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ELEGY I / elegy × 2 / ἐλεγείᾱ

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january 17th, 2023

CONTENT WARNING: EVERYTHING (this one's really not that bad, though)

that in the best of times, we share memory.

lately i have been thinking that if i died, most of the people who would come to my funeral would be people i haven't talked to in years. or maybe they just wouldn't come, i don't know. at most points of the last several years, there would maybe only be one or a few people who i was actually currently talking to, who would probably be at my funeral.

& i know that the people who have hurt me, know that they have committed moral injury. not just on me, but on themselves. bc when we hurt others, we do not hurt alone.

actually, maybe they don't know.
i realized recently what a big part of what my lifelong psychosis is. believing in goodness in others that was not actually there. (sad, isn't it?)
maybe they can justify their actions, maybe they aren't aware of them yet.
the consequences.
but i will make them aware.
i will make them aware one day.

i think i have been thinking about the moral weight of my actions since i was 5 years old. since 5 i have been thinking about how the [capitalist] world doesn't make sense; about how if your immigrant parents don't teach you what a grocery store is but takes you to one, it shouldn't be your fault if you accidentally take something without paying for it, when nobody even taught you what "money" was.

so it breaks my heart. it breaks my heart for them, but i am trying nowadays to not let my heart break so much that i let off some grown adults in their 30s & 40s & 50s who lacked a moral compass, while their 5-year-old child grew one in abundance.

so i forget.

because in the best of times, i hope you'll remember for me.

i wish i could live a life where i did not think about moral consequences every day, but to live a life like that would mean to not think about capitalism every day. is that possible? do other people go home, do those people go home after their days of roleplaying as revolutionaries, hang up their hat, & eat with their loved ones? when was the last time i ate with a loved one like that?

i told you i haven't been happy since that year, but the truth is, i know i haven't been happy since 2010. 19-20 years old, that was the only time i felt occasional moments of peaceful happiness, in my entire life.

in an [i want to say ice cream] shop in pasadena, i stared at a baby in their stroller, & i smiled at them. "what if that's my grandmother, reincarnated," i whispered to you, & you smiled.

so i forget.

not because i want to.

but because my brain gets lobotomized every evening, even without a psychiatric prison warden to do the job.

so i forget.

because in the worst of times, i know you'll remember, even if i don't.

so that is why my funeral will be filled with people who haven't talked to me in years. because they stopped talking to me, so i assume that they forgot about me. but i know now that everybody else carries the moral weights of what they did, in their bones, just like i do. they carry our memories in their cells, even when i can't remember for myself. even when they don't want to. remember, that is.

or maybe they just wouldn't come.

maybe they would assume that i forgot about them, & maybe they just don't care anymore.

maybe my funeral would be mostly empty. like an elopement.

me & my death.

me & death.

life is hard. "love is hard, s" he said to me. & my mind refuses to forget these moments, so why do you?

i think in recent years, we, colonized peoples, are remembering the power of remembering. we are remembering the power of remembering.

we are remembering the power of memory: to not forget the still-bleeding wounds white supremacy & settler-colonialism stabbed into our literal bodies, our literal souls.

to no longer brush the past under the rug, but to dig it up, again & again & again, & throw the murdered bodies in front of our oppressors, & scream:

LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID.

they won't get away with this.

but will you?

i'm scared.

all i want to know,

is who i'll love at the end of my life.

i have been thinking a lot about what happens if somebody who nobody knows gets murdered.

disappeared.

destroyed into tiny bits & pieces,

& then

thrown into the ocean.

i have been thinking a lot about what happens if somebody who nobody knows gets murdered.

is that possible?

in order to be born, you have to have known somebody at one point.

you had to have touched somebody else, to exist in this world.

other human beings had to touch each other's skin, for you to exist, regardless of the story of your birth.

i have barely touched anybody since march 8th, 2020. every single human being i've touched since march 8th, 2020, i don't talk to anymore.

i have been thinking a lot about what happens if somebody who nobody remembers anymore, gets murdered.

when i first lived alone all by myself in my own apartment with my own name on my own lease, i thought about that. about the stories i'd read about people, single people or older people, who died alone in their apartments, with nobody to care about them. that their bodies wouldn't be discovered for days, because they didn't speak to anybody regularly enough for anybody to remember to check up on them.

that hurts to write down.

i worried i would be one of them. i have worried that i would be one of them, at many points in my life. & people like to think that a young, systemically-attractive+relatively-thin (because my only value lies in how much you can objectify => fetishize => dehumanize me) asian person like me, wouldn't be one of those people. because i'm too physically [systemically] attractive for that.

Careaboutability.

it hurts to write that word down.

a word that i invented.

i was speaking to a fellow Mad, Disabled, neuroatypical friend about that recently.

"i am grateful to know you," they told me.

many people say this, but that doesn't mean that they think my existence is actually worthy of protecting. of doing the hard work to actually protect.

Careaboutability, & how it negatively correlates with Madness.

with Being Crazy & Psychotic & Mentally Disabled & Cognitively Disabled & Developmentally Disabled & unable to speak in words out loud, in words that others think that they can understand.

"i am so sick of everything
i really am
i just am

most people fucking suck
i just can't
why are people okay with hurting me?
i've always known it wasn't okay, i always felt angry and bitter

but as i "heal", i'm even more horrified

people don't treat you like a human being unless they find you careaboutable"

a pause.

"or unless they want to suck up to you, because you're rich"

for decades, i was abused & bullied every day by pretty much everybody i knew, including my chinese immigrant child peers. yet i chose to develop a moral compass since the number of my age was a single digit.

why haven't you?

i want to create a world where everybody knows that it is a grave moral violation to abandon somebody who is Sick or Disabled or "Mentally Ill" or Impoverished or Unhoused or Vulnerable or going through a crisis.

where everybody knows that it is a grave moral violation to abandon the most vulnerable, those closer to death than you are.

{ if you're going to take that in bad faith & tell me all of your supposed "exceptions", you're missing the point. you can come back to this when you understand. }

You bitches talk about "suicide prevention" when you would run from someone speaking honestly about the "unpalatable" feelings & thoughts they have that don't uphold the saneist ableist white supremacist capitalism that you secretly still cape for, & call them "toxic" & treat them like an inconvenience, a burden, the moment they open their mouth.

You bitches talk about it like it's a slogan to be worn on your wrist, because that is all it is for you. It's just two words that you put in your bio, "mental health advocate" — now that's three words. You've graduated!

You bitches don't know the first thing about how to save a life.

do most people just not realize that other human beings are human beings with feelings & bodies that they can hurt?

do most people just not realize that to be alive at all, is to be vulnerable?

do most people just not realize that to exist at all, is to be vulnerable?

I would love to not think about moral weights every day. One day, perhaps. Or maybe not. Maybe when my future children come home & tell me how the white kids at school bullied them for the way their nose looks, I will not be able to stop thinking about every single system that ties to that. Probably. Or maybe I'll take them to a school filled with only children of global majority, & then they'll be teased for being neuro-different, or having non-normative ways of looking at the world. Because apparently even adults who think that they're oriented towards "justice", will always find something to pick out of you, if they think you're a little bit different.

i imagined "healing" to be this pleasant thing, this pastoral thing, this thing that would make me feel "better" — but i always knew that there was a reason why seeing memes, & especially seemingly-earnest posts written by people peddling their self-help/toxic positivity(forced sanity) wares, about "healing" on social media, makes me angry. for me, "healing" is grotesque; it feels disgusting, it feels soul-crushing. it makes me feel more & more suicidal, as the tiny abused children in my body make themselves known.

for me, "healing" feels grotesque.

I was violently abused & isolated every day for decades at both the house that I lived in & school. I had no real friends for a long time, & as an adult neither.

But I chose to develop a moral compass.

Why haven't you?

if you aren't already, give material support to my continued existence here.

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ELEGY I / elegy × 2 / ἐλεγείᾱ

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*re: the paragraph about settler-colonialism — i do not intend any insensitivity or harm towards Indigenous Peoples with these words. for my own context, this has shown up with regards to devastating violence in my own life, & also the aftermath of violent japanese imperialism war crimes & the Rape and Massacre of Nanjing, & european+usameriKKKan imperialism in china.

*re: my talk of funerals, i'm not going to die, tonight anyway — i hope. can't i make & share my art in peace? if white male musicians can scream to the masses about their "dark" ("unpalatable") thoughts, why can't i? *sigh*