I have had two three heat-related chronic illness flares in the past week. And it’s very difficult to explain what those are like, but I tried anyway.
it’s hot, I think I can walk through the sunshine it’ll be fine this time, just a short walk and I have my hat on so long as I don’t need to do anything else for a while
I forgot to wear my UV jacket with the long sleeves, it’s hanging up by my camper door and I forgot anyway it’ll be fine? I’m fine I think
I sit at my desk and my insides feel kind of like I am about to fold up in half, across a pocket of weak dizzy adrenaline-spiky orange swirly energy that’s how I know I flew too close to the sun
I have to go outside again this time with my umbrella, fuck it’s hotter out than a little while ago, I’m pretending I can walk in a straight line, I am not going to fall over it’s probably fine? I’m fine I think
back inside and the spiky worry swirl of weakness is spreading a little, dammit, it was less than three minutes I think I need to go to the toilet there is a hot rectangle shape of heat across my forehead and this is when I start to fall because my heart rate is dropping, so of course my legs can’t support whatever is happening, I’m fine I think I’m not fine, I have to sit down
why are my words,,, so unable I am breathing too fast but tired I can’t say anything sleep,. rest, the cold floor like it’s how the floor holds you when you”re sick, am I sick/? right, yes just breathing, not die just right now how silly crying? why what is the ppoint what does this do maybe its a crash or why can”t I think
I forgot I forgot to take a rescue med where is my water bottle? it’s not that hot,,, I’m probably fine now, I’m not fine it’s okay don’t worry about me sorry sorry please don’t worry but also help, I feel sick and stupid and I am trapped in my own head and my own body it’s too hot today
cw: I’m talking about tracking my health data, and also about spiders; you can skip around or just skip this one in particular, no hard feelings xoxo
I live in Australia now, and I have been acclimating to much hotter (and dryer) air temperatures. It helps that I went and stayed for almost six months in Thailand this year; there’s nothing like VERY heavy humidity and heat all day and night to adjust your body to that kind of nonsense.
I am also getting used to referring to temperatures in Celsius, although I do still calculate them in Fahrenheit to grasp the physical and emotional weight of the heat sometimes, like for example today’s predicted high of 37C. This is the equivalent of 98.6F, which is the body temperature that I was taught as a child was “normal.” Above 98.6, you might have a fever. Below 98.6, maybe you had a naturally lower temperature, or maybe you had hypothermia. Or you were dead! Whichever.
My normal body temperature has always been below 98.6, and here in Australia when I take my temperature and it shows me in Celsius what it is, it hovers between 36.0 and 36.8, which makes sense to me. I don’t think it means anything, but it’s interesting.
Anyway, it’s going to be really fuckin hot out today.
name and gender marker changes
In Victoria (the state where I live) it is now free to change your gender marker / sex at birth, and you can also change your name for free if you do it at the same time. I will be able to do this myself here within a year!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND, THIS PROCESS IS TRICKY AND COMPLICATED IN THE STATES!!! It involves legal paperwork here too, of course, but it is not difficult or impossible; it’s just paperwork. And I can do paperwork. Boy howdy, I have been doing paperwork for decades now. Nobody prepared me for how much paperwork you are always needing to do once you become an adult.
No quicksand, but lots and lots of fucking paperwork, and usually it’s paperwork I already did before.
So, I have the better part of a year to decide if the name I legally take is the same as the one I’ve been going by. There is a secret extra last name that I may add to it, but I’ll decide for sure later.
this ring doesn’t give me superpowers at all
I have a new health tracker ring (they were on sale) so that I can start keeping track of my health data again, which actually means something given that I have established medical care here now. One of the things it does is track steps, but not very well–yesterday I drove an hour and a half into one of the nearby cities for a family member’s medical appointment, and an hour and a half back, and my ring data is positive that I walked (very fast, I guess?!) over 1600 steps while I was, in fact, driving the car.
The other thing that it does, which I need it to do, is track how I am sleeping, because my experience of sleep is pretty shit most of the time. The first night I wore the ring, it said that I slept all of 2 hours 26 minutes. It didn’t even register the first several hours of sleep before I had to get up to go to the bathroom, or the fitful hour or so after the second bathroom trip at 6am. The second night, it had no sleep data at all. I went to bed with a migraine and apparently my body never relaxed enough (based on temperature and heart rate mostly, I think) to register that I was asleep. I certainly did not feel as if I had slept; it was more like I was unconscious for several hours and regained consciousness when I needed the bathroom. I have body temperature and heart rate and blood oxygen data, just not sleep data.
Last night (the third night), I managed to get 5 hours 44 minutes of sleep before I was up early for the bathroom. Hooray for me! Ash is pretty sure that I need to do a sleep test, although we are both also pretty sure that I will fail it. At least I finally got some fucking sleep. It’s going to be hot tonight and hopefully there is enough cool air in my camper from the air conditioner unit that I have a chance of sleeping comfortably.
spiders georg
spiders Georg tumblr meme originally posted by Max Lavergne
As I keep bringing up (annoyingly, perhaps), I now live in Australia, famously the land of everything that is trying to kill you, and also spiders. There are days when we need to remove/re-home multiple spiders from various places inside the house, and occasionally from inside my camper which is where my bed is and also where I keep my stuff.
Most of these are huntsman spiders, of which I now (upsettingly?) am familiar with several species. Some of the spiders we find in our living spaces have deceptively bland names like ‘house spider,’ although we also have orb-weaving spiders, wolf spiders, and daddy long-legs in and around the house on occasion. I’m sure some of you may have seen photos or, unfortunately, VIDEOS, of Very Large huntsman spiders the size of an entire wall, but the ones around here are approximately fist-sized. That’s including the legs, so it’s not a fist-sized body and then a massive amount of pipe-cleaner legs. Although they do kind of look like pipe-cleaners, or like they are wearing corduroys, or stripey socks.
If they weren’t so inherently startling to me, they would be awfully cute. I have tried very hard to learn not to be so immediately frightened of them, because none of them are running at me waving sticks or screaming. Sometimes a spider that needs to be moved is very determined to stay where it is, and we have to cajole them into the large bucket that Vincent uses to safely capture them for relocation. I am almost positive that several recently relocated spiders have come back into the house and needed to be removed again. I do tend to anthropomorphize things quite often, but it seems to me that those spiders have been noticeably peeved.
If I can’t see them (even when I know they’re there somewhere), or they aren’t 1) crawling on me, 2) sitting on any of the things I identify as My Stuff that I Need To Use, or 3) building webs in places inconvenient to me [like doorways], I don’t mind if they are just doing whatever they are doing. I’m not here to kick them off where they live, I just want to be a good roommate to what already lives here. In return, I try to make it obvious that the space I want to occupy is where I’m spending my time, so that it makes sense to them not to try and hang out or live there.
Also: we have a snake bite kit in the big first aid kit by the main door, because it is also Snake Season now that it is quite hot and getting into summer. And we all have health insurance and know what the emergency number is.
it doesn’t feel like christmas to me
I have been emotionally disconnected from the holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year in the states) since last November, and maybe the November before that one back in 2023.
The only reason I know that this is the time of year when there are snow days and Christmas trees and holiday decorations on main streets back where I grew up, is that I see social media posts by my friends and acquaintances who still live there. There are no snow days here but there are decorations and Black Friday sales, which feel odd to me because of the emotional disconnect–and additionally odd because it’s 37 Celsius today but there are Santa decorations for sale in the shops and Christmas-themed baked goods in the grocery store.
how to measure time
Maybe when we move to Ireland, into the same general latitude as the one back in Michigan, I will feel the overlap of cold weather and twinkling colored lights and wrapping paper-covered gift boxes and remember what it feels like to celebrate those holidays in a happy and nostalgic way. Right now, I live in the desert, in a bright and sunny and windy place where my family also lives, and it’s been summer or nearly-summer or recently-summer for me all year because I also was in Thailand for half of it.
The sky at night is brilliant and the moon is bright enough to cast shadows from its first quarter phase through the full and last quarter phase. I don’t know the stars well enough to identify where in the seasons I am based on what I can see; what I see is a vastness, an endlessness, which is strangely comforting and feels perfect and good, but it does not coincide for me with any experience of where I am in time.
Time here, for me, is measured in moon cycles; in the span of a week from Sunday to Saturday; in how much recovery time I need for the effort I’ve spent; in weeks between water deliveries; in library book due dates; in the regularity of the six-year-old’s bedtime every evening; in how many doses of a prescription I have left before I need a new script from my GP; in how many minutes or hours or days it’s been since I last kissed my girlfriend.
ephemera:
my spouse StarChild has started writing at a new blog 👉
I’ve moved from Spotify to Tidal, although I haven’t decided yet if I’ll stay there or go to Qobuz; but for now, I have 2 months and change of listening history, enough for a 2025 Rewind, which you can see here 👉
sometimes when the six-year-old is emotionally dysregulated, this Stray Kids music video helps when we watch it 2-3x and also sing all the English lyrics and some of the Korean ones (deong gideok kung deoreoreo)
I feel tired and it’s only 1:55pm. This is what happens when you get up early!! You need a nap!!!
I hope your days are not too exciting nor too boring. I hope you have shelter and sustenance. I hope you get hugs sometimes. And I hope you don’t have to dissociate too much today in order to make it through.
cw: this post contains spicy language, including descriptions of physical and energetic intimacy.
you are and always have been a light in my darkness. if the journey was long, if our hearts were breaking, if love was all that’s left, it is enough for me. if you were ever my burden, it’s because I wanted to carry you.
I have been part of a polycule, and then a chosen family, for the better part of the past ten years. I first met StarChild — my spouse — and then shortly thereafter I met their polycule, and in the years since we have lost loved ones and gained family members and eventually we chose to leave the country together in one tremendous effort that is still ongoing.
I believe it’s fairly typical for members of polycules to develop new relationships with one another when new people come into the group. It’s one reason that polycules can be messy as all hell. When Rose was pregnant with Robert, our six-year-old, Rob and Rose and I decided to be co-parents together, so we did the doctor and midwife appointments together as we could, and made plans for our new little one, and I drove us all to the hospital when Rose went into labor.
Earlier than that, when I was in and out and in and out again of the hospital with Alex during the worst of his mental health experiences before he turned eighteen, Rob was with me for almost every single visit. He would drive, he would put his name on the hospital paperwork alongside mine so I wasn’t the only person getting phone calls at 2am, he held me while I sobbed on the floor in hopelessness so very many times. He showed up in all the ways that he was capable of, to help me, to help Alex.
When I started having multiple court dates and CPS calls related to my second youngest, Sam, Rob accompanied me yet again; to the court in the early mornings, sitting with me while I replied to emails from my attorney, holding me while I sobbed and screamed. He was there when I saw Sam for the last time before I left the states. He knows the deep pain I carry because he’s looked in my eyes while it happened and watched me tuck it away for later because I could no longer manage to feel it.
we are both Leo sun signs, both strong in our convictions that we are correct, both deeply committed to showing up as who we say we are.
Ever since before we all left the states, Rob has been doing magical work to ease the way for us to get where we all have chosen to go. And because he would never falter, it has taken everything he had to give and more. Now that we are less held down by things in the states that needed dealing with, there is more room for him metaphorically to breathe, but it does not change the fact that he has been near death for months now.
When I wrote with an everlasting love, that was my own working of putting words to the reality that I have grieved much already and that while I am not ready to lose him, I can see a little beyond the grief to the place where there is love and joy and forever-ness.
I came back to Australia in early September. I was so fucking grateful to see Vincent again finally, and Ash, and StarChild, and Robert, and Rob. I felt almost frantic with the worry that I’ve been carrying for so long, hoping and hoping that he would stay alive, stay with us, please stay with us a while longer. I didn’t know what I could do to help him remain, but I wanted to try. I needed to.
a woogity explainer of sorts:
People like those I surround myself with are often not really human. We have regular looking human shaped meatsuits that we inhabit, and for all intents and purposes we function as human, mostly. But part of knowing ourselves (for those of us who are also studying in the Path of Light tradition) is understanding all the pieces of who we are, and if we are non-human, that is a thing to be aware of and to learn about. If I have power and am learning to use it, then I need to know its shape, its flavor, its strengths, its weaknesses, so that I can follow my oaths and my will to the best of my ability.
Rob (and here the name and the pronouns are like a wallpaper of descriptors that serve as signposts for people who just need to know who I’m talking about; because Rob is not necessarily the correct name and he/him are not the correct pronouns, although I have permission to use them like this) is non-human. I am non-human; Rose and StarChild and likely some of my kids are non-human. We acknowledge this about one another and we do our best to learn to be the best version of ourselves that we can, no matter what that looks like.
Rob is fae. Rob is specifically a fae person who needs to take in energy to sustain the body from outside the body itself. People like this who are not disciplined and not willing to control themselves could be easily described as energy vampires; people like this who are disciplined and willing to control themselves have to spend a lot of time finding consensual ways of sharing in the energy of others, in order to stay alive.
I have known for some time that Rob needs this, and it has been painful to see him merely surviving each day, always cold, always hungry, always one moment of too much effort away from a fainting spell.
It’s like knowing he needed a kidney transplant but also knowing that my blood type hasn’t matched in the past, and why would my blood type change?
so I did what I could: I stayed close to him as much as I was able to.
I sat by him on the couch. I would check in with him as he sat on his bed throughout the day, making sure he had water, tea, food, snacks, company, whatever it was that might help in that moment. I wanted to do the thing I’ve trained for as a death doula. I wanted to help provide the support for him to have a good death, a good death of his choosing.
It started with a few moments of closeness as we sat together that seemed suddenly more intimate. He leaned over and asked if he could whisper in my ear, it’s difficult for the intrusive thoughts to take over when my feet are tucked under your cock. (I am not human; I am trans, physically; and I am something closer to male than female, energetically) This made me laugh, and the feeling of being seen and understood by someone who will always respect my boundaries was beautiful and I wanted more of it. Waves of energetic effervescence seemed to rise in bubbles around us from any places we touched.
Once while we sat next to one another I reached up to rub the back of his neck, smoothing his hair out of the way, and then as I brushed his ear by accident, gently, I remembered how sensitive and private his ears are. But the way his breathing changed while he let me continue to touch his neck and hair was, I can’t lie, extremely wonderful. Another time, I fell asleep against him and while I was mostly conscious, I took his left arm that was gently around me and pulled it close to myself. If I could just stay like this. If everything could be okay, just for these moments, let me have this.
and then, it shifted
Rob invited me to attend a convention a few weekends back, with the full understanding that if I decided to go, I would set the pace. If I didn’t like it, if I wanted to leave, if I wanted to play, if I wanted to watch, if I wanted to do anything at all, it was my call to make for the both of us. It was a kink festival, and what he wanted to attend was the expo during the day; there would be acts on different stages, and lots of vendors, indoor and outdoor space, and plenty to do in the city as well when we weren’t at the festival. Then there was the after-party, when the vendor tables would be cleared away and the music would be louder and deeper, and there would be play parties happening in the dark throughout the place.
I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I was honestly kind of scared because what if I didn’t like it. What if all the things I was now feeling and thinking ended up being things I didn’t want to do? But I wanted to go. I wanted to try it out; the worst that could happen was that I didn’t like it, and nobody was going to shame me about how I felt about any of it one way or the other.
We sat down and talked to StarChild beforehand, to give them as much context as we could, and to make sure that they understood that this was partly for me and equally for Rob, because Rob could pick up the ambient energy and use it to replenish his own. And I wanted them to understand that Rob had been getting a trickle of energy from me already, because somehow and somewhere along the way, our energies have become very compatible. Rose was already aware, because Rob communicates with her all the time anyway, and I’m damn fortunate to have a co-parent + life partner who is so beautifully happy for me to be experiencing something this meaningful.
There was a long day of driving on Friday and eventually we made it to the Melbourne suburb where we stayed for the weekend. I barely recall what we had for dinner or if we had any, but what I do remember with my physical and energetic memory is the feeling of just sitting together, just holding each other, just slowly and carefully tracing lines across one another’s arms. Melting a little at a time into puddles. I turned my body into his and put my face in the warm curve of his neck after I told him, I’m in trouble, because you’ve started to smell good. I sniffed his skin and he gasped. I pushed my nose in and inhaled, then I carefully licked, and then I briefly lost my shit and bit him.
It’s an ebb and flow, you know? It goes back and forth. It gives and takes, it pushes and pulls. It’s a dance and a weaving-together. It’s the way a sine wave traces itself in sound. I have perfect pitch; I can see music, usually Beethoven. It’s a brief moment of clarity and mutual belonging. It’s the doing and it’s the time for breaths in between.
I made up my mind and asked how he felt about kissing. This was going to do me in if he said he enjoyed kissing. It would be even worse (better) if he was good at it. There are only two people in the world that I have kissed that I think can almost match me; one of them, I am married to. The other one is Rob.
We slept in separate beds that night because I wasn’t ready to do anything else. On the following day, we grinned at each other a lot as we had breakfast and coffee and got ready to go. We held hands and didn’t stop holding and touching each other. I bought a vibrator at a booth full of colorful toys. We walked outside and saw a really fun skit, then we bought a spiky rotary toy that sent sparkles across my skin when I rolled it up my arm. Later, we went shopping around downtown to find me something to wear for the afterparty, because it has been years since I had clothes that made me feel exactly as desirable and confident as I wanted to. Rob’s jaw is still on the floor in the shop where I found a pair of corset-waisted jeans and a tight button-up vest that both shows off cleavage and downplays it, which is perfect for a nonbinary person like me.
It was dark and loud when we got there and there were several play scenes already happening. The bass was vibrating through the floor and the air and so many queer people dressed up in all the ways they wanted to be were there, just being there with each other, or watching, or laughing and talking. It was profoundly beautiful. And Rob and I just wrapped around each other and rocked back and forth in time to the music and after a little while I needed to sit down because the energy was pretty heady. We found a short stairway in the corner of the hallway outside the main room and then we stayed there for hours, completely losing track of time, holding and kissing and touching and reaching and asking and taking and ebbing and flowing together. I took off my glasses and I could only see his face, or his neck, or his arms, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
After the party started to shut down, we went back to where we were staying and I’m not sure how late we were up that night but I don’t think I checked the time. We slept in the same bed. And I woke up feeling so warm and good and happy and whole.
it’s been twelve days
I’m someone’s boyfriend now. I’m boyfriend-shaped. And my girlfriend (god I love queering language in this queer relationship) is feeling healthier. He’s even generating his own body heat most of the time. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BIG DEAL!!!!!!!
I can’t single-handedly give him all the energy he needs, but what I can give him, I will do so willingly. I’ve already said, what I give you is yours, no strings attached. I will learn to balance my own energy and take plenty of rest so that I can replenish myself, and I will have mind-blowing sex as often as we like which will have a delicious side-effect of giving him some life-affirming energy. I am willing to learn to take better care of myself if it means that my friend, my co-parent, my lover, my girlfriend, my beloved, can live for longer.
I’ve never written anything like this for you before. I’ve never shared anything this intimate without using as many metaphors as possible, and I wanted to write this because I can’t keep it to myself. This new relationship and the way it’s come to be is one of the most affirming things that’s happened to me. It affirms my gender identity, my literal physical appearance, my energetic appearance, the ways that I give and take energetically when I am intimate with someone. May it last for years and decades.
