I live in an attic and try to make art to live. Somehow. I mean, I don’t make art to earn money to live. I make art to feel as though I still exist. Somehow. But the only thing I think of, as I live my once was dream, is Anne Frank.
She’s the only person that I relate to right now. The me that is me, after those events, now thinks of another girl stuck in an attic back when things were the same again. The me that I once was now destroyed and deleted some time ago.
I make art that reminds me of the Holocaust even though I’m not Jewish. I draw The Grey People and glue half transparent tracing paper onto recycled brown shopping bags because I cannot afford materials.
Anything to still exist somehow.
I wanted to be an artist and now I am because there is nothing much else I am allowed, or able because of them, to do anymore. And so I make art that reminds me of the Holocaust even though I am not Jewish. But art brings me closer to Truth and my truth is too gritty and dangerous to share.
What do you say when your reality and truth is unpalatable? What do you create when your truth is too dangerous to acknowledge? How do you even speak when all you can say is that you’ll never be the same or okay again?
They silenced me because I knew too much.
Because I asked too many questions.
Now I am only allowed to speak in pictures.
If at all.
But art has no meaning in comparison to the joy and life I felt when I was with my children.
My son was the last thing that they could take from me.
And so they did.
I’ve spent years trying to turn shit into gold and only half succeeding. And I am tired. They've not only held me captive to torture and punish me over these past long nine years, for what I’m not even sure of, but have also followed me from town to town to corrupt and sabotage any vague inkling of a possible transformation or alchemy that may save me.
Whoever they are, they halt progress in full.
They disconnect at every opportunity and destroy for pleasure. It's an entirely manufactured hell on earth that has, ultimately, led to an emotional and mental freedom that might take others decades to achieve. So many almost deaths now, that I’m liberated from the fear of death in full.
So many close calls that I no longer bother to make phone calls or reach out for help.
But still I feel no cause for celebration.
All that sits with me is detached observation and stunned disbelief that cruelty like this can go unfettered and so openly without pause for thought.
I no longer want to participate much in what they've created. It's just too dark and too despicable to make sense of. For years I’ve pondered how human beings can, not only go about their daily normal while they inflict such very intentional pain on innocent beings, but have often wondered how they sleep at night or kiss their own children good morning.
And feel okay.
I wonder if they do feel okay.
I suspect they only feel anything when they cause suffering in others.
And this repulses me.
This thought makes me want to disengage from the world entirely. It’s not that I’m not strong enough to accept the truth of it. It’s just too alien and unpalatable to engage with anymore. And it feels as though it’s everywhere and all over where I live. And I am not allowed to leave.
It's not like this elsewhere in the world.
I once experienced this in person. A long time ago now. Perhaps I was simply born in the wrong place and time because everybody else that I meet seems to think that this purely intentional destruction of me, and some others that I see more clearly now, is both normal and okay.
All normal and okay, bar a select few who seem to think that they have no power. Or who are too scared and scattered themselves to change anything.
I can manage the mental and emotional agony mostly. And the physical abuse and destruction. I can even do it with some dexterity after nine years of this torture. But my soul is tired now. And the calmer, but still isolated and quarantined life, I’ve been afforded is evidently not one I’d choose for myself.
Because it shows on my face.
The person that they insist I should be, is not me.
None of us can live like this.
Non-existent.
Who would bother to stick around for this when you're not even allowed to Be.
Not really.
A watery compromise.
Still breathing but not alive.
Breathing is automatic.
Living, and a life, is supposed to be directed by free will and personal choice.
What life then?
I am forced to bide their time.
That’s all this is Now.
The painful lump in my right armpit will go unattended. I’ll take my chances with death. Again. I think when a person is confined to not being allowed to fulfil their dreams or purpose, but to being a slave to other people’s fear and perversion instead, that a cancer unattended is a gift.
Because suicide would be defeat.
This lump is a moment to moment reminder that time is running out.
A reminder that time is precious and things are passing. Even in the midst of a horror story.
Inevitably passing time results in inevitable change. Wasting precious time is hard to sit through though.
One seemingly simple word, and the context it is used in, can send me into deep despair or full surrender and freedom.
There is peace in surrender.
But surrender to them leads to a bottomless pit of grief.
They may not allow me to choose how I lived but now I’ve been afforded the gift of choosing how I might die.
What does it take to kill the human spirit?
Perhaps that was their curiosity.
I wonder, after eight years of this, whether they’ve found their solutions. But I suspect their interest is only in the destroying. No real questions asked. And this still shocks me. Some part of me is still naïve, I guess. But, I know now, that’s why he chose me.
They’ve known I may have cancer for over a year now and done nothing.
I still struggle to understand how I could be so disposable.
But he did say I was naïve. 💜
"Keep on keepin' on" 💜
Beta than before
Maybe
...
[ai free for this one]
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