Sans Seraph

Tag: trans

  • Just keep swimming

    Just keep swimming

    I’ve been focusing rather hard recently on finding somewhere I belong, some sense of community in this new identity and body I’m finding myself in. Considering how little I slept last night, and how puffy my face is from crying, it’s going well.

    Nothing is wrong, really. I went to play a very interesting DnD variant last night, and had fun. Everyone there was nice to me. I will go back and hopefully continue to push through my own bullshit and make friends. For right now though, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.

    I’ve made it my goal for this year to branch out and widen my social circle. That’s not to say I don’t have a lovely group of friends and a partner that I adore, and I have already made some new friends since coming out, but I feel this very deep longing to be part of something that I honestly have never really felt before.

    It was so easy before. When I was wandering through life, pretending to be a guy, being mad at the world, hating myself, I had no problem being alone. Afterall, who would want me? Why should I have any joy when I’m trapped in this body I despise? For thirty-five years I went through the motions of what I thought it was like to be a person. Now, though, the mask is off, and I really can’t put it back on. So much of how I moved through the world was hidden behind the character of the man I played at being, that I never developed a sense of self. Now, at my early middle-age, I get to figure out all of the things that people usually have decades to work out.

    I’ve realized that not only do I have next to zero social skills when I’m not drunk off my ass (nor confidence in who I am) that I also exist in this liminal space where I don’t feel like I belong with men or women. It also seems like the other trans people around me are much younger, and are getting to learn who they are without having to unlearn as much programming as I do. It’s a very isolating feeling.

    I’ve lived half a life. I have the greatest of hopes that things will get better, but from down here, that feels so far away. I’ve felt that sense of belonging that I crave now before, at raves, at Burn, and I can’t help but be mad that he got them, and I didn’t. Even though I can still go to those things, I’m older, and that wild, young, free person is a bit more subdued now (and much, much more jaded.) I can’t help but feel resentment for all the time I didn’t get to be young, and gay, and a woman.

    I’ll be thirty-seven soon, and, statistically, my life is about half over. Subtract the years of abuse I put my body through, and the chronic anxiety, and I probably have less than that. It would have been far easier to just kill myself, but I’ve never been much for taking the easy way. The truth is, I’m a lot of things, but a coward is not one of them. I can repeat that over and over again to myself, but it doesn’t make the pain of feeling like something other go away. I know a lot of this is my own internalized fears, and a lot of it is just needing to grow more into who I am, but being essentially a teenager trapped in a grown woman’s body is the most supreme of mind fucks.

    I guess until it gets easier I just have to trust that forward is the only direction. It’s all part of the becoming. I spent so long in a state of arrested development, and I’ve gone through so much fire and ash to get to this small precipice, that to stop now would be a disservice to my past self (yes, even him.)

  • I will fear no evil

    I will fear no evil

    I recently got a new piercing and it’s made me think a lot about fear.

    Fear is not an emotion that I like to subscribe to often. I think of all of the vast range of human emotions, it is the most belittling. Fear leads people to do horrible things, inhuman things. Fear leads to panic, which often leads to death. Fear leads to war, to genocide, to living a half life in the shadow of something that is rarely so big in the light.

    Yet even though I like to say that I don’t live with a lot of fear, I do. I was afraid to get my nose pierced. I was incredibly anxious, nervous, but ultimately afraid of the pain, the change in my routine, the unknown of how it would affect my life. Even immediately after, some of that lingered. In the end though, it didn’t really hurt, and though it has been annoying adjusting my routine, I quite enjoy it. It gave me ownership over a part of my face I’m not too happy about, and that was my goal. However, in the week leading up to my appointment, I was very much on the fence. Even in the moment, I wasn’t too sure about my decision, even though I had spent a good amount of time considering it. I tried to call those emotions everything else but fear, but they were.

    My mother used to always say that there are only two emotions, love and fear. I don’t like to give that heinous witch too much credit, but she had some wisdom. If you really want to be reductionist, I think that you can boil things down to just though two emotions. I think sometimes intelligent people can get caught up in all of the myriad ways we can define and categorize things, yet it’s hard to not look back on all of the times we walk forth into the void, pushing past all of the uncertainty and doubt, and move forward into greater things, that it wasn’t those things that kept us from doing it sooner, but ultimately fear. After all, isn’t anxiety mostly just a fear of being wrong, of having too little information, and making the wrong choice?

    I spend a lot of time thinking about why I didn’t transition sooner, when it seems like the time was right a decade ago, and, though there is an argument to be made that I wasn’t ready (because dear god, I wasn’t) it was really my fear of being something that I had been told was horrible to be my whole life that stopped me from even considering it. I spent so much time trying to make anything else work, that I missed out of so much of my life, all mostly because of an emotion that in hindsight is just so small, yet casts such a big shadow in our lives.

    Some fears are instinctual. Being afraid of what can destroy you bodily is healthy. When your gut tells you that something you’re about to do is sketchy, then it’s usually a good idea to listen to it. Fear definitely has a purpose in our lives, but the real problems are the fears that we’re taught. In a vacuum, there is no reason to be afraid of all of the things that society tells us are wrong. These fears are little lions with amplified roars, echoing off of cave walls. These are fears that are meant to control us, and make us bend to the will of others. These are the tools of evil, and those that seek to work it have used the same formula to get their way since the beginning of time.

    The right likes to tout the idea of the “woke mind virus” as if the idea of being awake is somehow bad, as if it is better to live in the dark then to be shown all of the messiness and splendor of what is going on around us. They are ultimately afraid of losing what they have worked so hard to achieve, and those that follow them have co-opted that fear as their own. Now they decry that their cause is righteous, that the way people like me live is against some divine order, when really, they’re just afraid of the truth: there is no order, and not them, nor you, nor me, are indistinguishable from god, and when everything is the same, nothing is special. We’re all born, we live, we die, and the cycle repeats until the last proton decays. Our lives have no more meaning that the actions of a hydrogen atom fusing with another, and honestly I think that’s rather beautiful.

    I think when you take out the idea that life is special, it takes the pressure off. The roar isn’t so loud, and you can see the actual beauty in everything. The absurdity of it all is fascinating, because when nothing is special, everything is. There’s a duality to existence and oblivion that makes the whole idea of judgement, of caring what others do and shrinks it down into an oddity. The only law is to cause no harm. To stand in the way of other’s trying to live their life is an affront to the flow of the universe, a violation of a physical law that is far bigger than you could ever hope to encompass. I think we’re seeing a change here, and on the other side of it we will realize how childish it was to live with so much fear and hate.

  • Jagged little pill

    Jagged little pill

    I have to take these supplements every day or else my joints hurt. Yes, I’m getting older, and yes, I’ve been doing blue collar work my whole life, but more than that, I spent at least a decade, probably more, simply not caring about my body.

    I’d assume this is somewhat typical. When you’re young you think you’ll live forever. You can watch your wounds close up in front of you whilst you search the cabinet for a bandage. For me though, I wanted to be broken. I wanted to use myself up, to sacrifice my body and to leave a husk to blow away in the wind, or some other such poetic drivel. Before I came to the realization I was trans I hated myself. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t work myself to the bone, do risky things, and not drink and smoke myself into a stupor every night. A very common phrase of mine to toss out was “I’m just waiting to die.”

    Now, to my employers, this made me an excellent worker. I’d do the hard things. I’d work late, lift too much, get paid too little. I didn’t care. In a way it was a cowardly way to approach suicide, though, after a while, it started to be clear to me that I was far more resilient than I gave myself credit for. I was going to suffer before my body wore out, and I was starting to worry that I might not be up for it. The answer then came to be that I would have to hasten myself off this mortal coil. Being a firearm enjoyer, the quickest answer seemed to be eating a nine millimeter sandwich, but that seemed to be letting myself off easy. I still wanted to suffer.

    So i figured one day, at some point in the future, I’d drive myself out into the woods, toss a rope over a limb, and hang myself. Not a far drop, I wanted to suffocate. I wanted to watch the world fade away, grasping at the rope futilely as my instincts betrayed my desires, then all of the anger would make sense. The body I’d hated so much for so long would cling to a world that I hated so much, and me, the real me, that lived inside, would finally end, and with it, all of the suffering I had to endure.

    I didn’t though (obviously.) I’ve always been a fighter, and more than my share of stubborn, so I had to try one more thing, and, lo and behold, I finally had my answer. Transition literally saved my life. Now, however, I have to deal with some very interesting consequences.

    The longer I’ve been transitioning, the more I have trouble relating to that person that wanted to hang himself. Not only because that dim world I lived in has gone, but because that is not all who I am now, or perhaps ever was. When I think about my life before, it is so hard to think of it as mine. I know, logically, that all of those events happened to me, but the extreme disassociation I had for the first part of my life has left me in a state of arrested development, such that here, while going though a second puberty, I find that I truly have to learn who I am all over. Whoever I was before, and the experiences I had, has come to have very little bearing on who I am now. The things I liked to do, the way I dressed, the people I liked to be around, all of those are in flux.

    Aside from my partner, I feel so supremely alone in this world. Not only is this a lonely time, but naturally, as we get older, we drift away from the things we liked to do in our younger years. I have no lived experience telling me where to move on to now though. It is frustrating, and anxiety inducing, but all so exciting. I’m trying new things, slowly making new friends, but where as a teenager it is so easy to be fluid, I’m a thirty-six year old woman. I have a job, responsibilities, and, yes, aches and pains that have pigeon-holed me.

    Experiencing such a great change in the middle of my life is by far the biggest mental trip I have ever been on. Perhaps on a daily basis I have to catch my breath and reassert myself into the world, lest I be swept away into the waters of disassociation by the massive “what the fuck” of it all. I’m sure, as time goes on and I get farther into my transition I will cement this personality more, but for now, it is quite the experience.

    For now though, despite everything going on, I just have to live my life. The world, the country, the species, all of it is literally burning down around me, the difference is now I don’t want to be swept away by it all. I’m all full of piss and vinegar, and that fighting spirit, the little part of him that held on so that I could raise like a putrid flower from his corpse, isn’t going to shy away from living while everyone else wants me dead.

    In the end, he got want he wanted, but I like to think that as he slowly fades into oblivion, that the anger he expected has been replaced with a certain peace watching me step out into the light.

  • All the bones of summer

    Well, that’s it. The summer of 2025 is over. The bleak gray of the long dark has come once again to Seattle, and I sit here hoping in the deluge and freeze to come, that some of the rot and decay that has stuck fast to the ribs of this country will be washed clean. I hope that in winter’s blanket the world, and myself, will heal a bit, and be ready to face what spring will bring, and what will probably be another summer stolen.

    I recently returned from a work trip. Usually I abhor going on such excursions, but this time was a bit different. I am a bit different. I’m a bit better. Despite everything I feel the progress in my own soul advancing, even when the world outside me seems determined to crumble. For a week I holed up in my hotel room, and in the hours that I was not working, I took a break. Spending time online recently has been a source of extreme frustration and suffering, and I just couldn’t do it. After washing off the dirt of the day, I’d lay in my rented bed, watching cable (an anachronistic hobby at this point) and reading. In between page turns and early evening cartoons I had a lot of time to think.

    When I’m alone and not plugged in, I’m happy. When even for a minute I can ignore the tempest blowing through the hallowed halls of Washington, I can remember how I felt in the summer of ’24, when my whole life was ahead of me, and that’s the thing, it still is. I’m really starting to love the way I look, and how I feel, and I’m starting to gain an amazing confidence and surety in myself that I can’t believe I never had before. What I am doing, what I’m going through, this whole process of becoming, and of being true to myself, it’s working, which makes me wonder why are there people out there that think that standing in the way of that, when it affects them not at all, is a good idea?

    Completely ignoring the fact that most people actually don’t care about trans people, and most people also want to be left alone to live their lives, and that trans people are just another in a long line of marginalized populations used as scapegoats to further the agenda of organizations determined to impose their will and, more importantly, capitalism, why does anyone fall for it? Why do followers exist? Why do people look at me, who has found within herself all of the tools to heal and be healthy and is doing the work to make a difference in her own life, with such disgust? Surely it can’t just be the fault of propaganda?

    Why do others feel the need to impose their will on others? Why is everyone so convinced that their way is right, and that others are wrong, and that they can’t be happy until everyone thinks like them? I think there lies within the structure of power, of governance, an inherent evil. One that is ancient and must be routinely routed out, or else great pain is felt for entire generations. The playbook for this evil is known, and that knowledge is widespread, yet there exists some sticky-sweet honey that it possesses that allows the common man to fall prey to its charms and ignore all of the history, all of the rivers of blood, that it has left in its wake.

    It is the need of the few to control the many that gives rise to this evil. True freedom, for anyone, can never be felt as long as there is the will of another imposed on the will of the self. Small groups of people can work together, and I think everyone agrees that common goals and mutual aid are a great boon to society, yet we seem to all be fighting the same battle every century.

    If Siddhartha’s great battle was to free the soul from the infinite cycle of birth and rebirth, then the modern search for Nirvana should be to break the constant cycle of the few holding sway over the many. I do not know how much longer we as a species can do this dance before have no more floor on which to do so.

    Men who live in excess now go to their satin lined graves on the backs of generations of people who wanted nothing more to be free. They have sacrificed the future of billions of their fellows in order to make their temporary respite from oblivion marginally more comfortable. What else can you call that but evil?

    I want it all to make sense. I want to understand how anyone can look around at all of this, see what’s happening, and not rage against the time stolen from them. I want to know why evil prevails. I want to know why something using such archaic weapons is still so effective.

    I’m very curious how this will all play out. We always look back at things like genocides, or wars, or terrorist attacks, and say “never again,” but it always comes back. Millions of people, myself, included, have been pointing out the descent for years, and yet it all falls on deaf ears.

    The only hope I’m holding onto right now is that the current administration seems so farcical, and so inept, that I hope all of the atrocities I’m predicting don’t come to pass. I’ve been staying away from the news as well. That has truly been helping. I don’t feel so under fire when I get away from it all. I am doing great. When I focus on my little life, I am constantly in awe with how much better my minute world is now. Perhaps that’s the secret. Maybe where individualism went wrong was it stopped being about the individual. If you look to make yourself a person you’d actually like to be, you stop caring about how others are different. If you look to better yourself, then all of their primordial weapons will turn to ash, and finally blow away and find rest on the fields of history.

  • 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.