“It's not possible to constantly hold onto crisis.
You have to have the love, you have to have the magic.
That's also life..." - Toni Morrison
TW: suicidal ideations and violence
"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down..."
"If you surrendered to air, you could ride it." - Toni Morrison
I say that home is wherever water flows, and now I am flying across oceans and man-made borders, I am flowing back home in river-like tears. I say that home is grief and family is when we love and hate at the same time. I learned sacrifice from blood family and compromise from chosen families. I watched my mother hide and weep growing up in the city, then I witnessed myself cry and rot away trying to survive in a city... I say home is the city is a tree is where people make love is where people starve is where people make art is where people kill. People die trying to love and trying to eat and trying to live another day. People rot from the insides trying to laugh and sleep for another day. I say home is wherever you can sleep for another night dreaming of rest. I say home is only but a dream for dreamers like us... I wish to give offerings to the all trees that I have ever touch in prayer trying to hang myself from: I ask for forgiveness; I kneel and bow for a final embrace from Turtle Island. Thank you so much, to all that have wanted and kept me alive...
"Freeing yourself was one thing.
Claiming ownership of that freed self was another."
- Toni Morrison
I think someone said that they knew our friendship is over, once they called or allowed wellness check to be called on me in my own house. And I remember a quote from this 2006 Taiwanese drama that someone said: "I may not be your friend, but you will always be mine"... People forget that my dreams are to be able to hug my own rapists; people forget that I have unfortunately called the police, on my own blood family due to domestic violence. People forget, that I want to choose love. It all reminds me of a few years ago when I ended my friendship with a cis-and-possibly-queer white man, after he said that the revolution doesn't have a place for him anyways, that he can not and will not make change... Why have we, as queer and trans people, become so afraid of choose love, to risk for change, to bare it all naked with letting our weapons and armours down ? When did we become so comfortable, that we sleep with complicity at night ? Where your silence will not save you, my ideals tried to kill me, and when it all crumbles: can we still be friends ? We deserve solidarity and empathy, we deserve each other even if we don't know how to love without hurting yet... May we learn to love in ever safer and softer harm reduction.
"I don't want your love and light if it doesn't come with solidarity and action... I speak a lot about radical empathy. Its an empathy that moves beyond 'I'm sorry about what you're going through' and into a space that demands we ask, 'how does the way I move through the world play into your pain as you move through the world ?'"
- Rachel Elizabeth Cargle
I'm afraid that home is crying and carrying a body to the airport, to fly across borders and oceans in grief, that home is a space going everywhere anywhere but nowhere. Home is you at your worst, home is enough time to get better enough to leave again. Home is a conversation impossible without google translate; home is a grandmother traded into marriage with bags of rice... I want to live. I want to hold both my grandmas' hands while there's still time, I want to learn stories, I want to ask questions. I want to live. I want to love my mother the way she loves me enough to try learning softness. I want to live. I want to start fresh and get to know my own father and brother again, even as they still grieve a son or a brother. I want to live, and I want to love as much as I can while there's time left. I want to live, I want to visit the mountain my father grew up in and thank the trees. I want to sing to the rivers I grew up learning how to swim in, I want to live as I remember... I want to relive love and remember life. May I navigate family with grace, may I stay in my truth as a non-binary femme in a society that still forgets. May I explain gender diversity even with language/ideal barriers, through a heart full of forgiveness for both myself and others. I remember crying non-stop on a flight years ago to Lisbon, Portugal, wondering why I wanted to travel across borders to teach respect. Why I thought it was needed for me to go to the colonizers' land to share my gender research, why it hurt so much to teach solidarity when there's been no support offered... Home is loving grief through softness, and learning to leave when a house is no longer a home - when respect nor consideration is given.
Today I may leave with messages calling me a liar, manipulative and selfish, called manipulative because I'm telling my story - because I'm no longer willing to hide or apologize for a co-sharing environment that I'm not the only one responsible for. And I may be called selfish for needing a home that I feel safe enough to heal in, but I have not lied. Though I should accept as all truths exist at once, I have not slandered or speak of others' human character, however I have been told of mine again and again in messages of edging on screenshots or timelines as something to prove. We all want to prove how hurt or helpless we have been, but never have I interpreted harm as intentional but just unfortunate. I have, however, been intentionally to only repeat the things said to me and describe the choices made. How disgraceful to the time spent together calling each other family. How disgraceful for myself as I still write in full transparency, despite people's discomfort. How disgraceful we are to the survival we live, when at the end there is nothing but pride, grief, and shame... I'm curious to how we can heal from this, I'm excited of how we can be better to each other beyond ourselves. I'm learning to have hope, because I have to live. And as Mariame Kaba reminds us: "hope doesn't preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope is not an emotion, you know ? Hope is not optimism"... Hope is a discipline. And my heart is full for all who have had faith in me, in the words I write, and in the world that I dream of living in together.
However I shall also leave today with love-like words and hug-like wishes. I know I'm wrong for burdening each other, including myself, with socio-political ideals that we say we believe in, I know we still need to survive. Yet we must survive softer, better with each other. We must navigate conflicts better than to become violence itself, to choose grief because "it is what it is"... We deserve more than just choosing grief because it's familiar, because sometimes change hurts more but I believe that we can do it. We will win by choosing love I know we can. As a triple Earth sign in Sun, Moon, and Rising, I want to take a leap of faith, I need to fly away and into the unknown. I am letting go and choosing to believe that it doesn't always get better, but we get stronger, together. I pray we be softer with each other but first ourselves, I hope we learn grace, and offer peace when life gets messy... Thank you, to all the mess we deal with as we try to heal. I'm sorry for holding onto people so tight that it pained, I'm sorry for it to get to this point. I'm sorry for being so stubbornly triggered that I could not see anyone other than the people I was trying to love/be loved by. Thank you so much to the people who never gave up on me, who who kept holding on even despite fear or uncertainty. Thank you... It is with my deepest apologies and regret, that goodbye is more bitter and sad than sweet.
'An Invitation to Radical Tenderness...'
by Dani d'Emilia and Vanessa Andreotti:
"Radical Tenderness is being receptive to the teachings of our shadows...
It is to embrace oneself as both cute and pathetic.
It is being courageously vulnerable.
It is knowing that we pee, we poo, we cry and we puke.
It is about being the ocean, watching the waves.
Radical Tenderness is engendering new forms of co-existence...
It is witnessing ourselves and each other moving between our comfort, stretch and panic zones. It is knowing that people can begin to heal when they are heard. It is breaking the cycle in which people with trauma are demanded to share their stories in order to be validated...
It is looking at painful and difficult things with the love of really wanting to see.
It is about being open to what we can't and may never understand.
It is learning to breathe water together.
Radical Tenderness is to practice engaged detachment as we hospice a dystopic world, while respecting the teachings it offers.
Radical Tenderness is assisting with the birth of something new, which is potentially, but not necessarily, wiser, without suffocating it with projections.
Radical Tenderness is being critical and loving, at the same time."