Once upon a time, there was me. I was a drunk. I wanted to die. I couldn’t handle the way I was living anymore. So I went into a recovery house. I failed. I went to another one. Three years into sobriety I had a mental breakdown. Things have been fucked ever since. But through it all I’ve also had this eating disorder, see. So it’s not enough to try to get my life back from mental illness. I’ve got an eating disorder too.
poverty Archive
16 Oct 2012
Coming to terms with childlessness
I never wanted to be a mother when I was young. Seduced by the freedom I could have as a single woman, at varying levels of “being about to take care of myself” financially and psychologically, I pushed onward. When I was 19 and in college I had an abortion. The father was irresponsible and unemployed, and I wanted to graduate. I wanted to live an exciting, satisfying life and knew if I kept the child I would be doomed to poverty and single-mother-dom before I had even gotten started.
24 Jul 2012
Help Hanners represent QMH.org in New York!
Hey everybody! I’ve been offered an opportunity to speak at an event at Callen-Lorde in NYC about trans and queer mental health. The flight from YVR to JFK is somewhat expensive, though, and as I am currently struggling with poverty, I’m asking people for a little help so I can make this trip. It would […]
16 Jul 2012
How to be an Ally to Disabled & Neurodiverse Folks in Activist & Academic Communities
This is based on my own experience as a Disabled, Trans, Queer, Autistic activist. In compiling this list, I consulted other Disabled activists as well. Most activism I’ve been involved with has taken place in Queer, Radical, & Academic communities. I’ve been both a grass-roots activist and a student activist. I do not claim to speak on behalf of Neurodiverse or Disabled folks–or any group for that matter. Here are a few ideas I’ve compiled on how to be a better Ally to folks who have been left out of social and political movements/communities:
04 Jul 2012
Shaming my Food Stamps: EBT and SSDI
I grew up a white, middle-class, cisgendered, femme bisexual. These are the labels and privilege that I am willing to claim. When I reached 33 and went on SSDI, I went on food stamps. The transformation from Daddy’s Girl who just had to get another temp job to actual psychotic starving schizophrenic who had to take anti-anxiety medication to take out the trash was a process but has landed here. With me, today. Taking a handful of pills so that I can be brave enough to go use my EBT.
18 Jun 2012
The Table Scraps Mentality
But it’s budgets, of course. No one’s fault, per se. And you can’t argue with a budget. Universities are following the WalMart model of pump and dump cheap employment, and desperate graduates are the casualties. This is not likely change, and is only likely to get worse, as the turnover rate of recent PhDs increases seemingly exponentially.
13 Jun 2012
Bipolar mania and the high femme: Adventures in Sephora
I was bipolar for ten years, and while rifling through the sexual identity coatrack I found I was most comfortable as a bisexual femme. In the gay bars of 2002 this was the look that got me most often ignored or disregarded. A decade later in a different city, I amped the look up to high femme, in a sense queering it, by making the femininity into camp, a form of drag or masquerade. With a blonde bouffant, pencil skirt, purple lipstick and platform heels, I could not actually be serious about being sexy for the boys, I scared them.
16 Apr 2012
Sick of capitalism: The chronically ill body as a site of resistance.
I’m sick. I have chronic illnesses which cause me lots of pain and fatigue. The specific names and causes of my illnesses are not important (and not even totally known by me or my doctors). I spend a lot of time in bed. Sometimes even weeks at a time. This is not something I have […]
28 Nov 2011
Sardines on Sundaes
So, is it my choice that I have schizophrenia? Is it my choice that I’m queer? Is it my choice that I come from a lower socio-economic status? Is it my choice that I was kicked out of my house before completing my high school education? Is it my choice that I don’t have rich parents supporting me?