aside: the yurt
CW: description of building collapse
Most days I feel overwhelmed by the number of words I still have to piece together and write out. There are so many moments, even now, that I return to again and again in my body. Most days, I can only piece together words in my head. Some days, I get a push to do more.
This morning a friend told me they had a dream in which I toured them around a home I had just built - a structure that in some ways resembled a yurt.
Today, the push I needed came from someone else’s dream world.
The night I met M, we spent the first few hours together in the yurt, at twilight. At that time, the yurt was the most noticeable structure on the farm from the street. It was the first thing I saw when pulled into the driveway, after driving from my friends’ in Louisville, Kentucky.
As the sun set that evening, they were seated just in front of one of the vinyl windows of the yurt, their head backlit, and their face shadowed and undecipherable, as I answered their questions about my life, beliefs, and work. Even then, each question was a covert invasion.
Storms on the farm were significant, both in terms of their impact on the environment, and the violence they highlighted in my relationship with M.
Between the round bales, scattered around the property with their haphazard tarp covers, and the inadequate safe infrastructure on the farm, a frenzy would begin the moment the wind would pick up or rain would start to fall. Add to that the manner in which M would put things down instead of away, and there was no shortage of items to suddenly track down by the time it was pouring.
“run! cover the saddles! they’re on the ground in the woods!”
“close the greenhouse doors! push the water off of the roof!”
“are you SURE you strapped that tarp down?”
“do you remember if the ATV is covered? can you go check? for a million kisses?”
Sometimes these would be orders, barked at me as they ran in the opposite direction to tend to something on the other side of the farm. Often, they would be sneers. The worst was when they were saccharine pleas, delivered with batted eyelashes, and a coy tuck of their hair behind their ear - from the comfort of their warm dry bed they would sarcastically call out, “you’re SO brave,” as I stepped out into the storm alone.
In truth, I can handle all the things to keep up with, and I do enjoy the adrenaline rush of being in suddenly frantic environments, when I have a clear task. I could have dealt with this aspect of our life together, and possibly even with their violent communication in the midst of weather events.
The yurt was something else entirely.
A photo caption I wrote in March 2023:
This week I was standing in the woods and could feel the ground move beneath my feet, from wind so strong that it moved the roots of the trees.
This week the yurt collapsed on my body and M held it up so I could crawl out.
This week my body remembered 19 years of traumatic experiences that coincided on a single calendar day.
And still, this week I met over 100 new students who will look to me to answer their questions about carework.
Carework is asking for help.
Carework is extra hands and bodies cleaning up the mess, bringing by food, and helping us to keep going when it’d be easier to be a puddle in bed.
Carework is noticing my stress responses, and asking whether what my tired brain is about to have me say/do is in alignment with how I want to show up.
Carework is repair.
It was in the yurt on the night we met that I told M about the job I held at the time, and had held for three years. I was in a leadership role with a training organization for careworkers, and worked as a contractor for the organizations founder - someone I counted as a friend. It was a very challenging workplace, and it was not one in which I was treated equitably. Even still, it was work that I loved, cared about, and was good at.
The week I began my last training cohort with that organization was the week the yurt collapsed. By May, M had talked me into requesting a mental health leave of absence that would result in the end of my time with that organization, and the end of my friendship with its founder.
“Make sure when you make the request, you specify that you need this mental health leave because of your work there. Make sure you tell them it’s not because you moved here.”
They always wanted to be sure I wasn’t giving others the idea that I wasn’t happy on the farm with them. One time they told me outright,
“You can’t talk about our life here. People won’t understand it. We are already trans - there’s enough stacked against us. It is better to not give them more to question.”
The reality is that, although my departure from that organization was overdue, and their response to my request for leave was entirely inappropriate, the need for the leave I had requested was absolutely catalyzed by the daily abuse I had begun to experience upon moving to the farm in January.
When I look back at what I wrote then, I still see M’s influence.
This week the yurt collapsed on my body and M held it up so I could crawl out.
Always the hero. Just like when they totaled their car - it wasn’t that they almost killed us, it was that they saved us.
Carework is noticing my stress responses, and asking whether what my tired brain is about to have me say/do is in alignment with how I want to show up.
Of course, the days and weeks just after the yurt collapsed were stressful on the farm, and the tension between M and I was increased as a result. The thing is - it was ALWAYS stressful. And, as I was constantly being semantically manipulated, I began to question every thought I had, word I spoke, and action I took. I became a walking self-manifesting prophecy of self-doubt. I let myself become that vulnerable to someone else’s narrative.
How did the yurt collapse? Improper installation. In particular, based on my conversations with the manufacturers after its collapse, there was a “wind kit” add-on that M must have cheaped-out on when they ordered the parts.
Why was I inside of the yurt when it collapsed? Because after running around covering equipment and battening down the hatches, in the middle of a tornado warning, for weeks, we would go stand in the yurt as it came apart around us. At first we would just strap things in place, weigh things down, or brace the walls with furniture. Little by little, the structural integrity worsened - until the door was no longer flush, and pieces of the interior wall were snapped or bent. During its last few storms standing upright, M and I were in the yurt bracing our bodies against its weak points to support it in the wind. Eventually, it came down.
Of all of the wow-glad-I’m-alive-moments I had in my time with M, the yurt’s collapse was at least the most graceful.
Imagine, a circular yurt with a vaulted roof - a skylight at its very top. The walls are latticed wood, the kinds of panels that can accordion in and out. The roof is supported by beams that extend from the skylight to the tops of the walls, stretched out in a sunbeam, and held in place by a thick tension wire on either end.
As it collapsed, the entire structure twirled inward, like a figure skater drawing themselves in towards their center to spin faster and faster. The vinyl exterior of the yurt draped over its wooden bones with a hint of that centrifugal motion - a hoop skirt bellowed out as its wearer spins once or twice before crouching to sit on the floor.
Of course, the yurt rebuild became a half-assed effort to rally community, both in person to help with repairs, and via gofundme.
Once the yurt manufacturer made it clear that the wind kit should have been installed, and they would only cover shipping costs for new parts, not any of the parts themselves, I think M kind of gave up. I had been the one to communicate with the manufacturer, and within a few weeks of the yurt’s collapse, I had also secured the farm a $10k grant designated to rebuild the yurt - that isn’t how M spent it.
The community members who did come to lend a hand one afternoon reached the same dead end that M would reach - the hoard of items that had been within the yurt. Like every structure and square inch of cover on the farm, the yurt was filled with items - many half rotted already - that M could not part with. Without new indoor space being created - either by way of clearing out space or creating a new structure - there was no where for the belongings to go.
Within several weeks, M had asked me for $1k to spend on a carport-sized white event tent. Originally they bought this claiming a plan to put it over the bus in which I slept, to help the space stay cooler in the summer. When it arrived, they put it right behind the bus instead - just a few inches short of providing it with any cover - and turned it into an outdoor living room by bringing down some of their items from the yurt.
By the final time I spoke to them, they had added two additional sheds to the property. At that time, the yurt was still a collapsed pile of lumber, and a mountain of forgotten belongings beneath a tarp.