“Children are the ways that the world begins again and again.”

i have said before that i often struggle with building intimate and especially romantic relationships with adults, but i have really wonderful loving relationships with children. i have wondered in the past why that is, but it hit me this week that i know exactly why.

i don’t ask for a lot from partners in terms of time, or money, or binding contracts; all those things have been offered to me in abundance. if i wanted something tangible, i believe i could have it.

i ask for a lot in terms of authenticity and care. i ask people to part with social scripts about what relationships should look like and how people should behave. i ask people to be themselves and to accept all of me, slutty and silly and traumatized and mentally ill. i ask people to learn the ways trauma has shaped me and carve out new ways of interacting that will heal my wounds. i ask people to learn how trauma shapes them too, and to teach me how to love them in the places where they feel most unlovable. i ask people to take risks that i know must feel so destabilizing, because there are real costs, and i know this intimately, because i have had to pay those costs. i have lost friends, i have been abandoned by family, i’ve been institutionalized. but for me, the greatest cost of all would be to lose my sense of self.

to lose myself again, i should say. because i have dedicated the past 5 years to the intimate archival project of recovering parts of myself that had been lost in bargains i had made to survive in this world.

and children have no expectations about what the world should be or how they should exist within it; children only have a limitless imagination about what’s possible, that sometimes adults stifle when they impose gender norms, and when they tell kids to be quiet and stay still, and when they try to steer kids in the directions they believe to be most practical or fruitful or valuable, and when they push kids to perform when their bodies are telling them they need to stop. and on all of these questions, i’m with the kids asking:“why?”

i’ve talked a lot with friends about my desire to have another baby, and people often wonder about how much it makes sense to bring new life into this world we’re losing to climate catastrophe and fascism and greed. and it doesn’t make sense at all, and that’s exactly the point. it never really makes sense to bring life into this world; it’s so expensive, and you don’t get enough help. these were the reasons i spent so much of my life feeling like i wanted to die; living just didn’t really seem like it made a lot of sense. here in the belly of the beast, we don’t live in a context that supports life.

by seeking to bring life into the world, and by choosing to stay alive myself each day, i am banking on the next world. i am trusting that there will be a future and the future will be so queer, and trans, and disabled, and Black, and Indigenous. that there will be love and care in abundance! i am trusting that the world is still in progress, the future is still being created by the actions we take here and now.

i wonder if this is what june jordan meant when she wrote, “Children are the ways that the world begins again and again.”

my last suicide attempt was in October 2012, and within a year, i was pregnant. every day of my pregnancy, i bargained. i told myself, “i’ll kill myself, but for now i’ll take prenatal vitamins for the baby, just in case. i’ll kill myself, but i’ll buy this beautiful stroller on sale, just in case. i’ll kill myself, but i just want to meet the baby first.” and then every day i stayed, and i met the baby, and i fell in love with the baby, and i chose life because i had such a deep fulfilling love in my life.

and learning to love was how i learned to live. and raising Black queer trans and disabled kids, and just letting them be exactly who they are, is how i am continuously learning to love myself. it doesn’t make sense, but it will make perfect sense in the future that i’m creating.

a friend asked me my ideal way of bringing another baby into this world, and i said, “through magic.” and i really am holding out for that.

i would be remiss to share this post about children and the future without also offering ways to preserve both for anyone who might be reading. Palestinian children and adults are being starved in Gaza by the US-backed Israeli genocide, and the Sameer Project is on the ground distributing food and supplies. I am also fundraising for the Safer Movements Collective where we provide emergency microgrants to Black queer and trans people in our cohorts to cover basic needs like housing. we need to care for our people, our kids, our land, here and everywhere if we want to make a revolution.

please give to the Sameer Project!

and please give to the Safer Movements Collective!

• hanif abdurraqib’s essay on instagram
• “dismantling the master’s clock” by rasheedah phillips
• collage workshop at collective climb with jillian m. rock
• falling in love and letting it go
• children being weirdos in my house

songs i have on repeat:

• “worth it” by raye
• “white flag” by dido
• “naked” by ella mai