comic sans god

i just rediscovered my old open diary and started re-reading entries from high school. that's right, folks; i've been blogging since 1999. and things on the internet really never go away; every word has been preserved in all its comic sans glory. 

                                    

we've gone from hamster dance to lolcatz. from icq to gchat. from ms paint to instagram. and from an online diary where most of my writing was about how much i love god, how much my life sucked, and how worried i was that  i'd never have a boyfriend to...

BEING ENGAGED TO A LADY!!!!

leslie and i are getting married next year!!! in seattle, where it will hopefully be legal and we will hopefully have a camping wedding in the rainforest and hopefully also a giant doughnut cake.

what even happened between point a and point b??? lots. mostly, i found myself, and possibly a god who is truer to me than my 1999 comic sans god.

telling my family was hard. really hard. i told my sisters first, which was mostly okay. but i put off telling my mother for weeks. and i get it. they're trying their hardest. i know what they're struggling with, because i was there before. but frankly, it sucks. same for leslie's family. i'm sure many of my high school and college friends disagree with our decision.

and then, of course, i have my own personal struggle about subscribing to an historically hetero-normative, oppressive institution. are we perpetuating something destructive?  should we wait until the benefits of state-sanctioned marriage are available for everyone (single people, unmarried people in relationships)? what does it mean to get married in a state where the state recognizes our marriage, when we live in a state that doesn't? probably a lot of our friends in the queer community wouldn't choose this path.

everyone's gotta go to through their own process. read the books and articles you need to read, think and pray the way you need to. we are doing everything we can to be thoughtful and intentional about how we go about this whole bizness.

come next summer, whether or not our families show up, we plan to celebrate our love with a group of people who genuinely love and support us.

stretch the writing muscles

the year so far: 

celebrated the new year with some of my dearest framily (that's a squird for friends who are family, if you didn't know). so much changes, even in five months. 

the composting toilet broke, quite a lot. we moved. we have housemates and a big yard. 

of course, as you've seen on facebook, we have a new puppy. 

in april, i cried in the bathroom at work. then i walked out in the middle of a shift. i should have done it much sooner. leslie left her job to pick me up. i walked out of the clinic and almost yelled "fuck you!" to the protesters, but the protesters were an 80-something year old man and woman, getting lawn chairs out of their trunk and i just couldn't. 

i was sitting on the curb eating little ceasar's crazy bread, still in my scrubs, when she pulled up. 

i know you're not supposed to quit a job "in this economy," but no paycheck is worth being demoralized everyday. anyway, i had a job interview the very next week, and one month later, back to the world of the working. 

after spending a month by myself, i became soft. an abortion clinic in texas is not a place for the faint of heart. i have to work back up to hearing the heartbreaking things, to keeping them out of my dreams. 

i'm helping to start a full-spectrum doula organization. that means that we support pregnant, pre-pregnant people, and post-pregnant people, whether they want birth, adoption, or abortion. whether they're trying to get knocked up, or they've miscarried. whether they're doing it by themselves or they have a partner. a radical concept, in every sense. last night, a celebrity of the movement came to my house!

one of my fellow doulas asked me why i was so interested in working in abortion care. "have you had an abortion, or something?" i've never even been pregnant (except in arizona). so what am i doing centering my whole life around supporting people through experiences i've never had? sure as hell ain't for the money. 

maybe it's some sort of penance for being such a conservative little shit for 20 years of my life? or being an especially empathetic, female-bodied person? a fascination with....new life? second chances? positive transformation? the right to control one's own body? 

who knows, but i'm enchanted and i'm here. 

there's been a lot to contemplate, and time for meditation. i've been thinking a lot about life, and death, and what the differences are. i've been meditating on "being with," and how hard that is. i've been changing the way i move about in the world, and how i make decisions. i'm trying to become less practical and more bold. 

i have not been writing. so pardon me while i warm up. 

i have not been biking.

i have not been exercising.

however, i have finished most of my new year's resolutions already. 

i went to ohio for a weekend so watch my little sister's musical. i surprised her, and she's a dramatic teenager, so her reaction was most satisfying. she played elle woods in "legally blonde: the musical" on the same stage on which i performed almost ten years ago. 

i saw my mamaw. she can't believe that people don't think i'm a redhead. i'm not sure she's happy. i know i wouldn't be, in a nursing home. she made fun of my nose ring and asked if i had a boyfriend yet. other grandma looked at me and said, "rebecca, you know we're praying for you for you-know-what." all i could do was purse my lips and say, "mmm." 

claudia took me to a cupcake shop called "to die for" that shares a store front with a shop that sells headstones. morbid, but clever.