Hate this

Hate This, is a powerful piece written by Carissa Lee, a Noongar actor and writer whose work has featured in The Guardian, Junkee, Witness Performance, IndigenousX and The Conversation. We are happy to be able share the piece both as written text and spoken word performed by First Nations actor Angeline Penrith.
It is part of a series of performances about women navigating life after jail. You can read about this project, coordinated by Kerryn Drysdale from the University of NSW’s Centre for Social Research in Health, here.
You can listen to Jarrah performing, Exhaustion, another piece in the series, here.

Hate, and a little bitta trust. Sometimes. Only way to get through it, ya know? 

I worked hard to hate being in there, and the place doesn’t make it hard to do.  

Though if I hated it, I could work to stay the hell out of it. I know some people need to be locked up, but these days it feels like a money-making thing. For so long, there’s been no reason to trust these people running jails, they haven’t been doin’ nothin’ to stop us from ending up back in there. 

There are some programs in jail, like support people to help some of us, but unless it’s court ordered, there’s no real pressure to do it, ya know?  

No obligation as part of your time served. It’s left up to you. If we choose not to, we’re just chucked in there to do fuck-all, dry out, stare at the wall until it’s time to get back out again. 

I do miss my sistagirls, though.  

We were in this little group with our Aboriginal worker Aunty Em. She was a good one. Blak and white girls in that group, all on methadone. We looked after each other, no one else was gonna. We never used while we were in there. That’s thanks to us and Aunty. 

Now I’ve been released, it’s pretty much the same. Except there are more faces attached to the nothing being done. Blank face agencies get your name down, so they keep getting funding, but they never follow up with you. The blank face of the pharmacist when I turn up asking about my suboxone script: none in stock, sorry. Ask them could they please fax it to another pharmacy who has it. 

Next blank faced pharmacist; sorry we never received that fax. 

How am I supposed to live some kind of normal life like they want me to, unless they let me have these meds? They’ll be the first to flinch when I start coming in when I’m sick. 

Try again tomorrow. 

I’m shaking, cold, yet hungry to the point of hot, and I can feel the wet of sweat in the hollow of my tailbone as I talk to my doctor. I can feel the seat stick, and I know I’ll leave a mark when I stand.  

Finally get the script sorted. I hear my heartbeat and sweat finally cools me. Why do I have to get like this before anything gets done. Is this a mode of Aboriginality they can work with, weakened, vulnerable, docile from sick? 

Bored face of the 47th Centrelink worker looking up my details in the system. Suspicious doctor faces, monotone faceless voice on the phone telling me I gotta wait ten weeks to get a housing appointment. The absence of faces who are meant to be checking to see if I’m still alive. How am I supposed to trust someone who’s never there?  

I hate this. 

Can’t go back home to family, because the gubbament say I have to stay here in this town. Keep us here where the drugs are, rather than let us back on country. Makes heaps of fuckin’ sense.   

I wander around to find a familiar face, familiar comfort of the warm road under me, like a big rock in the sun, until it grows cold and I’m alone again. Days of warm road to cold, warm to cold, familiar face, familiar needle. 

I feel sick. 

Fuck. 

I need to hate this too. 

They don’t care because they don’t have to see it. We’re locked up, being turned away or dying somewhere. Leaving us all to die. They don’t have to see what happens when they break their promises or don’t do their fuckin jobs. Why would they have to see? We fuck up and get back on it, that’s the only fuck-up anyone hears about, not us trying to trust them to do their damn jobs. 

Organisations looking after us like Centrelink, prisons themselves, need to do more to stop people from getting back in here.  

Show we can trust em to let us be better, rather than abandon us everytime. Sometimes you get one good person who’s fighting against the system they work for to try and help, but it’s against both of us, at the end of the day. We need more people to care, more people to want us to be well and not back in jail. 

Can’t get angry though, because one angry blackfella means we’re all angry blackfellas.  

Yet a handful of incompetent whitefellas means what? The system. 

I want you to care. I want you to be angry, too. I want you to hate this. 

This new doctors’ is alright. It’s a bit far to travel, but them doctors understand me over there, you know? It’s best to see one doctor all the time instead of different ones. True gawd, if it weren’t for them NSP people, I wouldn’t even go to these Centrelink appointments. They set them up for me and remind me when I have to go and that.  

I don’t have to be put to the side of queues like some task a chemist or doctor is putting off, they actually treat me well.  

At least I can trust them, I guess. Better than at the Centrelink.. Y’know when you’re having to bring some gubba up to speed, different one every time, and they gotta search for ya and relearn everything and you’re just sittin’ there starin at that stained carpet wonderin’ why they don’t just assign you someone permanent. Also, why’s the carpet always stained? Everytime. 

Too many young people ending up in and out of jail. Too young for all of that. But they get used to it. Hey true these young kids in jail, know what to expect when they do go inside. Seasoned prisoners, these ones. 

This one kid, one young one says “gee it’s good to be back.” 

I say, “heeeey, you come ’ere, you goose. There’s young kids who hear you say that and they’re gonna start thinkin’ the same thing.” 

These young ones though. Think of your family, your Mob, what hope you’re giving them other young ones if this is all life is to you. We know this system is built against us, so we have to find a way to make it work for us. To fight for it. Find someone to trust. A good doctor, them NSP folks.  

Truth is, most of the time you have to talk their gammin’ whitefella lingo for them to even give you a second. 

Remember when Mum and Nan were always telling me that, growing up. Can’t be yelling and swearing around. Even talkin normal for us isn’t good enough, they don’t listen. Gotta talk prop-er-ly. Apparently I seem ‘stern’ when I’m trying to get my point across. Gotta be more friendly, or some shit. Fancy that, gotta play some fuckin game for someone to do their damn job. Tried to teach these young ones when they come into the jail. Teach them how to play the game the gubbament has already set up for us to lose. 

You’re more than what the gubbament feeds you. You can’t eat lies from whitefella hands who tell us we’re nothing, who keep us in places where nobody sees us, so everyone can recoil when they do. Figure out who to trust, and insist on what you need. Make them work for you. Don’t let them leave you to die. 

To know your worth more, you need to hate what they do. You need to hate this place. You need to hate it.