Be Brave. Be Cautious. (Just Be Brave)
I wrote this when I was in refuge for the first time. Someone gave an old lap top to the charity that was housing me and I spent many nights believing that if I just kept writing I would be safe. I was wrong. I have left it more ot less as I found it, only taking out bits or adding when I really wasn't making any sense and a sentance at the end
I bless every second of pride and bravery. Intelligence and self-belief meant stepping back without disassociating. I limped when I could of danced and I looked away when I could of documented. I hated it but had decided to understand as much as I could, to study it, to turn it on its self. I knew 'getting out' wasn't a serious option for the likes of me, if anyone.
But the ‘traditional’ scene, that hit just as hard as the first time even when you where practically a god in your home village. These scenes never changed much, there would be the odd power struggle, and then the young men realised the older men really did know more about oppression than they did despite their apparent ‘holding back’ and then give in. At least with the newer groups there was more opportunity for promotion.
I watched it all, the smart kids, the hard kids, the appeasers, and the collaborators without to much effort. I didn’t watch what happened to me though just everyone else. Everything that happened to more was stored unanalysed to be relived at a later date sometimes by my own or someone elses will. The young adults would become disheartened be the lack of heroic humanity shown by their grandparents and bosses and resist even less. The kids and the older ones showed signs of waking up from a routine of predictable horror in order to watch the young mums and dads, teenagers, students and young people of every class trip onto the same swords as they did. I imagine it helps with the filth of guilt, seeing other people make the same mistakes.
Why couldn’t they raise their eyes beyond the corners of the tarpaulin, beyond the grass flickering with bodily fluids and firelight to see themselves? It always felt like a privilege to know what would happen next even when they improvising. To know who would make it and would die of suicide, drug overdoses or car crashes before they were 22. Every second spent in their company not tied up or poisoned or starving was a huge victory. They loved that.
It was the only thing reliable in life; the rape. No matter where you were or who you were it would be there on the same days and times of season. And without it I see everything. Like them I have given up on being responsible of my actions but I know what I am fighting for. Like them I have chosen violence and manipulation as bread and butter but choose when to steal and when to starve. The ones that choose and are chosen to take over, to give the orders and reduce the amount they were the subject, meant distance from regularly being close to death. Who wouldn’t make that choice? But having someone take your body to the brink so often like that, some you know or certainly do now. A sibling, a school friend a friend of a friend. It took away all choice, as you realised that they had said, “This should probably kill you and has in the past. But we know will probably come back because you like it really”. The speech was starting to bore the speaker the victim hearing it so many times they began to make out the words. They lost their enthusiasm, the thrill had gone, but the procedure was undertaken with a fresh diligence.
But they didn't understand modernity. Communications and the erosion of traditional ideas did more to free me than any desperate fight. Part of me clings to this the other knows it was violence, cash, sex and manipulation that makes it possible for me to be in a position to write, or publish this.
I bless every second of pride and bravery. Intelligence and self-belief meant stepping back without disassociating. I limped when I could of danced and I looked away when I could of documented. I hated it but had decided to understand as much as I could, to study it, to turn it on its self. I knew 'getting out' wasn't a serious option for the likes of me, if anyone.
But the ‘traditional’ scene, that hit just as hard as the first time even when you where practically a god in your home village. These scenes never changed much, there would be the odd power struggle, and then the young men realised the older men really did know more about oppression than they did despite their apparent ‘holding back’ and then give in. At least with the newer groups there was more opportunity for promotion.
I watched it all, the smart kids, the hard kids, the appeasers, and the collaborators without to much effort. I didn’t watch what happened to me though just everyone else. Everything that happened to more was stored unanalysed to be relived at a later date sometimes by my own or someone elses will. The young adults would become disheartened be the lack of heroic humanity shown by their grandparents and bosses and resist even less. The kids and the older ones showed signs of waking up from a routine of predictable horror in order to watch the young mums and dads, teenagers, students and young people of every class trip onto the same swords as they did. I imagine it helps with the filth of guilt, seeing other people make the same mistakes.
Why couldn’t they raise their eyes beyond the corners of the tarpaulin, beyond the grass flickering with bodily fluids and firelight to see themselves? It always felt like a privilege to know what would happen next even when they improvising. To know who would make it and would die of suicide, drug overdoses or car crashes before they were 22. Every second spent in their company not tied up or poisoned or starving was a huge victory. They loved that.
It was the only thing reliable in life; the rape. No matter where you were or who you were it would be there on the same days and times of season. And without it I see everything. Like them I have given up on being responsible of my actions but I know what I am fighting for. Like them I have chosen violence and manipulation as bread and butter but choose when to steal and when to starve. The ones that choose and are chosen to take over, to give the orders and reduce the amount they were the subject, meant distance from regularly being close to death. Who wouldn’t make that choice? But having someone take your body to the brink so often like that, some you know or certainly do now. A sibling, a school friend a friend of a friend. It took away all choice, as you realised that they had said, “This should probably kill you and has in the past. But we know will probably come back because you like it really”. The speech was starting to bore the speaker the victim hearing it so many times they began to make out the words. They lost their enthusiasm, the thrill had gone, but the procedure was undertaken with a fresh diligence.
But they didn't understand modernity. Communications and the erosion of traditional ideas did more to free me than any desperate fight. Part of me clings to this the other knows it was violence, cash, sex and manipulation that makes it possible for me to be in a position to write, or publish this.
