Gina

I’ve been working on a prose poem called “Reasons For & Against Loving Me.” I can’t tell if it’s awesome or drivel.

Writing about break-ups and your own romantic anxieties in the midst of a Scorpio pink moon kinda means you just go for fucking BROKE, y’all.

Dirty Thirty. Wow.

I am happy and relieved to finally say good-bye to my twenties. But it’s not “good riddance.” It’s more “fond farewell.”

I have learned SO MUCH over this past decade. Also, let’s be real: I have accomplished a really impressive amount of cool stuff over this past decade, both personally and professionally. I’m not even gonna play at being falsely humble or modest here: I’m totally awesome and I kicked a lot of ass in my twenties. I was brave and forthright and honest and bright. Sometimes I made really stupid decisions, bad mistakes. Sometimes I was way too hard on myself.  

But sometimes I was really good to myself. Sometimes, I was bloody spectacular.

So many moments over this past decade were formative. Everything from leaving a horrible abusive relationship at 21 to starting Girl Talk at 25. Graduating college at 22, getting one of two Master’s Degrees at 29 (and being very well on my way to getting my second in May). Starting not one but two manuscripts. The shitty meaningless boring jobs and the work that I loved, the work that fed me. Getting published a lot, teaching a lot, performing a lot. Touring and doing college gigs. Meeting so many sweet people. Making friends who have become beloved family. Building towards actually making a living as a working artist. Bad awkward funny-story sex that still taught me a lot about my body and my boundaries. And the best sex of my entire life, the kind of fucking that left me humming and panting and alive with the utter possibility of the world. Falling in love a few times and becoming a better person for it. Learning so much every time my heart broke open.

But what it all boils down to is this: The biggest thing I learned in my twenties is How To Have A Body. That is the lesson that made all the other joys and discoveries possible. At 20, I was glassy-eyed and constantly underslept, anoretic and running on fumes. To say I was completely fucking dissociated is an understatement. My consciousness floated about 6 inches above my head at all times. Over the past decade, I have gone, slowly and painstakingly but surely, from floating above my head to actually being in my body all the time. To actually listening to my body.

Sometimes I want to send a picture of myself now to my 20 year-old self. She was so small and scared, so trapped and cornered, so hollow. I want to feed her everything she wasn’t letting herself take in — food and rest, safety and love. I want to give her a soft place to land, to remind her of what she deserves.  I want to say “Bella, abundanza. Look. Look. Look who you’re going to be and what you’re going to do. You’ll leave all of this behind and you will be so much better and happier for it. You are so brave.”

I’m looking forward to growing into my bravery and bad-assery in my 30s. And I wonder what 40 year old me will want to say to 30 year old me. What that picture will look like.

I bet it’ll be really good, whatever it is.

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So, I wrote a post called “we’re all we’ve got” on Xmas Eve, and I put it up here. It’s personal, vulnerable, and still fairly rough. I talk a lot about relationships, break-ups, building family, disability, and what we call community. I was a little scared to put it out into the world, but I’m also proud of it.

And I want to add this addendum: I especially want to say a humbled, happy Thank You to all of the beloved friends who have been my rocks through what has been one of my hardest years to date. But I also want to say thank you to those of you who are not as close to me, but who have still stepped up for me in amazing ways. Everyone who contributed to my health fundraiser over the summer, whether financially or just by spreading the word. Everyone who comes to Girl Talk and Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop. The extended St. James Infirmary and Center for Sex & Culture families. My amazing students in Writing On The Body this semester. Dodie Bellamy & Donna de la Perriere for being amazing professors & mentors in  my graduate program. Everyone who’s offered up support and connections and laughs and, yes, love in the hardest times. You matter. It matters. I’m so humbled, and so grateful.

Also? I ended up having the best Xmas I have ever had as an adult this year, even as I spent much of it home alone and sick. I rested up enough to get to have some lovely, low-key, and downright magical times with old friends. I’ve spent the past few days in general feeling held, buoyed up, beloved, and cherished. Like I’m building up reserve and energy for The Next Big Awesome Thing. It is a great way to feel at the end of this year and the beginning of a new one. And it couldn’t have happened without all the people I hold dear.

Grazie mille, beloveds. You really do mean the world to me.

♥

So. I’m officially a Sickmess on Xmas, and am home in bed instead of spending time at a friend’s party (which was gonna happen tonight) or seeing my family of origin (which was gonna happen tomorrow).

Being alone & sickly on a major holiday is hella hard no matter how you slice it. Holidaze are also always rough for me. They are rough for most people in the various communities I’m in (which include but are not limited to queers, genderqueers & trans people, broke people, disabled people, fat people, perverts, sluts, survivors, and sex workers). Being both sick & alone on a holiday brings up all my Singleton Anxiety and my Cripple Anxiety, and then it cranks both dials up to eleventy. Lots of Am I too much? and Am I not enough? questions have been swirling in my head. Lots of thoughts about family (both blood & chosen) and communities of care, and what I want out of the next year, and what I want from my next substantial relationship.

For the record, I feel a little silly & maudlin to be getting Sooo Deeeeeep! right now (please imagine me saying Sooo Deeeeep! in the Strongbad Voice). But it is what it is. And it makes sense, considering the year I have had.

Of course the holidays also bring up This Time Last Year Feelings and Residual Break-Up Grief Feelings. If I may indulge them for a second: This time last year I was introducing my then-boyfriend (who was queer and pervy like me, and who I met in the very queer and perverse context of a threesome over Pride weekend) to my family of origin. I hadn’t introduced my family to a partner of mine in nearly 7 years, and A. & I had only been dating for about 6 months at that point. But the relationship definitely felt solid enough to bring him home and have him meet my folks. He was the kinda guy who had already introduced me to his mom via the telephone and facebook, and he wanted to meet my family (especially, he said, especially my beloved Nana). He’d told me, repeatedly and insistently, that he wasn’t going anywhere, that I could let my very sturdy guard down and relax into what we were to each other. It was a huge fucking deal for me to bring him home for Xmas.

It doesn’t seem like any coincidence now that all of this was about two months after I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I wanted and needed a rock, someone to be basic day-to-day support — and then a rock showed up right when I most needed it, and also swept me off my fucking feet by being so charming and sexy and lovable. I’d been wanting that kind of consistency and dailyness from a relationship for a long time. I’d been feeling frustrated that I’d had a string of lovers over the years who were awesome in many ways, but not available for deeper, daily connection. But I also think that part of why I craved that so badly in those first few months after my diagnosis is that going it alone when you’re chronically ill is really fucking hard. It feels vulnerable to type those words, because I don’t want to be mistaken for saying that that’s why A. and I got together, or why I let him in as much as I did or fell for him as hard as I did. But I will say this: Having my rock and my steadiness vanish felt particularly brutal when it came to negotiating my disability as a single person after the break-up. Single & Sick looks really, really different from Partnered & Sick. It is not better or worse, and it’s not like I hadn’t been dealing with undiagnosed fibro for years before A. came along. But it is still different.

So this year, on Xmas Eve, I’m Single & Sick. And home alone, and thinking a lot about what building family with each other looks like. Who my rocks have been this past year – when shit just blew the fuck up, when I was the saddest and most crazytown I’ve been in about a decade. I have been thinking a lot about what reliability and consistency mean. What showing up means. What family means.

I’m not sad right now, is the thing. I’m contemplative, but I’m not sad. And I’m very grateful for what I do have, even with all the rough spots. Because I have an awful lot of amazing, beautiful people in my life. I have sweet, abundant, glorious love, even if I don’t have a partner. And I do have a family that treats me right, even if it is not often or always my family of origin.

Tonight, I’m thankful to Debbie & Saramoore for g-chatting with me when I felt lonely, to Ivy for taking me out for soup & gossip, to Fureigh & Emily for dropping by with a burrito & Philz & six months worth of catch-up yesterday, to Jos for texting me which Community episodes to watch, to Colin for calling me up with his latest dish, to Jenny for bringing over cookies & milk and telling me silly stories, to Toni for texting me prayers that made me cry. I’m thankful for Marlene & Dorian, for Carol & Robert, for Elisabeth & Meagan, for Austin & Zak, for Aidan, for Elana, for Jayvin, for Wolf, for Tobi, for Melissa, for Yalith, for Rose, for Jakob. For so many other friends for being there when I’ve needed it the most over this brutal — but still wonderful — year.

I’m thankful that I can reach out to my friends and that they reach back to meet me. I’m thankful that my friends reach for me when they’re sick or scared or lost. It means something, this web of family we build with each other. It gives me a lot of hope.

Happy Xmas if you celebrate it, folks. Please, please be kind to each other. We’re all we’ve got.

Edited a couple days later to add this Addendum. Thanks so much for all the love, folks. xox

Today was rough and frustrating and exhausting. I am okay, but basically, I had to be Hella Tough in a hard moment with a bully. And now I am feeling the way I usually feel after I put on my Tough-Ass Bitch Face. Which is freaked-out and exhausted and very small.

And (I promise this is related): I feel less lonely every day, for sure. The break-up grief feels further away every day, for sure. And, after a day like today, I’m also just like “Shit, when I had this kind of hard day when A. and I were together, he’d come over with tacos and tell me I was strong and get me stoned and tell me jokes till I laughed so hard I got a stomach ache.” And I miss all that especially bad tonight.

(Other things I am trying not to think about: Halloween last year, and how we both got so giddy about planning out our costumes together. How sweet it was to be falling in love over autumn. How much amazing sex we were having.)

So. I’m being sweet to myself tonight. Listening to Antony & The Johnsons, going for a walk, treating myself to tacos, reading my homework (which sounds un-fun, but it’s actually a lot of fun, the readings for this class are hella interesting). And maybe I will pour myself a glass of fancy bourbon and watch a silly movie before bed.

This too shall pass. I know. I know.