i am not a member of your army
you can neither conscript nor enlist me
you cannot equip, train, manage, or curtail me
i am beyond basic and eschew assignments
i will not board your boats or planes
i will not swim in your lack of consciousness
there is no line into which i will fall
without the ballast of my own beliefs
there is no mission i can be ordered into
except by the force of my own heart and mind
i am without structure and therefore seamless
i am without leader and therefore endless
unbounded, i grow with those who grow with me
we are legion, spores, starlings
expanding and growing in ways you cannot kill
i am not a member of your army
because my goal is for all of us to live

A year ago was married, my house was also home for ray, my in laws picked up the phone for me, and no queers in cleveland hated me 

A year ago desperate, in conversation with dozens of doctors and specialists and facilities and connectors and helpers while I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped breathing 

A year ago terrified, ruining my nervous system and prefrontal cortex with chemical stress reactions I didn’t cause 

A year ago this week got ray out of the house the first time and slept a few hours and then cried because I had been able to sleep 

A year ago this week sixth hospital out of seven and then B Riley, meth, bar fights, the garage, barefoot freezing starving and screaming 

A year ago voted against trump even as my life fell apart because the trump administration is part of why and how my life fell apart 

A year ago sure I would file suit against cops but not hospitals, thinking the cops had done the most damage that we could incur 

A year ago employed, a year ago with a strong reputation and a trustworthy presence, a year ago visible, impactful, capable, clean 

A year ago in full survival mode for the first time since my teenage years and feeling my brain change inside my skull

A year ago knowing it would kill me and knowing that therefore I would find my escape hatch

A year ago invisible behind my partners chaos, a year ago sure that I would file for divorce, a year ago no one I trusted enough to say that to, and not recognizing it was the precursor of all the aloneness to come 

 There is so little difference between the cop yelling hold hold hold hold hold and the warble of an opera tenor

Between the 

Between silent waiting for the baton and silent just drowned

This is the symphony you left me in 

A place not even you can return to 

Alone in these sounds I tried to write in rests, I tried to pull your part clear out of the cacophony but you 

In your symptoms could not see the tsunami

I wrote timpani warnings and piccolo shrieking in for the depth and pace of my own panic, which you did not see or could not acknowledge 

They will try, soon, to diagnose me with bipolar for those highs and lows, written always in counterpoint to you 

Symphony that did not belong to me, chaos I did not know could be orchestrated by someone who loved me 

People who have present mothers feel burdened by the presence, wish for less weight

People who have gone mothers feel burdened by the absence, wish for the possibility of presence 

It is a very specific pain to have a present mother who harms you specifically, whose absence would make your life easier and healthier, to have to wish for both presence and absence in turns as you remember and forget your dream to have a mother 

 The only useful calculation left is whether you’re the burnout or the pyro 

the world does not owe me ease, only opportunity. and that opportunity can be toward harm or good, as i see fit. or don't see. or can't see. depending on my experience, capacity, clarity.

oh i have wanted the sunlit dreams of others. i have wanted simple stories, velvet nights, golden fingertips, the marks of people who have seen me or heard me in truth. but truth is not a debt that others can owe. love is not a gift that is owed. simplicity is not owed. these are earned, all. 

earned by individual action, to be sure, but also, by presence in communities who choose to hear and see as much as every individual must choose that as well. i have wanted to be seen. 

community chooses, like salmon pulling upstream, what is genetic: what is instinctual: what seems to be the greatest good for the most members. community chooses these things with blood, with time, with the long slow arc of mutuality. there is no individual outcome. there is no singular argument.

so to be set apart is to be set at a disadvantage: to be singular is to be separated from the possibility of communal peace, separated from the opportunity to build communal paths. if i know that i am singular, then i know too that i am alone. in much larger ways than simply today's pathways. 

there is such a difference between us: a million miles and all the paths i've already walked, a million tracts and all the books i've already written. you cannot see me. you cannot hear me in the ways i want to be heard. 

i write poetry about psychiatric intake. it earns laugh reacts on facebook. 

i write poetry about a broken body, the machinations of physicality. it earns shrugs from those who came before, and a round of beers from those who are stuck here with me. 

the perpetual struggle: is it me? or them?

and if them, what can that possibly mean about me other than that i am different, other, elsewhere, somehow set apart? whether it is mercedes declaring me an indigo soul or leslie declaring my chakras broken, it will not matter, the outcomes are the same. only me, standing on this cliff, alone and groping for anyone else's skeleton. only me, standing in this tornado, ripping community to shreds to get to the facts of your body. 

i miss you desperately. i have forgotten and remembered you ten thousand times. make it a million more. 

you could be here with me: you could be in this house, you could be sharing these meals, you could be skin to skin with me and holding onto a hope we sprouted together. you could be here with me. you could have loved me. 

on the ways when i forget how much more weight physicality holds, the days where i press knife to skin to remember that psychological, emotional pain simply is not enough. if i cannot prove it in my body, it must not exist.

this too will be rejected. and i remain unafraid of my faith. i will come to you, time and time again, hoping to see love light up your eyes, hoping to see recognition. 

this is a public service announcement

i am done fighting. not everything has to be a battle, and i am tired of fighting. if i do not get the job, it is not the right job. if i do not get the funding, it is not the right funder. if i cannot be seen or heard in relationship with a friend, that is not the friend for me. i am done fighting.

i have expected greater loyalty. i have expected a greater understanding of my pain (much less empathy). i have expected recognition, for the years of work and service and love and help and service i have already invested. i recognize now that individual/internal viewpoint does not shift due to the journeys of others/external viewpoints. i am done fighting. 

i expected you to get vaccinated in the name of protecting the community. those of you who are not vaccinated have broken my heart. i thought we could mutually understand the safety, the health, the security granted by vaccination. if we cannot protect each other, what are we doing? i am done fighting.

i have been abandoned for other peoples' ease, for their comfort, for their habits, for their preferences. my safety, my livelihood, my ability to exist in cleveland has been buried beneath others' desires for simple interactions and the ease of not having to consider history, connection, outcomes, impacts. 

if, when i am not in the room, you have forgotten that ray, kim, lavonna, amber, erika, hannah, and so many others chose to harm me in the name of ease and comfort, i will not be reminding you any further. enjoy your easy, thoughtless, vapid relationships. enjoy your path of least resistance. 

if you think i have not seen, heard, known about all the ways that you have abandoned me, you are wrong. at this point, everyone in cleveland should already been knowing who i am and the amount of what i know, can find out, will understand about you and your choices. i am always the spider in the center of the web. i feel every vibration, every repercussion you create. 

for too long i have held the burden of being untethered from my family, from my background, from old friends, from people i grew up with. i have held the responsibility for having had to move past those pieces of grounding and understanding that so many others get to enjoy, and the way you look sideways at people who make choices different than your own. but i did not come from where you come from-- my family has been active harm, pervasive toxicity, lethal in its machinations. 

i have held that responsibility because my responsibility is to myself: toward my own health, my own future, my own sense of self and community and values. i will not hold responsibility toward those who so easily abandon me. and that is, at its root, why i have walked away from family, from long-entrenched relationships. i will leave you, and i will not look back. 

not everything is a battle. i will not fight for your good opinion or your goodwill. either you can see my value, my worth, my offering of love and trust and mutuality, or you cannot. i see your choices clearly, and i will not fight any more. 

Elaine Schleiffer is proud to be a resident of Cleveland, and dedicated to improving outcomes for all of us. Elaine has worked in communications and public relations in both the public and private sectors, and these days can be found collaborating with small nonprofits and direct service organizations on values-guided development, fundraising, and organizational strategy. She is the incorporator and founding board chair of the Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s only LGBTQ+ media outlet. She served as chair of the board at Preterm from 2018-2020; she has also served as a board member at Plexus, the LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce, and at Guide to Kulchur. She is also the cofounder of the Cleveland Bi+ Network. 

Elaine is terrified, all the time, and normally does a great job of hiding it. Her self-destructive tendencies know no peer, even as external viewers say they see great capacity for work and achievement. The inside of her head is a toxic waste dump and requires regular self-medication with a wide range of substances. She remains neck-deep in her earliest traumas, which include a homophobic upbringing among a fiercely conservative family in an obscure faith-healing religion that denied everyone medical care. She does not believe herself to be capable of the level of healing required to retrench long-embedded beliefs, or the personal, social, and cultural outcomes of sexual and intimate partner violence. She is tired of everyone’s shit. 

 realizing i need to change the way i talk about myself, to myself

am i making myself crazy with all the toxic things that are in my head? 

i have not been screaming; i have been insistent

i have not been fighting; i have been challenged and come through it 

i have not been crazy; i have been struggling

 Knowledge they cannot prescribe 

Why do we all of us understand the life and capacity and sometimes even gender of our zygotes 

I know clearly that I lost my son 

 I am lucky to have had lawny

If I had had to express all the fear and concern I felt at myself, it would never have come out 

Only with someone else to think about do I know clearly how deep the threat from ray runs 

Only when someone else’s safety on the line will I move to protect this house or this life