wixbloom's journal

Also, yesterday I watched Beauty and the Beast with my mom and tomorrow I'm watching it with my moirail! I'm so pumped for that as well aaaaaaahhhh

 

I'm taking a writing class and it's great, but for this week we have to write a first-person personal narrative about our first aesthetic experience (like, our first memory which we can see connects to our art) and mine is so fucking melancholy, even though my art isn't. But I can really see the strong connection between the two, and I can't honestly write about anything else, I'm just feeling very raw and vulnerable, as I often feel when I write from a personal perspective.

 

In broad brushstrokes, the memory I described is my very first memory, and it dates from when I was 2 or 3 years old, had a very bad bout of insomnia, spent hours awake in my cradle in silence, watching the headlights of the cars be projected onto the ceiling from slits in the windows while listening to my parents sleep in the same room (we were at my grandparents'), and probably had my first experience of abject loneliness in which I was aware that I was having sad feelings that nobody could fix or even be aware of.

Even recounting it I'm a bit [Marge Simpson voice] 'kids, could you lighten up a little?'

 

And it being childhood stuff, everyone's gonna be all "childhood was rainbows and love and innocence and purity" because either they're in denial of what a miserable lonely powerless experience childhood is or I am a fucking alien. I think that's what getting to me most. Like. They're all gonna stare at me and I'm gonna feel like shit.

 

tfw you deliberately ignore the wankery meta forum only to find that for some godforsaken reason there is now wankery II electric wankaroo a new meta forum

 

*cries softly at the mastery and delicacy involved in the painting of this tiny tiny bee*

 

My latest source of baseless anxiety has been agonizing obsessively over What If The Gender Clinic Demands That I Lose Weight Before Getting Top Surgery And Then I Can't Transition. Which is stupid because I know for a fact that they operate on fat guys, so even if they do demand weight loss they certainly don't demand that you get skinny. But that's not even the point. The point is, there's always one baseless source of anxiety or another. There's always some catastrophic powerlessness on my end which my brain convinces me will be my doom, and when it turns out, as it literally always does, that that's bullshit and all in my head, soon enough a new fear comes along. It's not even worth addressing each of these projected menaces as actual things I might have to deal with, and figuring out plans for them and whatnot. That may be comforting on some level but generally it doesn't address the big picture, because that's not the fucking point, the point is that I struggle with anxiety and my brain can't let me feel happy without conjuring up a random boogeyman of the month.

 

I've been kinda avoiding having muay thai and gender clinic stuff on the same day because often I think that carrying my gym tote with me all day when I'm already stressed about going to the hospital is too stressful and too much of a pain. But I did that this Monday and actually came to the conclusion that having muay thai after gender clinic stuff will do good, because even being in a group meeting of trans guys doesn't stop those fuckers from misgenderig me, and my kicks and punches got a lot more effective once I started to picture the smug face of doctor who called me "she" on the punchbag.

Also: generally, gaining confidence that you'd be able to punch your problems in the face if it came to it, even though you know that you won't, is awesome, A+, 11/10 would pretend-punch again. For the past few months my imagination has had me punching my drawing professor, my boss, the nurses' boss, my printing professor, and a myriad of doctors. All those people are weak and physically unfit, and so am I, but I have a great fighting stance :B

 

Another thing: this morning, as I got dressed, I listened to The Stills' "I'm With You" and I thought of something I had never quite realized:

The first time I heard the song was in 2009 and I was 18 and I remember at one point listening to it on my ipod as I crossed a street and thinking that, while the song moved me, it didn't actualy make me think of anyone, there was nobody with whom I had that kind of bond.

About a year ago, when my friend Gui went to live in Japan, I got home from his airport sendoff, and when I went to sleep I thought of the song and sent it to him. "Be close to me, be where I am, when the wind is hard, when all the wind is hard, I'm with you, I'm with you, if you want me to".

It took 2 years between thinking "there's nobody I have this kind of relationship with" and meeting Gui, and another 5 years before arriving to the point where the song became about him in some way. And it makes me hopeful: where will I be in 2 years, in 7 years, in relation to the longings and loneliness I am concerned about now?

 

And the moon is red
And the sky is clean
In the loneliest place you've ever been
I'm with you, I'm with you
I'm with you, I'm with you.

 

Hooooooo boy. The past 16 hours or so, in broad strokes:

Realized that I am, if not in love, at the very least deeply infatuated (is that a thing) with a very sweet, very kind guy who I don't think is interested in me. I'd had a crush on him for ages, and as it turns out we're going to share a studio together with some other people, and he kept smiling and telling me in his beautiful soft voice how happy that made him and how enthusiastic he was about that prospect and how necessary he thought my presence would be. That last bit gets to me a lot. I haven't felt necessary to the lives of others in a long time. And then, he told me about a project he has that he wants to involve my trans girl senpai Sofia in, and he apologetically said "it has to be Sofia because she's the only trans person I know" and I said "you... you realize I'm trans??" and apparently he is Harry Potter levels of observant and it never crossed his mind. And his instinctive, immediate reaction was... happy, kind laughter, and "that's wonderful!", and a hug. And he let me talk for hours about trans identity and sociopolitical issues and body and society and culture, all the while being an eager, attentive, respectful listener, and he hugged me several times, and right then, right there, I truly felt that I love him for the person he is and not for his physical charms alone. I couldn't stop shaking and anted to cry.

And then I got home and a guy from the trans support group messaged me on whatsapp to say that "many of the guys" were "curious" about me and ask me some really tactless questions on why the hell am I so damn feminine and am I really trans. And here I was with all of these emotions, and I started to cry, and my internalized mysogyny + dysphoria combo reared its disgusting ugly head to tell me "see, he's right, you DO look and act like a lady, crying like a girl". I went to sleep with all these feelings, and I still don't know how to make heads or tails of any of them. I feel really vulnerable and lonely and touch-starved and craving affection, touch, validation and, more important than either, wishing that people would really look at me and see me as I am, with all my vulnerability and flaws, and love me as I am.

 

I don't think I even need to say that the douchebag who said I look like a lady is the new imaginary target of my recently learned headlock + knee to the ribs combo.

Also suck it: I definitely look like a lady but I'm still a head taller than you with a handsomer face and the ability to kick your sorry ass into the dirt.

 

Really I can't wait to get on T and have all these weak pathethic men come to the conclusion that I'm prettier than them and that they have the most confusing gay boner

 

FINALLY I am home and get to selfcare. Currently: listening to nice music and hydrating.

 

I feel I should share with all of you one important fact about my crush: at one point, he was sitting on a stool adding wheels to a little cart he built from crates, and I was on the floor next to him, and he started talking about his ever present disgust for postmodern art and I told him he would pry my love of Jenny Holzer from my cold lifeless fingers, and he asked how I felt about Damien Hirst, and apparently before replying I gave a full-bodied shudder, which made him laugh. And then I said "but there is none in the art world that I loathe as much as Jeff Koons" and he wordlessly extended his hand and we shared the sweetest possible floor high-five.

 

A day and a half after the "you look like a lady" comment, still not OK. What am I doing? Why am I spending time with people who espouse that mentality? Why am I making all this sacrifice when even the people who would supposedly be able to understand me better still seem to think I'm some alien? Do I truly want to do this to myself? Am I just going to end up ostracized from everywhere?

Also, how cruel is it to spend a lifetime being told loud and clear that you're not woman enough and then suddenly being criticized for being too much woman?

 

Let uncle wix tell you a cool lifehack: if you headcanon Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" as being about a femme transboy, rather than a transgirl, it goes from being ProblematicTM to being super empowering - at least to THIS dude right here who has recently been accused of looking too much like a lady ;P

 

Saw an interview with 2 brazilian trans guys who have a youtube channel, and the coolest part is that one of them is nonbinary. Read it and sent it to the guy who said I don't look like a guy, and wished him a happy Easter. This is a Good Way of dealing with my feelings.

 

I've said this a billion times and it remains important: an outside perspective of transness puts a lot of focus on the CHANGE, before and after, radical transformation et cetera, but in practice, more often than not, being trans is an exercise in patience and acceptance of limitations - the limitations of your body, the limitations of your life, the limitations of your society, the limitations of others.

 

The guy didn't comment on the interview but he wished me a happy easter too.