Despite the fact that the title of my blog says a great deal about me, as well as the blog itself, I feel the need to elaborate on what led me to publicly offer up myself and my story. Grab a cocktail, sit down, and prepare yourself because you truly never know-Hell, I never know-what will spring forth from my mouth, or rather, my fingers.
The Past
I love to write, talk, tell stories, and crack people up with my witty zingers. I even have a fancy pants Master’s degree in Communications Management from a snotty, private, women’s university in Boston, MA. You’re impressed now, aren’t you? Ok, ok keep it in your pants. There will be plenty of time for that later.
As I was saying, I love my words. I wrote my first story, with the help of my crazy, but kind hearted grandma, whom I called Degee, when I was 4 years old. I had this very lucid dream about fairies and flowers and other such nonsense that I felt compelled to write down. Being only 4 years old though I didn’t have the skills to actually write the story. I enlisted the help of Degee and with pen to paper she took dictation of my first masterpiece. An author was born!
I later went on to write such illustrious stories as Puppy Claus. It was a heartwarming tale of a family that was ripping apart due to the impending divorce of a young girl’s parents. The family was miraculously pulled back together by, you guessed it, the arrival of an adorable puppy at Christmas time. It was no coincident that the girl in this story was roughly 8 years old, as was I when I wrote it. My home also happened to be a war zone due to the piss poor conditions of my mom and father’s marriage. A puppy, however, did not improve my home life. My mom soon put me in counseling.
With the onset of full blown mental illness I began the writings of a tortured poetess at the age of 13. I was at only the beginning of a long line of improper diagnoses, ignorance, and blame and torture from myself, family, friends, the medical community, and society at large for what would be a series of health issues and life events that were in no way my fault, but would provide excellent fodder for my writing.
By the time I was 16 I had survived, on my own and often with contempt from others, countless forms of abuse and three suicide attempts. Believe me, these things have fucked me up good and led me down a hard path of self-destruction. Somewhere through it all though I managed to achieve a great deal with little help from many-not to discount the few amazing people along the way who have shown me great love-while surviving more trauma.
The Present
I’m 33 now and I continue to be relentlessly haunted by my past as well as stare down, often with sheer terror, my retched present and possibly more terrifying future. I wake every day to low mobility, chronic pain, migraines, illness, anxiety, PTSD, countless medical appointments, a stack of bills including $250,000 in student loan debt for degrees that I’m unable on to use because I can’t work right now, the latest letters demanding more proof of expenses/income from government agencies, an overwhelming amount of prescriptions to take and order, rides to medical appointments to schedule via the broken Masshealth system, and no support system, no love life, no social life, no career, not much of a sex life, and very little joy.
Despite the intense pain that I feel, and how sick I often am, every week I have to find some way to rally and take care of myself. I have to haul my laundry from my 3rd floor apartment to the basement and back without an elevator. I have to walk to the grocery store and back to my apartment and up to the 3rd floor with bags of groceries. I have to run any necessary errands on the train or bus which requires walking, standing, and using stairs. While it’s the law that people give up their seats for the disabled, because this is Boston, the land of the self-involved Masshole who would never do anything nice for someone without anything in return, and I’m young and don’t look disabled, people won’t give up their seats for me even when I clearly need them and ask for a seat.
In the winter my outside errands come with the delightful bonus of being in the cold, stomping through piled up snow and ice and praying that I don’t fall, yet again. Of course this is usually being done in the middle of the goddamn street because the miserably inept city of Boston doesn’t properly plow the streets nor does it cite property owners when they don’t fully shovel and salt their sidewalks so no one fucking does it well. This leaves the middle of the street as the only place to walk and then you have to practically lie in a snow bank when a car comes by! I fall about twice every winter and with one exception no one has ever helped me. I have had people step over me and stare at me. I’ve even had a group of young, healthy guys point and laugh when I went down hard on my back. Yes folks, these are the people this Southern woman lives around.
I also face the constant tyranny of a government, and society, that oppresses me through means of legislation and policy, violence, and every day acts of discrimination and erasure because I am any one of, or a combination of, the following:
-Woman
-Bisexual
-Native American
-Disabled
-Chronically Ill
-Mentally Ill
-Live below the poverty live
You can’t interact with the world without hearing some jackass making comments about women’s bodies, the validity of rape, whether or not we deserve birth control, abortion, and other forms of health care. There’s always some cretin with money talking about how those of us who received public assistance out of sheer need are lazy and should just be left to fend for ourselves. I can’t walk into a gay or lesbian space without one of these tee totaling assholes hating on us fabulous bisexuals. And don’t even get me started on being Native! Hell, no one even thinks of us to make fucked up comments about us. Oh unless of course it’s to give a sports team a mascot. Within all of these communities and issues there are people saying awful, ignorant, hurtful comments about my other identities. I feel alienated from the world. I feel…alone.
Why a Blog Rather than a Gun?
I have, attempted for a great deal of reasons, throughout the course of my life to hide my pain and struggles. Slowly, since I transferred to the University of Southern California at the age of 21, I have learned to tell my stories. Once I realized that I wanted a career in politics, rather than music, I was hit by the harsh truth that the American public, and many in politics, would rather keep me bound and gagged in an air tight box in a bunker 100 feet under Death Valley then let me have a successful political career living as myself with no secrets and no shame. I am to censor myself at all times on anything and everything. Even when I was a 14 year old girl that had just been raped I knew that my voice mattered, but the world didn’t want to hear it. I know now that I’m most likely shooting myself in the proverbially foot by writing this blog and the political career I want will sadly suffer, but I will no longer be silenced.
This blog is about the frustrations, anxieties, depressions, heartaches, horrors, loves, pleasures, triumphs…the idiosyncrasies of my life due to the multiple identities and my past and present challenges as a survivor of trauma and as someone living with chronic pain, illness, and disability. I will do the best of my abilities to share my entire emotional and physical spiral down the rabbit hole, as well as the laughter and highs, and how they pertain to the events I write about. There may be times when I’m just not emotionally and physically up for it, but I will own up to that space. I, unlike many of those in politics, will deliver transparency.
My hope for this blog is to no longer feel that I have to hide myself and nor will I feel forgotten by society. I’ve made it this far in my life and I’m not going away. I have a story. I have a voice. I fucking exist and I fucking matter! It’s time you take notice.
With fierceness and solidarity,
Jen Deerinwater
https://www.facebook.com/JenDeerinwater
Idiosyncratic Gimpries: The Trials & Tribulations of a Crazy, Bi, Fat, Femme, White Injun Feminist, Gimpy Grrrl & her Trip Down the Rabbit Hole in Search of Health, Stability, & Well Being 