Sunday, May 26, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with minor edits for accuracy.

I don’t really know if there is a point I want to make tonight, even subconsciously. I think I mainly just want to explore some thoughts and see where things go – but it’s going to be a dark and rough trip I suspect.

This year has been hard. It opened up with a horrific series of weeks that culminated in me giving up my dog for re-adoption – a loose end I still have not had the heart to follow up on, meaning I have no idea what happened to him.

And then there was a terrifying sequence of emotional crises. I don’t even remember a fraction of what happened. But I know I had flashback issues and tons of repressed trauma and pain just came surging back, over and over.

Then I went through the moment of wondering if my career was about to be altered permanently – and, worse, the pain of watching that sudden and horrific change inflict its misery on dozens of people I cared about. And then the process, still ongoing months later, of trying to rebuild for those who were left.

Under that strain, I nearly broke entirely, and made a frail plea to my [abusive partner] to help me get better psychiatric care. He succeeded; and as I confronted the unraveling knot of lies and stupidity he had been building in our relationship, I wound up breaking up with him the day after he helped me schedule a new intake appointment.

In the aftermath I have gained a lot of clarity on those months. I’ve found a degree of explanation for what I did and even a measure of ability to forgive myself for much of it.

[Editoral interjection: none of it was actually my fault, but that's a separate story.]

I knew I was trans, before we broke up. He was the first person I actually told. He acted so supportive and even excited… it just feels important for me to make sure people know that we didn’t split up over my gender. Far from it.

And I think that’s kind of the theme of my mood tonight. None of this shit had anything to do with my gender.

The wrestling match with ADHD and the process of stabilizing my treatment have deeply marked the past couple of months, for sure. I’ve had to face a set of goodbyes – an experience I have found painful for a long time, and one that always stirs up a lot of old baggage. I’ve coached my best friend through some struggles and family turbulence. I’ve struggled with my own feelings about my family and how to handle those relationships.

I’ve watched with terror as a very dear friend ran headlong into some very difficult times and made multiple attempts on her own life. I’m still struggling to come to terms with how to handle that situation. For as much as I want to be able to do something – fucking anything – there is an emerging pattern here, one that echoes back to the earlier days of our relationship. At some point I will put myself in considerable danger trying to help her. And I can’t risk that. It’s an infuriating conflict in my heart – I want to help, I’m prepared to do something genuinely stupid to try to help, and somewhere at the root of it all I know that I simply can’t take that risk. I can’t get myself killed. Put your own mask on first. Can’t save anyone when you’re dead.

I’ve lost feeling in parts of my left hand and down my left foot. Presumably some kind of nerve injury or some shit. I have persistent sinus irritation and eyes that are so raw there are angry, floppy bags under them. Seems allergy-related but the repeated use of antihistamines has worse effects so I don’t bother. My sleep oscillates between brief, restful, and refreshing – and then practically meaningless, where I don’t even wake up or dream about the alarms going off anymore, just drift to a grumpy and profanity-laden awakening around noon.

It’s all tough, and trying, and exhausting, and somehow I just can’t manage to feel like it’s that much of a deal. I’ve been through far worse emotional pain. Far longer episodes of despair and emptiness. It’s like my scale is totally broken. I know shit could be so much worse, so I just can’t really acknowledge that this is even that bad.

Even still… even when I can grant myself the compassion to admit this is a hard thing to do… it isn’t because of my gender.

I don’t really know why that is sticking in my mind. I vaguely worry that it might seem, from the outside, like I’m having a tough time because I’m trans, or something. But… if anything, it’s the opposite.

The things I have learned and realized in the process of understanding who I am… there’s a feedback cycle. I’ve survived 2019 because of those skills and that understanding and that strength. And 2019 has, in turn, pushed me to learn and realize and appreciate even more. It’s all just a giant spiral.

I look at the things I’ve had to face in the past five months, and all I can see is that I’m doing better than I ever could have before. It’s still hard. It’s still painful, and scary, and exhausting. But I keep catching myself, in the middle of a complaint or a lament, and realize that most of what I’m saying is habit. I don’t actually feel that tired, that hurt, that scared, that uncertain.

My reaction is usually guilt – some strange, reflexive instinct to scramble for a reason for why I’m wrong and should feel bad. But I’m getting better at intercepting those, too.

I don’t know. I want it to be OK that I hurt and I’m tired. And I want to be proud that I’m strong.

Friday, May 24, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited. See the recap post of 2019 for crucial spoilers on how this ended up turning out.

I’m resisting the urge to write on a really weirdly primal level, which is probably a strong indicator that I should write something.

I’ve been reflecting a bit today; not entirely sure what prompted any of it anymore, or how I wound up in this particular thought-region, but here we are. I usually try to be really disciplined about distinguishing between relatives and actual family, but I feel pretty raw at the moment and probably need to just get things on the page instead of crafting my wording too much, so for the next little while, I may be imprecise in that particular set of language.

I fucking hate my family.

I mean… I have a bunch of people related to me who I don’t even really know and barely even remember exist. They’re… indifferent, I suppose. I have one sister who is actually pretty cool but still at a place where interaction with her is a net negative for me in terms of energy and such. One nibling I actually really want to connect with better. One brother-in-law who is a metric fuckton of human shit and deserves a category of rage and ire all for himself.

So I guess what I really mean is I hate my parents.

I… wish I didn’t, in a way. I wish I could still care about them and trust them and want to have any kind of a relationship with them. Deep down in my heart I am still really sad that they did what they did. And deep down I wish there was some path through the future where I could tell them who I really am. Before they’re gone.

But for all the ache and tears that well up when I think of that, I just keep coming back to all the harm.

I come back to the beatings. Never enough to leave discernible marks; that would arouse suspicion and maybe even make them think twice about what they were doing to their own goddamn child. But beatings. The sweet spot is to leave the kid unable to walk comfortably but provide no observable evidence that they were repeatedly struck to create that situation.

There is a certain tier of fucked up depravity that drives a person to violently beat their own child on a frequent basis. There is another, worse tier where someone will have “funny” conversations with other like-minded parents about whether or not it counts as “child abuse” with the clear implication that they’re simply looking to justify and rationalize their behavior.

And it gets worse; there’s a tier where people will systematically combine psychological and emotional abuse with the beatings, to the point where simply making a particular facial expression, or using a specific tone of voice, or alluding to a particular word – any of these things can instantly produce terror and helpless submissiveness in the child. I don’t need to hit you anymore, because all I need to do is give you that shitty head-tilt and stare, and you know that if you don’t fall the fuck in line immediately I will end up wailing on you with some random fucking object until you do what I want.

Bonus points: tell your child to contemplate how it’s actually all your fault as they convalesce from their contusions. It’s all for your own good. It hurts me more than it hurts you. This is what love looks like.

If you ever, in any situation in life whatsoever, find yourself about to rationalize non-consensual violence by claiming it is acceptable as an act of love – and especially if you’re talking about smacking your own child around – please press pause, step away from things for a second, and ask yourself what the fucking hell is wrong with you that you have become such a degenerate and vile sack of fucking shit. Do not return to existence until you can provide reasonable assurances to the human realm that you have thought better of your idiocy and will, as appropriate, go fuck yourself in an act of humility and contrition.

Mom didn’t hit me much. I suppose I sort of appreciate that. But she also never did anything to stop it, or any of the myriad other forms of blatant abuse I had to live through.

I remember a moment when I was 17 and nearly ready to move the fuck out of the house. I don’t recall exactly what my misdeed was, but I do remember my dad grabbing me roughly, and essentially saying, “You’re not 18 yet; I can still hit you.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a terrible threat. Maybe I should have responded differently, or something, I don’t know. What I do know is that 17+ years of being hit, and hundreds of times as many threats, added up to a lot; there was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to freeze and panic and drop directly into subservience mode.

For fuck’s sake, he could probably still make certain gestures now and I’d reflexively panic. Train up a child? Nah, fuck that. Beat the shit out of your kid, and they’ll definitely never get over it.

 

A small handful of times, at a certain window in my life, it made sense for me to babysit one of my nephews. For a portion of those events, I had “disciplinary rights” – idiot euphemism for “you can spank the kid if you want.”

I only remember even trying to do it maybe two or three times, ever. I vividly remember being confused by the results. Even at that phase of my life I had a vicious (but carefully concealed) habit of punching inanimate objects. I generally had to be careful about hitting things because I knew I could easily break my hands. I had technique and a moderate amount of strength to draw on. And yet when I went to hit my nephew I simply couldn’t. I ordered a sickening smack and delivered a negligible tap.

It bothered me, for a few years. What did it mean? Why couldn’t I do this simple act? And then I put it out of my head and ignored it for ages.

Tonight, earlier, I finally realized the blindingly obvious truth. I couldn’t hit a child because I can’t hit a child. This isn’t some indicator of my deficiency as a parent or some shit. I just fundamentally can’t bring myself to violently strike a kid.

I’m a little proud of this, now. Certainly, I’m very relieved that, even after all the fucked up nonsense I had to crawl through in life, I didn’t really internalize the barbaric poison idea that it’s a good thing to beat a kid.

 

I go back to the image, of one or both of my parents passing on, and me just sitting there trying to comprehend the reality that they died not knowing who I am.

Maybe it would be better that way. I have no way to know. I never did manage to make a committed decision about any of this; sometimes it’s really just as simple as you lost your rights to your daughter somewhere around the time you started beating her.

And sometimes I just can’t quite let go of that lonely, desperate ache, of a scared girl, lost and helpless, who just wants her parents to come and make everything OK again.

Did you ever actually love me? Or are you the reason why it’s easier for me to believe that I don’t deserve to be loved? Because I just can’t handle the idea that you’re so fucked up you would do all of that shit to your own child?

 

On a significantly happier wavelength… I love my name. Amelia is just… so fucking yes. I need a word for perfect, right, snug-fitting, warm and comfy and comforting, worn in but an eternity from being worn out.

I’ve written about the feelings I had the day I discovered my name. I still love the moments when whatever layer of my brain refreshes the linkage… “Amelia? Oh, shit, that’s me!” Chills.

I hope that never fades. I don’t know if that’s a silly thing to hope for, but then I’ve never actually known my name before, so I have no idea what to expect. In any case, I kind of hope that someday, locked in the maddening confines of the nursing home or whatever, I still have those moments – where I do some horrendous elderly maladaptation of flirty shit with a nurse or whatever, and she just gives me a coy smile, and she quietly says, “shut up and take your pills, Amelia.”

Fucking. Chills.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I fucking miss my dog.

 

 

Heads up, and thank fuck that you’re still alive
Still air in my lungs, still blood in my veins

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Editorial note: I've redacted the entirety of this actual entry as it was originally written. At the time, I was still reeling from the end of a catastrophically abusive relationship, and parsing through the feelings and confusion from slowly beginning to realize that it was not the wonderful experience I'd made it out to be in my head. As often happens with recovery from abuse, time has brought a clarity to my mind that makes this entry almost feel like it was written by someone else - it is that out of place in my archives.

However, I did want to come back here (today is Friday, September 3rd, 2021 as I post this) and mention that the entry did in fact exist. I no longer feel the need to hide that I wrote this, even if the words themselves are so painfully distorted as to not merit publication.

I have learned so much - and healed so much - since this was written. There is hope.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I dragged out of bed sometime slightly before noon today, and put together a long checklist of assorted responsibilities and obligations and whatever that I should be taking care of this weekend.

And then I procrastinated a tiny bit, and then I decided fuck that shit, and finally shaved for the first time in a week, and cobbled together the most blatantly girly outfit I could with the clean laundry I have left.

And now I’m sitting here with my hair as tousled and vaguely feminine as I can make it at this length, sporting the super cute black lacy dress thing I got a little while ago, and my comfy leggings. I don’t have many reasons to say anything out loud, but I’m trying to remember to shift my pitch a bit whenever I do.

I’m taking over now. I’m not the third person entity that gets referenced all the time. I’m not an alter ego that has to be “activated” or something. This is me now.

Hi. I’m Amelia!

Friday, May 17, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

It’s 03:40. I woke up because my dumbass laptop started playing videos and I don’t really understand why.

But what I actually thought was noteworthy was the fact that, as I slowly clawed my way out of sleep, I remember some dim impression of another girl – cute, fascinating, sassy, I dunno what all else. She was interesting and compelling in that undefinable way that imaginary people you conjure while semi-conscious tend to be. And I remember waking with a smile and the thought, “I am so damn gay for her.”

Apparently it isn’t uncommon for gender fluid people to feel like they lack certainty about their gender. Well, OK, no fucking shit I guess. I mean… it’s one thing to shift around and feel different over time, but it seems like a common question to wonder if we’re “supposed” to settle into a specific identity. Like, sure, maybe I have some changes now, but if I have a streak of several boy days in a row, does that mean I’m just stuck there? Or that I should be stuck there? Maybe it means I’m not girling hard enough, whatever the fuck that means? If I really wish I was a girl all the time, does that mean I’m supposed to be a trans woman and not gender fluid?

Where is the line between gender fluidity and “locked in” trans identity that isn’t quite stable or “committed” enough? Some people seem to feel like this is an issue because they aren’t as sure as they feel like they need to be. I feel like this is an issue because I secretly hope that the fluidity can be hatchet-murdered and left to rot in a fucking swamp. If there’s a way to just girl and nothing else, I want that shit.

 

 

 

I struggle, at times like this, to feel like it’s OK for me to need shit. I’ve written a lot recently about how much I feel an intense need to be loved and accepted and cared for. And then I read over the early entries in this and feel like I’ve lost sight of the selfless, generous woman who was so wildly passionate about loving other people. She’s still… somewhere, I guess. But she’s not front and center right now, and that somehow makes me feel guilty and wrong.

Which is a tragically fucked up thing, honestly. Nothing is that simple. I should be at peace with the fact that I can need things and still be loving and caring. I am still the woman who is moved to tears by the idea of her words consoling someone else and setting them free to be who they are meant to be. I am still a good person – kind, providing, maybe wise and supportive, I don’t fucking know. There is nothing wrong with me also needing to feel loved.

I am the woman who decided to amass this journal of whatever-the-fuck-it-is because she wanted desperately for it to help someone, anyone. Ever. And I am the woman who weeps for her lost childhood, for the years of violence and neglect and disgust and for the unending bitter ache of wondering if anyone will ever fucking care. And the fact that I need to tend to that pain does not, in any possible way, detract from who I am, or the beautiful soul in me that just wants to salve that hurt for anyone else she can reach.

In a way, really, the time I’ve spent with that hurt is integral to my ability to touch someone else who is in that kind of pain. Struggling with the shit I have to carry does not make me self-obsessed, or narcissistic, or arrogant, or anything of the kind. The struggle makes me capable of turning around and providing the love and compassion and support that I so desperately want everyone else to have.

Put on your own oxygen mask first. You can’t save anyone if you’re dead.

 

 

God… I can fucking see her, almost, just clearly enough to know that she is me and that she is fucking incredible, but not quite in enough detail to really portray properly. I couldn’t describe her hair, her smile, her little ephemeral but exquisitely feminine mannerisms; I couldn’t put into words why she is so alluring, so inescapably powerful, so gorgeous and captivating and impossible not to fall madly in love with; I couldn’t say what, exactly, makes her so her. But she’s there all the same, flitting in and out of the periphery of my mind, enticing me to keep fighting and moving forward. Keep pushing towards the future. Her future.

I dream of the day when she is all anyone sees when they look at me. I imagine tossing that cascade of hair, flashing that devilishly cute smile, soaking up the knowledge that everyone else is as certain as I am that she is me, and that’s it. I get tingles up my spine just picturing silly pointless moments that really don’t have any specific notion behind them, aside from me existing as I always should have.

I remember the day I found my name. It was a total accident. In the middle of some random unimportant thought, I suddenly found myself looking for a way to address myself in my head. I had already begun distancing myself from my assigned name and variants, but I had no idea what else to say. In that split-second of panic I just trusted something and let myself fall backwards.

And almost effortlessly, there it was, like I had known all along and was just waiting for the chance to do something about it. I wasn’t sure for a while – maybe it was just a random brain short-circuit or whatever. Give it time, see how it feels in a few days, etc.

I didn’t need a few days. I was trying it on, here and there, just to see if it would stick, when it happened – and I knew for sure. I think I described the moment elsewhere as just imagining someone saying my name – just to get my attention, or a semi-unexpected greeting in a store, or whatever – and they say it like it could never occur to them that my name could possibly be anything else.

I want that day. I want the world to look at me and simply know, with all the certainty that I do, who I am. That nobody else could be there – who else would it even be? I mean, shit, have you met her?

I want everything else to just evaporate into irrelevance and obscurity. I want to completely, totally, and unquestionably exist, in physical reality just as certainly as I do in my mind now.

I want to be fucking around in some stupid grocery store or something, and hear that call-out, with that conviction that’s as deep as everyone’s confidence in fucking gravity. I want to be seen, and I want them to know who I am so fundamentally that it isn’t even a conscious observation. I want them to say my name like it could never occur to them that it could possibly be anything else.

Hey Amelia!

I got chills the day I learned my name. And I still do.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited but with clarifying additions inline.

Finding myself drifting into thought-territory that is mostly occupied by attraction and relationship matters. I don’t really know what to make of any of it yet, but I sort of hope that leaving some breadcrumbs will help in some way.

Of course, I have the standard tangled confusion between finding people attractive and wanting to feel like I am that attractive. This is particularly pronounced around women. On one extreme, on total boy days, it’s mostly attraction with a faint hint of wistful jealousy. But even on serious girl days, I still find women hot; there’s simply an increase in the jealousy.

Sometimes in weird moments I may find a guy cute or even actually appealing. This is OK, really, because I’m already fine with identifying as bi and I guess it sort of makes sense to be interested in men in ways I’m not totally used to thinking about while my gender moves around. I’m trying really hard not to repress anything or whatever – I certainly don’t want to discourage whatever is Actually Real. On the flip side, I’m hesitant to “force” anything either, and so when I do get attraction feelings for a man, it usually instantly trips a strange discomfort that I can’t quite figure out, and I leave it alone and move on. Somehow I don’t think this is quite the right approach but I have yet to really pinpoint anything better.

[Added in hindsight when publishing in July 2020: I'm not bi. Attraction is vastly more complex, and human connection has so many more possible configurations, than I understood when I wrote this. I still don't understand it.]

Beyond the starting point of attraction, I’m quite lost with regards to actual relationships. I feel like it would be disingenuous or even deceptive to try and start anything right now. I mean, maybe I could explain my entire stupid fucking spiel well enough, but… I don’t want to do that right out of the gate, because it’s a fucking exhausting conversation and nobody is really looking for it to begin with. And yet I feel like if I go far enough with someone to feel comfortable that they’re ready for that talk and worth the energy it’d take to actually have it… it just seems like by that point it’s too late and I’m back in disingenuous territory. So I don’t know.

I feel like it would be nice to have a better relationship situation in general. Not just a sex/romance/life-partner/whatever-the-fuck arrangement but just… actual friends and shit. It would be nice to have shit to do. People who will check in and make sure shit’s OK. Maybe even some vague allusion to the feeling that someone cares For Real, in that weirdly gross but romantic kind of way where you would totally brave the bodily fluids and the precarious rescue in shitty weather and the hellish conversation at the police station at 3AM and the life choices you might actually regret if the experience hadn’t been so fucking unadulterated awesome.

It isn’t worth lying, covering up, or weaseling around. I want to feel like people love me. I want to feel, when it comes time to look back over whatever the fuck my life amounts to, like I had some fucking traveling companions. Not the assorted allotment of unknown mystery stand-ins that populate the rest of the bus or plane – people who were in it for each other, who knew that no matter how wildly uncertain and uncontrollable the path ahead, we were all going to jump into that maelstrom together. The kind of people who will stand in a huddle in the dark, shrugging off the misty rain, to say some mystical incantation of bonding, in a ritual nobody can actually really define; the kind of people who will look back on that circle from the next morning’s warm light, and still take that shit seriously, because we all give a fuck about it, and who fucking cares if it’s a little cheesy or stilted. Fuck you, we’re for real here.

God… I want to feel like someone would willingly choose to do something silly or awkward or outright fucking stupid, just to prove they love me. I want to feel like that’s not even a decision, for someone – that who fucking cares what it costs, Amelia needs love and acceptance. And it doesn’t matter who sees.

I worry that I’ve started rejecting socialization because it doesn’t reach that level of intensity and earnestness very easily. I sort of feel like if I gave it time, and built on things, I could get somewhere. It’s just such an immense amount of work and time… and it costs more spoons, on any given day, than I usually have laying around. The flip side is that I feel like I am trying to selectively invest those spoons into the handful of opportunities that are most likely to pay off.

I don’t really know. All I can say for sure is that this shit is getting lonely and I’m becoming keenly aware of the danger of just buckling entirely and locking myself in a dark box for the next hundred years.

 

Jesus fucking Christ.

It all really is that goddamn simple.

I just want someone to love me.

 

 

I want to know that somebody is completely, unchangingly, stubbornly convinced that I deserve to be loved. Even if they never really do manage to convince me. I just want to know that they are that sure. Sure enough to shrug off any pain in the defense of that notion. Even the pain of knowing I might never agree.

I want someone to read the meandering, incoherent stream of self-indulgent horse shit that I’m accumulating here, and look for the mangled and hopelessly lost soul behind it all. I want them to see whatever wreckage and despair is left at the end and somehow perceive someone in the debris. I want them to breathe in relief when they finally catch sight of whoever is there – and I want them to say, “yes – I love her. She is worth it.”

Sunday, May 12, 2019 - Mother's Day

Ah, fuck.

For some trans women this is a tough day because it’s a heartless reminder that things will always be a bit different for us than cis women. For some it’s a chance for affirmation and belonging – to be included in the population of “mothers” as it always should have been. For some it’s a chance for acceptance – to be a mother’s child, unbroken and righted, as was not always the case.

And then there’s my contingent. This day is nothing but a spiteful twisting of the knife. We have to spend the day being reminded that blood relatives are a thing, and that ours are fucked and we wish they wouldn’t continue to invade our reality anymore.

My mother is very sentimental and prone to taking things very personally. I know she’s hurt that I’ve broken off ties with my relatives and that I am pushing to widen that distance as much as I feasibly can. I’m not heartless or evil – it hurts me to know that this is how she’s taking it all, and I feel bad for being responsible for it.

But only to a point.

I didn’t choose to be beaten routinely as a child. I didn’t choose to endure almost twenty years of emotional and psychological abuse, or to spend another ten just trying to figure out what the fuck happened. I didn’t choose to be born into a world that would never accept me, let alone care about me, and god forbid actually fucking love me. I didn’t choose to be born into a world that almost successfully convinced me to live my entire life like something I’m not. I didn’t choose to be mocked, ostracized, struck, or threatened with worse, until I learned that who I am is not acceptable and she should be hidden away forever.

So fuck you. All of you.

I did choose to get the fuck away from you. I did choose to try to learn something about reality – not the corrupted, warped idiocy that you pass off as some kind of life. I did choose to dig into the rubble and ashes and mines buried all through my soul. I did choose to listen to the voice of the girl I heard trapped under there. I did choose to keep digging, until my fingers bled and my body would barely move. I did choose to get her free, and I will keep choosing to fight for her life.

She’s worth it. And she’s the best fuck you I could possibly hope for, to all of you.

Happy fucking Mother’s Day. It’s a girl.

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with only minor edits.

Feel this fire deep inside
Burning strong where you can’t hide
Join the elements tonight
You can see the light
When the darkness comes too strong
Don’t forget you’re not alone
Join the elements tonight
And feel the light
                                - Neo Cortex, Elements

I can’t tell what I am today. I can feel the resistance inside against being boy, and the almost-panicked yearning to go back to being girl. I am not who I want to be and I cannot find a name. This is being enby, and it is a conflicted familiarity. I know this turf well and it mostly seems like it is supposed to be home – but it isn’t where I want to be home. Enby days just stir up a terrified worry that maybe I’ll never actually know, never figure anything out, never get to just be someone I actually like. Or love.

It feels like going back to not understanding. It feels like losing ground.

On some super abstract level I know this is ludicrous. I know what’s going on now vastly more so than I ever did before. It isn’t actually losing progress – it’s just coming back to a familiar place with a new and ever-expanding set of tools and skills. It is sort of like Groundhog Day – but the good part, where I have begun to learn and adapt and modify the cycle to suit my own purposes.

But that’s painfully hard to remember sometimes.

I know that somehow, there is a woman named Amelia, and she is beautiful and lovely and magnetic and everyone loves her. I know her, and I know she somehow overlaps with my presence in reality, just not right now. I know she will be back – which is a damn good thing, because I miss her a lot and I really don’t like whatever mess I am right now.

Some important part of my personal journey will probably involve making peace with the variants on me that aren’t Amelia. I get that it’s going to be important to be able to live as me in other setups. I don’t know if I’m entirely ready to try to start that yet. Too much resentment and distrust. Amelia I love. The rest of this shit is just distressing.

But I really ought to start moving that direction. No matter how much of my future belongs to Amelia, I can’t just shut down and disintegrate when she’s not around.

I just read a set of Reddit posts from a woman named Stephanie. She told her simple but relatable story of her 58-ish year life: childhood, young love, family, and – tragically – sudden brain cancer. It wasn’t much, and that was exactly her point. At the very end, faced by an unexpected and unchangeable death sentence, she had one overwhelming purpose: to warn a community of internet strangers of the costs of living safely and regretting all of it. As near as I can tell, Stephanie passed about a year ago, and hundreds of posts have honored the memory of what she wanted us to learn.

Stephanie was [designated male at birth]. She never came out and never made any steps to transition until after she learned of her terminal condition.

Fuck.

I started thinking about mainstream perception of gender again. It’s really impressive how much simply goes unasked or unnoticed by most people, because they have the privilege to never have to care. I think we’ve actually hit a point as a species where “men can raise children” and “women can earn paychecks” are genuinely default ideas now; we owe a huge amount to feminism for pushing us that far, and I’m frankly really grateful that challenging those ideas is now more or less universally seen as regressive and undesirable.

A slightly less universally accepted notion is that toxic masculinity is real and actually a problem. The whole MRA idiocy aside, at least there’s a conversation of sorts happening there. So to some extent there is at least a general awareness that gender normativity isn’t exactly “okay” yet.

But then we get into toxic femininity and shit gets unstable. I’m not even convinced there is a usable consensus on what that term even means. So it is very hard to use as a basis for exploratory discussion.

And this hits on some of the interesting idea-snags that [my abusive ex] and I used to talk about. What does it even really mean to “be a woman” at all? Is it a thing that we can genuinely separate from societal expectation and the demands of some sort of gender roles? What would the “objective” component of femininity look like?

Of course from my current vantage it seems painfully obvious that gender and expression are orthogonal. I can “be” very much a man and express in a way that would be categorized as feminine, and so on. But it feels like the more scrutiny we apply to the ideas, the faster they vanish entirely.

The only usable definition I have for gender is that “if someone identifies as a woman, then that person is a woman.” That’s what we get. And while it is a very important conceptual line in the sand, it just doesn’t seem robust enough yet. How do I know if I identify as a woman? I mean, I absolutely do, sometimes, but I couldn’t actually tell you why, and there is a frustrating resistance to concrete and practical definition here.

On a girl day, I find a lot of “feminine” things more accessible and appealing – things that would generally be coded as stuff a girl does/likes/etc. But I also find a fierce personal adherence to a more liberated feminist ideal; maybe I’m a girl but I can still blast death metal at unhygienic volume from the car stereo. I find it easier to feel comfortable and confident on both ends of the range: I can be as girly as I can get and love every second of it, and I can proudly insist that no, fuck you, girls can also do things that aren’t girly.

I have contemplated a bumper sticker that says something to the effect of “you’re getting out-driven by a girl.” I’ve had the fantasy conversation where someone says “well you don’t do thing like a girl” to which I’d like to think I would respond with, “oh, I definitely thing like a girl, that’s why I’m better than you.” I really like the pure, unmitigated Fuck You of yes, I am a girl, and that’s why I’m a billion times more fucking awesome than you. There is something about being competitive or aggressive – at all – as a boy, that just makes me feel sick. Girl-me will kick your goddamn ass into your hat. Boy-me isn’t going to make a fuss.

Actually… I think that I feel the worst oppressive bullshit (in terms of gender roles) when I am a boy. Maybe it’s just because I have more practice with feeling the implied judgment of people when I am non-conformant. But I think that one way or another I have carved a mental rut for myself; I am deeply familiar with failing to boy correctly, and that shame carries an unreasonable gravity, because it is so easy to recognize and therefore fall deeper into.

For future use: Schiller – Tired feat. Jaël, esp. the performance with Symphonia (orchestral arrangement)

Things are going to be melancholy for a while. There will be ache, and struggle, and it will be hard and uncertain.

But it will be so very fucking worth it all, in the end, to have done it.

I see you, Amelia. I know you are there, now, and always have been. I have seen who you are – your beauty, your excellence, your sheer unequalled loveliness – and I know without any doubt that you deserve every effort I can possibly expend to set you free.

I would trade my life to see you thriving in the open. Absolutely no hesitation. You are every bit the incredible person I should be. I know it isn’t as simple as throwing a switch. If It were, I’d have done it a thousand times by now. I know it will take pain, and work, and fear.

And I will gladly and bravely face all of it, even for just the shred of a chance for you to be free.

Amelia – I swear this to you, here and now, in the most sacred ways I could: I will get you into the world, or I will fucking die trying.

It fucking sucks. It isn’t fair. It’s so fucked up and it’s destroying me and I’m going to just break my self-imposed stupid moratorium on self-indulgent bitching because I feel some shit and I’m sick of reinforcing that fucked up stupid habit of just burying everything again and acting like it isn’t real.

Life is just a series of sadistic fucking cheap shots. Everything is just a buildup to ultimately remind me, in the most disgusting and cruel manner possible, that I am just going to be alone forever. As soon as I start feeling like I might belong someplace, something happens, and I don’t. If necessary, invent new ways to make me feel like maybe I belong someplace, and then yank that rug out at some point. Rinse, repeat, endless shitty loop of fuck you.

I know I keep trying to latch onto the idea that intersectional experiences mean I can relate to more people. But it never really totally sticks in my head. All I can do is come back to the fact that it means nobody understands me.

No matter what, no matter how good a connection I may form with somebody, someday there will be that point where they just don’t fucking get it. And maybe that’s recoverable; a lot of times, I think it is. But it never stops being painful as fuck.

Jesus fucking god. I just want to be able to curl up in some cute lesbian’s lap. I want her to gently run her fingers through my hair, and hold me close, and just squeeze a little bit harder while I cry. And maybe, whatever it is, maybe she doesn’t get it. Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter.

Maybe I don’t need her to get it. Maybe I just need her to hold her favorite woman in the world in her lap, and love her as hard as she can. Maybe I just need her to hold on for dear life because whatever the fuck is happening is alien and scary and she doesn’t feel like she really knows what to do, but even if she can’t fix anything, she can convey the thing that matters the most of all, and the thing that might actually make any kind of fucking difference.

I want so much to finally feel the tears subside, and to feel her sense that, and quietly whisper, “hey.” And I want to open my eyes and look up into hers, and almost cry again at the love and concern and sincerity – all written plainly on her face, but far beyond the reach of any words.

She squeezes a little bit more, and as we look in each other’s eyes, she proves that she gets it, even if she doesn’t really follow the specifics of whatever stupid-ass fuckery is going on in my head.

“I love you, Amelia.”

And she kisses me… the way only she ever could. The way that means I can’t run from her. Or me.

Maybe then I will finally stop being alone.

I need her to love me because I don’t ever really think I will love myself any other way.

I never believed I deserved it – to be loved. Maybe I never will. Having to be the only one who loves me is… untenable. Eventually, no matter how good my intentions may be, I will just stop believing that I should.

I wish I could. I really do. And some stubborn part of me still insists on trying. I wrote that note at the beginning because goddamn it I am going to do whatever I have to in order to get as close as I can to actually caring about myself. On the better days I think it may actually be possible. And then there’s times like tonight.

I think for the most part I could do it. Just… not alone. Eventually I just need someone there to close the gap; to poke me and say, no you silly shit, I love you. I need someone to love me if for nothing else than to remind me that someone actually thinks maybe I deserve it.

Eventually I will stop believing that I’m worth it. I’ve gone through too much life with a broken soul; I’m not going to just quit fundamentally believing that I have no value.

The only way that will change is if someone is there, consistently and persistently, to give me unarguable evidence that I should be loved.

I should go the fuck to sleep but I was dumb and took a Ritalin at like 9PM or something and now I’m all in a weird mood and don’t want to stop doing stuff and whatever blah fuck.

I generally have a strong hesitancy to write anything sexual here (not really sure why, probably some leftover brainwashing shit) but I’m sleepy and moody and really just want to stuff a cute girl’s head into my boobs.

There, I fucking said it. Nitey nite.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with only very minor edits.

Fluidity is fucking bullshit. It sucks. It feels profoundly, terribly, hopelessly out of control. Beyond control. Beyond predictability, beyond hope of sense.

But it isn’t just arbitrary; it feels outright cruel. Gender fluidity don’t give a fuck. You wanted to feel like a girl tonight? Too bad, don’t give a fuck. Oh, now is a super inconvenient time to exhibit a massively feminine behavior? Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. Need to act like an actual operational human being for five seconds instead of being paralyzed with anxiety about what you’ll sound like if you’re dumb enough to try to speak?

DON’T. GIVE. A. FUCK.

It isn’t even the sort of cruel that simply always does the worst possible thing. I can fight what I can see; this fucker is… just chaos.

 

I don’t actually know if I hate being a boy or if I’ve just associated it with three decades of bad experiences. Being enby I can sort of be OK with most of the time, because I think that had settled into being “normal” for a long time. There are weird, non-geometrical realms of enby space that seem somehow oddly proximate to being a boy, and those are gross and I don’t like them as much. Being an enby with really pretty long hair and some nice boobs seems pretty good, although honestly I don’t know, having never experienced that configuration first-hand.

Sometimes I do not, in fact, hate looking boyish or whatever. That tiny fraction of days, I kind of like it. But so much of my time is spent in a mode where I just don’t want it at all… and even on the rare occasion when I feel something that isn’t total hatred for being a man, I feel guilty or something. Like I shouldn’t be a guy because – even though at that exact moment I am fine with it – so much of the time I just want to not be.

* * *

I have this picture saved separately but I wanted to copy it. It’s striking and important and I want to gain that strange sort of possessive investment one gets over things that we have copied down.

 

The woman you are becoming
will cost you
people
relationships
spaces
and material things.

Choose her over everything.

* * *

Gender can’t be coerced or convinced. Even defiance is risky; go too femme on a boy day, and shit gets unpleasant real fast. Small crimes.

 

As I look back on my life, I bring back a sort of pattern-memory – not specific events in any real detail, but a recurring feeling, a sort of emotional theme that feels familiar and frequent even if the clarity of particular occurrences has faded.

I remember a sequence of emotions. First, something would happen, and draw attention to my “insufficient manliness” or whatever the fuck. There would be a requisite moment of shame, of course. But after that… something subtle, something subversive, something so defiant of the dominant brainwashing that it took many years to even realize I had been quietly burying it as soon as it appeared.

Sure, I wasn’t very masculine, and whatever stupid moment had brought that into the spotlight one more goddamn time. But like an echo, hiding behind the loudness of the shame, there was a guilty sneer: “I didn’t want to be anyhow.” And of course that was such a forbidden concept that the neural programming just unobtrusively “dealt with it” and stuffed the dead body out in whatever metaphorical swamp.

I lacked the tools for most of my life to actually understand that this was a legitimate idea – it wasn’t an unimpeachable law of the universe that I had to be a man and like it. In fact once it actually got into my skull that I might not have to be a guy that thought process became unstoppable.

I knew that “being trans” was a thing for a while; I had a really shitty half-idea about it even from childhood, and that concept slowly took on shape and significance over time. It didn’t actually quite become real until late 2018 I think, despite me personally knowing a few trans people and being sort of peripherally aware of the idea for much longer.

I think the key was [questioning if I was bisexual] in early 2018. That pushed me into a few queer and queer-friendly spaces that I probably never would have engaged with otherwise. And in those venues I started seeing things I didn’t quite understand; a chunk of terms and such were familiar because of general accretion of mental stuff, but there were new ones. At first I did some really lazy-ass web searches and decided I didn’t really know what “non-binary” meant but whatever. Not my shit to appropriate, right?

I remember running across the Non-Binary Wiki somewhere in the rat’s nest of Mastodon instances. The timeline is fuzzy but it wasn’t long after that I spent a couple of hours just poking around the wiki, and came away from the experience feeling a profoundly important sensation.

It took a while before I could articulate what I felt, but I knew it was a Big Fucking Deal. It turns out I know that particular feeling a lot better than I might like.

I felt it when I learned about Third Culture. I felt it when I de-converted and recognized my own atheism. I felt it when I learned about bipolar disorder. I felt it when I learned about Left Coast Politics and the marked contrast they bear to deep-south culture. I felt it when I learned about [queer sexuality]. I felt it when I learned about complex-PTSD, and in the wake of that, religious trauma syndrome.

Holy fuck. This shit is my life. How can someone I have never met write my experiences so perfectly?

There’s that weird moment of confusion where you have to carefully convince yourself that you aren’t somehow reading your own words. And then the real beautiful part hits:

Jesus fucking shit, I think they actually… get it? Wait. Maybe I belong here!

Going through the non-binary wiki I hit the page on gender fluidity, and everything simultaneously clicked into perfect place, and also exploded into an amazing spectacle that will never really go back into the bottle.

I have refined my understanding a lot since then, obviously, although I think a lot of that has been accelerated by me also meddling with shit a whole lot more than I ever knew I could before. I think I’ve had clearly Girl Days (Hours?) more over the past couple of months than the entirety of my life prior. I can’t tell how much of that is because I actually know what to look for, and how much is because I’m doing my damnedest to coax that out. I also don’t know if it matters, or if I even really care. (See adjacent entries waxing verbose on the matter of I WANNA BE A FUCKING GIRL FOREVER YOU MOTHER FUCKERS.)

Anyways. There was a moment of catalyzed comprehension that opened the door to an entirely new approach to reality for me. So much shit makes more sense now.

There is a particular feeling I get about certain ideas. It generally only pops up in domains where I feel a certain level of expertise and confidence. To feel it in regards to a major life discovery is unexpected; and maybe I would normally be dubious of the feeling because of that, but in this case it seems to just reinforce the certainty and conviction of it all.

This answer is right, in a way that singular English adjectives are fucking powerless to capture properly. This is correct, it is supposed to be correct, the framing of the universe almost tautologically demands that it be correct – there can be no conceived reality in which it is not correct.

It’s an incorruptible rightness that transcends even elegance or universality. It’s fucking axiomatic.

I’m a girl.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I really, really, fucking love being a girl.

Like. Fuck. All that eloquent floral linguistic shit is just utterly inadequate.

I LOVE BEING ME AS A GIRL.

I like the me who is cute, and flirty, and adorable, and sexy, and captivating, and alluring, and fun, and silly, and magnetic, and... just all the things. I like her a lot. She's fucking awesome.

I miss her when she's gone again. On some level I kind of understand that I'm enby a lot, or even a guy sometimes. But it makes me sad. She's my favorite me.

What the fuck does this all mean? I don't know. I just wish I was always a girl I guess.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

Oh holy fuck.

I used to think about what it would have been like to have really hit the trance scene properly at its height.

It just occurred to me that what I really missed out on was the peak trance scene as a girl.

FUCK.

 

That might seriously be my secret ultimate wish if I ever obtain reality-bending powers. Go hit all the big shows, watch everyone awesome spin live, tour the good spots and destroy as much of my hearing as I can manage.

Just... to be alive at a time when I know of this music is fucking powerful. To be able to hear it played in a real venue, surrounded by people who understand the magic and the irreplaceable majesty of being there for it in person... to know we have a piece of history that can never come back, and lives on only in the fading memories of a crowd of beat junkies who will never really manage to outgrow that high...

It's a cruel nostalgia for an experience I didn't actually get to have. So while I'm fucking with history... let's do this rave right.

I want to plunge into a borderline-deafening storm of music lovers who are totally lost in the rapture of what we're hearing; I want to feel it all take over and forget, like everyone around me, that there's any kind of world worth paying attention to beyond the reach of the speakers; I want to spin to an exhausted, giddy, euphoric pause as one track calmly passes into another - and open my eyes for the first time in what may as well have been an eternity, and be met with the admiring smiles and approving nods of everyone immediately around.

Damn. That girl knows how to dance.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I read a post today from someone who was concerned about coming out trans to their family, because of the possibility of losing that family in the process.

It made me think. I've observed before that I feel like I've had a fairly easy time confronting being trans, because it's just not the first major upheaval I've ever lived through. Fuck, at this point, shredding my world and doing something entirely new from scratch is practically a fucking routine. Sure, this is larger in magnitude than anything I've done, but the process of starting over is... home.

So in some senses at least, I think I'm confident in the whole idea that I can face a dramatic reconfiguration of my reality and come out ahead. I have experience. I know the sensations. Once more until the breach, dear friend. Once more.

 

But the family post fucked with me a little. Frankly I didn't even really think about my relatives much during my initial processing phase, because I was already basically at the point where I didn't even want to acknowledge their existence ever again. I didn't worry about losing anyone because I'd already chosen to get rid of them... for unrelated reasons, sure, but I was done.

The tiny shred of contact I have with relatives at this point is entirely due to my own concerns for one of them - I didn't want to leave anyone behind if there was a chance I could help with their own discovery. Even if I had to do it behind everyone else's backs. That was all a surprise, and a bonus really.

Friday, May 3, 2019

Tag: dumb shit that should have tipped me off that I’m trans

All those random moments where I had vague, wordless thoughts – something about an incongruity between me and the expectations I just sort of assumed I couldn’t dislodge from everyone else… the ideas that I can now verbalize as “man it really sucks nobody else can tell I’m a girl.”

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Editorial note: posted retroactively on July 6, 2020, with only minor edits.

The earliest memory I have that I can definitively label as gender dysphoria happened in early fifth grade. I remember standing in the spartan nook that pretended to be a bathroom, in the [house my family lived in at the time]. I don't actually know how long this took, but it felt like five eternities at least. With nothing but a second-hand comb and the trickle of water from the sink, I fought an unending war with my hair.

I just wanted that fucking mess to stop looking wrong. I was two decades away from being able to describe why it was wrong, but I didn't know that, and it didn't matter. Nothing I could do made a dent in the gnawing void of terror I had begun to feel. That shit was busted, and I didn't understand why, but I had this weird sort of foreboding sense that it was going to stay busted for a really long time.

I more or less shook it off... well, less, I suppose. I'm still dysphoric about my goddamn hair. I hated haircuts since forever. For a while I "explained" it as a latent phobia of shitty electric hair clippers. But even years after I'd ever actually had a bad experience with clippers, the very idea of someone touching my head remained horrifying. Fuck barbers.

To be clear, the very last time I went to a barber, I only went because of an extended pep talk from a very lovely woman who I was intensely interested in having a lot of sex with. [Spoilers from the future: it never worked out.] In the six-odd years since, I have exclusively cut my own hair.

Of course, by itself it isn't much, but I've been able to recognize that same emotional tinge in other memories, too.

I remember being upset for years as a kid that my arms were skinny and not muscular. What I'd done a pretty good job of not remembering is the point when I noticed my muscles bulking up finally. I should have been thrilled, by all rights, but I mostly just felt vaguely uncertain, and eventually tried to just forget the whole thing.

My voice has been a point of contention forever, too. I remember feeling awful through the entire process of it changing - but I assumed that was supposed to happen, since everyone seemed to expect it to feel awful. And then I remember the point where I sounded deeper and people commented on it... and that was worse, somehow. I remember half wishing I could still sound not-like-a-teenage-dude, but not really knowing how to comprehend that feeling. I remember finally resolving to never sing again, because it always just seemed to make me feel like shit.

I pretended to be kind of progressive or some shit for a long time - rah gender roles are evil, blah blah whatever. But it never really meant a whole lot to me on any significant level. I didn't really even comprehend how far I had to go. Since I've understood that I’m trans, it feels like that whole arena has completely changed for me. Wearing frilly underwear and squealing like a cat-girl is suddenly totally an option. I would have previously claimed that I didn't believe in the gender normativity bullshit, but for whatever reason, I treated a lot of things as off-limits. There's a weirder tangle in here than I think I'm going to unravel right now, but one way or another, now I really truly don't give a fuck about doing things that aren't "male enough" because fuck you, I'm not male in the first place.

I actually feel free, now, to just do things that I like to do. I'm really loving the sense of freedom and the thrill of discovering me, and whatever makes me feel amazing.

Post-script from Friday, May 3, 2019

[I finally understand] all those random moments where I had vague, wordless thoughts - something about an incongruity between me and the expectations I just sort of assumed I couldn't dislodge from everyone else... the ideas that I can now verbalize as "man it really sucks nobody else can tell I'm a girl."