cosmolinguist | marriage is just this thing, you know

I think the thing that has surprised me the most is that I really miss being married. It struck me first when I was trying to register with a new GP and it asked me who my emergency contact is and if that's my next of kin. I went right from having my parents be the obvious answer to that to having A be. I've never had to think about this question for a single second in my entire life.

Now (well, not technically but soon I guess, according to plan) I will be living in this country where I'm not related to anyone.

Like just the legal status of it, I never thought it meant anything to me. I'd campaigned for more equal marriage for years on the basis of some couples being denied stuff freely available to other ones, I've argued that marriage is still valuable to the kinds of queers and anarchists who hate it and think no one should be able to do it (I always start with "you have to abolish borders before you abolish marriage if you want there to be any justice in it). So I know there are all these like legal and emotional benefits to marriage (religious ones for those that do, though the religiosity of my marriage never meant anything to me and continues not to) but I never really felt them beyond "I need this to immigrate."

So I was surprised that it felt quite so much like some rug had been pulled out from under me.