UA's Sanctuary

FLIGHT RISK

- 07-11-2025, poem

ghost passing through the icy veil
inhabiting bodies she is disgusted by
eons lost in the suasion of false angels
convinced her suffering is virtuous

the traitor smiles in the mud
rending away the gossamer strings
a putrid trail of wilted flowers
forsaking her world for her own sake

she should be ashamed.

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The Moon is Upside Down

- 07-10-2025, essay

The following work is the essay I published in Vol 4 of the STAMPED zine project. It's a zine dedicated to sharing the voices and experiences of minority immigrants in the Australian system. This issue's theme was DEPARTURE. All issues of STAMPED can be read for free on their website. And to the Neocities community that was there for me during my lowest, a special thank you.

✧˖°.⊹⋆˙⟡₊⊹

I remember first stepping out of the airport on a dark 5am morning in mid-June. 23 hours of flying and now everything was the complete opposite, day was night, summer was winter, and the waxing gibbous was waning? Talk about feeling like an alien. The moon is very important to me. For a long time, she was all I had.

My life I left behind in the United States was hardly a life at all. My early childhood was characterized by violence, being hurt at home and hurting my peers in turn. I was sent to the police at 6 years old for sociopathy, and walked out with an “autism” diagnosis instead. My f*mily knew I was a sick child, yet they were too beholden to their image of a perfect suburban American family to listen. Instead of supporting me, they stuffed me in the attic, only retrieving me to pose for plastic dinners and idyllic holiday photos. They refused to teach me basic life skills so I would remain dependent. I gradually relented as I matured, preferring total isolation over the brutal cyclone of my f*mily life and the murky waters of socializing.

I hadn’t quite realized how bad things were, although I was glad to go away to college. I could maybe spread my wings a little, step out of my cage for a bit. Of course, the pandemic had other plans. Back to the box I went. I put up with it, it was what I was used to. It was all I knew. Solitary confinement was uneventful and taxing. My anxieties multiplied year after year. I never learned how to take care of myself, always afraid of failing fundamental tasks, expecting neglect and malice from everyone, crushed under pressures I couldn’t understand.

After college, my f*mily woke up to the fact that I was going nowhere fast. They chose to grow hostile rather than helpful. Naturally, I got tired of being berated every time I showed my face, so I stopped showing my face. I no longer participated in the rituals of dinners or holidays. I became nocturnal so I could sneak around my own house at night for food. My f*mily, ever spiteful, eventually started throwing out leftovers. They knew I couldn’t cook, they purposefully never taught me, and they knew I couldn’t order food, I was so paralytically agoraphobic. The message was clear, I was being flushed out with starvation. I rebelled, surviving on forgotten cans and expired morsels in the back of the pantry for nearly a year.

During this affair, she came to greet me. The moon. Her radiance gave me the strength to carry on. Her gentle glow drew me to finally venture outside, to take walks around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, if only for a brief change of scenery. A quick breath of air. A small taste of freedom.

In the slow agonizing process of coming to terms with the trauma and grief, under the moon’s motherly guidance, I discovered I was transgender. She offered her embrace when nobody else would. We both knew this was the last straw. Truly there was nothing left for me here. Soon after, I desperately pleaded to all the people I knew on the internet: please get me out of here. One of my longest friends said she had space for me, could provide for me for a little while, and could teach me the life skills I yearned for. The promise, the hope, and the moon granted me the willpower to overcome my crippling anxiety. I went to get medical clearance, I went to the bank to open an account without my f*mily on it. And on that fateful, sunny, stifling June morning, I walked out of my house for the last time without a word to anyone.

Landing in Melbourne, dazed and scared, nothing was familiar. Not even my most reliable tether was safe. As I stared up at her through my own misty breath, I understood her message. “Things will go differently now,” she whispered, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s been about a year since then, yet the pain of my old life feels centuries away. I go out and about on day trips, I meet up with friends, I create art, I shop, and sometimes I make dinner for the very same friend who rescued me. For three of these recent months I travelled the Victorian countryside fulfilling my visa duties, enjoying more and more hospitality along the way. In those gorgeous unpolluted mountains, I basked in the moon’s unbelievable brilliance, and thanked her for everything. The kindness afforded to me has taught me the proper meanings of family, love, and safety. It isn’t lost on me that my security is always in jeopardy as a migrant, however my newfound sense of belonging melts away my fears. Australia is undoubtedly my home, and my future is built here. Even if the moon is upside down.

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application

- 07-06-2025, diary

i want to give an update on the previous entry, because it is relevant to something else going on. i have indeed lost a really close friend of several years. i approached in good faith hoping to temporarily cut contact, and that first ever lapse of loyalty sent him into scorched earth mode. i blocked him after he called me stupid and a snake. all this i covered previously, the new development is that he went out of his way to message me on steam, only to call me a flight risk, and that secretly everyone in my life knows i'm not to be trusted because i turn my back on my f*mily and my friends. he told me i should be embarrassed for escaping abuse. i had dreams following this of losing everything. getting deported back to my old house, fighting verbally and physically with my mother and grandmother, trapped again in my old bedroom, encased in glass this time to signify that i will never have my own privacy nor agency.

it was awful, but i found that it doesn't matter. with this person out of the picture, the entire friend group revived from death. about a dozen people who were inactive or kicked for years came back, feeling a newfound sense of safety. we've all done so much catching up and we are all leaps and bounds better people than when i last spoke to them. one even transitioned during her time away. this point of pain in my life that i was numb to, a neutral dull ache i hesitated to engage with, was excised to make room for a wholly positive uplifting group of friends. people who i actually enjoy. the loss of someone we all care for is shared between us, and we've all supported each other. it's only been a couple weeks and i think we're all already moving on.

i am taking these lessons with me into the next challenge. this time, it concerns my roommate, my rescuer. too many individual events have happened since last november to recount them all. by nature and by nurture i am an observer, i've noticed these patterns, the big picture, and i have tried to work through things with her for so long to no avail. at a point, she made the boundary with me that i was doing too much therapy for her, and i was relieved that the pressure was off me. i should've spoken up sooner too. still, gradually she's only deteriorated. nonlinearly, but declined nonetheless. a laundry list of poor coping skills including substance dependency for mood, isolation, relationship pleasure seeking, limerence, self harm, cries for help. idk probably other shit i'm not privy to. she has a lot of new friends who show up to the house unannounced who i've still never actually met. last night at 3 in the morning she returned home and told me she did ketamine. she's... really sick. it makes me so... just, sad and disappointed. i know for certain that it's too much for me to shoulder, even just a little. i feel powerless that i can't do anything to help, especially since i think she is actually secretly hoping i will, but we have not had any real communication in a while either so i don't know. and besides, she told me not to before.

my other roommates are fed up with the behaviors. she's grown significantly careless and absent, so many chores and responsibilities end up neglected, or worse, half-assed. her propensity for explosive breakdowns has made everyone afraid of confronting her, so tension and resentment has been building. what started as a complaint about dishes quickly escalated to unjust victimhood, blaming, quitting collaborative work, and threats of moving out.

normally, and what i've already done in the past with similar situations involving the same people, is negotiate. i foster agreements and compromises because i love both of them. with my latest loss, though, i'm fed up. i pride myself on my immense patience, not only do i think it has finally run out, i think i need less of it. after 7 years of playing both sides for my toxic former friend who turned out to be in the wrong anyway, i'm tired. these are the first times in my life where cutting somebody out tangibly benefits an entire group. my group. my friends. i am triggered by the lack of harmony. i've been getting in the way of long overdue confrontations between other people. another manifestation of my people pleasing, i'm an enabler.

once again i'm taking it as a good sign that i'm angry. ever learning to harness it and own it. i am learning to trust myself with it. i already trust my judgement, and i'm listening to it when it makes me frustrated. i feel these things for a reason, and i know now that i am reasonable. people who need to be defended or justified over and over and over again are not reasonable. i'm tired of it. i'm done.

as i write this, i'm sitting in the library with my 2 roommates who actually make me feel safe, supported, and loved. we don't feel safe in our home but we feel safe together. we've had really constructive talks about the situation and have reached the same conclusions, i've even guided them through the grief of needing to set harder boundaries. to me, it's palpable how similar this dynamic is. the most toxic person holds all the power, and i've been defending them, holding out hope that they can get better, neglecting the actual victims around me who i care equally for. my familiar exhaustion and new experiences are telling me to change, to protect my loved ones instead of enabling the manipulator, whom i also love.

07-06-2025

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