a Traveling Dragon/on Mental Health/on Queerness/the Cycle of the Seasons

how can we know how precious it is?

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how can we know how precious it is

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

Secure Yourself by Indigo Girls: link to listen on Spotify

featured images is a photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

on Chosen Family/on Grief/on Hope/on Love/Poems/the Work

with an everlasting love {poem}

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with an everlasting love

my moments with you
seem so few and far between,
crystallized by memory
into precious stones to keep and hold,
and I will never forget them.
I could never forget you.

when this lifetime’s memory fades
there will still be a hearthfire in me,
warm and eternal —
it doesn’t matter if I remember why.
we built it together
and it will burn in me forever.
whatever eldest ancestor can give me,
let it be this.

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.

whatever promises I could have made,
I made them to you,
or beside you,
or with you nearby.

shadows will never be as lonely.
hope will always be closer.
grief will always remind me of love.
joy will sometimes look like you —
fire to my fire,
wisdom in my wondering,
guidance in my wandering,
laughter in my laughter,
strength in my bravery,
compassion in my pain,
peace in my quiet,
memory in my myth.

you changed my forever
into something more beautiful.
something more complete.
an existence more made of promises fulfilled.
a cosmos no longer cold.
uncertainty no longer terrifying.
fear no longer paralyzing.
assurance of rest to come.

I have made a handful of true choices
that changed me fundamentally,
no looking back and no regrets.
may I never speak untruth.
choosing you was never wrong.
whether or no,
you’re stuck with me forever.
this is the gift you gave me:
I am never alone.
this is the gift we created out of who we are:
together we are never alone.

I won’t tell you who this was written for, although it’s possible you might guess. The one I wrote it for knows and that makes the upwelling of my need to speak and the tears that fell on my lap more than worth it. Sometimes there is pain layered into love but that does not make it any less true.

xox, beloved —
Nix

epilogue:

I long to feel my heart burned open wide
‘Til nothing else remains
Except the fires from which I came
Like parted souls, divided for an age
Awe and wonder, I’d embrace
And the world anew again

But now, this picture from me fades
From still’s cold hand, there’s no reprieve
Light the fire in me

Shine, shine your light on me
Illuminate me, make me complete
Lay me down and wash this world from me
Open the skies and burn it all away
‘Cause I’ve been waiting
All my life, just waiting
For you to shine, shine your light on me

I dreamed the world with my eyes open
But time moved on and then
New worlds begin again
Oh my heart, in this universe so vast
No moment was made to last
So light the fire in me

Shine, shine your light on me
Illuminate me, make me complete
Please shine, shine your light on me
No hesitation, make me complete
Lay me down and wash this world from me
Open the skies and burn it all away
‘Cause I’ve been waiting
All my life, just waiting
For you to shine, shine your light on me

— selection of lyrics from Nova, by VNV Nation

featured photo by Aldebaran S on Unsplash

on Chosen Family/on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Grief/on Hope/on Mental Health

because our choices led us here

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a dark sky with clouds and a rainbow arching down from left to right. there are some tree tops at the bottom of the image.

There is no comfortable way to exist in a world where fascism has risen again and is viciously eating as many people as possible as quickly as possible. There is no way to stop seeing it without fully disconnecting from the rest of the world. And I doubt that anyone who’s here reading this has done that, or even truly wants to. I want a break from suffering, but not at the expense of compassion and anger on behalf of everyone caught in the beast’s jaws.

if we knew then what we know now, would we have made different choices?

I think it’s easy to assume that if we had more information, more knowledge, more wisdom, that when the choices were made that led us to this place, we would have done something different. But the different thing is probably the harder thing, and even though we all know that sometimes the better thing is the harder one, we don’t naturally choose the hard way.

All the choices that led us here would probably be made the same way again.

And even if that isn’t true, we can’t go back and do it differently. Maybe, hopefully, there is another timeline where this is not what happened. In another timeline, you and I and the people we love are safe. In another timeline, trans people were not continuously erased with violence. In another timeline, nobody was deported. In another timeline, perhaps there was more kindness.

I am afraid.

I have an idea of how all of this might play out, but seeing it happening might break me. I don’t know if I am strong enough to survive simply witnessing all of this. I don’t know if I am strong enough to stay alive and stay here and take care of my family and love everyone who has passed and everyone who is still here. I want to be, but wanting something to be true doesn’t mean that it’s true.

we are together but separate.

I am in our Thailand house. I can hear the cats downstairs, I can feel the heat radiating through the walls of the building, I can smell the shampoo from someone’s shower. I washed my laundry and dried it earlier and put it away just a little while ago. I had some lunch. I drank some coffee. I added things to the household shopping list.

And I read the comments on the thread I posted yesterday afternoon (which is the middle of the night in the part of the US that I’m from), and I am achingly aware of all the things I cannot do.

hey y’all — if you’re trans and you haven’t updated any of your documentation but you plan on doing that, DON’T

it’s too late for that. you probably won’t be able to keep your identity documents if you submit them for any reason. a deadname is awful but it’s literally not worse than a concentration camp.

(posted on Threads on April 15)

I can’t help anyone with the very real very terrifying fact that some trans people have already been denied identity documentation, that some of them have had their documentation confiscated, that some of them are stuck in a limbo between having some documents changed but not all of them. I can’t help anyone who is now unable to leave the US legally if they want to. I can’t help anyone who might be deported or harmed or killed or disappeared. I can’t do ANYTHING but speak words into the chaos of everyone screaming in anger and fear, just in case it helps one person. Just one person. Please let me help just one person more.

Most of the rest of my family is safely in Australia, where the fascism can’t directly hurt them. But I’m not with them because I’m here with other family. I can’t smell their shampoo or wet hair right out of the shower. I can’t hear our five year old giggling. I can’t feel the hot wind or see the red dirt of a land I only recently met. I can’t cry on the shoulders of my partners or hold them when they need to do the same. I feel the distance and the uncertainty because nothing is ever completely immune from a sudden change.

I miss them and right now in this moment I am afraid, although I know that feeling ebbs and flows just like grief and just like any other kind of pain. Sometimes it feels like too much to bear, and sometimes I can be the person who speaks words of love and hope to my beloveds.

I don’t know what to say, really, except that this is so incredibly hard and none of us know how to get through it, not really.

All we have is who we are and what we give. Right? Even in a crumbling empire those words are true.

Who I am is an amalgamation of all the choices I’ve made and before that, the choices my parents and other adults in my life made, and even before that there were choices made by the people who wrote and published the christofascist curriculum that I was eventually taught while I was homeschooled, and the awful thing about that is I had no idea that’s what it was until decades later. As a kid I was unimpressed with it and took nothing from it except that it didn’t make sense to me, but that was as far as my thoughts about it went. I had no idea it would lead to a place like this.

What I give, I want to believe, is sometimes hope, sometimes truthfulness, sometimes really good jokes, sometimes meaningful insight, sometimes wisdom. And I also bring with me my trauma and my trust issues and my need for love and my fear of not being enough, and the behaviors that stem from those things.

If you were hoping I knew how to end this post I’m very sorry to be disappointing to everyone including myself. I don’t know how. I don’t think there is a way to end a conversation about these things, because the things don’t stop happening so that there can be a break for a while.

All I can do is cry and dry my tears and drink some water and remember to eat some food and do the little things that keep the cats and other people here safe and healthy, including myself. All I can do right now is try to make sure I said what I meant to say here, and then stop gnawing on my own soul and just publish it and hope, once again, please let me help just one person more.

Please try to take comfort in whatever non-harmful thing can bring it to you today. Please try not to carry the weight of this brokenness on your own back. Please take one deep breath. Please stay.

xox,
Nix

epilogue:

weep not for roads untraveled
weep not for paths left alone
’cause beyond every bend is a long blinding end
it’s the worst kind of pain I’ve known

weep not for roads untraveled
weep not for sights unseen
may your love never end, and if you need a friend
there’s a seat here, alongside me

— opening verse from Talking to Myself — One More Light Live by Linkin Park

featured images is a photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash