no matter how many fans i have, i still feel ugly + hate myself

this is a free public post. i am a formerly homeless physically & mentally Disabled survivor of extreme violence. please consider supporting me, to help en-able me to continue to fight for justice. it means a lot to me, thank you so much!

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content note — it's a heavy one!

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people talk a lot about "self-love".

"you have to love yourself first, before anybody else can love you."

can a newborn baby love + take care of themself "first"?

should they, before they are "allowed" to receive love?

must they be able to "love themself", before their caretakers "can" love them?

"we are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, + we heal in relationship."

so which one is it?

"re-parent yourself."

how can you re-parent yourself, when you have no models for parenting except for maybe some {usually written by whites} self-help books?

what if you can't read { or hear / listen to / process / pay attention to / stand audio-books }?

not even most actual parents of children today have a model for first-parenting their own children.

"we are wounded in relationship, + we heal in relationship."

what if you can't afford a therapist?

what if all the therapists you find, or the therapists your insurance will cover, would call the cops on you { which can lead to the cops either brutalizing you, murdering you, or psych-incarcerating you at best } ?

what if the vast majority of therapists in usameriKKKa are loyal to white supremacist capitalist neoliberal individualism, just like most everybody else? { hint hint, they are }

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you're disabled + living on the streets?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you're trans + "mentally ill"?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you're impoverished by a system you can't control, a system that quite literally does not care if you die?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you talk to yourself out loud?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you hear voices in your head, completely outside of your own desire or control or choice?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because nobody ever taught you how to put on make-up?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you're sleeping in your car?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you're fat?

what if nobody wants to be "in relationship" with you, because you can't speak english?

* my definition of relationships *always* includes friendship/s, btw.

what about all of you who cannot heal?

what about all of you who cannot heal, through no fault of your own?

what about all of you who cannot heal, because this society is saneist, + both society + individual human beings abandon you?

the way i observe how most human beings treat each other in this world... it seems like it requires a loathsome amount of dehumanization.

i've never abandoned a human being who’s struggling. i've never left a human being who’s struggling, without at least trying to give them resources first.

one focus of my life is to cause as little unnecessary trauma to other human beings as i can. because i hurt other human beings. we all do. and it is actually so, so, so hard not to traumatize other human beings unnecessarily. the way we take shit out on each other. lash out at each other. abandon each other. emotionally unavailable. avoid conflict.

trigger each other with all of our childhood shit.

bubbling up.

i trained myself to stop lashing out at other human beings in 2016, after a number of awful things happened to me, including "good" people i trusted de-humanizing me + seeing my life as so value-less, that they were completely ready + willing to treat me in a way that ended up with me almost losing my life.

i trained myself to stop lashing out at other human beings in 2016. this meant that i mainly just isolated myself + tried not to get close to anybody else for many years. i went to a lot of therapists, half of whom helped, + half of whom didn't. not just because i wanted to stop hurting other human beings. i also wanted to find a way to not want to kill myself anymore. { btw, 7 years later, + i now know it's not about "finding a way to not want to kill myself", it's "it's not my fault i'm suicidal + very truthfully it should NOT be MY responsibility to change the fact that i'm suicidal, but in this present society, i'm forced to fill that role for myself, because nobody else will" }

it was very hard. but i never wanted to traumatize somebody else unnecessarily again, like i did in 2015.

ironically, when i stopped being so messy in relationships, almost everybody i met treated me with more callousness than i'd experienced since i was bullied by other kids i didn't even know for "looking like a lesbian" in middle school. + [treated me with (more)] saneism.

in our society, most human beings see "anxious" as weak. and they see weak as bad.

{ is that not the foundation of ableism? "weak is bad"? but i don't actually want to talk about ableism *in specific* for once — *all* of this is about ableism. }

in our society, most human beings see kind, thoughtful, generous, anxious, depressed as weak. easy to take advantage of. easy targets.

vulnerable means "able to be wounded". i've been thinking about that definition since i was 22 or younger, + i'm over 32 now.

wearing something that also protects you { read: a high-quality face mask } is now a bold, polarizing political statement.

you might even get attacked for it. physically or verbally or even by your own loved ones or whatever.

some human beings try to wound you for caring.

how did we get here?

why are we here?

{ i'm not asking for the obvious answers. i know that you know that most human beings are here because our society is about protecting the money, not protecting the people. }

many human beings are totally okay with wounding the most easy-to-wound { read: vulnerable { this includes children, elderly, impoverished, undocumented... } } human beings.

some human beings want to wound you for caring about easy-to-wound human beings { including yourself }.

it requires a disgusting amount of de-humanization to not care about other human beings.

other human beings became a lot meaner to me after i was no longer semi-successful, well-known, famous { disclaimer: i wasn't "that" famous back then }. they were all "anti-racist" "anti-capitalist" "activists", "abolitionists", "organizers", "communists", "socialists", "leftists". other human beings treated me with much more cruelty, after i became a kinder human being. other human beings treated me with much more contempt, after i came out as trans, + i stopped caring about appearing or acting cis.

you would have to force yourself to ignore reality, to continue to believe that oppression, systemic AND interpersonal, doesn't exist, + that you don't suffer its traumas — either from others oppressing you, or you benefiting from others being oppressed even when you don't do the oppressing others directly yourself { which is, i believe, just a different kind of wound — trauma — }.

most supposedly "neuro-typical" human beings i know are firmly attached to their denial of reality.

but i'm a psycho. or something. hehehe

this is a pretty imperfect piece. i started it out feeling more confident than i feel now. + then it just became a bunch of thoughts. which was already my intention. but now i feel even more insecure.

i really want to dissociate from the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 / covid-19 pandemic. + i do. dissociate, i mean. but i won't endanger others with my dissociation. { read: i would never, + i will never, not-wear a face mask. } the part of reality i want to dissociate from is the pain. the pain of the fact that now, even previously not-disabled human beings { who have now seen others suffer or die from covid, or who now have long covid } get to see just how little most human beings care about each other in usameriKKKa.

+ that that fact is stark + unavoidable, now, at least to me.

what is clear to me, is the truth:
to know the reality:
to be able to see* just how little most human beings care about each other.

{ should i use sight as a metaphor? it's ableist. is it possible for me to ever write "perfectly", ableism-free? should you punish me with a public shaming for not being able to think up a better metaphor? are words more important than actions? i'm never going to perfect in actions, either. but i'll admit, i try really hard to be lol }

{ i think i could have used the word "know". but it wouldn't have landed the same, i know }

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i'm thinking about two words:
caretaker + caregiver.
they mean the same thing.
english is weird.
care-giver + care-taker.
give + take.
i don't really like the word "take".
but then there's "take care of each other".
+ "take care of each other" means the same thing as "give care to{/wards} each other".

i don't think i'm a good writer.

can you blame yourself for not being able to love yourself?

shouldn't you blame the human beings who didn't know how to love you first?

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this is a free public post. i am a formerly homeless physically & mentally Disabled survivor of extreme violence. please consider supporting me, to help en-able me to continue to fight for justice. it means a lot to me, thank you so much! 💙 [blue heart]