Just in case anyone was curious, I’ll Keep Coming by Low Roar is my personal anthem song (though Introdiction by Scroobius Pip, All Eyes On Me by Bo Burnham, Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths and Mars by Yungblud are also up there, I sorta have a hard time choosing favourites haha).

The song saved my sanity once, in a hospital up North, along with the male nurse who let me keep the cord to my headphones despite them being a ‘choking hazard’.

It took 3,499 words to avoid having to go to court to get my freedom back. I had committed no crime. I cried reading the words in front of the shrink who was impressed that David Castle had been my psychiatrist in Melbourne. Not soon enough though to avoid being medicated against my will via injection. I cried then too. The nurse almost did also. They supplied no medication nor adequate support for the withdrawal. That was the second time I tried to kill myself. Waking up to a room full of projectile vomit is sh*thouse, I tell you. My throat burned raw and I hallucinated for days, alone. I couldn’t be fu*ked to clean the sheets so I tossed everything in the shower, left it there for over a week, and slept on the couch under the towels a couple mates had left days earlier when their car ran out of gas and they’d needed to stay the night at mine.

…another woman in hospital had woken up to her stalker sodomizing her. The doctors didn’t believe her, so she got committed. But from inside she was able to arrange the documentation from her regular Dr that provided evidence of the Co2 poisoning that he’d used to sedate her. Once she got out she found another of his victims and, last I heard, they were organizing a court case against him.

…anyway.

…It’s a great fu*king song.

…

..

.

…another great song is Same Shit / Complicated by Kimya Dawson (thanks to Fiona, who made me aware of its existence). In the following video, I attempt to sing it (after first sharing yet more overly personal sh*t regarding my hospitalization at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital):

…anyway.

Now, this may seem a hard left turn but, like many others, I passionately adore the MCU (that would be the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those less entrenched in comic geekdom than myself).

Unlike many others (I assume), the MCU has a particularly special place in my heart because I was weaving my way through fluctuating psychosis and suicidal depression as it unfolded.

See, I don’t hear voices in my head, I never have…but I do confuse context in external reality. And, particularly when Infinity War came out, the characters, at times, seemed to be speaking rather directly to me (especially Doctor Strange, that smug as*hole ha ha).

There are many characters in the MCU to whom I relate in one way or another. But there’s one that sits above all others: Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, also known as the Winter Soldier.

And two scenes above all others hit me in the feels. They did when I watched them…but they hit me even harder these days.

This is one:

This is the other:

They hit me because…whether or not you believe me…I know, for a fact…

…Everyone gets remembered.

Forever.

.

Personally, I remember Shannon Howlett of NL, Canada, who passed on the date of October 19th some years well back in, to the best of my knowledge, his sleep. Shannon worked with me as a mentor in Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as taught me to rock climb at the local YMCA. Shannon once got stabbed by a guy trying to steal his wallet, and showed me the scar. When I commented how badass that was Shannon laughed and recommended that, should I ever get mugged, I should just give them what they want because no wallet is worth dying for.

I remember Karen Angela Waters, of NL, who passed in a traffic accident on April 11th 2008. She was the daughter of my childhood backyard neighbours, whose Saint Bernard once bit me so hard I still have a dent in my ass.

I remember Jason Conway of NL, who passed in Dec 2020 at the age of 50. Jason owned Downtown comics, where I spent a great deal of time in my early 20’s. He never gave me sh*t about being a girl in a comic shop, and was super supportive when I started drawing others RPG characters for money to support myself during my tattoo apprenticeship. He also let me take FOREVER to read whatever in the shop, and never pressured me to buy more than I did. That basement was a real sanctuary for me during that time. The night he passed, I was praying a dearly loved mate of mine would make it through what was proving to be the long and strenuous birth of her son…when I woke up the next day to hear of Jason’s death it felt like I’d made some unconscious trade bargain with the universe, because that’s where my damaged head and heart were at at the time.

I remember Liam O’Connor, of Tralee, Co Kerry, Ireland. Liam was my housemate. We once both drunkenly passed out in our own beds while flirting with one another via text, just one wall between us. Liam once told me I’d inspired him to travel, then passed in a freak fishing accident here in Australia. I only stopped feeling guilt for that VERY recently.

I definitely remember Britt Lapthorne, who disappeared in Dubrovnik, Croatia the evening after I left her to go learn to scuba dive in Korčula. We’d intended to meet later in Split. What was left of her was discovered off the coast weeks later, and I still weep for her some nights, and for her family and the lack of answers they were able to find as to the mystery of their beloved daughter’s disappearance.

I remember Adam Richter, who passed Sept 15th this year. Shortly after his passing we had that earthquake which made me feel better because, heh, Richter. https://www.dubockfunerals.com.au/adam-richter/

I remember my grandparents Dorothy (née Ayers) and Archibald Noseworthy, and Lena (née Osmond) and Maxwell Anderson. I’m not ashamed to admit I did indeed have a favourite and it was Lena; my mother called me in Australia as she passed in hospital so I could speak with her one last time, though she was too weak to reply. Afterward, my mother informed me ‘I don’t know what you said to her but she passed quite immediately after’. I told her, through sobs, that I had found someone and was happy and would love for her to meet him later the year when we planned to visit but that, if she couldn’t hold on, that was okay and I understood. I told her I loved her.

I remember Cash, Cat in Black, Destroyer of Chairs. A very handsome boi, last of his trio.

I remember Snowflake, for whom I fell down in pain a world away. And now I’ll never forget that some children don’t get the chance to be born, and that the women denied motherhood are often expected to suffer that loss in silence because talk of miscarriage makes some people ‘uncomfortable’.

And fuck it, while I’m at it, I remember Chadwick Boseman, The Black Panther, King of Wakanda, who told next to no one about the colon cancer he was silently battling that would eventually claim his life. The final tweet on his Twitter account, announcing the star’s death at 43, was the most-retweeted post of the year — and the most-liked of all time.

To quote from this article, ‘Actor Josh Gad from Frozen posted on social media a few of the last texts he received from Boseman.’

. . .

And I will remember John Snow. In this life, and every other.

🖤

…

I also, thanks to this most beautiful of books, remember the Ngangkari of Central Australia.

…

…anyway here’s a photo of me from my youth to close out this beast of a post (which I’ve typed entirely on my phone given the recent death of my laptop goddamn I am tenacious haha). Before you slam me please remember that cultural appropriation didn’t exist in Corner Brook, Newfoundland circa 1995, and I was but 12 at the time (soon to be 13). My mother sewed the outfit, as she always did. I made and painted the spear myself.

I hope you all rest peacefully tonight. Everyone deserves to sleep, and to heal as they do.

Finally learning how myself.

With love,

– Krys/Logañ

🖤