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 another anniversary on my mind
dear mia,
i have been so, so scared to write. every time i sit at the computer to type out my thoughts, i think of all the different people in my life who have asked me quite pointedly what i have done to deserve such a platform - what makes me worth the amount of money that we have received for our move or what amount of life i have experienced to even have something to say. sometimes i remember that i do have a story to tell but most days i sit lodged somewhere between the deepest desire to write and the inability to even acknowledge that i might have things worth saying out loud to another person. it is a infuriating existence. i am writing for documentation purposes. i am writing because i want to remember this moment in time.
this week you and i celebrated four months of living together in this glorious little in-law cottage. in this four month time, we wrote out our values and guiding principles for home. we had our first fight. we learned about our own access needs. we went to the ocean. we built with our upstairs neighbors/landlords who have the kind of relationship with each other that we never thought was possible for a disabled person. access. intimacy. love. it has not all been a california easy breezy dream, in fact, it has been grueling. we moved to the other side of dreaming and wondered if it was better to stay asleep. i know it is not. we are learning to come back to each other, returning again and again instead of leaving.
i am also reflecting on another anniversary this week — the death of my friend altinea’. altinea’ was a friend i had back home in fayetteville. she was a few years older than me. she was a black woman with a complex body like mine. a true southerner. a fan of tyler perry and donnie mcclurkin. a gemini if i ever saw one. in another life time i don’t think she and i would have been friends, but as two extremely isolated people, we cherished every moment we were able to spend together because it was a moment we got to spend around another person, out of our parents’ house/garage. we fell asleep on the phone together. we watched the obama inauguration together. we went out for margaritas and movies. i loved her. we taught each other so much.
nea’ died two months before i left for california. my move was loaded for her: two years ago, we tried to move out together and couldn’t bring all the access pieces needed to make it work. we found an apartment — since she was homebound i went to visit them and sent her pictures — but when her insurance rejected her request for more nursing services and we had to figure out how we were going to make sure she would have 24/7 support, i wasn’t ready to make that level of commitment to another person. we didn’t have enough community support to make it happen. it was always just us.
sometimes i like to tell myself that altinea’ would want me to have what i have with you — that she would want me to be able to take the bus and have friends and attendants and freedom — and i truly believe she does from her grave. still, if she was alive, it would be no lie to say that she would be angry for me having what did not seem was allowed for us. it would be no lie to say i saw something glitter outside of my window and made a run for it, not knowing what was outside.
i made it out just in time. i dodged the sticky swamp of isolation and depression. i dodged another year of not leaving my house and not really knowing another human being. i dodged my spirit being broken. when i think of leaving altinea’, i think of leaving billy, the disabled boy in my town who also used a wheelchair and had a korean mother and a soldier father. he and i were not friends but our stories were so aligned that when his mom died of cancer and exhaustion from taking care of him, his reality did not feel so far away from mine or my mother’s. billy stills lives in father’s garage and wants to go to a group home in raleigh because at least it is more freedom than he has now. i made it out. billy hasn’t yet. altinea’ didn’t.
these are my thoughts as my attendant brushes my hair and i get myself ready for a friday off from work to spend with friends. when i think of altinea’ and billy, leaving does not seem so brave. i am thankful for my freedom but i am also mourning for friends who never did make it out.
love,
stacey
