Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern are two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color in the process moving from the South to the Bay to create home and community with each other.
This tumblr documents their journey. For more info about Mia, visit her blog at Believing in the Impossible
dear stacey,
I feel worn out and tired, and a little bit bruised. I have been out here for almost a week looking for housing and after today, I am sitting here thinking, is it an impossibility? Do we have a right to dream it? You sift through the listings, send me the links, I call and inquire about accessibility and arrange to go out and see the one or two of them that might work. Nothing I have found will work so far. It is either inaccessible outside or inside or both, or it is not anything we can afford. They charge more because they know they can—where else can we go? They would rather have us locked up in institutions, they would rather we not come over to their houses…
I feel the distance my own privilege provides. And I feel the intentional shifting of this, a constant process of re-centering disability in an ableist culture that wants to pull me back into their center. But I never belonged there anyway. I belong with you, I belong with the pieces of myself that I never had the courage to commit to, didn’t want other’s to see, didn’t want to look at myself. I do not “need” wheelchair accessible housing, but I do. I need you and I need those pieces of me that make able-bodied folks uncomfortable and bored, frustrated and guilty. I need those pieces of myself to know that I want them, I desire them, and I am here to struggle with them. I need them to know I will stay present and never leave.
I sit in the passenger seat of the car and watch house by house, building by building, pass by with stairs and broken sidewalks. My heart feels heavy. This is nothing extraordinary—this is the everyday reality of most of us. I push through it, roll it off this thick armor I have grown that used to be skin; I feel foolish for thinking things could be any other way. But still I feel it. Some where, I feel it.
Today was the hardest so far. Disappointment, discouragement, inaccessibility built up over the last month coming to a head. Feeling like I can’t talk about it because we have some things: we are not locked up in an institution or group home, I don’t live with my parents, we are able to even contemplate crossing state lines, we have access to a car, we have community support from all ends of the country and beyond, we have the financial resources to move and the relational connections to find them. And yet, even with all of that privilege, what is there that we can even consider?
I was thinking about accessible housing and accessible home today. About how excruciatingly difficult it is to find accessible home, in houses, buildings, people, movements, community. How rare it is to find places where we can even park the car and get in the door, literally and metaphorically. And what is home anyways? The things I have gotten used to feel like home, the dreams I carry in my heart feel like home. And all of these places and people, they know they can charge more because where else can we go? And we will compromise more because it is the best we have found so far and, after all, we have some things. So what if it costs more than we can afford or we can’t use the shower or are only intellectually and emotionally consumed? So what if people like to say they are “with us” and our “allies,” but can’t seem to (or won’t) change themselves to be in solidarity. They aren’t good at organizing, speaking up, asking, talking about their feelings, doing administrative work, initiating, holding space, challenging their communities, sorry. I have been asking the landlords and contacts I call for all the properties if they are willing to make the necessary changes to the properties. They won’t or don’t know or “that’s just the way the building is.”
I feel like I have been looking for accessible affordable home all my life. Where I don’t have to pay or perform or be isolated or give ‘till I am exhausted. I have been looking for places and people and love that are accessible and affordable. I have been disappointed more times than I can say. Sometimes I think it will work and I hold my breath, and then it falls through. I’ve learned to not expect, to not be surprised and sometimes to think the worst. And I hate that.
Day after day, I see houses and apartments that are so cute, so sweet. Places where I would want to live, where I want to make home in. But I find that I am even having to shift the kinds of houses/homes that I desire, because so many of them are built to not include me and the people I love.
Whenever I think intentional accessible affordable home is an impossibility, I remember that we are too, you and I. We are impossibilities that have some how, some way, survived enough to defiantly think we can dream—and live beyond dreaming. Who do we think we are? This question haunts me. If it wasn’t for your support, and the support of all the people surrounding us, I would lose hope and faith. Each day, my work is to awaken the remembering inside of me: we are here, we were never meant to survive and we will find a way home. I believe this. I have to.
believing,
mia
