Queer youth are five times more likely to die by suicide. I did not know that. I knew nothing about Andrea Gibson until after their death earlier this week from Ovarian Cancer. Every word they wrote throbbed with a cry against injustice. They were an activist for tenderness, a warrior for the human heart. I have spent most of today reading her poems and they sing to me. Gibson lived deeply and spoke candidly about moments when things got too much for them.
“When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain.”
“Just to be clear,” they wrote, “I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.”
Sitting in mesmerising remoteness, I’ve been falling in love with Maya Angelou. Her words in this interview on The Paris Review have been singing in my ears and I am compelled to share the music as it resonates with the beat of my heart. And, is she funny or is she funny? Astounding combination of humour and profound fundamental human truths.
“We may encounter many defeats.” She says. “Maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats. I don’t know. But we must not be defeated. I see people who haven’t gone through anything and you think, ‘Ah! Honey, go through something. Go through something.’
If I have a theme in my work, it is that we’re much stronger that we appear to be. And maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. And that human beings are more alike than we are unalike. There’s no real mystique. Every human being, every Christian, every Jew, every backslider, every Muslim, every Shintoist, Zen Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, every human being want a nice place to live. A good place for the kids to go to school, healthy children, somebody to love, the courage, the unmitigated gall to accept love in return, some place to party on a Saturday or Sunday night and some place to perpetuate that God. There’s no mystique. None. And if I’m right in my work, that’s what my work says.”
Truly inspired. Love the sweet little made-up words like ‘unalike’. Thank you Ma’am.
Andretta is a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas. It has been calling to us for the past five years. We’ve been working towards becoming able to take it up on its invitation and finally, we are here.
I return to my country, a stranger. I am not that young lady who left and this land is different from what it was when she left twenty-three years ago. It is noisier, busier and dirtier. People and houses everywhere. The national highways used to run through wide expanses of green and yellow fields but now they are lined with messy shops, workshops and warehouses. Overweight people used to be a rarity but now obesity is commonplace, even in kids and village folk. The forests are thinner and the weather full of surprises. The number of extreme rain events has risen three-fold since the beginning of the last century, possibly due to a warmer Arabian Sea.
It was in the last century that I ventured abroad. The dreams that lived in my eyes then, are a mere story now. Those dreams had to be dashed, so I could wake up. My heart had to be shattered before it could learn to be full. I had to be completely humiliated, before I could be truly humble.
Maybe it was necessary.
Fifty-four days ago, my father walked into a hospital for an operation that he believed would improve his quality of life. He has been unable to leave his hospital bed since. Every time I turn from one side to another in my sleep, I am aware that my father can’t do that. He needs help with nearly every activity of life. He’s aware of his predicament and we all are helpless. This helplessness is an old friend from a few years back. Looking back, it might have been better if he’d not had the operation but we don’t know for sure and it’s too late now. It could be worse. I could be better. It could be different.
I wonder why things happen as and when they do? Is this a question worth asking or is it completely pointless? Some questions are unanswerable no matter how frantically the logical mind looks for answers. There are none.
Here is an example of language, describing the same thing in two different ways.
First:
“I was 15 when I started to suffer with mental illness. I went to see a psychiatrist who told me that I had something called Schizophrenia. For a couple of years my symptoms got really bad and people were afraid I was going to hurt myself so I was hospitalised. They stabilised me on meds and shock treatments and sent me home. For a long time, I didn’t get sick again.
Later, as an adult, I started to get symptomatic again. I got pretty psychotic and once again got put in hospital. They told me there that I was really sick and should go on disability. For a long time, I was pretty sick but then started to be able to manage my symptoms.”
Second:
“I was 15 when I started feeling different than others and really alone. For a couple of years after that, I would do things in pretty extreme ways. They made sense to me based on what I was thinking and feeling but I guess it was scary for others who didn’t really understand what I was thinking and feeling. I got put in a hospital. There I really lost hope and beliefs about being a ‘regular’ person. They put me on a lot of medication that made me sleepy all the time. After I left, I threw out all the meds and put my intensity into music.
Years later, coming out of a difficult marriage I started to have similar kinds of experiences as the ones I had as a kid. I had really strong feelings and felt pretty separate from others. I got put back in the hospital again. I was told I had a major mental illness and that I should go on disability. Though I did that for a while, I realised that I was just going along with their beliefs rather than looking at how I’d come to think in certain ways. Little by little, I figured out what to do with my intensity and I’ve been really growing ever since.”
Each one of us is simply at a different place in our growth and development. Using language that is personal and descriptive of our experiences enables shared understanding. It forces us to think of ourselves and others more broadly as human beings, free of labels and assumptions.
kidsaregifts 