I feel like I would feel significantly less insane and incomprehensible if I weren’t aware of how mad I sound. If I weren’t so self-conscious. If I had what Kim Rhodes described as ‘an audience that has your back.’ Maybe self-awareness is its own trap. People who are self-ignorant seem to get along fine, albeit with periodic epic pouting about not understanding why people sometimes just snap and go crazy or up and leave. But then forgetting the next moment and running out to play again. Secure in the sense that this will never come up again, never happen again, like a small child, easily getting over hurts because they’re not patterns of abuse, and because no one else is holding grudges, and no one in particular is consistently being scapegoated or targeted for unfairness. So when does it start? Kids aren’t born prejudiced. It has to be carefully taught, to fear and hate and single out particular characteristics, and erase everything about that person but their skin colour, diagnosis, mannerisms, differences (assumed or actual). Sondheim told us, “Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Careful the tale you tell; that is the spell. Children will listen.” So many people learn how not to listen, how to tune out, some form of selective deafness to navigate the world. Although it’s an easy thing to get addicted to, deciding to ignore what others say, and dangerous. Are we educated, or socialised out of not listening? People insulated with more privilege can afford the luxury of listening less, for they can afford more mistakes, greater risks, and still have either money or social capital/implicit influence to pay or perform their way out of legal and other consequences. The further down the social pyramid, the more load we bear to consider the balance of people above. The more we are trod on, burdened, holding up people who perhaps climbed up us like we were handy architecture to come out on top. Sin, wrote Terry Pratchett, starts with treating people as things. Money makes this easy, to measure someone in static externally determined cost/benefit terms. How much is a life worth? How much would a wrongful death lawsuit or life insurance policy pay out if this particular person died? If someone becomes disabled, how much are they owed monthly to live on, based not on actual costs of living and expenses related to their disability, but a fraction of what they were making when they were able to work. What about people never able to work, due to how they were born? What of them? Universal Basic Income as a concept is universal — for everyone — and ‘basic’ could mean like ‘base pay’ that everyone gets and can make more on top of or ‘basic’ in the sense that it covers basic needs. Food, housing, health care, transportation, hygiene/household products, that sort of thing. There’s too little love, but humans are fickle and inconstant, prone to dependency on extrinsic rewards and external influences. What the world needs now is baseline equal access to basic survival needs. When those needs are met, we improve as individuals, as a species. Generations of abandoned children can stop abandoning each other and fighting over scraps while licking the toes of hedonistically powerful parental figures. Less sacrificing each other under a social human pyramid, please. We are all tired and afraid of each other, and addicted to fear, its delusion of keeping us safe by telling us who the Enemy is and what the Enemy will do to our most vulnerable — as if we’re not doing even worse things to children, the elderly, disabled. There should be simpler ways to say this, but people tend to mouth platitudes and go on doing the same crappy little things. Really, let’s all unfuck it up. Are you sooooo busy you can’t do one little thing to help unfuck it up? Something new, perhaps? Something… difficult?

Talking, even to myself, values my voice and my words. Sharing my words is frightening but for a while there, podcasting was the only way I kept in practice communicating verbally. The trouble is, talking to someone whose responses remind me why I silenced myself tends to broom-handle my bicycle spokes of progress. Kershnoogle my senses and my words, and my courage to communicate. Scrambles my brains, fills it with all the onions that make me sick, and force-feeds it back to me. I wind up feeling small, ashamed, worthless, unlovable, unworthy of life, and that brings out behaviours that reinforce that. I want to be around people who bring out the best in me. Who see the diamond in the rough, the rose among the bullshit, the love amidst the pain, my spark in the dark. And help shelter it from the wild winds of fortune. It doesn’t take much to fan me into a flame, into life, but I need protection from what snuffs it out. Without wasting time on words. See that my brokenness is a result of my environment. Give me time and space and I’m self-mending. Take a leap into faith, as I must simply by trusting you after so much hurt. I am frightened of people so maybe the right people are keeping away? Maybe those drawn to me like my fear, or are oblivious to it? Human nature: ooh, a big red shiny button, let’s press it and see what it does… ohshit.

In the age of suck. Sucking and draining away every bit of ourselves and each other. Maybe today I can force myself to try to talk to a librarian. Maybe not start out with the housing thing. I need someone to talk to who can hear me. And not waste my time. Someone to whom I am a whole adult person. I’m looking for a mind that works, in a junkyard of ruined prefrontal processors.

If I have to pay people to listen, it sort of sucks. Plus hiring people to listen tends to give them unearned confidence in the value of their unsolicited opinions. I’m not buying your words, I’m buying your time. If you want to pour words in me I want to be paid for my time. Or refunded. Mostly what I want is to hire a translator, a liaison, a spokesperson. A buffer between me and other people, someone excellent at both listening and speaking. Someone who mostly listens to me and talks TO other people. Takes my information and needs, clarifies, and then goes forth and delivers this information effectively enough to meet the needs. And would be rewarded to the best of my ability. Extroverts hiring themselves out to introverts to make phone calls, network, schmooze, do what they love for someone less privileged, in order to help other people. Rather than acting on us, act on our behalf with people like you. Neurotypical other neurotypicals on behalf of the neurodiverse. Speak for those who have no voices, either literally or because we go unheeded, misunderstood, ignored. I have a voice but it might as well be a random nonsense generator for all it helps me when I need help the most. That is the time I most fear. When stress ravages my confidence and triggers all my symptoms and shuts down my brain. When I most need help is when I’m most pinned down by what makes it impossible to call out for, negotiate, secure. Mostly what I get is more pain, threats of imprisonment, because people listen with their madness, their perceptions, not to the bare meaning of words. People listen for tone, and react more to what they see, than to content. Understandable. As a survivor I understand that the same words spoken by different people, or in different manners at different times, can mean very different things. Stripped of inflection and context, words on a page feel all but meaningless. We can read the same tweet a billion different ways filtered through a billion different perspectives. But more context isn’t necessarily better, sometimes it’s just more. And people tend to shut down. Too long, didn’t read. Someday that will be every book report, and the bell curve will adjust for a post-attentional world hooked on urgency. I’m the one with ADHD? Maybe it’s that people give of their attention most to what matters to them, and for the most part that’s what rewards them — money, or comfort. How does one give attention, mindfulness, when it’s tough? When it hurts? When it seems all in vain? When you don’t see the point, and there’s a cost? We don’t stick with things after they get uncomfortable, or we stick too long to what’s sinking with us, alone. Like everyone abandoned ship at the first sign of seasickness and now there aren’t enough people to crew the boat so it’s sinking. And the story they’ll tell is, “It’s a good thing I got out of that hot mess when I did.” Justifying abandoning others by the way their life falls apart when completely abandoned. Every snowflake claiming innocence in the avalanche. Seriously. It wouldn’t take everything from one person if you could draft & conscript others onto the life-support squad, but it takes one person to help start a chain. Like George Carlin I’m nervous about groups of people, but it seriously does take a network, or group of hands, to catch a falling human. Making everyone solely responsible for building and maintaining that network, when it’s like herding attention-deficit cats, is killing us. We are each responsible for our own needs, but also responsible to each other for creating the support and ease we each may need. And we’re wasting it fucking around with small talk and fun, vanishing when stuff gets hard. Like life’s a party, and the important thing is to skip out before cleanup and consequences. Gotta work in the morning… who’ll be there if your job goes away? I am fed up. Preaching to the wind.

I’m not going to learn new skills in verbal self-defense or practice them well on my own, any more than a punching bag teaches me how to fight off an attacker. I can practice using my words, but I wind up over-explaining on here, and thinking our loud, and that’s one of the things I want to replace with, more simply, “stop. time out. No.” It should not be this hard. When my right to say no is entirely hypothetical, it’s crazy-making.

Gods, it’s worse than cocaine. It gets everywhere. I think it’s even in the water. Whether we like it or not, everyone’s drinking the Kool-aid.

With the right listener I speak. With open hearts I open. With the right support I rise. Does that even exist anymore? Is it accessible? How do I find it? How will I know?

Especially moi.

My whole life all I ever wanted was a safe place to live. It’s only unreasonable when people overcomplicate it with reasons that ignore the real issue: everyone deserves a safe place to live. Every human. No exceptions. If housing is taken care of, a lot of things improve. Mental health, addiction, abuse — if we were guaranteed, each of us, a safe place to live, then we could work on how we want to live. Housing and food, forever, for everyone. No excuses, no questionnaires, no financial scrutiny, no waiting lists, no bullshit, no fucking around. All the money pouring into housing, mental health & health care that doesn’t address living environments, stress management, impulse buying, addiction, housing litigation, advocacy, administration and social services and screening applications, shelters, domestic abuse services, paperwork, could be redirected into improving and caring for living spaces, mutual aid, infrastructure. Aaaaand I’m pretty sure this is both how corrupt political systems based on ideas (and wars) start. And then we go round and round again. But can we just try HOUSING FOR ALL PLEASE for a change of pace? It makes it easier to shelter in place if we have actual shelter. I think housing for all, free and clear, might actually frickin’ flatten the curve. Can I emigrate/flee to New Zealand on the grounds that if I don’t get some shelter, as a developmentally disabled transgender survivor of domestic violence & hate crimes, I am in fear for my life? Probably not. SOMEONE GET ME ON A BOAT HEADED THAT WAY LET’S DO THIS. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, US? I’ve had enough of the American Nightmare. This place is a war with, what, 350 million individual sides? Did commoners ever successfully flee pre-revolutionary France? War and genocide shouldn’t be the only acceptable reason to flee a country. They’re not the only things that destroy lives, wipe out whole peoples. Like the AIDS crisis. When you’re living in an abusive situation, the only real solution is to get out. But getting somewhere safe? When the places with the most land, wealth, and resources are the most stingy and over controlled by people who on no account should be allowed to be in charge? Anti-Americanism? Maybe. I don’t hate people for being American, I hate solipsistic dicks in denial about the impact of their habituated choices. People here are addicted to capitalism. Look at how money-addicts flip when someone threatens their stash. “[Pearl clutch] GASP! Not… SOCIALISM! I might have to give back some of my preeeecious stuff? DEATH BEFORE EQUALITY!” Greed has poisoned human souls, has barricaded the world with intolerance, has gas-powered driven us into narcissism and misery. We have overdeveloped busy-ness, but we have shut ourselves down. Technology that gives connection has left us isolated. Our education has made us mindlessly obedient; rationalisations, cold and numb. We talk too much, act first and think later, and aim to see who can feel the least. More than progress, we need compassion. More than rationalising, we need consent and consideration. We need humility, we need to fuck up and learn, we need to listen, we need to ask. We need to act human. We are not computers, in need of reprogramming, combating mental malware without consideration for individual needs and sources. We do not live to assimilate, work, and suffer in silence. We need mind and time to act with awareness. We need compassion, not shame, to deal with mistakes. We need hearts that can withstand strong feelings without burying them under the floor and acting unconsciously on them. We need the nerve, the courage, the chutzpah to be unique, to be imperfectly human, fallible, inconsistent, aim to live smarter rather than harder. We are not machines. We are not zombies, drones, and were not born to create our own cages of past and future until the present is erased, on autopilot. We are human, which is dangerous, terrible, beautiful, powerful, capable of change--with courage.

I don’t care much for picking up and moving, but I need to be accepted and enough as I am. I never thought I’d be this alone and this far out of my mind, struggling even to communicate with minds like NORAD bunkers. I’m not trying to cheat anyone, I’m trying to live, honestly, with integrity. But paranoia and fear-based reactions tend to block any other choices but ones that reinforce the fear, justify the paranoia after the fact. Treat people like criminals, deny them rights and pathways to legally survive, and this drives people to have no available options to live that don’t involve some kind of crime.