The Packbats' Dreamfeed

It's ME Awareness Day, and my train is running 39 minutes late last I heard, so I took the opportunity to finally read this piece in a tab I've had open so long I cannot remember where it came from. It's a really incredible read about chronic illness and narratives as necessary for access to care, and what hearing from ill people does to those in a position to offer care.

( long quotes, from a much longer article )

I had a dream that I missed my train to London today and it was fine.

Almost disappointed to wake up with my alarm, in plenty of time.

I was briefly tempted to just stay in bed...

Now, on my train back to Manchester 12 hours later, with two hours left to go before I get home, I can say with certainty that I could've stayed home and it would have been fine.

I talked to my parents last night (a Friday instead of a Sunday since they've got plans this weekend).

My dad mentioned the new pope. My parents both said approvingly that he's "pretty progressive, pretty similar to Francis." Which was a big change after the previous 24 hours of social media being all shitposts and "uh guys did you know this guy sucks and actually the catholic church is problematic, can't believe no one has mentioned this yet."

My dad mentioned something the new guy has said, I just got a garbled version from my dad but I think it was something about him saying it's not his place to judge humans that God has created to be gay. Regardless of the accuracy or veracity of that, it was something my parents were repeating approvingly, which feels like a very big deal to me.

On the topic of same-sex marriages, my dad said "I see these pictures of people and...they just look so happy. If they want to get a piece of paper, fine!"

"And it isn't hurting anyone else!" my mom chimed in. It's true! (In a few weeks my parents' mixed-sex marriage will have existed for fifty-three years. Unbothered by the existence of gay marriage for like the last 15 or whatever of those years.)

Then my mom said "And those homosexual..." but she kinda swallowed the word like she was thinking wait, that's not the right one, then she said "lesbian" in a way I thought might be about disgust but I later realized was more "trying to carefully say a new foreign word" but then she still struggled to get her sentence out and then my dad had sufficient context clues to say "Do you mean trans gender?" And again it was definitely a new word, with a big space between the two parts like it was foreign (reminded me of those people who hyphenated "bi-sexual" for such a long time) and I had time for just a moment of oh, here we go... dread before they went on to say something I can't remember word-for-word but basically, they're being told trans women are too manly to play sports but also not manly enough to serve in the military, and they're not having it.

Even my parents can see that transphobia doesn't have any internal logic.

It was a stressful call for other reasons, and I had a huge headache by the time it was done, but I hung on to my dad saying "They just look so happy" about queer couples getting married. It warmed my heart. As did the fact that, even not knowing the words for trans people, they know that you can't decide they're whatever gender allows them to be punished the most.

Telling the others about this afterward, I mentioned that I remembered, by chance, being at my parents' when the Obergefell ruling came down legalizing marriage across the U.S. and watching TV news with my dad, with some of those photos of beaming newly-married couples. I remember my dad saying something similar then (I know I wrote about it here, but search doesn't seem to be working for me right now sadly), about how happy the people looked.

D sent me a link to a song, "City Hall" by Vienna Tang saying it's his "favorite 'queer people being happy about getting married' song." I wasn't familiar with it, but just reading the lyrics gave me goosebumps.

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

The annotation on that Genius link for those last two lines says

Those who were married at the City Hall in 2004 knew that their right to do so remained in jeopardy– and unfortunately, it was in fact taken away; in August of the same year, the state courts ruled against the city and voided all licenses it had issued to same-sex couples.

I remember those times, I remember people driving sometimes across the country, people who'd been together for decades sometimes. People lining up at night to be ready when a city or state or federal law was about to come into force. The eagerness and the desperation. And all the businesses and volunteers that gave them food, drinks, treats, people wanting to do whatever they could to support this, to celebrate, to whatever limited extent felt possible.

It feels so long ago now and it really wasn't. And I remember the first time Trump was elected hearing Lib Dem friends, who treated U.S. politics like a series they were binging, blithely talk about Obergefell being overturned. Nothing can be taken for granted.

But it's still there. And my mom is saying it isn't taking anything away from anyone else. The world really has moved on. I have hope.

"Any thoughts about dinner?" D texted me, a usual question at the usual time (quarter past six or so). I was in the unusal location of sitting outside the Corn Exchange, in the sunshine, having an after-work drink with a friend I'd met in town. We do this every month or so. We'd actually both surprised ourselves by how much work we'd gotten done, after what has been a stressful, high-pressure week for us both.

She said it would be just one drink after work. She had plans this evening.

That's fine! I worry I'm a bad influence, because I always go along with this, she always diligently checks her train and plans to get the one that's at 5:29 or something like that.

I don't think it's happened in the three or four times we've done this. It definitely didn't today. As you can tell when I was still there at a quarter past six.

"Afraid not," I texted back to D. "I've had three beers."

Or so I meant to say. It's only after I saw his replies -- "Bad three beers!" "You should good three beers!" -- that I noticed I hadn't said that at all.

Autocorrect had helpfully ensured that I had indeed said I've bad three beers.