Unwell 0.1

This first new link almost missed my radar before publishing this first part of several ORIGINALLY and PERSONALLY written pieces

I think I dreamed of being saved (also putting a spotlight on this part of the country where there is a sustained source of passive [and active] bigotry) so I left breadcrumbs of where I live throughout my writing and make it known because experiencing what I have to experience ad having it weaponized in the way it has been is making my body break down in a way that I found best described by Hafizah Augustus Geter in The Black Period. But, sometimes, you have to save yourself and I live in Connecticut; knowing I'm not now or have ever been the 1st one to notice these dog whistles is a load of my back and shoulders.

Now all I need is someone(s) to listen to me.

What are these writings that I've labeled "Unwell"?

Poems? Essays? Musings? Ramblings of an Unwell mind?

I believe Connecticut (this world in general, but specifically this state) has made my mental health deteriorate to such a state that I feel I and my brain can be labelled Unwell. Black crazy, dually Mad (Mad as in angry and Mad as in mentally disturbed), neurotic and even paranoid may be just as good descriptors, but none of them encapsulate how I feel better than Unwell.

I have felt bad, depressed and even low in my life before, but to the extent that I feel Unwell in this state, in this city that I live in and in the current state of the world that we are all trapped in? I can say I have never experienced THIS before. “C'est la vie, no?” Growing up from now on, I will carry the trauma, exasperation and crazymaking of this place. Especially of this place I live in with these nosey predatory ass men, the nosey Stockholm syndrome stuck women and their neglected children who they raise to be nosey and just like them. Indeed, I feel like I will almost always be looking over my shoulders with a low level of extra anxiety and distrust of most people.

Is this my lesson, y'all?

Y’all felt the need to "humble me"? Teach me a lesson? And this is that lesson? I have to “prove myself” by making it out of this crazymaking situation?

“Pressure makes diamonds”?

Remind me of "my place"?

Where is my place exactly? I walk my dog and there's a family that rush outside when they see me walk by. So many other families in that area also don't like me. Study and watch me, day after day. And I have to ignore them and control myself. I was exasperated (hangry, sleepy and dehydrated) and made the hand to head gesture of shooting myself in the head to the 2 black men who stepped outside from the apartment of the black woman who seems to repeatedly rush out onto her porch to watch me walk my dog, make sure I pick up their refuse, as if I wouldn't and PERSONALLY have a history of doing so, and get the hell out while wearing a yellow shirt that says Choose Happy. How ironic, how sad, how Unwell, how uncontrolled, how crazy made.

Where is “my place”?

Under your feet?

Six Feet under ground?

Why do y’all feel the need to “humble me”?

If I grovel with my head held low, you’re mad; if I walk around with a smile and a kind word, you’re mad. It’s a catch-22, isn’t it? Living in this body with all of my intersecting identities? No matter what I do, someone’s going to be mad about and might try to take my life because of it. Should I just off myself since my existence is such a trigger to y’all?

“Call 988 if you need someone to talk to”

“Don’t kill yourself, your life is important”

But the life I live where your business is minding my business? Where I seemingly can have no peace? Where I seem forced to continue to live surrounded by people who seem to want to cause me harm? Physically and psychologically? Have my immune system triggered because they seem to know what makes me uncomfortable (“I’m not touching you”/being too close for comfort microaggressions, I suppose) and get off on it? It’s hard to remain calm and centered all the time, if I’m being vulnerable.

In my state of being, like, the outside looking at me, I feel like I would be seen as like the town/city "crazy" person, and I think that that's Unwell; so, I say that I'm Unwell.

Not good. Low. bad.

It's really not that funny. I can’t imagine how genuinely depraved one must be to read what I feel is happening to me and my reactions to it and think it humorous. Although, y’all have and continue to show how fascistically depraved y’all are so I can’t be too surprised, can I?

I feel this anger because I feel like people see it happening, know it's happening, are a part of this (I just sneezed writing this part. Synchronization of my feelings, my body and my writing, I think.

Caveat, then: one thing I've learned from this whole experience is to "listen to my body", "trust my intuition". I've followed my heart and that's led me down regrettable paths. I have a habit of ignoring my body's signals for pain, though; been conditioned to from family, school, work and extracurricular activities. Not stretching oneself a little further to make yourself stronger, more flexible and resilient, but overworking oneself because ONLY those who do so make it anywhere. Body aches, shivers, sneezing, yawning and even pangs of pain throughout my body that I force myself to downplay and minimize daily. To get by? To make other people happy? Generational trauma? The systems that we all live under and influence us? I can't quite say. But I need to listen to my body more. I've been procrastinating writing and publishing these writings but everything in my body is saying to do it)

24/7, 365 crazymaking and weathering and enjoy it. In my own way, I "did the math. It's either 2/3 of folks are awful and 1/3 are trying to make things better or vice versa but half of the 2/3 group have no choice in the matter of being in that group. Their world is "the default" after all so half of the 2/3 follow the rest of the crowd. It seems like being awful is the default which means 2/3 of folks are awful and I might be part of the 1/3 of folks trying to make things better (keep things from getting worse? trying to find a way to exist throughout collapse?) which puts me in opposition to most folks. It explains something yet leaves me feeling anxious. Like, one day, someone is going to kill me because of who I am and I can't do anything until someone directly walks up to me and hands me a note saying that they hate me and want to see me dead.

What did I do?

I have an inkling and it seems I can't apologize enough for it. Can't learn, grow or do enough to be worthy enough to some folks. Don't want to start drama, but I can't please everyone. Another catch-22.

I imagine someone who is in the know about what's going on with me is one of these folks I can't please and, like a Queen Ant, influences others to not associate with me. I'm “A Problem”? A bad influence?

Too many books that I've listened to in the last few years come to mind when I think of it all.

I can't just live in this place. I feel preyed upon by men and jealousy from women because of it but I'm afraid of men (there I said it! take away my WOMAN card) and it’s specifically because I'm intersex. As license plates with "XYY" have tailed me, parked behind and around and been around in my community, I get the feeling that I'm meant to see it and know what it's supposed to mean. Folks, without me telling them, know that I’m intersex and, like that intersex waitress in Yaoundé, seem to wish to strip me naked and take turns hitting me over and over again to their hearts contents.

I don't have to say my legal name because I stupidly used my real face and voice and forgot to turn off people in my phone being recommended my social media.

People are stalking and terrorizing me (engine begins to rev around me). Crazymaking and weathering me. And folks don't want to believe it because they're happy with me being in this unsafe situation with no community to reach out for. My presence as everything that I am (all the intersections of my identity) seems to make people very uncomfortable. Continuing to wear a mask in public doesn't help.

So, I must write?

I'm already Unwell. I have a therapist but no friends or family who'd listen and all of them recommend just writing and posting about what's going on "if it bothers me so much". So, here I am. I have maybe hundreds of pages of writings from the past few years that might make a little book in the end. That's either sad, a manifestation of an unwell mind or something more than substantial than just a conspiracy theory.

So, I guess that's Unwell: me talking about slowly losing my sanity while dealing with chronic stress as a response to seemingly crazymaking reactively abusive people in Connecticut (and also about trying to “live in the shadow of hope”). New England in general but, if I'm being honest, this is a global thing. As in prices in stores, license plates and government vehicles with actual white supremacist dog whistles and people being dismissive or mad at me for noticing it in the first place.