Friday, Apr. 26, 2024 - 9:30 pm.
Well, fuck. We're expecting our second child already. We got a call from the adoption unit this week, they had another possibility for us. We attended a meeting with two social workers on Thursday and of course we said yes, consider us to be this baby's family.
The baby is a five-month-old boy. His mom is a 21-year-old uni student who had to keep her pregnancy a secret from her family. There was little to no background on her, but clearly she couldn't rely on her family, and per the social worker, she wasn't in a very "stimulating" environment. But she'd still manage to continue studying.
The baby was born with mild problems and continued to have them for a while: APGAR, blood stuff, a red spot in his forehead that becomes noticeable when he cries (I'm sorry but LOL <3). And he cries loudly.
He was behind on some newborn milestones, but THANKFULLY, he was taken in by a foster family. They sound quite lovely (and have pets!) and it seems that thanks to them, the baby is catching up. The other social worker he smiles a lot.
I feel numb about this, mostly. I guess Andrew and I ended up exhausted after last time...which happened only a couple of weeks ago! It was exhausting, struggling with preparing while not fantasizing, but mostly with having to tell people that it might happen, then explaining that it didn't happen, and dealing with some well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful (and some frankly hurtful) comments and reactions.
We'll have news by mid-May. As it happened last time, the adoption unit has to round up three potential families and present them to a judge so they can decide which one adopts the child.
Just wait. Prepare but don't daydream.
Anyway, in the meantime, I am overwhelmed with work and the impending trip to my home country *checks calendar* NEXT WEEKEND. I've been working nights and weekends due to some extra assignments that I've gotten, but at least I'll get paid extra for some of those.
On the work front, I was told today that I'm a reference point in uni for all things sexuality and gender. I have succesfully pulled a David Bowie. When he travelled to the States the first time, nobody knew who he was but he and his team hired people to follow him around and set everything up so as to make him look unapproachable.
Me, I was -still am- a nobody but I started acting like I was somebody. I surrounded myself with a couple of people (my students) with my same interests and set up an Instagram account. Now people talk about "the lab", my lab. Lately I get a lot of communications regarding "my lab". Lots of works, requests, invitations, meetings. I'm swamped.
All this has brought me to the ultimate challenge: the uni Gender Policy is being discussed by the whole uni community in the upcoming months. There's a small but vocal group of furiously conservative academics who concentrate a lot of power in university and are pushing back on many initiatives on sexuality and gender. Meetings on gender policies, which are supposed to have representatives from different sectors, get ugly; "trans people are sick and these people just practice paedophilia" kind of ugly.
I've only heard about that, haven't had to endure those comments myself. But now I've been called to attend these Gender Policy discussion sessions. These past days I've been told how important these discussions are. Today I had a conversation with a bunch of queer people (who work in different departments in uni and have heard first-hand those nasty comments) that sealed the deal for me. A lot of those furiously conservative people have already signed up to attend those sessions and boycott the process.
I get a knot in my stomach in these situations. In my mind I'm so fucking quick and witty when I imagine conversations and exchanges of all sorts. But when it's time to face the situation, I get tongue-tied and vocabulary just abandons me. Worse, when it comes to defending a position, my heart starts beating fast and my voice breaks, it sounds as if I am crying. I am, effectively, overcome with emotion.
Outside of my imagined scenarios, in the real world, I'm often thrown off easily. I'm taken by surprise, I stutter or go speechless. I let people interrupt me because I'm at a loss of words over how rude people can be. I still wait for my turn to speak. I'm too polite.
Maybe I'll get someone to coach me by spitting the most awful comments about women and LGBT+ people at me.
But let me rest! It's the weekend. I have some work to do, I have to start packing as well. But most importantly, I have to get lost in my happy place: hang out with Andrew and travel to my little world of short stories, novels and comic strips.
I need to do things that are pleasant. That's how we survive.
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