Sans Seraph

Tag: life

  • Carte blanche

    Carte blanche

    I don’t normally like to be so reactionary with my words as I’m about to be. I’m not a reactionary person. I prefer to observe, assess, plan, but I have some time to kill at the moment and the specter of fear is lording over me, so, here it comes out of the brain pipe, raw and unfiltered.

    I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the truth prevails, and that this incident with Kirk doesn’t become the call to arms for the right to start firing up the engines and building the camps. I hope that this incident was (as statistics show) just another pissed off cisgender, white, male.

    But it won’t be. The right has been looking for a martyr to catalyze their message for years. It didn’t work when Trump was shot, not how they wanted. They needed blood, and, after seeing the video, it looks like they got it.

    I pray to whatever force beyond me is listening that the shooter doesn’t turn out to be a trans person, but, as the truth does seem fluid these days, I’m sure no matter the outcome, we will be blamed. There is an agenda here, and this fits so nicely into furthering their narrative, that I really don’t see a way that they won’t try to twist this as a leftist-trans plot to kill “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.”

    Since January 2013, of the 5700 mass shootings in the US, 5 of the perpetrators have been confirmed to be transgender, according to Gun Violence Archive. A statistic that works out to 0.088%. That’s even less that the often reported 1% of the population being transgender. Yet, of late, every single horrific event is being tied by the right to a transgender person.

    If at any point there is a person in this country with even a modicum of free thought that thinks that trans people are not being singled out an othered to force an agenda of eradication and genocide, then you are the highest of fools.

    Here’s what is really happening. Law abiding trans people, such as my partner and I, and scared. Fear is not something I generally describe myself as having. Yet, in the middle of the night two days ago, as I awoke to my dog barking out the sliding glass door that walks directly into our bedroom, I was afraid. I am proudly, outwardly trans. We have trans pride flags hanging from our frontage. Yet in that moment, my partner mentioned how maybe we should take them down. I wondered at whether I should keep my pistol out of the safe and next to the bed. Trans people have now become hunted things.

    What had become the greatest gift I had ever given myself, to be truly happy, to feel joy and love for myself and my body, is being used as a political tool to further the cause of fascism. It happened before, and it is happening now. Every fascist regime needs a scapegoat, and trans people are it.

    In the same week as three prime ministers have resigned from office, as countries such as Nepal riot in the streets and demand better, America, so braggadociosly strong, rests on her laurels and lets her democracy erode. While the jews died, the Germans suffered, and it will be the same here.

    Though the world did not depend on Germany. Germany was at best a giant among men. The United States is, for better or worse, a cornerstone of our civilization, and the fact that the “greatest country in the world” is keen to sit back and let the rot of fascism eat her from inside, says a lot about how decadence and comfort are the enemies of growth.

    I’m afraid, and if you’re not, if you think yourself distant from the conflict, or even on the “winning side” then you should at least beware.

  • Up to speed

    I’ve recently returned from my tenth journey to Burning Man. Since I’ve been back I’ve been trying to think of how I’d write this article, something summarizing the changes I’ve seen in the event, the denizens, etc, but I find myself not having a lot to say, or, at least, I haven’t puzzled out quite what all of those thoughts I had in the Great Desert K-Hole meant.

    It was a hard burn. With the weather and a flurry of emotions in the beginning of the event, I found myself falling back into old habits. It is a lesson I’ve learned a few times now, but it is truly hard to disassociate who you were in certain places and certain events with who you are now, especially when those prior actions were, at best, coping mechanisms for a hollow life.

    It has become very apparent that my attitude and relationship toward the event needs to change, and I’ve decided to take at least next year off. I’ve been planning to do so for a while, but I’m going to follow through this time. Think of it less as a retirement, and more of a licking of the wounds and returning with vengeance.

    All of that being said, I had a great time with my absolutely wonderful campmates, and I greatly enjoyed showing my darling, patient girlfriend around my favorite place. I promise, beautiful, burn was better next year.

    I haven’t posted in a while, and that irks me. I really hope this gets me back into the habit of writing regularly. I need it. I think I can make something of it, if I can just maintain momentum. It is the thing I was always best at, afterall.

    This summer, nay, this past year, has been hard. It constantly astounds me how polarly opposite this summer and last were. Here is the part where I’d tell you about how my job has been kicking my ass, I seem to be incredibly emotional all of the time, I live with constant anxiety that my rights are being taken away, and I’m one dark alley away from being tossed through the gates of a modern Auschwitz.

    In fact I’d usually, at this point, start lamenting how my depression has returned after being basically eliminated by HRT. I’d talk about how every day I read the news and cry out into the void as only one who truly doesn’t understand what to do in the face of such reckless hate and idiocy can.

    I won’t. I won’t do it. I spent this morning crying and I won’t do so again. Not today. Not for that reason at least. I just cry all of the time now, so it’s bound to happen later. So let’s talk about what’s going right, and we might as well start with that.

    I cry all of the time! I have emotions! How wonderful (and no, that isn’t sarcasm!) Now that I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of exclamation points, let me just say, that being able to feel this deeply is one of the highlights of the past year. Sure, it makes the bad stuff really bad, but the good, dear reader, the soaring in my soul when I play with my dog, or eat something delicious, or feel hope, the good things I feel almost make up for the pall that has fallen over the world.

    On top of emotions, I look great. Modesty be damned, and I know that I have a long way to go, but I don’t hate looking at myself in the mirror every day now. Things are starting to match. Just earlier I noticed my silhouette, something that has always bothered me, and I didn’t have an instant aversion to it. I had a lot of dysphoria at Burning Man, but it was apparently unwarranted. I loved the pictures. I’m starting to feel confident in my body, and why anyone wants to take that away, I’ll never know.

    I took Jenny to her first pride, and she took me to see her camping spot, and, just, Jenny. She is so good to me, and so patient, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so understood by someone. How I have not annoyed her to death at this point, I’m not sure.

    I went to the ren faire with my friends for my birthday, and we had a great time. In fact, I have wonderful friends. I am really hard on myself, but these people let me hang around despite the despair and self-loathing.

    I’ve been writing. I think I’m actually starting to get back into the swing of it. Currently I’ve got two stories I’m sort of hashing out, as I’d like to start diving into fiction again. I think at this point it’s safe to assume I’ll always be far too anxious to make it as a reporter, and that’s okay.

    Things aren’t always going to go well. In fact, I’ve spent increasingly more amount time assuming that nothing will be good ever again. I’m still not sure I’m incorrect on that. There are dark clouds on the horizon. The overwhelming sense of agitation I feel on a daily basis just existing in this most broken of timelines is immense. I’m not going to think about that for the rest of today. I can’t. To do so pushes me farther into the realms of burn out, and I’m already circling the rim. There may be a time where my will finally breaks, but not for the rest of today.

    Fuck it all, and stay safe.

  • Rattling the keys

    Mine is a very anxious mind, and as such, I have a very hard time sitting still. You see, I like to solve problems. More than anything I’ve ever been able to do, that is what I do best. Even this blog is a means to try to solve the problems I have with the insane ramble that is always chattering and wailing inside my head. Living like this, while constantly feeling I must shift one way or another, in a futile attempt to “fix” something about myself, or my life, is an absolutely horrible way to live.

    I wrote the above after having a shower revelation. I spend so much of my life trying to pursue some sort of arbitrary level of perfection. The impatience and anxiety I embody wholly is immense. I am eternally, and existentially, exhausted. I seem to be constantly taught and reminded to breathe and take things easier, slower. So I am hoping that this small, daily reminder, posted next to my monitor, will be something that can ease some of this tension.

    My entire life there has felt like I have this spring inside me, that I just desperately want to let go. The only time I have been able to make any progress on that goal was when I started transition. That is perhaps the only time I have ever felt peace in my life, and, for a long time, it was good. However, I’ve noticed a curious pattern of late. If I could find an answer to the biggest question I ever had, if I could actually change things in my life, than surely I could solve everything, right? If I had the ability to start this monumental journey, it should be easy to roll the momentum over and finally reach the top of the mountain. I could untwist the spring inside of me until the coil was straight and true and rang pure into the void of my soul.

    So, without even realizing, I let my guard down. I took out the earplugs, and let the sinister voice of anxiety back in. That demon then immediately used its greatest weapon against me. My old nemesis had sat for nearly a year armed and ready to bring me down, and it did so with my greatest flaw.

    I’ve never been a patient person. I rush through things. Really, it goes hand in hand with my anxiety. If I have things I want to do, problems I want to solve, I feel compelled to do them, even if care and caution are warranted. The weight of the thing pushes on the spring and undoes whatever progress I have made. Thus, the only logical way to relieve the tension, is to immediately and completely do the thing.

    Sometimes this manifests as projects completed to a lesser grade than I would like, sometimes it manifests as crippling agitation when I can’t do them. I will spend a whole weekend worrying about something I have to do on Monday. If I can’t complete something in one day’s time, than I will ceaselessly grind down on it until it and I are dust.

    I decided I’ve spent too much of my life concerned for the future and lamenting the past. I gave myself an amazing gift, of finally, after more than three decades, of being my true self. I have goals, sure. I’d like to own my own house some day. I really need to get out of my dead end job and do something creative for work again. None of these goals are achievable overnight. I am doing the work. Hell, this blog is testament to that. In the mean time though, there is a whole lot of life I’m missing.

    This is all easier said than done, of course. Not only do I seem biologically prone to this constant worry, but we live in very worrying times. Ours is a world that tells us to constantly achieve, constantly grow and earn. If we don’t do that we’re left behind, or possibly cast out. Our lives are candle flames that are being used to heat an ever larger pot, and the cook cares not for any individual candle flame, only that more are produced when one burns out. Well I’m done caring about the pot. The only thing that matters are the lights within me and around me, because in the end, all that really matters is the warmth around us while our candle still burns.

    So if there is a spring, and if there is a constant, never ending supply of loads added to it, then it follows that I should not be concerned with the rate at which I am able to unload the spring, but rather with how much weight the spring can handle. There will always be time to remove loads and solve problems, and there are far worse things to be than a spring.

  • You are (not) free

    I was born to deeply religious, conservative parents in a deeply conservative part of the country. I was raised to believe in the supremacy of the United States, that we were on the right side of history, that we were “the good guys.” At some point in my life, I even wanted to join the military, to serve my country, and to participate in whatever way I could in the great American experiment.

    Today is the Fourth of July, a day that used to be my favorite holiday. Each year in rural Montana we would go into town to watch the parade and spend time at the local faire in the park. This small town was the epitome of life when “America was great.” This was the kind of life that people had in mind when the wave of conservative thought rot swept the country. A place where you knew your neighbor, where you lived in harmony with the land, and where the great Big Sky that the state of Montana is known for opened wide to greet you.

    It was a town with such accolades as “the place FDR visited once,” and one of the few places Max Brooks in his book World War Z said would survive the zombie hordes. A place where if you were white and male, you enjoyed the pinnacle of existence, as long as you had a job; at the mill, or the mine, or worked for the Forest Service.

    Well, the mill closed ages ago, and the mine is, well, a mine. Many forestry jobs were lost when the government gutted the Forest Service, selling out the land that some many people, who voted vehemently for this administration, love and cherish. The nearest hospital is the next town over, and will probably close with the recent cuts to healthcare. Most of the people in the town are aged, and will almost certainly now suffer a higher mortality rate due to lack of accessible healthcare.

    Corporate interests will move in on the newly purchased land. Maybe enough labor jobs in logging and resource gathering will spring up to keep what few young people remain interested as the trees on the mountains thin, and the fish die out. Maybe, finally, after the mountains are run through with shafts and tunnels, and the Earth herself tries to shake us off her skin like biting fleas, will the people realize what they have done.

    When I planned out this post, I had intended to write about how today, as we celebrate the independence of our country from tyranny, that I, a trans woman, am less free that I have ever been before. I, someone who at one point wanted to serve this country, who, for all intents and purposes, has done everything “right” in my life, am in a position where I am simply a political pawn for our corporate overlords. All of that is true, and, honestly, the working class hasn’t been free in this country since, well, ever. However my thoughts today return to my small hometown in northwestern Montana.

    The overwhelming majority of those that fell prey to the MAGA cult are people like my parents and former neighbors, who wanted so desperately to live out in the wilderness and enjoy the serenity of nature and the quite of only occasional social situations that they deliberately chose to live in what could be called economically and educationally depressed areas. It is the people in these places that will feel a sickness of the soul that will grind them down into weak things even as people like me are hunted and destroyed bodily.

    The passing of the Bulbous Bubo Betrayal has doomed the average American worker, both those that voted for this administration, and those that so viciously fought against it, to a fate worse than what potentially awaits me and other trans people. Though it has become clear that the ruling body of this country will stop at nothing until me and my ilk are rounded up and done away with, it is those that linger and will have to endure the epigenetic blight that will suffer the most. You see, I never thought I was free. I took up the mantle of womanhood knowing that I would have to fight for my rights, yet I did so willingly. It is those who are truly the most vulnerable, who were duped into thinking what they were doing was right, who believed the lie that they were not free who will suffer the most as their spirit decays.

    So today, it is as I prepare to celebrate not the birth of my country, but of my community, that I lament the fall of the noble redneck, hillbilly, and good ol’ boy. The farmer, the miner, and the rig worker. To all of those that have finally realized their betrayal, who now realize that the lines aren’t left and right, but us and them that I say “welcome to the party.” You were always allowed in. We love you, and it’s okay. Now, grab your torch and pitchfork, and let’s get to work.

  • Paddle your own spacesuit

    I have a very interesting relationship with alcohol. I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to define that relationship. It certainly isn’t a relationship I have a lot of control over, but I do think it’s one I can figure out.

    My brain never shuts up. I’ve been known to say that I am “existentially tired,” and that’s why. Even my dreams are a bundle of horrible worries inserted into the VCR of my less than wakeful consciousness. Especially recently, it seems. Enter in alcohol.

    Nothing takes away all of those worries like alcohol. The constant barrage of thoughts ends for a brief few hours. Add to it the boost in confidence, and the final escape into oblivion, and you have a perfect drug for dealing with a mind that is far from stable. It is the one thing I keep coming back to, and probably always will.

    At times in my life I definitely could have been considered an alcoholic. I’ve ruined relationships because of my drinking. I’ve ruined days, weeks, jobs, hearts, property, all in the name of escaping myself. While I seem to (mostly) have a handle on things, sometimes I go a bit too far, and once I lose control, I definitely become and act like a person that I dislike far worse than the person I’m trying to escape from.

    If there has been one hallmark of my transition, it has been that it is a supreme act of self love. This whole journey was started because I was faced with the question of “why do I hate myself so much?” Well, a big reason is that I hated this meat spacesuit I pilot around. It was, in fact, a HUGE reason, and things are better, but they aren’t perfect. Now I’ve come to realize that I still have a long way to go to feel good about the pilot.

    Shame is a powerful motivator, and where in the past I’ve always tended to wallow in my self loathing after doing something I regret, now I really want to get to the bottom of it. I know that I have the capacity in me to feel better. I feel better every day I look in the mirror, and that is because I decided to make figuring out the source of my troubles a supreme priority.

    So, why then, do I hate the pilot? Is the disconnect I have between body and mind the issue? Is there some sort of unification I can bring to the two, so that the growing love I have for the outside can flow to the inside? I always feel as if my emotions, my problems, have no weight given the emotions and problems of others. As I am reminded often by those around me, I am too hard on myself. I also have a bad case of the “people pleasies.” I will go out of my way to do anything for everyone, but if I slip up, if I need help, if I get all in my cups and cry and let the flood gates open, that somehow feels wrong.

    I love it when people open up to me. I love playing therapist, but even now, even having the logical ability to see how one sided and insane it is that others wouldn’t also enjoy doing those things for me, I can’t give myself the grace to accept it. When I think about being anything else than the confident girl who can do anything for anyone, when I think about needing help myself, then the feelings of doubt and shame creep in. Suddenly, the illusion is destroyed. When others need help they’re simply human, and deserving. When I need it, it has to explode out of me in a horrible way, and then I feel worthless and small because of it.

    So I’m trying. I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself, accept that I’ve made a mistake, and move on. I’m going to start trying to recognize when I need a little guidance, or a hand, and not let it all fester inside of me to where only under the lubrication of some substance or another it comes out, because the truth is I am worthy of having the same things I so willingly give to others. I’m not a terrible person. What I’m doing is a brave thing (despite how much I get tired of hearing it.) Am I more unstable now? Yes and no. This phenomenon is not a new thing for me, in fact, this whole “charge and discharge” thing is right out of deadname’s playbook, but I’m not him anymore, and I can be better.

    I’m not saying it won’t be a long road, but I am saying that I’m going to walk it, instead of drunkenly stumble down it. I’m worth that much, and I’d like to remember it as much as I can. I didn’t start transition to come out on the other end the same as I went in. I aim to be better, and if I can’t make the spacesuit be indistinguishable from me, then I want to fill it so completely that the lining on the inside feels like home.

  • SOTD: Brain scratchies

    SOTD: Brain scratchies

    I have this section of the chalkboard in my house where I write a rather existential “Soup of the Day.” I started doing it on my whiteboard at Burning Man last year, and continued for several months after getting back to the default world. Well, now I want to revive it on here. Consider this a sort of “not worth of a full length post” post.

    I have the brain scratchies. It’s what I call the mental state that is similar to when you have a rash or other such affliction that you just can’t help but keep messing with. It isn’t that the anxiety is born of a particular topic, but there definitely feels like there is something “wrong” that needs “solved” but the “what’s wrong” doesn’t really exist, and thus the resolution can’t be found.

    This was a pretty constant state of being for me before I started HRT. Now, considering I just had my dose adjusted (lowered) I can only assume that’s what it’s from. Not that knowing the source really does much good.

    The only thing that seems to cure it for me is constant activity. The mind needs to focus so that you can ignore the psychic rash and feel better. The problem is, of course, that you can’t be busy constantly. That’s when the scratchies sneak back in. That’s probably why I turned to alcohol so much when I was younger. Sometimes you just need the constant hurricane of awareness to stop.

    So there you go: brain scratchies. Now I’m off to go make dinner, play video games, take a long shower, then read. Hopefully that’s enough time to let the brain meat heal.

  • Magic with a k

    I went to my first rave in February of 2009. I had a cursory interest in electronic music, but was never very close to the pulse of it to like anything beyond what I occasionally heard on the radio. Finding new music, especially something so underground (at the time) was hard back then.

    A person I was in the dorms with in college, contacted me out of the blue one day and asked if I wanted to go with him to a rave in San Francisco. He also asked if I wanted to try MDMA. Up until that point I had only ever drank and smoked pot, but I was definitely open to trying more. Afterall, I styled myself, at the time, as a burgeoning gonzo journalist, and I felt it was time to jump down the rabbit hole.

    To this day there is no single event in my life that I can point to that changed me so much. After that night, where I danced with abandon for the first time, heard music that I really connected with, and talked to strangers without a care in the world, I was forever changed. What followed was a decade and a half of learning about myself, about others, and truly becoming a better person.

    What was, in the beginning, just a thing I loved to do on weekends, where I’d see people I only met in the dark and on drugs, eventually became a career. After getting my journalism degree in 2012, I decided to pivot into doing event lighting. My roommate at the time (who I met through raving) was tired of seeing me struggle to find work as a writer, and decided to show me the ropes as a stagehand. After that, it was nothing but concerts and festivals for a very long time.

    Life, as it does, got in the way eventually. I stopped working shows after the pandemic. I was incredibly burned out, and having a few years to sit with myself, realized I couldn’t handle the stress anymore. I was drinking too much, was suicidal, and needed a change. If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know what that change was, but even that took a few years to come about after formally leaving the event industry.

    Last weekend I went to a rave in the woods that was attended by mostly trans people. I haven’t been to a proper rave, and especially not a renegade, in a long time, and it was one of the things I was very excited to do since I started transition and was really feeling better about myself. In very me fashion, I showed up being rather curmudgeon-y. As the night wore on I started to get into it, and, mid-conversation with my friend, I stopped.

    “Did you suddenly realize this is what it’s all about?” She asked.

    I had. There is something magical, and not card magic, but magick, with a k, about being in a place like that. You’re all together, dancing, enjoying your life, surrounded by nature, and you truly feel like what you’re doing matters.

    On the surface, you’re just a bunch of people in the woods, or in a warehouse, or an arena, listening to a bunch of computer music with bright lights, but there is an intention to something like that. It doesn’t always happen. I’ve certainly been to electronic shows that felt more like a concert, especially some of the larger ones, but the intimacy of a bunch of people sweating together in a warehouse, or doing a bunch of drugs in the woods, becomes a sort of synergistic feeling that vibrates outward like the gravity waves from a collapsing star.

    So that’s why I do it. That’s why I make art, that’s why I love people, and make space, and why I get so mad at the world when it doesn’t see things the way I do. We as a species are at our best when we’re together. We are all parts of a greater whole, and all I hope is that one day we figure it out. Until then, as long as there are trans people dancing in the woods to bleeps and bloops, that hope will remain.

  • Searching for a former clarity

    I don’t think I’ll ever get used to winter in Seattle. I am beginning to see the fleeting light of my fourth spring here, and, though normally I am ecstatic this time of year for the return of the light and warmth, this year it seems like that same feeling of rebirth and energy is missing.

    Spring really is a beautiful time here. There is just so much green; green that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t such a wet place. Every year around April the dark lessens, the air warms, and the rain slowly retreats, ever warmer and less frequent, into the most beautiful summer you can imagine before once again running away for nine months.

    Once the flowers start to bloom and life returns to the land, it has always felt like life is also breathed back into me. I have terrible seasonal affective disorder, or, I did. I was really hoping that this winter would be different, because I am different, and, it was, but not in the way I was hoping.

    My life seems to have taken on a path of extremes. Where before starting my transition I existed in a state of constant melancholy, reaching down to despair, I now fluctuate between extreme happiness and extreme agitation. On one hand I have the endless sea of love and care that is my relationship with my partner, who continues to surprise me with the depth of her love for me, and on the other I am bearing witness to the destruction of my homeland as it is gutted and resold to the highest bidder.

    Being trans in America in 2025, or, honestly, being a person with a lick of sense in America in 2025, has become akin to watching a car crash in molasses. The die is cast, the stage is set, we all know where this is going, but the process into fascism seems inexorably slow. With the blanket tariffs, and the elimination of wealth with a speed and magnitude which has never been seen before, I think no one that isn’t caught up in the cult thinks that this ends any other way. At least the orange rectal fissure got one thing right, he is going to run this country like a business, which is to say, burn it down and sell it off to the highest bidder.

    The April 5th protests were the largest ones yet, and somehow the sycophants think that it’s all a ruse. The protesters were paid, the images were AI generated, whatever mental gymnastics they have to do to make it seem like the path they are on is the righteous one. History will not look fondly on this time, yet the outcome will not be a return to American greatness.

    If the twentieth century was the century of pax americana, then the twenty-first will be the century of American despair. We are no longer “the good guys,” hell, we probably never were. John Wayne isn’t coming in to save the day. In fact, like John Wayne, who made a name for himself playing a soldier on the silver screen while other men gave their lives in war, yet never went to war himself, America has become that which it originally opposed, a bloated tyrant inflicting its personality on distant shores.

    A lack of equality and fairness is the problem here. As long as one group, one country, one person, holds more power than another, there can never truly be peace. For a long time I thought we were moving in the right direction. I harbored the light of hope in my heart for so long, yet like the dull spring in Seattle I now face, that light has dwindled and the magic seems to be fleeting. I loved this country. This is my home, but I do not feel at home here. I have no intention of leaving, but my duty is not to this land, but to those who dwell in it. I do not know if I any longer wish to identify myself as American. I simply exist as a citizen of humanity, who hopes that with each action going forward that I am on the side of goodness and love.

    The wheels of history will continue to turn, and just as how a dreary spring will give way to the light and energy of summer, this will pass. The house divided will fall, and the survivors will build a new house, one with its walls made to include all, and it’s foundation built on the weary packed earth of history.

    Let us hope that next time we remember.

  • Things have changed

    The first time I ever did hallucinogens was at San Francisco Pride in 2009. I consumed what I at the time didn’t know was a rather large dose of mushrooms. Within an hour I began to lose myself as the roar of the crowds and general chaos and over-stimulation consumed me. I remember saying to my friends that “things have changed” as what was already an incredibly over active mind and socially awkward person began to unravel.

    Then something beautiful happened. I let go.

    It wasn’t a conscious decision, but as the psylocibin coursed through my synapses, I let go. I had crossed the abyss of what has been termed “ego death,” and while the drug fueled search for self of my twenties is the topic of another post, the important part to focus on here is that when I let go, things got better.

    One major lesson I’ve kept learning in my life is that attachment is the root of suffering. Yes, that’s very Buddhist of me, but it stands. Even in the past year, as I keep navigating the choppy waters of transition, I keep realizing that holding onto the past is really not doing me any favors.

    Last night I attempted to do something that the old me loved. I got all dressed up, grabbed my beautiful girlfriend, and we drug ourselves out to a bar to go see some local punk bands, and support a charity for trans youth. Yet about fifteen minutes into being there, I was ready to leave. Between knowing I couldn’t have more than one drink, since I had work the next day, and just generally not being a fan of crowds after spending a decade in the event industry, I realized that a lot of the things I was looking forward to doing from the past as the old me aren’t really part of the new me.

    I’ve done this four times now in the past year. It is the very definition of insanity.

    Things have changed. I have changed, to which you say “of course you have.” Which makes sense. My body is changing, my mind certainly has, but what is astounding is just how much all of those hormone driven changes really do change who I am. I’m still me, in that I’m still him, in a lot of ways, but more and more I realize that a lot of him was just bits of personalities strung together to cope with the depression, and dysphoria, and anxiety.

    I’ve said a lot in the past year that I finally feel like a real person, and that before transition I was basically just waiting around to die. A person doing that isn’t really a person, they’re a shell. Even though I never had a real strong sense of “being a woman in a man’s body” I certainly wasn’t okay with being a man. I was so against it, in fact, that I operated like some cheap children’s restaurant automaton. Faded from age and neglect, the face smiles and the song plays while there is an audience and the lights are on, but then when the doors are locked for the day the false life fades and the body slumps. That’s what it felt like for me.

    I took my old ID and put it into the temple at Burning Man last year. It wasn’t something I had planned to do, but it felt right. I felt like I had to honor the pain and suffering he went through, but also draw a line in the dust saying that “this is where he ends and I begin.” It was one of the most defining personal moments of my transition so far. Yet last night I found myself still trying to pretend that I’m the same person that I let go in that conflagration.

    So from now on, I’m going to push myself to try new things. To accept that I need to figure myself out all over. I’m older now, I have a day job. I don’t drink as much. I prefer a small gathering of friends over being squeezed into a room with loud music and strangers. That’s okay. I can be a different person, because, in a lot of ways, I am.

    Give yourself a little bit of grace, girl.

  • No contact

    I’ve been dealing with an interesting emotion recently.

    My childhood was not what you could call “good.” Sure, on the surface things seemed to be fine. Sure, there was the slow financial decline, that saw me continually sheltered in smaller and more modest dwellings the longer my childhood ran on. There was also the crusade of isolation from any sort of extended family, either due to my mother’s machinations, or my father’s lack of care and alcoholism. Then the emotional abuse and turmoil that extended to both me and my grandmother perpetrated by my mom. Also my absent father’s complete lack of interest in any real part of my life beyond obligation. However I was “given anything I ever wanted.”

    What I wanted though, was a home that didn’t feel like a warzone, or some sort of free range prison. I wanted a father that showed some interest in my life beyond when I was young and cute. I wanted a mother that wasn’t so obsessed with me that she stunted any sort of self discovery I had to force me to stay on the “right path.” It was never about what I wanted. It was about the status quo.

    An interesting thing happens after your egg cracks, where you start noticing all of the signs. I didn’t think I had a lot of signs that I was trans, but it’s so obvious now that I carry significant regret that I didn’t figure things out sooner. I think the original thoughts that there might be something different about me starting forming in high school. They would then rear their head again in waves until I finally cracked in early 2024.

    When I finally came out to my parents, they treated it exactly how I expected them to. I had hoped that there would be some sort of understanding, if not an acceptance. I was met not with love and willingness to understand, but hatred. So poisoned by the rhetoric of hating the “other” were they that I suddenly went from their child to something subhuman.

    Nine days after I gave them the news, on the day of my name change hearing, my father texted me from my mother’s phone. He informed me that my mom seemed to be suffering from a stroke, and he was taking her to the hospital. I tried to contact him to get any information, but to no avail. In late February I received a text from my mother, full of errors and jumbled words, informing me that she had been home for three days. The text was essentially lamenting how I now hated her.

    It was never about me. I was never expected to be my own person. It was never their desire that I forge my own path, or be happy. All that was required of me was that I fell in line and continue the crusade; of capitalism, progress, genocide, whatever our fearless white leaders told us was our god given path.

    As one might guess, that went over well.

    So I chose not to respond to her message. I will probably never speak to my parents again. I feel relieved by that. To know that I can finally heal from all of that. From the emotional pain, the fear, the bitterness. I am very sure had I not been so marked by them I would have accepted myself as I was far earlier. I’d be in a better place now, not that I have regrets. This is my karma, after all.

    This speaks to an interesting parallel in the soul of our country right now. The people in charge are mostly the people that are of my parent’s generation. This country is going through changes. The world as we know it is entering a new era, and much like my adolescence, the ones in charge are fighting tooth and nail to do what they think is best, with no regard to the flow of time and progress. We as a nation are being gripped by the cold, dead hand of the past and are being pulled into the graves of our forebearers.

    So afraid of their world changing in ways they don’t approve of, our leaders seek to freeze our lives into a form that never actually existed. Blinded by the fog of nostalgia for a time where it was only good to be white, Christian, and male, those in power will hold us fast and sink to the depths as they breath their last. One final send off from the me generation.

    So we “go no contact.” We must no longer let those who refuse to work for the future keep us in the past. If they see fit to ignore the laws, we should too. Keeping working the National Parks, and keep paying those park workers too. Refuse to clean their houses. Boycott their products. Approve that trans person’s passport. “Playing dirty” doesn’t have to mean throwing bricks and torching teslas.

    You can be your own person. We have spent far too much time doing what we’ve been told. If they refuse to see us, then we should refuse to listen to them.

    What of those that are listening to their parents, then? Those who are happy in their clouded misery? It’s okay, we all have to figure it out in our own time. It took me until I was 35 to figure out I was trans, and one day you’ll figure out that all of this hate isn’t who you are too.

    And you’ll be better for it.