I feel remarkably resistant to participating in this project. 

I am no stranger to refusal. Indeed, in the halls of institutions I feel no shame in telling authority figures to stuff it with their excavating and violent projects and programs. I hold no qualms about looking my supervisors in their eyes while I refute their suggestion to make me hold their responsibility to repair the fractures in their relationships. 

Sometimes I fear my expectations are excessive. My resistance too exacting. I worry that overtime I became the thing I hated the most – an elitist and demanding academic with no humbleness nor openness to learn at a different pace, from a different place.

I came here with a desire to feel challenged. To stretch the spaces in my writing that have been dragging on. To dedicate my mind to the dizziness that comes along from a day filled with writing. To feel like I could maybe soothe the fear that flows through my body like blood that I am not enough – not worth the sacrifice my parents made for me.

I can’t take the weight of looking at the pictures of my parents when they were young. I see their faces knowing the future. My eyes rake across faces of young hope and desperation – but I know that they have three asshole adult children that are selfish beyond means. I know the dreams they put aside to work unimaginably long days. Cyclical shifts between tending to children and labouring for the extraction of our oldest ancestors reduced to dark liquid that heats our homes. A trade off so that we could play hockey, dance, or chase whatever whim would come next. I can’t hold the devastation of a nineteen year old new mother who was not abandoned, but lonely beyond measure. I can’t bear the face of the new father who lost his while still a kid. 

Sometimes it feels like I wander through that reality – that moment in time – like a hazy dream. Something about the circularity of time. The spiral that makes things happen all at once. I feel the past and know the future. I can’t tell them though – I must let them find their pragmatic dedication to one another. With apologies shaped like popsicles gifted after a long day and quiet resignation to give each other space while they negotiate their commitment to this family.

One of the first things I learned about myself is that I was not meant to exist. After the last ectopic pregnancy post the birth of my sister, my mom’s doctor advised that she elect for tubal ligation rather than attempt to have her second fallopian tube repaired – the first already damaged between the birth of my brother and sister. Another pregnancy could be fatal, or at least catastrophic. But my mom saw the future while high on pain medication; Saturn would bring her another baby with its return. So a risky repair is what she got. My dad was unimpressed with my mom’s penchant to sacrifice herself for her children. He did not know then that this would be a lifelong battle. My sister likes to joke that she is the only one of us that was wanted – the first and last were accidents. Miracles, our mother corrects.

This sentiment weighs heavy on us. As we throw ourselves through life, it is like a crusade to prove ourselves. And god does it feel like we fail a lot. Not my sister, though. She is so steady. A stable and measured climb through the ladder of life. Eldest daughter and all that. Brilliant and steadfast. She bears the weight of our family without looking away. My brother and I have cried about this together a time or two. Accidents, as we are. 

I tell you this because in it you will find the web that weaves my reality together. It is only through these threads of relations that I come to exist. I can’t look away. I can’t sever these ties. I can’t write from a lens that doesn’t see my existence is only possible through these relations – and their relations – that shape the spiral of my life. It is impossible to count all the threads. But I inherit histories that define my responsibilities to Land, to water, to neighbours, strangers, friends. 

My routines are shaped by these obligations I hold. Every thought in my head and word that leaves my mouth is materialized with the heaviness that I am accountable to Land and to Life. How can you ask me to think outside of this? How can you suggest that I see myself as separate from this?

The suggestion that there is weakness in specificity is something I spend so much time rebelling against. I deny the possibility that objectivity is possible. I refute the suggestion that a room overflowing with the voices of white women should be encouraged to see themselves as able to write from above – from some notion of “universal” that has always intended to draw sharp lines on who is included. Fuck you and your lesson on using the god trick as if it will make you a better writer. I will always find more in the crevices – in the cracks that are left behind by the ruin of the people who deny themselves, their relations, their obligations. 

So I am here again looking for crevices. I had something I wanted to work on. A vision for a conversation I wanted to have. But I have no faith that this structure will hold it. I trace jagged lines looking for something new – outside of the classroom. My fingers catch on moments that teach me a new way to see. Like crosswords as something to build community. Or learning to be brave instead of horrified at the burden I fear I am. I leave fingerprints on the new people I have come to hold so dear. I offer affection like it might soothe me too. I stare at a tree glistening with bright light for far too long because Annie told me to look. I do this all instead of writing. I fail at what I came here to do. But in this failure – stemmed from a refusal lashed out like a petulant child annoyed with being told what to do – I find new threads to weave into the web that shapes who I am. And I refuse to see myself as outside this. As capable of existing without being marked by the generosity of people who owe me nothing. As separate from these new relations that share mandarins with me. Or cook me dinner. Or relentlessly tease me for the frantic flailing of my hands or every silly thing that slips out of my mouth.

I refuse to understand myself as anything other than this. As someone deeply tied to everything around me. As a long list of identity markers that explicate the ways I am bound to everything around me. As the surplus of nicknames lovingly dolled out based on every quirk they find. And if that makes me a failure, then fine. Maybe on another day I will find a way to tell you how this failure is my friend. But, for now, I refuse. 

With contempt and more anger than is good for me – your dear friend,

Dani