my collapse is the best thing that ever happened to me

disability/overculture, the urban mythic (videos!), standing in the earth-water ..

in 2017 when i was an outpatient in a recovery center, a life-rerouting 5-times-a-week-for-11-weeks intervention for my mental health and dangerous enmeshment with my newly-ex-partner in the throes of hard drug addiction … there was a man in group who reflected on someone he was talking to while he was in jail, almost at the end of his serve-time. that man asked him two questions, which he passed on to us— 1. do you think you changed? 2. do you love yourself? i’ve never forgotten them.

i was listening to sarah vrba’s video on tomorrow’s full moon in capricorn, the second and last, as we close out this cancer season .. thinking about pluto in capricorn and the 16 year cycle, from back in 2008. how have you changed? what have you learned about yourself, in that time? the timing is always The Timing. it aligns with what i need to reflect on, and Re-Member.

i’ve had a long, long history of reconnecting with my exes. one of the prime orientations that lead/led to this behavior is the root-system of “Moments,” passed down to me by my upbringing. just— get for yourself all the Beautiful Moments you can. “steal them” from this insane fucking existence, from the limited time we have here, because “life is too short”; steal them, with others, even when you are in relationship with someone else, if that’s what you need to do— to “be happy,” to be “fulfilled.”

in 2008 i was nowhere near peering curiously into this root-system. by the end of that year i would end one of the two relationships i had simultaneously been in for 2 years; not poly and not formally open, fully unbeknownst to both partners. i would not grieve the relationship i ended— i would pivot right back to the other-boyfriend. and then let the Moments ignite with my best-friend-at-the-time, and then my former professor, and then a new friend i met in the astoria music scene, all while still with the remaining-boyfriend, and .. i am not saying any of this to be unkind to myself. i am just re-membering. the Chaos That My Life Became because of “Moments.” the scavengery of not being able to root in one place, root into yourself— to not only know when to call it, to Be Alone— but to be able to give time to process, to grieve, to— my favorite and often most triggering word— Digest. from 2008 til now i’ve lived into and through that Deepest Fear that was passed down to me, particularly by my mother— do literally anything it takes to Not End Up Alone.

“Moments,” as i clumsily reflect, now, actually has no root-system. it is island after island, in the roiling abyss. there is no sense of ecology, no taking-into-account of how anything affects anything else— you or the other people involved; how anything affects the whole. you are just Having This Beautiful Evening over here and Having This Intense Sex over there and Calling This Person to hear that someone loves you because you can’t bear to sit for even a few minutes with the heartbreak of Something Else ending. There Was Always Someone. There Was.

crawling out of “Moments”— i have seen that life can be abundant in ways i was never taught. that being alone is not Life-Ending. that you don’t have to “Steal Beauty From The Cruel Hands of Fate”— you can collaborate. you don’t have to stay in harmful situations and then maladapt all manner of patterns in order to make it bearable. you don’t have to spend your life figuring out ways to make unsafe situations seem safe. you don’t have to override your nervous system to stay in relationship and then act out all your shadows in affairs and binge-eating and projection and compulsivity and self-hatred. continually Inside and On The Other Side of all these years, that’s what i have learned— There Is Another Way. a more honest way. a more abundant way. a more ease-full way. a gentler way. a way in which there is a Need To Learn Boundaries. a Need to Learn When To Call It. to Learn What Is Safe and What Is Not (and that Safety is Particular to each person). to Learn To Say No. that move, ever in perpetuity— to re-member what has been dismembered, slaughtered, flayed apart— for so, so, so, long.

[…]

there are Other Things i’ve learned. more subtle, Always, when my life is not in constant chaos, as it was, for years— one relational trauma on top of another relational trauma, the thickening strata of guilt and blame and self-hate; running, Running, scavenging, gathering, hiding; to be Safe.

there have been realizations about my nervous system. about how much tenderness and holding i need. realizations about what is an Actual safe container. about healthy containment, in General. about owning my own Otherness. about what kind of life lends itself most supportively to Who I Really Am. about how deserving i am of that kind of support, of support In General!— irregardless of how many years i pressed on, running from shadows, twisting from grasps, pushing, forcing, fighting— Making and Creating— from the Ruins, As the Ruins. not knowing self-care or Pause or making-sacred or Space.

grace always finds you though, thank god. thank god. that’s really what it does.

speaking of— i feel like it’s time to experiment with dropping a video in here (first time, on substack!) […]

a hinge-place of this Grace-experiencing came in fall 2019, when i first found The Altar To The Firebird— the place i am in this video.

something has been happening over these past days/weeks— i’ve felt drawn to pull out my phone and record my telling-of-stories— the interweave and interbeing of my own personal mythology, the old stories, and the earthen landscape. what i’ve been calling, over the past two to three years: The Urban Mythic (i’ll be doing a talk/presentation about this on sharon blackie’s substack, later this year).

in the first video i did i am harkening back to the last time i really did this—the pain-point inherent in that it was before Everything Changed in spring 2021. my brother, who soon after would abruptly move across the country to california, filmed these clips with me— i experimented with the Beginnings of “wild body dreaming” and being dreamed by the URBAN landscape— with dancing and with speaking out what i was feeling, including my inquiries into what happens when, as martin shaw so beautifully states, we are Claimed by a place— for me, in particularity— when that place is a place that is not “beautiful,” and is in fact characterized by human-words: “derelict,” “abandoned,” etc etc… i’ll draw a line between my two consciousnesses, here— and drop one of those 2021 videos, unedited from youtube, right Here:

i am Still This Person. deepening. listening. inquiring. and perhaps i Will still type out the entry i hand-wrote some days ago, the day before i held my last online story-space— HERE BE DRAGONS (which was one of my most favorite spaces i’ve ever held <3).

something coalescing here, something in what my summer is feeling like— a terrestriality, a sweat-and-dirt, a bike riding, a high sensitivity, a closeness to the earth, a Home-ing, and even— which i hope i’ll write more about another time— a recontextualizing of my parents in a gentler way, which has been emanating naturally from what i’ve been spending the summer doing, in earthen spaces, in spaces of otherness. thinking of my parents, both of them— as tenders, as menders. underneath all the survival strategies and maladapted coping mechanisms, lack of boundaries, cultures of harm… that is there. somehow, i’m finding, Glimpses Into— Pristine.

****

here is what i wrote by hand, rain-spattered, on 7/13:

i feel like so much has Changed.

my Eyes alone, my entanglements— seeing Through things. seeing things Through. a small, slow, somewhat sweetly-growing respect for what my nervous system has been through, since last fall. it is 8 months since bianca died. i see sunflowers everywhere. my girl, i say. it is 4 months since i made the decision to stop the relationship i had— we had— been trying to re-grow. her beautiful brother, who i fell in love with when i was 18; the bright spot in more occurrences and choices, back then, that had darkened my skies— i found out my boyfriend of 2 years had been cheating on me, i just started college, i got pregnant, i chose to begin the journey to abortion.

my past will always be with me, mixed like sediment. the earth-water i poured from the bowl of soil i put out in the rain this morning. how beautiful. not clear. earth-particles. browning water.

i’m walking— meandering— slowly, notebook in hand— this neighborhood. water drops onto the page, my right lower back hurts because these flip-flops don’t align with my body anymore. everything looks Different now; much of it, entirely the same. i walk into my park. let myself notice where the ankle-deep “flooding” is. the water i somehow fought against back when i was running public programs here, over 3 years ago, now. i stand in the puddling. i remember summer solstice 2019— the last of that long-running festival i ended up doing— nearly crying, wrestling with an inflatable sculpture i was trying to drag out of ankle-deep water from the pooling rains the night before and earlier that day.

it’s Her. she’s Here. i just didn’t understand what this was. yet. yeah, the park floods, the park floods. it was the “bane” of what we were trying to do— build sculptures, do events.

i’m standing in it, earth-water now. the same corner where i wrestled the sculpture— the water still pooling, ankle-deep. but i’m smiling, this time, not crying. dragging my feet slow.

this is where you were, sunswick. my undercity dragon, my guide.

water persists the way life persists. it does what is Natural for it to do. i recognize that is what i love so much about my post-industrial home neighborhood. the plants break through everywhere. tangled with junk and metal and garbage. cracking paint and warping steel. construction sounds and birdsong. it all lives together in my bloodstream. she was Here. is, Here.

the topography of this land remembers her. the way our bodies remember the old stories. spiritual acupuncture, my teacher martin has called it. there are installations here of tall grasses and native plants. i walk in puddles, i remember the park of my childhood— still wild, nonsensical, purposely unexplained.

i often find i don’t want to do anything anymore but quietly wander. remember i am a being with senses beyond sight and unconsciously holding my breath while my fingertips slide along the glass-top of a screen.

she’s Here, and it makes sense to me now the way it didn’t before.

i am allowing myself to Be Here the way i used to— i am reclaiming my anonymity, before i became ~The Rise and Fall of the Director of Public Programs~. just the girl wandering through, sitting at the edges, Listening. watching.

maybe that’s really what i’m here to do.

*

i thought i was supposed to be a nomad. really, i did. i remember how hard i fought, but not even that— it was Easy— sometimes i can barely remember— the sheer raw Elation i felt— in Exploring. taking trips that seemed, perplexingly arduous— why would you take a bus for 2 1/2 days when you could take a plane?— it is/was fear, and also— something terrestrial, in me. something wordless that wanted to know the land, know how long it actually took, how far away i was actually travelling—

i’m standing ankle-deep in the water again. my former co-worker comes over to tell me The Latest that i don’t (want to) care about anymore— he is abruptly pulled away because someone lost their dog; i am following her channel again, with my feet. this One i have not wanted to Be, but I Am.

there were so many things i couldn’t notice, here— while in the over-stacked Rush of everything i was doing or trying to do.

the shoreline cliff-perch where i used to sit in my early 20s has crumbled into the river; i don’t care, i say, but he doesn’t understand me— i don’t care if they forget my name or pretend not to know me. i am earth-water, i am sediment, now— people are picking through the rocks, the collapsed dock or barge, looking for the lost dog, maybe. am i watching tragedy unfold? i don’t understand. so easy to get lost in such a Tangle, if you don’t know your way. […]

the story changes. the tide comes in. i hear squealing, or screaming. it is the dog, it is black, it is tiny. people are stupid, i want to say, life is unbearable, there’s no way of getting around it. that dog survived, many other beings don’t survive that Tangle, we can’t help it, i almost didn’t—

i breathe in the rain-darkened atmosphere, lean against the willow bark turned green, a dragon tree. algae, or moss, or fungus, they are all showing today.

i want to be silent, i want to listen. “my art began by dissolving”— they don’t have to re-member me, i am doing that for Myself. Her, and Me.

how did i ever think i was going to write this on the computer? what about that atmosphere, topography— My Collapse Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me. stopped me in my fucking tracks. whatever the hell i thought i was, whatever the hell i thought i was doing, compares nothingly, to This.

i see why i love the so-called “abandoned” places. i grew up inside it, places where things didn’t need to be explained, they just were. why are you walking in puddles, audrey, why are you sleeping under the table, audrey— because it feels good, because i need Shelter, because i don’t care to know why.

i haven’t Failed, i tell myself. everything looks so green. i had wanted to begin writing about ability/unability/disability, to begin trying to wrangle that more Directly— but/and here i end up in the very place where it started, when i couldn’t deftly shift and recover from it, fall into another job like a pothole in the street— this has been a stoppage unlike all stops. until last month, maybe i thought i was going to be able to Return to a full-time job. “get back into the world”!— for a person who loves so much to be of service and to Work. i have learned of an orientation to disability in that the person is disabled by society. the way the society is/runs, disables and prevents them from participating. i like the shift therein that makes it about society and not blaming the individual, but, but—

WHAT IF I REFUSE TO DEFINE MYSELF BY SOCIETY, THE OVERCULTURE, ANYMORE?

what if i can’t stop noticing, QUESTIONING— the glaringness of the word NORMAL— what if i fully refuse to believe that such a thing even exists?

what if i REFUSE. I REFUSE. to end every inquiry of dissatisfaction with “the way things are,” with some all-too-familiar statement of compliance— that’s just how it is; you need to make money; we live in a capitalist society; i need to survive— i don’t have any answers for you. i don’t know how you will feed yourself or your children or keep the lights on or “avoid” being homeless.

what i Do know is that in the Divestiture, in the supposed Collapse— other things have a chance to come together. sustainable things, Truer things. mutual aid and communal support things. ecological things.

all of this, “the way it is”— it doesn’t work; we can all agree. maybe we need some Collapse. i feel like i’m re-treading myself, oh well, i’ll follow the weave— the way we only protect what we care about. the way doorways to True Life often only come through illness, death, grief, collapse. startling and unforeseen sudden life change. and maybe you don’t have to be as hardy as you think to withstand these things— maybe what’s called for, Integral, is softening. softening. Softening.

i had my first serious conversation about social security/disability benefits with the therapist i’ve had, more infrequently, now, since mid-february. this was a week or so ago— even in my crisis-time in 2018 when i was being given these suggestions by others, i didn’t get near taking them. i was told on that call that i’d need to make a case, essentially, of my inability to work. need to collect letters and accounts of— it feels like everything i’ve been trying to fight against, for so long.

i want to work. i am able to work— when that ability is defined by Me, and not externally. not by the harmful-by-design overculture. i am realizing, slowly, there is No More: 9 to 5 or 10 to 6; 5 days a week and/or on the weekends; “no breaks” because of the “nature of the work” and “that’s just the way it is”; the to-do list comes first and i always come second, rather Last; eating while walking or writing emails; working through lunch as penance/to “balance it out” because i kept coming in late; calling out with anxiety most often on the days i had 1-on-1’s with my boss; chained to a desk those months i spent in a literal cubicle or other times in windowless rooms; no more needing to SIT DOWN and STAY at the computer or else you’re fucking off or not being productive Like Everyone Else; all the years of not-enough-ness, starting every single fucking email with “sorry for my delay;” harming myself because i “couldn’t keep up” with something that, by design, was too much for 1 person to “keep up” with. (satisfactory side-note, since i left my last job 3 years ago i’ve heard that the responsibilities of my SINGULAR JOB have been split into 3 to 4 people, in multiple iterations/configurations). no more travelling long distances and pushing myself onto the subways that give me so much anxiety, forcing myself to stiffen up and masculinize because i wanted to prove i was as physically strong and capable as the man that held my position, beforehand. no more doing it and doing it and doing it Alone.

All Of It Has Shattered, and i bless it. i fucking Bless It.

here’s me with my feet in puddles continually losing my taste for any remaining trappings of this society and What People Think Of Me. my Vocation is Listening, my Requirement is Space.

i Care about so many things, can’t care anymore to control My Story in the mouths of others, the paperwork, the diagnoses, the emails, the probationary periods, the chronic lateness, the insubordination— i love the way people see the white feathers and the drying mulberry branch and the tiny unicorn-horn rock stuck into my straw hat and smile at me. the way the stranger on the pharmacy line asks about the model of my bike i’ve trailed with me into the store, starts gently bumping my crossed forearms with his lightly closed fist the way new yorkers do for emphasis as he tells me about the man from turkey who lost most of his fingers climbing mount everest, with the bicycle he gave him, in tow.

other things, simpler things, more precious things, mean More to me, now. the Dragons are helping me hold this space of utter Otherness in an overculture still trying All It Can to keep its claws deep in the flesh of the most vulnerable, to its annihilating ends.

well guess fucking what, overculture? I Do Not Consent. i do not consent to being disabled by a harmful system i don’t believe in. i reject your fallacy of Normalcy. i reject your fallacy of us being the “minority” to the “fully-functioning majority.” i reject your definitions of “what is real” and “what is not.”

i have scales and teeth and claws now. i’ve been swallowed by the serpent, the Dragon, the reptilian/amphibious one, and i don’t need to find my way out. I’m Becoming Her by Re-membering Her.

i will not un-see the harm you’ve done. i will not continue to live by your laws.

It Is Enough. It Is Enough. It Is Enough.

*****

a few notes:

it feels beautiful and intense to have typed this out, after so much else has happened since i wrote it, and since the dragon-space. it feels like something that needs to Exist in my internet-oeuvre (i laugh as i type this). i want to make some notes—

~ “overculture” is a term i’ve been using a lot lately and it comes from the great clarissa pinkola estés and her book that needs no introduction, “women who run with the wolves.” here’s a mention of her usage here.

~ funnily enough, this substack first began back in spring 2022 housing my ruminations on an environmental public art project involving sunswick creek, the underground stream that once ran above-ground in my home neighborhood until she was diverted into the sewer system (rather, used to shape the movement of the sewer system) in the late 1800s. more on Her, definitely— including the culmination of my collaborator and i’s portion of the exploration, the storytelling/dance/ritual-walk, “for the depths of us,” that was part of the water connectors cohort 2022.

~ a final note:

1a. this is my own [much newer/more recent] understanding and wrestling with the conceptual Angel of “disability”— there is so much rich gradient here, especially inside that word— how it is aiming to capture both physical And cognitive/intellectual/perceptual/etc “disability” and Difference. this is My opinion and My experience— similarly to my work in the mental health sphere, i may not have taken the medication i was prescribed for the “serious mental illness” diagnosis i was given, but i know many people who Do take “medication for mental illness” and i support what works for You on your journey. it just wasn’t mine. // i know many people who empoweringly identify with the word “disabled,” especially/including those who also identify as “neurodivergent”— me? you’re watching my wrestle with this, in real-time. <3

1b. i’m recognizing— also, literally, in real-time— that i am the Egg and not the Sword, right now. i am realizing that there are New (but not actually New— i think perhaps— emergently Truer) things about me i am being inspired/challenge to hold space for. i am recognizing Why things like this happen Later in life, After— because when you work on self-care/self-compassion/The Work, truer traits/ways of being are able to have safer places and ways to be Held— i often think of an injured or scared wild animal and how you would react to approaching it or trying to help it— It Takes Time. // i realized today while trying to walk and garden with some folks in-person (AT an accessible space open to having these kinds of conversations! …) that i just didn’t feel quite ready, yet.** in this Egg-ness, this New-ness, this True-r-ness. and there seems to be somewhat of a Key in this— of Seeing/Recognizing/Integrating awareness of my own Different Form, right now— that can help me bring compassion to this instead of just bewilderment. i am an Egg, right now. Fragile. Different.

the exiled wild twin who was once the lindwurm after the coarse-brushing, the scraping away, the milk and the ash baths, from the strong, devoted, gentle hands of the brave shepherdess. All The Care, it must have taken— Within Himself(!)— the terrifying-ness, of Surrender. to let himself Become That. to Become That, and As That, to be taken to the marriage-bed, and Held— to wake up laughing in the rose-gold light. almost too beautiful for me to bear, right now; my god.

stories, for another day~

[…]

** edit/// from later. after i wrote this, i ended up Going. and i sowed seeds of two of my favorite flowers, calendula and bachelor’s button. :) not that it’s about Going rather than Not Going. but it’s about Listening. coming to the edge. seeing if it’s time. Trying, if it feels right. <3