Guess who has two thumbs and just woke up from a 14 hour sleep?
Yeah, yeah. I'm too tired to even think of a decent punchline. I think Liz Lemon came up with the best one for that kind of joke, anyway.
So I saw that my cousin Julie had messaged me on Facebook early this morning, when I woke up to move from the couch to the bed, but I only saw the subject and first part of the first line of the message, which were "Confusion" and "What's your inspiration for..." respectively.
Now the thing about my cousin Julie is I don't know her very well. She's like 13 years older than I am and we never lived anywhere near each other, so I'm pretty sure I've only met her a handful of times, and none of those meetings have happened in at least 15 years.
I still feel like I know a fair amount about her, because I've spent a ton of time with her dad, my uncle John, my dad's oldest brother, and the rest of our aunts and uncles, of course, but I just haven't spent a lot of time with
her. Things that I do know about her (in chronological order) include that she went vegetarian at a young age, that she's bipolar, that she converted to being a devout Mormon when she got married, that she's had four children in six years, and that she had me and my cousin Tim friended on FB for months before she realized that neither of us are straight and then made a status asking when "all of her cousins turned gay [...] and what does she tell her kids?!"
(That last one made for some awkward times.)
In any case, she seems very nice. I don't want to say that she's
not... but she's also weird in the sense that I don't know how we could ever really get to know each other, even though we're first cousins, because of our differences and the amount of time and space between us.
Anyway. I was assuming the message had to do with my name change, and I spent a few hours thinking about how I would respond. I have a few cousins on my dad's side friended on FB, so I haven't been expecting them to be totally clueless, but the only family person I've really discussed any of this gender business with other than my mom is my aforementioned cousin Tim.
So I was like, okay, this is a test run, sort of. How to tell the straight, non-queer contingent of the family. This is a good thing.
( But then I actually read the message. And, ugh. )Ugh. I don't agree with what she wrote, but I can't deny that it had its intended effect on me. I don't even know how to respond. Despite the religious tone (which creeps me out, in general, whenever I see that sort of thing), I think she's coming from a decent place, so I would like to respond. I just have no idea how. And in the mean time, I will just be over here, wondering what the hell I think I'm doing.
[
ETA: Okay, so. I stewed for a few hours and then I went and exercised for a good, solid hour, and now I am feeling much more centered.
( I sent this as a response: )Crossing my fingers she takes it the way it was intended, which is to say "well"!]