and now for something completely different

I have been thinking and pondering and thinking and hemming and hawing about how and what to say about this new adventure I am on with my chosen family.

I still don’t know that I have the right words, or at least not the words I would prefer more, but I am going to do my best.

Two years ago this March, two of my family — Rob and Rose — and I visited Ireland for about three weeks. We went partly because we had never been and always wanted to go, but the main reason was to see if it was a viable choice for us to potentially move there as a big chosen family. It was really difficult for me not to share everything as it was happening there, because it was such a meaningful experience for me. Even considering the possibility of immigrating to a place where some of my ancestors were born (and the place they immigrated from) has been somewhat difficult. I grew up poor, and that has influenced the ways I think about what I am and am not allowed to do or to want to do, even as a grown-ass adult.

We’ve spent the better part of the last two years planning and refining plans and researching and refining plans and doing more investigating and research and more planning. We wanted to be able to actually move to Ireland by the autumn of 2024, but all of the gestures at everything in the United States caused our timelines to slip by several months, and some of the things we needed to do in preparation for that kind of move weren’t started in time for us to be ready for a move in the autumn.

So now we are doing something completely different.

For the next twelve or so months, we are taking a gap year — a long lovely holiday — in Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, and more of the Asia Pacific countries. Is this something I ever thought I would be able to do? Um, NO. See above where I mentioned that I grew up poor; even considering a vacation at any point in time in my life was a nerve-wracking guilt-filled experience, because what if I didn’t deserve it? What if someone was mad at me about it? What if I just wasn’t allowed for some numinous reason?

Guess what? I don’t have to prove to literally anyone that I deserve to experience life in the ways I’m able, at any point in time. If you’re reading this (I know some of you are reading this) and you disagree, you can either find a new perspective here that helps you feel curious about your own life experiences and expectations, or you can get mad and are welcome to fuck right off. I really do hope it’s the former, though. I am comfortable telling someone to fuck off, but I don’t like to if I don’t need to.

Hang on — I bet you’re wondering how I got here

Let me do a mini-introduction of the people I’ll be talking about, since now I can stop being mysterious for safety reasons and can use their names and refer to the different relationships we have with one another. And I’ll be able to use the correct pronouns too. All of us are a flavor or several of neurodivergent, whether it’s autism, ADHD, or other neurospicy brain structures. I won’t speak for others on that unless they give me the okay to do so. Personally, I have a somewhat mild mood disorder that I am able to treat very well with the prescription my doctor gave me, and I am autistic + have ADHD as well as C-PTSD, and currently experiencing the world differently while I work to take off the masks of “normal behavior” that I took on so that I could survive in the world I have lived in. My long-suffering and beloved therapist has helped me so very much.

Me: I’m Phoenix, and most of the time people call me Nix, which I love. It is a privilege to choose your own name and I am still so excited when my correct name is used, rather than my government name (my deadname, otherwise known as the name currently on my birth certificate and all forms of ID). My pronouns are they/them.

StarChild: my spouse of eight (?!?) years, who has been such an integral part of my life I have almost forgotten what it was like when I was without them. They are also disabled and share many of the same chronic conditions that I do, which is a weirdly comforting thing, because we can understand each other’s physical and emotional pain in a bone-deep way. I have never been in a long-term relationship for more than four years and have been with many toxic or abusive partners, so even the eight years we’ve spent together blows my mind whenever I think about it. StarChild’s pronouns are they/them.

Vincent: my oldest, whom I cherish with my life. Vincent is my smol emotional support silly little guy, although it’s a lot more than that. I am constantly, quietly (unless I’m being rather loud) amazed at the life it gets to experience because it is so extremely different from mine at the same age. I will be using it/its pronouns for Vincent although there may be more variety there, but that level of nuance isn’t necessary for writing about things.

[I don’t usually talk about my second eldest because the way we separated from one another was painful in ways I can’t express very well. It is what it is, for now.]

Bee: my third (in age order) child, a whole-ass adult, whom I also cherish with my life. She is the person who invisibly sticks as close to me as possible when we are going places, the person who falls asleep on my shoulder during a long airplane ride because it feels safe and okay. Bee’s pronouns are she/her.

Sam: my fourth (in age order) child, almost sixteen, living full-time with his dad. I’m using that name and he/him pronouns until he tells me he prefers otherwise. We get to text each other once or twice a week, and I have a deeply complex relationship with him, which is often tricky. He’s a teenager and doesn’t usually get my humor and is a beautiful handsome person all on his own. I cherish Sam with my life, even if he’d rather I maybe didn’t. Sam’s pronouns are he/him.

Robert: my youngest child, five years old, who was born barely pre-pandemic and is being raised in a family that doesn’t punish him for being as neurospicy as he is. I love him dearly and am constantly amazed that I get to be one of his parents even though I am not biologically on-paper related. (Yet! Other countries are much more understanding of the nuance of chosen family, which blows my fucking mind.) Robert is also called Bug, and right now his pronouns that we use are he/him, but he will tell us if that changes, if he wants to. He is, for many of us, a bright and shining reason to keep going.

Rob: my queer-platonic life partner, Rose’s spouse, and co-parent, sometimes very misunderstood by the wider world, precious to me for reasons I probably couldn’t put into coherent words. I love Rob with a part of my heart I didn’t even know that I had access to. I can’t imagine life without him. On this website, I’ll use he/him pronouns until he lets me know his comfort level with different pronouns here. Sometimes one’s identity is both intrinsic and fragile, because people on the whole don’t tend to be understanding or curious, in favor of assuming and passing judgment instead because they don’t or can’t understand. Rob is also one of my reasons to keep going. He is one of Robert’s biological parents.

Rose: my co-parent, Rob’s spouse, and Robert’s other biological parent, whom I had the honor (no sarcasm intended) of driving to the hospital in the early morning when it was time for Robert to be outside of mum. My personal experience with giving birth to four babies definitely came in handy because Rose would (and does) endure an unimaginable amount of physical and emotional pain, and almost didn’t realize it was Time For The Hospital. I think Rose and I are life partners, although I don’t know at all how to describe what our relationship is. Rose is a warm and safe place, a strong and fearless person even when she thinks she is being very afraid. The pronouns I’ll use for Rose here are she/her unless she lets me know otherwise.

Ashley: last on the list but not last in my heart; my co-parent to Robert, and even though we haven’t given it many words, I consider them to be a queer-platonic life partner as well. They are Rose’s queer-platonic life partner and Rob’s queer-platonic husband, although there are more relationships they also have that maybe I will get to talk about later. I love Ashley so much. The way they chose us to be a part of, as a family, is one of the bravest and most meaningful things I’ve witnessed. They are hilarious and darkly beautiful like Persephone. They introduced me to K-pop and I will literally never be the same, and I fucking love it. Ashley’s pronouns are they/them.

And I cannot forget our cats: Flame, the old man who against all odds continues to choose to exist in physical form; Maisy, second oldest, the fluffiest tortie with the biggest most unnerving green eyes; Ash, who is not the oldest of the three siblings but she fuckin acts like it and we are just fine with that; Merry, a loveable asshole who does asshole behavior all the time but he’s so damn cute and he LOVES his people; Pippin, much smaller than her siblings Ash and Merry, a black kitty with glowy green-gold eyes who wants to be perceived and also does NOT want to be perceived; and Callie, our tiny calico kitty that for a long time had the moniker Captain Pickles because her favorite place to hide and sleep was a box made for transporting pickles.

Well, that took a lot more words than I expected. Are you still here? Okay, good. You made it this far!

As I was saying,

We are doing something completely different.

We’ve chosen to spread ourselves across several continents, in order to get where we are going, and so that we can have experiences that are new and scary and wonderful and are helping all of us to relax our parasympathetic nervous systems because nobody in Australia or Thailand or, eventually, Ireland, are going to give us the kind of shit we constantly dealt with in the states.

All of us adults identify as queer, and we all have spicy brains, and most of us are disabled to one degree or another, with varying intensity levels of chronic illness. We have been learning and adapting to our individual needs, and discovering the ways that we can hold one another in community, with a great deal of love and understanding. I don’t think we could exist as wholly ourselves if we were not in community in the ways that we are.

We have changed our fate and it has not been without great cost, but it is exactly what we wanted, what we needed, what we craved, what we cried for.

All of that, I think, is a pretty good primer — from my perspective — on what is going the fuck on with us at this moment in time, what has happened in the past, and what will happen in the future.

Most of us are practicing pagans, and a small subset of us are a coven in the tradition of the Path of Light. Yes, I know that sounds weird and maybe ominous, and you aren’t wrong, but you probably don’t know why you aren’t wrong. When we show up as the Ourselves that we are within the tradition, we can be compassionate beyond measure, we can do impossible things, and we can be frightening when it’s called for. It is not a beginner-level tradition to belong to; it is probably one of the most difficult traditions to be part of. Not for the faint of heart.

Now that I’ve said all the things here, I can share so much more in all the places I like to share; I am here (and you can subscribe to this particular website if you want to, the subscription form is still in the sidebar I think), I am on Mastodon, I am on Facebook (eww, but still), I am on Instagram (also eww, but still), I am on Matrix for secure comms, I am on Signal (username nixkelley.74) for secure comms, and who knows where else my life will lead me. I welcome interaction but if you are going to be a shithead, please do expect to be blocked. If you are an EXTRA shitty shithead, expect to be blocked with prejudice.

(For more reading, go to Rob’s website and see what he is posting because we have no hinges now because we don’t need them any more.)

My address is still in the United States and I am a US citizen. In the future perhaps this will change, but for now I am on holiday and did you know there are so many cockatoos in Australia? And how loud they are?

If you haven’t seen a kangaroo jump in place, I saw it, and it was so extremely funny. I think it just didn’t want to lose momentum but two smaller kangaroos stopped for whatever reason and the scene was so weird and new and amusing.

Right now until our SIM cards are sorted out between carriers, I don’t have very good internet connection most of the time, but I am managing much better than I expected to, and I am grateful for these new glimpses of a life I never knew was possible.

So long, my many beautiful friends, and may we meet again.

If you will happen to be in any parts of the world where I also happen to be, perhaps we can find each other and have hugs and a cup of coffee or tea together. And if we don’t see one another in person again, it does not mean that our relationship no longer means anything to me. This is just a new adventure I am having away from the fascist carceral harmful horrifying trashfire that is the USA.

We are proof that the queer, chronically ill, pagan, neurodivergent can also choose wildly different things; it is not the sole purview of rich WASP people for whom traveling around the world is easy.

xox,
Nix

---

epilogue:

walk in the shadow land
nobody’s innocent
hand in mouth we live like demons

stuck in the phantom zone
lost in the thunderdome
twilight ruled the day

we found the impossible
now we’re unstoppable
taking off the world beneath us

strong under pressure
we’ll make it together
our universe will change

freedom looking down a telescope
starlight never been so beautiful
whole world waiting for us, time to go
escaping gravity

we’ll be rising high above the rain
sunset never gonna be the same
thunder calling us to outer space
escaping gravity

straight to the galaxy
faster than sanity
left behind a land forsaken

black holes and meteors
riding on shooting stars
feelings like our dreams

we shoot down a satellite
wings of a butterfly
constellations recreating

fighting for liberty
raising the energy
bursting at the seams

freedom looking down a telescope
starlight never been so beautiful
whole world waiting for us, time to go
escaping gravity

— Escaping Gravity, by TheFatRat & Cecilia Gault (no link because my internet, she is slow)

featured image is a photo by Nick Jones on Unsplash