Whispers and rumours and friends of good friends. The city of glass lies next to the water, waiting to break. Which ones are real, paper or plastic? Talk of an ending, an earthquake, an exit. Anything but nothing. Nobody listens but everyone talks. Fake plastic people drinking five dollar bills, monopoly money through fake plastic straws. Designer drugs and ,faerie dust sold by the flap. The questions are answers and the excuses are reasons. Tomorrow’s losers are yesterday’s heroes. Everyone living and dying for a fix, still the mess never gets cleaned up. Fall asleep to the sound of a leaky tap and the never=ending sirens. That’s right, someone on the train was explaining what the emergency is. But I cannot remember and it doesn’t matter. Dream that my face is full of holes.
I think it was the Same day that my dad told me that I “need a new life”. The Words slipped out by accident. Funny how what’s most accurate is often a fluke.
"Die Pretty (The Writing's On The Wall)" by scarsarestories, January 2011
I decided to put my (limited as they may be, Doctor Heidi Rimke) credentials to work, immersing myself in a Vancouver neighbourhood for my first “street sociology” project, based on participant observation that would never be approved by a University “ethics” (read: lawsuit avoidance) board. It is probably the most notorious of spaces in the city, and because of the open-air use of crack cocaine and intravenous heroin and cocaine use, as well as unhidden sales of these and almost any drug you can imagine in front of the Carnegie building at the intersection of Main and East Hastings – prescriptions being the most common, but of course second to ”up, down, and hard” (powder cocaine, heroin, and rock crack cocaine). While walking through the DTES, down East Hastings Street (a major route that runs through the whole city) surrounding the blocks above and below main, the words are repeated by a good number of the people you pass, mostly men but women as well. “Up down” ”Up down” “Hard, Up, Down?” “Up, Down, Hard” “Up Down”. Takers follow the sellers into doorways or alleys where deals are made, and drugs often consumed immediately. Though the area is known by the rest of the city as a place inhabited by junkies, it is really, first and foremost, a place where the city’s poor live. Drugs are secondary to a reality that demands blurring. This is very difficult for those who have never lived it to understand, but I hope, with this project, I can make a few people think about things differently.
It is the only place in Metro Vancouver where one can find a residence that costs $375, the housing allotment given to income and disability assistance recipients and a cruel joke in a city where my $800 studio apartment is considered to be cheap. The apartments available are rooms with mattresses and sinks that sometimes work backwards, only from one knob, or not at all. Anyone who has been homeless, however, knows that this is of little consequence when one’s other choice is the street. Bathrooms are shared by all twenty-two tenants per floor in this building I have been staying in fairly often, as most people I know here just happen to be neighbours, while newer facilities at the same price have private washrooms. Like so many things down here, where you get in is determined by luck after spending years on a waiting list. All have free cable and utilities, more than I can say for myself.
I know – I have a nice home. But I had been spending most nights wandering these streets, searching for something in the streetlamp-light silence of foggy February alleys and strangers that talk, that tell you their story and sometimes their name. There is a magical hour, when the buses and trains stop running, the only cars that pass are sporadic, either taxis or cops, the sirens that scream throughout Vancouver days stop long enough for relief to wash over us, caught in this space, wishing time would stop ticking just this once and let the peace reign over the noise for more than an hour. Of course it never does, and up starts the train and first buses, men line up outside the “Union Gospel” complex across the street several hours before coffee is served, inevitably fights often break out between fellow poor fellows with nothing to do, and there is money to be made with the turn of the day so the “up, down, hard” winds up until the dark hour comes the next night.
I’m seduced by the silence, the hiding in dark, but most by the rawness that residents of the DTES epitomize. Money comes with so much pretentiousness, even if it’s not much, the dressing up to get groceries, the wicked things women say about one another but never to another’s face, the boiling anger of hipster boys pretending to be calm and grey-haired men just as unimpressed with the police state of the times, the shiny objects that beep and blink status, labels instead of real people speak everywhere else in Vancouver. I came here in search of something real, and everything on the DTES has a price but the raw frankness is free and necessities are sold cheap. The line between needs and wants is thin and tricksters will try to trade you one for the other with a missing-teeth grin. But you can’t trick a trickster. At least not that often.
The women here fight as hard as the men and if a girl’s got a problem she tells you. I appreciate this honesty so much, and it’s missing among all other socioeconomic classes and their respective spaces. If a guy is ripped off or owes money (money is usually the reason for anger, this cuts across classes, it’s the method of dealing with it that changes) the issue is resolved by a fight, followed by slaps on the back, even a hug. No one laughs or stares at the people that speak “to themselves”, soliloquizing as they walk down the sidewalks, past wheelers, dealers, the chased and the chasers, the buyers, the bought. The only dishonesty is the passing of make believe drugs, pure baking soda sold in flaps (folded up square papers, a kind of origami, really), and I don’t believe it has ever killed a man – no one fights to the death. When someone in the community here dies, everyone talks about it for days.
This is the main difference between my hometown of Winnipeg, specifically its downtown core, and the Downtown Eastside: violence involving more than fists here is considered stupid, and people talk about it when someone pulls out a knife. In Winnipeg people are stabbed to death daily, and nobody speaks. I don’t care how many times a man tells me “on the DTES someone will kill you for ten dollars”. This simply is not true. Anyone that has emigrated here from elsewhere in Canada will agree. It’s one way to judge whether or not someone’s originally from here.
I suppose I came here because I too am a hungry ghost. My appetite is insatiable, and I’m a spectre to so many people I once knew, even my own family. When you talk in a room of people and no one responds you feel like a ghost. If I try to spend time with friends from late adolescence and early university days I’m treated like trash for being intelligent, for actually having something to say. Down here, it’s respected. And a lot of smart people can be found if you look in the right places and keep your head up.
For the sake of comparison and as a point from which to take off, I’m comparing the lives of those I encounter here to how they’re described in this book, by a doctor that has worked here for a long time, but without living here:
Thirty pages into Matés In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts, I am blown away, realizing again a lesson that lately permeates every day – I’m a copy of copied, twice rewritten pages. Everything I say has already been said and there is nothing special about me or my story. There is both solace and sadness in finding this out. I read a line in the book that I had no idea was common, almost identical to something I have been saying since I was a small child, that I am scared of being alone with my thoughts, especially in the insomniac dark when trying to fall asleep:
“At all costs,” Maté states, “drug addicts want to escape spending ‘alone time’ with their minds.”
After reading this, I’m more afraid than ever, so it’s a blessing I am in a place where there is always someone to talk to, and someone who will really listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak – they know because they’ve been there themselves with a head full of thoughts that need voicing else there be risk of damaging oneself, even if they forget what you tell them by the time the birds start chirping, dogs begin barking, and men line-up chattering while waiting for coffee.
Hell, this is the most expensive city in North America – a decade ago the “best” but the sky here falls quickly along with the rain that washes our dirt down the gutter along with the pain – a free cup of coffee is a goddamn miracle. As long as you can avoid hearing the preacher who tells poor men that their lives would be different if only they chose Jesus over the quietness offered by drugs. Freedom’s just another word for losing God’s game, important papers that went missing and wanting more than another day that like each passed one, looks exactly the same.
I’m “in the field” right now, hence the lack of new posts. Over the next weeks you can expect…
A humorous and disturbing look at the latest male pick-up move…ladies, have you been victim to this lewd act that spans generations, and is apparently the new standard advance in the straight dating world? Hint: Reflecting the laziness, lack of creativity, and misogyny that characterizes the worst of current North American society, it involves a sudden shift from conversation to pulling something out of one’s pants…
My first comprehensive “Street Sociology” project… A look at the Vancouver neighbourhood called “Canada’s Poorest Postal Code” or the “Downtown Eastside”, “Mini-Los-Angeles”, et al. that would never pass an ethics board, risk theorists now being the purveyors of “risk society” and all…
A review of Dr. Gabor Maté’s In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts - did a medical doctor working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside capture the reality of the lives the of folks that live there?? If you want to read along buy it here, new for ten bucks …
Big, BIG, BIG News :O
For now, enjoy the beginning of a new Practice of Madness soundtrack.
After losing my friend at Pacific Centre, Vancouver’s downtown mall, in its shiny upscale glory, and having had my iPhone (camera/music collection/calculator/school notes/flashlight/teleportation device/et al. ….boy do I miss the days when someone could steal your phone without taking all those other things, or gank a CD without taking your camera! ) stolen for the fourth or fifth time last weekend, I figured that one of the hundred or more people (I’m starting to doubt that the sheep are human, that they bleed, feel pain, suffer?… ) sitting in the “lounge” area playing with or lazily holding cell phones I suppose waiting for a call would lend this attractive, well-dressed young woman their phone for less than one minute (though it is a Sunday and calls are free for cell phone owners on weekends) to call him and find out where I could collect him to leave downtown immediately (I’m allergic to yuppies, hipsters, yippies, or whatever they are calling themselves at the moment, and they gather downtown, anywhere near Robson St. (advertised at billboards lining train tracks as “Vancouver’s Runway”; I would post a picture of one if I had the phone that my latest snapshots held), women with war-paint faces and pantyhose for pants, men with eyes so vacant one may wonder if they are “sleep shopping” after an Ambien-nap. After a few turn-downs that would have been better without the lame excuses – a simple “no” rather than “I’m using it” when I know what an iPhone looks like and you are staring at the home page panicking or using a foreign accent to pretend a local call would cost you hundred dollar bills that might be clever enough to make me smile if it wasn’t the worst fake accent ever – I stood before the entire crowd and stated, “Excuse me. I have lost my friend. My cell phone is in the process of being replaced. Is there someone that would be willing to let me use theirs to make a fast local call?”
The whole pack looked down at once. No one spoke. I started screaming the name of my friend. This seemed to irk folks less. When I finally found someone willing to help, shockingly, he was not North American! Too boot, I’ve been a little irked myself lately. And not because someone politely asked me to lend them something for no longer than ninety seconds while sitting at a mall surrounded by bags of new clothing and an iPod that matches one of the five Hermès silk scarves in the small bag. I’ve been irked by the horror thawhsurrounds me, the growing number or impoverished Canadians never mind the state of the world, the multi-million dollar condos that rise above the Downtown Eastside and its gated parkade where five people are sleeping on cold concrete hoping the light shining near the gates will deter thieves who would gladly help themselves to the bikes of people who cannot afford beds, well, at least not spaces in which to put them. I’ve been irked by myself, by my sister, my family, and I went through my list of “friends” and told those who only show their faces when I have money to go climb a tree (but in a much meaner and wordier way). Since I’m on the topic, I will tell you a story about family, self-concept, and self-harm, which I will link here when it is finished. For now, let’s head back to the mall, the one I usually shop at if I must since it is right above a train and does not require stepping outside downtown. (Anyone have a word for “fear of downtown” to add to my list of technical terms for phobias? Win an item from Past Lives Beadery if you do! )
…I had given up on humanity, albeit a small group of friends who, like me, are not at all “normal”: we’ve been institutionalized in various sterile buildings holding cages holding people for a good part of our adolescent and/or adult lives, we are known to scream loudly in public knowing it is futile and crying for the show, others say we are hot one minute and cold the next but never nice and lukewarm. Not beige enough, don’t own a thing from Banana Apparel or American Republic (if you think I just made an “oops” you can navigate away from this page now), have great taste and lovely decor somewhere under the mess that so and so left because no one cleans up after themselves but us and when we do in the houses of others they do not know how to react, have beautiful faces under the black mess left by crying on Lâncome lashes, have coin filled pockets but cannot spare change cuz we’ve got horrible credit and the wrong kind of bills, we leave messages on each other’s machines that would make most people cry “waa, waa, waa” but instead we cackle all the way home, our parents hate us but not as much as our siblings do, professors used to love us but no longer care because we refuse(d) to conform to their values or visions or versions, friends including those we called “best” decided we were not worth the trouble a year or two after high school, strangers tend to take to us because we are actually interested in conversing (just don’t stay too long), bosses shake fingers even those we do not work for…
That leaves us and our cats. And we’re pretty goddamn lucky, as each other is amazing beyond “beyond words”, and cats are magic, didn’t you know?
Then, as I did last September when I was drowning in the thick mud of depression I had been since July, I opened my control panel for this blog/website, and there you were.
Eleven of you left comments, the most I have ever received in a week by far! As usual, they are lovelier than love is, happier than fresh flowers, kinder than Santa Claus. So I thought, before blabbing about whatever is bugging my brain, I should stop and say thank-you, because without your readership, the little community that is slowly coming together around this website, and those of you who take the time out of a way-too-busy day to leave a comment – a special thanks to you, because your words are just as important as mine, and I keep this site up, writing as often as my schedule allows for pro-bono work, for many reasons and “to create conversation about topics people usually do not talk about” is at the top of the list. I dreamed that someday I would be a writer for the first time about twenty years ago, and though childhood innocence knows little of money, being a writer has just as little to do with a paycheque now as it did then.
Being a writer, to me, means that my words are reaching other human beings and provoking a reaction, relation, in my wildest dreams revelation.
You have made my dream come true. If I were to die today, and I do not plan to, but if I did, I would die happy because you have made me something I remember wanting to be almost as far back as I can remember. School did not do that – not when it was high, not when it was graduate. My family neither. Nor Santa Claus.
Readers make a writer, and you have made me a damn happy one.
So, you know that photo app that I won’t shut up about? The amazing iPhone app featuring over 20 lenses, 20 films, and 8 flashes, mimicking analog using digital technology was even used by war photographer Damon Winter in Iraq, winning him a prestigious award (view the amazing photos here) Well, the Hipstamatic community also holds contests for amateurs like me! This post is a shameless request asking you to vote for one of the prints I submitted to the contest “Fashion. Music. Hope.”. The winning print will be featured on a T-Shirt sold at major retailers. To vote click on one of the links below and use facebook to “like” or twitter to “retweet” (or both! ). Here they are, “Eagle Ashes” and, for those with some East Van pride, “Die Pretty”. More soon – scars
I happened upon a serious vault of print ads, past and more recent, and most are those that only appear in magazines for doctors – journals but they’re full of ads, they always have been. I saw one from before 1920 on microfilm once and ads equalled (if not outnumbered articles) far before our current hyper capitalist age. Am I supposed to feel better about their presence dominating so-called “academic” – which is supposed to be somewhat objective, no? – journals being filled with ads for products to give the consumer, the newest and therefore most expensive products, obviously they must be better. Alright, I must not go for the tangent as the ads are, like the Japanese non-DTC ads (they are directed at psychiatrists, strictly) quite different from the DTC ads. This reminds me of the way both “chemical” and “Brand” names are just made up by teams of psychologists and other “experts” – come on, Abilify…Effexor… the more subtle like rispiridrone…
(and now a rare glimpse at what my psychiatrist is really thinking about me… )
(dare I suggest that if Van Gogh had been on antipsychotics, he wouldn’t have painted anything?… )
(and one for the docs! )
“Pfizer Sushi” …
(I vote for more pharmaceutical ads featuring naked chicks)
(Internet Addiction [to be "officialized" in the DSM-V] was around long before the Internet, of course – this is SCIENCE after all… )
<speechless>
(this is not the set for the sequel to “2001: A Space Oddyssy, but an exhibit on Abilify at a convention for psy-experts)
And now… The ritalin/prescription stimulant (Dextroamphetamine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, et al. ) files – Highly amusing and appropriately bizzare…
(a hardhat on head and a lasso in hand… I think this fellow has been taking more than his prescribed dosage… or maybe this is normal, and my conception of normal just that off…?? )
(oh that’s why so many long-haul truck drivers take speed! Is that a coffin in the second small photo from the left? )
(aw, pills for mommy and baby to share, aren’t they adorable… )
(or whacked on speed)
Stelazine: Stelazine (Trifluoperazine) is used to treat anxiety or psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
(um, I thought this was a drug to treat schizophrenia… apparently it also cures married men of the annoying obligation to speak with their wives… )
(but “borderline personality disorder” has nothing to do with schizo… oooh, I forgot, this is a psych med, and unlike other medications, they can be used to treat almost anything. Especially antipsychotics… “adding <antipsychotic x, ex/ Abilify> to a cocktail for depression, bipolar disorder” …basically anything listed in the DSM, is very effective. Effective how? It turns annoying patients with multiple complaints into speechless, complacent zombies? Better ask a doctor! )
(they forgot to mention the drooling bit! Nothing more relaxing than a good drool… )
(that is one of the most concise delusional descriptions of the psych ward I have ever heard! )
(I thought “neurotic” was the opposite of “psychotic”, psychosis being the Hallmark of schizophrenia, which this drug was synthesized to treat… I think it’s time to stop asking questions. <sigh> )
(what was that about the decline of culture signalling the demise of a society? Not that pills aren’t just as remarkable as one of the classic literary works ever produced by humankind, or anything… )
(am I the only one very, very confused by this ad? )
(hehehehe “back-ward”, j’ya get it, j’ya get it? )
(this one is way over my head, too. I’m not a doctor though… )
Stop using trifluoperazine and call your doctor at once if you have a serious side effect such as:
twitching or uncontrollable movements of your eyes, lips, tongue, face, arms, or legs;
tremor (uncontrolled shaking), drooling, trouble swallowing, problems with balance or walking;
feeling restless, jittery, or agitated;
high fever, stiff muscles, confusion, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats, rapid breathing;
feeling like you might pass out;
decreased night vision, tunnel vision, watery eyes, increased sensitivity to light;
seizure (black-out or convulsions);
nausea and stomach pain, skin rash, and jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes);
urinating less than usual or not at all;
pale skin, easy bruising or bleeding, fever, sore throat, flu symptoms;
joint pain or swelling with fever, swollen glands, muscle aches, chest pain, vomiting, unusual thoughts or behavior, and patchy skin color; or
This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur. Tell your doctor about any unusual or bothersome side effect. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
Medications made with you in mind!
(special treats for non-compliant patients – “Cheekers”, “traders”, “Saboteurs”, and the like)
(Who would try to shirk their Thorazine dose?! )
(Let me guess – Loxapine? The stuff that made me forget my name, and admit to the Vancouver Police – such that my permanent record is flagged and any complaints I make are treated as “likely just delusions” – that I have schizophrenia, one of the few DSM-IV-TR diagnoses that I haven’t ever been branded with by a doc? Of course, this statement must be read with great scrutiny… )
(Toilets: Many a psych ward’s most dangerous fixtures… )
(mmm…now in “red” and “blue” flavours! )
Why Take away when You can add on instead?:
Drugs to combat the side-effects, i mean, extra-pyramidal symptoms, of psych meds, such as Parkinson’s, tardive dyskenisia, tics…you know, a harmless little twitch now and then!
(since psychiatric drugs, as we know, take a nice lot of the “human” out of the individual)
(indeed, the ads that only run in medical journals… )
(Drug-induced Parkinson’s during young adulthood…sounds like a sure cure for depression/anxiety/paranoia/etc. to me! )
Psychiatry’s oldest and most reliable market population: The Deviant Woman
(Nothing does a woman more good, more quickly than a little speed, er, Ambar [methamphetamine HCl] )
(couples may also benefit from a daily dose of uppers, or two)
(of course, once you’re on speed you need a sedative to maintain sanity, adorableness, antilethargicness, the ability to “cope”, and all the rest)
(Aha! The solution to our current crisis of the sisterhood: women are not bonding over pills like they did during the suffrage movement and second wave feminism… )
(what do you know, more pill-popping could also repair our broken families! )
(not money, but A.D.H.D. is the cause of the majority of marriage failures, didn’t you know? )
(no, this is not a joke… It’s all part of a brave new childhood that is largely going unexplored by media/researchers)
(hooked on phonics… and “o-lan-za-peen” … I certainly did not feel like playing soccer, or moving, for that matter, when I took Olanzapine. Oh well, maybe it works different for kids, I mean, no one really knows, right? )
(Oh yeah… 3) “MDB” or Minimal Brain Dysfunction)
(hm…this one helped me through grade twelve…guess it does the same for third graders… )
(once upon a time, before political correctness had to bugger everything up… )
(mmmmm…haldol… )
(this stuff cures daddy issues)
(because we all know “DIFFERENT” is just another word for “WRONG“)
(“stimulant antidepressant”… )
(this is the lasso dude, after taking Ritalin for five years, isn’t it? )
(oh, to be “regular”… )
(it depresses depression! man, why don’t they just put this stuff in the water? )
(I have always liked corners. What is wrong with corners?? )
As the time has come for some change in my personal and public life, I think the time has come to begin piecing together a new “soundtrack” to accompany my writing on this blog. I have gotten positive feedback about the tunes I play here, a soundtrack not only for the pieces of writing that come up over the period of a month or a few, but also a soundtrack for a period in my life, and perhaps one in yours, as well!
As I do have pay, monthly, to keep the music playing, and as traffic has increased lately, costs have risen, I am going to do what I usually do when I change the music: provide the last playlist for download – however, I must limit the time during which I make it available, as allowing you wonderful people to download the tunes takes up quite a lot of bandwidth.
(I realize that we are in the middle of a recession/depression, and I enjoy maintaining and writing for this blog so much, that I have financed it on my own so far. Allow me one second here to beg…now would be an ideal time for you to donate anything you can – $1.00 is just as much appreciated as $20.00 – via Paypal, by clicking on the “donations accepted” icon on the right-hand sidebar. If I do start receiving donations, I would like to honour the incredibly generous souls who do so, by creating a page featuring the names of donors, as well as sending all those who donate a free gift from my online/Commercial Drive, Vancouver-based handmade jewelry business, Past Lives Beadery. If you cannot donate right now, please do not feel bad – I am constantly torn as I would love to donate to many causes, the most recent being Wikipedia, but am not yet in a position where I can afford to do so. I adore all my readers, and donating certainly does not change the way I feel about one subscriber over another. )
Here is a listing of the tracks, available for download below:
Bat For Lashes: “The Wizard”
Bjork: “The Modern Things”
Bob Dylan: “Ballad of a Thin Man”
Bright Eyes: “Poison Oak”
Emily Haines: “Pretty Head”
Emily Haines: “Our Hell”
Feist: “I Feel it All”
Faithless: “Addictive”
Fiona Apple: “I Know”
Laura Marling: Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)
Leonard Cohen: “Stories of the Street”
P.J. Harvey: “The Garden”
P.J. Harvey: “The Desperate Kingdom of Love”
Radiohead: “Life in a Glass House”
Radiohead: “Scatterbrain”
Regina Spektor: “Carbon Monoxide”
Sneaker Pimps: “Waterbaby”
Tori Amos: “Curtain Call”
Tori Amos: “Police Me”
Wilco: “Hummingbird”
Damien Rice: “The Blower’s Daughter”
Tori Amos: “Shattering Sea”
Ani DiFranco: “Welcome To” (live)
Cocorosie: “Angry Sea”
Tori Amos: “Me and a Gun”
Tegan and Sara: “City Girl”
Elsiane: “Paranoia”
Scarsarestories: “Airline Safety”
Lykke Li: “Time Flies”
Metric: “Help I’m Alive” (Acoustic)
Regina Spektor: “Daniel Cowman”
Again, for this weekend only, you may download the music you have heard here over the past couple of months for free!
I will make an exception if you miss out this weekend, and write to me (a comment on this post shall suffice) requesting a download at a later date. At the same time, I cannot make exceptions for everyone, so try your best to download the tunes this weekend, if you so desire.
The Podcast Player, provided by Cincopa Media Platform, is quite straightforward – you may click “download all” at the top, to download all thirty-one tracks, or you may scroll through the tracks, selecting which songs you wish to download. Without further ado…here it is:
Bonus: In honour of my lyrics-obsession, I would like to share with you some of my favourite lyrics from the songs on this list. I would be overjoyed, if you did the same, in a comment reply to this message!!
3. “You have many contacts/Among the lumberjacks/To get you facts/When someone attacks your imagination/But nobody has any respect/Anyway they already expect you/To all give a check/To tax-deductible charity organizations./You’ve been with the professors/And they’ve all liked your looks
/With great lawyers you have /Discussed lepers and crooks/You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books/You’re very well read/It’s well known.”
4.” Then when you turned away/When you slammed the door/When you stole the car/And drove towards Mexico/And you wrote bad checks/Just to fill your arms/I was young enough/I still believed in war”
6. “Our Hell is a good life.”
7. “I don’t know what I did before/But now I know I wanna win the war…Who will be the one to break my heart I’ll be the one to break my heart…The truth lies.”
8. “I’ve got a demon for a wife/She delights in your pretty face and she hates my life/Takes notes on how to provoke past grief/makes my teeth decay with the loss of my self/Belief”
9. “So be it I’m your crowbar/If that’s what I am so far/’Til you get out of this mess”
10. “And I’m cleaning all the crap out of my room/Trying desperately to figure what it is that makes me blue/And I wrote it in a letter to you/And it’s twenty-two pages front and back but it’s too good to be used/I’m out now/It’s too hard/I’m out now/It’s too hard…”
11. “One hand on my suicide/One hand on the road”
12. “And there was trouble/Taking place”
13. “Oh love/You were a sickly child/And how the wind/Knocked you down….There’s another who looked from behind your eyes/I learned from you how to hide”
16. “I wash the streets from your skin when you come home/I wash the streets from your hair then you leave again.”
17. “Then you ram your hand in your bag for a little friendly/Substance…You climbed/China’s Wall.”
18. “Perhaps the answer/To the question/Lies in the question/Perhaps/You should read my thoughts/Line them up with soldiers”
19. “Remember to remember me/Standing still in your past/Fading fast like a hummingbird”
20. “Life goes easy on me/Most of the time/And so it is/The shorter story/No love no glory/No hero in her scar”
22. “Welcome to/Taking the good stuff down off the shelf/Welcome to/The art of conversation with yourself.”
24. “Yes I wore that slinky red thing/Does that mean, I should spread?”
25. “I cried so hard that you pushed me/Further away/Screamed so loud you called the/Police on me”
28. “And I get weak, I get weary/I miss sleep, I get moody/I’m in thoughts, I write songs/I’m in love, I walk on”
30. “All the survivors singing in the rain/You gave me a life I never chose/Wanna leave but the world won’t let me go/Wanna leave but the world won’t let me go”
I sincerely hope you have enjoyed the stories the past few months have brought. I am very, very excited about the new stories that will manifest within the next few, and the few after that…
{Note: I have made this post “sticky”, due to its level of importance as an announcement, both to my readers, and for family and friends that check up on me here at POM. In other words, this post will appear first on the “index page” (http://www.practiceofmadness.com), though I will continue publishing new articles. New articles will appear below this post, in chronological order as usual. So, if you’ve already read this, scroll down to the next post to read my most recent articles. Cheers! scars }
I was sitting on my bathroom floor the other night. A couple of “friends” had left some syringes in my kitchen “junk drawer” about a month ago, and I had taken them out – not for the purpose of injecting drugs, but for the purpose of self-harm.
I was injecting myself with peroxide and bleach, in very small amounts, and digging through my hands and feet with the needles, tracing my veins with little holes, tiny puncture wounds, until I had created a map, and until my hands had swollen up with balloons.
What the #&^% was I doing?!?
It took a break from reality to figure it out, as it often does for this young (and quickly growing older) woman. What was I doing, back on the bathroom floor that I spent so many high school days sitting on, breathing in noxious chemicals (“crystal meth” ) ? As I was dissecting my own body, I ended up dissecting my life, my psyche, and the map on my hands became a map back to myself.
My visit “back home” for Christmas was devastating. I do not know what was more Hurtful and harmful: A Hate Crime, during which this White Woman With Blonde locks was raped by a first nations man three times her size for two hours, or the revelation – upon her departure ten minutes after my arrival at the family home, and her arrival ten minutes before I was due back at the airport for the sole purpose of screaming at me and making me feel, just as she had last year, like a complete “failure at life”. I would venture to say the latter, as during the sexual attack, I waited for it to be over, and eventually, it did end. My sister’s decision to pick a few times out of a 20 year-relationship – the few times that i was at my weakest, and did not show her the pure, unconditional love and generosity that has absolutely characterized my relationship with her since she was born – has threatened to tear my life apart. I wait for her to reevaluate our relationship, and I’ve been waiting for over three years now. Yes, this is what truly derailed me.
So, for lack of a better way of putting it, I was acting out a bit of an “I am whatever you say I am”, bit. I was responding to my family’s persistent decision to view me as an out of control drug addict (a quick anecdote: after my best friend in Winnipeg, Sam, who has known me since I was fifteen, drove me to the Emergency Room after my attack, I had to fill a $400 prescription, that I will soon be reimbursed for by the B.C. Government, and thus be able to pay my dad back, who “fronted” the money. I walked into my dad’s house, apparently without being heard, coming “home” after the grueling and rather gruesome experience of a going through a post-rape examination and rape-kit at the ER, and filling this prescription for anti-HIV medication, to find my dad screaming at his wife in the kitchen about how he wanted to know about what this $400 prescription was that “Sam and I were snorting or smoking, or whatever, at his place”…I walked into the kitchen and slammed the bottle of pills down on the table – I had been trying to save my family the stress of having to know about what I had been through the previous night. And when I told them, there were no “I’m so happy that you are still alives”, no “you poor things”, not even any “you did the right thing by going to the emergency rooms”. There was only concern about the pricetag of this prescription, that may well prevent me from getting HIV or another horrible virus from the horrible monster that raped me) …so, back to a few nights ago. I did purchase some drugs, though they all ended up lost or down the toilet – I had no idea what I was doing with these substances, I find them boring now, I was done with them a long, long time ago, but my family’s insistence that my experimentation with drugs almost a decade ago, makes me wonder if I “am, whatever they say I am”. The needles, instruments of death, are not me either. And I was not trying to “get high”, I was trying to make this woman, who my sister seems to think is deserving of great pain, feel that pain, to an extreme. When my hands grew numb and I realized that I could be doing permanent damage that would prevent me from doing the one thing that I truly love doing, indeed, my very life-blood: writing – I knew that I had to stop.
But I had not yet figured out why I had been doing this, or what was to come next. Luckily, I caught one of my best friends online as I tried making a few phone calls at 1:00 am, proclaiming that I had lost touch with reality and was hurting my body. Everyone else was sleeping. Everyone else “has to go to work” (I think small retail chains can suffer a little when saving one of your so-called best friend’s life is the issue at hand, but I also know that I was let go from a job for trying to save someone, so though firm in my opinion, I understand the employee’s dilemma). I talked out my immediate circumstances with my dear friend, and only then did I come to the epiphany that I was trying to be the despicable person that my family (very falsely) thinks I am, and that I was trying to make the person that my sister, the sister that I raised after my mom died when she was six, and I thirteen, feel the pain that she deserved. I was being the person, and playing the roles, assigned to me by the people that are supposed to know me better than anyone else in the world, but do not, are incredibly far from knowing me even close to as well as how well my friends know me, because they have never given me the chance to show them who I really am. For some reason, the labels they have chosen for me provide them with comfort.
It is for this reason, that I am “cutting the cord” for some time. After my ICBC settlement cheque arrives, and I settle my recent bills with my father, I am going to do some travelling, and I am going to write a book, and I am going to enroll, not in law school*, but in a one-year journalism program, and perhaps a photography program afterwards, as these are my dreams, and law school is someone else’s dream.
*The reason why I had decided to return to the academy to obtain a degree in law, was that I saw it as the only way that I could compete with my very perfect sister, who has done everything that my dad wanted his children to do (live at home until they had earned medical or law degrees – she’s chosen medicine, so I chose what was left). I thought that if I did this, maybe, just maybe, the father that I love so dearly would, for once, be as proud of me as he is as my sister – more importantly, that he would show me the respect that he shows my sister. However, on that fateful night (I believe it was Monday, perhaps Tuesday) I realized that I was, once again, choosing a very demanding career in order to please other people. We all know how well that went last time!! (if you are not familiar with the story, I suggest you scroll all the way to the bottom of the “Academia is Nuts” gallery that I created a link to in that last statement, and then click on older posts, once again scrolling to the bottom, to get a clear picture of how I discovered that the “academy” and I just do not mix. Oil and water. And I, I am blood. Dragon’s blood, and salty sea water, with a sprinkling of rue and lavender.
Part two: I have decided that it is time for me to write a book. In preparation to do so, I need to take a trip, all by myself. I have been wanting to travel to SouthEast Asia for over a decade, and this is my opportunity. Thus, I am going to ask you, dear readers, a couple of questions. (And of course, I will continue writing for this website, every day or every other day when time allows. It is the one thing in the world that I am most proud of, prouder of than my thesis, or any number of theses and academic papers I could ever, ever write):
I don’t know whether or not to laugh, cry, or just be very disturbed. Last night I had a pretty scary few hours, and since I’m too old to call “Kid’s Help Line”, I decided that I would give Google a try. Bizzare. Just, bizzare. Here it is in its less than grammatically superb glory… Naturally, I find the last item on the list (result #10) most appealing…
Q: what should a twenty seven year old who doesn’t know if she should live or die do to shock her to life?
When a stroke is considered to be massive, it can result in paralysis of one side of …. I know him well and he would not want to live if he were a dependent invalid. … My 19 year old daughter suffered a massive right-side ischemic stroke which left … say may have attributed to the shocking occurrence of her having a stroke.
fficial&client=firefox-a#">Block all www.dailymail.co.uk results
26 Jul 2011 – ‘On arrival officers found the body of a 27-year-old female who was … A spokesman for the late singer said: ‘Everyone involved with Amy is shocked and devastated. … A section of the road where the singer lived remained cordoned off tonight. … ‘Because the drugs will get her if she stays on this road.
The 40-year-old woman arrived at the emergency room of her local hospital displaying a …When the nurse returned to work the next day, she was shocked to discover that … strikes a young woman, she is likely to suffer debilitating damage or die. …. The doctor will know what to do and armed with that knowledge you’ll be …
3 days ago – … they do it? Over the years I’ve studied the lives of numerous successful people. I’ve read their books, watched their interviews, researched them online, etc. … Here are twelve things they do differently that the rest of us can easily emulate. … Growing happens when what you know changes how you live.
12 Sep 2011 – “If you’re with multiple people, you can‘t get your heart broken,” she… Because there will always be the next sex session to look forward to, … Being a big fan of Winston Chruchill, I know he did not die of an STD as …. It is sad to me being a 27 year old women that my peers are risking their life long health for …
After having my 6th surgery and hoping its my last, but I do fear of getting old and not …When will the medical profession listen to their patient’s?! I have been taking oxycontin for 9 year’s and i know my body well..every … digestive system not counting the pain I live with every single day of my life. …. July 16, 2011 • 12:27 pm …
You should consider what might happen to your life if your friend decides that he/she doesn’t share your feelings and doesn’t want to be … Just revealing your feelings for your friend to deal with can be shocking and overwhelming to the friend. …. wow good advice for me lol a 13 eyar old gril needs to know this stuff ! ..love it …
So if the Wizarding world know of Voldie downfall for most of the day how … So they left a one year old baby in a blown up, burn up house for 15 to 20… And, also, “Hagrid doesn’t Travel By Magic” isn’t a plot hole. … You can explain it by saying he happen to be on his way to visit the Potters … Anyone ever hear of ‘shock‘?
If a wife does have a weight problem then her husband should try and help her loose …. Not one time in 27 years has she had an orgasim and without that, where is the …. There is no way you can live in a sexless marriage your whole life. … I take that as she doesn’t care either, or she’s hoping I die soon so she can cash in.
Trauma: An extremely severe emotional shock. …. I have survived all of her usual drive away tactics for six years,but is there any … Feb 27, 2009 @ 12:12 pm …He WILL not take medicine because he is afraid that he will die, and also him … out of control when i tell him what he said he said that he doesn’t know what i am …
I suppose if another young woman happens to perform the same seach, she’ll end up here now. Hi. You’re not alone.
“One day I took off my mask and I noticed my face was missing!” – jaap scheeren
I picked up one of those $20.00 art magazines that I would love to subscribe to when I was in Winnipeg – I dearly hope that when I am making enough money that I can do so, I still have time to do what I do with them (after using them as most use magazines): make collage art. I cut out pieces of other art, sometimes with painstaking detail, and add a few elements of my own, like black paint, saran wrap, a violent RIP, glow-in-the-dark modge podge and fire, to name a few. I’ve never tended towards calling myself an “artist”, though collage is kind of to fine art what remixes are to music, I think primarily because of my younger sister’s oft professed hatred for artists, or at least “people that call themselves artists“, my Aunt Karen being the prototype for her bias. But my sister also got me to start wearing bras again for a few weeks, when she came here to visit me almost three years ago, and was able to put an end to that. Bras hurt though (torture devices, in my opinion, underwire is the equivalent of foot .binding in current North American society. European women seem to be a little more liberated. I don’t even own one anymore. There are undershirts for women… ). I digress. Maybe I’ll take out a DeviantArt account one of these rainy Vancouver winter days that lack school or employment of any traditional kind.
A couple of weeks ago I leafed through the magazine and ripped out quotes and images that I thought might be useful in a new collage project, or at least those that I thought were interesting. I did not have a theme yet, though.
Today I went through the pieces of paper, and the quote above reminded me of last night’s post. Faces and masks – in sociology and social psychology these are key concepts: the different selves that we reveal to certain groups or individual others. We all wear masks to some degree when we’re out in the world – I think this can definitely become pathological, spawning the classic Caulfield “phony”, but that it is also necessary for survival in a society where plenty of others are looking for people to take advantage of (that’s when I put my scary mask on) – and may even wear them at home. I sure was, during my decade of codependency.
I feel I am becoming much more who I really am, now that I live alone. Taking my mask off at home has led to some alterations to the mask I don when I leave my apartment. I’ve become more outgoing, which at first seems like quite a contradiction, but makes sense if socializing is thought of like food that we must have at least once in a while.
I discovered so much about myself that I did not know the first time I lived alone – for a brief two months upon moving here to Vancouver, before I allowed codependency to cast its spell on me one more time, for good measure.
Over the past ten months I picked up where I left off I guess, save for the two months that my dad was here – not that we are “codependent”, but my reason for being adamant about not having any roommate was that I did not want my emotional state to be affected by anyone else, and Goddess knows we all wear masks that we put much effort into making around our parents. I do not think I’ve learned as much as I did during that one summer, but I figure learning about oneself is like learning about anything – there is a “honeymoon” period at the beginning, during which you feel like you could read about topic “x” forever. Then midterms arrive.
So, I decided that the topic for my new collage will be that post, and then I realized that it would be another self-portrait. I started wondering if all my collages have been self-portraits. If so, how very, very interesting, looking at them in chronological order…
<em>all collage art by scarsarestories<em>
(in the first one you couldn’t see my face – I was hiding under the blankets hitting the snooze button…unless I was the child…in this one I’m peering out from under a blanket! completely unintentional…
Now, not yet in a codependent mess of a “relationship”…
And, I never realized this, but when I moved in with my final ex-boyfriend, I must have… thrown out my own collage? Really? Did he throw it out? I do not remember. Huh!
After
We
Broke up, I started making lots of collages, which were unfortunately, after being put together to make one big collage, destroyed, this time by angry former roommates and friends (the fake hippies/neo-cons wearing harem pants, sporting dreads)…
(to show a few of my rather disturbing masks at the time)
This
Year
I’ve been making jewelery and taking lots of pictures and decorating my apartment and experimenting with paint…sometimes in combination with each other:
…so maybe I’m a damn artist. My sister already hates me, why not? And she just happens to hate me because of my inability to don a mask when I was with her on a few occasions that have dirtied the rest of the memories she has of “us” (in and around that fateful year, 2005, from what I can discern, at least – my sister never, ever speaks of her feelings, well, unless unleashing rage upon someone), I suppose, the same way it’s hard for my dad and me to remember my mom when she wasn’t sick, it is hard for my sister to remember me before I was …well, her age, with a lot of pills.
All I really know is that I agree with Tori,
“If I die today I’ll be a happy phantom, and I’ll run naked through the streets without my mask on…”
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