the Infinite

on Chosen Family/on Grief/on Hope/on Love

memories like twinkling stars to keep

Posted on 2 February 2026

NOTE: I wrote this on Friday last week; the things that hadn’t happened yet while I wrote it have already been how and what they were going to be.

As I write this, tomorrow you will travel out of the country. Tonight I am still sleeping in a hotel room, because several of us have had to bunker down away from our old farm house during this week-long heat wave. I’ve been alone this week much more often than usual.

Last night we stayed together, you and me, and I slept on and off but more off than on because I kept waking myself up on purpose so that I could be aware of you there, so I could hold you while you slept and know that I was able to be so close to you in those moments. I am a very sentimental boyfriend.

Tonight I will hug the pillow you slept on. It still smells like your hair, and I keep sniffing it and feeling my eyes blurring with tears again. I am a very sentimental boyfriend.

see

dark curls. smile lines around beautiful dark eyes. lips still rosy from kisses. ceramic and cold iron pendants on braided leather and chain hanging over your shirt. silver rings on your fingers. sleep wrinkles still on your skin. the multicolored tattoos that wrap around your arms. the phoenix feather (me) inked on your right forearm. I am always with you.

smell

sweat dried on sun-hot skin. yesterday’s shower lingering in your hair. deodorant spray. the milkshake you had for breakfast. the pillowcase you slept on last night. you are always with me.

feel

lean muscled arms. the softness of your skin: your neck, your cheeks, your temples. silky strands of curl that I brush back from your eyes. the heat of your body with mine while we are close together. fingers and palms laced together. the pressure of your back against my chest, my arms around you as you lean back and close your eyes for a few moments. I am always with you.

taste

a lingering slight-sweetness of your mouth. salt I’ve licked from your neck. the air we are both breathing together in these quiet minutes before you need to go. you are always with me.

Lately when I’m starting to cry and trying not to, you make faces at me, which startles me and then I’m laughing while I’m crying because it’s so unexpected. I don’t know how long that trick will work, but you did it again as the car was pulling away from the door earlier, while I stood there signing I love you as I tried not to shake with the effort of keeping my shit together, and then I laughed in spite of myself and you signed I love you back.

I know I’ll be okay.

I loathe separations, and it’s been more than a year now of all of us moving in small separate groups, together and apart, across the world to the various places we’ve needed to go, and I am longing for the days when we can all be together in one place again for a time.

What I loathe in equal measure is uncertainty. I don’t know what the timing of some of the big important things are this year, and that causes me no small amount of worry and grief. It makes everything seem less possible when I am in my saddest, most pessimistic moments. I do try not to dwell there but it is difficult lately. Where will I see you next? When will I see you next? I don’t know yet.

NOTE: now it is present-day; this section was written the day I’m publishing this post, on Monday night.

I wandered a long while under the moon tonight; although I was wandering in a mostly straight line, across the yard and then down the driveway, stopping every now and then. The moon is so very, very bright tonight. I can see my own shadows cast along the ground, and shadows from the house, the car, the outbuildings, the trees. I turned left out of the driveway and kept going down the dirt road until I reached just past the edge of this property, and then I turned and came back, the moonlight on my face and the night breeze in my hair.

It is fully dark and a full-moon night here in Australia. It is not yet evening for you right now in Thailand, but even before the sun sets, the moon is still up there over us both. We are under the same Light, and we always are.

I am glad when I remember this.

Our little man went to sleep much more easily this evening, even though he wishes it was you putting him to bed instead of mum and Papa Nix and auntie. He snuggled in after he got to see you on his video call and drifted off after a few minutes of cuddles with mum’s arm. I love watching over him as he goes to sleep. I love being the protective dragon keeping watch over my loved ones in the night.

Someday soon you will be back in my physical proximity and I can watch over you as you sleep once more.

I love you forever. To the moon and beyond it, as far as infinity goes.

xox,
Nix

on Chosen Family/on Grief/on Happiness/on Love

if love does not harm me, is it real?

Posted on 20 January 2026

This morning during my free-writing journaling time, I was thinking about the fact that most days are unremarkable except that they are links in a chain. Not every day is a milestone day. Not every day can be a standalone thing worthy of note and notice. Some days are a link in a chain: just one link. Without links, a chain cannot come to be at all. The chain is created when one thing and another are linked together.

Today is a link in a chain. And the chain is important; all the chains. All the things I weave from my choices. From my discipline. From my intent. From my will.

A chain of writing (52 days in a row today). A chain of relationship (so many to count, and all of them important to me). A chain of chronic illness symptoms. Tracking each thing so that I can look at it and ponder. Today is a link in the PMDD chain; I do not want this chain, but I am keeping track of it because I need to know what it means and what it may reveal to me if I pay attention.

My mind changed topics and then I thought about love, because love is often on my mind. Love is, to be honest, always on my mind.

I pay attention too much sometimes and it takes a lot of energy. I am afraid to miss the good things. I am afraid that if I do not pay close attention, closer than necessary, that I will miss something that could matter to me. I collect future memories like jewels. I keep them close to me, I string them up and wear them. I scatter them across the ceiling as I lie on my back and dream. I cherish them. I wound myself with them, letting their sharp edges carve shapes on my skin, over and over and over. I let love ruin me and I invite it to happen again and again. I want the memories. I want to know that love has left its mark on me. I want to know that I have the scars that deep love leaves. I want to know that my pain has been worth it in some kind of way, even if the way is difficult to discern.

I want love to harm me but only when it must. And I want to be what love has harmed, because if it harms another, does that not mean I was not loved enough?

Why is it that I believe that love must hurt me or it is not real?

I cannot conceive of love that does not harm. I cannot conceive of being loved in ways that never hurt me. I cannot conceive of a world in which there is no darkness. I cannot understand how to live if there is no loss lurking in the corners and in the shadows. I cannot see a nebula until it is spread across the backdrop of dark space.

I cannot comprehend beauty except as it is in contrast to horror, to pain, to loneliness, to sadness.

I cannot yearn to be alive if I do not also yearn to die.

(I will not seek death, I have made a promise.)

As promised, two songs:

Lost pt. II, Lost Sky & Shiah Maisel: dedicated to a person that knows who they are and how much they are loved and missed and how eager we are to be reunited.

Been trying to find you
As long as it takes we got you
Just hold on you’re almost through
Just hold on now
We’re so close to finding you
Just know that you got someone out there who loves you
There’s nothing left to do

We’re fighting
For you
To come back
Home soon
The families miss you
Lost now but we see you

…

Seasons, Rival & CADMIUM & Harley Bird: dedicated to myself so that I can remember that even to wait is a gift, and that love does not forget what it loves.

The seasons come and go like thoughts of you
Like a wave returns to the sea into the blue
They change but in a cycle that I can’t lose
Each painful but delightful to live through

You came into my life just like another season
Not for long just a time, just like another season
Maybe this time next year you’ll reappear for unknown reason
But I’ll cherish every day, until you come my way this season

The seasons turn and change just like your mind
Like the sun gives into the moon into the night
Time continues marching, it slowly crawls
With each new one starting, I recall

Each time of year carries memories
Like a never fading whisper in the breeze
Oh, we will keep on changing all over again
Yeah, we will keep on changing just like another season

May love find you. May love leave you better than before.

xox,
Nix

on Chosen Family/on Chronic Illness/on Harm & Reciprocity/on Love

and this is also love

Posted on 10 January 2026

We are just coming off a very intense heat wave here in Australia, which was accompanied by a horrifying number of bushfires and destruction. Here in Victoria, many of the bushfires are still burning. The temperatures here at the Castle reached 45 Celsius, which was its own intensely scary thing. Thursday was the first extremely hot day, and I flared in the mid-afternoon, so badly that Rose had to wipe me down with ice water for about an hour before I stopped shaking, and then put me in a cool bath, which I stayed in for almost an hour and a half. (If you know me, you know this is VERY weird behavior for me because I generally refuse to get in bathtubs)

I had been staying in the main house since Monday evening, since it was getting to be too hot for me to be able to keep my camper cool enough to safely rest in. I’d already packed for myself for the week so that I wouldn’t need to go back out while the heat wave was here. After Thursday’s extreme heat, we decided that we needed to close off the big room that is the most difficult to keep cool, so on Friday morning I moved a lot of my things into the lounge and prepared to stay further in the house with everyone else during the swiftly approaching heat. I started to have another flare (a POTS flare this time, something different for funsies I guess), and Ash stayed with me while Rob and Rose finished closing up the great room and putting foil on the windows and hooking up the portable air conditioner that we moved from the great room.

this is also love: Ash is holding my hand while I am shaking and crying and embarrassed to be flaring again

I do not want to be sick. I do not want to be sick again. I do not want to be sinking into the furniture while it feels like gravity has increased inside my chest and is causing my heartbeat to hurt. I do not want to be crying as if I am helpless as a baby who cannot lift its own head yet. I do not want the damage that repeated flares are doing to my body. Ash is holding my hand, even though they don’t know how else to help me, but they are not leaving me alone in my fear and this is the thing I cling to.

this is also love: Rose is moving my computer and putting it all back together so that I can use it from the couch where I am resting

I am being gently and firmly and compassionately held in Rose’s heart-warmth. My computer–the CPU, the monitor, the power cord, the keyboard, the mouse–all are being handled with such care. Rose’s animism blooms outward in love for all things, including me, my computer, my favorite pillows, the blanket they gifted me for Yule so many years ago, the ice water fae uses to cool my skin when I am once again too hot. I am comforted by the care Rose shows me. I am buoyed up by the insistent love that Rose gives me.

this is also love: Rob is sleep-deprived and under so much stress and is hooking up the air conditioner and taping foil to the specific window pane that might let sunlight touch me

It is not that I am any more special than anyone else in our family. No, because I am exactly this special, and so are each of us. It is that when my beloved sees something that is harming one of us, and can act, fae will do as much as it is possible to do in those moments. As soon as Rob knows I have started flaring again, fae brings meds and puts them carefully, directly in my mouth, and then immediately starts moving the air conditioner into place and covering the windows. Actions speak louder than words: Rob’s words are some of the most beautiful things I can hope to hear, yet faer actions are even more beautiful to me.

I will not leave out my other partner; StarChild was in the house when I had a similar POTS flare a few weeks ago, and saw it happening before anyone else did, and did not leave me alone. I cannot express how lonely and scared I become in those moments when I am falling fast and nobody is around and I do not have the strength to call out for help. Sometimes, having someone there with me feels like the one thing standing between me and drifting away altogether. If someone is there, I can hang onto that energetically even if I cannot open my eyes or speak aloud.

When Rose had got me in the bath (well, I did get myself into the tub, but I definitely needed help getting there), Robert and his whole six-years-old self positioned himself on the bathroom floor with his phone and stayed there with me the whole time. He wouldn’t even leave the room to ask for a water refill, so I messaged the group chat to get it for him. He had his snacks and a few toys and was very protective of his Papa Nix while I was in there, my sweet boy.

my first post of the year was supposed to be a retrospective or a wrap-up or something; but it is a hot, hot summer here, and there are fascists shooting people in the face in the place I fled from

As the people of Gaza still starve and die and are being bombed and shot at and murdered again (STILL), another murderous criminal has bombed Venezuela and sanctioned every escalation of violence in the United States.

As trans people are being actively genocided in the place I fled from, the Stray Kids fandom is arguing about whether or not we should boycott the shows that are coming to the states and the movie that is also being shown in so-called “Israel,” and the only thing I want to scream is our public enjoyment of our fandoms is not–can NEVER be–more important than the safety of people under the boots and guns of a fascist police state.

So it’s been tricky to post a retrospective, you know? Because shit keeps happening, not just everyday gosh that’s annoying kind of shit, not the kind of shit you’d hope for right now; it’s genocide, it’s murder, it’s complicity, it’s climate change, it’s horrifying.

so. this is also love: sacrifice in the service of others.

Are you able to participate in a boycott, or sign a petition, or donate to a mutual aid fund? Then I think you should. I think it is your moral obligation. I think we are past the point of whether or not we feel like it, to be perfectly honest with you.

I am not asking disabled people to give up services or access to medications, groceries, food, or shelter. I am not asking anyone who is in danger of being scooped up and/or murdered by fascists to give up something that they need in order to survive. It is up to you to know yourself, and know what you can and cannot safely and reasonably do.

Love for others must include love for oneself. Harming yourself will do harm to us all.

We are all connected. Never forget that. Each person’s choices shape the reality we all live within, which I think is ABUNDANTLY clear right now.

I’m still a little too recently heat-flared to properly share some song lyrics with you, but I will try to give you two songs next time.

xox,
Nix