than a one-night-fuck
and maybe thinking back, I was
precious
in that turkish delight moment
softened at the edges by
little blue pills.
If I die in ten years from some malady
will you point your frozen heart at me
and say; “Her bloody drug use killed her”
without recalling
without it
I’d already be nourishing trees
with my life blood.
Will you state: “She was weak because she
couldn’t cope without them”
forgetting, we do what it takes
to stand upright, pulled from the inside
skins flayed on electric lines of penance.
For our generation, for some of us
those who didn’t yet know how to
put words to how we felt
the holes in our fabric
those diminishments
only worsening with perpetual self-reproach
(after all, didn’t we have a roof over our heads?
How the hell could we be so ungrateful?
Do they say that to people with cancer?
Only the smokers I think, we are banished
to the smokers ward if we suffer from
depression, they put us down as incurable
and slightly pathetic and faces turn away
like cliffs beckon our swift feet forward).
I danced beneath strobe lights, proud of reaching
19 and not having taken anything stronger
than weed, my iron will a contrast to
my crumbling will to live, sometimes
it fascinates me. He whispered in my studded
ear; “I know you disapprove of hard drugs but …“
and like a violin played accutely until
you find yourself crying on the other side
of intensity, I saw the futility of holding back
how ‘good behavior’ didn’t work with the model
of suffering experienced daily, another way of
saying it was
fuck it
the pill was bitter like
poison
and returned me someone
I had not met in many years
happiness flooded my bloodstream
I didn’t care it was artificially induced
all moods are, all behavior dictated by
the flow and ebb of chemicals surging
in our amygdala.
Why do some of us fall so far?
When others seem oblivious of
sorrow like it’s a thing to bring out
at funerals and nothing more? Can we really
reduce it to ‘failure‘ and ‘success‘ and affix the
ugly admonishment forever, like kicking
someone all the harder once they are down?
The self-loathing and condemnation
invariably accompanying perpetual sadness
lifted like a shroud and music entered
my blood stream with an invoking joy.
Many years later I read about ‘self medication‘
and thought as a professional
trying to help people who felt
like I did / alone / worthless
how trite labels and ‘understanding‘ in general
was.
I’d write you a book of my foray with drugs
if it didn’t cause you to condemn me
then again
you already have
so why not?
Don’t throw stones
at glass
houses
unless
you’re bulletproof.
Cordelia Feldman writes on WP and has published her first book of fiction In Bloom. She’s a magnificent person and a genuinely beautiful human being. I urge you to purchase a copy.
I didn’t know what to expect when I purchased In Bloom. That can be exciting. I purchased it because I have followed the author Cordelia Feldman on her blog for many years. As a publisher/editor I tend to get high burn out for acquaintance reads but this was not at her behest, I wanted to read In Bloom, because the quality of Cordelia’s writing and humor over the years has often left me astounded.
In Bloom is semi-biographical set-in mid teen hood. Which might seem odd at a time when the adult author is struggling with metastasized cancer since her mid thirties and this has taken such a chunk out of her valuable life. One might not be blamed for thinking she’d write about a later time in her life. However, if the reader has ever had a prolonged battle with their health, they will intimately appreciate the difficulty of ‘going there’ and the positive impact of focusing on other things. In addition, the challenges a writer has to accurately reflect her past self, something few do realistically and Feldman excels at.
Cordelia has in her blog, done a monumental job of focusing elsewhere, she’s ‘bloomed’ in the years since her cancer diagnosis despite all obstacles. Her infectious optimism, her attitude of caring for others even as she suffers, the way she brings humor out of the darkness, and her undefeatable intelligence hook you from the start. With each blog post she refers sardonically to a book title, often obscure, and that quick mind of hers is as agile now as those who have never experienced a days sickness.
Likewise, with In Bloom, a little gem, a veritable Pandoras’s box replete with humor, nitty-gritty mindful observations, completely lacking in self-pity and with so much to evoke and fascinate. Why fascinate you may ask? Many of us can directly relate to being a teen and going through much of what Feldman has gone through, but many cannot. This is both a warning and a true invoking of a time in history and a type of lifestyle for the young that Gen X’ers and perhaps many others, can appreciate.
Just as we can put an album on and suddenly go back in time, In Bloom takes us to the tawdry experiment called youth and provokes some intense feelings about why we do what we do when we do it. For some, drugs are a clear cut no, no path to hell. For others, they’re a rite of passage. My personal take on it is; drugs are a gateway, to growing up and moving on, but for some, a gateway we don’t regret, nor judge.
The club scene of the 90s in the UK was spectacular and for many young things, going out and dancing all night on Ecstasy was the most fun they’ve ever had. If that makes them sound sad twenty years later, well you weren’t there. The clubs had such atmosphere and comradery that it was impossible not to see them as Magic Faraway Trees of their time. It might be like trying to explain to a non-drinker why a drink can feel so good at the end of the day. Or try telling your parents the Sixties weren’t a revolution.
All the proselytizing in the world and nary a judgment cannot convict those hearts who bloomed in that era and recall it with fondness and a little embarrassment. If you imagine ecstasy earned its name through hard graft, and lived up to it, there’s nothing shabby about those Turkish delight infused experiences anymore than throwing rocks at the Beats Poets for their dabbling with the illicit.
Feldman writes hypnotically and with great alacrity, understanding the mind set of the teen to an uncanny degree. Her intelligence as a writer is evident, but so is her sage wit. Feldman conjures a time that has passed but we can all to some extent, look back on. However, this is not all she does. In Bloom isn’t merely a celebration of taking drugs at raves, that really wouldn’t begin to give it its dues. In Bloom is an evocation of a young woman’s experience with mental illness.
Do drugs cause mental illness? We know they can but more often they exacerbate or draw out, what is already there, for chemical and hereditary reasons. We don’t truly know the myriad ways mental illness occurs, just that it does, and for so long, it was judged and condemned without trying to be understood. Feldman attempts understanding through description and succeeds admirably, in her gentle nudging toward insight through the stumbling’s of the newly initiated.
The main character of In Bloom is clearly a composite of the younger Feldman, but she’s also a character in her own right. Her experiences are not mere autobiography, she and her cast of bandits are all fully fleshed out people existing within In Bloom and they make you care about them, despise them, cheer for them. Do not forget 17 is the age mental illness will begin to rear its head irrespective of whether you are downing E or lemonade, although of course, the reaction with the former will be more dramatic and so it is.
I rarely want to stay up reading all night as I used to because I read for a living. But In Bloom was that notable exception, as I feel it will be for many of us. Before being tempted to cast stones and accuse Feldman of glamorizing drug-taking or blaming her cancer on her previous actions, consider the truth. We don’t get sick because we dabble with drugs as kids. We don’t start doing drugs because we read about them in a book. Pain has its outlets and kids know that well. There are deeper issues here, ones that In Bloom cannot speak to, but we all know they exist and we all know life is far, far more complicated than what we see on the surface.
The ultimate value of In Bloom lies in my knowledge that I would have enjoyed this book immensely whether I knew Cordelia as a writer beforehand, or not. Her skill as a writer has never been under question, she has proven her worth time and again with her tapping into the amygdala of her readership. Her intelligence as a thinker on this planet, is beyond refute. I only wish deeply that she were given time to write more, as I suspect, in Cordelia Feldman we have a voice of our generation.
The ingratitude of the well
Inspired by the incredible Cordelia Feldman and her novel In Bloom, for sale now. For World Cancer Day.
It would be easy to say
I haven’t been stricken because I couldn’t cope with it
there would be no one, I have learned, if I were;
not a flower garden, or brothers with curry, or kind lipsticked nurses
socialized healthcare, or odd private room
there would not be a mom bathing or a dad talking
about vegetable garden and the latest episode of Silent Witness
who could really cope?
Even as I say this, knowing the avocado heart of it
I also know I could be stricken tomorrow, or already
as all of us could
(as all of us could)
and privately in a fat second
(like when you see a train wreck and you process a hundred thoughts all at once)
I know I have my will written (handwritten, badly, not rubber stamped)
ready to mail to fate should it come.
When I got sick, though not C.A.N.C.E.R.S.I.C.K., nevertheless I really planned
taking another way out
in my head, thoughts of how bad it had become, lead to imaginings
of suicide and how savage that is to hear
for someone who is dying and does not want to die
the ingratitude of the well
these thoughts fly around me
like bees unwilling yet to sting
my heart is heavy for her
wondering selfishly what I would do
had I the same burden
praying to an empty sky, for that not to happen
superstitious that even the mere wish not to be sick
evokes it
as if fate were laughing and throwing darts
at fleeing people
so helpless, we sink our teeth into projects
wind up time like a ball of yarn
knit it into shapes we can understand
all while keeping horror at bay
the imagined car crash, the loved one never returning home
a cancer growing inside like a whistle
on a hurtling train
it is easy to not find time for empathy
or to feel, it is too close, too raw, too impossible
to process
most of all I think of her grace
how she can appreciate something like a child might
I think of her humor
how she’s had me folded on the floor laughing at the
sheer fucking brilliance of her
I am proud in ways that hurt
she’s everything I am not and she’s also
deeply human
if one person says ‘I’m sorry for your loss‘ I will
scream; “She’s not gone yet! She’s never
going to be gone, that’s just not how
she rolls. Don’t underestimate her
don’t think you own her anymore
than you own your own life.“
Those platitudes are all we sometimes have
we mean them more
than scrolling past someone’s bad news
crossing ourselves, as we step over graves
one day slated to be ours
we side step death like the dancers we are
thinking we’re somehow avoiding
something born before we were
and I focus and think of her
how if I could show her my feelings
they would be in movement, in laughter
in light, spinning like an electric waterfall
like her spinning class, where just for a moment
she is that girl beneath the hot trance lights of
the 90’s and I am dancing along side her
as the earth holds us both, alive
despite any ‘support’ she has
which I am more glad of than anything
though what support does against terror?
I cannot lend a description to
my own failings in the courage department
planning my demise when the first meteorite hit
although I read we use meteorite and meteor and astroid
interchangably
and they are actually very different
with only the burning of the sun
in common to collease
their strength as potential planet killers
my math teacher used to say
a morbid mind will only bring sorrow
of course she was right
in her Laura Ashley dungerees
that would now be worth $300 on Ebay
a funny ole world my grandma prosthelytized
nipping at the ever full box of wine in the kitchen
clipping her rose garden when ABBA wasn’t
sufficient to propel demons
I get it
I really do
there’s only avoidance really
we can’t look into the sun too long
we’ll lose our sight before
we’ve made our way back from the garden
or maybe
we’ll stay, our heads upturned
soaking in the rays
To dearest Cordelia, I adore you.
Please consider purchasing Cordelia’s first novel In Bloom, it is magnificent.
WHAT WE VALUE
Our society worships entirely the wrong animal, venerating them and reducing others to ash.
The news recently devoted a good portion of the sports coverage to how much money certain sports figures were going to be paid for kicking a ball across a field. And this in a time when our jobs are dissolving, our society is being wrecked, our economy may be irrecoverable and certain industries will cease to exist en mass. Put simply, there will not be jobs to come back to folks but apparently we still need to pay these guys billions for their service to humanity?
I cannot understand how ANY society and how any of us can tolerate/accept a sports figure being paid anywhere NEAR that sum for what they do when those who really do jobs worth paying, are dying in droves because they are not receiving enough personal protective gear to protect themselves.
When did we start paying someone to kick a ball millions and a nurse who saves our life, hundreds?
What’s wrong with us?
If I were an alien observing our planet, I would seriously wonder if we all were crazy in our assessment of VALUE. What we value. What we do not. If nothing else, Covid-19 has given us a chance to see this once and for all and try to do something about it.
We have marched for Black Lives Matter during this time because it was over-due and our raw emotions on the subject burst out of their polite shell and filled the streets with ire and a desire for equality but how many of us really want equality? Not all of us that is for sure, look around and you can see it in every facet of life, a desire to be above someone else somehow.
We still routinely under-react and permit by our inaction, serious hideous crimes like rape to go unpunished in this country and others.
It’s the year 2020 and we still think inequality for women is acceptable in some forms and fashion. Let us not forget what Maya Angelou said about wanting to vote for a white woman over a black man. She said – women were the original oppressed group, thus we should work backward until all oppressed parties are equal. I agree with her.
We still think hate crimes against Jews and telling Jews that Israel should not be their country is somehow acceptable, despite those Jews having descended from that country. Would we say the same to Black People about Africa. Of course not! So why do we say it to Israel? Because of the Palestine Question which Europe in particular has decided to side with, uncaring of the history of persecution toward Jews and their right to have some land of their own. Of course we shouldn’t persecute Palestinians either and of course, Israel has made mistakes but it’s now about what optics politicians choose and what side of the story is half-revealed via inaccurate news reporting. It’s essentially about which side looks right to support? Because Trump supports Israel, most left-wing supporters are against it. Yet it is not that simple and never should be. Lest we forget our history.
We still think homosexuality is unnatural and abhorant and that being queer isn’t natural. We don’t say it out loud because it’s not popular to say it, but we think it and we act it and gays know. They know.
We talk about slavery and how horrific it was, but half the time we just pay lip service to the deeper issues, because we don’t know our history so we don’t mention Native Americans and how they were exterminated en mass and continue to be disenfranchised. We’re so proud of ourselves for changing the Red Skins but we think that’s enough. Or how slavery has never really gone away, it’s just changed hands and outfits, but it’s still well and thriving in many forms.
So it’s never enough. Until everyone is equal and inequality and racism are a thing of the past. But will they ever be? With people who seem to thrive on discrimination and putting themselves ahead of others and putting others down? If people think wearing a mask is too much, is it any wonder they really don’t give a shit if you are sick or you are vulnerable? Don’t they just want you to die and bugger off?
Likewise with illness, with chronically sick people, it’s never enough to just have laws that allow them to not be discriminated against because discrimination comes in a myriad of differing forms. Subtle. Unreachable. Devastating. People of color have to put up with this EVERY SINGLE DAY as do women, as do gays, as do sick people. Just one roll of the eye says everything. Says; ‘we think you are pathetic‘ invalidates an entire moment.
Chronic illness is a little like amputation. Obviously anyone who has suffered an amputation will refute this and rightly so. But metaphorically it remains akin to the loss of a limb. You are left flailing, unsure of how to right yourself, and continue as once you were. A part of you is lost.
They talk of periods of adjustment. The stages of grieving: Anger for what you have lost. Shame imposed by a society who now judges you weak. Acceptance of a ‘new normal’ that includes intolerable things such as chronic pain etc. For many, those stages of grieving never really end, they cycle and you go through different dilutions depending upon how you progress.
But progress is perhaps not the right word. In our linear society where so much is expected. For someone to drop off and no longer thrive, in nature they would be left behind to perish. In our society they are carried along but reminded frequently, of their burden, of their ineptitude.
For many who suffer mental illness, physical illness, both, there is a lot of shame attached to their existing after this fact. Even as people do not come out and say it directly (and believe me, many do!) there is a thin veil that is easily penetrable. People know when they are treated differently, seen differently, worse, judged without jury.
Being ‘sick’ in any manifestation is seen as a ‘weakness’ by our society. This invariably goes back to the ‘dog-eat-dog’ notion of surviving. The weakest link perishes or is a burden to the whole. But these days, with our so-called faith and mercy in place, one might imagine a little more compassion? And if you did, you would be sorely disappointed.
Since getting sick in 2017 I have felt intermittently well enough to continue working and ‘accomplishing’. But as with any pendulum, when it swings deeply toward illness, I am right back at the horror point of when it all began, down on my knees, imploring the universe for healing. And for the most part I have done this alone, because as all those who have been sick for a time will attest, most people do not stay by your side. Even those you expect to.
You can’t plan any longer. A trip is a fear because what if you get sick? Then someone suggests; maybe it’s in your head, maybe you are making yourself sick? And no matter how many times you prove otherwise, they think maybe it’s a choice, just like being gay is a choice, right?
Wrong. You can’t rely upon yourself like you used to because you never know how it’s going to be, how you are going to be. And usually you could be relied upon 100 percent and now that’s gone and somehow you still have to plan a future, but how do you plan a future if you can’t rely upon yourself?
I try to take something from every experience I have, including negative ones. Without learning we don’t grow we just regurgitate and I would rather grow even if I’m throwing up and in pain as I do it. I have taken from this experience what is obvious, but I have also tried to take from others experiences, and have noticed disturbing patterns among those I know who have also been sick for a while or a very long while.
People leave.
People don’t care.
Poverty goes hand in hand with illness.
Anxiety and fear are natural outcomes for a plethora of reasons.
Loneliness can kill.
What I have come to see is this. Sick people are TRUE WARRIORS.
They fight the unimaginable that most of us never have to endure. They have to get pacemakers in their 40s, they have to struggle through taking 2 hours to get dressed and STILL MANAGE TO SHOW UP and this strength – this strength is what I have learned the most from my experiences and listening to others. Strength comes in many forms. We dismiss most of those forms but they are real.
I watch people who have seizures and brain tumors, fight and fight and fight and I realize, we’ve got it backwards. We should be applauding these people not marginalizing them. But we do everything backwards, because as a whole we are poisoned by false ideas of what is valuable and what is not. We toss aside those we deem un-valuable when they are perhaps some of the most valuable people in the world.
So if you are disabled in any way, be it in your head, or your body, remember that. You are some of the most valuable people in the world. Let nobody ever let you forget that. You are some of the most valuable people in the world.
This is written for my sister Angie. You inspire me every single day. You are that light in the dark that refuses to give up and because of you, I refuse to give up too.
The Right To Die
https://www.yahoo.com/news/column-californias-aid-dying-law-100053133.html
The Right To Die debate is one I have strong opinions on. Ever since Brittany Maynard decided to end her life to avoid inevitable agony and suffering and watching her discuss this in many interviews, I concluded that the Right To Die law should exist for everyone, everywhere.
There are pitfalls no doubt. I can imagine nightmare scenarios where people are ‘terminated’ by bored relatives who do not wish to take care of them. So obviously safe-guards must be paramount. That said, I am open to the RTD law be expanded to include dementia patients and those with serious Chronic Illness, including long-term-depression.
That’s murder! You may say. And part of the invariable slippery-slope! But I would disagree. Unless you have been the victim of Chronic Illness and/or long-term-incurable-depression you cannot speak for others who suffer each and every day.
A few years ago I killed a kitten who was suffering. It was in agony, unsavable and its liter mates had died in excruciating agony. It was a Sunday and no pet-store nearby was open to euthanize the kitten. To spare her suffering I put her to sleep myself. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, I didn’t actually think I had it in me (to take a life) being vegetarian among other things. But the compassion for her suffering over-took the fear of harm.
The harm was her suffering any longer and that is how I see RTD laws.
Obviously we have to put into place protections against this being misused. I recognize that many deeply devout folks believe God takes us when we are ready, but I have never subscribed to that. How is suffering in agony EVER God ordained? If a God exists I do NOT believe he/she chooses people to suffer in agony for years on end. Thus for me, that argument is moot.
Without the issue of ‘taking God’s job away’ we are left with the morality of RTD laws. If I see someone suffering as horrific as it is, to consider their dying at my or their own hands, I would want to help them not suffer. If that was their true wish.
In the case of dementia patients, if they sign a waiver now they can ask not to be force-fed and kept alive, but it still means those wishes can be ignored, effectively they can exist for years as a vegetable, and do nothing about avoiding that outcome. This isn’t a pragmatic thing. Obviously our society is going to be destroyed by dementia cases as more and more develop it, but irrespective, this isn’t about convenience of death, it’s about the mercy of death.
Few of us (I know some exceptions) would wish to shit on themselves, not be able to eat, remember, function etc, and lose all dignity and awareness. Most of us would prefer to die. Giving us a way to write this out and have a representative help us achieve this, seems to me, a mercy not a convenience.
The whole subject is heart-achiningly awful and we avoid talking about it for the most part. But we need to think of this. Just recently with Covid 19 ventilation, the question of dying and life has been very pertinent and young people who never wrote living-wills have been in limbo. It is never too early to consider these things because we really don’t know.
When I put my cat of 18 years to sleep it haunted me. Briefly I went back on my belief that RTD was the best choice because I thought; If I can’t handle the images and flashbacks of the catheter being put in my cats arm, and watching him being put to sleep, if I felt that was ‘wrong’ in some way, how could I handle it if it was my dad? Or someone I loved?
Truly I think I am nearly not strong enough to cope with that day. But despite that I would still do it. TO END THE SUFFERING. It would haunt me and yes it would feel worse to me than if they died naturally just as it would have been ‘easier’ if my cat had died naturally instead of being given drugs that killed him. Watching that was horrific and it did feel ‘unnatural’ because it was but sometimes it’s the only choice, and it’s the best choice and even if it leaves us feeling horrific, we should consider it.
I don’t regret putting my cat to sleep. But I regret that it had to happen and I still get flash-backs of the last moments. If I had to do that with a human-being I know it would be the hardest thing I ever had to do. But if I loved that human being and it was THEIR WISH I would hope I had the courage and love within me to do it or be part of it or at very least, support their wish.
Having had chronic illness I know we can be ‘not in our right minds’ and so the issue of ‘how sick is too sick?’ must be considered. Depressed people for example, may be able to be cured, so are they really the right candidates for euthanasia? I don’t know the answer, I only know that if someone I knew had suffered for 20 years and wanted to die, I would find it hard to deny them that mercy. If all else had failed.
This is not what we want to think about but right now, out there, are many people who are in this VERY situation right now and have no recourse to end their suffering. I believe safe laws CAN be made that protect against abuses and I believe at this juncture in our societies evolution we need to consider those things, not to keep our sick numbers in check, but to be merciful to suffering.
The courage of Brittany Maynard has stayed with me ever since I heard about her and followed her story. Some may say that is morbid. I say it is honest. I still think of her, she affected me deeply and opened up this debate. I hope others can get over their prejudices of what they believe others should do and give people a CHOICE. Just like my best friend who doesn’t believe she would have an abortion but believes others should have the right to choose if they want to have one. Such is this debate about an individuals right to choose their outcome. Who can honestly deny that in the face of suffering?
I often think if I live to be old, I will be alone and I fear that very much. I think if it were possible I would choose to end my life simply based on not having enough money to keep going or enough reason and family left to make it worthwhile. Is that wrong? Maybe. But one day that too may exist as an ‘option’ and a mercy, to help those who would otherwise resort to suicide which can often fail and leave awful aftermaths. This is a very sad subject but it’s one many of us will one day face one way or another. I don’t want to dwell on it, but equally, I don’t want to pretend it could never happen.
I think now more than ever, we have learned, anything can happen and we need to be prepared. Taking responsibility for our lives AND our deaths is a responsible decision, and helps those who may be left in our lives, follow our true wishes. I hope I never have to find out, but I believe we should all be prepared for both the best case scenario and the worst. Contrary to popular opinion, taking ones life is probably the hardest thing a person can do, not the easiest. But as this article above states, there are worst things than dying and I would say suffering in agony meets that criteria and forces us then, to consider this subject honestly and with compassion.
Come on Elaine
Come on Elaine … this is how it would go
you’d get the email about your son, either dead, or gone, or famous
extremes of an only child, spoiled by two successful parents
likely famous, as he was in childhood, yeah … fat and famous
so now, he’s still not tall and he’s still not thin but he might be
unwrinkled and have lots of kids or … Venereal Disease
he might hate me, i suspect he would
why? Why do i think he’d hate me?
When he was the one who threatened me with a sword
when he was the one who broke the Lalique vase
i suppose because breaking hearts is worse than betrothed glass
though someone, with his desire for the world
i doubt anyone had the power to break his, because words
written by 18-year-old boys on the inside of cassettes of
music for my girl, rarely mean what they say and speak
with their hermaphroditic pricks.
i was older than him in lots of ways
i would have told you Elaine, it wasn’t my intention and yes
you remember us arguing but it wasn’t all me
when he was high, he was really high and
when he was low, he was really low
a sundial beneath the earth
i stayed witnessing, smoking chain after chain
his taking of porn, watching nude and slobbering
as i clamored in my shared insanity, letting him
have his hunger sated in my emptiness.
Well … depravity is depravity and girls who hate themselves
they’re really good at running with that and boys who
like to torture cats
did you know what he did behind that red door Elaine?
did you know what he was really like or just your little boy?
i remember his father once visiting and how
estranged they seemed and he hollered at you like he’d
never stopped not for one minute
and you screamed and screamed and screamed
i remember it because i witnessed it, see i’m not the bad penny
you assumed, but he might think i am, that’s how our memory works
put her in this box, label it wrong; She’s the reason i got a Second at University
she’s why i didn’t fuck enough, she’s why i fell out with my really good friends
(who weren’t so really good, if they had those seducing intentions)
and she? Sure, she let his friends do her, like she sold her soul for lasagna
or a slice of wholesome bread with Ganja
God she was always hungry, or purging
and the drugs he gave her, sometimes with prescriptions, sometimes with sweaty palms
sometimes naked on his stomach where his scar, shone like a dalmatian on a fire truck
she half-liked his brown skin and his imperfections, the matted hair, green eyes, short squat pudgy thighs and tiny cock
they didn’t threaten her, they reminded her of a girl
she felt safe even when she felt scared, his hormone injections, wild untamed stare
he said she made him calm, especially when sucking him off to a good record
yeah I bet. Swallowing is harder for those who give head, to narcissistic boys with pretty
circumcision.
Though it’s been so long, she can’t be sure, of what cut what and who bled and who left the door, slightly ajar,
because that was the year she found out she was mad
and he was too, so they sort of worked
though he wasn’t her boyfriend, though he wasn’t her brother, he was a lot of things under the covers
places where they could escape themselves and that eventual horror of knowing
you haven’t got any hinges and the world’s gonna spit you out into the gutter.
Elaine, she could tell you that your son, was actually a surprisingly good lover after she got through showing him how
or she could lie and say; We just watched horror movies, sometimes he posed me
and pricked me, and played, games, with paint and swords
which was also true, because it was all true.
We gorged ourselves, only children without parents who were home
and when you were, you chain smoked too, behind your dust and your exhausted slump
we all did, drinking your wine, eating delivered organic food, such irony Elaine
you think i was just some dumb girl with thin hips and a small brain?
You used to look at me like; Who the fuck do you think you are? And I’d look right back because I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I was fucking the world with my sadness and it really didn’t matter what you thought or what anyone thought, because i’d already decided to jump
and i was watching all the time i was standing there, in my short skirt and my bare legs and my impossible tight breasts and my impossible tight cunt, all of which you hated, because your husband had left you for one
but one isn’t me, and i wasn’t her and she wasn’t it, and you weren’t alone, you were free of him, and he was the reason your son hated you, not me.
I watched through the floor boards, through holes in the ceiling, to your life unpeeling
for your short stubby hands revealing, to the kisses you gave the picture by your reading glasses, to the wine you drank and stained your hands with, before you passed them over yourself in genuflection like a good Catholic and reached for the vibrator
to your son hating you, as he may have loved you also, why we never quite knew, does anyone? Hate being so close to love, as sex is to horror and horror is to desire.
Elaine, you summoned like a Magi, some kind of anger in him, at a strong mother or women in general, he was a sexist asshole, who liked men who hated women and women who let men hate them and I was a great substitute for Robert Crumbs little busty girls who bent over and let anger take them right up the ass
but he thought anorexic actresses with dark nipples were beautiful and one time i visited his office in Greek Street Soho WI and he was talking to a Jewish actress who i also thought was hot
Rachel Weisz you still are …
and she walked away with her five-inch heels and his eyes up her skirt
i wanted to say what about me? But i was just ordinary despite being an eight to his one, and she was a handsome, famous, adored shiny girl with a full rolodex and you were a tit man
who because you were a man, (though you’d never be a real man and that made you crazy) thought you could, (fuck Rachel Weisz? Seriously?) and you never would, but it was funny imagining, especially when you already had more than you ever would
(with me, the girl of cinders and soot)
so i watched you watching her and later on when you pretended it was her you took
i pretended right back because i wouldn’t mind being her or being you
and if i were her I’d let you split me open four ways like star of anise and divide me back because it’s a soulless game and I’m your whore and i’m your mother and i’m your bloody crack.
I’m sure now you have a young wife and four chubby kids with green eyes
or you might have died, by plunging into a canal, or cutting your throat with a blunt razor
if you’d started to shave after you starred aged ten in Ms Marple as the fat cheeked boy with shorts on and a smart mouth (yeah that was about right)
but either way, i hope you will let me know Elaine, what happened to your son
because i didn’t burn his house down, he did, he struck a match and he lit us both
on fire, until we stopped being repulsive and we stood charred and broken
in Camden Town, not being able to afford to drink, at The Elephant
or fuck each other in your bed, or die standing up right then and there
because burned people are shadows, they persist
in
reminding us
of
them.
I think of him regularly, whilst I’m sure, he has long forgotten me, which isn’t fair and is ironic and really typical, because men operate on a different time and hour. They think of the girl who is bending over now and not the one who did when they first learned to use their magic wand
unless she was obedient at all times and acted the part, in which case they will brag at 45 of the one they did in St. James’s park, who hitched up her skirt and got on all fours, and she was a “right go-er that one,”
Yeah I gave it to her so many times, she couldn’t walk and yeah, yeah, yeah, builders salivating in a pub talk, I guess you had me enough you could, but you’re probably an attorney and that means you like being tied up and debased, and it’s bad taste to talk about women who left you
raw
because you’re in control, you’re the passive one with the fat wallet and the penchant for sex in the afternoon in a diaper, or with a plastic mask over your hair, that you cut when you became serious, so you could hide the scream and the mess of your desperation.
Sometimes I check online to see, if you posted the naked pictures you took when I wasn’t even legal, in your bathroom, where your mom had lots of soap in fancy bottles
whoops
because we both have ruin in our DNA, and Elaine, if you’d asked, I might have slept with you both, your eyes were so lonely and I liked how ruined they were
the extending, unending madness of your family of animals
it comforted me, slowly dawning, I was mad also, I really didn’t know it, until
my
little foot
fit
your
little shoe
that
is.
(First published in Ascendum Magazine 2016).
I cannot, you see
What if she’s me? The woman screaming without reprieve?
And what if she’s you? The body beneath the sheets lifted by strangers?
Every time the phone rings, I see in my minds eye, your prone form
fallen, or hurt, somehow
this fear I inhabit is years in coming
your fragility creeps up on us like a wettened shroud
once so strong, you’d take me in your bronze arms and
press me to you where the sound of your powerful
heart beat assured me nothing would erase or remove
your certainty
then the sick hiss and whisker of machines
a tube down your throat, a glazed look, no recognition
slack hand filled with needles, empty eyes void of life
I felt you moving away even as you stayed
gone and still there
a stranger in your face, your expressions glazed
even the taste of your lips changed
as if blistering over from sudden Winter storm.
As time ticks down, we look up
to salvation, prayer and hope when
maybe nobody listens
I stand over you as you sleep
your little bluebird chest rising in dream
I want to
climb on the bed and laugh as once we did
curling around each other in chased game
oh so much joy in one shared heart
when i was your girl and you were my
evening rose
now the dust has settled and we still
scattered pictures, cannot see clearly
all around are shadows and shorn warnings
easy to lose ourselves in fears glory
like gathering a bird who has fallen from glass
stunned and dying pressed in our hands
death on us now, like unsought reflection
glinting, glinting, glinting.
I miss you, the you I knew
better than I know myself
who would turn in her sleep and
touch me without waking
such was our eternal fuse
one into the other, no boundaries
and time is a fickle fellow
taking you and keeping you sickened
welded to pills and paper casts of closed theatres
we stand apart, at times nearly severed
I would sacrifice all to make you well
but i have given everything i know
it is clear we go in different directions
one is the end and you drift like
wind on frigid water
while i continue to swim upstream
i cannot, you see
let go
your bright feathers dull
and still i look up
when birds fly into glass
TheFeatheredSleep 