RaeAnna + A Nerdy Lifestyle
Hey, y’all. I’m queer. Pansexual to be specific. This isn’t my coming out. I’m fully out of the closet. If I’m being honest, I never had an I’m-not-straight talk with anyone. It’s just been something that has existed as a solid fact in my life for a decade now. My non-heterosexual identity has been talked about for awhile, but as I get older, I’m feeling the need to live more loudly in my queer identity.
In a week, I turn 30. I'm very much looking forward to it, but a small part of me is dreading it. Society deems women of a certain age unworthy of... everything, and I am now about to be a woman of a certain age. There are so many exciting things about aging, but my existence has always and almost solely been validated for the way I look. Who I am is just a bonus to the way I look for the man I'll one day trap/catch. The world has told me so many things about aging and my existence in the world. I would be lying if I said I hadn't ended up on the kitchen floor in a full on panic attack about aging in society.
Anxiety is something I have always lived with. So often, I can't name the thing making me anxious because it is all of the things all at once all of the time.
I have not been open about the way this year started. We were more than careful, but COVID came for us anyways. Dylan was hospitalized for almost three weeks on the other side of the country and spent two weeks on oxygen and another week before he came home. I floundered at home struggling through my own severe case of COVID and the worry that my partner of five years could never walk through our front door again.
Every day is puppy day because I have a pack. It’s a chaotic zoo. A furtacular event. No moment, big or small, goes without the dogs. I attribute it to their being enormous, multitudinous, and very attached to me.
A year ago today, thirteen beautiful and unique puppies were born. Tessa went through 38.5 hours of labor and seventeen hours and one minute between the first puppy and the last puppy were born. It was just the beginning of an incredible adventure. Three months later, nine were happy and healthy in their forever homes and four stayed with me. A year later, they are all thriving and celebrating their birthday with their families.