the ways i need to be loved

i don't think i want to have it as a personal goal of mine, to be loved, i think i want to do things from love and not for love, but when i am loved, whenever that happens in life, these are the ways i need to be loved (list may be updated/edited):

-- i need someone devoted to liberation; Black liberation, Indigenous liberation, disabled liberation;

-- i need someone to challenge me, to unsettle me; "this joining cannot be too easy, too open, too settled. Solidarity is an uneasy, reserved, and unsettled matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor forecloses future conflict." - Tuck & Yang. i need someone to kill my innocence; to celebrate with me the small, simple but effective moments of care, such as when we are the folk to feed someone who hasn't eaten yet today or even in a while, but to never let my pride or ego take over our practice. as i saw someone say a while back; there's no such thing as enough, one person, one family, even, can never do enough, there's only the work we can do, that it is our responsibility to do. challenge me, unsettle me, not so i doubt my sense of what is right and wrong, but so i expand my sense of what is right and wrong. and i will challenge you and unsettle you too, as best i can, from my positionality, to kill your innocence. and that is a form of care

-- at the same time, be one of the people that works through my feelings with me. do not dismiss me when i am in pain, do not conflate pain with discomfort, do not prioritize my comfort above the work we do, because you know that is not what i ask. if i come to you asking if i can share my experience with you (especially if i am Unmoored), feel free to lack the capacity to hold it at the moment of my asking, you do not need to all the time, but be gentle enough with me as you point me towards someone who does have the capacity

-- become an animal and have a bit of untethered fun with me. if i need to engage in sensorily vibrant, reactive and self-centered activity once in a blue moon to be grounded, join me on that journey, and be one of the lights that guides me home to my obligations towards family & community at the end of the wild night

-- please love, or learn to love, food & cooking