ghosts

I think Tosha's dead. I think he died and went to hell and his poor mother is never going to see him again no matter how desperately she hold out hope. I think he's a corpse on the streets of Las Vegas. A ghost that haunts the glitzy casinos like the literally hundreds of thousands of people before him who have died in Las Vegas due to suicide, or a drug over dose, or murder. Las Vegas is a violent place. I think. It's somewhere you go to die.

"Friends and family who knew Tosha from before will remember him as a handsome, smart, funny, considerate and kind young man." His mother writes on facebook.

I do not remember Tosha this way. He was an asshole to me. He made me feel bad about myself, he was dismissive, and judgmental, and discouraged others from being nice to me. I don't think he deserved to fucking die though. I think that boy deserved soup, loving arms, and a place to cry. I think he deserved the basic knowledge that he was safe, that his life had value, and I don't think he was granted those things. And what is a boy to do when the world tells him that his life is worthless, other then pawn off his laptop, buy a plane ticket to Las Vegas, and die? 

Tosha is a ghost now. He's a voice inside my head. He haunts my sleep. I'm going insane. Developing undiagnosed schizophrenia like Tosha developed undiagnosed schizophrenia before being murdered through a system of violent neglect. I wake up, I talk to ghosts. Owen, I'm getting evicted, I'm homeless, I'm living inside my car. I eat dinner, I talk to ghosts. Owen, I am self medicating. I don't have any money. I'm being neglected. I am not okay. I go to sleep, I talk to ghosts. I dream we are all children. I dream we are traveling in a little car through a great landscape. I dream we are driving towards soup, loving arms, and a place to cry. We never arrive, but in my dreams such a place exists, and in my dreams I am not crazy, and the voices in my head are real people I can touch and kiss whose flesh radiate sadness.

And then I wake up and I am alone, and I am a crazy person, because no one around me can hear the voices in my head. I ask for help. I ask for support. I ask for the basic knowledge that my personhood has value and meaning outside of my ability to make six hundred posters with the words "I am okay" printed in an illegible font somewhere on the page. "Everything's fine. The system is fine." I write and the teachers nod in contemplative approval. "Make it about death" they say "make it about violence, exploitation and neglect" they say "but whatever you do, don't make it about me." "This is about you" I protest. "I am not okay. You are the system. You are asking me to speak bullshit in a frenzied state of meaningless production until I cannot breath or think or feel anything at all." "Let me think about that and get back to you" they say. In two weeks they will write to me and tell me that everything is okay, actually. "There are no voices inside your head if you choose to not listen to them. Listening to voices is a moral failure on your part. It is not my job to help you with this. I don't hear any voices other then yours, and you are clearly crazy and easily dismissible."

Just stab me, James. Fucking stab me. You think I deserve to fail school? You think I deserve to be shipped off to a fascist country where kids I went to high school with are living on the streets, selling their bodies piece by piece until there's nothing left? You think I deserve to die alone of a drug overdose because it's not your job to examine the ways in which you are complicit in a system of violent neglect? Stab me, James. The blood is on your hands weather you see it or not, and I have no respect for the rule followers who hide behind a system that obscures and justifies the murder of those that are not privileged enough to lie to themselves about what's going on.