Monthly Archives: July 2005

Tell a secret

I’ve never been diagnosed or treated for it, but I believe I have a mild form of epilepsy. I’ve only ever had one grand mal seiziure, I remember it clear as day. I remember the way the morning light came in the windows, and I was eating my cereal, probably fruit loops, reading Gary Larson and laughing my butt off. Then my funny bone hit the edge of the kitchen table and I was in massive pain, yelling owie. Then blackness. The next thing I knew I woke up on the livingroom carpet, soft face smooshed into the weave. My first thought was “It must be Monday. Time to go to school.”

There’s nothing else particularily remarkable, no further grand mal seizures, but I have petit mals. I get them quite frequently. I’ll just stare at a small spot and suddenly no information gets into my head. People could be having meaningful conversations with me and quite often I’ll “space out.” I’ve learned how to cover for it reasonably well, just nod your head in agreement once you can move again. There actually have been a couple of times I agreed to something that wasn’t . . . agreeable. People sometimes also assume I’m not listening to them, which is true but for a medical reason, and then they get all tetchy.

***************Bonus Secret!**********************

I commonly have auditory hallucinations. Ironically, these didn’t begin until I started taking pharmaceuticals to combat depression, then manic depression. There’s nothing particularily remarkable about these either, quite often I hear my name being called, during withdrawal from Paxil I kept hearing the sound of a huge truck passing by, sometimes just a pounding frequency. When I went really crazy I had very distinct voices telling me things, and church bells. But my hallucinations are pretty benign, and I cover for them pretty well so I can pass as normal. I’ve just learned not to react every time I hear something similar to my hallucinations. Unfortunately this sometimes makes me look a bit stupid or standoffish if it’s not a hallucination.

Montreal psych ward horror story bonding

Last night I did the something for the first time. I actually met a couple of folks who I knew only through the internet. It was a gas, and this girl had been in a Montreal psych ward too. When I tell people I was in a psych ward, they truly don’t grasp the traumatic horrors that occur there.

First off, you are not treated as someone with an illness, you’re treated like a criminal. For another thing, I think they take some kind of course in destroying the last traces of humanity, empathy, and compassion. Personally, I think a lot of the psych ward workers I met, particularily in Emergency, were probably the Gestapo in their past lives. You look into their eyes and it’s completely cold and soulless.

Then there’s the restraints. It doesn’t sound as violent as it really is. I’m all for consensual bondage, but when you’re put in restraints it’s really fucking scary. Usually it’s used as punishment for minor infractions, in my case I wanted to use the phone during nap time, and instead of having a rational discussion about why they had some rule against using the phone, I was drugged and tied down for three and a half hours.

Then there’s this absurd idea of medical care. They do not care about their patients. Drug em, feed em, let them watch television, that’s your life and it won’t get better until they decide to let you out. When I got first degree burns on my hands they didn’t give me proper medical attention until two days later, even after I went to them saying my hands were burned. My hands were in agony. Finally one of the few nice staff brought a doc to see me. So they gave me this special cream to put on my hands to heal them. Later, when I went in again, I still needed the cream, but of course I didn’t have a chance to get it before going to the bin a second time. I kept asking friends and family to go get me this cream, but they thought I was a delusional nut, so instead they brought me hand lotion which didn’t do shit for my poor burns.

That’s not the only instance I saw of poor medical care. A homeless man who came to the hospital had gone walking in snow and ice in bare feet in montreal. His feet were pretty cut up, and looked frostbitten too. No one did anything for him until I got mad at my shrink and pointed it out.

They don’t care about protecting patients from other patients. There was this gross old man who wanted to gang rape me and even though I protested, they put me in a small ward with him and a handful of other male patients. As a rape survivor, this totally triggered off a whole host of things, none of which helped calm me down and bring me to this mythical state they call normal.

Finally, they have a fucked up attitude towards anglos. If you’re an anglo and you end up in a montreal bin, they will not provide you with interpreters and they are adamant about not transferring you to an English speaking hospital, of which there are a few. Actually, not just anglos, I take that back, anyone who doesn’t speak French is left to try and make sense of arbitrary rules. There were a few people who obviously spoke very little French OR English, and I have no idea how awful that must have been for them.

Anyway, now I have a friend who actually understands how truly soul destroying a stay in a Montreal psych ward is. And that makes me feel a lot more relieved, less alone about the whole experience. I sometimes get so furious about how casual certain people are about my experience in the bin. I have no obvious scars from the stay. But I am a psychiatric survivor.

One day I hope to transcend from being a psychiatric survivor. I think that day is coming. It’s taken a lot of really hard honest soul searching, writing, crying, and most notably, coming back to life. I feel I died in the psych ward. But my own personal ressurection and living has made me a stronger person.

Lesbians

God bless ’em. I’ve spent nearly half my life proudly being lesbian. Then some questioning years, related to gender. Now it’s an identity I feel oddly at ease with all over again. Like a well worn leather jacket. Yeeeah! Women rock my world. They really do. Nothing makes me feel more electrified than feminine flirtatious energy. I love butch/femme identities and sexual frission. I love that my town is filled with brazen leatherdykes who love sticking needles all over their bodies. I love belonging to a sub culture. I love being a lesbian.

I want to write something in honour of all the lesbians I have known who have supported me and paved the way for me to be. And yet, thinking of all the wildly talented and hot women I know across Canada, I find it hard to express how truly blessed I have been to have them in my lives.

Instead, I present to you a montage of my top ten favorite lesbian moments in my life.

1. Riding the back of a butch dyke’s motorcycle through the streets of San Francisco one hot summer night.
2. The first time a woman’s breasts pressed against mine and I realized I loved female flesh.
3. Losing my virginity to the most gorgeous bisexual in grade 11.
4. Getting shy and flustered when Kate Bornstien liked my hair.
5. Getting shy and flustered when I first saw Annie Sprinkle in real life.
6. Butches bonding over fatty fried foods.
7. The time my vegan lover asked me in the middle of the night if I ate bacon.
8. Kissing a reluctant older butch in a courtyard in Germany.
9. Having romantic baths with my femme girlfriend who actually didn’t like baths and would always end up laying naked on the floor talking to me. Actually now that I think about it that was kind of weird.
10. Having meaningless sex with an ex for the purposes of art. Actually it was really fun but I was never allowed to tell her that.

Lesbians. God bless ’em.

The mice are back

God bless ’em. At least now I’m not so pitifully alone.

Pride weekend is around the corner and my dance card is empty.

Someone told me there is no sex in the afterlife. For shame!!

Can Pride 20055555555555 be the year I break my celibacy? I actually just meant to write 2005, but my five key sticks. I fear it may be a much more accurate assessment of my singleness.

Secrets and Rants

Hi, my Netscape is being a big jerk and won’t let me sign in, so I am on Safari. Anyway, I found a blog you all might be interested in. It’s called Post Secret and it’s a collection of mail art made by anonymous folks who tell a secret about themselves. Some are funny, some are sad, it’s updated every Sunday with new secrets.

I made a secret card to mail in this week.

And now for a rant.

So I spent a few hours cruising around Livejournal looking -seeking- for another community I would actually want to be a part of. But all the bipolar communities are full of whingers and all the lesbian communities seem composed of newly out lesbians still raging about how their families just don’t understand. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve been openly a homo for thirteen years, so this is all quite redundant to me. God, I’ve been through being an out homo in high school IN SASKATCHEWAN no less, and I hate listening to twenty-somethings who have just come out whine about oh, my mum’s an ass, and wah wah wah, and I just wanna say yeah, thanks a lot.

Thanks for being the homophobic twat who slammed me in high school to protect your reputation and then later when your hankering for pussy gets the best of you, now you want in the community. Well fuck you. I have nothing but contempt for homos who are too shit scared to be who they are when they’re a teenager. Thanks a bunch for leaving me and many other queer kids in the lurch, looking for allies and finding nothing. Sorry, that’s just my mood today. I know it’s scary to be a queer teen, but fucking christ, I did it in the Canadian equivalent of the Midwest so fuck you. And when you’re in your twenties you have way more options opened up for being in the queer community, so quit your whinging and go to a support group or a rally or a bar or something.

Down Town East Side Eagle Feather

It has been a long time since an eagle feather came to me. The last time, and first time, I was walking along the beach with my mother when she found a golden eagle feather. It was truly majestic, and she gave it to me. I was probably thirteen or fourteen.

As you know, it’s illegal to kill eagles, so getting a real eagle feather is a pretty special thing.

Present day life in Strathcona, I go on a very long voyage on foot to buy pot for a friend, I wind all the way through the hinterlands of East Van, down Commercial Drive, up to a street corner where I meet the dealer who has been developing a rather amusing infatuation. Then I hop on the Freetrain back to my neck of the woods, risking a fine just because my feet are tired. I arrive back at the apartment building, when what do I see, but an eagle feather. Not majestic, but noble nonetheless.

We have a pair of bald eagles in the neighborhood, so it could have come from them.

Or, as my friend pointed out, fallen off of some Indian.

Either way, a sacreligious reward for walking so far, mighty halfbreed, to score drugs.

I choose today to blame it all on my Saturn Return

I only clean when people visit me. How strange. Like, I can live in a sty, but visiting folk cannot. Anyway, there’s not really much to tell about my life. Or maybe, there is stuff to tell and I just don’t wanna. I think it’s my Saturn return. It’s kind of interesting anyway, to me, not necessarily other folk. I feel poised to make massive changes in my life. I don’t know that they would be changes anyone would notice though, except for me.

Since going a little loco at the end of last semester, I’ve been on an anti-depressant and my mood stabilizer and my anti-psychotic, and I haven’t been terribly depressed since. I’ve felt way more hopeful about life. This whole unemployed thing is a freakin’ nightmare, but I know somehow I’ll end up in the right job.

******************living kitchens*******************************
My fridge breathes. It’s true, ask Lynn. Every few hours it lets out a great sigh.

Lynn (my neighbor) has dirty dishes. Once I was visiting her and I heard moans and creaking bed noises and it was coming from her kitchen sink! We just call them the dirty dirty dishes.
*****************end***************************************************

I haven’t cried in a very long time though, and that unsettles me. It’s like, crying is a focused expression of emotion, it’s kind of a religious experience really. And it’s healing. And I just haven’t cried about anything in a long time, whereas before I could cry at the drop of a hat. I don’t know which is worse. I miss crying.

That all being said, please don’t go out of your way to make me cry. That would annoy me.

I finally have a happy dream to tell you about. My mentally handicapped sister had her 30th birthday party and I missed it, which was sad. But I dreamt that I was there, and the whole family was there, all dressed up. And somehow my sister had connections with the millitary, so they flew in fighter jets across the sky and dropped all these little toys, like swimming noodles and those punch balloons. And my job was to go gather up all these little toys for her.

So I think when I have some money, I’m going to go down to the toy store and buy her a bunch of goofy toys she would like. And marshmallows, because she loves marshmallows. All kinds. There’s this really yummy kind she likes that has toasted coconut on it.

Job Hunting and Gathering

“A BFA, what kind of a job can you get with that?” my cousin scoffed.

It is true, BFA’s, or as they are affectionately known, “Bachelor of Fuck All”‘s, are a whole lot of work with dubious credentials at the end. But surely a major in Film/Video must add up to something. Dear god, all that learning how to use equipment I could not afford.

Anyway, there’s a job opening as a technician at ECI. Which is a bit ridiculous, going back and working for the school I graduated from. On the other hand, I was taught how to use all their gear, and I was a technician intern.

My protein sources are sad. I need to buy some groceries. My potatoes are all rotten. And I need to take out the garbage.

I had a long nap today.

Recently I had a nightmare I was trying to move into a new place and everytime I was moving in I would find dead murdered bodies everywhere, I was screaming and running away, eee. Finally I told my friend who was helping me find a new house NO MORE MURDERED PEOPLE. Strange dream.

Boy – Part 3 TMI

************Do not read if you don’t want to hear about testosterone’s effects on clits********************
The two weeks is up, I do not have a mustache, I am beyond the hot flashes and higher body temperature. I am still not planning to transition into a man. However the one thing I was hoping for has happened. My clit got bigger. I am probably exaggerating, but it feels twice as big as it was before. For a masculine little dude girl, this is an exciting development. My sensation even feels slightly different, which is awfully cool.

Did my sex drive go up? Nah, not a whole lot, I’m fairly concupiscent as it is. That’s a fancy word for horny, yes it is.

Either way, the whole experience has left me feeling more comfortable in my body as it is. I consider it another form of body modification that I’ve chosen. Apparently it will stay the same size, unless I opt for further hormone treatments, in which case it will get bigger, but that whole body hair lowered voice thing scares me.

I like being a lesbian boy the best. All these parts of mine are nice, and I want to keep them as they are.