It’s been a little more than three months since my last published post here.
But actually, let me go back further than that. It’s been 274 days since I boarded a plane in Detroit Metro Airport, less than an hour’s drive from where I lived at the time, and left the States. I connected to my overseas flight in Dallas and crossed the international date line and on January 2nd, the land that is called Australia held that plane as it landed safely.
I spent almost six out of the last nine months in Bangkok, and I am missing Thailand and the people and her weather and loud wildlife at 2am and the spirit house in our village.
And now, I am back here, in the southern hemisphere. Back in the place where I was born and grew up, it was just recently the Autumn Equinox and is getting on into pumpkin season. Here, it is deep into spring and will soon be summer. The waxing crescent moon in the night sky hangs like it is suspended, the light moving across it in a way I am still getting used to. The stars at night have been thrown generously across the dark; there are too many of them to see. (Looking at the sky with my old glasses prescription is part of the problem.) Everywhere is big here in the south of the country: the sky is big, the land is wide, the sunset colors spread out so far. Trees bigger than the ones I grew up around are everywhere in the farms this property is part of. Spiders and birds and bugs and cows and stray cats and snakes and dogs are always nearby.
(Not as many kangaroos out this way, though.)
Am I still on a very long vacation adventure? Yes. Am I taking measures to keep myself safe from fascism? Also yes. Will I go back to Bangkok? HELL YES.
I am waking up when my alarm goes off at 9am and rolling toward the camper window by my bed to pull open the curtain and wind open the pane of glass so the morning breeze can blow in while I lie there and let my brain try and put itself back together for the day as my morning meds soak into my bloodstream.
I gained enough muscle mass and reconditioned my body enough while I was in Thailand that I can participate in the family community the way I’ve wanted to. I can wash dishes, I can do laundry and hang it on the line, I can pick up the six-year-old boy so he can feel tall. I can move heavy things. I can walk around town or around the property and wear my boots so the snakes don’t chomp on me. And when my new glasses get here in a week or two, I can put on my prescription sunglasses and do some of the driving errands.
In short, this all feels rather new. And it feels like a respite, in the way that only the daily routine of family — coffee, breakfast, laundry, lunch, errands, laughter, dinner, tickle fights, bedtime, staying up late — can be a respite. And we worked hard for this bit of peace.
I have done so many hard and scary things this year.
I didn’t think that fleeing my death would be part of my life’s history. If anyone wanted to double check to make sure I wasn’t making shit up, all they would have to do is look at the things the woman who gave birth to me is still posting on social media. Look at the image she has as her profile image, which she put up shortly after October 7th 2023. It is not lost on me that the Nazis are in my living ancestral lineage. I do not take this shame as my own; it is not my responsibility to cleanse their sins. It is my responsibility to be a person who is not a fascist. It is my responsibility to be a good community member, a good family member, a respectful dweller of the land I’m on, conscious of what I choose to do, what I choose to say, how I treat those I know, and how I treat those that I don’t.
This year may yet bring me things I did not expect, to places I didn’t know I’d see, to choices I have known I will need to make.
I had a birthday last month and now I’m forty-seven but I feel like I really don’t know how old I am any more. Who is this person that I am? I am so familiar with myself and yet the circumstances I am in feel so unfamiliar, but they aren’t scary. I am not afraid. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a child in a family where there is no fear dogging your every step the way it was when I was last a child.
Maybe this is (for me) a new timeline, not because I’ve skipped over all the bad parts of another one to get to the good part, but because my family and I have done an extraordinary thing on our way to do more extraordinary things and the real trick here is that we all get to live.
I get to live.
I am queer, trans, pagan, neurodivergent, anti-fascist, and I get to stay alive a while longer yet.
