satismagic

I’ve often immersed myself in quite complex end-of-the-year/beginning-of-the-year rituals to set intentions or goals or unravel the future. Sometimes that was helpful, sometimes more like a chore. This year, thanks to the Christmas crud HH and I caught, I was too sick to ponder much. And when I was feeling better, I spent my time poring over companion planting charts. (Still not quite done…)

I have, however, really enjoyed reading the compilation of resolutions from the newsletter “Brainpickings” – highly recommended for deep insights and deeper sighs.

As for myself, this year, I want to focus on my garden, on planting and growing and breathing. I always want to be kind, I strive to be patient, and I deeply desire to feel more grounded in the moment. Be now, and not let my anxious thoughts spoil my experience of being now and being alive.

For 2020,
I wish you and your loved ones, far and near,
health, happiness, and good luck.
May you find the way you are looking for,
or at least: may your GPS never leave you stranded.
May the winds of fate
only make you stumble, but never bring you down on your knees.
May the sun shine warm upon your face and melt away all shadows –
but not your ice-cream.
May the rain start falling
(soft or cold, in a drizzle or a down-pour)
only after you’ve reached your destination.
May you find friends
in unexpected places, and meet them again
and again and again
in health and happiness.
And throughout the year,
every month,
every week,
every day,
every night,
every hour,
every minute,
every second,
I wish for you
that whatever you believe in
(be it the power of the divine or the power of reason,
philosophical ideals, small dreams or really big visions)
may be a blessing for you,
and guide you and guard you.

Until 2021.

No matter what holidays or holy days you just celebrated,
no matter if you feasted under palm trees or icicles,
alone or with family or friends,
with noisy exultation or quiet introspection,
I hope your days were filled
with warmth and wonder,
with healing and happiness,
and much
joy.

♥

And I hope you love

the cards

I did not send to you

because I donated the money instead…

…to the WWF, specifically to support tigers, and…

…to “Ärzte ohne Grenzen”/”Doctors without Borders” for alleviating suffering in crisis regions worldwide.

I’m 19 years married as of today (just the legal bits, we did the church part the following year).

Where the fuck did time go?

I’m not going to say it was always easy. But it definitely wasn’t “hard work”. I think if maintaining a relationship turns into an unpleasant chore, something is wrong. Just my take on all those relationship advice articles everywhere.

No, sticking together isn’t always easy. Life isn’t always easy.

He will never, ever learn to do x. I, for one, will never do y. (Not for a million $$ and honestly, why should I??? And if he even suggests as much, he’ll regret it.) He has shockingly developed a liking for z. And even more horrible, I’ve turned out to be… Well.

We both have changed. Or maybe matured. Grown into ourselves.

My Dad’s summary of why his marriage failed was that he hoped my mother would always stay the way she was when they got married, and that my mother always hoped she could change him the way she wanted to when they got married.

They both failed.

I was determined not to repeat their mistakes, and although I’ve made plenty mistakes that are all my own, I think I’ve avoided those. Or at least I’m still working on that.

19 years later, I’m pretty happy with the result.

I have never believed in romantic love, and I’m not sure I do now. For a long time I’ve struggled with that.

But I do believe in a lot of things by now.

I believe in getting up at different times during the week and having leisurely, luxurious Sunday brunches together. I believe in having very different opinions and spending nights just talking – after one year, and after 19 years. I believe in soft kisses frantically grabbed across the other half of the bed in the morning and even softer kisses between coats and wet hats coming home at night. I believe in having different standards about how to clean and in dividing up chores and forgetting about standards. I believe in standing up for each other, no matter what. No matter how much that hurts. I believe in adopting kittens together and in dealing with messes… separately. (You stepped in it? You clean it up.) I believe in holding hands when you sing a feline family member to sleep for the very last time. I believe in cooking and eating together, more often than not. (No, cats get no scraps from our table. But sometimes juicy morsels make their way to the cats’ very own plates beforehand.) I believe in travelling together. I even believe in hissing and snarling at each other while  packing or running to the station. Because by now I can also believe in harmony on holiday (never mind the toilet curtained off in the middle of the room). I believe in looking at old pictures together and marvelling – were we ever that young? (Yes, yes, we were. Once, once upon a long time ago.) I believe in learning things together. Like dancing. Or sword fighting. (We’ve done both; we basically suck at both; and we love it.) I believe in doing new things together. Like planting a garden. Or founding a club. I believe in doing things separately. In weekends away from it all with your mates. (Or even a month on the other side of the big pond.) And in staying Home Alone for once. I believe in sharing friends and in making new friends on your own. I believe in crying together, in breaking together, in the face of pain and loss. I believe in trusting each other. We have some rules, and we follow them. (Flirting is fine, fucking is not. Honestly, it’s not that difficult.) I believe in back rubs and head massages and hugs. I believe in serving beer while in a bubble bath. (Or champagne, because, hey!) I believe in dancing the twist while watching Pulp Fiction. I believe that good sex or bad sex or any sex can be fun, but pizza and hugs and the aforementioned back rubs can be just as awesome. I believe in admiring silver hair on the head and on the chest and elsewhere. I believe in loving imperfections and loving perfect moments.

I believe in so much now.

Most of all, after 19 years, I still believe in us.

“…but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Yes, sex is real. But even biological sex is more complex than “there are men and there are women” and “men are born [biologically] male” and “women are born [biologically] female”. There are people with different physical characteristics, there are people with a different chromosomal makeup, there are people with a different hormonal balance… There are many factors that affect biological sex.

And that is not in anyone’s head, that’s hard science.

And yes, gender identity is real, too. (Or the woman in that court case wouldn’t identify as a woman so strongly, would she?)

Maybe we are indeed all born this way. Feeling male or female or anything in between or nothing at all.

At least I remember that even as a very young child of maybe three or four years I didn’t feel like a “real girl”. I only pretended to be “a real girl” because I was expected to be one, and I always, always wanted to meet and exceed expectations.

However, I also don’t see why gender identity shouldn’t evolve and change during your life.

For over thirty years of my life I lacked the vocabulary to even fathom what is “wrong” with me or that this “wrong” connects with who I am. There was no such concept as “gender identity” when I was growing up. Or “physical dysphoria”. Yes, there were trans people – men who “wanted” to be women, women who “wanted” to be men. But I never “wanted” to be a boy or a man. I just didn’t “want” to be a girl or a woman. Because that felt fundamentally wrong.

Maybe tests would reveal that there’s something different about my genes or my hormone production or something else on the biological level. Maybe tests would show that I’m biologically female. Maybe the intense physical dysphoria I experience, maybe the way I don’t think of myself as a woman, that I feel agender, maybe all of that is only happening inside my head.

“…but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

 

x-posted to Dreamwidth & Pillowfort

I have survived HH’s 50th birthday bash with my sanity mostly intact.

A week later we got up at 3:30 am to catch the train to attend the funeral of our friend Mike at noon. It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine and late summer vibes and butterflies. We got to meet his family and friends we’d heard a lot about during the many years of our friendship (he was friends with HH over 30 years, and I counted him as one of my close friends for over 20 years). There’s a plan to meet up with some of his friends, his brother, nephews, and his partner next year for a memorial hiking tour. I think he’d love that.

Thankfully a good friend who lives only an hour away from where the funeral was let us stay with her for the rest of the weekend, so we didn’t have to endure six hours on the train again right away.

HH cried so hard at the funeral that I was too busy steadying him for tears of my own. Instead, grief keeps catching me unawares at odd moments. Every other day or so, I feel as if I suddenly stumble and plummet into a black hole. I keep hearing Mike’s voice and his exuberant, extravagant greeting, and I can’t wrap my mind around the fact I’ll never hear his voice again. And I wonder when I’ll forget what he sounded like.

In other news: In July I applied to rent a garden from the local rabbit breeders association. There were ten applicants, so my chances were not fabulous, and I figured that behind the scenes it was already a done deal when I heard that a friend of the current tenant had also applied. However, I couldn’t help going back to the garden, and I ended up chatting with my prospective garden neighbours quite a few times. I guess that helped, because… I got the garden! I’m in the process of dealing with the paperwork and getting the garden design approved by the committee. In a week or so I’ll take over the garden from the current tenant.

So now I’m researching plants and soil and mulch and tools. I hope to build and fill four square raised beds and prep one bed on the ground according to the “back to Eden” method before winter, and maybe plant some roses and column fruit trees and some bulbs for spring flowers. Maybe I’ll get around to sharing a few pictures.

I’m still alive. I’m sorry if you were worried. I was worried, too. I’m still worried tbh.

I’ve been struggling with health issues for the the first half of the year. Unfortunately, I still have no idea what’s wrong with me, but at least things got somewhat better.