In this You Are Here commission, Elinor Rowlands takes us for a tense walk through the past, exploring the things we remember and the things we wish we could forget.
You Are Here – peer to peer survivor writing – was Jet Moon’s second survivor writer’s platform; building on the first: Playing With Fire, which took place in 2021. You Are Here offers an expanded series of workshops, a survivor writer’s group, via Spread The Word, and a series of interviews for the Wellcome Collection archives.
Trigger warnings: I don’t know if this is a trigger warning but I could see how people might get frustrated at the sense of my longing for someone who clearly wasn’t interested in me as a disabled person so I don’t know if it’s disablism or ableism, fear of surviving, access barriers.
Listen along as you read
The Guilt I Hold of What I Couldn’t Communicate (C) Elinor Rowlands 2024
Outside the world stops
and breaks up the sky.
((when I become anxious, I feel all the colour drain from my face, I feel all my limbs go cold right away, my heart starts to race so hard it hurts, and I begin to shake.))
The world is stormy
Hurling out of me, my voice
It creeps.
Because of words, bones and conversations faulty
I tell someone I’m autistic until I’m blue in the face
I do one thing destructive that I cannot control
Because of the spiralling, exhaustion,
And then they’re gone. Vanished.
I was suffering
From so many things that lived in my head.
I am a house and I am haunted.
During my third year at Aber,
Struggling with my mental health, severe pain
becoming more irritable.
incredibly stressed.
Struggling with conversations
Keeping up the pretence
that I was fine.
In China, I could no longer lie.
((You’ll remember that time in Paris when I had a panic attack
from just eating some food,
the texture in my mouth made me gag,
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. ))
I went to a retreat thinking it would help my pain
Juicing helped my Dad’s cancer.
The next day, eating lunch with your family,
your mother asked me how the retreat was,
I went into autistic overshare detailing the minute details
of the philosophy
and your sister asked me directly
“Then why are you eating a chocolate pot?”
I felt so put on the spot – ashamed
You never came to my rescue.
I was so embarrassed.
I had wanted to get up and leave
but I couldn’t drive,
I remember making light of the situation
but inside I was mortified.
There are memories where I felt very/extremely
alone and like you weren’t interested at all in
how I felt about things. Like when Bongo would make fun of
the way I spoke. You never stuck up for me.
I needed you to speak up for me but you never did.
I couldn’t express to you the stress
I felt it in my head.
I felt so wrong for feeling these feelings and
whenever I went into autistic meltdown or shutdown
you told me you couldn’t handle these emotions and
I felt really wrong for having them, and so I felt ever so alone.
You always collaborated with my friends,
but not me,
and it reminded me of school,
where I was always a secret friend.
I felt so sad, that we would never
collaborate on projects together,
I so desperately wanted to live with you
and not in a shared house again
You’d said no, not yet.
I never showed you my tears, but I spent
a lot of time crying alone.
I felt you didn’t understand how much these experiences hurt me.
How could I move in with your family
if I couldn’t get a job in a shop, cafe or restaurant,
if I couldn’t stand?
How could I stay in Aber with Teena
if the boy who scared me
kept coming over because he was friends with people in our shared house.
I didn’t have the words,
to be heard, by either of you,
that I was scared of that boy, that I couldn’t get a job, and I felt your sister,
especially after Halloween and Easter,
where she’d not been that nice to me,
I felt she didn’t like me and
now your Dad, not sure about me,
I felt I couldn’t move into your family’s home.
I felt I couldn’t ask my parents for money,
so we could get a home of our own.
I loved you but I could see you couldn’t cope
with anything “challenging” you wanted simples.
When you stopped communicating with me,
it was like I’d lost a limb. You were my home.
I thought you loved me and that
you’d know I loved you but I was struggling,
I loved your mother, she was so kind to me.
I loved you so much, but I struggled to tell you
what was wrong
because I didn’t have the words. I didn’t want to
have these intrusive thoughts or to be so sensitive
or experience fatigue all the time.
I felt as friends I could share with you so much more
than when we were dating because I wanted to talk to you honestly
about my pain/fatigue/struggles/stress
and not always this need to be happy.
I thought as friends you’d want to collaborate with me,
that we could be equals, that you’d see me
as someone worthy
but the invitation never came, instead you became more distant,
once in a while an email that said you’d hoped we
were still friends, and the hope I’d feel in my heart, that you still cared.
I wanted to be different for you.
I’d even asked if you could
come to China with me when we were in London,
and you’d said
you’d gotten onto the teaching course
And didn’t want to change your plans.
When I asked you about her
you assured me nothing was going on and
it would be the same as the year before,
we’d be in close contact, that you’d contact me weekly,
well we know the rest,
Within a month you were in a committed
relationship.
I feel you’ve had a wrong version
of me for many years,
I picked up on this when Jonathan wasn’t very nice
to me in the pub, with you,
I didn’t know what I had done
to either of you,
I was there because
I was excited for you,
I wanted to support your practice,
By buying some of your books,
I have always treasured your words.
and I thought we were friends,
even though
I was incredibly naive,
I’m so sorry for anything or everything that I did.
About the author
Elinor Rowlands is a London-based transdisciplinary poet and artist. She creates audio-video performances, and performs live art with art texts and soundscapes to engage audiences. Her practice is moved by feelings of “otherness” offered through the prism of ritual and magic. Using repetitive and rhythmic gestures (“stimming”), her autistic/ADHD/synaesthesia filter explores texture, text, voice, recorded media and live performance. Autism exists in her work intentionally, without being overtly placed at its centre. Her work has a phantasmagorical feel, overwhelming and immersive, secretive, yet particularly revealing to diverse audiences. It has been compared to a Leonora Carrington psychological landscape – at one level displaying a consciousness echoing an ancient sensibility, at another expressing something intensely contemporary.
Recent work: Biodivergent Sites & Sounds (2023) – an autistic-led immersive and accessible interactive experience funded by Arts Council England. Creating “stim”scape trails around the canal to encourage interaction digitally, physically and community-led narratives.