It’s The Not Knowing When It’ll Stop. The Unpredictability. Wondering “will This Ever Get Any Better?”

'BUTCH MANIFESTO'

inspired by 'FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO' by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

(ID under cut)

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[ID: an original poem titled 'BUTCH MANIFESTO'. the stanzas are all on the left side of the page and lineated, except for the first line, and last stanza. Poem begins:

Listen up! Butches hold it down! We don’t spend hundreds of pounds on designer clothes and black and white tuxes – we shop off the charity shop rack, hand-me-downs from our bois, our men, our women. Butch is not a glamour word - Butch is not for the white collars in their 9-5 and their office parties, Butch is not for the woman in a police uniform with short cropped hair, Butch is not for the masc who looks down on our femmes, Butch is not for the dumbass white people who call themselves stud, like our people haven’t taken enough from black lesbians, Butch is not for the politician or the soldier, it’s for those of us who get shit done and don’t throw anyone under the bus; who stand between our loved ones and the white-knuckled fist; it’s for the people who take a breath of relief when they get home and get to lay their head on the shoulder of their baby and say, it’s hard, and I need you right now; it’s for those of us with hard-soled feet, worn by hours of standing, just so people can buy some useless shit on a Sunday. Butch is for the primary school teachers, the neighbour keeping your package safe, the hairstylist, the barber, the youth worker, the locked up, the sectioned, the evicted, the boy on the dole. Butches hold each other up, Butches stand up for communities, no matter how different we might be.

Butches stand up for Butches, because only we know the shit we face, we don’t argue over what butch looks like for someone - their struggle doesn’t counteract ours. We’re brothers, sisters, siblings, lovers, mentors, we don’t fight over femmes or fight each other. We help up our siblings who can’t hold themselves up and shouldn’t have to.

Butch is recognising our hurt, our pain, and making sure nobody has to go through that, in the very least not alone. Butch is not reproducing that hurt, butch isn’t the transfem exclusion, the toxicity, it’s driving our girls and boys to the abortion clinic, it’s holding your femme’s hair back over the toilet bowl, it’s telling your darlin’ to take a deep breath, before you poke the needle into her thigh, it’s holding back on punching the catcaller because you know it’ll put your lover in more danger, it’s fishing in your closet for an old, dusty dress for your questioning girl, it’s never calling the cops, it’s carrying the Narcan, it’s gathering the funds for bail, it’s tipping the waiter, it’s kissing the bruised chin of a fellow butch who’s built like a brick shithouse.

Butch is not all muscle, able-bodied, white Butch is not all skinny and androgynous Butch is care Butch is NURTURE. Butch is a cane and an unsteady step Butch is putting down the ramp Butch is wheeling up it Butch is addict Butch is straight-edge Butch is diaspora Butch is desi Butch is antiracist Butch is socialist Butch is punk Butch is black Butch is brown Butch is fat Butch is fat-loving Butch is mental illness Butch is antipsych Butch is autism Butch is trans Butch is anger Butch is tears Butch is grief Butch is the old bull Butch is the closeted kid in a dress Butch is the baby dyke wearing a rainbow flag cape Butch is smile lines Butch is crinkled eyes Butch is crying in your friend’s beat-up car Butch is foetal position Butch is pink Butch is motherhood Butch is fatherhood Butch is cat-dad Butch is fucking Butch is getting fucked Butch is stone Butch is bashful Butch is humble Butch is cocky Butch is proud Butch is single Butch is uneducated Butch is poet Butch is poetry Butch is council estate Butch is gentleness Butch is bones and spit and the soft curve of our lower backs the clenched jaw under a double chin the hard-eyes that any femme can see right through the estradiol the testosterone the carabiner clink the thick hands the cellulite the bloody pads the tampon string the mood swings the sagging tits the top surgery scars the swinging cock the hairy pussy the protruding t-dick the leather harness.

Butch is eternity Butch is sewn into the fabric of atoms Butch is love and solidarity Butch is never leaving anyone behind and never selling anyone out.

End poem. In the bottom right corner, the poet is signed as 'Ren H.' End ID].

First day of med school some of the older students "dress up" as and pretend to be first years. I spotted four of them within 15 minutes and one of them was in a wheelchair with a leg and an arm in casts and a neck collar on. So basically, he was pretending to be disabled. And most of us knew that he was a fake first year and I overheard people joking about pushing him out of his wheelchair to prove he was faking it. I don't understand how a group of future doctors sat around a table and decided it was a good idea to have a fake disabled person there. It just perfectly sums up the attitude of most doctors.

i believe in you

TW sleep deprivation, derealisation, depersonalisation, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts

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Can we talk about the effects of spending all of your formative years dealing with chronic pain? About what comes with it besides "just" the pain?

I used to routinely go days without sleeping. And I don't mean the way some people say they "didn't sleep at all last night" when actually they did sleep 2 hours. I mean no sleep at all for 3-4 ish days, I'm not sure bc my memories from that time are fuzzy (wonder why). The pain kept me up night after night. And it wasn't until the overwhelming urge to sleep finally won over the pain that I would be able to sleep.

Do you know what happens when you go without sleep for too long?

At first, you're just more tired than usual, it gets harder to concentrate, you get snappy easier. Then it'll feel like everything is too loud or slightly shushed like you're in a bubble, it's hard to focus your eyes properly, the ground and the walls get squiggly. Obviously, the pain you already have gets exponentially worse but also different, heavier.

If you are awake still, you'll start to have micro sleeps. That's when your brain shuts down briefly for a micro second while you're awake bc it fucking needs to sleep. Time feels weird, stretching and shrinking in on itself. It won't feel real. You won't feel real. You'll forget basic shit like your own name.

It varies from person to person how long you have to go without sleep before the visual and auditory hallucinations start. But if you're awake for long enough, they will start. Whispers of your name when you're alone, songs playing when there's no music on, shadow people in your peripheral vision.

Maybe you'll think about killing yourself just to make it stop. Maybe you don't even think killing yourself would mean death, but instead you belive you'll wake up and everything will be back to normal. Your ability to reason, to think logically will twist.

Eventually, the urge to sleep will be greater than the pain and finally you will get to rest.

I understand all too well why sleep deprivation is used as torture.

In what universe does experiencing this countless of times when you're a literal teenager not affect you when you're an adult. Even when it doesn't happen anymore bc of semi proper pain management and meds to sleep. It haunts me. Still.

❤️❤️

i saw this helpful print out at my local library earlier, i thought this could be of help to someone. even if you don't inject, this advice could save a life. I'm here for all addicts and users, we care about you and love you. everyone deserves to be informed about their health regardless of what substances they use

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

It's so frustrating that my neurologist is so clearly in over his head. To my face he's denying that there's any uncertainty in the diagnosis he has given me and is blaming anything that doesn't fit on my mental health. But on paper he has gone back and forth between two diagnosises for months now. He is switching between the two every time he writes in my medical chart and when I ask him about it he denies that he's unsure. I can't fucking wait to start af the headache clinic