the Infinite

I have been thinking and pondering and thinking and hemming and hawing about how and what to say about this new adventure I am on with my chosen family.

I still don’t know that I have the right words, or at least not the words I would prefer more, but I am going to do my best.

Two years ago this March, two of my family — Rob and Rose — and I visited Ireland for about three weeks. We went partly because we had never been and always wanted to go, but the main reason was to see if it was a viable choice for us to potentially move there as a big chosen family. It was really difficult for me not to share everything as it was happening there, because it was such a meaningful experience for me. Even considering the possibility of immigrating to a place where some of my ancestors were born (and the place they immigrated from) has been somewhat difficult. I grew up poor, and that has influenced the ways I think about what I am and am not allowed to do or to want to do, even as a grown-ass adult.

We’ve spent the better part of the last two years planning and refining plans and researching and refining plans and doing more investigating and research and more planning. We wanted to be able to actually move to Ireland by the autumn of 2024, but all of the gestures at everything in the United States caused our timelines to slip by several months, and some of the things we needed to do in preparation for that kind of move weren’t started in time for us to be ready for a move in the autumn.

So now we are doing something completely different.

For the next twelve or so months, we are taking a gap year — a long lovely holiday — in Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, and more of the Asia Pacific countries. Is this something I ever thought I would be able to do? Um, NO. See above where I mentioned that I grew up poor; even considering a vacation at any point in time in my life was a nerve-wracking guilt-filled experience, because what if I didn’t deserve it? What if someone was mad at me about it? What if I just wasn’t allowed for some numinous reason?

Guess what? I don’t have to prove to literally anyone that I deserve to experience life in the ways I’m able, at any point in time. If you’re reading this (I know some of you are reading this) and you disagree, you can either find a new perspective here that helps you feel curious about your own life experiences and expectations, or you can get mad and are welcome to fuck right off. I really do hope it’s the former, though. I am comfortable telling someone to fuck off, but I don’t like to if I don’t need to.

Hang on — I bet you’re wondering how I got here

Let me do a mini-introduction of the people I’ll be talking about, since now I can stop being mysterious for safety reasons and can use their names and refer to the different relationships we have with one another. And I’ll be able to use the correct pronouns too. All of us are a flavor or several of neurodivergent, whether it’s autism, ADHD, or other neurospicy brain structures. I won’t speak for others on that unless they give me the okay to do so. Personally, I have a somewhat mild mood disorder that I am able to treat very well with the prescription my doctor gave me, and I am autistic + have ADHD as well as C-PTSD, and currently experiencing the world differently while I work to take off the masks of “normal behavior” that I took on so that I could survive in the world I have lived in. My long-suffering and beloved therapist has helped me so very much.

Me: I’m Phoenix, and most of the time people call me Nix, which I love. It is a privilege to choose your own name and I am still so excited when my correct name is used, rather than my government name (my deadname, otherwise known as the name currently on my birth certificate and all forms of ID). My pronouns are they/them.

StarChild: my spouse of eight (?!?) years, who has been such an integral part of my life I have almost forgotten what it was like when I was without them. They are also disabled and share many of the same chronic conditions that I do, which is a weirdly comforting thing, because we can understand each other’s physical and emotional pain in a bone-deep way. I have never been in a long-term relationship for more than four years and have been with many toxic or abusive partners, so even the eight years we’ve spent together blows my mind whenever I think about it. StarChild’s pronouns are they/them.

Vincent: my oldest, whom I cherish with my life. Vincent is my smol emotional support silly little guy, although it’s a lot more than that. I am constantly, quietly (unless I’m being rather loud) amazed at the life it gets to experience because it is so extremely different from mine at the same age. I will be using it/its pronouns for Vincent although there may be more variety there, but that level of nuance isn’t necessary for writing about things.

[I don’t usually talk about my second eldest because the way we separated from one another was painful in ways I can’t express very well. It is what it is, for now.]

Bee: my third (in age order) child, a whole-ass adult, whom I also cherish with my life. She is the person who invisibly sticks as close to me as possible when we are going places, the person who falls asleep on my shoulder during a long airplane ride because it feels safe and okay. Bee’s pronouns are she/her.

Sam: my fourth (in age order) child, almost sixteen, living full-time with his dad. I’m using that name and he/him pronouns until he tells me he prefers otherwise. We get to text each other once or twice a week, and I have a deeply complex relationship with him, which is often tricky. He’s a teenager and doesn’t usually get my humor and is a beautiful handsome person all on his own. I cherish Sam with my life, even if he’d rather I maybe didn’t. Sam’s pronouns are he/him.

Robert: my youngest child, five years old, who was born barely pre-pandemic and is being raised in a family that doesn’t punish him for being as neurospicy as he is. I love him dearly and am constantly amazed that I get to be one of his parents even though I am not biologically on-paper related. (Yet! Other countries are much more understanding of the nuance of chosen family, which blows my fucking mind.) Robert is also called Bug, and right now his pronouns that we use are he/him, but he will tell us if that changes, if he wants to. He is, for many of us, a bright and shining reason to keep going.

Rob: my queer-platonic life partner, Rose’s spouse, and co-parent, sometimes very misunderstood by the wider world, precious to me for reasons I probably couldn’t put into coherent words. I love Rob with a part of my heart I didn’t even know that I had access to. I can’t imagine life without him. On this website, I’ll use he/him pronouns until he lets me know his comfort level with different pronouns here. Sometimes one’s identity is both intrinsic and fragile, because people on the whole don’t tend to be understanding or curious, in favor of assuming and passing judgment instead because they don’t or can’t understand. Rob is also one of my reasons to keep going. He is one of Robert’s biological parents.

Rose: my co-parent, Rob’s spouse, and Robert’s other biological parent, whom I had the honor (no sarcasm intended) of driving to the hospital in the early morning when it was time for Robert to be outside of mum. My personal experience with giving birth to four babies definitely came in handy because Rose would (and does) endure an unimaginable amount of physical and emotional pain, and almost didn’t realize it was Time For The Hospital. I think Rose and I are life partners, although I don’t know at all how to describe what our relationship is. Rose is a warm and safe place, a strong and fearless person even when she thinks she is being very afraid. The pronouns I’ll use for Rose here are she/her unless she lets me know otherwise.

Ashley: last on the list but not last in my heart; my co-parent to Robert, and even though we haven’t given it many words, I consider them to be a queer-platonic life partner as well. They are Rose’s queer-platonic life partner and Rob’s queer-platonic husband, although there are more relationships they also have that maybe I will get to talk about later. I love Ashley so much. The way they chose us to be a part of, as a family, is one of the bravest and most meaningful things I’ve witnessed. They are hilarious and darkly beautiful like Persephone. They introduced me to K-pop and I will literally never be the same, and I fucking love it. Ashley’s pronouns are they/them.

And I cannot forget our cats: Flame, the old man who against all odds continues to choose to exist in physical form; Maisy, second oldest, the fluffiest tortie with the biggest most unnerving green eyes; Ash, who is not the oldest of the three siblings but she fuckin acts like it and we are just fine with that; Merry, a loveable asshole who does asshole behavior all the time but he’s so damn cute and he LOVES his people; Pippin, much smaller than her siblings Ash and Merry, a black kitty with glowy green-gold eyes who wants to be perceived and also does NOT want to be perceived; and Callie, our tiny calico kitty that for a long time had the moniker Captain Pickles because her favorite place to hide and sleep was a box made for transporting pickles.

Well, that took a lot more words than I expected. Are you still here? Okay, good. You made it this far!

As I was saying,

We are doing something completely different.

We’ve chosen to spread ourselves across several continents, in order to get where we are going, and so that we can have experiences that are new and scary and wonderful and are helping all of us to relax our parasympathetic nervous systems because nobody in Australia or Thailand or, eventually, Ireland, are going to give us the kind of shit we constantly dealt with in the states.

All of us adults identify as queer, and we all have spicy brains, and most of us are disabled to one degree or another, with varying intensity levels of chronic illness. We have been learning and adapting to our individual needs, and discovering the ways that we can hold one another in community, with a great deal of love and understanding. I don’t think we could exist as wholly ourselves if we were not in community in the ways that we are.

We have changed our fate and it has not been without great cost, but it is exactly what we wanted, what we needed, what we craved, what we cried for.

All of that, I think, is a pretty good primer — from my perspective — on what is going the fuck on with us at this moment in time, what has happened in the past, and what will happen in the future.

Most of us are practicing pagans, and a small subset of us are a coven in the tradition of the Path of Light. Yes, I know that sounds weird and maybe ominous, and you aren’t wrong, but you probably don’t know why you aren’t wrong. When we show up as the Ourselves that we are within the tradition, we can be compassionate beyond measure, we can do impossible things, and we can be frightening when it’s called for. It is not a beginner-level tradition to belong to; it is probably one of the most difficult traditions to be part of. Not for the faint of heart.

Now that I’ve said all the things here, I can share so much more in all the places I like to share; I am here (and you can subscribe to this particular website if you want to, the subscription form is still in the sidebar I think), I am on Mastodon, I am on Facebook (eww, but still), I am on Instagram (also eww, but still), I am on Matrix for secure comms, I am on Signal (username nixkelley.74) for secure comms, and who knows where else my life will lead me. I welcome interaction but if you are going to be a shithead, please do expect to be blocked. If you are an EXTRA shitty shithead, expect to be blocked with prejudice.

(For more reading, go to Rob’s website and see what he is posting because we have no hinges now because we don’t need them any more.)

My address is still in the United States and I am a US citizen. In the future perhaps this will change, but for now I am on holiday and did you know there are so many cockatoos in Australia? And how loud they are?

If you haven’t seen a kangaroo jump in place, I saw it, and it was so extremely funny. I think it just didn’t want to lose momentum but two smaller kangaroos stopped for whatever reason and the scene was so weird and new and amusing.

Right now until our SIM cards are sorted out between carriers, I don’t have very good internet connection most of the time, but I am managing much better than I expected to, and I am grateful for these new glimpses of a life I never knew was possible.

So long, my many beautiful friends, and may we meet again.

If you will happen to be in any parts of the world where I also happen to be, perhaps we can find each other and have hugs and a cup of coffee or tea together. And if we don’t see one another in person again, it does not mean that our relationship no longer means anything to me. This is just a new adventure I am having away from the fascist carceral harmful horrifying trashfire that is the USA.

We are proof that the queer, chronically ill, pagan, neurodivergent can also choose wildly different things; it is not the sole purview of rich WASP people for whom traveling around the world is easy.

xox,
Nix

epilogue:

walk in the shadow land
nobody’s innocent
hand in mouth we live like demons

stuck in the phantom zone
lost in the thunderdome
twilight ruled the day

we found the impossible
now we’re unstoppable
taking off the world beneath us

strong under pressure
we’ll make it together
our universe will change

freedom looking down a telescope
starlight never been so beautiful
whole world waiting for us, time to go
escaping gravity

we’ll be rising high above the rain
sunset never gonna be the same
thunder calling us to outer space
escaping gravity

straight to the galaxy
faster than sanity
left behind a land forsaken

black holes and meteors
riding on shooting stars
feelings like our dreams

we shoot down a satellite
wings of a butterfly
constellations recreating

fighting for liberty
raising the energy
bursting at the seams

freedom looking down a telescope
starlight never been so beautiful
whole world waiting for us, time to go
escaping gravity

— Escaping Gravity, by TheFatRat & Cecilia Gault (no link because my internet, she is slow)

featured image is a photo by Nick Jones on Unsplash

Do you ever wonder why we are so afraid of the dead? Or is it that we are afraid of death, because to us who are living in chronological time it feels so final. We are afraid of endings, maybe. We are afraid of not finishing something, even though death is the finishment of life.

Wrapped up as a perfect circle. The snake bites its own tail not because it is foolish, but because everything is a cycle. The beginning is the end is the beginning is the end.

I do think it’s possible to die with regrets. I think there must be many spirits still tied to Here because of grief, regret, guilt, fear. I think the dead have not necessarily moved beyond strong emotions. I think the dead sometimes need to be walked home.

In the midwest, in southern Michigan, autumn is a full sensory experience of the natural cycle of death. The leaves of deciduous trees changing color and then falling, then fading.

Now the leaves are mulch for the earth.

Now the earth will draw into itself, protecting what is underneath, preparing for a sleep of many months.

Now the animals get ready to hibernate. Now the sandhill cranes cease their stalking across the fields and yards. Now there are squirrels burying as many acorns as they can find, letting the earth cover their last harvest before the winter.

Smell the air and you will understand the sweet rotting death of thousands of leaves. They are becoming what is inevitably, naturally, the next thing they will be.

Now the whispers of trees are inaudible as they speak to each other through their root systems, nourishing themselves and each other, surviving in their long slow timeline. There are trees alive that were there before you were born; there are saplings nestling into the ground that were born during your lifetime; there will be trees growing after you are gone.

All the dirt you ever see is made of fragments of so many other things. The earth itself is a record of all our lives and all our deaths.

We are always dying, and I think we forget this on purpose. Because we are so afraid of death and afraid of the dead. Because we don’t know what happens afterward. We are the snakes biting our own tails trying to make a perfect unbroken circle of our lives so that they never end.

How sweetly foolish we are.

The point is not that the veil may be thinner today; the point is that we are facing toward death and trying out what it feels like to be afraid and look anyway.

If you believe that your ancestors can watch you — and I hope it isn’t all of them at the same time because that is a crowd far too large — you may hear them whisper to you today. We love you. Look how alive you are. I can see my memories reflected in your eyes.

If you believe that the cycle of the seasons has meaning; even in this burning world, even though our seasons are changing and have already changed; these are the last days of the waning year. Let them pass naturally. Let what is dying, die with dignity. Let it touch your heart so that you don’t forget the depth of meaning held in death’s mysteries.

Pause here, but don’t stay here. There may be many reasons to be afraid; fear not. We spin on an angled axis around the endless circle, closer then further away, then closer again.

Being in death’s presence is a gift. (Not every gift is meant to comfort you.)

None of your love is wasted. All the love and effort and meaning that you have known, all of the ways you have fought for your life and for others, all of it is added to the immeasurable breadth of the universe. It will always exist, like the atoms at the foundation of your physical body.

Never gone.

If there is a weight on your heart today, if your chest feels full and tight, breathe into it. Let death be what death is. Put down your desire to control every piece of what scares you, because it is impossible to do. Have faith, at least, in these words.

Time can be measured in human lifetimes, but it is also measured in epochs, in centuries and millennia, in the evidence of ourselves still hiding layers down in the earth. We have been here. How can we forsake the place that loved us every moment we have existed?

Grief is a natural call-and-response with love. The more love, the more grief.

Hope is necessary when grief is overwhelming. Grief is meant to be felt, and honored, and given space, and when the wave has crested and gone away for a while, it is time to remember how to hope.

Take your grief to the stars. To the shadows under the trees in the dark. To the moonless night. Take your grief to the growing things. Take your grief with you not as a burden, but as a gift. Put your grief in one hand and hope in the other, and hold them both dearly because they belong to you.

Right now you are alive.

It should be effortless
A little of nothingness
It could be anything but this
Remember to take it in
It might be the last time
That we ever meet like this

If heaven and hell were to collide
Would you choose darkness over light

Did you leave enough of you, you behind
Cause no one lives forever
Forever is just a word
That everybody says when they get hurt
Forget forever

— 44 (Forget Forever) by WOOSUNG

44 (Forget Forever) by WOOSUNG on Soundcloud

I am writing something that will probably take all of next month to finish, but that’s okay. Everything in its own time.

xox,
Nix

featured image is a photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

and now for something completely different