Dear one\u2014<\/p>\n
Oh\u00a0my but some days it\u2019s just hard to get up in the morning.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you feel the age in your body, the disease or dis-ease (or both), and it just feels like too much. Sometimes you wake up, you\u2019re still queer, fat, trans, Black, still a person the world says isn\u2019t worth anything.<\/p>\n
Some nights I dream that I\u2019m not fat, that it\u2019s all been a bad dream, all the bullying, all the jobs I didn\u2019t get, all the people who looked at me and saw only an affront to their ideals of health and beauty.\u00a0Of all the people with more power than I who kept me from living in the fullness of my dignity and joy and liberation. I think none of that has ever happened.<\/p>\n
And then I wake up.<\/p>\n
I wake up and it\u2019s the nightmare all over again. It\u2019s being the brunt of knowing that, especially at my weight, my insistence on Health at Every Size,\u00a0and even<\/em>\u00a0no one owing their health to anyone else is seen as \u201cglorifying obesity,\u201d\u00a0or \u201cignoring my health.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes I dream that gender is understood to be a construct, something to play with. I dream of femme disconnected from womanhood\u2014the two coming together, or not\u2014and not just for some compulsory response to a male gaze, but for self-expression. For delight. For joy. I dream of having been a boy, as Dar Williams sings in her brilliant song, \u201cWhen I Was A Boy.\u201d\u00a0I remember\u2014and this part did happen\u2014riding my bicycle, age 11, with my shirt off.<\/p>\n And then I wake up.<\/p>\n I wake up\u00a0and remember how a neighbor mom\u00a0that very day\u00a0told me to put a shirt on, what was I thinking?!\u00a0The adult to the child who was free and happy and living in joy.<\/p>\n Sometimes I dream of lush forests that go on for miles and miles and miles, having never been disturbed by loggers. That the ridges where I grew up were never clear-cut and a primordial, full of old-growth oaks and maples, sycamores and birches.\u00a0When Penn-sylvania\u00a0(Penn\u2019s Woods, for those who aren\u2019t from that part of the world) was first seen by William Penn, when that Quaker man first was introduced to that lush land where people had lived for generations, it was just an unbroken sea of forest on the ridges and the Laurel\u00a0Highlands, the Appalachian Plateau.\u00a0And then I wake up and I remember that those ridges, lovely as they are, just aren\u2019t what they were in the centuries before I was born. Even the old trees aren\u2019t\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0old, all things considered.<\/p>\n Now I dream waking. And my dreams are wishes. And we all know that if wishes were horses, everyone could have one and afford to take care of them and be able to spend time with a beautiful, loving, warm, giant friend.<\/p>\n I watch Madam Secretary on Netflix and feel how eerily prescient it was. How she talks about what it\u2019s like to live under tyranny, and what it could mean for refugees and those seeking asylum in the United States, and I dream of a way to stop what is happening in my country, in the UK, all of the over. I dream of not abandoning thousands of Kurdish people to murder, rape, and really, genocide. I dream of not having concentration camps, private\u00a0\u201cdetention centers<\/em>\u201d\u2014bah, call them what they are, and that\u2019s concentration camps\u2014in which people are dying in squalor every day.<\/p>\n I dream of a time\u2014am I sounding like I\u2019m trying to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because I\u2019m not, I assure you\u2014when we love one another\u2019s traditions, do not steal them, but share their beauty in love and care.<\/p>\n I am dreaming today.<\/p>\n Last night, I dreamt of being on the street, talking to myself, having no permanent home.<\/p>\n Why did I dream that one?<\/p>\n Friends, I dreamt it because it happened to me. It happened to me\u00a0in my\u00a0hometown,<\/em> where my\u00a0parents lived<\/em>. It didn\u2019t happen for long, though.<\/p>\n And why?<\/p>\n Because my family\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0live there. Because I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0have friends to help me. And because I had fucking health insurance.<\/p>\n What if I didn\u2019t have those things? What if I have been left to the ravages of bipolar disorder and the voices that came along for the ride, telling me every day that if I didn\u2019t kill myself, it was only because I was a selfish coward. That I should \u201cstart over,\u201d begin again, or at least make space for someone else to. That I deserved to die. Every day without fail. Every day those voices.<\/p>\n And I think, in daylight, of how I wasn\u2019t diagnosed until I was 30 years old because medical professionals wouldn\u2019t listen to me. They wouldn\u2019t listen because they had the power and I was fat. And because I was fat, my problems weren\u2019t that I was crazy as a shit-house rat, which I was (and yes, I think I can say that, sorry). Rather, they decided I should live on 1000 calories a day\u2014I am not making that up\u2014and get diagnosed with PTSD from abuse that I couldn\u2019t remember. Abuse I couldn\u2019t remember because it never fucking happened.<\/p>\n Power, people. Power does terrible things sometimes. And remember what Frederick Douglass said, that power concedes nothing without a fight. Without words or arms, he said. And while I am genuinely in favor of the\u00a0words\u00a0method, I do fret. And my dreams are, in fact, disturbed.<\/p>\n What do you dream in joy? Do you dream of flight, as I did as a child?<\/p>\n Do you dream of love?<\/p>\n Do you dream of freedom, of true liberation?<\/p>\n Write to me. Tell me what you dream, what you hope, what you wish, and what has been lost. Write to me, and if you like, I\u2019ll share it with our comrades at The Way of the River. Or just write to me.<\/p>\n Put it out into the\u00a0aether, and let it breathe.<\/p>\n Just as we all need to breathe, friends, as we all need to breathe, and live to fight another day.<\/p>\n Blessings on our sleeping and our waking \u2013<\/p>\n ~Catharine~<\/p>\n