Hello, my heart

Hello, my heart

I'm glad you're here. It's like no time has passed when we talk, aye. 

I've been meaning to write but I wanted to do you justice - it's the only kinda justice worth seeking at this stage right?

Hey, so do you remember three years ago before this modern hysteria when I wrote the hungry ghost? And had break-up sex with myself, or one of them (the higher one), in a poem? 

The Hungry Ghost 09/10/20, a poem, a motif, Samsara
and a personal point of reference

Remember how I wrote it because I knew I'd betrayed her in a lot of ways and I guess I assumed she'd read it? Well, she didn't. Maybe I thought she wanted to play games too. Had I known she was actually gonna leave when I told her to fuck off I probably wouldn't have told her to. You remember.

Ok, so anyway, get this: I ran into her recently. 

I know! I was bashful bro. I hadn't seen her for a while but I guess we're moving in similar circles again? I don't know. I don't wanna speak too soon. Obviously it was a joy (like always!) but. Fuck, I'm still just so... ghostly compared to her, them: that me. 

Tis folly to be intimidated by my own self and how alive I was before. And yet, in ways that are hard to word, my middle, my side to side selves and so-called lower selves feel implicated by the hierarchy alone. 

As above, so below I guess, but no one wants to be below. You get it. 

So it's me straddling... me. And damn. I thought, we're just having sex we're not breaking up but it feels like it. Feels like we are. Like we're breaking up. I can't do this again, not with you, me. I'm too sensitive.

I'm weeping and pleading:

                                            I didn’t know you thought of me as lower you

                                I thought I was just the base, the root.    I thought I was root

And I'm responding                  

                 

FUCK listen                                   you are root                                                 

                                                      you are base 

                                                                                                                                               

                                                      but I am growing       from the top now

I said                                                                                  I have to be    up and out   now

I said                                                                I’m the same as I was before                                              

                                                                  but I’m the same in another                                                                                                                                                  direction now 

    

                                                                                                                     

Because you are root

                                                                           You must grow down     

                                       up                                                                                                                                                                   I am leaves                                                                                                                                                                       

I’ve got to grow    up 

                                           

                                                        You are stays 

                                                                                                    you've got to grow 

                                                                                                                                     down 

                            I’m gonna come back all the time I’m gonna come back all the time 

I’m saying that too,

                                            I’ll come back when I can 

So I say fine and other I says fine and now the room feels like a held breath. 

Like when trees make that cracking sound or doctors have news or a slumber party hears a bump in the night. And while I’m probably hopefully maybe moving closer to integrating all the selves I’ve had to become to survive, I’ve had to give so many selves the silent treatment to do so. 

They get gnarly too bro, trying to get my attention. I'm like let it be, what the fuck.  And what began as a silent retreat eventuated into of a self-ghosting. Ignoring my own calls, tasks my 30th birthday. Worse, I said cruel-as-fuck shit about self. The kinda shit I have hit people for saying. That's me: on the giving and the receiving end of everything I do. Like all of us are. All the time, forever.  

Please just admit that it’s funny in a tilt-your-head kinda way that I already felt like a ghost when I very nearly became one. I’ve said this before but it is one confusing bitch: to be suicidal and then very nearly die without having a part in it. I felt excluded. 

Anyway, that's just it. I never planned to haunt my own house. I don’t even remember becoming a ghost, but apparently that’s normal for ghosts. 

Sure, I walked fast for a hungry ghost. Those I chatted with were likely not wary they were even communing with the dead. I walked until I was a thirsty ghost too, but at that point I didn’t even care to write poems about it. I wasn’t certain I existed and I figured someone who didn’t exist had no business writing poetry. Plus I kept being told to write, to write from the heart but I knew I would have scared the shit out of them if I had. 

The silence, actually, woulda scared them more. 

 

 but oi I write to my heart not from it for good reason

 

i don't remember it feels good to be abused it feels good to be abused

                         it feels good to nurture 

it feels good to be abused        it feels good it feels good to nurture it feels good to be abused

                         it feels good  

it feels good to be abused        it feels good to be abused i don't remember it feels good to be abused

 it feels good to nurture 

it feels good to be abused

                         it feels good

it feels good to be abused    it feels good to be abused i don't remember 

What I do remember is hearing Ruby slow-talk to Ma and Justin, relaying that I'd had a seizure and couldn't breathe. I remember the paramedic mocking me to the back of my head, not for lack of gall though (he mocked me to my face once I was turned over). Ruby stroked my head and placed her body between his and mine. For his protection, too.  

He might have been the boldest motherfucker I've ever encountered. And I've met (and been some bold motherfuckers). I used a great deal of my air to tell him he was a fucking dick bro

                                   to that he said the wife agrees,  he reckoned that was pretty funny. 

Then he said my lungs sounded                         "clear as a bell" 

                                                                                                       

                                               

ok, focus Gary

the bell is fucking clearly tolling for thee   

Fuck is it seriously April Fool's Day?

How dare you have my grandfather's name?

                                                                                                                                              

He diagnosed me with a panic attack and he put it in writing, alongside the antipsychotic medication I'm prescribed. In other words:!!GAME OVER!!

The two younger paramedics stood by the entire time like big dumb dogs, moving only when instructed. They put me in the ambulance and kept telling me to breathe deeper. 

when he couldn't find my pulse 

I told him I had a heart of coal. I told him I had a heart of coal and 
                        he’d still managed to hurt my feelings. 

He laughed. I wasn’t joking. 
                                          Surely a heart of coal is as worthy as a heart of gold 
                                                                 if I must compare thee to a fossil fuel
Mine took time rather than exploitation
                                      

 

 I’ve seen some of your golden hearts
                                                                                I’ve seen how you got them

 

We’re all just carbon anyway, like diamonds
But diamonds are forever and we’re                 for now.  

I know we’re for now but I still carry myself like an ambulance (lights off)

The misdiagnosis of a panic attack meant for nearly 5 hours I was given ibuprofen and told to take deep breaths and calm down. The misdiagnosis of a panic attack meant my lung was 'missing' by the time I was x-rayed and I had entered cardiac arrest by the time they shoved the tube in my side.

Evidence 4, 31/4/23.
Ruby, my best friend, advocate and training social worker documented for evidence.
She happened to capture me meeting god moments before the chest drain was in situ. 

The long deep breaths I’d been encouraged to take had collapsed my left lung completely and created a gigantic and expanding air bubble in it's wake. Without my lung to contain the oxygen it began breaking my ribs and crushing my heart. I felt my sternum fizz as my trachea shifted. I inhaled half my stomach into my throat,desperate for air (quarter of it is still in my oesophagus now).

My vital organs were too compromised to put me under so they pushed me over-- on ket. Yes bro! I had the procedure in a ketamine-induced-waking-coma. High as fuck, I truly believed I was in a magic school bus type situation, a teeny-tiny person navigating my internal organs, trying to lift the walls of my lungs from inside. 

I recalled it unusual it was that they had beautiful Japanese twins instead of a singular anesthesiologist, but Ruby says I am not remembering correctly.  

ok ok ok ok ok ok 

I want to wake up now 

                                is it seriously April Fucking Fools Day?

where are you going I'm talking to you why won't anyone listen

Above: Healthy lungs in August 2022.

Below: Fully collapsed lung, arrested heart April 1 2022.  

In the end, almost all of last year is a complete blur to me. It took 8 days to drain the oxygen and a full year to even find the bung by which to drain the adrenaline. I gained 5 degenerative diagnoses. I lost a quarter of my body weight, a quarter of my friends. I gained the weight back.

Self portrait 1 13/04/2 
A series of photographs inspired, guided by gifted photographer,
illness advocate and dear friend, Becki Moss. 

For months  I made balm out of cat's whiskers, kawakawa, kōwhai and persimmons. I spoke only to pīwakawaka, tūī, rūrū and my mama. Everything else felt like an obvious lie. 

I fought everything and everyone and then lost my strength and it stayed lost for ages because I didn't search and because it didn't seem to matter how hard shit was, I kept being told to challenge myself more. Pseudo spiritualists implied I had invited illness into my life and to that I said: if I had died you'd still like me, that's quite funny and also quite absurd. I'm glad I bit the bullet instead of my tongue. 

Self portrait 2 13/04/22. Me, the halter monitor and the hole in my side that still tingles when I'm told to breathe deep. Guided by Becki Moss. 

April Fools' Day marked one year since resuscitation and I'm done haunting my home with Modern Hysteria. I don't remember when I stopped being a ghost but I guess that's normal for ghosts. 

Voice and intuition still say no when I ask if I can forgive this but I think you can move on without forgiving or forgetting. World history says so, so does earth. 

I won't forgive the situation because it is not an isolated one. This story is not unique. As a feminised person with a mental health history and a mean face my experience was probably statistically pretty average. 

I won't forgive because they acted once my hands, feet and face went blue. From beige to blue. And I know it's hard to see when Brown and Black skin goes blue, to see when Black and Brown lips go blue. There but for the grace of God go... my privilege and I? No, fuck no, I can't forgive it. 

That is not even mine to forgive. We can't take it to the judge, we gotta take it to the ancestors.   

And, yes I reported them. They responded with a request for donation and a letter saying they stood by their approach and Em was hard to build rapport with and not following instructions. 

Instructions? 

 Listen cunt I headed for the life boat when I heard the first violin.

                        I footed it out of the mine when the canary fell from the perch as

                                seemed pretty fucking foolish to assume she lost her footing, bro.

                                         I'll always believe me I'll always believe me I'll always believe me

                                           I'll always believe you I'll always believe you I'll always believe you.                                                                                            Fuck them we will believe each other  

Self portrait 3 14/04/22.
Before I had my hair washed for the first time in four weeks, I also pretty much only spoke French at this time. It happens sometimes. Guided by Becki Moss.

I don't want to be an advocate. I want to complain right now and that annoys people. Maybe I want to be annoying. I want to be angry the way the boys are allowed to be if I'm expected to be as stoic. I want to be sad the way the girls are allowed to be if I'm expected to be as dainty, polite, sweet. 

And I don’t want the fear. I'm rehoming the fear because fear like a lot of living things tends to get blind and confused with age. 

Still, I didn't realise I'd be sad to see them go, that Hungry Ghost.

I'm healing. Oi, come here. I'm healing. You wanna know how I know? 

Cigarettes were one of my first true loves and I quit them to intentionally stay longer in a place I don’t wanna be a lot of the time. 

It's not morbid, it's just intense. Listen for the unbearable, insatiable, undying hope. It's not break up sex. I'm just giving up the ghost. I will keep writing to my heart. I know I'll hear back soon. I know I'll hear back. 

I love you, I love you so much 

Em

Portrait by Nadia, December 2023.
We walked past the hospital to the winter gardens. Small victories.

Portrait by Nadia, December 2023.