("Bedroom in Arles" #1 - Vincent Van Gogh, 1888)
CW/TW: mentions of suicidal grey ideation, mental health, interpersonal/collective trauma
Like a lifeless log on a cold beach rocking back and forth like a baby shaking from the waves urgency as it’s only motivation for movements... How can we not realize, that such panic is only a distraction: The virus is real, but the economy is not.
I thought I would be good at social distancing and staying inside as someone who routinely self-isolates due to one's mental illness, but how can one be good at something when they're not feeling good at all ? I've always said that sanity is a privilege, but how cynical is it to feel yourself becoming insane with only intervals of clarity. Such unsafe uncertainties with reality, I pray that submission is just survival and that salvation is only unfolding, slowly... They say public health and safety; I ask where, when, and for who ? Everyday my heart wonder and worry for who they have always and are still so ready to leave behind: undocumented folks, sex workers, working-class parents, folks experiencing homelessness, essential service and medical-care workers, elders/children/anyone chronically ill/with a compromised immune system, folks stuck in abusive households, folks incarcerated, refugees, as well as First Nations folks on reserves... etc. Colonial-capitalism shows itself with fragile systems of profit over people, and with such ignorant privilege that most only awake to injustice from a call of crisis.
Like a wilting wallflower, with rotting soils and only watered desperately: a houseplant dreaming of a garden, a sick joke she's still learning to laugh at... Being suicidal makes me feel selfish, as there are people dying, risking their next breath, and here I daydream of me dying the next day. How unappreciated my breath must feel: unworthiness, a flower asking why she deserves to bloom. The worst phone calls are of those that go to voicemails, I don’t know what it is of me trapped in a basement room while the people I love are risking it all... Such privilege to breathe, such abundance to feel, and such complicity to even understand: They say stay home but what about those still searching ?
Like a wilting wallflower, with rotting soils and only watered desperately: a houseplant dreaming of a garden, a sick joke she's still learning to laugh at... Being suicidal makes me feel selfish, as there are people dying, risking their next breath, and here I daydream of me dying the next day. How unappreciated my breath must feel: unworthiness, a flower asking why she deserves to bloom. The worst phone calls are of those that go to voicemails, I don’t know what it is of me trapped in a basement room while the people I love are risking it all... Such privilege to breathe, such abundance to feel, and such complicity to even understand: They say stay home but what about those still searching ?
What we need more of is compassion
What we need more of is loving care
What we need more of is justice...
And yet my heart also aches for
Us privileged enough to self-quarantine but
Maybe not sane enough to
Survive...
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