My uncle Billy

Content warning: suicidal thoughts, and physical injury.

I can't emphasize enough how hard life was in my late teens. Spells of depression, spells of suicidal thoughts, even some half-hearted attempts. But there was art. So much art. Art was my life line, and there was one artist in particular who pulled me trough. Andrea Gibson.

Their poem photograph was my favourite for many years. One day, in a very weird hebrew class that was more about homosexuality than learning hebrew, I started to write the poem down. The whole poem went in my notebook. I never memorised it on purpose, but I just.. knew it. I could write the whole thing down without mistakes. Later I started memorising ashes, together with my brother who would later come out as trans.

Years went by and sometimes I would lose touch with Andrea Gibson for a while, but I'd always turn back to their poems at some point. In 2011 I discovered their facebook page, and I wrote under the tour anouncement: I'm still waiting for the day you'll come to Europe. But that would never happen. Poets don't go on international tours. Meeting Andrea Gibson would always be a dream, only a dream.

When the madness vase came out, a poem about suicide, it became my new favourite poem. This poem literally saved me. Whenever I didn't know how to continue living, I would listen to this poem on repeat.

let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet. You, you stay here with me, okay? You stay here with me.

In january 2015 or 2016 (aargh, which year was it?) I got an e-mail anouncing new tour dates. I didn't know why I'd click the e-mail. But I did. And.. Europe. They'd start in the UK, visit my country two days in may, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and after that they would also go to France and Sweden. And I, well, I got my brother, who was better at online purchasing stuff, and told him to get two tickets.

In the months that followed, I caught up with Andrea's work. They had a lot of new poems since I last paid attention, and I wanted to know them well when I saw them live. I saw one video of a live performance and Andrea Gibson forgot a line. Many people in the audience shouted the right line to them, and I couldn't help thinking: wow, that must be magical. You didn't just listen to them, you contributed.

May arrived, but with bad luck. In april I had moved to my very own tiny loud studio apartement, and while still unboxing, my knee suddenly just stopped working. I was 3 meters away from my phone when it happened, but it took me ages to crawl to my phone. I remember screaming in pain with every tiny move I made. Finally I was close enough to reach a table leg and I just pulled the table closer to me until I could reach my phone and call for help.

I told the person on the emergency call I thought it was a dislocated knee. It happened to me before, 5 years ago. Exactly 5 years ago, later I would realised both of the accidents did happen at may 10. The ambulance came, with a man and a woman, and the woman was in charge. She kept looking for a broken bone, which was very painful. I much have told her several times I thought it was a dislocated knee, but she wouldn't listen. Dislocated knees only happen after things like motoraccidents, not spontaneuously when someone walks in their own house... Finally the male ambulance person spoke up. 'Wait a second, didn't you use to live at... [he described the house I just moved out of]'. I did. He then told the woman: 'She did have her knee dislocated. It was very strange'. The woman believed him, and stopped the painful process of finding the broken bone that wasn't there. Next up was: call the fire departement. There was no way to get me out of the house over the very steep stairs.

In the hospital, the same thing would happen. People looked at my chart and assumed there had been a mistake. 'Wait, this thing says your knee is dislocated. Do they maybe mean kneecap?' The doctor in the first aid left me in pain for many hours because, despite being a experienced doctor, she had never seen this injury before, (and expected she would never again in her carreer), and she wanted to call another doctor for advice. Which of course she didn't do until it was morning. I remember I kept asking for painkillers and they would tell me I was already on the maximum dose.

I was not allowed to climb stairs for many weeks that followed. Since I lived in an apartement without elevator, and not on the ground floor, my only option was going to my parents' house. They put a bed in the living room and I didn't have a chance to shower for weeks.

My parents house... well, it's my unhappy place. I spent so many years there being depressed, suicidal, and misunderstood. I'm okay there now, but in my twenties I hated visiting it. It was like the location would instantly make me more depressed. And here I was, in a bed in the living room, living in that freaking house again.

My parents, well, they try to be nice people, but they're judgemental. They didn't understand how difficult it was for me, to be here, and in a lot of pain, and they said a lot of things that made it even harder. My mental health was poor, and I could not even walk out of the room to get some alone time. All evening, I was forced to watch on tv whatever they were watching, but during days, I'd be left home alone. They wanted me to spent those hourse studying, but I couldn't. I couldn't even study when I was in university, how was I going to study in some sort of personal hell, with so much physical pain?

So, what did I do all day? I'd read a little, but mostly, I would cling to my life line. Andrea Gibson. The poem that fitted best right now was new and called Angels of the get trough.

This year is the the hardest of your whole life. so hard you cannot see a future, most days. The pain is bigger than anything else. Takes up the whole horizon, no matter where you are. You feel unsafe, you feel unsaved. Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth.

I lived that poem, and so many others. These poems, they got me trough the pain. Both physical and mental. Days followed days and very soon it would be the 29th. The day Andrea Gibson would perform in Rotterdam, and I had a ticket. But I couldn't walk. And I had no transport. Rotterdam is 50 km from my parents house and they were not going to drive that far just to please me. They said things like: 'get a taxi' they said things like: 'it's just a concert, you can go to something else when you're better.' They didn't get it. Andrea Gibson was my life line right now and I waited sooo many years to see them. Maybe a chance like this would never come again.

I tried to convince my dad to let my sister borrow his car and my sister to drive me, but they both looked at me like I was crazy. But my sister was the only one I knew within this area with a drivers license. My own life was 150 km away from me, and all of my friends were more fellow students than real friends, so they wouldn't help me.

I started to face the ineviteble. I wouldn't go. I felt crushed and like I would not survive this period in my life. Not without that one glimmer of hope. But there was one last option... my cousin had a driver's license. Would she be able to borrow a car? Would she be willing to drive me?

Miracles do happen, and that friday evening, me, my brother, and my cousin were in a tiny church in Rotterdam. We were front row, because wheelchair places were front row. Andrea Gibson walked onto the stage, started performing, and it was... magical.

I needed to remind myself to stay quiet. But my lips moved. I worded many of the words of many of my favourite poems. Because this was a church, and because Andrea Gibson never performed in a church before, they ended up doing some of their older work. They said that with some of these poems, they always felt like these belonged in a church. And that was great for me, because their early work was the poetry I knew the best, and therefor loved the most.

At some point, near the end of the show, they introduced a poem they wanted to read. They talked about art and how important art was. I was trying to guess which poem this was an introduction to, but I couldn't. But then they said: 'this poem is called yellowbird'. Music started to accompany the poem, but Andrea stayed quiet. And they said: 'I forgot the first line.'

The room started laughing, but I got super excited. THIS WAS JUST LIKE IN THAT YOUTUBE VIDEO I SAW. I could contribute. I struggled to remember the words and while the laughing died, I shouted: 'My uncle Billy was the..' I couldn't come up with 'Little Debbies snack cake sales man' so I stopped after 5 words. But I was in the front row. Andrea had heard me. And they said to me: 'What?' and I repeated simply: 'MY UNCLE BILLY'. And that was enough. Andrea Gibson said: 'Oh yeah..' and then they performed the whole poem.

I got to talk to Andrea after the show and I bought some merch but that's not my favourite memory. My favourite memory is shouting the first words of their poem to them. I contributed to their poetry.