Pittakinionophobia (Fear of labels)

Don’t label me… Look at me…
Use your eyes. What you see, this is me…
I have no airs and graces
but sometimes I can’t read faces

I have a thing called Aspergers
which sounds like bad fast food
But it means I can miss social cues
and come off seeming rude
So my presentation of facial expression
is limited by my mental condition…

And now I have said those two words
you can’t unhear them, you have labelled me…
You have categorised me…
Filed me under ‘Mental Condition’
Pigeon holed me without further information
labels marginalise and sideline
labels stigmatise dysfunction

labels cannot define me, I am a complex human being
labels are an artificial tag
for a complicated web of chemicals and interactions
labels are a convenient excuse
for your own fear of what is different
Don’t label me…

I am not a phobia or a mania
I am not a condition or a syndrome
I am a human being
with faults and quirks and hopes and dreams
I am not a label…
This is who I am…
and you… and you… and you…
You are not a label too…

Peter Roe – July 2018

Coming Out Of The Bubble

I have a mental health issue
I don’t like to say dis-abled
Because I feel mis-labelled
I have A S D and sometimes
It’s like a fricking superpower
Specifically I have P D A
Pathological Demand Avoidance
No… It’s not just a label…
No… It’s not just an excuse
I can find myself trapped
In a descending
spiral of indecision
Because having to make a choice
Any choice
Yes, no or maybe
Creates an anxiety bubble
That I can’t penetrate
Rationality and logic are hopeless
Because they are hiding
Over there in the corner quaking…
The simplest mole hills
can be the highest mountains
Prevarication is my watchword
Putting things off is my defence
It may seem crazy to you
and I know it doesn’t make sense
but I am at the mercy
of a web of neurones
and brain chemicals
that turn my thoughts
to plaited fog
This isolation
time spent with the black dog
nibbling on my toes
doesn’t really help
Going round in circles
Living in a tribe of one
With just my own company
Is not my idea of fun
It’s just the way I’m wired
but if you feel inspired
Ask me…
‘Is there anything you can do?’
I’m my kind of normal, not weird
I’m just on the spectrum
Like many other people too
Let’s all reach out and ask
“Is there anything I can do?”

-Peter Roe – December 2020

 A recollection:

I remember it well. Aged 17 and being told I’d not be able to have a ‘normal’ job, or life or anything that other people did. Why? Because at 13 I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I’d already been told by my consultant that anything I wanted was possible. Mainly, because I was stubborn, he said. Adding, that’s a good thing, by the way.

So, in a job centre aged 17, to be patted on the arm like you’d pat a pet dog, and told to give up any dreams or hopes now. Then, because you were kind enough to help, you might find me a little job in a quiet office counting parking tickets that was the limit.

I might not do anything exciting for work, but I chose it. I do the things I want to, when I  want to. I might have listened to you thinking my life at 17 was over.

You told me at 17 my life was effectively over. That I’d live a life alone, without children. I’d never have a job I enjoyed or go beyond the city I grew up in. I should be afraid.

Then and there I decided I would do what I wanted and I have.

I have hidden disabilities and unless I tell people which I’m fairly open about doing, you wouldn’t know. I travel as I want, I have the child I wanted. I have like anyone else had jobs I’ve loved and hated. I’ve fought my own corner. Lived and written my own stories.

Don’t do what that woman tried to do to me. Don’t try and destroy someone’s hope. Don’t assume anything of anyone. Just because the internet says it doesn’t mean it’s right.

Do ask yourself if you’re being biased, it’s not difficult to stop for a second. Do ask how you can understand what someone deals with. Do ask questions of everyone, because one condition can have many outcomes.

Just be a thoughtful, sensitive human. That’s all. Disabled doesn’t make you dead.

-Ailsa

© AilsaCawley2021

Bios And Links

-Peter Roe

is Neurodivergent, diagnosed twenty seven years ago. He was retired from work due to physical disability ten years ago and reinvented himself as a performance poet. He has two published collections and is widely anthologised. A former Bard of Dorchester, he is a Health Champion for disability, ASD and mental health.

Tree in Snow

We grow as Nature ordains
never complain and bear the pains
from black to grey, green to brown
one by one we fall to the ground
Our duty done with full obedience
spreading freshness and fragrance
with peaceful quietude we surrender
making space for others in elegance.
This is The Truth This is The Call
This is The Providence of The Fall
Be it Oak, Pine Fir or Kowhai
Sown ‘n Grown, This is The Final Cry’.

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Tree Law

-Jennifer Roche

If we were trees
(after Tom Weir’s “Glass”)

Some of us were profligate, we were sycamore, we bolted,
trampled gardens. We were full of sap. We were headlong.
and
some of us were yew that puts down roots in graveyard loam
and closes up the mouths of the dead
and
some of us were holly, glossy, sharp and bitter We were all unkind
and
some of us were silver birch, we went everywhere like witchlight,
asked nothing of the ground; we could live on air;
we drank light. We danced
and
some of us were oak, and some of us grew straight as the mast
of a good ship, and some grew stunted, rooted among lichens,
and there was gold in our grain
and
some of us were old from birth, all wire and sinew,
we were hawthorns, our spines wicked against the browsing tongues of beasts
and
some of us were evergreen, fast growing pine, lush spruce,
lined up for the saw, the axe, how easily we split
and
all of us knew what all trees know, which is the art
of letting go. Every year we practice dying
because every one of us will burn. One way or another

-John Foggin

I choose.

A big old strong tree, gnarled
like an olive and full of owls –
Loll on in its generous shade
inhaling that uniquely exotic fragrance;
the power to command every quote and
epigram carried by the bees,
ivy-league messengers sweetly laden
with the harmony of the spheres.

-Jane Newberry

Be that tree,

standing strong, in all conditions.
Growing and stretching
arms towards the sky
completely free, still,
grounded deep in the past.
– Omar Kay

Artful
Love grows like a tree;
you never see it happen
but we have blossom.

-Lawrence Moore

Mulch
I wrote about you on a maple leaf.
Pushed for space, my words were brief.
They blew away with a sudden gust
and will turn to compost,
just like us.
-Lawrence Moore

Rowan

Mountain ash: I banish witches,
Grace hillsides, straddle ditches,
Greet spring, green as grasses,
Hold court as summer passes.

Red as winter cheeks, my berries
Pucker your mouth, like sour cherries.
Jelly rich in C and A
Wakens taste, keeps colds at bay.

Autumn’s gift gives winter savour,
To lend meat a piquant flavour.
I hold fast, through squall and blast,
To greet the living sun at last.

Bride of storm, the lightning flash:
Red-crowned rowan, mountain ash.

-Yvonne Marjot

Lament for Lemon Trees

I hate to slice a lemon
and cut through a pip

that’s green inside.
It’s like cracking an egg

and finding the foetus
of a chicken. But the seed

would have sprouted,
the chick would not.

I think of the tree
I could have grown

like those that touched the ceiling
at Elmfield Gardens,

had to be left behind,
too tall for the new house.

-Peter J. Donnelly

Bios And Links

John Foggin

lives in West Yorkshire where he writes an occasional poetry blog : the great fogginzo’s cobweb.

He was one of the winners of the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition [2015]. His latest collection was Dark Watchers [Calder Valley Poetry: 2019]

-Jane Newberry

is a late-emerging poet, after 30 years of motherhood and a career in music education. March 2020 saw the publication of Big Green Crocodile (Otter-Barry Books).

Published by The Emma Press, South Magazine and online, Jane lives in Cornwall.

-Lawrence Moore

has been writing poems – some silly, some serious – since childhood. He lives in Portsmouth, England with his husband Matt and nine mostly well behaved cats. He has poetry published at, among others, Dreich, Pink Plastic House, Fevers of the Mind, Sarasvati and The Madrigal. @LawrenceMooreUK

-Peter J Donnelly

lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter.

He has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Writer’s Egg where ‘Survival’ previously appeared.  ‘Peppered Moth’ was included in the Ripon Poetry Festival anthology ‘Seeing Things’. ‘One Day on Dartmoor’ was highly commended in the Barn Owl Trust competition and published in their anthology ‘Wildlife Words’. It was also published online by the National Trust on their Fingle Woods webpage.