… the overwhelming majority disliked [“childless” and “childfree”], with one being seen as stigmatising and the other gleeful and nasty in its implication that parents somehow need “liberating”.
… that’s one reason why – when absolutely necessarily – “doesn’t have children” is the kindest, most neutral descriptor we can hope for. Though we can also hope to be moving away from one’s parenting status needing to be defined at all, especially for women, who still face this question far more frequently than men. Language matters, and as ever it often says more about us and our assumptions than we realise.
what can i say about me in a five-year timespan? everything and nothing.
it’s funny when you fill out fellowship applications they will ask you where do you think you will be in five years, what do you see? expecting you to be somewhere else, a different person, in a different place. they will dismiss at once the idea of being a static, a stagnant.
but here’s five years after living abroad.
1. no matter where you go, or where life takes you, you are still you. i came there to cleanse myself of myself, off of myself, and here I am still the same.
2. you will see more and more evil in this world, they came in different faces of kindness and sincerity. you will be fooled and you will not grow out of it. still, you keep wanting more and more. you always want more. arms wide open, bleeding just the same.
3. they will stab you in the back time and time again, and you will endure. you will cry, but you will endure. you will not get over it. shopping is a cure and you will go broke from the stabs. you continue to live, of all the whispers and screams, you’ll live.
4. everything that seems fancy, is not. go back to what you love, who you love, they’re there for you, and they will be there for you, again and again. put them in a frame, and carry them in your heart.
5. friends leave. let them go. it’s alright. you were born alone.
6. it will be exhausting and you will be exhausted. and death is not coming to get you. you will create an escape in the least things expected, in the most unthinkable ways. you will survive. you will not be smiling, but you will survive.
Years away now. Years my life without you near. Years in solitude and just like that you came back into my life. No signs, no hunch. No sting in your gut trying to tell you this is the day. This is the day you’re going to again meet the love of your life. You got rid of him and now the universe is giving you a second chance.
What have I done? I set you free. I have set you free.
someone asked me what home was and all i could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.
they say tomorrow might be the waves i cannot see the sheer anticipation of what might have been we’ve grown so old from heartbreaks so young a dream we’re so vast a universe but no words to swarm in this existence hurts my skin it hurts more everytime it doesn’t bleed here in this dark place everything is shameful and unforgiven but there’s a rabbit hole down here and there’s you and i and the world disappears we need to be somewhere else but here we are, bloated up and shrunk down into an instagram post