Home?

Spent most of the day printing zines for the Anarchist Bookfair in London while my dad's side of the family came up to do some apple picking. It was cute, my Aunt bought me a soybean chicken and also made a rice noodle dish with fake beef. I'm going to eat the soybean chicken for dinner while the rest of my family eats meaty things like turkey.

Kind of alluded to my mother that I may identify as an anarchist (though I'm still not sure if I even fully identify as an anarchist). I told her that I was printing off zines to bring them to a "radical" bookfair, but then added "well, actually it's an anarchist bookfair..." And she kind of made a face and said, "I'm anti-anarchists. I don't like all the violent things that they do." Then I tried to explain to her that insurrectionary anarchism isn't the only form of anarchism and that smashing windows never hurt anyone whereas the extreme right bombs abortion clinics, kills doctors, and starts  wars (but the media likes to sensationalize the radical left). And then I mumbled something about all governments being corrupt and de-centralized power, and, I don't know if she got it...

I guess over the past few days I've been thinking about how little my family actually knows me (and partly, I admit, is because I'm afraid they would reject me if they knew who I really was). I mean, yesterday, when I told my cousins that I'd be in London, I was extremely terrified of telling them that it was an "anarchist bookfair" because they think that I'm wing-nutty enough. Also, my mother confronted me and told me that my sister implied that I engaged in a "bad lifestyle" (doing drugs and engaging in promiscuous activities), which, is a grosse exaggeration. For my age, I'm a pretty tame person, but I guess, even  with the slightest of transgressions, I kind of get weird about and hide. I don't know...

I guess I'm just sad that I feel like I can't fully be myself around my family and wonder if I'm not giving them enough credit.  I don't know. Families are weird.