un Projects is based on the unceded sovereign land and waters of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation; we pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
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Cyndi Lauper is the only person who cares about me (or) Anne Sexton as a pop girl

by

do you need some hope? a friend told me I need a taser. fear and violence. I felt no one would talk to me. having no one to share your achievements with everytime that you create a new world. I’m sorry I care about you. I’m afraid to ask for more of your time. I think there’s evil inside you and I want you. I want it. to prove me wrong.

are the devil horns externally sourced or did you make them yourself? I don’t know why you are still here. maybe you already left and I’m just yet to find out. does anyone ever realise they don’t have a reason to avoid doing this anymore. drawing into skin with a staple gun. a cold and empty coping.

a research and occupational interest in suicide prevention and loneliness. what leads to a dysfunctional life? can someone take a photo of me giving a koala water with burnt trees in the background or equivalent so everyone thinks I’m a good person. I think about everyone who is dead, everyone who I think is good. work disappearing. on edge.

cruelty studies. I can’t think about the world if all I can think of is you. a brief amount of time spent deciding that I am taking care of myself. what if you are wrong. lower your body temperature. I’ll never know what it’s like to want to throw my child off a bridge.

it’s part of us forever. if you were to ask how to help me. I wouldn’t be able to answer. it feels like someone died. inside of me. it means something else to you. together we receive reassurance that we are safe. and somehow, we believe it.

I can delete your words.

the structure of an imbalance. I’m not sure if anyone else would get help to do this. based on an unhelpful thought. did anyone else fall and hit their head on the floor? dying alone. all anyone wants is to be asked questions. ask the worst questions you can think of. if you don’t you’ll end up alone. I ask you what is the most evil thing you’ve ever done. fear and love and care and cruelty and fear again. sharing thoughts but wearing dark sunglasses. obstructing vulnerability. is it funny that anything could make us hurt. incongruent behaviour. pairing vulnerability with suffocation. I wrote Anne Sexton a letter and I didn’t know I was doing it. I’m still thinking about my head hitting the floor.

doing what you can only as an attempt to avoid being in trouble. I’m reminded of care being like a feeling. suggesting it’s not an obligation. a sense of deliberate action. a time spent consciously giving in spite of abrasion. the world wears me down and i respond to it. an expression of grief that can exist without love. tiny pieces of your heart can escape into feelings. the nicest thing I’ve ever done. taking action. my heart hurt from the beginning and it never stopped. a desire for protection. or safety. cooking a kale dinner. I want to tell you what I ate. a cure. walking together. meeting in the daytime. getting a post mix Fanta. sitting in the park. a tour of the grocery store. doing a painting of a body. making a phone call. learning I don’t have to worry about your safety anymore and that you didn’t want me to save your life anyway. wondering how to perform an action.

I just want to do something beautiful. every twenty years you should do something nice. haunting thoughts and bad dreams. I tried looking but I couldn’t find it and I tried waiting but it didn’t come to me. you might haunt me. a protest against cruelty. seeds of aggression. I was following a paper trail to somewhere that does not exist. using your own emotions to discover the limits of what cruelty might be.

Cyndi Lauper describes singing as an ‘energy force that comes up through your feet and goes up the top of your head and maybe you’re holding hands with the angels or the stars ...’1

write a poem and put it to music. everything I’ve ever made is part of an ongoing memoir. instead of writing a letter to everyone who’s ever been kind to you have you thought of writing a letter to everyone you’ve ever been cruel to? is it something misguided. or intentional. searching for what is an evil person when the answer is yourself. do I want you to know how much I’m suffering. I think I know what cruel optimism is. is anyone else drowning?

I don’t know what will happen to us. being evil and
causing pain or
just feeling hurt. doing an online quiz to see if you are evil or searching for crisis help on the internet and being told that you are evil. we would do anything for each other. looking for a reason to mention ‘Cruel’ by The Veronicas. uptempo pop music but make it sad and dark and twisted. what if you never stop thinking about being kind. It’s cruel to compare yourself to others if the person you compare yourself to is better than you because then you are making them seem bad. to feel so cruel.

an attachment to possibility. it’s self-created hurt. missing persons. making pop music for sad others. you can do anything and be hurt by it. every poem is a pop song. another uptempo pop song its lyrics are about suicidal ideation. controversial pop hits. you can’t run away from people but they can run away from you. I wonder if I know what feelings mean or what they look like. keep writing letters. I’m just a pop girl.

a feeling of desperation and a desire to be wanted. the cute store shut down. if you have reached the edge. what happens if you go over. is it possible to go over the edge. what’s the threshold of being a human? where is the world that exists beyond coping. altering your appearance so to look less aggressive.

am I a literal clown or am I serious is a question no one will ever know the answer to. what if I was the only person who ever hurt me. I need to create a goodbye strategy.

trying to convince yourself it’s okay. to be alone. in public. everyone is keeping secrets about how to be functional. hold my face down into a bowl of dessert soup until I’ve drowned in it long enough that it’s filled with vomit and no longer bubbling over. please stop sending me text messages and write me an email with 1–3 images attached one per day maximum and one per week minimum. I can only think of things I don’t want to know about your life. challenging myself to stay in pain forever or until it goes away in 1–3 years. do you only ever get more haunted through life? secret suicide data.

Laura Hershey writes about going back four years to before an awareness of being lonely.2 recovery and wellness plan — working together in recovery. it’s painful to watch so you are just distant wondering why am I like this or maybe you don’t think about it and then you cancel our plans and then you mention doing another thing and then in a week you cancel it again. I’m prioritising recovery too.

I perform an a capella cover of ‘Reminds Me’ by Kim Petras but you don’t even know that it happened. a list of all the discomforts I could tolerate for you. it’s all part of the curse. what if I say nothing. cruelty is a letdown. how can anyone care.

say you still try. breaking someone else. notes from 2018 or earlier read ‘why is it hard to want to figure out why I don’t want to think and feel’ and ‘if it’s bad what is the worst that could happen.’ ‘what’s the point of being friends with anyone if they are just going to disappear.’ make it stop. make my thoughts and feelings stop.

I want to hurt you. You’re allowed to talk to me. and don’t have to look away when you see me in public. tied down by vocal chords. dancing so big that you’re one person taking up the entire room. why do you like it? killing to not be alone.

an idea that everyone is evil. getting stuck and feeling trapped. climbing over a fence with you and when we are at the top we enjoy the view together. putting a bandaid on a cut. cruelty and care relying on each other.

I had a bad dream and I think it might be real life. I’d do anything for you to tell me it’s not real life. I woke up thinking I could never see you again. maybe I can’t. I didn’t want to see the things that happened in the dream. in limbo. how to not be like this. if I’m not too late or haven’t ruined too much. undesired perspective and escape. is this change just false hope.

world of 3d models
high intensity
you look like the girl from 100 gecs
heart hurt
caring about someone so you don’t tell them to shut up
reclaiming cursed locations
and your favourite pop musicians
to not have intense feelings or feel empty
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
try really hard to not be insane
a display of all the pain experienced in one life
it makes you cry
or almost
how do I let go
I don’t know who you are
but I’d do anything for you
‘I will build a bomb shelter over my heart.’3

every time I remember you exist I also remember not the entire world is against me. everything I’m avoiding talking about. a use of time I now regret. after my mum died I thought no one could ever care about me again. I started listening to Cyndi Lauper. and found an example of care when there were no others in the world. has anyone ever thought of caring about someone. to feel like it.

what happens when you are distressed by thoughts and can’t think about them anymore. drink some strawberry mylk. a desire to treat each other with kindness. if the whole world is against you. does everyone just exist to hurt you.

Jemi Gale is an artist and poetess. She works with emotions.

1. ‘Cyndi Lauper’, Behind The Music, season 6, episode 2, written by Gay Rosenthal, aired 8 September 2002 on VH1.
2. Laura Hershey, Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master, edited by Meg Day and Niki Herd, Warrensburg: Pleiades Press, 2019, pp. 38-9.
3. Anne Sexton, Selected poems of Anne Sexton, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Diane Hume George, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988, p. 257.

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