Staten Island is Actually... Cool?

New York, I have a secret for all of you. And you have to promise not to laugh at me (too much), alright?

My secret?

I... I love Staten Island.

Yes, yes, I know, NYC's "forgotten borough" is often ignored or ridiculed. Most New Yorkers' experience with it, I've found, is that they rode the ferry over once, then turned around and got right back on it and rode back to Manhattan, spending only a few minutes on Staten Island itself. I was one of those New Yorkers for awhile, myself. I get it, I do. Staten Island is a pain to get to, and you need to be comfortable with buses if you go there.

But it's so so worth it, you guys. Staten Island, I am publicly apologising for all the shit I once gave you, for you have shown me so many delightful hidden treasures. If you ever have a day to kill (and don't mind buses or can access a car for a day) I highly recommend all my New York friends check out at least one of these incredible little-visited gems...

A Gift Guide in the Loose Sense of the Term

Iiiiiiit's the season of holidays! Hanukkah! (Which technically ended already but shhh goyim don't know that.) Kwanzaa! Christmas! Winter Solstice! Yule! Saturnalia! Festivus! Probably like ten others! And you know what that means?

Is the answer 'Stock photos'?

It means that in today's capitalist hellscape of a world that we are all forced to live in, there's a lot of pressure to get the perfect gift!

This gift guide is... probably not going to help find the perfect gift for anyone. (But if it does, hey, you're welcome!) What I do hope is that this will at least help you think outside the generic gift box that most other 'gift guides' I've seen fall into...

A Very Heathen Hanukkah

You GUYS. I gotta say I am touched.

I recently found out (just last night at a Lore Chat with the New York City Heathens group) that this blog has been getting outside attention due to an older (in retrospect rather word-vomity) blog post on this very blog. Throw. Back. In fact, some of my irl friends within the Troth mentioned having read it without realising I was the one who wrote it, which is... certainly interesting. (Whoever shared me with the Troth, thank you and hello from a fellow Lokean and Troth member.)

Anyway, did you know that I also consider myself Jewish? And that Hanukkah ended recently?

By night 8 the menorah was significantly messier with wax drippings, so have a photo from night 1

"But wait," say those of you who know little to nothing about Judaism and the fact that Jewish Atheism is actually a very common thing, "that makes no sense. How can you be Lokean and also celebrate a Jewish holiday?"

Fair warning, those of you who are very attached to the idea of the One True God who created everything? You're gonna wanna skip this post. If you choose to click through and comment in a way that is offensive to either Jews or Heathens, I will delete your comment and refuse to engage with you. You were warned.

Disenfranchised Grief - How Do I Mourn Someone I Never Got to Meet?

November (and NaNoWriMo) is over now so I can finally post about this.

I stopped blogging rather abruptly in October, and I apologise sincerely for that. I've been struggling to figure out just how to post about what happened. As you may recall from recent-ish posts, I was very excited by the news that my sister was pregnant, due to give birth in late September/early October. She was going to have a baby boy. She was going to name him Greyson.

Then, on October 16th, I was on my way to work. I was sitting on the Q-Train, which was stuck at the station for like 15 minutes and not moving, which was some grade A MTA bullshit but that's neither here nor there right now. My mother called and I remember thinking, "it's early for her right now" so I picked up, wondering what the deal was.

"Greyson was stillborn," she said. No hello. No how are you. No are you on your way to work. Just three terrible words.

Greyson was stillborn.

You know how in movies when a character gets a terrible piece of news and the camera zooms in and turns at an angle to represent their shock? This felt like that. I was so stunned. It felt like I'd been punched in the gut, and I was reeling as my brain tried to wrap itself around what it had just heard.

I didn't understand how it could be.

I still went to work that day. I was so in shock that I couldn't think of what else to do. The news didn't really hit me until about 10 AM. And then, abruptly, I could feel the sobs tearing their way up my throat and I had to run - physically run - to the employee break room to let them out. I do count myself lucky that my coworkers are understanding, and that one of them had a sister go through the same horrible thing so she was extremely understanding.

But still, it just didn't seem fair. I was bitter. I was angry. I would see people pushing babies on the streets, or read news articles about child abuse and child neglect, and think 'why do they all get to be parents? Why do they all get to keep their babies and my sister - who wanted nothing more than motherhood, who always wanted children as far back as I can remember - have to lose her son?'

I couldn't understand why. I still don't understand why. Maybe there isn't a reason why. But the human brain doesn't like that answer and still searches.

When someone like a parent or grandparent dies, it's tragic. It sucks. I am not trying to belittle that. But when you have lived a life with someone and they go, you have the memories of that life to help you through your grief.

With Greyson we don't have that. We have nothing but my poor sister - I am the older sister; I was  supposed to protect her - bemoaning that her body has become a tomb. We don't know who Greyson would have been. We don't know how to even begin to handle this kind of grief. Are we mourning the person or the possibilities? Or both?

I'm still trying to take it day by day. For the most part I'm still living my life - I did NaNoWriMo, Sarah and I celebrated the first night of Hanukkah last night, things are going well with my girlfriend - but every time I think about it too hard I still start to cry. It's been difficult to get used to. I had so wanted to be an aunt, to buy him cute little presents and sing to him with Sarah.

I don't know how to properly mourn that in a society that tells me what mourning is and doesn't leave room for an aunt who lost a nephew. Of course my sister and her boyfriend have more right to this grief than I do, I'm not saying they don't - but it's just indescribable.

If I have seemed off to anyone who knows me in real life lately, I am sorry. I'm  still reeling.

How do I properly mourn Greyson if I have no idea who he was going to be?

-Nym