Lyrics to Walking Wounded, by Everything but the Girl

What do you want from me? Are you trying to punish me? 

Punish me for loving you, punish me for giving to you 

Punish me for nothing I do, punish me for nothing 

You punish me for nothing, for nothing.

I’ve had the same two choices for my entire life: violence or isolation.  To be part of a family or relationship meant pain.  To leave the pain meant loneliness and desolation.  This has always been  the only two roads I could take.  I have lived in this part of London for over twenty years, but I have no local friends at all.  Strangely enough, most Eastenders don’t take well to bisexual, black, disabled survivors.  Most of them seem to think people like me don’t exist at all, and when they discover who and what I am, any outstretched arms of friendship wither away as they step back and keep on going.

Most folk think when I ran away from my family, all the pain stopped.  Some think that time and distance from the abuse and violence has faded, and I am left as an everyday, ordinary person.  Sure I flinch when a cup shatters on the hard floor, or freeze when the rare person tries to hug me, but I must be better by now surely?

The truth is only part of me escaped.  Only part of me survived.

I often wish I were Asexual.  I often wish I could live without sexual desire and all the problems it brings up for me.  But asexual people still have hearts; they have friends they snuggle with, and sensations their skin enjoys.  There is closeness, warmth and comfort that sing them to sleep.  What I want is to feel nothing, to protect myself from being hurt by denying I can feel at all.  This is not asexuality.  This is sadness.

Pic: a piece of beachglass and silver jewellery I made in 2005.

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Making my own clothes (from bought patterns) has been a great way for me to have clothing that’s one of a kind.  Whether its using Ankara fabric, or just playing with styles that don’t ever come in size very-fat, it’s a lot of fun.  I shouldn’t have to this though.  I should be able to go […]

Silly idea, I know.  But I actually love Rothko’s art.  Gauguin is my all-time fave artist, but he also comes with a buttload of problematic stuff, like fetishising women of colour/Pacific Islander women.

Appearance is everything – a poem

I would like to be well spoken but I am not.

I would like an accent that says I went to a rich school and was raised in a rich way.

But my recovered voice reveals industrial North London, like an opulent velvet curtain swept aside beneath a crystal chandelier, mirroring the council estate where I was born, with cement walls the colour of Russian mink.