The Anus Monologues, People's Theater Training Workshop, Co-Creation Exhibition＿Going Home

"My family is so lovely, clean, happy and healthy. My sisters and brothers are very kind, and my parents are kind." 』
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If the family is not tidy and happy, the sisters and brothers are not harmonious, and the parents are not kind, is it still a home?
If I am the only one who is not healthy, can I still go home?
When you leave home, find a home, and build a home, it may rain or thunder on the way home. There may be tempting candies and drinks to make you stop. You may have the key but cannot find the door lock. The door may be opened but there is no one inside. , or, you are the one guarding the door waiting for someone to come back.
Here are three stories about home, inviting you to come closer and listen.

I once lied to my classmates and told them that I didn’t live here.
I don’t live here, the illegal building at the bottom of the alley, I live next to it! That beautiful home. When I get off the stroller, I will say goodbye to my classmates. I live here. This is the home where my mother earned her hard-earned money by selling noodles. My father is also very good. He doesn’t know how to gamble or drink. He also drives. Went to a suit shop! My second sister would help me fight with the kids nearby. When the noodle shop was very busy, my neighbor would take care of me and take me to his house to play secret games that I couldn’t tell my mother. I am a good kid, I am fine, this alley is my home.
I don't really live here, that's true.

I once thought that we would be together for the rest of our lives.
I am really happy when I am happy. He has good financial resources and many friends. Life is like a party that never ends. As long as he takes a pill, there will be no worries. Although there is no way to gain the approval of his family, the grand wedding swore an oath for us. love, so it doesn’t matter, this can also be my home. But why does it rain and wind at home? I was sick because of the medicine, and I was experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations. It seemed that I couldn't stay here any longer.
I used to move with love, just like I kept moving when I was a child. I want to go home.
But can I still go home like this?

It was my second sister who took me home.
I felt like I was back when I was a child, lying in bed, and the murmuring voice was my mother telling stories, calling me back bit by bit for several nights in a row. In those stories there are mothers who run away from home, free and happy girls. There is no marriage, no quarrels, no children and no burdens. It is the happiest time in life.
But my mother still chose to return to this home and loved me unconditionally for having made her life so miserable.
Home is synonymous with complex emotions, and I don’t think I can escape anymore.
I'm living at home now, but I'm still on my way home.

I registered an account.
After the breakup, I wanted to expand my circle of friends, so I registered a social media account.
When I first entered the online world, I felt helpless. I didn’t know how to establish relationships with strangers. Looking at Internet celebrities with thousands or tens of thousands of fans, I silently envied their lives. When I mustered up the courage to raise my hand to participate in the activities of Internet celebrities, I felt the kindness shown by these strangers. With their help, my number of fans reached a small goal after a month.

It seems to be quite popular and I want to take it a step further.
I feel that I have achieved something in a small way, and I have begun to have the influence to take the initiative to organize activities and create topics. Every day after work, I am thinking about what kind of persona I should create and what kind of articles I should publish in order to attract attention. My hard work seemed to be in vain. Suddenly, I became a hot topic on the Internet. Some people called me Didi Rich, some people rushed to take photos with my doll, and some people called me a topic maker.
I have not forgotten my original intention, hoping to make friends online, but I also met many people who said sadly that they were envious of my life and asked me what I should do to become popular online and meet new friends. . I thought of the goodwill shown by others in the past, and thought that perhaps a circle of kindness could be formed on the Internet, so I began to teach many community novices step by step how to run a community account step by step. They assured me that as long as I was my friend, I would let them meet more new friends.

I shared an apartment with an online friend.
My various actions are like running a virtual family on the Internet. Everyone can come to my side and become my family and friends. Later, when I changed jobs, I thought I would have the opportunity to turn this ideal of a virtual family on the Internet into reality, so I made an appointment with a few netizens to rent an apartment together and make it a place where netizens can get to know each other in person.
One of the roommates wanted to ask us for help with the rent because he would not be able to move in for two months. Then I came up with a good idea - converting his spare room into a daily rent plan, and borrowing it for 300 yuan a night. , and you will also have the opportunity to interact with our internet celebrity roommates! My roommate posted a post on the social platform for rent, and our apartment suddenly became a popular attraction. Netizens from other counties and cities in Taipei came to our place to visit us. In order to stir up the topic, I also held a party and only charged 150 yuan for drinks per person. Internet celebrities from all over the world were worried that they had not kept up with the topic. As a result, 60 people crowded into our small apartment. That was really my highlight moment!

Then, things went a little beyond expectations.
The topic surrounding my virtual family has been trending for more than two months, and I am still immersed in the cheers of support from everyone. But one day, someone began to inadvertently ridicule on the Internet that "you have to pay even if you rent a house." Some other netizens echoed, thinking that I talked too much and was too noisy. Some people felt that they didn't get what they wanted from me. Couldn't help but run over to make up for it. The negative comments on the community are like a snowball, getting bigger and bigger. From the initial vitriol, it slowly evolved into personal attacks, and finally became a full-blown inflammatory, gradually getting out of control in the community. Some of the new internet celebrities I brought into the community became the first to make trouble, while my roommates just hid aside and waited to see my jokes.
In those days, I felt like my body was being eaten by a swarm of insects. I was constantly anxious, uneasy, resentful, and in pain. I even had thoughts of death. I couldn't understand why others had such strong ill will toward me. Obviously there were a lot of invitations a week or two ago, but now they are cancelled. No one wants to get close to me, the god of plague. I was like a corpse lying in a pool of blood being watched, surrounded only by blood-red eyes expecting me to make a fool of myself.
In the end, I deleted my social media account and stopped interfering with online things. After half a year, I moved out of this ugly home and completely cut off all ties with all netizens. I have never encountered such terrible collective bullying since I was a child. Fortunately, I can easily decouple the Internet from reality. I imagine that if this happened in reality, there would be no way out.

"You can make hundreds of people hate you in the community. Have you done something wrong?" 』
For a long time, I reflected on whether I was not social enough. Every time I wanted to discuss it with other friends and ask for comfort, I got the words like this. This past became something that I could not heal for several years. Wound. I once told this story to my counselor, and he said that I am like a driver driving a rainbow bus, trying to take everyone to an ideal place where everyone has love, but the reality will never be the same. Everything went smoothly, but the people who got on and off the bus blamed the bumpy and uncomfortable journey on the driver. I suddenly understood that it was not that I was bad, but that no matter who was put in this position today and could not respond to everyone's expectations, it would lead to the projection of everyone's negative emotions.

Can you stack three layers of strawberries?
An eminent monk once said a metaphor: Wanting everything to go smoothly in life is like trying to stack one strawberry on top of another. Most people can stack two when they are lucky. Some people can stack two strawberries on top of each other. The most powerful people on the Internet can stack up to three, and when everyone sees it, they feel envious and want to imitate it. But the three-layer strawberry will eventually fall down soon. Life is inherently impermanent, but people feel frustrated and painful because they cannot keep the strawberry tower stable all the time. If I just want everything to be perfect and want everyone to like me, it will be self-defeating. This is the case for anyone else.
Later, I met other good friends who accepted me. Now, when I see the lives of Internet celebrities on the Internet, I no longer envy them because I have learned to grasp limited happiness and love those who are worthy of my love. people.

Image source: Freepic

What impressed me most was the color of the urine bag.
Every time I come back from playing, I open the door and walk through the kitchen. There is a hospital bed in the living room. My father, who suffered a second stroke, has been bedridden for many years. As the urine bag slowly turns red day by day, I know that time is running out. It wasn't until I went to jail and my mother printed out a photo of my father dying and pasted it on the guest glass, that I seemed to have lost some ability to express myself. I couldn't face it or say sorry, just like my father who was speechless in the end. Some words are left, some are stuck in the throat.
What else can I do?

Dad used to drive a taxi.
We used to travel together. Grandma didn't like Mom, so Dad would drive my brother or me to Grandma's house in the car. But Dad always liked to ask my brother and I whether we should choose Mom or Dad, as if they would be separated at any time. I don’t remember when my father started drinking. He started beating my mother, my brother and I. Later, even though he had a stroke, he went downstairs to drink. Finally, he became paralyzed in bed and gradually lost his speech. At the bedside, I always smiled and talked to him, watching him try to tell me to stay home with a few words.
Then I walked out, closed the door, and burst into tears.
I hate it and I love it too.

You can treat me the same as before, but you can't treat my plants carelessly.
I have received more attention from my mother since I was a child. My mother would say bad things about my father and his women outside. Later, I went out to play, I took drugs, and I became the one who caused trouble in the family. I didn't care about myself and didn't identify with myself. In this whirlpool, suffocating love for family members, hating and loving at the same time, we are all at fault and we all suffer.
But now I have a balcony, an oasis where I live with plants that are important to me, bigger than myself, and that I spend a lot of time taking care of.
I live at home, and this is my oasis, my strength.

Photo credit: Freepic

What does home mean to you? If I had a home, where would it be? Please click on the relevant links at the bottom of the screen, write down your thoughts about your home or the exhibition, and send them to us.

The most unspeakable and stigmatized things in everyone's heart are like chrysanthemums, burdened with the most filthy excretions and unspeakable desires.

What do you think about drug abuse, AIDS, and sexual minorities in society? Or do you have such relatives and friends around you or at home? Have you ever heard the story he told with his life? Or what do you want to say to him?

We believe that only when people are willing to listen to each other and find empathy and common ground can they begin to tolerate and accept each other. This is the starting point for resolving opposition and discrimination, and can we find opportunities to take a step closer to each other. It’s not just about understanding the root of each other’s suffering, but more importantly, how to continue living together and even change together even if the hurt is still there.

"The Anus Monologues" uses a popular theater training workshop to gather people from different backgrounds to transform negative labels in life into performances through drama training, story sharing and co-creation. Invite the public to share their own stories and listen to each other’s stories, and find similar feelings in these stories.

We come from every corner of society, and we have also fallen into the bottom of life on the road of life. Therefore, everyone has the experience of "receiving help" at different times and years. From this experience, we gradually move to helping each other and helping each other. Through studying together, we got to know each other through the process of "physical and mental addiction" and gathered this helping energy to establish the Hand In Hand Association of Taiwan.

We all receive help from each other, learn from each other, and then help others, but the process is a continuous cycle. There is no pure helper and no pure recipient. In life, we all move forward together. When we fall, someone will always Some people stop to wait for each other and lend a helping hand. The name "fellow travelers" means "walking side by side with life" and "moving forward, life is transformed, and travelers have no boundaries." I hope that in the process, we will continue to give to ourselves and others. The warmth, vitality and hope of life gradually give rise to the power of inner transformation.

We look forward to you growing, learning and changing the status quo together with us, and gradually breaking through yourself.

Since its establishment in accordance with the law in 2017, Travelers has started from the self and cared for life (self and others), through prison counseling, detoxification assistance, anti-drug propaganda, volunteer training, community companionship and groups, human rights education courses, etc. , in schools, prisons and communities, to convey positive self-worth, gender-friendliness, awareness and understanding of physical and mental addiction, thereby developing life education such as understanding of drugs, diseases (physical and psychological), and gender-friendly education.

Let us all be nourished in body, mind and spirit, establish good interpersonal relationships, and build a positive future.

If you agree with the philosophy of fellow travelers, you are welcome to support our courses and service plans