Writing Isaiah
Entry #4
May 18th 2013
Logan Casey
I mentioned to you my difficulty in settling on a question for this project, and you asked me to use that as my response, that you could work with aporia. That was a new word for me, and I found this on Wikipedia: "denotes in philosophy a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement and in rhetoric a rhetorically useful expression of doubt."
Maybe my puzzlement is about my own relationship to biological parenting... that I won't ever be able to do that, and so I am in wonder (amazement, awe) about how even to imagine the bodily experience(s), let alone ask a question about them. (This part seems particularly puzzling to me since my body used to be such that I could have had children the way you are.)
But I think there's an even more personal element for me than just the bodily process... Barring some kind of miraculous scientific advancement, I simply can't ever have biological children. This makes me even more invested in chosen family than I already was as a queer person. So maybe here's a question, then, separate from the aporia: as a fellow queer person ---and as one of the most vivid embodiments I've ever met of creating and sustaining chosen family --- how do you find yourself relating to and experiencing this process of creating biological family?
:)
Love you.
How can I even begin, Logan? Part of the experience of aporia is anti-beginning. A stalling. A coming to space only to encounter non-space. And yes, this can be puzzlement and wonder. It can also be frustration and lack. I experience none of those at this moment. Rather, a kind of built-in respect that necessitates a form of pause. These reflections, the two paragraphs you have gifted my way--how does one begin to respond? A hesitation feels like the only form of holiness worthy t/here.
So I sat/lingered with your reflections/question all night. Too much came up. It was overwhelming. Resonance. Rejoicing in the recognition. Feeling unbelievably seen and honored by your naming my embodiment/s of chosen family. I have worked so hard to incarnate family differently--that is outside of normative nuclear notions of family which in all honesty don't even exist for the most part, because as you know and I know, there is no norm when we boil it all down--and so to have that work called out/forth as good is humbling, beautifying, a congratulations from the universe (that speaks in the form of you today). I also must admit that I felt some fear and dread because you articulated impossibilities (albeit with qualifiers :) and instead of facing those self-named places of "not here" "not in this body" with openness and loving kindness, I felt myself balking and grieving. Which, of course, tells me that I have work to do. (Hence, the fear and dread) There's this incredible quote I stumbled on years ago that feels vibrational here: "If only I could throw away the urge, to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you." It seems as though I stand at the precipice of your articulated truth about not being able to biologically parent with a kind of traced pattern. And while there may be balking and grief for you in all of this, I wonder if it isn't my own grief, or a kind of collective grief I feel.
You see, for years I sat in shadows of shame about my queer body, particularly its inability to be feminine enough to do all kinds of stuff. I was actually told by a physician that I had too much testosterone in my system to have an easy time getting pregnant and I might not conceive at all. Before that I had years of shame around the fact that I got left for girly girls and cheerleader types, that lovers would scoff at my body when I took off my clothes, that I was teased as a kid for "looking like a drag queen." My mother's husband even said that my kickboxing injury (which left me practically paralyzed for almost six months) happened because I try to act (in sports and life in general) "like a man." As a result of this harassment, taunting and projection I have often walked around in the world with an internalized sense of being too masculine to achieve certain results--pregnancy being one of them. Our world, and yes, even our sciences, are incredibly limited by what we think is possible/impossible through a gendered hermeneutic. Part of getting pregnant and forming family, for me, has been about prophetically pushing through those narrow definitions of the possible. I want every gender queer person on this planet to know "the limits of discourse" don't always match the limits of their bodies. They do sometimes but not all the time. I'm also aware that part of my reaction to your reflection is that many queer bodies feel branded, both externally and internally, by some kind of "not enough or too much" narrative around gender/hormones/etc. Essentially, that I am not the only one: many of us feel this way. And it gets in the way. In the way of creating the lives we desire, the babies we yearn to meet, the families we hope to form, etc. And while I don't want to make the aporia you've offered some kind of totalizing segwey into my own story, or some social systems analysis about body shame & dysphoria, I am aware that we all--you and me and anyone else brave enough to admit these realities--exist at some intersection of bewilderment and bravery as we behold our queer flesh.
The more I write about this the more aware I am of a need I possess to personally and communally, private and publicly grieve these places of pain. This is clearly clearly clearly not about you. AND here's where I need to practice a certain ethic. I want You. I don't want to trace my patterns. I want to admit my patterns and in the admission process make space (cleared by the recognition of my stuff) for your stuff. Hence, I'd like to ask you, if it feels like something you want to engage, for a response to this writing, specifically focused on this question: how do you experience the reality of not being able to biologically parent? You have named puzzlement. In taking that term literally and artistically I envision pieces, many pieces, coexisting together-yet-apart on a common surface. Is there an accuracy to this vision? Tell me more.
Now...to your question...
My process around processing :) this move to biologically parent started about two years ago when I found myself falling deeply, quite unexpectedly (with varying levels of disturbance), in love with J.R. I was on a plane to Biloxi MI where I'd be doing a week long Katrina Recovery home renovation. We were both in other primary romantic relationships at the time and nothing physical had happened between us but there was an acknowledgment of something totally powerful going on that couldn't be stopped. It's an utterly terrifying feeling. Anyways, six months pregnant, dyke-identified with a sperm-donor baby and I was madly in love with a self-identified biological male. It made no sense. Still doesn't some days. But on that plane, high in the sky, (never underestimate the power of fucking with gravity/routine/placement when it comes to receiving revelation) I had this distinct premonition that we were going to have children with each other. It scared me. And enticed me. Like only something totally outside the box can. At that point I didn't even think J.R. and I had a future as a couple; I certainly couldn't see biological children. But however perplexing that's the message I got. Looking back, I'm more sure than ever that the 'power that couldn't be stopped' was (multiplicitous for sure and) partly Isaiah's need to be in the world. He was part of that pulsing, gripping, completely compelling mystery we call love. Sometimes things need to make their way into the world through already existing things in the world. I think the desire we feel is often this currency, a kind of invitational communication, of the unborn. And I mean unborn in a large sense: books to be written, sculptures to be formed, music to be composed and sung, places to be traveled, you feel me, right? What I'm trying to say is that future incarnations can often preview themselves in the form of yearning that makes no sense in the present. Hence, after a long detour to set context, let me say that my first response to biological parenting (and of course, I (am) biologically parented/parenting Aurora too but conception came about differently; more of this later) was outright disbelief. Like, how on Earth is that going to work? Yeah, fucking, right.
And then something crazy happened. I listened to my mother. Lol!
Two weeks after that initial vision/premonition I was with my mom in Cape Cod (again, outside of my normal geography) and I was lamenting this love that didn't make any sense, refusing to give into "normativity" and "heterosexuality" and wishing it would all go away. Do you know what she said to me? I'll never forget it. "Em, you've been fighting for everyone else's right to love each other however they want, whoever they are, ever since you were a kid. Why not give yourself that same right and freedom?" My mother standing at the altar of my life, calling me, pushing me, propelling me forward. In some ways I know that her own failed love affair with my father is what enabled her to utter that prophetic question. Again, sometimes things need to make their way into the world through already existing things in the world. In my bloodline that means one thing for sure: the capacity for love and desire to be honest about themselves, to not quit, to persist when everything in the world (except the heart) says turn around/away. My parents couldn't do it. No, let me be real: my father couldn't do it. She suffered as a result. I could feel her hoping that my life wouldn't be thrust into a similar love-not-chosen kind of spiral.
Let's face it. We are undone by each other. And if we are not, we're missing something. --Judith Butler.
You sent this to me and Anna the other day, Logan. Do you remember? One wonders why a certain passage/text/pericope echoes with such force throughout the years with such force throughout certain communities. Here's a guess on this one. We queers fight for freedom in the world that we too easily deny ourselves. Because we've so often been rejected (because our bodies, love, sex, relations are taboo, non-normative, too big, not enough, etc) we are a self protective people. Yet the balm we most need is the very love we understandably, yet tragically protect ourselves against. We need Judith to remind us: the only way to wholeness is through the process of being undone.
I had ideas about the kind of love and the kind of family I could have. It was a kind of militant framework looking back. I had so thoroughly rejected notions of nuclear/biological family and so whole-heartedly embraced queer/family by choice lifestyle that when the love I most wanted/needed came my way, I had to struggle to undo what was protecting/blocking me. The point here, is of course NOT that I have now seen the light and embraced the "true" paradigm by settling into marriage and having a kid through vaginal intercourse. Not at all. In fact I feel more queer than before. Because I've realized sky is the limit. When it comes to love, relationships, family, sex, parenting, etc, the options are endless. It's all possible. I can choose any of it. There is incredible freedom in this. The freedom to accept what comes my way in the form of gift, no matter how it comes. (ha!) I think my way of conceiving and parenting Aurora is equal (in the sight of God and my community of accountability) to how I've conceived of and will parent Isaiah. I absolutely love the combination of stuff my family is. Gay straight queer. Black brown white. Young middle and old(er-ish). It's (the diversity) a huge source of pride for me. No one I know has this story. How awesome is that?
The choice was before me: was I willing to be undone by J.R., by this love, by this potential family--or not? I chose love. I chose J.R. I chose the potential for Aurora and Isaiah to have a father/co-parent. I am not sorry. I am happier than I've ever been. More free in the commitment. More secure in the ties that bind and inevitably cause grief/loss. So, to answer your direct question: "how do you find yourself relating to and experiencing this process of creating biological family?"--Logan, I feel grateful. Grateful that I know it isn't the only way and that knowledge isn't conceptual but experiential. Grateful that I could have repeated the pattern of my parents by walking away because it didn't make sense but I didn't. Grateful that I chose to love and be free and be Isaiah's mom. On my knees, in a sacred hush, most days, because the gratitude is so deep that I cannot help but kneel in adoration.
Thank you for your reflections and question. Thank you for being a presence that evokes the best. The fucking best. You are a friend, a brother, a companion of delight and depth.
In my experience an aporia is often an opening. Never seems that way at first. At first it's often disorientation, a kind of disturbance for those of us who like to Know. You began with/at an aporetic door. I hope I walked through this one with the respect, honor and bad-assness that this relationship, and all aporias, deserve.
All my love,
Emily Joye
No comments:
Post a Comment