nel-s-unfolding

[nel-s-unfolding]

Rachel Farmer, Ancestors at Rest, 2013

[nel-s-unfolding]

Thursday night

Thursday night

survived another week

nearly

sad pop songs

melancholy packed

and rolled in glitter

loneliness

feels different

in the age of Facebook

and RuPaul's

queer capitalism

makes me still

dream of the stage

and

femininity

well

the dog is dreaming

while backs on cold

floors

feel

the stiffness

creeping

into everything

[nel-s-unfolding]

no title

On the good days, I come home and come back to myself.

I pull the pants from my leg, standing.

I pull off the socks.

I take of my earring.

I store away my backpack, my headphones, my hanky.

I come back

into my skin.

On the good days, I can feel my chest

rising and falling

deeply drawing air to fill out both lungs.

I feel the coldish air

on my arms

and the hair I've decided to grow

touching my forehead

and brows.

My back hurts.

My feet hurt.

My head hurts.

I

feel

so it's a good day.

[nel-s-unfolding]

Ohne Titel - Text zur Kundgebung der Aktion Standesamt 2018

Dieser Text ist entstanden, nachdem ich auf einem viertägigen Seminar zu geschlechtlicher und sexueller Vielfalt war. Fragmente des Textes gab es schon vorher, und sind in diesem Text zusammengeführt und verlinkt. Das Seminar war für mich ein Raum, mich mit einer Sehnsucht zu connecten, als genderfluid, genderqueer, trans, nichtbinär zu leben, so oft wie möglich.

Den Text habe ich auf der Abschlusskundgebung der Aktion Standesamt 2018 (https://aktionstandesamt2018.de/) performt und ist hier noch mal zum Nachlesen veröffentlicht. 

In der Sprache

falle ich zwischen die Geschichten.

Da ist es bodenlos.

Ich halte mich an einem Baum,

die Rinde

ein rissiger, im Fluss erstarrter

Fladen:

eine Haut,

die auf meine trifft.

Voller Informationen,

Sprüche,

Widersprüche.

Ungenügend Raum dafür.

Ich möchte

in meinem Körper wohnen.

Ich möchte

mich spüren können.

Zwischen den Geschichten

ist Spüren

schwieriger.

Ich bin auch da,

wenn es heißt,

es gibt mich nicht.

Unfassbar ist das Konstrukt,

von manchen

als Realität behauptet.

Ich bin da,

aber manchmal

kann ich mich fast nicht an mich

erinnern.

Und wenn mich jemand umarmen will,

wird es mir wieder einfallen:

ich bin

berührbar.

Die hochgezogenen Schultern,

der angespannte Rücken,

nervöse suchende Hände,

ein durchgeschwitztes T-Shirt.

Atem zu tief eingezogen, um

die Anspannung in einem Zug

los lassen zu können.

Von Blicken vollgesogen,

ist die Verzerrung

zu einem Dauerkrampf geworden.

Und ich weiß nicht,

wohin damit.

Ich will

am Anfang anfangen.

Dort, wo ich meine Kraft

hören kann, dort

wo meine Schmerzen wohnen

können.

Unter den Fingerspitzen

ist Weite.

Unter den Fingern sammelt sich

Konzentration.

Es geht um die Stimmen in mir,

die Träume.

Ich weiß, dass es sie gibt.

Wieder und wieder

entwische ich mir.

In dem ständigen Fragen,

bist du das oder das,

denke ich

an das Kinderbuch,

in dem der Witz so ging:

Was ist tiefer, Teller oder Tasse?

Die Antwort ist Oder.

Könnte heute eine Antwort sein:

bist du das oder das?

Nein, auch nicht oder.

Ich kann mich

(fast)

ganz spüren.

Zwischen den Geschichten wird als Makel gedacht.

Als Fehler, als Irrtum.

Als Phase.

Als Neuigkeit,

Dabei ist es einfach

zwischen den Geschichten,

von denen sehr sorgfältig

behauptet wird,

es seien die einzigen.

Da ist Veränderung

und Bewegung.

Ich bin Veränderung

und Bewegung,

auch im Stillen.

Auch im Fragen.

Auch in mich verkrochen, verzogen

… habe ich mich.

Im Fallen atmet es sich

flacher.

Ich will am Anfang anfangen,

dort wo mein Atem wohnt.

Angst vor Unverständlich-Sein

macht auch die Zwischenräume eng.

Erschrocken halten die klingenden euphorischen Töne

inne

machen auf halbem Weg kehrt

und schlüpfen zurück in die Stille.

Farben und Zeiten,

Murmeln und Rauschen,

ein Fisch,

der immer wieder wechselt,

auch die Perspektive

könnte wechseln,

es könnte schön sein

und feierlich.

Feiern

und Kämpfen.

Kämpfen und aushalten.

Aushalten, durchhalten

und Kämpfen.

Atmen.

und Feiern.

Ich müsste nichts von mir

verstecken,

nichts korrigieren,

Acht geben,

wenn Geschichten und ihre Zwischenräume

nebeneinander

ihre Plätze einnehmen könnten,

da, wo es sie eben

hinzieht.

Ich falle und versuche

einen Tanzschritt dabei.

Mein Körper

will in sich selbst wohnen

und

sich in aller Kraft spüren.

Ich lasse die Schultern fallen.

Sie halten

die Spannung.

Die Rinde

fließt weiter.

Sie war immer

am Fließen.

[nel-s-unfolding]

the tipping point of light

the summer sale has ended.

the stores are closed.

clothed are all the windows

for the winter break.

don't make me unveil it all.

you can't, anyhow.

anyhow, you don't.

i decided not to call you

so many times, my love

is not an offer to be taken

or to be missed.

the opportunity that is me

has run out, that's what I want you to know.

but i don't call you.

now you texted me nicely

and your number is back on my screen.

the winter has ended.

the eyes are clothed

with niceties.

don't creep into my mind again,

the store is closed.

that's what I wrote in large letters

on the cardboard that fell

during the wind.

the wind is a veil

and you shake the cloth.

summer vacation is just beginning.

in the absence of longing there is freedom.

in the absence of you there is me.

there is me, sitting at my desk

and I look like an adult.

I pay attention to the summer sale times.

never did I say no to you, only this

tne time when I didn't mean it.

the offer has been called and missed.

last call, the train leaves.

slowly, price tags descend and rest.

in a heap of passed moments

I forget you, really.

the tipping point I survived

without you.

the tipping point my life seems to

have become.

it's just another cold summer night.

clothed and veiled are all the leaves

frisked rose bushes sprung into disciplinary growth

we all must go on

on winter break.

we don't go home.

i will never know your passion

your freedom that is the absence of longing

your longing, your eyes

I know you think you've seen everything.

don't bore me

with that simple route.

Love me.

Instead, love me.

the light is fading.

the offer expires

summer vacation is sitting

on the fallen cardboard defense.

[nel-s-unfolding]

Boy with an I

This is a longer text that I’ve been writing over the course of some years. I stumbled upon it a few days ago and felt like sending it out into the world. Some things I would write and think and say differently today, or not at all. Some questions that have really burnt back then, don’t matter so much now. But I wanted to honor this process of growth and change, which is why I publish this text with only minor edits and the last few paragraphs added. 

I’ve learned that “boi” as a queer marker has its origins in Black / PoC spaces and was appropriated in mostly white queer spaces. You can read more about it here: http://genderqueerid.com/post/52144260437/hello-i-once-heard-somebody-say-the-term-boi

Content note: I am talking about rape and what effects that has had on me, though I am not talking in details.

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Boy with an I

When you told me your label, and explained the spelling to me, you were sitting and your couch and smiled. I was standing in front of you, spellbound by the attraction between our bodies. You were the first person to talk to me about queer identities, and I would love you just because of this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My parents organized a dinner to celebrate. When I graduated from university I was wearing a little pink robot on a pink chain, cautiously selecting the item as a silent protest against the celebration of having finished studies and now being able to enter the workforce. There were flowers, and my fiancé, and when dinner was over, we went home and I cried in front of the flowers. I felt broken and emptied out, and I had no idea how I had come to this point. I tried to fix myself, and things, by saying yes to a marriage proposal. But I broke up, and my mother also sat down and cried, talking about safe havens and that it wasn't so bad (he's no drinker after all, he doesn't hit you. What more do you want?) and I was listening to her crying on the other end of the line. I had been a bad child.

When I was raped the last time, I met people who helped me put the experience into words; words that have effect, and words I was forbidden to use in the end by rule of law. It felt like I was being put into an armor that had the hard surface on the inside. I didn't realize for a while that from this moment on, I would feel an itchy pain with every swift movement. Fighting would hurt me as much as it would hurt others.

Every person creates a battlefield, is pushed into the fighting pits, has to react to acts of violence and doubt. I think the prevention to this is spreading love, although this is dwindling into absurd circles and spirals of cause and effect. About a year before the rape, I wrote an e-mail to this person who was then my ex-lover, and said: thank you for making me the person I am today. I don't know what to make of this now. Sure, his actions have contributed a lot to how I've changed, but it's a  way of looking at things that rips me apart: should I say good things have come out of my rape? I became political in a way that I wasn't before. I reached out to feminism to make sense of the violence and the after-effects (the no-one believes you, the you play the white woman's tears, the sorry we can't change the law, the you're just a little too much at the moment). I moved to another place, and I queered my life, unlearning and re-learning, endlessly posing questions, staring at the walls and wishing to disappear at certain points, but also: I remember this one party where he left the room because of me, and I was dancing, and the feeling of having survived was even stronger than being drunk.

He's surely stuck in the mist of the things he did. He is a sleepwalker, and he was a sleep raper.

After two years and a five hundred euro sentence for writing a text about my rape, I can start thinking about him again as a human being. I can also start thinking about myself as a human being again. I can, for example, make a clear connection between the violence I experienced and the romantic love moves I am going through time after time. It's pacification. It's the desperate logic of being feminine like an island in a sea of hate for femininity. I outdo myself, and maybe I won't be punished so much as the others. I spread love in an overflow of efficiency, and I will probably just to be able to vanish into the crowd. I always put a lot of energy in clearing the route: an expression in rock climbing for a task done by the person who comes second in a party of two. It means taking up all the gear that the person going first needed to put into place to get the route down securely. It means not leaving traces, not wasting gear, nor holding up the others. I started climbing after the rape, and I let myself sink into the learning of gear terms and geography, rock formations, climbing history and training methods. I could feel my own muscle strength. And it was how I got to know you.

I walk home tipsily, thinking about the friend who had dumped me because I was becoming too heavy for him. Clearing the route: we wrote a lot, parallel to each other, snatching words and topics, exchanging our approaches to the world and riding swan boats on broad open rivers. I am writing about others as a means of love, but he blamed me for stealing, imitating, and coming too close. This seemed to be the way to go: coming very close, wanting a lot, almost forcing others to share whatever it is that is important to them. Because I understand so well, I am the ever-friendly hostess of feelings and states of minds, and because I want to fix things so much. Only later I connected this ideas of love to the overstepping of boundaries that happen in the name of affection, and how closely this is connected to a self-image I wound up with, having grown up in patriarchy, in which there are a thousand ways to tell me I don't matter, and my actions don't matter, and my words don't matter. (It's almost soothing to get a piece of paper saying that my words made my rapist have a mental breakdown, which must mean that I matter, in an odd way)

After this I can never go back to pacifying. It aches in my muscles, in my stomach and my brain to uncoil my own entanglements and look at the hurt I do, but I won't go back.

I try to turn ahead, like I was a ship with mighty sails that a more stable version of myself is able to steer. I pick up things I used to do like remainders of a stranger's life: the neon light I brought along to so many parties, my engagement ring, the pink robot, my habit of taking pictures. But there are blind spots. The pain kept sitting there where I hesitate to say I, say me, say my. Friends have been lost- no, friends have decided to stop hanging out. They decided to ignore my pain, and told me instead to focus on work. Being a rape survivor sounds edgy, a fast slash of a phrase, like a clever and dangerous dinosaur. That's me alright.

When I met you, you hesitantly told me that you were raped as well. Of course, a little voice in my head said. I can always tell, at least after a while. I can just tell, and there is no way I can say why, but I know who has been violated and who hasn't. Unfortunately that made my hate no less, on the contrary I was busy neglecting that I am one of them. I wanted to have the privilege of being unhurt. 'Innocent', the word in patriarchy would say.

You reminded me that this sort of language is not for us. Us: the queers, the hurt, the dysfunctional, the glittering, autonomous, wandering, weird. You showed me how you're uncomfortably shifting between s, h and e and how this inability to make a home in names is a well of creativity and erotics for you: your films and selfies capturing your transition. These documentations of yourself draw others in, make people being caught in the headlights of your steadfast faith in your own power. I am learning that this is what emancipation means. And it feels like standing under a huge disco ball, throwing its inexhaustive eyes on me like a lover delivering their touch, and my skin is endless, a vast object to caress. I take it all in.

I am allowed to be part of this community; this group of people that were taken apart so often by razor-sharp norms that they lost interest in putting things back together; the norms always itched or strangled anyways. While I hesitate to look at myself, I indulge in looking at all the hot queers, and I indulge in wondering how I ended up there (feeling nothing like the emptiness when I cried in front of the flowers, but inside me the fear echoes if I might get punished for every autonomous, critical utterance) I begin to fantasize: I will be able to love again. All the holes someone poked into me- I will be able to close them up. By your ooze, by glitter, by liquid, and light, and conversations in which I am considered fresh with my honesty. And then? Then I have your face in mind, which is also full of holes, and you made use of them by shining little lights.

I still would like to love. Not in the way I've learned and taught (all the names that seemed off now come in handy: emotional blackmailing, gas lighting, being straight.) And every technique of domination has a dimension of lust, as well as power, to it. There is a vision I cling to, clearing the route once and for all, because we're not coming back: we dive into each other's folds. There's no hate or disappointment that couldn't be survived. There are only warm centers pulsing. I can feel you, touching your tighly closing-in walls, and I wrap myself up in your spreads. A space has opened up by focussing on spelling, and details, and redemption.

I will need two more years to accept that I have been raped. Not once or twice, and in a way far too close to home, which I will discover, was never home to begin with. I will need to break with you, let the passion seep out of our shared fabrics, to see that I've dyed and redyed myself so often that I don't recognize which parts I would want to keep. To be able to chose even is a novelty to me. I will need someone else to tell me, everyone can be trans, in order to break down some of the patterns.

When I stumble upon you again, we're far apart, and our break-up is something that sits untouched by both of us. On a quiet night I ask myself wether you've forgotten my pain. You chose to roll down your safety screen at some point, when working around my pain ranked high on the daily agenda and you wanted to be somewhere else, possibly wanted to have more space for your own pain and I wouldn't know. You seemed so light, dangling in the air, and I loved that about you, and around the corner of my own shame, I can still feel my love for you. No that I don't expect anything anymore, I can see you again, as the disco ball you turn yourself into, time and time again.

I still would like to love. This is unfinished. The question how to relate to another seems intimidatingly big, too intertwined with all the things I won't allow myself to think about. What is anything? As I am growing older, I can feel the crushes pop up and recede again, like waves, reliable, steady in their changing nature. I don't know where, or if, to lean on. I am going back in time, trying to pinpoint the phase when love and loving became difficult, because I know for sure, it has been easy once. There was a time when I had just arrived, being untouched yet by patriarchy, and shame, and violence, and it hasn't been birth. The phases come and go, they come and they go. This is unfinished, and indeed, I'm breaking down into smaller and smaller questions, posing them at a slower and slower speed.

[nel-s-unfolding]

Gestrüpp

Es ist immer noch als Leere zu spüren wo du warst.

Ich kratze die Krusten weg, die mein

fürsorgliches Herz über die Wunden gelegt hat

und zarte Bewegungen brechen auf.

Mit einem Seufzen zieht sich mein Rücken

eng zusammen, um das Leben auszuhalten.

Nicht dass ich noch anfange, dir falsche Pronomen zu geben

sagst du betont und lehnst an einer blauen Wand.

Die Strichpunkte in deinem Gesicht

tanzen ihre konzentrierte Abfolge

während du denkst.

Oder warst du eigentlich

schon halb woanders -

Für das Bild mit den Mündern bin ich dankbar.

Kolibrischwebend formiert sich ein Nein

flüsternd, während ich ausgebreitet

am Höhepunkt der Grenze liege.

Alles kribbelt, und dein Wort hat mir geholfen,

meine flatternden Lippen zu lieben.

Mein ganzer Körper lächelt,

wenn ich etwas wirklich geben will.

Ich lehne mich vor, gezogenes Mitgefühl

lange gezogen in einem Saft aus Schmerzen.

Ich kann es fassen, wie es dir geht.

Ich kann nichts daran ändern, dass du lebst,

dass wir beide dem Leben

als Püppchen auf seinem langen Rücken sitzen.

und es springt mit uns davon.

Dumpf prallt unerlaubter Widerspruch

als Bruchstück eines Gespräches

gegen meine Schädeldecke.

Hier habe ich alle meine Trümmer

für einen kleinen Preis

abzugeben.

Willst du sie?

Hier habe ich all meine kleinen Trümmer

für einen Preis abzugeben:

willst du sie?

Hier sammle ich auf, was als fliegende Zettel

in den Gestrüppen gestern gefangen wurde.

An langen entschiedenen Linien, lila aufgesetzt

die Fragen.

Ich will sie nicht mehr, wo ich sie schon

seit dreißig Jahren raunzen höre.

In den Winkeln der Erinnerung hastig

aufgefressene Zweifel

ob das nun richtig war,

ob das

nun

ich war.

Du lehnst und für einen Moment

kennst du mich, stimmen

meine und deine Versionen überein

von den Wünschen beißen wir beide gern ab

nehmen aus Höflichkeit noch ein Brötchen

bevor wir abtauchen, jede*r für sich.

Ich kann mir kein Ende vorstellen,

kann mir

keine Weite und tief genug reichenden Worte vorstellen,

um die Luftlosigkeit zu beschreiben,

unter der ich lebe.

Als wären nur noch blaue Wände, endlos

für unsere Raume verfügbar als Trennung.

Und abtauchen wäre keine Wahl mehr, wir würden

viel mehr davon sprechen,

wie wir unter Wasser

leben.

[nel-s-unfolding]

In honor of my fifteen year old self

[nel-s-unfolding]

In honor of my twelve-year-old self

[nel-s-unfolding]

Don’t armchair diagnose mass shooters and other killers. The misconception that all violent people must be mentally ill (and the following conclusion that all mentally ill people must be dangerous) has horrible real life consequences for visibly mentally ill people.

Schizophrenic people are 14 times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than committing one because people assume that we’re homicidal and dangerous and may react very negatively to visibly mentally ill behavior, partly due to all the media portrayals of schizophrenics as violent killers.

50% of people killed by police are disabled or mentally ill (and the victims are disproportionately black or other people of color) because the unusual behavior of visibly disabled and visibly mentally ill people is read as inherently threathening and dangerous.

Please consider the real life consequences of reinforcing the association between mental illness and violence - people are dying because y'all want to blame all evil in the world on severe mental illness so that you can clearly separate yourself from it. You’re harming an already extremely vulnerable and marginalized group of people and it’s time to stop!

[nel-s-unfolding]

WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there.

Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author (via almost-always-eventually-right)

[nel-s-unfolding]

no offense but if your writing is so dense and pretentious and superfluously flowery and confusing in its wording that more effort is spent in literally understanding what you’re trying to say than analyzing what you mean, it’s bad writing. half of academia is just bad writing

[nel-s-unfolding]

I hate Freud. His whole weird theory about penis envy and children being sexually attracted to their parents and secret desires and all that shit actually came straight out of an attempt to ally himself with wealthy and influential rapists and was a direct form of victim blaming.

He had started the research looking into “hysteria” which at the time was really usually referring to women’s symptoms of PTSD. It turned out that the reason so many woman had these symptoms is because so many of them had experienced sexual violence– especially CSA and incest at the hands of their fathers. 

At first he was making real progress, and it was through working with these women that he discovered that talk therapy could be used to treat trauma. The symptoms of PTSD were lessened when women were able to safely speak about their experiences out loud and be believed. 

But it wasn’t the women who paid for the therapy. It was their fathers, husbands, the same men who were perpetuating the violence in the first place. And Freud didn’t want to validate his patients (the women) if it meant making his clients (the men) unhappy.

So he came up with a new idea. These symptoms weren’t from trauma. The memories weren’t real. These women were just sexual beings as children and had penis envy and it made them lust for their fathers and fantasize about the rape that they had reported to him. That’s where the shittiest parts of Freud’s theories emerged. Another part of it besides just the monetary aspect, though, was that there was a feminist movement on the fringes starting up at the time and by publishing work about women’s CSA he would be aligning himself with it and therefore losing support, respect, funding, prestige from his male peers and from the psychological community at large. He literally made that gross victim blaming shit up to keep his own reputation with these fucks and to make sure he still got publication and fame.

By coming up with fake theory about little girls fantasizing about incest he not only fucked over generations of women, the feminist movement that was arising, and the entire psychology field for years to come, but he also completely swept away any progress made in understanding trauma and so we didn’t have any clue why men coming back from war had “hysteria” like women during WWI.

And our research on PTSD and trauma is still lacking to this day, especially because of the stigma that maybe traumatized people deserved it or wanted it or imagined it. People don’t want to believe it’s real. Perpetrators of traumatic violence want everyone to forget about it, not acknowledge it, or trivialize it.

And they have Freud’s cultural legacy to help them.

[nel-s-unfolding]

Widerhall auf leere Worte

-------

Wie oft misgendern

muss

ich

verstehen?

Wie viel Transfeindlichkeit

sollte ich

schlucken?

Zu wie viel gut gemeinter Ignoranz

sollte ich

lächeln?

Und wie oft soll ich,

auf meine Kosten,

damit ich auf meine Kosten komme irgendwann

Bildungsarbeit

leisten,

ohne

bezahlt zu werden?

Wie niedrig lasse ich meine Standards sinken?

Warum finde ich es toll,

wenn jemand

meine Pronomen richtig behält?

Sollte ich nicht

von mehr träumen können?

Wie öffentlich darf ich

das, was ich geschluckt habe,

wieder auskotzen?

Warum ist es dir nicht peinlicher, warum

entschuldigst du dich nicht

für meine schon wieder durchgeschwitzten T-Shirts

für meine Verspannung im Rücken

für meine

Panikattacken

wenn mir dann doch einmal jemand

nahe sein möchte?

Wieso übernimmst du nicht ein bisschen was

von der zähen, tickenden Masse aus Schleim

die mir in den Haaren hängt, zwischen den Zähnen, zwischen den

Internetseiten.

Sie ist schwer und kratzig und drängt die Klarheit zur Seite.

Bis ich mal wieder nicht mehr weiß, ab wann ich überreagiere,

bis ich nicht mehr weiß, warum meine eigenen Worte sich so fremd anfühlen

bis ich nicht mehr weiß, ob ich dir das nicht schon einmal alles erzählt habe

und du hast einfach nicht zugehört.

Leid wiegt unterschiedlich schwer, weil wir dem Leid unterschiedlich

viel Masse zugestehen.

Aber wenn die Masse fast durchsichtig ist, sieht man die 10 000 Tonnen nicht.

Mit jedem deiner gut gemeinten Worte spuckst du ein bisschen was dazu.

Du siehst es nicht und ich merke es erst, als die Spucke auf mir landet.

Und ich sollte mich dann aufraffen, unter 10 000 Tonnen Transfeindlichkeit aufraffen,

und dir erklären, dass auch du Teil der Spuckemasse bist

mit deiner Spucke.

Ich sollte dir noch dazu ein Taschentuch reichen,

eines, besonders für dich geschneidert und verziert,

damit du deine Spucke vielleicht etwas besser abfangen kannst.

In Zukunft, in einer Zukunft, auf die ich hinarbeite.

Und wenn dir das Taschentuch nicht gefällt, legst du es mir zurück.

Ich habe umsonst geschneidert

und verziert.

Du fühlst dich in deiner Freiheit zu spucken eingeschränkt,

in die Schranken gewiesen- du willst lieber

ohne Blatt vorm Mund sein.

Und ich soll es verstehen:

Provokation nennst du das.

Nein, viel mehr sollte ich zur Verfügung stehen,

mich auseinandersetzen, deine Spucke genau auseinandernehmen

denn ein Körnchen Wahrheit ist auch in Spucke drin.

Und bis ich die Kraft aufgebracht habe zu erkennen,

dass dieses Körnchen Wahrheit in mein Gesicht explodieren wird -

wie eines der unerreichbar schönen, unberechenbar teuren, unerträglich lauten

städtisch inszenierten Feuerwerke-

bis ich so weit ein Loch in die Spucke gezerrt und gezogen habe, dass ich wieder durchblicken kann

und zu dem Punkt komme, dass meine Wahrheit über mich relevanter ist als deine Wahrheit über mich,

deine Wahrheit, die eher dazu dient, mich etwas kleiner, dümmer oder fremder zu machen

deine Wahrheit, die dazu dient, dich als neutral zu setzen und mich als besonders spannend

deine Wahrheit, die dazu dient, mich zu dekonstruieren, während du warm, ganz und trocken bleibst

deine Wahrheit, die dazu dient, dein Portfolio um ein weiteres Thema zu bereichern, über das du jetzt auch sprechen kannst, denn du hast die One on One Schulung im Gespräch in der Pause des Workshops direkt von einer echten Trans-Person erhalten, so ganz gemütlich bei Kaffee und Donuts, das braucht man ja auch, ein bisschen was Stärkendes, denn wir wollen den Weg ja zurückfinden in die Normalität nach unserem Ausflug in die genderreflektierte Pädagogik --

bis ich die Kraft aufbringe mir die Ohropax gegen das Wahrheitsfeuerwerk reinzudrehen, meine Augen zu schließen und meinen Atmen sanft in meine Handflächen zu pusten --

bis dahin schlucke ich runter, was von deiner Spucke kommt.

Ich trage die manchmal schwer nachvollziehbaren Fäden aus Angst

und die manchmal ganz leicht nachvollziehbaren Fäden aus Verlorenheit.

Und ich blase mich auf, bis in meinem Inneren ganz viel Platz ist, bis ich rund werde, so rund, dass die Spucke von mir abrinnt.

Alle widerborstigen Oberflächen wenden sich nach innen,

und alles Glatte, Unbeeindruckte wendet sich nach außen.

Ich tue wieder einmal so, als hätte ich keine Angst.

Ich schaue Trans Pride-Videos auf Youtube

und klammere mich an die wenigen Cis-Menschen um mich,

die das wenige verstanden haben, was es aus der One on One-Schulung zu verstehen gibt.

Ich weiß, dass ich nicht normal bin, aber manchmal

ist die Sehnsucht nach Normalität so erdrückend, dass ich nicht atmen kann.

Die Sehnsucht nach Mitgefühl hat überlebt,

und die Stimme, die sagt, es wird anders werden, ist auch sehr überlebensfähig.

Du hast mich einmal gefragt, wie ich es aushalten werde, wenn "wirkliche" Probleme kommen

wo ich doch jetzt schon so ein zartes Pflänzchen bin.

Und ich schaue in die Geschichte deines Lebens, die

eine Geschichte von Mangel ist.

Mangel an Strategien, Mangel an Mitgefühl, Mangel an Liebe und Kraft.

Und ich denke - du hast mich gut vorbereitet.

Vielleicht war ich einfach schon immer empfänglich

für das Gewicht des Spuckefilms, der die Normalität klebrig und lästig

überzieht.

Und ich hatte genug Zeit, um mich lieben zu lernen

damit ich das hier

überstehe.

[nel-s-unfolding]