The next chapbook book will be about confronting my disability and how that intersected with the Eaux Claires. Didn’t you see when I fought a demon down on Carson field? Oh, you missed that part?

In normal life I just kind of make the demon comfortable bc that is what is easiest, but a two day music festival, well I had to actually deal with it this time.

Quick vignette in prose so you understand exactly.

The first day the walk up to the park from rideshare, killed me and for the first part of the day I was having a lot of problems walking. I had lost all my friends and I felt very isolated in a crowd of thousands. I eventually found my friends, recovered, and we had a wonderful night watching JV perform as Bob.

The second day was completely different. We got up to the gate and asked if we could be dropped off up front bc I have MS and the walk nearly killed me yesterday. The info on the website has been changed and was in no way clear (guys love you, I know it’s a lot, but you need to do better!) They were going to make us go to the shuttle drop off which would have been fine if they had made that clear on the webpage. But I wanted to get in to read my poems at the open mic, so I got out and started to walk in typical New England passive aggressive way (watch me kill myself even though you’ll probably never know I died, see what you don’t know will show you).

My friend @OdetteBloom got out and started chatting up the security guards. The one with the golf cart got it. He gave me a lift in the golf cart all the way up the drive. Just me. His mom has MS . He got it right away. That yeah I can walk, but what I walk now might be what I can’t walk later. That I wanted to save my precious steps for the festival grounds. He made all of Saturday possible. I got there way early for the open mic. And read the poems, and I had the most amazing day, all bc someone saw me and understood. Bless this kid and Bless his mother. I wish I could tell you his name.

I need to learn to ask for help. I need to learn to advocate for myself. I am so blessed to have a friend who did it for me this time.