#random blithering

***

Chances are, I scare you.

Radical queer. Mixed-race. Non-normatively gendered. Activist. Progressive. Atheist. Intersectionalist. Sadist.

Kind to animals, so good with children.

If that last part threw you, you may have some assumptions to examine. Just an FYI.

I am speaking now to the other grown-ups in the room: some of your children are freaks. This does not mean what you think it means. What it means, actually, is that you are blessed. That your life has been gifted, expanded and distinguished by the presence of a singular mind and spirit, one which, due to circumstances of not-fitting-in, will always regard the world through a quizzical tilt. Regard and question, regard and create, regard and rage. That’s what freaks do.

Nobody else does it. That’s what makes them freaks.

I won’t say that that work—that freak-work of regarding the world and responding to it—is a vital part of our survival as a species, because life persists despite all forms of oppression. But I do believe that the labor of freaks is a vital part of how our species evolves: how we move towards a point where we can think about being much better to each other than we are now.

You are driven to foster your children’s safe passage through childhood and into maturity. And there’s been a whole lot of influences informing you exactly how you should define ‘success’ at that endeavor: when your child is grown, has a college degree and a profitable career, and a family and children of their own so that the whole thing can start all over again.

That is one path. It’s a narrow one. Some people go there easily, and feel at home there. But some people don’t.

I am childless. By choice. And that in and of itself may be enough to cause you to finally turn away at this point (as you have likely wanted to do since I started), because who the hell am I, who doesn’t even have a kid, to critique your parenting style?

Who the hell I am.

I am: the foster-parent of your freaky children. I am the pinch-hitting parent of the child who lives in fear of you (of your discovery or disapproval), the child who staggers under the burden of your disappointment, who carves out chunks of themselves in a desperate attempt to fit into the mold you have laid out for them, with the implicit or explicit instruction: fit, or else.

Or else. Your children. Live with that ‘or else’—so many of them, too many, too, too many, feel that pressure every day, exist while encompassing the irreconcilable: what they have to do to be loved by you, and who they truly are.

Please stop making them choose.

Please.

Stop.

Just stop.

Stop making them choose between your love and their orientation, their gender, their vision, their identity, their inner landscape, their passion, their weirdness, their heart.

Your children are amazing. Your children are freaks. Precious, precious freaks. And I am privileged and proud to have the honor of loving them, accepting them, and telling them no, it won’t always be so bad, they won’t always hurt this way, they won’t always feel so alone, so unlovable; they won’t always have to go out and suffer tortures each day only to go home and suffer more each night.

I’m so glad to have the honor of loving them. But I’m so very sorry you’re missing out on the deal, because it’s pretty much a one-time opportunity, and not likely to come your way again. And it’s awesome.

So, please: join me? Accept the incredible gift you’ve been given. See your beautiful freak through the rough waters (because they always will be rough, yes) and into adulthood. Give them what they need. It’s not much—just love. Acceptance. Understanding. And prepare yourself for joy.