getting to tell a young human the things I wish someone told me
I had the loveliest (maybe, hopefully not??) last time at the cabin omg
also god damn I didn’t realize how attached my anticapitalist, anti private-property ass was to that piece of property until I found out they were selling it yikes
I was helping Jazmine get ready for day camp this morning and it was so nice. We talked, pretended it was our “restaurant,” and made her lunch and unloaded the dishwasher together. She clearly really enjoys being given chores to do and just talked to rather than scolded. She’s turned into a little adult, she’s at a fun age
It broke my heart a little when she said “Hannah I wish we could live together.” Damn, I wish Dan and Mary weren’t in the situation they are in, that they weren’t so grumpy and tired and traditional and strict
I talked with her about makeup when I was putting some on before she left and said “I’m so jealous you get to wear makeup!” I told her she was beautiful without makeup, and that makeup is cool cause everybody -- boys and girls -- get to decide for themselves whether they want to wear it or not, it’s one of the many choices about our bodies that we get to make, like shaving is. She asked me if I shave, and I said I don’t. I told her that the other cool thing about all those choices is that we can change our minds, and it’s always okay to do that. We can shave sometimes and not others, wear makeup sometimes and not others, or do it always or never. All of it is okay and your decision to make
I realized I was telling her the things I wish I had heard as a kid, the things that I was so deeply uncertain and self-conscious about that just fucking continued into my everyday life and who I am as an adult. And it felt so good to be able to tell a young person that. And that it could be even cooler to be her parent, to be able to have those little conversations all the time, to little moment by little moment, raise a child who *maybe* doesn’t carry around with them deep shame and confusion about their bodies, about their gender. And that it would feel so, wildly good and wonderful and healing and just plain fun to do that with a person who shares those beliefs and is so supportive of me, someone like Lizzy
Of course we could adopt a child who would reject those conversations entirely, but I think just that orientation to parenting, even if all those explicit lessons don’t get through, would make for a really wonderful and really loving home. Pro feelings, pro consent, pro gender fluidity, pro queerness, pro sharing and openness, pro unconditional love rather than shame, pro justice, pro bodies and body acceptance, pro self love, pro critical thinking and discussion and openness rather than blanket rules, pro happiness and mental health over traditional success
It’s honestly weird, I kind of feel like a switch has been flipped inside of me in my thinking. I do not say that lightly because it feels like such a cliche for people my age and I have been really pretty sure for a long time that I didn’t want to have kids
But I’ve been thinking about it a ton, and maybe I just didn’t want to have kids in all the models of it I had ever seen - disagreement and different values among both parents, men being shitty parents and partners who do the bare ass minimum and get praise for it, intense gender roles and heteronormativity, parents going on and on about how their lives are over and they don’t have any of their same friends, kids adding financial strain and struggle to already strained and difficult and busy lives, discipline, fighting, shame and discomfort around all kinds of subjects, my friends’ parents being hurtful and abusive over and over
A lot of my adult lessons have been “wait... this doesn’t have to be done this way” and this feels like one of them
I wonder too if it took someone like Lizzy who is profoundly sensitive and caring and supportive around phobia stuff for my heart to open up about this a little bit. How could raising a young person who lives in my home and could potentially get sick ever be remotely viable when Grant so deeply didn’t understand and didn’t actively support me around this??
tldr -- shit, I am wildly, deeply in love with Lizzy and I am also probably v gay to be suddenly thinking this way about parenting lol. what is happening????
