Support Board

Words by Yolande Clark

“Please spare me your hypochondriacal entreaties to “stay safe.”

Safety is an illusion. It’s an illusion when it comes to birth, and every moment after, as we all progress inevitably towards death.

Safety is a farce. A performance.

I have no interest whatsoever in “staying safe”.

In fact, it disgusts me that “stay safe”, has become the standard—or virtuous—farewell du jour.

Stop cursing me with your pathetic terror.

Stop trying to enroll me in participating in your deluded phobia of embodiment.

And yes, your obsession with “staying safe” *is* delusional, because no matter how tightly you wrap yourself in plastic, or how often you saturate your skin with carcinogenic gel, no matter how many times you inject yourself like a junkie, safety will still, tragically, elude you. Safety is entirely illusory.

The only difference between my degree of safety and yours, is that I choose to *embrace* the reality that life is full of inevitable danger; that opportunity is always accompanied by uncertainty.

I *choose* the kind of possibility that only ever comes with risk.

I want precariousness and vulnerability.

And if I die tomorrow from a flu-like illness, or a bolt of lightening, I’ll take that a million times over your sanitized, contracted, masked, shuttered, abbreviated, but oh-so-safe existence.”