Sassafras Patterdale's Blog, page 29

Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

- Margery Williams 'The Velveteen Rabbit'

This past weekend I sat with one of the most talented artists I've ever seen and had him hammer ink into the tender skin of my inner forearm.  It's a tattoo that I've been planning for a long time, one that has called to me, and now that it's nestled into skin feels so very at home. I believe that in a world that does not love us, that does not want us, that has hurt, and abandoned us, the most radical thing we can do is love one another. I also believe, like the Skin Horse tells the little rabbit, love is what makes us real.

For me, this tattoo was about claiming my own Realness,  and honoring the path that brought me here, especially chosen family past, present, and future. It is those queer folks spread about the country that I've built family with who are responsible for having  loved me into realness.

For me, family is a stitching together of lives, a bond that must be claimed not prescribed. I was plucked from destruction and raised into queerness by dyke moms, I have brothers spread from Portland Oregon to Portland Maine- one is the first also kicked out person I'd ever met, and the other is in so many ways the spitting  image of the crusty punk boi I was nearly a decade ago, and a sister with who i share spooky similar scars and deep connection. I have  an uncle  who fosters my stories and sees me more fully than most, and a partner for more loving and nurturing that I could have ever imagined. This is the kind of family I used to rock myself to sleep dreaming of, but never believing I would actually find.  Family, this family, is what has brought me into myself again and again, and ultimately what has made me real.

This morning I awoke to a facebook notification telling me that my little brother had listed me as his sister and would I confirm that family relationship. I was,  pleasantly amused to realize that I'm now listed as the sister of one person, and the brother of another.  This is what my family looks like.   I take great pleasure in knowing that for us, there is nothing strange about these seemingly contradictory realities.