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 en route, in motion: leaving Atlanta part 2
Dear stacey,
I made it to California late last night. I will reach the Bay area tonight.
The last four days I have been in constant movement, no time to be still. It still sometimes feels like I am just on a long adventure, after which, I will return home to Atlanta. I don’t know that it has sunk into me yet, that I am not going home.
Moving out of my loft was so overwhelming, I had no time to feel the regular crip panic, anxiety, shame and guilt of not being able to lift boxes, carry heavy furniture and having to depend on people. Usually I am strung so thin on moving days, feeling every possible emotion: anger at my body for everything it isn’t; jealousy and awe of other people’s bodies for all they can do, the ease of their movements and the security it provides; enormous gratitude and appreciation for the people around me who offer their time and love to help me move; and alienation from the acute internal isolation of an entire crip world on to itself playing out inside of me, always on the verge of cracking open, spilling over and exposing me.
But instead, my heart was full and my head was racing as the rain fell outside and one by one, friends and loved ones came through the door to help. Sarah, Carol, L, Moya, Cara, Glo, Mara, Jillian, Lewis, Connor, D, Jocelyn. They made the load-up so smooth and easy, so loving and gentle, so full. Little by little, I watched my house empty. I was the last to leave, looking around a bare and dark loft, feeling an emptiness and a sadness I hadn’t felt since the first time I came home to the loft after my ex had moved out. There was no turning back now. There was no returning. I let myself cry for a moment before turning off the last light and slowly closing the door.
Since then, I have been driving. Watching the landscape change and the highway signs fly by. “Welcome to Alabama,” “Welcome to Tennessee,” “Welcome to Oklahoma,” “Welcome to New Mexico,” “Welcome to Arizona,” “Welcome to California.” Driving through the deep south to the desert has been beautiful. I have seen giant wind turbines, stretching up through the Oklahoma sky, fields of cotton in Alabama and Mississippi, huge red rocks in Arizona and shooting stars in the night sky. I have left Atlanta, I have turned 30, I have changed.
I keep wishing you were with me. I had dreams about us making this journey together. I had dreams about moving in with you once I got to California, about being able to unpack and set up a home with you to hold my heart, heavy with leaving the South, heavy with leaving home. I know it is ableism that keeps us separated still, patiently waiting to find a crack in the concrete, in which we can plant a seed together. I know if we had different bodies, we would have found a home together already and possibly driven across country together, driving in shifts, listening to music, navigating roads. I think about this all the time.
In many ways, I feel like I am not just leaving the city I love and have been formed in, but I am also leaving an able-bodied-washed version of myself behind, ready for the clearer—crisper—version of my crip self that lies ahead. Excited to be fiercer and more bold. Excited to hold more in letting go and remember the leaving as a hope sent out across state lines, shooting through the night sky, bold with everything that has ever been possible.
love,
mia
