Having a big "we could have been priestesses" kind of day. Where "we" are disabled, traumatized, neurodivergent, genderweird girlthings.
Sometimes, I think back to how deeply I attempted to do catholicism for my first 20ish years of life. As I got older and learned more about the world and myself, I found catholicism deeply empty. It didn't matter how I felt about my faith. The de facto reality of US midwest catholicism (where I grew up) was vague anti-queerness and anti-neurodivergence plus a milquetoast love of the status quo. These moments- from learning my queerness, transitioning silently, and leaving the midwest- felt like my disenfranchisement with consensus reality. It felt like a raw severing of myself from my family, my spiritual history, my old 'friends', and parts of my culture attached to those things.
While I've recovered a lot from those vulnerable times, I still hold onto a lot of emptiness. There's voids of culture and history and spirituality. Certain kinds of art and art spaces, in between horror, queerness, and sentimentality, feed some of those missing spaces.
And I wish it was easier to engage in healing in a community focused way. I wish neurodivergent girlthings could more easily care for our own- the less high-functioning. A world that respected the agency of even some of us seems nearly idyllic. I wish there was a place for us- to hold non-standard beliefs, to care for each other- even if its imperfectly, to get support from others so all the burdens of care do not fall on other broken people. Modern late capitalism and other modern sentimentalities are just so hostile to this.
We could have been priestesses.
Very related to this, I get concerned with some of the ways queer art spaces get reinterpreted and misrepresented. Watching people to react to Empty Spaces on twitter and tumblr has been enlightening example.
Empty Spaces, in my viewpoint, was an imperfect art space for usually transfemmes often about a mix of trauma, dark comedy, and kink. While there were definitely people in the space that warranted suspicion, there was a lot of umbrage thrown on the general space. People using shared symbols became "cult behavior" and generic decentralized space drama was seen as excuses to condemn everyone.
The most painful parts of this- much of the good aspects the space had feels neglected. There was a lot of juicy, authentic truma-feels that came out of the space. So much of the common thought process around trauma, neurodivergence, and disability is framed around recovery. Empty Spaces was great for feelings around trauma, neurodivergence, and disability that weren't society-serving. What does being broken mean for the rest of us? Those that don't care or cannot fit into society? What is it that broken things desire- in their own words? What does imperfect recovery look like? What happens when broken things hurt broken things? How can broken things work together?
A lot of these fascinating and relevant questions- and sometimes even emergent spirituality- gets written off as a kink thing or otherwise cult-like. Which is just incredibly disappointing.
