So, it’s an open secret that I’ve definitely struggled with my mental health issues in the past, and that I probably will all my life. For that reason, as I was looking through my basket of scraps to sew with, I found my old medical gown from my last hospital stay.

And I wanted to turn something really negative for me, a real shadow over me, into something positive.

This is my personal blog, and I’m about to get real personal right now so if this is something that might make you uncomfortable, I would like to give you the opportunity to skip this one. Consider this your trigger warning for rape, trauma, abuse, etc.

If you’d like to read a non-triggering statement that covers some of the same ideas, please click through to something like What the heck is water?

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” — David Foster Wallace

There is always the element of something transformative and transgressive in my work, and there is a good reason for that. This post is not actually about that fish. This post is about the fact that I am the fish. I don’t know what it is be normal because I’ve never experienced it. I don’t have a baseline. I never have. That trigger warning isn’t up there to be cute, I’m not using it in some dumb Tumblr sense of “I literally can’t even I’m shaking right now and I’m so triggered”, and I don’t normally put them on so if you’re the sensitive type, heed way.

For those of you that are lucky enough to be neurotypical, the hospital is a frequently dehumanizing place that denies you such luxuries as scissors, the ability to get dressed without random perverts i.e. other patients ogling you (WHY is the whole damn ward co-ed?) and other small freedoms, like shoelaces, and the mental health in this country is closer to the state of a prison and that’s IF you get helped at all. I didn’t. I never did, I never was given therapy or the proper medication or anything that might resemble sympathy or empathy within my life by my caregivers or by professional medical staff. They always just phoned it in, and please don’t think that we don’t notice.

The highlight of this shit-covered cake would be the time I was in the hospital ward and I asked for a blanket. I’m short, I get cold easily. The black guy grins and points into the closet of blankets or whatever and then says “pick one out.” While I do so, he takes the chance to grab my ass. I complained to the supervisor later and they told me:

“There is nothing we can do because he was in a camera blind spot.”

I am lucky enough to still be alive. If I had access to a gun, I probably wouldn’t be today, and it’s not because of some terrible selfish reason like “I want to punish others” or “I’ll show them” … it’s just because I’ll go through these periods where it is like an avalanche has buried me. I literally cannot breathe, I cannot feel anything but pain, pain in my head, pain in my heart, pain in every slow pump of my lungs, like they’re filling with tar.

I really want to unpack that. A camera blind spot? I just told you what happened, straight to your face, about your staff’s actions. Sure, I am lucid right now and all I felt was anger, but what about the next person that’s nonverbal? There is not a single doubt in my mind that at Peace River, that man probably still works there. Who even knows what will happen to the next defenseless patient that passes through? Probably worse, and nothing will be done. Nothing is ever done about it.

And I get so mad, so unbelievably mad, furious!

Like why, why is it like this? Why am I so dis-empowered that I cannot get proper healthcare coverage, that I can be prescribed the drugs that worked for me before and when I don’t have a history of drug seeking behavior? And the kicker is, they don’t replace them with a working recipe. So two things about bipolar disorder: It’s primarily a sleeping disorder, and medications lose their effectiveness over time. A medication that works, without side effects, is like a goddamn unicorn, and it was stolen away from me just because I’m on Medicare. I don’t have the access, or connections, to proper mental health care coverage. A doubt does not exist in my mind that if I was rich, I would have those connections, and I would have the ability to get the medicine that would cure me, not forever, but something enough like it to keep me alive. Sane. Breathing.

It’s not just some shallow reason like, “I’m not happy with as I am” but also something like “I just don’t know how to cope emotionally anymore.” I was blessed (cursed?) with an IQ that falls at the top of the end of the bell curve around 150-160 and all the drawbacks that implies with a loss of common sense, but an unnatural specialization of several skill sets easily within the prodigy level, at the cost of my ability to do normal tasks with any degree of confidence or common sense.

Along with that came the developmental disorders associated with premature birth and the post-traumatic stress disorder that I was diagnosed with: Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s. The former I carry like a weight around, the knowledge that I can’t trust myself, that I am ultimately untrustworthy and unlovable. Everyone I have ever gotten close to has abandoned me in the end because I can’t be depended on to be sane or even remember what has happened to me in its entirety.

I just have these fugue states, where I block it out or—in some cases, especially of the lower-function psychotic states—choose to block it out and forget about it. Who wants to remember the time they froze a dead frog in the freezer in a cup of water or gave some stranger their shoes for no reason?

Not me.

As someone that has been raped in the past and had the justice system at that time already fail me because it ‘happened too long ago’ … I am used to falling through the cracks. I am the crack.

Because I do not own a car, I could not get rape tested at a local hospital at the time, and I was still being coerced/pressured into staying with such threats like “if you don’t go to the convention, you won’t make any money this month, and I can’t pay you for the work you’ve done.” God, I’m such a fool. A damn fool. And I needed that income, badly, in order to make ends meet. And I am sure someone out there will twist that in some judgmental sexist way like “you deserved it!” or “you should have known better” and Goddess knows, I’ve felt that way often enough. And, yes, you can withdraw consent in the middle of the encounter.

And people always ask for more details, and it’s like, what kind of details did you want? I trusted someone, my guard was down. It hurt. It hurt a lot. I writhed, and it’s all about power, it’s about hurting someone else. In other situations, this pain might have been erotic. In this one, it was well past my safety zone and went over the speed limit to 150 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. I just remember the feeling acutely, the panick, the loss of control, the absence of any pleasure or release after that. Violation. I went to the bathroom, wiped, and wept. Does knowing the details, of my head down between my knees as I tried not cry, my long hair touching the toilet water, do those details make it more real for them? Do you really need to know every gory detail of a rape encounter, perhaps to pass judgment or decide that it wasn’t really rape or something?

The extent of it was, I said no, hell, I said my safe word and they kept right on going. I bled anally for days. I felt stupid, devastated, and used. In fact, I was threatened with a libel suit at that time for alleging that he was a pedophile and he raped me. The fandom will stand behind these people and close ranks.

Any thought of it, of going back to to a furry convention or possibly meeting my rapist again and yes, he is still active in the fandom and there will probably be no push-back at any time, just makes my chest hurt and my heart thump and my throat close up.

And because I am bipolar, I was told at the hospital that basically my testimony was worthless. This is the state of the world. I am insane, I am ill, I have been hurt and I needed help and I was not helped. And this is just going back recently, to age 27/28 or so. The real damage began well before that and conditioned me into the neurotic, cowardly, ashamed mess that I exist as today.

Would you like to know what happens when one goes to the police, and let’s assume that a rape kit was done? Those rape kits don’t even get tested. It never goes to court for a myriad of reasons, all of them because of the status quo, which is, “don’t rock the boat” and “this is too much trouble for us.”

Now I’m just fucked up, I know that I’m fucked up and I’m never getting back to decency, normality, quiet. That’s all I really want. Peace. Peace of mind, peace of body, peace of heart. I don’t even fucking want justice, I’m far too disillusioned for that! I just want it to go away. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to dwell on it, I don’t want to really face the fact that I’ll never be fully in control of my own sexuality, pleasure, or a sensual space again, that the only way that I can function is to return to this sense of kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, hurt or be hurt.

The reality is, after that, a kiss became a threat.

SoItookthescrapsofmyself,sewedthemtogether,andmadeafish.