Emily Robison is living in Chicago and working for sexual violence crisis services. She is a queer diva excited about celebrating bodies of difference, sexuality, and pleasure while organizing to get liberated from personal and systemic things that hurt and marginalize. She is interested in working towards responding to and preventing violence within our communities and outside of the legal systems. She feels passionate about her stories being part of these processes. She can be contacted at robison.emily(at) gmail.com.

Her Vital Signs are Good (January 20, 2012. Issue 34.)

“How could you run to help her and not me?” A screamed.

Some will say A was dealt a bad deck of cards. She was, much like many others. But some beautiful things in her life are that she had two babies. She loved them dearly.

A has had a life filled with abuse. Many people have sexually harmed her, her husband up and left her for his current wife, the medical industry hurt her despite twenty-four years of incredible nursing, she lost her home, she is unemployed, she has no one right now, except one person.

That person is me.

I happen to be one of those babies.

She raised me to the best of her ability in our quaint south suburb of Chicago. She always took me to the doctors, signed me up for dance lessons, cheered me on while I played softball poorly, went to my choir concerts, fed me, and threatened the cheerleading coach so he included me on the squad. No, really, she did that. She even signed me up for an outpatient program far from our budget and our home during my high school angst.

And as Beyonce says, “What goes around comes back around,” well, sometimes it does.

About me: I’ve got gumption for anti-violence and pro-pleasure stuff. I like a lot of different people. I drink chocolate milk. I work on fierce allyship. I ride a bike. I’m kind of your run of the mill, urban, queer, organizing hipster.

My astrologer tells me that I am very compact. That I am a tightly wound ball. That all aspects of my life feel interconnected in ways that many people don’t experience. I identify with these words. Maybe you do too? Sag, Pisces rising & moon anyone?

Being a tightly wound ball brings with it a lot of blurriness. I don’t know when we’re dating and when we’re friends and when that matters and when we’re talking about it or fucking about it. I want to have sex with everyone. My organizing intersects a lot and my job interferes with my love and my laugh and my like and my lips. My home is my street is my work is my friend’s house and more. My happiness is my sadness is my angst is my sorrow is my humor is my hope.

Your issues are my issues. Your problems are mine. A’s problems are mine. A’s problems are my fault. I am to blame.

FUCK that, though.
I am OVER that, though.
I am BETTER than that, though.

“How could you run to help her and not me?” A screamed. I am sitting on the edge of my parent’s bed with my pink legs dangling off the edge. My dad with his dad mustache is holding my hands and telling me I am okay while I sob. My mom runs up the stairs and into the room. She stands above the both of us and yells those words under dim yellow lights painting shadows against the floral wallpaper. I look up to her. I wipe my face.

And now A is struggling and suffering right before my eyes. She’s got a whole slew of maladies. As I witness her healing in the hospital bed with medical and raiki work, prayers, stuffed animal hippos, and my baby cousin’s drawing, the light shines through the curtain. It lands on the floral painting on the wall, and I think of that memory. I understand I’ve blamed myself for your pain, for my pain, for hers, for far too long.

The police and I found my mother with an estimate of eight to twelve hours left to live. This was her second suicide attempt, and the image of her mumbling “No” on the stretcher with white skin and blood & saliva crusted mouth haunts me. I weep at her side, in the car, in my bed, on the bus, and while I write this story.

However, I open my heart to heal. I hold that her pain is old. I hold that mine is younger, yet intertwined with hers. I hold that the transformation I’ve been speaking of this year is a process. I’ve got to confront the deep negative feelings I have for myself, and the sense of responsibility for your pain and hers.

And who better to do these things than a queer? We do these things all of the time. My queerness does not cause that person’s homophobia. My hot sex does not cause that person’s sex negativity. My gender does not make that person transphobic. I get these things. I am present in my queerness and can be present in my accountability, too.

As I said, I am all she’s got right now. And all I’ve got is you. The person reading this story, my found family members calling me, hanging out with me, sending me texts, posting on my facebook, liking my tumblr, sending me e-mails. You get me through this like I get her through that. We get each other through this sick sad world.