poetry as pain management, mitigation, mediation
(this post begins with a poem that may be triggering.)
left to my own devices, i make myself write poems.
the nurses brought children’s books and taught me to string beads
sometimes all you can do is sit and wait for pain to pass through
waitwaitwait…
firecrackersareexplodinginmylungs
determined to distance myself from the burn,
tonight i will write.
writewritewrite…
if stanzas are not cooperative
i will slice into my skin
creating an opening and forcing
these damn poems to drip
out onto
the page
there is nothing i will not do so poetry don’t
you dare fuck with
me
oh poetry i didn’t mean it
that’s just what they used to tell me
i know it’s a scary thing to say, i didn’t mean it
come out come out
pls help me
ableism makes it impossible to have space where i can talk about physical pain i feel. if you say you are hurting, you are in pain, you are not feeling control over your own body, they combine that with mainstream ableist notions of disability and use that to justify stealing your self-determination from you.
i cannot talk about pain or feelings of powerlessness openly with friends either. it seems like my community depends on me to be this picture of strength and power. especially disabled people. somehow my queer, shittalking, consumerist/shopaholic, bossy ways has turned me into this larger-than-life persona of someone who is proud, loves her body, has a lot of love interests, and always knows what she wants and gets it. even though i tell people that this is just an image, that i am shaped by insecurity and full of frustration, there is still this expectation of not having fear or weakness. as if i wasn’t taurus enough already.
the truth is that chronic pain makes me feel powerless. poetry sometimes helps me retrieve power. the other night i decided i was going to force myself to write poetry because even though i was tired, it would distract me from my pain. i wrote until my eyes were heavy with sleep. sleep was my goal. it worked.
poetry is a distraction from pain and a journey into it; a companion and a place of solitude; a system of pain management and medicine you create for yourself ; a reminder that your body is your own and acknowledgement that there is little we can actually control
i love poetry because i can just be.
soon everything will erupt soon everything will release and soon there will be a downpour
so loud so intense you are not sure what the outcome will be
but somewhere in there is a quiet that comes
a quiet that is gentle enough for sleep
help me get to that place, poetry
I have high-functioning autism, PTSD and multiple learning disabilities and am not allowed to write about the emotional pain of my past or that my mental disorders bring me, at least without SOMEONE getting offended that I am not a super “proud autistic” or that I am actually, *gasp,* negatively effected by my autism and/or other mental/neurological disorders.
I am just told, by other fellow autistics (whom are not as severely affected as me and do not share my history of institutionalization and severe abuse) to “just get over yourself,” and to “stop using ____ as an excuse.”
I’m too “high-functioning” to get real help but too disabled to hold a job, go to school, have friends, etc. I’ll probably live off SSI for the rest of my life because I might not ever get off the waiting list to get “real” help.
Some people don’t like it when I write about the reality of my life.
Stephanie Lynn Keil
7 Feb 10 at 3:39 PM
hey! i’ll respond properly to this post (and stephanie’s comment) later, but right now i just wanted to say, i really like your new layout (*much* better than the last one, which i didn’t really get on with, but this one’s probably about my favourite in visual terms of the ones you’ve had), but there’s one little (dunno if i can really call it accessibility?) thing: it’s very hard to see where to click to leave a comment – in fact, until i clicked on the “cut” link in this post and saw the comment form, i thought in this layout it wasn’t possible to leave comments at all (hence my lack of commenting recently!)
(ok, yeah, i know not allowing comments on your blog really wouldn’t be like you, but still…)
so maybe if it’s possible you could add a link saying “add a comment” that can be seen on the main page?
anyway… proper response when i’ve got more verbal spoons available… :)
shiva
7 Feb 10 at 8:35 PM
stephanie, not to go into theory or frameworks but i feel you. i feel like that is definitely a problem associated with an assimilationist disability politic… not having space to talk about the complicated experience/identity that is disability. not being able to talk is really frusterating and makes life so much harder. i hope you find that space soon.
shiva, my dear friend, thank you for the access tip. i couldn’t figure out the coding to change it so i just added to the right hand where it talks about contacting me. i’m glad this layout works for you, let me know if you think that change makes it easier.
cripchick
8 Feb 10 at 4:34 PM
Lovely poem and post.
My Sissy Hankshaw thumb has slowed down my industrial-strength blogging. I was always so proud of my frequent updates. Ha, well… not now.
Still banned at FWD, so no real place to talk about that stuff but here. So, let me say, I *do* understand about pain. I feel like some old mare (the proverbial workhorse), though, so not coming from the same lifelong perspective that you are. But it’s interesting to watch myself break down (to borrow from Hemingway) first slowly, and then quickly. My left knee has, for instance, taken to buckling for no reason. And my thumb-joint becomes -enormous- in the cold weather; I can predict the weather with it too, like some scary old Appalachian woman with unkempt hair and too many goats in her yard.
Love ya. Just letting you know I am still here and still reading, as always. ((kisses))
DaisyDeadhead
16 Feb 10 at 4:41 PM
[...] *not exactly poetry, but nevertheless inspired by what cripchick said. [...]
When You Become Disabled* « She Keeps Bees
19 Feb 10 at 2:50 PM
Wow. thank you for this. means much
Yolo
9 Mar 10 at 7:56 PM