I am realizing how I have or haven't experienced family and caretaking and with whom. And discussions around blood/given family vs. chosen families recently have made me recognize how much of a gulf I have between my blood family, my chosen families and myself.
Because, let’s be real. The reasons why cochlear implants (CI's) are/were important is because I couldn’t be a part of my blood/given family with out them; we had no space for truly incorporating a deaf/hard of hearing kid within our family. Even with this, the CI’s help, but its like an anti-biotic, and it makes struggling with lost connections a bit easier. But the gulf is still there; the infection is still there. So I can not be a whole person with my family, if I wanted to be in the rain while we’re walking I have to be sheltered from the rain, instead of experiencing it while deaf. It prioritizes hearing, in the name of including me. They wonder why I’m excluding them or isolating myself; when instead I’m opening myself up to the world. I can choose whether I want to hear or don’t; and neither decision should mean isolation or access. So I have this incredible sense of estrangement and isolation, although, at the moment, everyone in the family struggles with addressing my hearing impairment and deafness in the family, attempting to create space for me as a whole person in the family.
In trying to navigate a world where I felt isolated and estranged from my parents, the people who tried to mother and father me, as well as two brothers who I fought with as well as tried to support; I searched and formed relationships with people who talked in alternatives, or at least said something that struck a chord in me. Radical-identifying folks, folks who experience/experienced oppression and marginalization, the people who tell/told stories of resilience and resistance, and recently, other disabled people. And, maybe the most important, the friends who lived, loved, laughed, played music, danced by my side and worked to help me get where I am today. Some of these people are alive, some are dead, some are people who I know closely, and others are people I’ve never ever met. But their words, their stories, articles, songs, laughs, hugs, and smiles have taken care of me in a way and helped me survive a world as a more whole person than my parent’s care-taking has done.
What frustrates me is that I know that my parents, deep down, want to do that for me. They wanted and continue to want to be some of the people, if not the people, that help me through hard times, like the depression I currently am feeling and dealing with. But I can’t seem to do it. I feel like if I reach out, I’ll enter the gulf and just fall deeper. I’m scared. I want to cradle them in their complexities. But that means they have to cradle me in mine, and I know this truth will hurt them. It will hurt to hear that I feel that I have been displaced from my family. That I feel displaced from my body from a world that is ableist; a connection with my body that is not just connected to being hard of hearing/deaf, but having cochlear implants and growing up being perceived/attempting to perceive myself as hearing. That other people and communities have built relationships to me in a way that create a space for me to be a more whole person, that seem to me to be more like family.
It won’t just hurt them. It hurts to say. It hurts to name, acknowledge the pain. It seems unfathomable that I’ll ever experience blood/given family the way that I have seen and heard my friends name, a connection with these people who they came from that is unbreakable. And I want to, and I know my parents and brothers want to. But here’s the gulf. Some of the tools and materials to make a breakthrough are here, I just feel that there’s something that there’s always going to be something missing, an emptiness that will keep on gnawing at me, within me. And that emptiness is wearing me down.
There’s another gulf I am realizing exists, that I’ve been too scared to acknowledge. And it’s a gulf between the people that I have considered to be chosen family throughout the years and myself. I struggle with feeling like a burden. But, I think it comes from knowing that my friends, especially people that feel like chosen family, can’t always provide the caretaking or support I may need or want at any given moment, in any given crisis I’m feeling. And that doesn’t mean I’m a burden; it means that they have needs and desires as well; and may as well be in crisis, and I need to recognize and support them.
I sometimes expect friendships with people (with whom who I may not consider to be chosen family, and who may not feel the same way) to exist in a way that resembles close friendships or chosen family, relationships based on caretaking, honesty, vulnerability, and enjoying each other’s company. The other person doesn’t carry with them the same notions of friendship or chosen family; or the notions of accountability that I attach to such relationships. So, folks may not want such relationships, and that’s totally legitimate; and I should be responsive to these needs and desires too. Consent should exist in all types of relationships, so I need to stop expecting these relationships to occur and embrace them the way that works for everyone. This doesn’t mean I need to let go of desiring and creating relationships that create chosen families, it just means, that they don’t work for everyone.
I need to create the space for myself to become vulnerable within myself, be honest with myself, and support myself. Because I’ve been so scared to. The sense of displacement with my blood family is connected with a sense of isolation from my own body: that it wasn’t enough for them; is it enough for me? The senses of a connection that feels like family from friends and people I am not related to, reclaiming that sense that I am deserving of such relationships, is connected the idea that I can and deserve a loving relationship with my body and my deafness, even if its complicated with the use of cochlear implants. Building liberating, loving, fun connections within myself supports and is supported by building liberating, loving, fun connections with other people; whether they be emotionally intimate or not.
There is still this gulf; I am scared to experience it: can I really do this? Can I build this not just with friends and people I identify as chosen family, but my blood/given family? More importantly maybe, can I build this within myself? It feels like I am entering an unknown. I am moving along a path that is my own, but is illuminated by the words, experiences, and existence of those who have gone into themselves and the world at the same time, by people who are alive and those who have died. The evidence that we have left and are leaving for each other and ourselves to find; to know that we are alone and together at the same time in our different but connected struggles and journeys.
All of these realities and experiences leave me with so many questions and almost all of them feel unanswerable. Can I be a whole person with myself and with other people in all of these ways, and ways that I haven’t mentioned such as strangers, classmates and people I will work with? But with these notions of family first and foremost: can I participate in building loving relationships with myself as well as with my families. If so, how would I go about doing that?
It feels like all of this is a part of navigating between how the world is, the way I want it or need it to be, taking care of myself and the people I love and care about along the way (and being taken care of); all the way to our respective and collective notions of home, liberation, and community. And at least for me, the ideas of places where I do not feel the emptiness that eats me away that I sometimes feel.
It scares me how vulnerable I am, how vulnerable I feel; especially in relationships that feel like family, and how much I want that notion of family. The relationships that feel like a site of home, of safety in vulnerability, of resilience and resistance, of visibility and conversations behind closed doors. The hugs, kisses, smiles, waves, text messages, phone calls, letters, all the things we give each other to know that we can find our way together, that we are there for each other even if we can’t be there or offer words or presence to support each other when we need or desire it most. All of it silently, softly, loudly saying: we care about each other and ourselves in the entirety of who we are and desire to be simultaneously.
