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 what “staying” means
dear mia,
thank you for writing about the weight of heartache and disappointment. there are so many emotions swirling in me. i have spent hours over a period of days writing this letter to you.
i don’t know where to begin: the tangible, crusted impact of my harm on you, our relationship, and family. knowing that the feeling undesirability is the result of my broken promise. the disappointment of our relationship not being what we thought it would be. the reality that i didn’t have a genuine understanding of what “moving in step together” or “life partner” meant or the skills / (guts?) i would need to be in a partner relationship with someone when i made the commitment to you. the body of all the things our relationship meant to me —- finding Home, community, queer disabled women of color love, disability justice, partner, best friend, co-conspirator, access person, family —- coming apart. my role in that unraveling. anguish. and sadness.
but mostly, i miss you. i miss listening to sugarland with you in the morning and i miss riding around our neighborhood with you in my lap. i dream about you, and like the cliche says, am sad when i wake up to find it was just slumber visions. i miss your brilliance to love and i miss our sweetness. i miss thinking anything we/i dreamed was possible. i miss hopefulness.
i reel in the uncertainty of where our relationship will go. i am trying to break out of my own narrative of being unwanted and staying out of one’s way. i watch myself out of my body, like i’m floating above us, and urge myself to do something different but nothing happens. i want to break out of my frozenness, my own hurt, and move towards you. as 2011 came to an end, i tried to kindle connection by being more present in family space, throwing down in ways i could to help you move, and just trying to open up to be in each other’s lives like we committed to and like you keep telling me you want. that earnestly felt like i was doing something. but it is silly to think that showing up at your door and sharing space without real talk conversation about where we are our relationship means anything. as much as we say we value “staying when it’s hard — especially when it’s hard”, i am realizing that what i was doing as staying is not it.
sitting across from each other at dinner and coming to family holiday time is not what “not leaving” means. i know that part, but to be honest, i am still struggling to figure the rest out. i don’t have answers yet.
for now i just wanted to say i really miss you. your name is in my every conversation and i think about you/us all day long. i love you and am wishing you good night.
stacey
