Not For The Gram

I created this space for me to write.

I was 11 years old when I got my first typewriter, so it’s been 29 years of - ‘been meaning too’…

..keep a record of my writing
..develop my editing skills
..compile a series of essays
..etcetera, etcetera.

That’s 29 years’ worth of evidence to prove that as it turns out, when you put something in a state of waiting, it only manifests into more waiting.

So instead of hitting the record button on an Instagram story and releasing my streams of consciousness into the wild, wild, west of “I’m entitled to my opinion town”, I’m gonna come here instead.

Here lives Le Vaa
Te Kore
nothingness

It’s the space between us
inhabited by all the matter we can not see

A home for the tools of alchemy

Here is the space between breaths

Where everything is born
and everything goes to die

When I reach into the Vaa with my hands full of creation, they are ALWAYS (and I can’t stress this enough) ALWAYS, returned to me with more.

In contrast, social media platforms rape and pillage the fertility of their contributors; farming attention to feed itself. The more it eats, the hungrier it gets.

There is DNA encoded into the reverberations of our voices, so I tread carefully in these spaces now - careful not to become entangled with an energy I have no business mixing with.

It wasn’t always like that though.

Since the My Space era, the socials had been a place where I would tell stories in an echo chamber of validation, or use my words to clean under the family rugs - (cue me riding self-righteously into Facebook on the elephant in the room).

Growing up I always had a lot to say, but nothing to say it with.

I think it’s mostly true for most of us that for much of our lives, our voices belong to our family; we’re playing the role that was given to us and reading from the script. So when I tried to use my voice, there were no words for it, the knowing had no language. Social media gave me a place to work that out and find the language of my voice. It looked like a fucking mess, but it served its purpose.

Now it sounds like a cacophony of digital identities trapped in a capitalist playground, where things like morality, religion, politics and gender are tried on like outfits; even oppression makes seasonal releases, but I STG it wasn’t like that before… I think that might be because before it was just about sharing, and now it’s about money and influence - capitalism ruins everything.

There’s still some genuinely good shit that comes from social media, but you have to sneak it through the back door, so I don’t fuck with it the same way I did before. Some stories are not safe there, they will only be eaten and never told, and when that happens my voice that I worked so hard to find, becomes a commodity - ‘interchangeable with other goods of the same type’ - stolen.

But here in this space, I am still her.

She is the 11-year-old aspiring journalist sitting at her typewriter in her Grand-poppy’s shed, planning for world domination.

Writing letters to the editor and arguing with columnists at the NZ Women’s Weekly, mapping out my journey from the garage to the newsroom.

And in breaking news tonight - my paperweight.

Ok - now I’m getting to the part that I wanted to talk about when I came here, the back story was relevant though.

So anyway - my paperweight. It was 2015, and I was having what the spirituals call my ‘dark night of the soul’.

At that point, we had almost lost everything a couple of times.

I was clinging to the house by the skin of my teeth, and every day felt horrific, right down to my bones.

Every day I cried for a whole year (probably not, but that’s what it felt like)
and every day I had to actively stop myself from driving my car into a pole and being done with it all.

My Mum came to live with us and help me out with the kids, she wasn’t working during this time and relied on me to give her money if she wanted to go anywhere or buy anything out of the ordinary, but of course, she never asked, and would only spend the bare minimum of anything.

On my birthday I arrived home from work to my favourite home-cooked meal and a gift wrapped up on the table for me.

Mum had walked to the shops, gone to the dollar store, and bought me this paperweight for my birthday with some coins that she had stashed away.

Of all the things she could’ve bought me in the dollar store, the fact that she got me a paperweight is one of those acts of love that break you wide open - (because when I’m working I always have a million pieces of loose paper iykyk)

and my Mum knew
because she paid attention to me
because she loves me.

And when I was looking at this paperweight today, I thought, shit
I think that was the first time I was able to comprehend my Mum’s love for me.

I mean I stare at it all the time because it anchors me to the feeling of being loved, and even at the shittiest of times love is still present, always.

And I am loved.

Deeply.

And I matter to the people who matter to me.

Wild… also here’s a pic of my paperweight.