Collective Emo-Round Collective Trauma

There are a lot of texts missing that I wanted to write about life in Liebig in the last years. About machos, drugs at Dorfplatz, about the fear of an eviction. Now this text will be the first. Like one of those terrible movies where the story starts with the ending.

Feelings were rough the last days. Inside and outside. Sometimes the worst thing about the eviction, is that I am, or that we are, so tired and just want go home to our own rooms and then realizing they are no longer there. We can never ever enter the house like it was. It is like a death. Something the brain is not able to grab.

Passing by the house is surreal. The missing windows of a dark and empty building. Liebig never looked like this before. The pile of trash in front. This „trash“ which was once our lives. I saw the super uncomfortable chair we wanted to throw out a while ago, and then the laundry basket from 3rd floor kitchen. The kitchen door was also there. Trashed. It was a nice kitchen door.

It takes a certain evil to render a home unlivable in such an inherently violent way,
Just as it begins to get cold and winter is approaching,
Just as the second wave of the corona lock-down hits Berlin.

This former home will be empty as people shiver in the streets.
Meanwhile, private mob-like-security are using our own tools from our house
as weapons of violence against our own community.

Sometimes I talk to people from outside. Lately parents, colleagues, neighbours tell us what a good thing it was that we did not resist. How happy they are that the eviction happend without violence.
I guess the common meaning of violence really needs to be re-thought.
While all the people talking about their happiness about this violence-free-eviction I just get more and more calm. Wordless. I want to vomit. I am ashamed that we were not violent. Usually I am the one thats talking this violence-free bullshit! I am ashamed that I let it happen like this. In these tiny moments I guess I can find my anger.
And then the thought that I am thankful that there were minimal physical injures. That no one who was inside is in very deep shit from the eviction.
It makes bit better to see the pictures from the demonstration and manifestations. That there’s people out there expressing the anger I still can’t find. I am so very thankful for this!

Maybe I’m just regretting a lot of things which happened in these past weeks. But damn. There is no such thing as a good eviction!

I can’t find my anger tired. weak. senseless. reality.

I can’t find my anger. And I have cold feet. Literally cold feet. Because I was wandering around in the kiez with the shitty weather not knowing where to go, not knowing what to do.
It seems that even the weather is mourning.

I don’t know where to go because my home got evicted just a few days ago.
I don’t know what to do because my collective space, bar and infoladen was evicted just a few days ago.
I know I should be angry, wild, furious. Even some hysteria would be great, this word so often used as propaganda against us! I can’t find my anger. Neither energy, nor motivation.
For sure, everything I write now seems to be a bit over-exaggerated. I am not homeless. I dont have to sleep at a shelter or on the street. But still, I feel home-less.

Nine Sentences

Since weeks I am trying to write a text about the present, about how I feel right now. It‘s happening so much, that I have the feeling I need to have some emotions I can write down. But I am starting text after text and after five sentences I recognize, that I have nothing to say. The only feeling that I have is emptiness mixed with a bit of anger. But not that type of anger, which is leading into much action. It‘s more this type, which makes me frozen.

I am prepared for the eviction. I am prepared that the home I‘ve loved most will be destroyed by the the executives of the state and then turned into luxury apartments by a capitalist asshole. Because he has still not enough money, not enough power.

Nine sentences.

Maybe enough to write down.

Once Upon A Time – Body, Shut Up.

I never thought that I fit into the norms of beauty. I never really minded much being a little bit chubby or a little bit small. I was strong. I was able to lift up my dad when I was a child, to carry heavy things at construction sides to push cars when the engine broke down and I had a lot of fun arm-wrestling. I was strong and sturdy. That was my thing.
Being (more or less) capable of building things, lifting weights like coals or wood, to running if somebody might bust you, walking for miles on a demonstration or resisting the pushing and punching of cops, is part of life in our houseproject and in our streets. And it is often fun!

A few years ago I had an accident where I crashed into the rear window of a car with my head and my cervical spine got damaged. In a state of shock – and I guess in the believe that nothing could ever damage me – I released myself from the hospital after a few hours. I went to the plenum back home, where I told that I damaged a car with my head and needed some life-check-ups during night time. Housemates did this for nights: checking if I was still alive, if I was still able to talk.
Since then my view on my body radically changed. I often get sick, I feel weak and from time to time (like right now) the situation even worsens. This time my physiotherapist said it might be that my cervical spine is once again dislocated because I had a cough. Really?! Because of a tiny cough.
When I usually talk only about the house or the dog, now all I talk about is my spine. Again. Everything hurts, my arms are tingling as if they have fallen asleep and the pain pulls into my head. Each time I wonder, if I can stand this again. Stand the pain and the weakness and kind of the loss of myself. Wonder if I will ever again do x / y / z without fear. Wondering, if I can bear being that fragile again. Constantly the thought, that I am not strong enough to be so weak again.

If people build or carry or run, now I sit next to them watching. When cops are stressing like on the 8th of March at Dorfplatz, I often stand still, with trembling knees. What happens, if I get pushed badly? What happens, if they hurt me and it gets worse? I want to get away. I don’t want to get away. I want to shout out my anger that a bunch of mostly cis-dude cops showing off in front of our house as if they owned the city. I would like to be strong and brave and tough. I wonder what this means. Strong. Brave. Tough.
Then I get angry, because nobody can see how I feel like. However, I am lucky and get support. People, who carry up coals in the winter or my laundry if it is too heavy on some days. People, who listen and who tell me that it will be better at some point. And people who forget about all this to remind me that there are other important and funny things, like the house – or how wonderful the dog was today again.