This Is What They Stole From Us (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Myself) - 2023 Retrospective
Wellington’s clouds are always moving.
The winds are the first and last thing you’ll feel. It’s not uncommon to have flights cancelled because of it. On good days, landing in Wellington still feels like a fight; there’s a sudden jerk to the movements of your craft, impossible from pilot hands—too abrupt, too powerful—a stark reminder of nature’s awe; that a simple, invisible thing like a gust of wind could easily shunt your 150 tonne plane to the side.
It's a wonder how you even landed at all.
Our friends greeted us at the airport. “How was the flight?” they asked. I shook my head. The automatic doors opened and a gust of wind blew off my partner’s hat.
It immediately started to rain.
“Yeah, we don’t wear hats or use umbrellas here.” (The latter would snap and break) They laughed, spread their arms wide, and strode towards the car with a surprising speed only possible from the days of walking against the raging wind in Wellington.
Another gust of wind made my partner shriek. She put away her hat. We fought the elements and shoved our luggage in the car.
It was a sudden thing, going to Wellington.
I am a girl littered with anxiety and panic attacks. I don’t talk about this much; it’s too common for the queer community to feel like a ‘bad place’ to engage with and I don’t want to add to it. I’d rather talk about happy things instead. My mental issues are my own. It’s a promise I made to my partner because we are in a relationship and we are one.
I made that promise when we started dating. I have stagnated for the past three years.
My life—and probably yours as well—is filled with social contracts. Most of Asian culture is conservative, status-focused, and everyone around me is always trying to min-max. If you’re doing something, then it better be perfect, and that kind of thinking leads to analysis paralysis and frustration in every aspect of my life.
Constant judgment. Endless expectations. I am trapped all the time. Phone calls cause more panic attacks. Anxiety leading to rumination leading to depressive thoughts and more.
You know how it goes.
The seagulls in Wellington congregate around the waterfront. On Sundays, there’s a harbourside market that’s just fantastic. My friends buy the best organic eggs here; I’ve seen firsthand just how bright and orange those yolks are. Trucks park and offload fresh farm vegetables—only the things heavy enough to sit in crates and not get blown away. A mass of stalls are set up in strategic angles to block the wind for their customers.
The seagulls here prefer not to fly. When they do, they fly backwards, with occasional jaunts as they angle their wings just enough to glide forward, before the wind blows them back again.
It’s not uncommon for seagulls to look as if they’re frozen in the air.
Pictured: a dog giving up against Wellington's harbour winds
I have always taken care of people.
Being in the queer community means I often host and shelter people who need it. That’s a privilege. I have space for an extra bed, and I’m financially stable enough to provide food and shelter for an extra person every now and then. I know how to cook, and I’m lucky enough to have the mental energy for it, which means I can really shave down on grocery bills. Everyone who knows me says I make the best food they’ve ever eaten.
Damn fucking right. Now eat up, bitch, yum yum.
But I have never been on the receiving end of this. Not until I flew to Wellington to dodge my in-laws, but also because I was on the verge of a breakdown.
2023 was the worst year of my life.
The end of 2023 was the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life.
These were the first people I came out to. These were the people I felt safest with. And simple interactions with them showed me how fucking easy it is to be an ally. You can, in fact, just not deadname someone or complain how annoying it is to learn new pronouns or say “Damn, I really do hate those trans people cause they’re so in my face, but I’ll make an exception since you’re my friend.”
The default should be kindness and love. I love my partner because she’s so sweet and kind and she never ever has petty thoughts. I love cooking for other people. I love listening to them talk, I love cheering them on, I will make you roasts, I will bake you pies, I will conjure an entire tray of tiramisu just the way you like it and say you can have it all, so tell me about the things you love because I love you and this world so much.
It's easy to be a good and kind person. To just love and accept people for who they are and see their intrinsic worth and not try and gauge them based on their career or their property portfolio or laugh when they say they don’t hustle and do overtime like you.
I had a lovely chat with my friend who walked me through all the clothing and bag brands she trusted and the ones she avoided. Afterwards, she asked if I had ever done nail polish, to which I replied no, because I thought I should wait until I was more feminine.
And my other friend turned around from playing League of Legends (he was losing—it wasn’t his fault—his team sucked) and shouted across the room.
“ACTUALLY, YOU CAN JUST DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.”
He was right, of course. That the qualifiers I had conjured up in my mind was of my own doing. And if society didn’t like certain people with nail polish because they didn’t fit the mould, then they could go fuck themselves.
My friend immediately ran to get her nail polish and said, “omg, salon time.”
Damn, my hands look great.
Wellington’s coffee is terrible. I had a list of cafes to try out and those that were available mostly failed my test (as a comparison point, most of Auckland fails my test). If I want to be in a city, then I want it to have good coffee, and everyone has been telling me Wellington has great coffee so—
Shit. Y’all got some low fucking standards.
But then I realized, wait a minute. I actually don’t care if I get bad coffee. In fact, the coffee is fine and serviceable.
Oh man. I’m really enjoying life.
*Pictured: a shitty cup of coffee. Yum yum yum.
Essentially, my friend’s advice for life is just another version of what you’ve been reading all over social media: kill the cop in your brain.
Every time you feel like you can’t do something—maybe you’re not good enough, maybe you don’t deserve it—you can just ignore the pig slobbering in your ears. Gut the cop if you have to. It doesn’t really matter if other people don’t like your taste in movies or think the games you’re playing is trash. It doesn’t really matter if certain people won’t accept you, because the ones who are worth something will.
My friends in Welly told me that if anyone turned against me for being who I am, then it’s simple. They’ll turn their backs on them too. And if there are people who are wishy-washy and say things like, “err, I’ll still hang out with that racist homophobe because I don’t really want to rock the boat,” then they weren’t worth jack shit to begin with.
“People always ask me how I’m living my best life,” he said. “The answer is that I actually just do what I want.”
If reading that statement causes a sudden urge to say something, then stop. This isn’t the hell bird site. I’m sure most people reading this are willing to take everything I have to say on good faith. Kill the cop in your brain. We literally do not care about the people saying, “Oh, since I can just do what I want, then I can r*pe and murder? Checkmate, atheists.”
Fuck those people.
“I am the best friend most people will ever have,” he says. “You are too. To deny it is to be a coward.”
It really is as simple as that. I am pretty great. This isn’t even a humble brag, btw. This is straight up a brag.
I’m an amazing friend. I’m funny, cool, I’m kind and sweet, and it is an absolute joy just hanging out with me. You’d be privileged to know me in real life.
I’d be overjoyed if I ever got to meet some of you incredible people too.
I am telling you now—this comfort, this love, the realization of how easy it is to just be yourself—THIS IS WHAT THEY STOLE FROM US.
This is what capitalism has moulded the world into; a private, segregated space of ownership and fear built on isolation and a desperate, uneasy comfort. That you can go out and buy groceries and never have to interact with anyone—via pickup or self-check out and going there in your own private vehicle and then coming back to your own kitchen and eating on your cold counter is a crime of unforgiveable proportions.
We are conditioned to believe that is natural, and when we lack any kind of human interaction, despite the basis of our entire existence being built on it, it opens us to any sort of propaganda. They say the world is scary so trust us as we stamp out the queer. They have asserted those lies as fact—to the point where they believe it themselves.
They think everyone is as cruel as them.
Pictured: the famous Welly Girl prints
I fit a lot of stereotypes. I’m disabled, tired, and trans. What I don’t want to be is disabled, tired, and trans, and angry, and it’s incredible easy to fall into that pothole; certainly, I’ve felt the rage. I’ve felt the addictive properties of wanting to rant and scream. It’s like I’m a teenager again and the world had personally wronged me and I don’t think I ever lost that sense of “I want to do good, I want to save the world” type of mentality that most young people go through before capitalism inevitably grinds them down into cynical, jaded pieces of work.
My friends tell me I am a ~little bit~ angry. That I do get worked up. And what I didn’t realize was just how incredibly draining it was when I really could just be living the best life that I’ve got.
Yeah. I’m still joining the marches for Gaza. I’m still doing what it takes for me to survive—and if it means engaging with people I know I can turn into allies, then I’ll do it. (even if it's like pulling teeth)
I’m rather done being tired too. This one's not as easy due to work and medication and the horrible people surrounding you. But I’ve never been so happy to just opt out of unwritten social contracts. No wonder why people in the queer community don’t have a family or barely any social connections.
Even on the verge, we’re better off for it.
Things are getting heavy, so please enjoy this dachshund with pearls I found at a cafe and omg I can't stop thinking about it
Wellington is a walkable city.
Like any walkable city, it forces you to interact. It cuts out cars and throws them away as afterthoughts. There are roads built for buses only. Despite it all, it still fails as a good walkable city compared to the Asian greats, but it is a walkable city nonetheless. Simply put it up to the bloated, shambling, corporation-riddled corpse that is Auckland and the dead suburban zones of Christchurch and you will find a lively city that actually has culture instead of trends and people in lieu of obstacles.
Everyday I stayed in Wellington was a lot harder than my place in Auckland. Everyday we walked around 15,000 to 18,000 steps to the CBD and the markets and back. Every day we fought the wind and the rain and we came home and cooked and did chores and lived and laughed and we slept on inflatable mattresses and woke up sore and tired but ready for the next day, because believe it or not, when you’re free from droll suburbia and you don’t have to spend hours locked inside your car and when you don’t have to deal with forced social contracts and endless expectations, your body is actually perfectly equipped and energized to deal with whatever comes.
It's so easy to exercise. It's so easy to stay fit and healthy in a walkable city.
I am incredibly overstimulated and anxious living in Auckland suburbia. Trapped and told that a forty minute drive is a natural thing and that walking around next to roaring cars and breathing in carcinogenic materials shed from tires and going to my closest strip mall with the exact same brands because only the big name corporations can afford rental space and so all the mom and pop shops are choked to death but I can’t think about that, not when I’m constantly thinking about how much free parking time I have left and calculating when I need to leave because of the rush hour times, then adding the extra fifteen minutes it takes to even get out of the car park—they say that all this is natural and I should want it, and that’s why everyone needs a big, expensive house because that’s the only way to have a modicum of peace from this harsh reality, only to get it and realize that you’ve lost the mental energy to do anything else. That the hobbies and loves you’ve pursued are gone and now you’re just sad all the time.
I’d much rather a single bedroom place that’s small in a walkable city because my real living space is outside. I have stores and mom and pop shops and communal third spaces and libraries and cafes and restaurants to hang out in. I have bars and piers and pocket parks where I can watch the dogs bark and chase each other under the nice shade of our native trees.
Life is harder when you give up all the quiet comforts of suburbia. But then you realize you never needed it in the first place.
And suddenly, life can be so much easier.
enjoy this friendly round boi we saw on Boxing Day
I never became a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer despite what everyone told me. I dropped out of my masters and I never got that PhD my grandmother said was non-negotiable. These things has been eating me up inside ever since I was a teenager—when I knew those professions were wrong for me.
I’m done feeling guilty over that bullshit.
It’s like those cooking channels proclaiming there are sacred rules to cooking. You have to use 00 flour, you have to use real parmesan cheese, you have to use low moisture mozzarella, you gotta heat your water up to 95F exact before you bloom the yeast and you probably don’t even have a thermometer and really, you’re going to hear all that and go “jesus christ, I can’t get those things, and even if they sold it around here I can’t afford them, guess I won’t make a pizza.”
You can make a pizza. You can actually just do whatever you want.
I fucked up. Wait, no, I didn't. It's fine, because we all had fun picking up the remains and it still tasted good! I'd rather make a mistake and have my kitchen full of laughter than do a perfect pizza and have people just say, "yeah, tastes good.
I'm so glad I made a mistake!
Second time--just not as funny! To the pizza experts: yes, I know it needs to be in the oven for a bit longer. No, I can't get low moisture full fat mozzarella, and I actually don't care.
Those people are chasing clout and engagement and showing off and you actually don’t need any of that bad faith shit in your life. I’m not buying 00 flour—it’s expensive. Bread flour and all-purpose actually works fine.
I mean this in the nicest way possible: you probably can’t taste the difference.
And if you make a ‘mistake’, then why would it matter? In fact, I’m no longer going to call them mistakes. Did I oil my container way too much? Yeah. The pizza dough bread I made tasted more like focaccia instead. It was great.
I loved it. It's not a mistake unless you make yourself believe it’s one.
On the last day, my friend made a side dish of roasted carrots and parsnips.
“Dude, you’re adding way too much honey,” I said.
“No,” he responded and went back for another drizzle.
Then he stared at it.
“Fuck…I may have added too much honey.”
We both laughed. It tasted great. It was a wonderful, memorable meal, and we got a funny story out of it. And that’s life. I cannot imagine living and forcing yourself to conform to every imaginary rule you’ve ever learned.
How miserable that would be.
“I’m a stubborn person,” my friend said. “I’m literally the most stubborn person you’ll ever know.”
He is.
“And if I can deprogram myself, then you can too.”
I believe him. And I believe in you too.
I'm back in Auckland now. When the plane landed, I felt a pang of anxiety. The urge to throw up. The shakes in my hands.
I thought to myself: damn bitch, you live like this?
I can't believe I ever thought this was normal. Then I remembered, actually, I don't give a fuck about people's expectations anymore. I've killed the cop in my brain.
I flew to Wellington to escape my in-laws. Now my partner and I realize we never needed their approval.
We are considering moving to Wellington. We think it'll be a temporary stopover--ideally, we'd still like to be in Melbourne instead for career reasons. I considered Adelaide strongly for a good six months, was even about to book a ticket there, before I realized. Wait a fucking minute. You still need a car in Adelaide. I want to live with people, like people, and love people. I never want to see another car in my life.
Wellington’s clouds are always moving.
Despite the turbulence and gusts, I think you should be too.
