i didn't plan on writing this much, or compiling so many drafts together. i wanted the second to last story to stand alone — me screaming & crying about saneism.

but, you know. shit happens.

including this preamble, it became 2200 words 😭 [sob emoji]

i wrote this all on my phone. my fingers hurt. no, my whole hands hurt. my wrists hurt. my hands have especially hurt since 2014-2015. when i was super homeless (bc it's a spectrum), i would write for 21 hours a day about racism / white supremacy, gender / misogyny / transness & queerness / cisheteropatriarchy, ableism / capitalism, violence / abuse, & etc., on my phone lol and sleep 3 hours, at most. i still write almost everything on my phone, bc i'm scared of bigger computers bc of trauma rn. (yep!)

send me well wishes that i don't have permanent injuries one day

— ahhh, ableism is capitalism, abilities are capital.

answer key: here, the ability is being able to type. if i didn't have that, i wouldn't have access to something that makes me capital, both social and financial (writing).

fun fact: the first time i wrote an essay (for "fun") on my phone, i was 17 years old, typing while walking { i do NOT advise doing that } around my mothercity of 上海 shanghai in 2007. now imagine the phone i had back then. it was just a numerical t9 keypad lol. for you young'ns, that means i was typing entire essays on a pre-"cloud" machine with only 12 keys, each button of which i had to press repeatedly in order to access each letter of the alphabet. lmfao i sound so old now wow lmfao

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content — you know, my usual

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written on october 6th, 2023 —

i remember taking a taxi, a real fucking taxi, to jfk, thinking i was dying. jk, it's new york; it was probably a black car. i remember listening to the song paradise by coldplay, on the way there, praying quietly out loud to myself for god not to kill me. i listened to paradise at jfk while going through the flying rigmarole {that is probably an exact-words phrase somebody else has written before}. i remember a part of me knowing i would write about that moment on one day in late september 2014 one day.

" when she was just a girl
she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep

and dreamed of para—, para—, paradise...
every time she closed her eyes...

this could be para—, para—, paradise

this could be para—, para—, paradise

this could be para—, para—, paradise... "

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written on november 3rd, 2015 —

the last time i was in JFK i wanted to kill myself

the last time i was in JFK i wanted to kill myself
i remember praying softly to myself all the way to the airport
my last host in new york last year gave me his card and said he'd hoped to see me getting published by big names one day
i think about how telling people i freelance is just an easier and more capitalism-approved way to say what i "do" for ~money~ { 2023 note — i was doing the same thing i'm doing now, back then. i started a p*treon in october? 2015, and made like $200 a month for the first year. it was the first money i was able to make since march? 2014. i quit being able to post regularly just 2 months later { in december 2015 }, because my "health" got worse again. health in quotes because what does that even mean? did my health get worse, or did my illness? and why do the sentences "my health got worse" and "my illness got worse" mean the exact same thing? 👀 [eyes emoji] }

the "radio" stations on this flight were amusing
a bunch of classical music, then "mixtapes" of every decade since the 60s
then suddenly: UK music, (and then some more northern european countries)
and "NYC rap." that was it.
in UK music i saw a familiar face ( [redacted] ) but i never like any of his radio-playable singles

so i listened to "paradise" by coldplay.
i actually like this song.
i remember listening to it on my birthday last year
as i sat alone in the burger place and failed at eating.

"when she was just a girl
she expected the world"

~~~

i thought i had more to say about this but i didn't. i don't want to die anymore. it's weird. like, super fucking weird. i've never wanted to live this much in my life, and a lot a lot a LOT of shitty shit has happened this year. especially with other people. shit within myself i can deal with. shit with other people continues to sting for years after the fact.

/

back to october 6th, 2023 —

my work is the only thing that truly makes me purely happy { and i've never really gotten directly paid for it, and i'd like to keep it that way. }, for myriad reasons, including the fact that i was valued for nothing but my ability to perform abilities when i was a young child. and thus, alas, ack! — i've been too disabled by abuse and also disabled by ableism, to do what i love as an adult, for almost my entire legally free {adult} life.

i call the "crisis" line at 2am & end up processing enough to end up excitedly talking about my own dreams around suicide "prevention" until i sound cheerier, talking about my work the only thing that makes me cheer up cheers me up, while the other voice on the line — sounds like a cis gay white male, this time, maybe a queer white — hasn't yet said a single helpful word.

i call the non-carceral "peer" support line that promises to not call the cops on me, & start out trying to be honest, crying about how suicidal i am. the voice sounds like a white male's, again. by the end, i feel uncomfortable, as i do in maybe 49~51% of "peer" support line calls, and 99.999% of traditional "crisis" line calls, to know that the other voice has even less insight to how to make me feel better than i do.

"i don't feel as suicidal anymore, because i remember why i'm still alive," i said at the end of the call.

"and why is that?" he asked, genuinely curiously.

to dismantle saneism, i think to myself, although i do not say it out loud, guessing that the other voice doesn't know what the word saneism means.

i talked about how i hated 988 in the beginning, & at the end, the voice says "i know you hate 988, but it's policy that i have to tell you about it." i learn to start my call every next times with the same script, every time: "i'm suicidal, don't worry, i won't do anything right now {and it feels like a lie, bc i'm only saying it for the other voice's & suicidism's & the system's sake, & not [for] my own [honesty{'s sake}]}, i don't have a plan, please don't call the cops on me, this line doesn't call the cops right [i say, even though i know it's policy that they don't], i don't need you to tell me about 988." depending on who answers, i can gauge how much they listen to authority, follow "the rules".

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written on september 18th, 2023. part 2 of 2 { part 1 is not yet shown here. } —

...

3 hours later, i called again.

"i want to kill myself," i said, as honestly as i could. i've rehearsed what i say a million times, but i'm never honest, because i used to call the hotlines that would call the cops on you, against your consent — which is *most* hotlines. "i'm not going to call 988 because they call the cops on people."

at the end of the call, he said, "i'm sorry, but it's policy that i have to tell you about 988. i know you don't like them."

"don't like" is not the real reason. "yeah."

i cried and talked about how i wanted to kill myself, when i was talking to him. there are too many reasons for me to even list out here right now.

by the end of the call, i begrudgingly remembered the one thing i ever have to live for, the most convincing reason.

it's not because i think life is worth living {for myself, anyway}. it's not because i enjoy living, because i don't. i have been filled with suicidal panic almost every single day for almost 30 years, a panic that makes me unable to do basically *anything* beyond post online occasionally, because it's a space where i don't have to see anybodymind anyone's bodymind *physically*. on the internet, nobody can hurt me — at least, you know. *physically*.

[ unfinished — bc the answer has already been revealed, above — ]

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back to october 6th, 2023 —

i know i write about suicide a lot, especially these days. and to the shallow ableist judgmental ones, it probably makes it seem like it defines me. but i don't consciously think of it, ever. my conscious self thinks i'm happy, somewhere else, in a world that's better than one where parents can, and often do, abuse smaller in physical size living human beings who deserve just as much power and rights as they do. my suicidal-ness is always just running in the seeming background — not a desire, but an urgent physical need from my body to escape this constant excruciating pain, feeling not any different from the need to urinate, tbh, except honestly it's even more urgent than that. we understand why we should put down non-human animals in pain — why do we insist that humans stay alive, too?

[because] the majority of discourse & advocacy around "suicide "prevention"" in the suicidist saneist ableist white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal capitalist white-majority western country where i live is focused on how the people around the suicidal person feels about their being suicidal, rather than how the actual suicidal person feels. never mind that i have observed, time and time again and not just from my own experiences, that it is the people who know and interact with the suicidal person who are pretty much always the problem / the ones making them suicidal * ,

and "suicide "prevention"" efforts should pivot to focus on educating them to stop being such horrible suicidist/anti-suicidal people, saneist, judgmental, guilt-tripping, selfish, nonconsensual, forceful, coercive, demeaning, disrespectful, disconnected, dismissive, disbelieving, condescending, patronizing, cold, heartless, unsupportive, and/or fearful and abandoning and avoidant pieces of shit, filled to the brim with unsolicited usually bad advice.

* this obviously has certain caveats and exceptions. this does not apply to abusive relationships. i'm trying to say that most people are suicidal because of other people / external factors — abuse, trauma, unsupportive family and/or friends, being abused or fired by a boss, other stressors, etc., and that it is usually suicidist <=> saneist <=> ableist people's reactions to suicidal people talking about their feelings, that often makes things worse.

* including psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, social workers, doctors, and other "'mental '"health"'"care"'" professionals, cops, prison wardens / psychiatric "hospital" staff, etc. —

note — i just thought of this: if somebody is suicidal because of natural grief, i.e. not anybody's direct actions, or treatment of them — if they are suicidal because say, their loved one died or there was a hurricane or their house caught on fire — it is still dependent on the people around the person, if they end up suicidal or not, imo.

whew! that's something i've been wanting to say for a long time that i didn't think i was ready to say yet.

to shitty saneist suicidist people:

stop being such suicidist pieces of shit and maybe fewer of us would kill ourselves, okay!?

/

written on october 4th, 2023 —

it was summertime. i entered the group call low-medium screaming, fully crying. i was crying about how i wanted to live in a world with no saneism. i cried that i wanted to live in a world where nobody would get shot on the street for acting or feeling or thinking differently in a way that doesn't harm anyone. i desperately wanted this world, needed it. but it's too late for me; what was done to me, is done. over 11 years, & in general a lifetime, of genuinely life-threatening suicidist <=> saneist <=> ableist abandonment & abuse, "it is what it is" "what's done is done" — i wanted to make the world where what happened to me, would never happen to anyone else. that's the real suicide prevention.

it was summertime. i entered the group call suddenly, crying & screaming. i cried about how i wanted to live in a world with no saneism. i cried that i wanted to live in a world where people like me — Black, Indigenous, non-Black, and white — people didn't get shot on the street, just for existing.

"i want to live in a world with no saneism," i cried, actually crying.

"i want to live in that world, too," they said softly, with their whole heart. we'd never spoken before, before that week.

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note: the following conversation was not with a therapist, but with someone who's had similar experiences.

"a bit of escapism isn't bad. if it helps you, it helps you."

"no, but this was my world my entire life. i didn't even know until recently that the world i live in wasn't "real"."

"i'm just curious. would you rather be psychotic, or live in the real world?
— would you rather live there, or here?"

"obviously, there.
in my world, racism, misogyny, saneism, ableism, transmisia, abuse, capitalism, white supremacy, and everything bad, doesn't exist."

"oh, that does sound better."

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