home is where the children are

when i look back on my life, i realise that i have raised my parents.

i must have been 7 or so, when i asked my mom why she wasn't praying at the usual time she used to pray everyday and she said she couldn't because she was on her periods. later that night, i asked her why god had a problem with her periods if it was god who gave her periods. she teared up and has since, prayed whenever she needed to.

children are often the best people to ask for advice (if you can get their attention, that is). most are too busy on their own quests to have started the side-hustle we call ideology: selling bullshit at the low cost of validation.

not to come down too hard on ideology. adults need ideology in the same earnest way that my mom needs prayer. when you invest in a free market, the risks practically beg for faith. and i get it. if it helps, it helps. from therapy to god, the immediate solutions for wanting to kill yourself are always gonna seem a little individualistic, and cool, and whatever.

see, we are all nomads when it comes to the unanswered questions. explorers, truth seekers, gaping at the darkness. waiting for form, discontent. but children have a more fresh memory of the womb. darkness is second nature. until you tell them monsters are real so that you can feed them another spoon of Cerelac (my parents never did this to me because I love Cerelac. & yes, present tense).

but the door is wide open and daddy still doesn't feel welcome home. & i’m not saying daddy is a vampire, but why do you stumble alone in the dark, drunk, when what you're looking for is me? waiting, at home.

gender is the division of reproductive labour, and you can pick which part of raising a child suits your personality, sure. or we can realise that those goofy little gods simply answer our prayers when we listen sicnerely at their altar. and it does take a village to raise a child.

education’s biggest enemy is gendered education. formal education IS about raising a ‘workforce’ - discovering their joys in labour, craft, practice and everything in between. but the reason most teachers fail miserably at this is because they have preset notions about the kind of labour that will be expected of boys and girls when they grow up. dads abandon their daughters because they don't know they have anything to offer that would help them. and that makes the feel worthless. and so, we're back at ideology.

adulthood is the gendering of the non-binary child's body. when faced with the burden of survival in a world where resources are hoarded with a select few who have convenient imaginations about how the world works, your gender is a contract you sign about how you will contribute. which part of the work you will do. this is manufactured consent. and it IS about sex. this is the world penetrating you. patriarchy truly fucks us all.

this is what i tried to write about in the previous substack about children, albeit convolutedly. poetically, if you will.

this is comphet- an infinite promise of dysphoria. when you are forced to ensure your survival through the gendering of your body, you will fight anything that challenges your truth like you are fighting for survival. this is queerphobia, at its core- the upkeep of the reproductive economy. & we are collateral.