The spook or the spooked?

I've had a long day. I'm exhausted—like, bone tired. You know that deep ache that you get in your legs, and the heaviness in your eyelids? But my eyes aren’t droopy from fatigue; they’re puffy from crying. My kid keeps pestering me to drive to McDonald’s, but the last thing I want to do is go to a genocide supporting-fast-food joint. Besides my mind is occupied on other things. All-consuming thoughts - I want to take a bat to every hard surface in my path. I just feel so fucking destructive right now.

And for all of you who know me, you know I am not a violent person. I don’t think I’ve ever actively destroyed anything. But God, I feel this urge in my belly—deep, deep in the base of my belly.

I want to smash windows, take a bat to doors. I want to cave holes into walls, trash things, and go on a rampage just to release all the anger, frustration, and rage that’s surging through me. Because right now, all of it is sitting in my head like a massive, swollen storm cloud, and it’s making my brain hurt and my skull feels like it could explode from the pressure.

I rationalise the fantasies of vandalism are about releasing the rage, but maybe they’re also about revenge. The rage and righteous fury I feel about the day’s events have me feeling wrathful in ways that I haven’t experienced before. Which is surprising. Today was not my first rodeo with a panel of state agents. It’s not the first time, I have had to open my life up to scrutiny, to judgement from fresh white faces of supposed virtue.

But today seemed different. And I can’t quite put my finger on what was different or to put the words to it, other than to tell you that it felt a lot more violent, a lot more invasive and a lot more damaging to my sense of self.

I won’t name the forum, because that will prejudice me, only to say I wanted something from the state and that is the worst position for a criminalised person to be in and the most gleeful position for the state.

So, I turned up to the hearing, linen pants and matching shirt, looking Suzie Homemaker meets Corporate Carly. I was prepared for their questions, after all when you are speaking truth to power, it always comes easy. But the thing is the state never wants unbridled truth. They want a version of truth that is carefully crafted by their mechanism of injustice. They have a narrative, and that is their truth – which becomes the one universal truth. And we are expected to embody it, to swallow it whole, and then regurgitate it at every opportunity. It must become our truth from here on out.

And there is an irony there, right? I have a record for deception – 47 counts of it in fact. 47 counts of lying and defrauding the state. So, it would follow, that a rehabilitated me, would no longer lie or defraud the government. A rehabilitated me would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, always and forever from this day forth?

face palm

But that’s not how this crazy cracker of a game works.

No. We do a silly dance together. Not a beautiful tango or ballroom dance, but the kind of dance where both partners are trying to lead and you step on each other’s toes and there’s a load of frustration and shaking of heads.

But the thing is, I have done a lot of work on me. I’m no longer interested in awkward dancing with the state, or even tangoing if I am honest. So, I just tell the truth, and bugger the consequences.

laugh

Ohhhh if it isn’t the consequences of my actions catching up with me.

The consequences of my actions, were spending an afternoon having my experiences of being a victim of domestic violence being invalidated, being denied, being refused. The consequences of my actions were being called abhorrent, irredeemable, and incapable of insight, and the list goes on.

Added to that, the people who supported me in this process had their integrity as practitioners called into question all because of the state’s pathological need to view me as a perpetrator, to view me as an abhorrent and violent woman unworthy of a second chance, incapable of “so called rehabilitation,” unworthy of “redemption.”

The state invalidated my children’s testimony, specifically my eldest son’s testimony as if they have spent any time in their lives or in their heads, or in the very close circle that is our family.

And as the midnight hours ticked over and over last night as sleep became more elusive, I started to wonder, short of what I do each day, what I would need to do to ever redeem myself in the eyes of the state.

The reality is that my dialogical relationship with the state is forever altered because of this criminal record. And perhaps that’s how it should be. Perhaps that’s how I want it to be. After all I have gazed at myself through their eyes, and I do not like the image of me that they hold.

They see me as a monster, a threat, a menace, a spook beneath the bed.

But I don’t feel scary, or brave or bold, or evil, or like I hold any of the sorts of power that a monster should. Mostly I feel powerless, subject to the whims of the state, an instrument of others design. Mostly I feel like others hold the key to my kingdom, to my future and to who I can and can’t be. Mostly I feel like I am as fragile as a butterfly’s wings, as if I walk on a tightrope made of gossamer strings and my world could collapse at a moment’s notice.

I don’t think I am the spook. I think I am the spooked.

And so, what becomes of the woman unable to move forward, with the state’s grubby thumbprint smashed down on her forehead, while people tell her ‘not now, maybe later?’

What becomes of the woman whose skidding past a half century and time feels like it’s running out and everyone tells her to be patient, ‘the system just takes time?’

And what becomes of the woman whose body has been violated by brutish men’s hands more than it has been caressed? Or to the woman whose experiences have been denied, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied….when she’s told to speak up, speak out, we’ll believe you (always believe the woman, just not this type of woman?

What happens to her?

What shape does she reimagine herself in when the state tells her the form she presents in is wrong? That the very ashes she scraped off her cell floor and smooshed back together to recreate herself was in the image of wrong, not right, incorrect, abhorrent, even?

Who does she try and become?

Does she become like the crown solicitor woman with the slick pulled back ponytail and who looks like her life is put together because her pencil pleat skirt matches her jacket, and her stockings don’t have a run in them? Does she recreate herself in the image of that unsmiling woman who suggested my violent husband wasn’t there to defend himself against the abuse soooo just how much weight could we really place on my unsubstantiated “claims” of DV?

Should I recreate myself in the image of the detective who arrested me or the officer who strip searched me or the parole officer who “rehabilitated” me or the church volunteer who proselytised me?

I’m really unsure what image the state wants for me?

Because I stand before the world as the woman I was before the world ravaged me and before men took more from me than they were entitled. Because I reclaimed myself. I reclaimed and rebuilt myself in the image of me, authentically me. A woman with dreams and hopes and quirks and silly little musings. I stand here as someone who likes to draw and paint and write poetry, who gets carried away with the whimsy of things. Someone who dances in shopping aisles and likes to know the ending of a TV show before I watch it. Someone who eats most of the popcorn before the movie starts. Someone who can’t park a car, and stresses that one day one of her toes will fall off. Someone who would lay down and die for my kids. Someone who is weird and can be a little bit odd. But who loves and loves fiercely, who is loyal and cares deeply about people, and the world and the planet.

But I am flawed, because humans are flawed. But I am a bundle of love and joy and I spend my days seeking out the moments of glee and happiness, and I guess I can’t understand why the version of me that is me is not enough and has never been enough. 

I just want to crawl in a little cave and let the darkness envelop me. Because this world doesn’t feel like it is built for people like me. People who believe in love and happy endings and fairy doors and trolls under bridges. I don’t think it is made for people who believe in goodness and light and infinite possibilities. I don’t think it is made for butterfly wings. Because I’m not tough. I’m really fucking soft.

And I think the state seeks out people like me. I think it loves to stamp on our wings and watch our slow and painful death. And I do think the state is slowly killing me. Each interaction like this affects me on a molecular level. It blackens parts of my big crimson heart and damages my perception of me. It reminds me that I am and never will be seen as who I know myself to be. To the state, I will always be who they say I am.

And before you all contact me to say, “that’s not true, what they say, doesn’t define me”, spare me the platitudes…because until we dismantle the state, that simply is not true. While the state rules our lives, what they say, has a very real and tangible impact and effect on the trajectory of my life. I am defined, constrained and restrained by their image of me.

Anyway, I guess all of these words is really to say a few things: 1. I didn’t vandalise any buildings last night, 2. I didn’t buy Maccas for my kid, but her pestering persists, and 3. I’m still sad. In fact, I’m really fucking sad. And I don’t know what to do with this river of tears. I don’t know how to alchemise this pain into power.

Oh, and while I am floating in a pool of tears, if you could please annihilate the carceral state, that would be really cool.  Thanks fam.