I’m not drunk. I can’t really get drunk because thanks to my chronic illnesses (I think) the hangover migraine happens before I’ve had a chance to realize I had too much. I’m as many drinks in as I can get right now and I’m rationing the rest of my liquor anyway. It would be nice to have a drink after dinner tomorrow since our grocery errands aren’t until Tuesday, so I’ll save enough for a little nightcap after my ramen tomorrow night.
It’s the first day of Pride month. It’s June. This month is absolutely flooded with emotions for me, grief the chiefest among them. And it’s full of magic as well. The solstice is this month, traditionally in Path of Light on the 21st, although I know other traditions follow the astrological date each year, so it might not be the 21st for you this time. I grew up in the northern hemisphere so for me, and here in Thailand even though I’m so close to the equator, it’s still north of it, so it will be Litha on June 21st. The summer solstice. Midsummer. The longest day, the shortest night. The one day a year with an abundance of Light. In the times before I found Path, this was the Sabbat when I decided I would follow the path of druidry. (And I wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it’s also witchcraft; a bonus, if you will; what I actually wanted, if you must be specific)
And six days later, the anniversary of a very hard day. Grief grows and shifts and changes as the years go by, and this year it hurts just as much but there are other colors I can see now also.
The year that the supreme court in America legalized gay marriage in June — whether or not that stays true — is the same year my two oldest kids, young teenagers at the time, were staying with family that I used to consider my most important other than my kids, and they fumbled it so badly that I can never forgive them in this lifetime. How can I forgive anyone that was part of the reasons my kids didn’t want to exist in the world any more?
June is both glory and grief for me. It is a bright light in the night sky, a fierce scream of existence and belonging, and it is a portent of things to come. We are here, and we are too few. We are not as many as we should be. We love and we cry and we grow and we sing and we become who we are. We are here until we are not. This is the first year since the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns in March 2020 that I feel like I have anything to say at all, or anything to feel at all, other than numbness and distant pain.
Is there anything so beautiful?
I love the month of June and I feel such agony about needing to live through the month of June. Sometimes I want to die when it’s June. But I am still alive, and I will still be here in July, and right now it is June, and I must dance through this month even if it tries to kill me, because I am here, and we are here, and we should live as our brilliant beautiful selves, if we can.
it’s June and I’m in the Southeast Asia-Pacific.
I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt and worrying that the rain is going to leak into the house we’re renting. I’m pale as fuck with a snake tattoo and red curly hair hoping that I can be a respectful visitor to this country that’s been one of the best experiences of my life. I’m trying to learn Thai, I’m using Google Translate all the time, I’m stumbling over saying sa-wat-dii ka and remembering to put my hands together at the right position in front of my nose and bow a little and try to smile like I mean it even if I can’t understand everything as well as I want to. I’m recognizing words and repeating phrases like the mimic I am and making notes with the correct accent marks so that I can study them again later.
I can’t read yet, but that doesn’t matter. There is a brief surprising kinship between speakers of different languages when you laugh at yourself for making a mistake and the person there with you laughs too. Laughing at ourselves seems to be a universal signal for ‘I know I messed that up but I was trying to do it right,’ and in the interactions I’ve had, that’s been more than good enough. Almost all of the Grab drivers (that’s the taxi service I always use here) speak a little English, and even if I forget how to say kop-kun at the end of the ride, they’ve said thank you in English and I have to laugh at myself for thinking I am the only person learning how to communicate with other people.
Several weeks ago one of my Grab drivers asked if I was here to teach in the school up the road, and even though I’m not and said so, I indulged myself in a brief daydream about what that would be like, and I am a little upset that I don’t have the credentials necessary to do something like that. What an incredible experience that would be. I love interacting with and being around and teaching middle-school and high-school aged teenagers, and for a few moments I imagined how much I wold enjoy it. And then I remembered I don’t have a degree (yet?). And that’s okay right now.
in this house there are people I fiercely love.
My family is still spread across several continents, and even though it hurts my heart sometimes, it’s what our reality is at the moment, and that isn’t such a bad thing. Do we miss each other? Of course we do. Is it the end of the world? I think I can say that literally no it is not. There are other ends of the world and this is not that.
I have cat-specific allergy reactions so I need to be careful of how I interact with them, but our four beautiful asshole cat babies who we love no matter what are here with me and one of my kids. This house is theirs and we’re their roommates. We keep them fed and housed and keep the litter boxes clean and smelling nice and I buy the toys and catnip and sometimes I toss the stuffed fish across the floor or twirl the ribbon on a stick. Every time I leave my room, Pippin yells and yells until I pet her and pet her and pet her. Every time I go downstairs, Merry and Ash and Maisy appear at the bottom of the steps waiting to be fussed. Every time I open the fridge, Merry needs to look inside it. Every time I make a peanut butter sandwich on the counter top, Merry needs to know what I’m doing up there. Every time I run the dry food dispenser for the cat food on the landing, Ash needs me to understand that if I don’t also do that with the downstairs food dispenser then she is going to riot. Maisy just looks at me with her huge green eyes and trills at me and I fold.
My daughter here with me is nineteen and will soon be twenty. We count days between grocery trips — how many packets of ramen do we need between now and next Tuesday? Are you going to eat two of those tonight? Do we have enough eggs? Will we run out of butter this week, do you think?
Mundanity is a gift.
it’s June 1st and it’s Pride month and I’m not alone and neither are you.
We’re all here together, wherever ‘here’ is, whatever that means.
I hope you are okay right now. I hope you will be okay later too. I hope there are people that love you.
xox,
Nix
epilogue:
Secure yourself to heaven
Hold on tight, the night has come
Fasten up your earthly burdens
You have just begun
In the ink of the night I saw you bleed
Through the thunder I could hear you scream
Solid to the air I breathe
Open-eyed and fast asleep
Falling softly as the rain
No footsteps ringing in your ears
Ragged down worn to the skin
Warrior raging have no fear
Secure yourself to heaven
Hold on tight, the night has come
Fasten up your earthly burdens
You have just begun
I’m kneeling down with broken prayers
Hearts and bones from days of youth
Restless with an angel’s wing
I dig a grave to bury you
No feet to fall
You need no ground
Allowed to glide right through the sun
Released from circles guarded tight
Now we all are chosen ones
— selection of lyrics from Secure Yourself by Indigo Girls, one of the first songs that told me being queer was a many-faceted experience of joy and grief and that it was mine
featured images is a photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
