It’s cinnamon heart season and that always makes me happy. If someone really wanted to win my heart they could just do away with the flowers and get me a big huge bag of cinnamon hearts! Mmm cinnamon hearts taste like love!
Valentines is coming up. That means some people desperately looking for a mate, some couples trying to be romantic, and some people being bitter and angry. I don’t think I fall into any of those categories though. I will be content to sit on the sidelines, watching my friends try to find someone to hump or being romantic with their S.O.’s while I eat my cinnamon heart out!
Valentines day is just an excuse for couples to lord it over their single friends though as if they have made it and are complete human beings while the rest of us limp along with our solitary selves. It’s a dumb holiday! I’ve never had much luck with Valentines day, I think I only had a girlfriend on Valentines day once and I think all we did was have phone sex or something like that (she lived four provinces over).

There’s an Anti-Valentines Day party at 302 called Shred Your Ex and while I like the idea of an anti-valentines day party, I don’t like the idea of threatening violence against previous intimate partners. So I will probably not go, just based on the name. Oh, and you’re supposed to bring a picture of your ex and shred it in the shredder. I dunno, that seems kind of extreme to me just for free cover. I didn’t mind taking my pants off for free cover, but shredding any of my ex’s photos, no! I like them all, most of them are still good friends of mine.

I am trying to think of places my straight friend could go to meet quality native men, because she’s just been looking for a baby daddy in the bars and at casinos and I think that’s not such a good idea. Not if you want a quality partner anyway. If you don’t care that your lover will always be at the casino or bar then I guess it is okay to meet someone there.

I don’t even meet potential partners at bars, I meet them through work or my art career, at festivals, in school, at protests, etc etc. And that one cashier at Safeway I picked up. I forget her name but she was disappointed in our date because I took her to a dessert place and she wanted fries. Oh well.

Oh man, these Cinnamon hearts are bugging my tummy! And I hafta go for a ride! Eeep!

I will report more later!

In the name of Harm Reduction my mother has convinced me to get a portable vaporizer and use that for my primary smoking. She says it doesn’t stink as much and it’s also healthier, which is all true. So I went on a little shopping excursion and picked up some lube at Positive Passions and then hopped the bus down Broadway to B.O.B. Headquarters and got a run down on all their portable vaporizers. I ended up getting this small vaporizer that looks like a red aluminum pipe but has a little ceramic stone in it that you heat with your lighter and it vaporizes your herb. It has cut the stink down considerably, and I can feel that it is easier on my throat. Although I still cough sometimes when I suck in too much!

It surprised me that it even worked, the vapor tastes exactly the same as what you get from a Volcano Vaporizer, kind of nutty and popcorny. And it doesn’t stink, not like a pipe being smoked, that is for sure. I am still learning how to properly use it and when the ground up bud is all used up. I’m pretty excited about having it though, and I can’t wait to show it off to my pot aficionado friends. It also saves money in that I am not burning through my stash nearly as fast as I used to!

Well, I should go to bed. Enough talking about my stash! Which is all theoretical anyway . . . yes.

This writing everyday is hard work! Especially for a blog I don’t get paid for. I do a lot of unpaid work for my career sometimes. No one has ever paid me for writing this blog. But that’s okay, I don’t need money. Well, yes I do. But I like writing anyway. Okay, whatever, what I am just doing is trying to jump start a blog topic by blathering.

I’m doing pretty good. I have started getting people asking me to come present work at different places in Canada and elsewhere and it’s pretty exciting. I like traveling for work related reasons.

Okay so the love of my life did end up writing back about Matthew, and it was a nice email and so I am not so weirded out. Although I still don’t know what to think of that girl. She stirs up such intense emotions, it’s hard to just move on. But I am getting there, I think. Nothing has happened for so long and she doesn’t even want to see me so I am just going to HAVE to get over her if I ever want a meaningful long term relationship with someone. And I know I could fall in love with someone else. Besides all that, I have a feeling she prefers men over women for long term committed type relationships. Depressing!

OMG! I have to run and take my morning meds!

Taken! I have to throw out my little celexa halves now. I’ve had such a low sex drive for months and months because of that stupid pill, and the first time I got off of it I got all depressed and fucked up again. BUT this time I am on 300mg of Wellbutrin and doing fine! 😀 Which is funny because I had a bad reaction to Wellbutrin the first time I went on it when I was 20 and had never been on any pharms before. Ugh!

I guess my tolerance to brain tinkering medication is better. More better, even!

Oh I don’t know. I really do love that girl. But I mean, whatever, she’s not into it, what the hell am I supposed to do about that? I wouldn’t even know where to find her in this damn city, and I am pretty sure she has a new phone number. All I have is email contact, it’s ridiculous! I can’t woo anybody over email, no matter how charming I try to be! And she doesn’t want to be my friend on facebook, which is like, well I mean OBVIOUSLY she doesn’t want me to be that close to her. Which means even if I did know where she was, it would be creepy of me to show up there with flowers and a violin. Assuming I could play said violin, which I can’t. She’d probably break my violin that I can’t play over my head, and throw flowers in my face, and maybe call the police as well! WTF????

So, well, see! I have to get over this girl! She’s going to call the cops on me if I don’t and cops aren’t nice to Natives in this city!

Okay, I take it all back. I’m sorry. Probably if there was a woman who wasn’t quite as strange as I she would consider them for a long term committed relationship if she were even single, which she usually isn’t, for as long as I have known her.

I on the other hand have had a handful of short short short relationships, lasting months not years! And long expanses of singleness in between. I’ve liked being single actually, some people hate it, I used to hate it, but it’s actually really comfortable and nice and makes you develop different support networks than if you are in a relationship. Still I feel like I’ve learned all I can from being single.

But I mean, who knows what the future has in store for me??? Maybe I am supposed to be single for the rest of my life?? Maybe I’m supposed to become some kind of video making hermit in some old house in like, Dalmeny!

Oh man, I am not doing the work I am supposed to be doing this afternoon, which is answering emails and making proposals and I should probably print off some loan applications too. Okay, no more dilly dallying talking about how I am in love with someone who doesn’t want to be my facebook friend even. I should just limit romantic interests to people who are friendable.

I haven’t been partying really hard very recently, but last night I went out armed with a bag of cinnomin hearts and a wallet with cash, and by the end of the night I had done several queer things, like sitting in the new gay bar watching my friends dance, and some beer and red bull and vodka, and then it was five in the morning at another friend’s house! And we talked about oppression in the parking lot. Not as in “oppression which happens in parking lots” but just a conversation about general oppression and privilege while we sat in the parking lot.

I reminded me of my politicized youth getting drunk on gin and tonics looking for a cutie and somehow always spending money at fundraising events for political causes because if you want a serious girlfriend she had better have the same politics as you!
Gosh that was a long sentence! I’m sorry, I should be a better writer by now.

Actually I do have something serious I want to talk about. This blog. It’s so much a part of me now, and I feel safe here because Blogger has never censored me. BUT this blog as a long term committed art practice has had various unintended consequences on me. Some relating to employability. It’s actually an unintended consequence of my entire art practice. I talk about identity issues and health issues and that sends up red flags for those employers who are googling potential hires. They can easily discriminate against me based on those issues without ever being caught. And people are usually pretty quiet here when they read, so only my site meter gives me any indication of my traffic. I know when I was crazy there was one hit from the White House, which really fueled my paranoia for a while there, like OMG! It’s all true we’re being watched and George W. Bush is gonna kill me for writing Fit of Pique! When the reality is probably some lesbian intern was reading queer blogs on her coffee break or something equally innocuous. I get creeped out seeing military hits on my blog too, from various countries. Or the Unknown Country. There really is such a place! Swear to mofo gawd! I don’t know who the Unknown Country is, I talked about it in one of my blogs. It is anyone who doesn’t want to be seen or known. I’m actually really curious about the Unknown Country folk myself.

Anyway, the Unknown Country was visiting me A LOT in 2007 when I had my manic episode. I don’t see it as often now, but it still pops up.

Sometimes I like to see visitors come back over and over. There was one from Weyburn I think who visited me for a year.

Weyburn!

When I was blogging from Vancouver I think my only reader there was Stephanie, and I would remember her isp and whenever I got a reader from Vancouver I would check and it was almost always Stephanie. Nobody cared for my hard luck Bad Manors blog! One potato and an infestation of mice, who cares? They ate all my popcorn!!!! How can you eat a meal when all you have is one potato?

Which brings me to my next point. When people say “Well why didn’t you cut off your internet so you could buy a bag of groceries?” (actually no one has ever said this to me but if any CBC or Globe and Mail commentors find me one will ask) I say “Sometimes when you have to get someone to call the police and the walls are too thin and the incident is happening next to the pay phone, it’s nice to be able to find an online friend in a different building in town to call for you!”

Anyway, this blog has both kept me sane and documented my insanity. I am not quitting. I think I am in far too deep to walk away now. I go through slow periods, but I always end up coming back. I am doing a self employment program right now, which will hopefully get me earning a decent living without having to worry about a big boss googling me.

But I do have to start reframing for myself my commitment to this blog and my intent of this blog.

So what did I want to prove by writing a blog for 7 years??? Longer if you count my previous secret online diaries, which were basically blogs for closed audiences. I wanted to document my life and emotions about my life. And I also talked about issues I cared about or maybe didn’t care about. But mostly it was an experiment to write really honestly about my life like I would in a diary to my friends. Although my readers can’t all be my friends, I’m sure. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t planning to get rich by blogging. I wasn’t planning on becoming a celebrity or anything. I just wanted a place to write really. I like that I can be published as soon as I finish writing and get feedback. Although this audience sometimes feels like one hand clapping, I haven’t gotten comments very often for much of this blog. Maybe everyone is scared??? Maybe the Unknown Country is a silent country.

Actually I don’t think the Unknown Country folks are silent at all. I secretly think they are all the anarchists and freaks and dissidents and warriors of some great change that is going to spread across the world. That’s why I love the Unknown Country.

But also they could just be celebrities in Hollywood.

So yes I am going to write here, I just wanted to explain what is going on with my writing a pretty revealing blog for seven years. It’s been an interesting experience. I am deciding that I can continue this experiment. I don’t know if it will leave me destitute or if it will actually make me money one day, or fame, or that big movie contract or whatever. I have a feeling it will go one way or the other right now. It really has to do with what’s going to happen in the next few years around the globe. Either being a fat disabled butch lesbian halfbreed will be acceptable or it will not be. Right now I have to say, people don’t accept me for those reasons. Not YOU personally, well maybe you, but various mainstream deciding people. Those fucking THEMS!

I sure hope revolution is contagious.

I bought 24 cans of coke today! Well, Mum bought it, BUT OMG! I love coke! In fact I prefer it to drinking alcohol. It is just so yummy! I know it is doing evil things to my body, but Whatever.

I am still trying really hard to write everyday. It is difficult. And I just learned that it is wrong to put two spaces after a period. It’s really hard to break the habit of a lifetime!

Aw hell, why am I writing here??? YOu know what I SHOULD be doing? While I wait for this mp4 file to compress I should be writing my new bio! It’s due all over the place! And people are still using ones I wrote when I was a teen!!! :O

I will be a CEO of a corporation.

Trippy! The sad part is I will still be scrounging for beer money. At least until my business gets off the ground. This afternoon I made a playlist about starting my business, but I think I forgot to put my favorite Tegan and Sarah track on it. I can fix that later.

Today we learned bookkeeping at school, and because I forgot my books at home (Tra la la off to school with no books or pens or pencils!) I wrote my notes in the back of my dayplanner for the year. Sooo, I have notes on debit and credit and little forms neatly filled out to refer to later when I also want to know when a bill is due.

I’m still in the long slow process of adjusting a medication. Now that Phase 1 of my program is finished I feel prepared to come off the Celexa entirely. But I haven’t got the official go ahead from my psychiatrist, so I am waiting for the 2nd of February when I see her again to get my prescription changed. That will leave me just with Wellbutrin as my antidepressant, which makes me a little nervous. The good thing is for the last year I have been on Wellbutrin and know how it is affecting me and that I don’t have side effects with it. So if I have to we can raise the dosage of that and crush my recurring depressions. Psychiatrists really like Wellbutrin for people with bipolar disorder because it’s not supposed to kick one into mania.

Ugh, these petty 20-somethings I know keep trying to pull me into ridiculously immature drama, and I for one am tired of it! I hate drama, I have always hated drama, and when faced with someone who wants to inject my life with drama I usually just cut the cords and let that relationship/friendship float off into deep space to orbit around some other unfortunate. I have enough personal chaos in my life without dealing with someone else’s shit. And suddenly and completely disengaging from someone is usually the best thing to do in those situations. I’m never going to be able to change the drama-shit-stirrers, so getting them out of my life is just easier. I don’t care if I have enemies, as long as they aren’t posting shit on my wall or things. Then there will be a fight.

But really, this 20-something drama maker likes to beat up his loved ones and relatives while drunk, and I am pretty tired of making excuses to leave his house when he gets to a certain point of rude black out-ness. Black out drunks give me a headache.

Not to say 30-somethings are any better about not talking shit about each other and stirring up drama, it’s just usually by then there are codes of civility protecting people from passing it on for jollies. Oh man. Saskatoon is one small fucked up town! But I do love living here. Mostly just because then I can see my very aged grandparents and my sister with the short lifespan. They and my mother make up the essence of my family and I am terrified that in the next five years I could lose all three of them.

I’m excited about starting my own business!!! I really want to get everything in order so I can go to the bank and ask for a loan.

That’s a knick knack Patty Black, give the frog a loan!

I am itching to get a cell phone. Specifically an iPhone. Partly because I am envious of all the apps you can get, and partly because it is compatible with my computer (a Macintosh), and partly because it shoots HD video. I really want to be able to record video at a moment’s notice, especially for when cops are being brutal to people. I haven’t personally witnessed police brutality . . . okay I lie. When the cops came to get me to take me to the hospital in Montreal they were totally over the top and brutal. I don’t know what my friends told them that made them think they could behave that way, or if they just always throw nude crazy women on the floor and put them in handcuffs.

But that was before there was video capability on cell phones.

In the hospital they don’t like you to have cell phones, which I think is kind of stupid. Because then you have to use the free phone that all the other patients use and sometimes it isn’t good to have people calling the hospital phone, especially when people taking messages are not sane.

MOSTLY though I need a cell phone for my business line. I need a number to start giving out to people because they are asking for it, and I need something to put on my business cards. Plus it would just be nice to be able to make and receive calls wherever I go. Telus is most likely the company I am going to be going with, I checked out Virgin but the price is way more for less.

I don’t know why I’m being so ridiculous that I want the damn phone today. It’s not like anyone is going to call, except for maybe my longtime best friend Laurel. But she usually finds me on facebook first.

And on to my issues with Facebook. I am really seriously considering deactivating my account. I am just waiting for Diaspora to really start working. Ever since my profile got disabled in October, with no explanation despite emailing them, I have felt VERY done with Facebook. It used to be a handy tool, but losing three years of information has disenchanted me with the whole stupid site. I am going to miss being on pages and groups and having friends that invite me to events and so on, and seeing my friend’s pictures. But I really want to have more control over my own information. I don’t like having to be family friendly or whatever the hell they call it. I’d rather be able to openly express myself whereas on Facebook I now feel like I could get censored at any time, not to mention having others trying to censor me.

You know, I don’t have issues with the fact that people and groups like Fred Phelps and Stormfront have online presences, because I remember when the tenet of the internet was free speech. But ever since the yahoos realized the internet was an interesting thing, there are all these politicians trying to crack down on it, especially in regards to free speech. I doubt this blog is accessible in certain countries, although I don’t know which ones. And what really pisses me off about Facebook is how other people feel the need to report every single thing that offends them. And I have reported things, never sex things, but racist/homophobic stuff. And it makes me wonder if I should, I mean, like I said, I actually don’t have issues with the God Hates Fags church having a page and Stormfront having a message board. Sooo, I would just like to leave facebook.

But not yet. I am preparing myself for it. When Diaspora comes online I can amalgamate my Flickr, Twitter, and Blogger accounts into an accessible profile/presence and have basically the same features that facebook gives me, that I like anyway.

Communications ISSUES!

OH! I never did say how my business plan presentation went. Well, the panel loved it, and someone asked for my business card, which I don’t have because I don’t have a cell number yet! Boo-urns! But the next presenter was told I would be a hard act to follow. It made me feel happy. I received really good feedback and I am excited to move into the start up phase! The next step is securing a loan. Well, and also: Become incorporated, buy a business license, get a cellphone, get a business bank account, um, lots more, thank god it is written down. I have to get some business professional support like a banker and lawyer and accountant and insurance agent etc. etc.

I have some work coming my way! I’m happy about that. In my presentation they told me I might have to train and hire another editor if I get too busy. Sooooo, I will probably hire another aboriginal person, because I think there are some specific programs that pay for their training and wages.

Well, time to go fry some steaks! I’m eating far too many cinnomin hearts!

Today was a whirlwind of last minute editing and typey-typing and smoothing out and I was all set to print at 9:30 this evening. I printed out all my financials and then I moved onto my business plan, and I was halfway through printing out my business plan when the paper ran out.

CRAPPY!

Luckily I don’t have to have it all printed until tomorrow before supper, we are going to stop at Staples on the way home and photocopy it all into four neat little packages to give to the panel at my presentation Friday morning. I have to do a couple edits on a video tomorrow too and print it to tape to take with me and show them. I am nervous for my presentation, I have to get some good notes written. It’s going to be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. Considering I’ve done numerous artist talks that are longer than that, I think I am going to be okay. It’s mostly getting every bit of information I have to present ordered and facts jotted down.

Next week I am shooting some video for AIDS Saskatoon as a volunteer gig and I also have a bookkeeping class to attend. But aside from that I am a mostly free agent after this week and am supposed to be securing financing and incorporating and getting my business license and so forth, all those little start up things. I have to register my domain name too. I am lucky in that the dot com is available for my company, woo hoo! I also have to try and get some quotes for my logo/website/business card design. Oh, and flyers. And I have to put together some more in my reel, maybe by editing completely new footage just to demonstrate some of my editing skillz.

I’m sooooooo tired! I will probably let myself sleep in for a couple hours tomorrow, I stayed up until 4am and got up at 8am yesterday, and even though I had eight hours of sleep since then it has still taken a lot out of me. My stomach has also been bothering me again lately, with puking sometimes, and I think it might be my gallbladder acting up, it was quiet for a few months! I really have to call my surgeon. I need it cut out of me! Take it away! And all it’s stones!

I kind of hope they put them in a jar and let me see the evil huge stone which will never squeeze through my duct. I wanna see!

I’m excited about venturing into the business world. I’m sure it will bring a whole host of new issues into my life, but it’s going to be so different from working for other people. I mean, I will work for my clients, but I won’t have a boss. I’ll be the boss! 😀

I really want to go to Burning Man this year. The theme is Rites of Passage. I’m imagining some gay male hazing ritual (and aren’t all hazings semi-homoerotic?) of some little naked newbie running by a line of leathermen who are all paddling his little butt as he runs. Or Parker Posey squirting ketchup on my naked nubile body.

But I have to save up for that, and since I can’t earn any more than what CanSask gives me until the end of July, I am going to be strapped for cash. And even after that I am not sure how many clients I will have or if I will be making enough money. Hopefully by then I will have semi-regular business. My overhead is not very much, which is a major plus of running a home based business. For instance my rent is fifty bucks. Not my real rent for living here, which is 400, but my office rent.

Jeepers this business plan is FAT! Maybe I should photocopy it double sided.

Aw, lil’ Mister is sleeping on the cushion next to me with his head on the floor. I found a picture of him in my email standing on four cans. It was what his breeder did when she was selling him to show how well trained he was. Of course I have never been able to get him to do it since. Once I said “Roll over” and he did! I was like “OMG! You know a trick!” But then he refused to ever do it again.

However sometimes he will shake his bum if I say “Shake yer bum!” and it is so freakin’ cute! I’ll say it over and over and he’ll keep shaking it to make me laugh!

Tonight I saw my sister Sky. We cuddled, which is more like her mauling me, and she spouted gibberish non-stop. I like listening to all the words she makes up. Tonight she was saying something like “Tidd tidd tidd tidd tidd tidd tidd tidd tidd.”

She also says something that sounds an awful lot like “Yeah!” So maybe she is adding one more real word to her limited vocabulary.

No more paper! 🙁 Tis a sad thing. Now I wish I had listened when Mum told me not to print that grant application due in April. I don’t even need it right now. 🙁

Also next week I am going to have some more time to write my Mars Script, which has been gathering electronic dust on my computer. I need it done by April 1st for the Aboriginal Media Arts deadline. I’ve decided to apply in that category because I think I might have a better chance than in the regular media arts program, since only one jury member on those juries is aboriginal. And it is a specifically aboriginal work dealing with aboriginal issues, although since it is science fiction and talking about contemporary issues we deal with, a non-native jury might think it isn’t at all relevant to my community when it is. Last time it was because I submitted a documentary clip (and a non-doc video) for my support material and for some reason they didn’t think it had bearing on the project. Since when does one video have to do with the next? Do I have to pigeonhole myself? Such a drag. Also some people have said they might have issues with giving me a big budget because my history has been self funded low budget works and why don’t I just stick with that?

In fact some people have told me to make the video anyway, but I don’t want to rip off actors by not paying them and I don’t want to not have a set, since they are in a space ship for the majority of the video. How can you make a science fiction space film with no spaceship? And I have to rent a studio to shoot in without outside noise, which is going to cost more money. So no, I am not shooting this tape in a closet with my finger puppets. And plus the whole point of making this video is to get more directing experience so that I can move forward on Bunnyhug, the feature film I wrote.

The good thing about incorporating my company is that I can also use it as a production company later on and be able to get some money from Telefilm, hopefully.

Thank god I am stabilized on my medication. I could hardly work when I was not stable. Having bipolar disorder is a bit like being on a seesaw with someone way bigger than me on the other end. Up in the air with feet dangling, then crashing down on my bum, over and over again. But right now that seesaw just feels like flat earth, calm and centered. I’m relieved.

Dr. Conacher is going to be taking me off of my Celexa completely because it is still negatively affecting my libido. Kinda sucks. I’m sure if the opportunity presented itself again I could go with it, but I wouldn’t be the best initiator.

My make out friend won’t make out with me anymore. It kinda sucks. I didn’t even care about getting into her pants by the end of it, but I do like kissing, it’s probably my favorite thing. Oh well. And then someone I hoped would be my new make out friend has had major health issues recently and is unavailable for making out. Soooo, well that sucks.

And bites.

I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that the love of my life does not love me. It hurts, but I really should move on and allow myself to open up to new women who can actually deliver on what I want. I wrote to her about Matthew, and she never even wrote back with condolences or sympathy or anything. I thought it was pretty cold. So maybe part of that is a good thing in that I can see how she really is, which is not loving towards me at all, even as a friend. Even a one line email back would have been nice. I didn’t expect some long lengthy debriefing on suicide’s aftermath, just something like “I’m sorry to hear about your friend. I am sending you good vibes” or SOMETHING!

Apathy is even worse than outright hate. At least with hate you know there is some kind of passion. Negative yes, but at least it is SOMETHING!

It’s been a weird few days because I have been so busy with school that I haven’t had much time to think about Matthew, but he still drifts into my head at the most unusual times. I talked to my psychiatric nurse yesterday about him. She told me about a funeral she went to for a daycare worker and a lot of children attended and they told a story in the service. It went something like this. There were these waterbugs and every once in a while a waterbug would go up a blade of grass and disappear, and never come back. And all these waterbugs were worried about what happens up there and where their friends were going. So one waterbug said to the others “When I go up the blade of grass I will come back and tell you what happens.” So one day it went up the blade of grass and became a dragonfly. But it realized it could not go back. It was a story to explain death to children.

So it makes me wonder where Matthew has gone, and what he has transformed into. I have a feeling where ever he is he is happy. I just wish he had stayed longer and been happy with us.

Little Mister and I have to go to bed!
Shake yer bum Little Mister!

Right now what is really bothering me is that a relative is trying to censor what I say on facebook, and most likely this blog as well. He says it is too explicit and vulgar. I never said I was a child friendly writer. I don’t have children on my facebook, just a teenager or two who tend to say more crude things than I do. I swear, I write about sexuality (I am a lesbian activist filmmaker after all), that’s about it. Once in a while I drop words like boobs or breasts. I’ve never said the c word on facebook (okay, yeah I did in my quotes, now it’s a blank word). But I said the C word on Bravo and APTN. Hell, I say it in my videos.

It’s really frustrating because I hate when people try to censor me, which has been happening since I was sixteen and making lesbian video art. There wasn’t any sex in it (I’ve had long standing dry spells for most of my life, so I actually don’t make very much work about specifically sex) but there was a lesbian teenager talking, which back in 1995 was very taboo and forbidden, especially in Alberta which is where it screened. I was actually outed in my hometown newspaper while I was still attending high school and being somewhat closeted for my own personal safety.

Anyway, people have been trying to tell me what I can and can’t say for half of my lifetime. And it feels like a special betrayal when it comes from your own family. Like, you think they might get it! But lamentably no. My Uncle has never been comfortable with me being queer as a three dollar bill and is even more uncomfortable that I am open about it and discuss sexuality on my online profiles/blogs/what have you. He told me I was “too explicit” and to “tone it down” for “your own good.” It was kind of threatening.

So I got pissed off and while I was seeing red I wrote fuck off and defriended and blocked him. And then I got in trouble for saying fuck off.

Sure it was rude, but man oh man was I pissed. It wasn’t the first time he has tried to censor me, and it probably won’t be the last either. Truth is ANYBODY who tries to censor me is going to get the exact same two word answer I gave him. I would have told those Alberta politicians to fuck off if I could, but I didn’t know how to handle heterosexually imposed repression of homosexuals back then.

So it is really making me rethink if I should be friends with ANY of my family on facebook. If I shame them so much by being who I am, what does that mean for me and them? I also have a documentary about me on rotation on two Canadian television channels where I say cunt, are they going to next demand that I stop allowing those tv channels to air that program? Are they going to ask me to pull the tape where I said cunt from the collection at UCLA? When I die are they going to have a big bonfire for my art and say good riddance?

But then that paints my whole family in a negative light, where it is really only this one Uncle who has an issue with how I live my life.

I think respect is a two way street. I know there is that whole Indian thing about respecting your elders, but not everyone who is my elder is worthy of my respect. And if they don’t respect me, why the fuck should I respect them? I had other issues with this Uncle when he stayed with us at Christmas. He was getting into my personal space in the basement and making comments on the state of my room and all kinds of highly inappropriate invasive behaviours. He wanted to “help” me clean up my room (I had clothes on the floor, a five minute job at the most) and also said ON CHRISTMAS DAY that there was no way I could be an entrepreneur/run a business because I was messy and had bipolar disorder.

This Uncle also has bipolar disorder, but he is totally bizarre about it! He thinks that it means you can’t work in management, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. His thinking on it is really dark ages, and in truth I almost suspect he is using his disorder as a really good excuse for his own bad behaviour.

I make highly personal videos using highly loaded words about highly loaded subject matter. I have been doing this for half my life. I have a following. I have fans. I am a public figure of sorts. I have a professional life that some people would not think is very professional. I am not afraid of language, of crafting it in crafty ways peppered with slang and, sure, explicit language. I’ve got a video circulating with a wide open beaver shot with a lock dangling from my hood and labia piercings that has been going around since 1998. That’s 13 years! I am not ashamed of my early work. I feel like I am not as edgy as I used to be. But that doesn’t mean I will avoid edginess or controversy.

My work is controversial. That is a fact. I’ve had the vice squad called because a museum employee thought I had made child porn (apparently myself as a nude nineteen year old is child porn????). In fact, the vice squad didn’t have an issue with the nineteen year old beaver shot with the lock on it, BUT they were troubled by a photograph of my mother changing my diaper when I was a baby. Talk about sick fucks. There you go right there.

There is presence in anger. I forget if Toni Morrison or bell hooks said that, but it is true. It fuels me to make my next work. It makes me realize there is something worth fighting for.

But I am ashamed that the forces at work in silencing me is coming from my own family. The rest of my family, while possibly embarrassed by my choice of words on occasion, has never told me to shape up or behave myself in my online personas.

In closing, well behaved women rarely make history. As long as the envelope can be pushed, I will be pushing it. My mere existence as a genderqueer lesbian of colour pushes the envelope already. I will not be diluted to placate a conservative relative. I’m a full strength kind of a woman.

I haven’t written everyday like I was going to this past week because I wasn’t sure what to write or how to respond to what has happened.

On Monday my friend Matthew committed suicide. I found out on Tuesday. It’s been a pretty rough week. I went to the viewing on Thursday and saw him for the last time. His funeral was yesterday, and his wake was last night.

I don’t know how to convey who Matthew was in writing. He was a very loving sweet creative human being who was suffering from the same thing I have, namely bipolar disorder. I won’t tell you what he told me the last time we saw each other, because a lot of it is personal to his experience of the disease. But I will say he and I exchanged stories of bipolar disorder as it has affected us in our lives. He was being treated with a medication I had been on, but really all it had done for me was make me sleep.

When I found out I had a cry, and I have squeezed out a few tears since but mostly I have felt numb and shocked.

Maybe what shocks me the most is that I do know why he would take his own life. Bipolar disorder is no cakewalk. I feel like I’ve been luckier than most in that I have a really good psychiatrist who has kept me episode free for 4 years or so. Oh sure, a couple of stress related depressions have happened to me, but those were mild compared to the potentially lethal nature of psychosis. Not in terms of me hurting others, but hurting myself. I believed so many strange things, I was lucky not to wander into a harmful situation, like taking a ride from a stranger or thinking I could fly.

The truth is that we don’t really know what Matthew was thinking about when he died, except that he couldn’t do it anymore. This act of living. I am really going to miss him too, he was such an exceptional human, it’s hard to believe someone who had such PRESENCE is gone from us.

I don’t feel like this post is going to do him justice.

I told his mother “thank you for raising such a beautiful man.” And she said “Thank you for loving him.” For my own sense of closure that is pretty good.

I have to get on with life, is the cruelest part. My major presentation for my video editing company is this friday at around about 11am. I have to present the whole business plan. I am going to be working like a dog for this next week. I really really need to get some more work done. It’s been hard dealing with this and a (so unfortunately named) deadline. I’ve been spending a lot of my time talking with friends about what happened. The world keeps turning, even without our much loved friend being with us.

Sometimes I feel having bipolar disorder means being in a near constant battle, always struggling with the undertow of thoughts and moods and the danger of losing one’s health so easily. I forgot my medication two days in a row this week and started hearing music whenever the furnace came on. It was pretty creepy, and even though I knew it wasn’t real, it still tripped me out and made me want to hide.

Could I have prepared him any better for what it would be like with bipolar disorder? Are we really so ashamed of psychotic symptoms that we don’t honestly and openly talk about how our brains can trick us?

Out of the whole spectrum of moods that is bipolar disorder, manic psychosis and depressive psychosis are the least discussed, except in negative terms like people suddenly chopping off someone’s head. We aren’t taught as a society how to recognize suicidal states, or we are even taught that only the weak commit suicide, that they took “the easy way out” and all kinds of stigmatizing views that keep people who need help from pursuing it.

I had one dangerous night, way back in Vancouver when I was 20 years old. I thought I would do it. I was really close. I was too jumbled for a plan, but it was one hell of a dark night. I ended up calling a crisis line and talking to a volunteer about what I was feeling. That night they hooked me up with a counsellor at SAFER, which is a free counselling service in Vancouver for people having suicidal crises. I saw that counsellor for a long time and worked through a lot of issues. Just knowing I had that appointment the next day got me through what could have been my last night on earth.

The suicide crisis line in Saskatoon is : (306) 933-6200

If bipolar disorder is the battle some of us are fighting, then Matthew was the unfortunate casualty of that war. We can sit around thinking about all the what ifs and it still won’t bring him back. But I choose not to believe he killed himself. Bipolar disorder is what killed him.

I hope we can come together as a community and support each other. I’m pretty open about having bipolar disorder, but there are even more of us, quietly relating to each other about what it’s like having it. If his death can change anything, I hope it is more openness about mental health issues.