Where do we go from here?

My partner proposed to me recently, and this time, I may say yes.

Neither of us are keen on entering into the institution of marriage: relationships can naturally ebb and flow, neither of us believes in monogamy, and marriage is a symbol and side-effect of a misogynistic and oppressive system that values women based on their ability to bear and care for children. Plus, I have my own heavy baggage around marriage and marital expectations, particularly as someone who was raised in a culture that only values women when they are wives and mothers.

Don’t get me wrong, tho; my partner and I are in love, and we’ve been in a committed relationship for multiple years. But neither of us are all that excited about getting married. It can get legally complicated should our relationship sour (neither of us wants that, of course, but it is still a consideration we take into account). We both want to be able to pursue other romantic or sexual partners. Etc.

But marriage does, however, offer a layer of protection if Something Happens to one of us.

The impetus for this proposal were concerns around the fervor of proposing and passing anti-trans bills across the US. I have begun medically transitioning, and while my legal documents remain unchanged, gender dysphoria is in my medical record. It’s undeniable, with a surgery coming up and my recent start of HRT, that I am transgender. What happens if I have to flee the country and become a refugee Elsewhere? Would my partner be able to come with me if we’re not married?

So we’re talking about that, and starting to research where we could go, and what that process looks like. It’s a bit terrifying, honestly, and not the way most people dream of a marriage proposal happening. But marriage would legally bind us together, making it, hopefully, easier to emigrate together if that is eventually needed. Plus, if something happens during my upcoming surgery, my partner will be able to legally take all my stuff, instead of it getting passed to the parents I haven’t spoken to in almost two years. (No, neither of us have created wills yet—marriage appears to be a cheaper and easier option on that front, if I'm honest.)

There’s a conversation that stands out in my mind from the early days of when my partner and I were dating, or maybe we weren’t quite dating at that point—I don’t recall. Regardless, we periodically reference this conversation, That Time At The Burger Place. We talked about transness and safety and whether or not we’d leave or stick things out, find a new community somewhere else or develop and support our local community where we already are. Any kind of gender-affirming surgery on my part was a distant dream; I’m not sure I even had my consultation scheduled (almost a year and half wait between scheduling and the first available consultation day). At the time, I wasn’t interested in HRT. We had a lack of medical and legal records marking us as trans. We’re also white and not visibly disabled. Let’s stay and build community and fight, we decided. That conversation was scary and clarifying and empowering. If I wasn’t already in love with my partner, I think I fell in love with them because of that conversation: their determination and resolve sparked something in me, not necessarily hope but instead, perhaps, my own sense of determination and resolve.

But now, three years after we first met, the political landscape has drastically changed, and (not to be weird), so has the landscape of my body. It’s undeniable in my medical record. Eventually it will be undeniable from just looking at me, hearing my voice.

And I’m terrified of what will happen next. Do we leave? Can we leave? How do we leave? Should we leave? ICE is in large US international airports, originally installed to assist TSA, but now lingering to question and deport international travelers, possibly to also question and send home US citizens seeking to leave the country. Gas prices—along with the prices of everything else—are skyrocketing as the US and Israel continue a pointless war against Iran (do we really think the ceasefire will last when Israel continues to bomb urban areas in Lebanon?). My partner and I both have pets and communities and lives in the US. The questions and complications stack up.

Three years ago—when I left my evangelical job, started coming out to people, met my partner—I listened to Arcade Fire’s album Neon Bible on repeat. Today, “Black Wave / Bad Vibrations” and “Windowsill” come to mind. I remember scream-singing “I don’t want to live in America no more” as I drove around a city that I thought I would move to but ended up only living in for two, maybe three months. It was spring, and the world and all its opportunities were opening up to me. But I also allowed myself to feel a sharp and stinging bitterness, a burning anger, toward the injustices around me and the ways that evangelicalism was still swallowing the world even though I personally had escaped its grasp. Everything was so uncertain, and my moods and optimism shifted as much as the springtime weather: cold pessimism and anger slicing to the bone one day, and a warm sun shining onto emerging flowers and blooming hope the next. I was simultaneously lost and found.

And that black wave kept rising. I’ve outrun it for awhile, and I forgot about it for awhile. But here it is, rising again, reaching my own windowsill. I don’t want to live in this country anymore, this country that is broken and rotten, this country that bears a history and holds a future of blood and violence, conquest and oppression. But I don’t want to flee to somewhere else unknown, with its own problems—can I outrun my own problems? And yet I don’t want to die in a concentration camp, or by some transphobic violence (whether state-approved or vigilante) in my own country. Even so-called blue states demonstrate, time and again, that they are run by spineless leaders who will not stand up for the scapegoated communities, the immigrants and the disabled and the trans folks. I can move to another state, but the black wave of christo-fascism will follow at my heels. Is leaving the country any better?

But, perhaps, first things first: Participate in the system so you can escape it; not wedding bells, but $25, a signed piece of paper, and a momentary peace of mind.

I don't want to live with my father's debt,
You can't forgive what you can't forget,
I don't want to live in my father's house no more.
I don't want to fight in a holy war,
I don't want the salesman knocking at my door,
I don't want to live in America no more.

Because the tide is high,
And it's rising still,
And I don't want to see it at my windowsill.