#kala explosion

[a-minke-whales-tale]

I have been so tired lately, even more than normal. I suppose really it has been going on probably since the explosion. My brain feels like clay, not in that it can be moulded, but as though the thoughts were trapped and obstructed by it unable to flow. It is so hard to put together thoughts, I cannot find words in either language nor even the ideas I want to string together. I can complete tasks but even that is quite difficult and my memory has been particularly bad and many evenings it feels like I am split and recombined as either functions are turned off or disconnected from me like a cup of soup seperated from its pot only to be dumped back in a few hours later. I hurt my foot at some point, but I do not know how or when, it hurts quite a lot to walk on it, but I do not know what I did. My vision has been worse lately, I can still physically see fine, but without focus the information is not meaningfully processed and it is just fields of colour and noise which is frustrating because I use my vision to hear. I often feel dead, as though I am a ghost that simply does not want to lay my body down. The humans are finally cleaning the ash and soot from my flat this week and there is strong fear still that I did die and have refused to put my body back, that once the place is cleaned I will not be able to anymore, and I will be trapped as a slowly deteriorating ghost until there is nothing left of the whale I once was. I know logically that is not likely, but it does not ease the fear. I have not been doing well lately. I have not been doing well for a long time but the past few months seems particularly difficult. Everything has felt dull and off, like none of it is wholley real for me, nothing feels right lately.

I hope this passes soon and I can be back to posting and chatting. I am sorry to those who I have not responded to, I will hopefully get to it eventually.

~ Kala

[a-minke-whales-tale]

"Handling it Well"

Since the explosion and fire, one of the most common things people say about me or tell me is how I am "handling it well". It does bother me quite a bit, because while it is meant to be supportive and reassuring, it does feel that I very much do not have a choice. I am not honestly sure what handling it badly would be, but I do not have a choice but to "handle things well". I have to move forward and rebuild things or they will never get fixed. My business was in my house as well and so simply I need to rebuild it and put myself back on track to be able to survive. But also, the ability to compartmentalise things, seperate emotion from myself, and continue to trudge forward is not some inherent quality of myself but a result and adaptation to survive the schizophrenia and the psychiatric system. It was the only way to survive and so I could have my own life outside institution. In a way being told that I am handling it well is a backhand, reframing the adaptations that helped me survive some of the worst things I can remember done to me as a positive thing while offerring little meaningful help - really only intensifying the pressure and weight they set on me to do and be as they wish.

If there is something good that does come out of my supposedly handling this well, it is showing the endurance and resilience I have built over the years to adapt and function in the human world. Those qualities are what will give me the best chance to actually complete my goal to return to the water. - To rebuild my body physically to be capable of sustaining the demands of life in the water, the breath control and the strength and endurance in my core and lower body. - To be able to build the complex prosthetics that over my body will sit and the machinery within her. - And when the time comes, to step away from the human comforts and familiarity and to my new life, a period which I look very much forward to but will be undoubtedly incredibly stressful and disorienting.

I like to think maybe that comment of the humans is an indication that in my goal to return to the water I have a decent chance to succeed. Or perhaps that is simply coping against the distress and trying desperately to find a positive or optomistic outcome, another adaptation to survive psychiatry. I suppose only time will tell.

[a-minke-whales-tale]

May I ask what happened with the explosion/fire? I hope you’ll be okay.

Around four weeks ago it was a normal Monday morning. I was making more morning tea and setting up my tasks list. I had been smelling benzine in the morning but was having trouble recognising if it was real or a hallucination and figured maybe it was a lawnmower. I was watching a youtube video with my tea and I got a ring on my door. I had ordered some bearings for a pump I was designing and was surprised they got here so fast but figured it was them so paused my video (which took me a few clicks to pause) and set down my tea and moved through the door quickly because DHL and DPD are really annoying couriers. As I stepped into the common stair area I was briefly confused because I did not see the truck. Then there was an explosion behind me and a bunch of clattering on the ground. I had not realised what had happened yet, and was still thinking it was my package and the delivery person had knocked something over, but I was expecting bearings, and so was confused what I had ordered and then I saw my neighbor thrown through the window. I ran down the stairs and out the building and saw him lay unconscious on the ground and a moment later his flat and the stairhouse behind me were engulfed in fire and I ran to the other side of the road and called 112 after fumbling with the telefone. In less than around 10 seconds I went from having a normal day to watching my home destroyed and in flames standing on the road in just my pyjama, only a single crutch, and my telefone. I do not know why I even kept my telefone in my hand when I went down there, but I did at least.

After the blast, I was dazed and confused and so everything is a bit of a blur. I had curled up on the street trying to stay warm and some bystanders brought me blankets and clothes to help me warm up. Later the police wrapped me in a kapton blanket and had me sit in the back of their car and basically faded in and out of being conscious and going back and forth between human and whale for a couple hours there while a policemanlady tried to keep me alright until my companion arrived and helped me to a hotel. There was a puncture wound in my foot I noticed a little later, but for the most part, I made it out unscathed which given how narrow the window of survivability seems by command of Providence.

At first I thought it was a gas explosion (natural gas for cooking). Those are fairly common here. It is hard for me to differentiate smells so I figured there was a gas leak, he lit a fag, and -boom-. He was taken to hospital and then later arrested for starting the fire. For what we can tell he soaked his house in benzine as well as his shed and auto but that is about the limit of what we know.

And now I am here, slowly putting the pieces of my life back together.

[a-minke-whales-tale]

Someday Never Comes

Earlier today I was so angry about everything.

I was so angry at the humans and everything they have done to me.

I was angry about my home being destroyed and everything taken from me. My sense of safety and security was quite literally blown apart and all the things familiar to me lost in ash.

I was angry at how little the insurance has helped us and how much burden I have just trying to fix it.

I was angry how many people tell me I am handling this situation really well because I have to. I always have to be positive and looking forward because the humans do not care what I feel and I have no way to escape them.

I was angry at the things the humans have done to me, and that they still do to me.

I was angry at the pain and fear I have every day that never ends.

I was angry at the things the humans make me do.

I was angry about how the humans when they do try to help, they only try to convince me I am one of them and should be like them only further reinforcing that they do not care what I feel or experience. Even when I play along there is no place for me among them.

The humans have tortured me for decades, they give me pain and terrors every night, they lock me away, they force me on pills that destroy me, they force me to be human.

My life is not my own and so I cannot even escape. I know I am different and that the humans can do what they want to me.

I know there is little I can do about them except to obey and hope they are gentle on me.

I want to go home, not to the burnt husk that was once my enclosure but the sea.

I want to be allowed to be alright, to be allowed to return to the water, but I know that relies on the kindness and mercy of a species that has tortured me for three decades.

It is hard sometimes not to hate or resent the humans for everything they have done to me.

It is for them I entangled and was stranded.

It is for them I was taken from my mother.

It is for them I was too damaged to be healed, and instead of trying they twisted my body into this form.

It is for them I will never get to be among my kind again.

It is for them I will never have calves of my own.

It is for them that even if I return to the water I will never return home and will never be the whale I could have been.

It is for them I exist in fear, pain, and anguish each day utterly unable to escape.

I was so angry before, but the fuse burnt out and so the reasons for my frustration and resentment stay but for the moment there is no emotion except a tiredness.

I know this is how the humans want things. I know this is how things have to be. I know I cannot change it.

I can only try to be positive and keep pushing forward to make things better in hopes someday things might be better.

Still then it often feels that someday never comes and I am clinging desperately to "eventually" and have been for years or decades.

I hope someday we can return to the water and swim forever, whether that will be in some show for the humans or if I might be allowed to live with other cetaceans. I hope I will be allowed and able to bring my podmates with me and we can all be okay, or as okay as we can be.

Worstel en kom boven, kleine walvis, want terug naar de zee gaan wij. Zwem ver, zwem vrij, kleine walvis, zwem voor altijd.

~ Kala

[a-minke-whales-tale]

I have been on some anxiety meds to help me sleep since the blast that destroyed my home. Since the medicine, I have been sleeping well without terrors (or at least cannot remember) and despite at points how overwhelming and hellish things can be at moments, it has been such an improvement. I know I will not be able to stay on the medicine forever, and I will have to go back to the terror filled nights, but for now it is really nice.