Elucidating Questions

I’m constantly struggling with this

This me who eats when they’re hungry

Versus the me who got by on a bowl of cereal, a small chicken pot pie, and sometimes some munchies to fill the ache of hunger that was always there, for years

In my moment of mostly peace, I am faced with the me who had nothing but

I moved back into town so buses are much more accessible to me now

Just got a job I may actually be able to do versus the job that had me becoming sicker and sicker with no end in sight until they changed the job so I couldn’t work it

Versus the last over a year of unemployment where people saw my walker, or heard disability, and shut down or shut me out

Facets on the rock of my life

I don’t forget them

The struggles

I don’t forget that every time I go downtown there are dozens of people I can see who need help

Homes

Actual support

That just one big change in my life will send me there

You don’t forget that homelessness always looms over those who, without outside support, cannot afford to survive in this city

I live in a world where, when things look up, I am filled with trepidation

Because up means down is possible

The higher up, the sharper the fall

Now that I’ve seen what it’s like to have a conversation with someone every day would I survive going back to that isolation?

The fact that I prefer my Dad trying to convert me to Christianity over hours of endless silence

I didn’t notice how much I talk to myself now until I started working with people around me

May you never know a silence so deep it turns you to utter just to keep it at bay

Now it’s a habit that makes me look crazy

Which I am

But 7 years of isolation can do that to a person

Minus maybe the 1 year I was being emotionally and then physically abused by a man

But really that’s just a different kind of isolation

I don’t want this for anyone

But there’s an anger in me

That I had to go through it at all

People deny how hard it is, how crushing it is, how dehumanising it is

And my anger wants them to feel it too

Learn damn it

But I know it won’t fix anything

Only fixing it will fix anything

How to reconcile this anger when people think my suffering was “normal” and acceptable?

If only I could soothe the pain of the harrowing

If only people saw the harrowing as the unacceptable struggle it is