Tag: politics

Maybe it’s time I start coming to terms with it: I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future.

Stuck is an interesting verb in this case. If there is one pervading theme in my life, it’s constantly striving to be absolutely free. Free to move, act, love, be. So, when I say I’m stuck, this should resonate as something that’s anathema to me.

I’ve lived here for four and a half years now. That’s quite a long time. I’ve lived in this particular house for longer than I have ever lived in any one location. Even as a child, my parents and I moved around a lot. My dad was always pissing off someone at work and having to move to a new factory, or my mom got bored or tried to “fix” things until they were too screwed up it was just easier to move than to actually let the dust settle around her own life. Unfortunately, that’s a trait I inherited, but luckily, I seem to keep my “messing” limited to my own art projects.

While the philosophy behind the endless pursuit of perfection is a great topic, I want to talk about something that no one would ever associate with me: acceptance.

Do I hate the winters? Do i hate the long cold and dark, the lack of any sort of happiness for six months out of the year as I await the triumphant return of the sun? Yes. Oh gods yes. However, over the past year or so, I think that being “stuck” in Seattle may not be such a bad thing. Maybe my perspective has to change.

I don’t think I really wanted to be here in the first place. Ending up here was the result of trying to please my partner at the time. It was I who wanted to move, but I don’t think if I had the thought incepted in my head, I would have chosen Seattle. I love the desert, you see. I love the vast nothingness, the at-first-glance lifelessness, and the deeper pulsation of life that’s hidden. I love the rocks, and the open sky, and the loneliness of it all. In a perfect world, I would live in the desert, but we do not live in a perfect world.

I know longer have any hope that humanity will curb climate change in any meaningful way. Without a major ecological catastrophe, almost assuredly resulting in the loss of massive amount of life, I see no way that human emission of carbon slows. This is one of the things I have come to accept. This is not something that ends well. There will be a flight from the hotter drier places of the world over the next few decades, as the feedback loop runs away. Billions will migrate from equatorial regions to more temperate ones, and the resulting diaspora will be brutal.

It makes no logical sense to live in the desert anymore. I think I have begun to accept that. I have no desire to be a refugee in the climate wars.

There are vast parts of this country (in hotter areas no less) that are basically no go zones for me. Hostilities are so great against trans people in certain parts of this country that my work reconsidered sending me on a trip to Florida to help another technician catch up on work. It wasn’t worth my life (and thank them for that.)

So, ever the logical monolith, I have arrived at the conclusion that I love Seattle, or, maybe I’m beginning too. Like my mother before me, in all of her “messing,” maybe I also have a desire to mess until I achieve some un-achievable level of perfection and happiness. I certainly talk to my therapist a lot about it. “If I move to the desert I’ll be happy. If I get a better job I’ll be happy.” If transition has taught me one thing, it’s that my happiness comes from being a better me, from achieving my internal goals. I am safe. I am warm. I live in a liberal city that’s oh so wet and cold in the winter, and absolutely beautiful in the summer. I have friends, and I’m hoping to make more. I’m in a relationship with a beautiful girl, and my dog is insane, but so sweet. I have more cars than I need (which makes me happy.) I could work to have these things anywhere, but I have them now in Seattle, and that’s just fine with me.

So I’m not going to spend my time looking to escape. I’m going to be me where I am now. I’m going to build, instead of run. Now, more than ever, with the very doom of our way of life looming in our overcast future, it is time to look around and begin to fortify what foundations we have against the coming storm.

So I’ll make my stand here.

I finally got around to editing my shots from the protest on 2/5/25 at the WA Capitol.

I think we all could use a breather. The anger and frustration came to a head last week. I realized I had been giving it too much power, and it was affecting my relationships. I’m still mad, but it goes to show you that being all in on anything isn’t the way.

I’ve adopted a itinerary of preparedness. It’s too early to be throwing bricks (much to my chagrin) and this will be a marathon, not a race. Make no mistake about it, I plan to fight, but I intend to live my life, too.

I tend to learn the same lessons over and over again. I consider myself a person of above average intelligence, but I am also incredibly stubborn. Patience has never been a strong suit. Usually I am able to put my head down and conquer any task with enough force of will, but this isn’t something that will be over soon, or easily, or probably bloodlessly. We are so far from the point of needing our full strength, and if it is wasted now, then the battle is lost before it has begun.

Now is the time to be making allies, and plans. Plans to live to fight another day. Plans to live in general. I refuse to devote all of my time and energy to “the cause,” not because I don’t believe in it, but as a 35 year old woman, who is just starting to live her life, I actually do have higher priorities.

I could be killed tomorrow. I could die of some strange disease. Would it be more of a tragedy that I didn’t get to give my life for freedom and liberty, or that I never had a life to give at all?

Falling into the trap of wasting our energy now is exactly what they want. It’s important that we don’t give in. That we remember why we’re fighting; not just for our selves, and our country, and democracy, but for our lives. Lives that most of us haven’t even begun to live.

I’m sitting here confronting the fear and pure aversion I have toward switching to injections. Every time I think about stabbing myself in the leg I get a cringe feeling that runs up my spine. Yet, with the way things are going, I see no choice but to switch to injections in case I need to source illegal HRT drugs from elsewhere.

Now, beside the evidence that injections are wildly (read: anecdotally) considered the “most effective” route, that’s not the point. I don’t want to do this. I have been having great results with just pills, and despite how much I do dislike being on a testosterone blocker, I’m rather happy just taking pills everyday for the rest of my life.

The point here is the only way I can imagine being able to stab myself with a rather long needle every 5 days (I’m aware of DIY hormones that are longer) is to build up this sort of righteous anger inside. What does that say about me that anger is such a motivator? I’m not sure, but with the recent events happening in the US, my ire is firmly directed to one place.

Which brings me to this post. I don’t want to be angry. I feel sometimes that by being trans and living my life out and proud, I’m committing an act of defiance. There is anger there that replaces what I think is the most important part about being transgender.

Being transgender is one of the greatest acts of love that you can do for yourself. We cannot forget that. I’m doing this for me because I want to love myself. I want to feel comfortable being me. That’s all it is. I spent far too long hating myself, my body, my life. I didn’t want to feel like I was just waiting to die. I wanted to like being me.

I loved people, and was kind, but I didn’t love me. Every bit of compassion I had toward others was just a hollow gesture. Every success I had was done out of a sense of “doing what I should do” and felt so empty that I never had pride in it.

That’s all gone now.

Things aren’t perfect. I will still carry a feeling of defiance and resentment until equality and sense is restored. I don’t know how to convince people that they should care about people. I’m going to try though. I’m going to fight and scream and sing, but most importantly:

I’m going to love myself.

Everybody knows things are bad.

I’m not sure what this is yet. I know I’m going to be writing it in first person, which is different for me, but the self is very important here, because I’m a part of this. I don’t usually journal, or blog, in this case, but considering I haven’t written much of anything in the past decade I can’t really say I do any of this. I suppose you can consider this a record of me, that hopefully stands the test of time, helps some people, and lasts long after I’m gone, which, unfortunately, might be soon.

My name is Traea McGrady, and I am a trans woman living in America at the beginning of 2025.

I am angry.

However, though anger may be my dominant emotion at the moment, I haven’t lost hope. Anyone paying attention knew that the road we were going down was bad. I have seen every hope I had that goodness would prevail dashed upon the rocky shore of fascism, but it has not all been spent. This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. Trans people will always exist. We always have, and always will. The laws of man are microscopic in the face of the laws of nature. What’s important now is that you don’t lose hope. You aren’t powerless. Every day you wake up and be who you are you chip away at the fortress of evil that stands before you.

Inside of you right now is a storm of emotions that is ever changing, and overwhelming. I feel it too. We’re all frightened for our lives, and for our futures. There are people out there who hate us, and truly want to see us wiped from existence. These things are scary. So feel scared. Feel scared, and depressed, and furious, and overcome. Cry yourself to sleep. Have aggressive sex. Smoke pot and eat an entire pizza.

Do that for a few days if you need to. It’s okay to not know what to do. After you’ve felt those emotions, that pain, sadness, anger, whatever it is, you take that and you use that. Be sad and write a crappy blog like this one, or some terrible poetry. Draw, paint, make music. Take those emotions and feel them and remind yourself that you are alive and that this sadness exists just so that you can be happy. This anger is inside of you so that you may know peace. As long as you are still capable of feeling you are still alive.

Let creation be an act of resistance. It is still early. We don’t know the extent of the weapons they have to use on us, but we do know that we can make our own. Everything we bring into this world that comes from deep within ourselves is one more marker that says “I am here, and you can’t ignore me.” Every protest song, work of art, late night conversation, and vertically filmed video is more evidence that we do exist, and more evidence that they are wrong.

The time might come when we have to destroy to protect ourselves. I pray every second of every day that it does not. Until that time comes, I will do everything I can to make sure that if I do go, the crater of my absence will be impossible to ignore.

I suggest you do the same.