Kaiya Waerea (she/her)
@kaiyawaerea | kaiyawaerea.com
Kaiya Waerea (she/her, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a chronically ill writer and designer from Aotearoa, now living in London UK. Her research is concerned with knowledge produced through marginalisation, particularly as it is produced through moving through this world in a disabled and indigenous body. Kaiya is gluten-intolerant, (mostly) vegetarian, and prefers to eat with others.
Her writing has been featured in Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents (forthcoming), Errant Journal: Learning from our Ancestors, AIGA Eye on Design, Ache Magazine, Sick Magazine, DreamsTimesFree and others. Kaiya co-runs feminist press Sticky Fingers Publishing and teaches on the Graphic Design programme at Camberwell University of the Arts London.
8th June
by Kaiya Waerea
by Kaiya Waerea
I was meant to start work at 10am today, but I didn’t get in until half past 12. Unable to get up when I woke I slowly wrote a text with trembling fingers to J. He said come in this afternoon if you can, but rest if you need to.
At around 11 I managed to get myself up, have some cornflakes and a coffee from the pot. Against my better judgement, I got myself dressed and ordered a taxi in, picking up a coffee on the way.
I picked at my packed lunch while marking with A, J and S. I ate all the broccoli, some of the chickpeas, an apple and a snack bar. Being around people improved my mood, and at the end of the day J and I went across the road to Peckham Pelican and had a couple of beers and a bowl of nachos in the sun.
When I got home, I tipped my lunch leftovers onto a plate, butterflying and frying the sausages in a pan and putting them in a sandwich, with the chickpeas and some salad leaves on the side.
I felt very unwell after all of this. I lay in bed unable to sleep with stabbing pains in my stomach. Eventually I started getting very hungry again, late into the early hours, but my joints were too sore to do anything about that.