Blindspot Busters

There were many topics I considered for my next blog post. The poverty trap is definitely high on my list, however over the last few weeks I have been getting progressively sicker with sinus issues made worse by my broken nose. As my nose, red from the cold, throbs bloody murder I have decided to type out the story of how it came to be this way. For context, I offer the following as my current favourite things:

Writer: Hunter S. Thompson (specifically Hell’s Angels)
Graphic Novel: Transmetropolitan
Movie: Donnie Darko (They made me do it)
Song: The Chills “This is the way”
NZ Writer/Journalists: Russell Browne & David Farrier
Fav Comedian: John Oliver
Fav Comedy Show: David Sloss ‘X’

For those in the cheap seats who don’t get why I started with this list is that us neurodiverse and traumatised people tend to like finding common ground, or a reference point before we share our stories. For those who don’t get the references listed above, my current mindset is dark. Sloss’s set ‘X’ includes a section on rape from a survivors perspective. It is brilliant, but very very dark, and I resonate with it so strongly I may have listened to it in the wee hours of the morning a few times when I couldn’t sleep to the above mentioned sinus issues.

So how did I get my broken nose? As with any great story, the best place to start is three scenes back. I was illegally kicked out of my cousins home because she choose to believe a bunch of strangers about my supposed mental state than actual have a calm grown up conversation with me about what is going on. Worse than this, she would not allow me access to my own things to get a clean pair of clothes and have a shower before court. Thankfully I had a beautiful pink haired friend help sort me out. I was then given 4 hours to move all my belongings (an entire house worth), and pack them as well. My cousin is a big girl, I am not, and so to physically achieve this very unreasonable task I had to take 10x my normal ADHD meds to ‘hulk out’ and get it done. I had my headphones on the entire time, however my friend who was generously helping me, could hear every venomous word the bitch said.

My friend helped facilitate somewhere for all my belongings to go and then we very quickly left the city. My cPTSD was going bonkers, as my cousin was behaving like my mother – a screaming Irish banshee – they are related after all. I was experiencing severe cPTSD spirals where I was responding as if I were six and my drunk mother was screaming at me to clean my room. I needed a break. So I returned to the place that I feel safest. The place I call home. Gisborne. 

While in Gizzy, the government did some messed up shit and I ended up organising the #payequity protest for the Gisborne region. Not long after this I was in Wellington to ask Nicola Willis in person “On behalf of the wahine of Gisborne, where is the Aroha in your budget?”. The afternoon following this encounter, my friend’s psychosis got the better of him. He is triggered by screaming woman due to his own cPTSD, and my cousin’s behaviour triggered him so badly he punched me in the face. Outside parliament. In a car. And broke my nose.

Now, as this happened during the day, on a weekend afternoon, there were a large number of witnesses and phone calls to the police. One of the callers asked me if I wanted to give my name to the police. Having been in the back of a police car a few days previous being taken to a mental health ward as my friend thought my desire to stand in water was a suicide attempt (the mental health staff referred to the incident as a storm in a teacup), I was not keen. I said I would give my name if I could get a ride to my friends house I was staying at. They offered to call an uber I had to pay for. I had no money for food, let alone Uber, so I declined for this very unhelpful suggestion and then did the only thing I could do. Called the friend who had literally just broken my nose to give me a ride.

After establishing boundaries, by sitting in the backseat on the passenger’s side, and barricading the middle of the car, my friend and I hit the road back to Gisborne. There were a number of pit stops. We met some wonderful people, and did some interesting things. When we got back another friend gave me dumbbells to help my get rid of my excess ADHD medication , and then my friend and I spent our last ever night together. We will never be in striking distance ever again. Because that particular night he strangled me until I stopped breathing. After showing me the machete he had in the car within his arms reach. I am grateful that I could very gently push him off me, gather my things and head back to the office I had paid to rent. There I started packing. I am also grateful I made new friends. As when the next day I was once again taken away in the back of a police car (I may have been upset that my friends car was locked, as I had belonging in there), the women at Gizzy Local attempted to steal all of my stuff. My new friend sat guarding my belongings and very politely said “No, she wouldn’t like that”. 

Once I was released from the police station (no one pressed charges – although I stated I wanted to), my new friend and I had to move my stuff. We moved it to the meeting place of the streeties, in Gizzy that is outside the library. There we got more friends who facilitated moving everything for me. It eventually ended up at Sweetheart’s house. After a bit of a breather, I arrived at the police station to attempt to press charges against that man who had assaulted me multiple times and was told point blank by the uniformed officer behind the counter “We don’t believe you,” and then was very rudely told to “Get the hell out, you are not welcome here.” This was at the Gisborne police station. Thankfully all the gangsters in Kaiti were very nice to me. They know to be polite with traumatised women. If they are not, they know they will be hit. So we all get along very well for the most part. They have even returned most of my stuff. Grateful.

Anyway… since this it has now been a couple of months and I have still not yet been to the hospital about my broken nose. Don’t get me wrong, I have made many attempts to go, however, the police generally end up getting called (either by myself or another person), as many of the white people in Gisborne feel the need to ‘save me’ from the gansters in Kaiti. They make these attempts through violent means. On one occasion I had three units show up to intercept me as the white people found my dancing to Nikki Minaj’s Starships a bit scary. On another occasion, a white male friend became so aggressive, a brown man I just met led me to a car and locked us in until the white man went away. I also had an old white woman threaten to re-break my nose. It has been very scary in white people ville. The brown boys are great. The young white boys also think it is okay to touch pretty white girls without permission, so I will be releasing a great video with a hula hoop shortly called “No means No”.

At present I feel like I am living in topsy turvey world, I have walked through the looking glass and I am beyond baffled. Twice now, I have been named perpetrator by an overly aggressive white man who thinks of me as property and I am left with no legal recourse. I am not property. I am a person, but the system seems to still take away all my rights. And now I am stuck in the poverty trap, but am still happier than I have been in a while. Because I have Sweetheart, and I have amazing friends. My friends are the outcasts, the streeties, the autistics, the gangsters, the downtrodden, the crazy. We are all same, same but different. We can all claim “one of us” with each other. And sadly our ranks seem to be growing every day. And for this I blame the current government. Their stance on punitive punishment is punishing the wrong people.

Why I am the one being punished for being assaulted by an entitled white man Mr. Luxon? I would really, genuinely like to know.

The below conversation is between my old friend and I – the above photo is minutes after he broke my nose. The police think I have no evidence and do not believe me. They think I am the perpetrator and he is the victim. I have more evidence. What more do I need to get justice? Mr. Luxon, you are in charge of the country… What does a white girl from the East Coast Bays of Auckland need to do to feel safe in your country?