TW: The zine itself contains some pretty graphic second-person descriptions of self-harm, deliberate starvation, suicidal ideation and severe depression. I don’t go into it much but in the off chance you get a copy of the zine, it’s worth knowing ahead of time.

I genuinely don’t remember where I picked up this zine. I usually have some memory or another attached to zines I pick up, but this one doesn’t bring back anything – which makes it a fun little enigma. Although fun isn’t quite the right word. It’s a stark, typed little thing, and the moment I open it, I’m slammed with prose that’s almost poetic, lapsing in between a rhythmic kind of pattern and the breathlessness of a rambling monologue.

Not that that’s a bad thing. if ‘i love you and i’m sorry’ reminds me of anything in particular, it is vent poetry, but in a completely undistilled form. It’s someone’s inner struggle, including the voice that rips you apart when you’re at your lowest and finds every single flaw with the way you do things, the way you are, the way you exist. Neurotypical people may read that and go ‘huh?’ For most neurodivergents, especially those with severe depression and/or PTSD, the concept is probably familiar.

The most interesting thing for me about Cameron’s work is that he stresses, over and over again, how nothing bad has ‘technically’ happened to him. His reminiscences of high school are mostly about his anxiety and avoidance of others; his parents aren’t mentioned in any significant way . There’s no trauma lurking like a shark behind the lines, at least not showing itself — just the trauma on the page of wanting closeness and never quite being sure how to get a version of it he wants. As someone who primarily consumes queer work, where a lot of our trauma is externally imposed and/or relating to dysphoria, it’s a perspective I appreciate; it’s easy to think of a lot of mental illness as inherently traumagenic, when the experience of being mentally ill is in fact traumatic in and of itself.

I can’t say I agree with all of the conclusions Cameron comes to, certainly re: love and art, but I also don’t think this is the kind of zine presenting logical conclusions as arguments on their terms. Still, I think it’s worth a read, and I definitely appreciate the little breaks — the middle pages in particular made me chuckle, and show a lot of self-awareness towards other vulnerable readers. (Trigger warnings on zines aren’t as normalized as they should be, and like I said, I don’t actually remember when I acquired this – but I’ve been collecting zines for a long time.)

Unfortunately, a search for Keith Cameron doesn’t yield anyone who quite looks like the right person, but if you’re interested in acquiring a copy, you can email kmecameron@gmail.com and see if you get a response.

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