you can't have me and i don't want you
Reading for work. "All the things I will do for my [important life ceremony that absolutely has to be marked ceremonially]".
I realise that, with no familial connection, and - ironically - two generations into a family which rejects the culture of its immediate forebears; in addition to transitioning, and to everything else, I have been at liberty to create and reject ceremonial importance as I see fit.
It's not very easy to impress upon other people the importance of A over B when there isn't a societal framework to back you up; there isn't much call for most people to examine why they celebrate something on a personal rather than a cultural level ("Derek why do you do the midwinter festival thing?" // "Because it's cold and dark and I need to have warmth and light and carbohydrates and assurance that the sun will come back.").
I pity these people as cowards. I pity the people who pity me for "having no connection" to things I personally didn't experience or to things I personally did not achieve, who think that by tagging onto someone else's doings and thinkings by blood or shared ritual they are gaining some measure of their power, instead of by DOING THINGS THEMSELVES. I do. I pity them from the bottom of my sympathy well, which is dry as a bone and laughing.
It's fun to watch; it's healthy to be reminded, as I just have been, that there is no shame or loss in not having the pink Barbie house you don't want or the award for Best Thing You Didn't Actually Fucking Do. I may not have Decades Of Proud Culture but I have written ten novels. I may not have A Moment Of Togetherness When My Family Marks My Proud Joining To Another Family but one day I'll have a Grand Awakening When My Shitty Body Doesn't Have Fucking Breasts Any More. There isn't going to be a nationwide festival or culture-wide festival devoted to a shared experience (that I haven't actually shared); no one is going to break bread because Derek Climbed Snowdon All The Way To The Top When He Was Four, no one is going to light candles for That Time I Was Bitten By A Stray Dog And Hid In An Irrigation Ditch For Nine Hours or The Blessed Moment Derek Saw The Milky Way Unadulterated By Artificial Lights, Lying In The Back of a Pick-Up Truck; even if "they tried to kill me, they failed" is pertinent to specifically my life the sole celebrant of this is me (has someone personally tried to kill you? Celebrate their failure yourself! Be proud!), and that's as it should be.
I like birthdays because we agree then that what matters is that person, even if it's nonsensical to commemorate them. I like creating and erasing my own meaning. I like remembering to eschew the nerd boy "Keeper Of Canon" attitude to all things non-scientific. This is how it was, this is how it is useful to think of it having been, this is how it might appear to someone else, this is how I will tell this audience it was, it doesn't matter how it was because was.
Culture is ownership and prison and family is ownership and prison.
I matter on my own and I don't need anyone else's achievements or failures to justify mine.
I realise that, with no familial connection, and - ironically - two generations into a family which rejects the culture of its immediate forebears; in addition to transitioning, and to everything else, I have been at liberty to create and reject ceremonial importance as I see fit.
It's not very easy to impress upon other people the importance of A over B when there isn't a societal framework to back you up; there isn't much call for most people to examine why they celebrate something on a personal rather than a cultural level ("Derek why do you do the midwinter festival thing?" // "Because it's cold and dark and I need to have warmth and light and carbohydrates and assurance that the sun will come back.").
I pity these people as cowards. I pity the people who pity me for "having no connection" to things I personally didn't experience or to things I personally did not achieve, who think that by tagging onto someone else's doings and thinkings by blood or shared ritual they are gaining some measure of their power, instead of by DOING THINGS THEMSELVES. I do. I pity them from the bottom of my sympathy well, which is dry as a bone and laughing.
It's fun to watch; it's healthy to be reminded, as I just have been, that there is no shame or loss in not having the pink Barbie house you don't want or the award for Best Thing You Didn't Actually Fucking Do. I may not have Decades Of Proud Culture but I have written ten novels. I may not have A Moment Of Togetherness When My Family Marks My Proud Joining To Another Family but one day I'll have a Grand Awakening When My Shitty Body Doesn't Have Fucking Breasts Any More. There isn't going to be a nationwide festival or culture-wide festival devoted to a shared experience (that I haven't actually shared); no one is going to break bread because Derek Climbed Snowdon All The Way To The Top When He Was Four, no one is going to light candles for That Time I Was Bitten By A Stray Dog And Hid In An Irrigation Ditch For Nine Hours or The Blessed Moment Derek Saw The Milky Way Unadulterated By Artificial Lights, Lying In The Back of a Pick-Up Truck; even if "they tried to kill me, they failed" is pertinent to specifically my life the sole celebrant of this is me (has someone personally tried to kill you? Celebrate their failure yourself! Be proud!), and that's as it should be.
I like birthdays because we agree then that what matters is that person, even if it's nonsensical to commemorate them. I like creating and erasing my own meaning. I like remembering to eschew the nerd boy "Keeper Of Canon" attitude to all things non-scientific. This is how it was, this is how it is useful to think of it having been, this is how it might appear to someone else, this is how I will tell this audience it was, it doesn't matter how it was because was.
Culture is ownership and prison and family is ownership and prison.
I matter on my own and I don't need anyone else's achievements or failures to justify mine.