It’s like realising how much I love my grandmother then realising in the same breath – I cannot tell her date of birth to save my life, yet somehow, the absence of this knowledge has done nothing to dissipate how much I love her. With that same non judgement, I can extend a hand to myself by making peace with my lack of interest in my own date of birth and how many times I have come very close to forgetting it, yet somehow that lack of interest is no indication of a measure of how much I love myself.
I hope my lover would understand. I hope those I choose to call family will understand. I hope the manifest forms of care in human bodies that surround my life will understand that my distance from a date that seems to want to keep me attached to this life is not a rejection of their care or love for me. I hope they can accept that my detachment from annotations has nothing to do with them but everything to do with me and my god.
The thing that circles in my chest, which causes it to tighten sometimes, is my greatest grandmother’s breath, trying yes simply trying to remind successfully sometimes that this life I have come to live is not mine. It does not belong to me.