So tired

 I feel exhausted. My job is incredibly draining and I feel like I'm walking on eggshells trying to not fuck up anything else, yet I keep doing so. It's exhausting to deal with, feeling constantly like you're screwing something up or forgetting something because you don't have the tools to accurately track things. I don't like this position, it doesn't suit me, and rather than move me into something else, I think they're more likely to just terminate me all together. Which, is fine. I have savings and unemployement at this point which will help. But I don't really want to look for another job just yet. That whole process is hell, and almost as bad as this job in general. 

Its the not knowing, the anxiety and the feeling like a shoe is about to drop at any moment that is draining me. It doesn't help that my boss is terrible at her job, at least terrible in managing me, but that isn't unexpected, most managers get there via experience and failing up rather than expertise in how to manage people. 

I'm just so so tired of everything. Life is exhausting and I'd much rather just sleep for the remaining 30 years or so of my life. Just, let me sleep forever, I'm so tired of being forced to do this shit under the threat of starvation/homelessness.

So what's taking so long.

 In lieu of being able to come up with a clever title for a new blog, I'm back here for now.

My summer hasn't been good. I'm alive, but it feels like a struggle. I write now because it feels like something I should do stave off the worst of it. I feel trapped in this terrible job being forced to take on more and more work until it becomes untenable. I'm sure, normal people could do this, but it feels so overwhelming. 

They say to take time off, but I just, can't. There's so much up in the air, that I might need that later on if I end up moving. Moving that I have to do because of this job. They pay me just enough to force me to move but not enough to move comfortably, almost as if by design. 

Which, I knew going in. I just thought I'd have figured something out by now. I wanted to cry by 9am on Thursday, I did cry at 2pm today. I came close to quitting but a coworker suggested talking to my boss about changing roles. 

But, I don't see any other possibilities and I doubt they'll have other roles I can just move into. I've seen them burn through so many people, and seen so many people leave it just seems like something they do. I put in a few other applications since all the talk is about how good the job market is now, but job hunting for me has always been a nightmare, and this is, sadly, still the highest paying job I've ever had at the mid 50s. I'm 36, with a masters degree in a marketable field. Another woman on the team just turned 36 and is selling her house. '

She doesn't have my struggles, but the comparisons highlight the differences. 

I'm also very isolated, from friends, and moreso from community. I haven't been able to really go and mingle with old friends and acquaintances at all, and I feel really alone. That sense of shared bonding that other queer folk have, people who's faces I remember but don't have their phone number. 

The routine and grind is killing me. I am not able to do keep doing this five days a week over and over again. There's just, nothing in it. It's just, paying rent and treading water. Buying time waiting for my ship to come in, and it's starting to feel like it isn't going to come and I just give up and let the sea take me. 

I forgot my suicidal humor doesn't always go over the same in different circles, and I think, worried a few people. Maybe it was reaching out for help, I don't know. I didn't know how to accept their help so I brushed it off, as one does. 

Everything just feels so meaningless, my work is utterly without consequence. We spent 5 hours workshoping and email response to a client who was upset over  returning 15$ of expired product back to their warehouse. It's petty, stupid, irrelevant bullshit. It is meaningless, and I am utterly alienated from it. My boss thinks I'll enjoy it because I'll get thanks for handling emails from co-workers. I do not. I play chess at work, I browse reddit, I do anything I can to not do my job because it is tedious, unengaging and unchallenging. Many companies have automated tools already to do this task. I have a woman babysitting me, who refuses to answer simple questions because she either doesn't hear me, or is too stupid to understand the question. 

I wished her back 10x the frustration and irritation she has inflicted on me as I made dinner. I need a new job. I need to do something as I haven't been this claustrophobic in a while, and the walls feel like their closing in. I don't do well when I feel trapped, I panic and then I get angry and then sad. Until the sadness just becomes everything. Until the anger returns as desperation and the self harm starts again and yadda yadda yadda. 

So we're at the suicide memes stage, the r/2meirl4meirl stage, the joke about not having a reason to not kill yourself stage. I tend to forget that doesn't sit as well with everyone since I've been in it a while. Some friends understand it, and others grow concerned, or worse irritated at it. 

I think about the grotesqueness of it all. How long would I decay before they found me, would anyone notice? Sure they would, eventually. But how long? probably after I started to smell. Would I care? I could put trash bags down to make it easier to clean. Just an idea I guess. 

Last weekend I off handily said I felt like the side character in someone else's life. My life feels like a pointless exercise of futility. A warning sign of what they would show more privileged children happens to those who are cursed with being trans. How many years of our life we lose and waste to learning how to cope, to trying to deny, to trying to tolerate and understand why we feel the way we do. How much time and money we miss out on, how little you can amount to because your fundamental coping mechanisms will be broken and you tune out of your own life because it has convinced you that happiness and good things can't be trusted. That the most fundamental and core belief you have is that you can't trust anything because your own fucking body betrayed you and who you are. But who can you blame outside of yourself? Who can you point to and ask to apologize? So you take the lesson, and you make it the pillar to which you stand, that you can't trust anyone, you can't trust happiness because it's fleeting, and anything that does make you happy, must be fickle, else why would you be happy. Never get too attached to the idea of things turning out well, or risk disappointment, a sin only matched by its own naivete.

Get busy living, or get busy dying. I feel like I've been dying for 26 years.

If you hadn't noticed by now, I always write the title last.

Working for the weekend

 I don't want to write. It feels like a thankless chore right now. Writing asks the question of how I'm feeling, and I don't want to answer because I've essentially wasted an entire weekend that I was looking forward to. I feel like I just plug into video games and just stop existing to the larger outside world. To which, my therapist will inevitably counter-ask:

 "what would you rather be doing with your time". 

To which, anything. Anything that I felt was productive and moved my life closer to a place I'd like it to be. But it feels like those options are locked away from me due to my inability to access them. They're difficult, and so I don't do them, instead I waste away my life playing games I don't even like. So I ask friends, hey, do you have any interest in any game, anything that isn't my playing games by myself? And I get no answers. 

Which, is fine. There's always been an undercurrent of feeling like an outsider with my friend groups, be it now or in elementary school. There was the core group, and then me as like, a side piece who would occasionally get invited, but more often than not I had to instigate it, I had to be the one to ask if I could join. Maybe they could tell early on that I wasn't one of them, or was, different, but they never said anything, they just, never bothered. 

There's a temptation to cringe at those middle school notes asking them to come over that weekend, only for them not to call, or message, maybe they'd go do a thing but I'd never know until the following week when I heard about it at school. Meanwhile I'd just, stay up in my room, playing the same games, being bored, and alone, every weekend. Grinding through the next week waiting for maybe the next weekend when they might be interested in doing something. I don't know if that ever changed, it feels like it did at some point, college maybe. When schedules were more flexible, social groups were wider, people were less busy. Now though, it feels more similar to those playground days. Alone, bored, restless, depressed, and feeling like there's no point to anything. I guess another metaphor is that of the dog excited for the owners to get home and play, only for them to leave again as soon as they got home. Well, I guess that's it, so, back to waiting. 

"Well what would you want to do"

Anything, it doesn't matter, something to make the week feel like time has passed with something to show for it. Something to ease the feeling of just wasting away for nothing. That I'm not spending countless hours of what should be comfortable adulthood doing all the things that adults should be able to enjoy, rather than wasting it doing a dead end job for 40 hours a week until I day with some worthless number in a bank account to show for it. Something that matters. And for so so much of my life I've done nothing that matters. I was always waiting for the next thing, the next phase. And now there isn't one, so it's just waiting for the next weekend. 

Side note, I'm uncomfortable with who might have access to this, so I'm likely going to move the whole blog to a new name/host. So, if this is the last your hear from me, Thanks, it's been real.

13 years and a day

 I've had this blog since 2008. 13 years almost. I've neglected it in the last few though as it became easier to escape and avoid the things that were getting to me. Easier to not deal with the negativity and the creeping dread. The pandemic, the politics, the relationships, the lack of any real sort of fulfillment, the impending sense of foreboding, and the complete sense of helplessness. Why would you want to look into that. Why tap into your own unending fountain of suffering. 

Honestly, I was content to not write anymore. Only on the suggestion of my therapist am I here again. Masks off I guess. 

So where do we begin? I'm trying to ignore the voices, the whispers that ask if anyone cares, if anyone will notice or bother. Because whether anyone does or not isn't the point. The point is not the response, the point is the asking of the question. 

Where do we begin? How do I feel? I feel numb. I have suicidal thoughts, and I fantasize about shooting myself. I have no plans to do such, but the desire is there. I find myself watching anime and feeling like I'm wasting my life. I talk to my therapist and we rehash the same conversations and nothing ever changes. I wake up, I go to work, I go to bed. We repeat. One day I'll die and my last words will probably be "fucking finally". 

I think about what all of this is for, what I'm supposed to be doing, what I want to do, and it's just empty. My brother has things he's passionate about, his music, his kids (I assume), and I look around and there's just..circuses and distractions. Things to occupy my mind so that it doesn't think about what's going on, or how I feel, or how empty everything is, just, waiting to consume the next thing. 

I'm on the wrong side of 30. And, reading back to 2014, I can say that my anger at being trans has diminished a lot. It's not something that I actively grieve as much. I've largely made peace with it I think. The surgery helped a lot in that regard. I don't feel attractive, and I don't think I'll ever be so. But, I've accepted that. It makes dating hard, but as we've seen, I'm used to being alone. It isn't desirable, but it is at least routine.

I feel suicidal because my life is needless suffering. It's needless because my life has no purpose. I've tried to ascribe some point to it, to try and create something, to try and say something, to scream into the void of anyone who would listen, but I can't form sentences. I get so paralyzed at the idea that someone might be listening that I freeze and go non-verbal anytime I'm emotional. So raw and sensitive am I to the idea that I might actually be seen that I shut down out of fear that I might reveal something. A lifetime of hiding will do that. Hiding who was I was, what I wanted, how I felt. Hiding everything under the guise of performative masculinity and fear. Convincing myself that I would never be perfect and so there was no point in trying. Since there was no point in trying, the only other option was suicide. Thinking, back in 2008. Holding that razer to my wrist, have the last 13 years been worth it, or do I regret not killing myself then. Or hell, back in 2000. If you asked me, given the chance, if I had the option to go back and make those attempts successful, would I? Probably. 

It isn't that things haven't gotten better since then. They have, objectively, I'm in a better place all around than I was then. Its more that, it still all feels so meaningless, and I still don't place much value on my life. I don't hope for better things, because better things don't happen. Will I have good days, sure, I'm sure I'll a few really good days before the end of my life, but I know by far those will be outnumbered by awful days. And dwarfed by the sheer endless numbers of pointless, meaningless, meandering nothing days. Pointless weeks on end of doing pointless capitalist busy work peaking from weekend to weekend in the hopes that one of three people in my life might be free to do something interesting. 

I feel like I've become a non-player Character in my own life. A passenger without agency to say where and how it goes. And even when someone does ask me what I would do with my own story, I have no answers. The things I would do, are closed off from me, by me. 

I say I want a voice, I want to say things, to express things, and every time I try I find my nothing comes. I try to create a song but I can't hear it. I try to create a world but I can't see it. I'd long ago given up any attempts at finding success with a voice, the goal was simply to speak for the first time. But I can't even do that. 

Maybe that's the true irony of being cursed. I can transition to be a woman, but I'll still never be able to create anything in exchange. Be it life or art. But I can suffer for it all the same. Someone remind why I don't kill myself again.

Beach House

It's hard to describe the emotions that come into this. I feel forced, and yet writing is seemingly the only way I can process things. I've been extremely low and suicidal lately. Mostly due to the ongoing feelings of being trapped and hopeless. The cyclical nature of my life becoming more evident, and feeling like nothing ever changes. Since I've moved here, I've bounced around jobs but never really landed a "career" or anything resembling job security. I've pushed my wage up, but the most I've ever made is still well below the area's median average. While it's a small point of pride that I can live on 17/hr, it's not comfortable living. It's certainly betraying what my skills and qualifications should be garnering. Of course, people who are hiring folks with my skills, don't want to hire people who look like me. They want cis folk, they want people who will fall in line and do all that 110% company life bullshit. That isn't me, but then I'm not asking for 100K a year.

The most depressing part is watching people in my same position, who are less qualified, get better opportunities because they "interview well" despite admitting to me lieing in their interviews, and other bullshit and questionable behavior that would get someone like me even more disqualified.

Being trans inherently means I have to work four times as hard as anyone else to get the same thing, and I just don't have the energy or mental capacity to do that. So I bounce around from temp job to temp job, struggling to get by, and watch as the money I've saved gets eroded away by months of unemployment.

Which, wouldn't be so bad if I felt like I was making some sort of progress towards anything. My relationship also has parallels of running the same course as my last one. The same anxiety/depression pairing where I get pushed into a nurture role that I'm not enjoying, but get stuck being in because, as with jobs, being trans means it's 2x as long to find an interested romantic partner.

Suffice to summarize, everything is incredible difficult, and I see no way to change any of that, or create or produce anything of meaning. So I wake up and I sit on the couch and I just ...waste. Time, money, energy, it all just gets wasted as I sit in this room, and just exist waiting for something dire to happen.

my heart aches for some sort of raison d'être, and everything feels pointless until I find it. I thought it was writing, I thought it was music, but so far the only thing I excel at is self delusion, suicidal tendencies, escapism and compartmentalization of my emotions. 

Everything in my experience of this world is so atrociously mediocre or short that I can't wait to pass onto some new existence. 

I often dream up a character who routinely kills themselves only to end up trapped in the same room over and over again in a sort of purgatory hellscape. It isn't intentionally auto-biographical, but that feels very humbly stupid and imperceptive of me. If I knew I would end up right back here, why would I even bother killing myself. The whole point is to get out of this bullshit.

I've no hope or options, but to just numb the pain away and continue on until I hopefully get hit by a truck. 

Criminal Negligence

I wrote twice in all of 2019.

It isn't due to lack of trauma, it's a sheer matter of negligence and aversion. I don't have to deal with my bullshit if I don't acknowledge it. As long as I stick my head in the sand my complete failure at my own imposed goals will go unnoticed and I can continue on this path of make believe.

Plainly, I've failed at everything I've set out to do in the last two years or so. I called myself a writer, yet I didn't write anything. I didn't draft, and I didn't even brain storm. I spent half a day on it, and then installed a writing program that I then spent more time configuring than actually using. I can't even get myself to write here, where there is literally no audience and no performance to create. How can I call myself a writer when I don't even do the basic things a writer does? What, oh, because three years ago I wrote a bullshit narrative based off actual events that happened to me that some friends liked?

I feel creatively bankrupt. Like I've spent so long escaping into other worlds that I can't exist in this one, let alone create new ones to exist in. Like I've warped my brain into a consume only mode that does nothing else but shut itself off while doing something else, anything else, rather than be left alone with my own thoughts.

I sit here, wallowing in my depression, as it drains my mood into ever deeper pits, lamenting my own failures because i don't have the discipline, or willpower, or strength or whatever have you to commit to the work needed to actually get the results I want. Be it any sort of creative outlet, or my body, or diet. And then I beat myself up for not having said results that I could have had by now if I only had the virtues to do so. I've been practicing yoga off and on for the better part of four years, and yet because I don't have the virtue to continue it regularly, I make no real progress. I could be in much better shape if I bothered to continue working out regularly, but because I don't see results in my hyper short attention span, I get discouraged, and then stop doing it, and then don't get results, and the whole cycle repeats. Look at creativity, had I consistently practiced guitar I likely could have done something with it, yet because I can't play the songs I want to play, I can't ever get the results I want, and since the results I want I can't get, I get demotivated and stop practicing.

There's no sense of just doing it for the fun of it.

And then back to writing, which all along I said the whole fucking point was not even to get results, but just to fucking finish the thing. I invested time and money, I took a class, and yet I can't get more than three chapters in before getting lost in bullshit. Feeling like I don't know where to go or what to write, or what the characters would say or do. I have a half an idea of some cool world building and then I can't get anything else. How could I ever finish a completed story when I don't practice writing stories?

So practice writing you say? Yes great idea, BUT I CAN'T GET MYSELF TO DO SO. Maybe because if I actually allowed myself to practice I'd have to put in the effort, and then, like I do with everything else, I'd realize I'm a failure at that too. After pretending to think this was what I wanted to do, not writing, feelings like I'm back to square one, and at my age I'm not sure I know what to do with the idea of being back to floating in the cosmic void.

Like all the rest of my emotional baggage, it's easier to put it in a closet and pretend than it is to take it out and unpack.

So now I sit here, once again unemployed, with endless time on my hands to do anything, the perfect time in my life to practice writing, and I sit here, depressed, crying on the couch, watching YouTube and playing crappy old video games lamenting why my life feels so empty and directionless, and why I'm so unhappy. While I at least have the awareness to realize my own bullshit, I don't have the capacity to change any of it apparently.

I wish I could just start this life over. Just hit the ol reset switch and call this go a mulligan. I've clearly fucked myself up to the point of being unsalvagable and it would be far easier just to start fresh without all the fucked up processes I've instilled in myself.

A question was posed on reddit earlier, something along the lines of: 13 year old you is teleported to the current time for 24 hours, what do you show them. And the thing that came to my mind was that 13 year old me would be so sad and depressed that after all this time, and everything that I've done, that I'm still a depressed little nothing, who doesn't even have the strength to do the things she wants to do, to get better at what she wants get better at, for the sole purpose of having fun and to do something she set out to do.

Like, those are small fucking goals, and I can't even do that shit right, and if 13 year old me, saw how fucking pathetic I still am, I think she would have put a lot more effort into those suicide attempts.

Insurance

I've recently been trying to figure out how to unlock my emotions. I don't know if it's just normal depression that has muted my feelings, or if it's a subconscious choice to dive into escapism or aversion. Either way the end result has me tuning out of most emotions because I find them overwhelming. I've been using the metaphor of a slipgate, and while I can try to turn the flow on or off, it comes as one large surge.

Which would be fine, if I could tolerate the water, but seeing as how almost everything I feel is related to how awful literally everything is in the world right now, it feels very difficult to try and stomach that taste. Maybe if I could isolate myself away from all the awful shit going politically, environmentally, socially, economically, literally almost anything about my outside world and focus on just the fine minutia of my daily life I might be able to tolerate my emotions. But as is, it's a few strands of happiness amidst an entire ocean's worth of negativity, anxiety, hopelessness, anger..seething apoplectic anger, sadness, and just more hopelessness. There's just soooo much of that awful brew that it outweighs any positive emotions I may be feeling at the same time.

Now I will add some caveats. I'm not married to the idea that it's all or nothing, or that its a binary of on or off emotions. I'm also not super set on being turned off to everything, because It has also locked up a lot of my desires to be intimate or sexual with anyone as well. Although, that may be an aversion to something else.

But the main gripe, is that to avoid all those awful emotions, I've locked away most everything that I feel. Most of my daily life I feel sorta empty. A numb contemptuous passive witness to my life. My instinctive Id-like mind doing all of the work, while any higher level emotions are just ..gone. The emotions are still there, but it's just the name tags. All of the substance and mass of them are locked away.

I don't want to risk dealing with those emotions, they are incredibly intense, and overwhelming, and avoiding them is easier and allows me to function on a realistic level. In that same vein, I need to come to grips with some very heavy sexual emotions that I've also been avoiding. One being the potential ongoing truama that is my sex life, that is coming to terms with what sex is now, and accepting it for where it is, and how it isn't what I thought it would as a little girl. All my life I've wanted to have sex as a woman, and while I now have as close an approximation as I can get, it isn't what I dreamed it would be. How could it have been? Nothing in the world would have lived up to those expectations. Still the disappointment in that is very, very real and very painful to experience. That isn't to say it can't or won't be enjoyable, or that I've even begun to learn how to have sex as a woman, or what the best and most enjoyable sex is for me. But the aversion comes from now wanting to risk that disappointment again.

After all, I can't be disappointed in the sex if I don't have the sex to begin with. That's the kind of sick, high brown mental gymnastics I've twisted myself into to avoid that emotional pain. In order to avoid that risk, I've locked away my sexuality as well, much to the detriment of my relationship, and any other potential relationship. Oh but we can go deeper. Buried in that fear of disappointment is also the fear that as I have more sex, that it will never be fulfilling or engaging or enjoyable, and that I'll come to regret my surgery, because you know, I don't have enough fucking weight put on my ability to enjoy sex from myself, I need to add the weight of becoming one of those people that neo-nazi's use to argue against my own fucking rights.

So, you can see how it just becomes so much easier to let all that shit go and just be asexual. Just don't think about anything, just leave all my cares and emotions behind to where nothing matters and I can just exist on some functional level. Everything else is just too much to risk.

Anyway, happy fucking birthday to me, guess I need to visit a claims adjuster.

Hit that Like Button

Here we are yet again. Pushing myself to write in order to try and get some sort of feeling again. Not, coincidentally enough, long after another letter from my dad. I'm not sold on what to do just yet about it, and if it is worth bothering to respond or deflect once again. The fact that the letters come off as emotionally manipulative has led me to liken them to an ex boyfriend who refuses to give up the ghost. He's not willing to meet me on my terms, but insisting that what we had was some amazing relationship.

I've babbled on enough before about that though, and how unwarranted that position is, and how hypocritical it is and I'm so very tired of it all. I'm tired of just about everything these days. I've seen my tolerance for being compelled to work to pay money into someone else's rent seeking bullshit decrease. Maybe it's just watching capitalism's slow cannibalization of our planet and conveyor belt sushi line style march of humanity towards it's own destruction that has soured me on the idea.

I see the rise of leftist politics on YouTube, and it's a nice change of pace, but I can't help but feel it's far too little to late to make a difference. I fight everyday against that notion and the urge, the idea that this is all pointless, despite knowing deep down that it is. That is my background radiation, and it makes it hard to justify putting up with even the slightest injury or inconvenience.

I'm not sure if that is why I haven't been writing. If it's just easier to compartmentalize emotions and go about my normal day of escapism and entertainment. I know it is, obviously, as who can live with the slow death of watching the world eat itself to death. I guess I sit here and second guess what I'm doing. Maybe I'm losing touch with reality in exchange, as I just.can't handle what the world is or what my life is.. So it's escapism or delusion.

Forgive the rambling. I've always struggled with my purpose and feeling like anything I did was of use or meaningful in anyway. I've spent so long in school and in life just preparing myself to get by in capitalism, just trying to be self sufficient. I am, more or less, at that point now. But it all just feels like treading water with no real aim at a direction or goal, and I see thousands of other people, all treating water, and they all seem to be going somewhere, or content I guess, and no one tells me where they are going or how to get there.

Sometimes I wonder just how much time I've spent staring at a screen, writing out thoughts, just...waiting, waiting for things to get better, for the world to make sense, and it just...never does.

I'll try to write more.

On family debt

I find myself at a bit of a judicial conundrum. For years my family has operated on a transactional basis. One of family duty and obligation. One of where we overlooked abuse and damage because of all the good things people did. We simply didn't talk about the awful things people did. My grandmother was a terrible abusive person but we all just grit our teeth and went along with it. The inauthenticity of that was outrageous and I couldn't stand dealing with it. I long ago cast off my ability to be inauthentic with myself, and even now can't stand doing it for long, if at all.

I've had arguments with them before over their attempt to leverage family to get favors, as if my labor or time wasn't valuable. "Yes I can fix your website for you, if you pay me to. I'll teach you how to do it for free, but I'm not going to be at your leisure anytime you want".

Which brings me here, where I've asked my father how he plans to vote, knowing everything that's going on. He sent me back a list of all the good he's done to support and help me, along with a paragraph of insane right wing ramblings that are both verifiably untrue, and paranoid terrified rantings justifying voting GOP. I say GOP because they aren't republicans anymore, If you want a republican policy vote democrat. If you want a liberal policy you're screwed, sorry, I digress.

What unnerves me about this though, is the transactional basis of the letter. It's balanced out in a way to make it seem like I'm asking a lot of him. A relationship is not a ledger, where you put in good times to enable your abusive behavior later on. It's 2/3 a list of all the support and emotional ties that we have together, and 1/2 a justification of why he feels it's okay to enable people who want me to not exist. People who will put into place policies to enable that, policies to pursue that goal.

That cognitive dissonance doesn't sit with me. You don't get to say you love me, and then vote for people/enable people who actively want to harm me. Your choices, have consequences. 

So there's that. My position, on one side, is thus: I hold fast, and maintain my policy of choices matter, of being authentic to myself and not tolerating a two faced relationship, of not compartmentalizing someone's enabling of a threat to me, of believing that a family is not duty bound by anything, and nothing is owed anyone.

The alternative side, is the huge guilt factor in that my position as it is now, and much of where I am in my life, is owed to my family supporting me. The privilege I've had in growing up wealthy, of having financial support in college, in having financial support in moving to a different city, of going to Thailand to have a surgery. The emotional and time commitments of him coming with my to Thailand, the guilt of him not being able to be at his mother's (my grandmother's) funeral when she passed, because he was helping me recover in Thailand. I owe much to him, and his money, and also his willingness to accept me when I came out, and to continue to support me in getting to where I am in my life, and to help me when I need it.

When I was fired from my last job he sent me money, and he continues to do so on my birthday and during the holidays. That isn't lost on me.

There's also the "he's your family, and he's the only dad you'll ever have" argument, but that falls a bit more hollow on me given how terrible my upbringing was. Still, Nostalgia is a bitch at times. I owe him a lot. So is my overlooking this, that big of an ask? Why not compartmentalize like my brother does and reopen that line of communication and relationship?

That's the other side. And I'm here debating between the two.

I don't know. I think in some ways, it's easier for him this way. It's not like he doesn't know why I don't talk to him, he knows what my sticking issue is, what is causing this divide between us, but he's continuing to stick to his absurd beliefs. If nothing else, he's gone even further to find new means to justify them, rather than self-reflect or admit he may have been wrong.

Maybe, if I was a cisgirl, I'd have the strength of will or emotion to attempt rescuing him from the cult that he's joined, but, that's just not in me anymore. I'm exhausted from this all, and I simply can't put in that much energy in what feels like a lost cause. In that since, it's easier for me as well to simply drop out of this relationship. If that means having to tolerate the guilt of it, well, maybe I'm too exhausted to give a shit about guilt.

Nine Months

It's been 9 months since I've written here. It's been over a year really since I wrote any fiction. I just, haven't found any real point in doing so. Which, maybe isn't entirely the case, so much as how it feels today at least. Let me back up.

I've been working part time for the last year or so. As I've written before it was causing my anxiety over my finances as I was unsure how long I'd be able to maintain my apartment and style of living long term. That ended in June as the company moved my department to Phoenix Arizona for some bullshit reason or another. Some of the team went with, most did not. I was again unemployed. This was third time in seven years, and I wasn't looking forward to the idea of another year long job search (as they tend to be). I applied for an entry level gig, interviewed and got the position, and then lost it about six weeks later for discussing my team's low wages in an email (we all started at minimum wage). They said they "didn't trust my judgement". Okay, whatever excuse you want to use, fine. I don't have the money or resources to fight anything so off I went. I picked up a temp gig a few days after that, and thought things were going well, only to be fired again randomly on a Tuesday afternoon about a month later. I'm still unsure why. No one said anything to me, there was no feedback, only they called the temp agency and said I wasn't engaged in the work. Which, is just flatly untrue, but even if it was, why not talk to me about it? Surely its easier to just tell me to engage in the work, than it is to hire a new temp right?

And so here we are, Early October, and unemployed again. I did build up my finances a little bit more when I was working full time, but that was only for two months more or less.

So, that's a thing. It wasn't being out of work that's traumatizing, I'm used to that. It was the insulting nature and surprise that really did it. I was expecting the contract to end in a month or so, not a big deal on the outside, but the fact that they randomly decided to call me after a full day of work was what was so shocking.

Now I start the whole process over again and it just feels so utterly overwhelming and pointless at the same time. I'll maybe send out 200 applications (I keep count), and of those, get back one interview request, in a three month span. Which I'll fail at generally because they all boil down to a random charisma test, which being a mentally ill trans person, I'm almost guaranteed to fail at.

MEANWHILE, we have all this *points to socio-political-economic-environment* going on. Which, makes even life in general feel like a tedious exercise in running out the clock. We as a species have already doomed ourselves within 150 years, so why bother trying to create anything? Why try and get a job to stave off homelessness and death, when life is going to get exponentially worse as time goes on. I can barely keep my head above water (global warming pun intended) as it is, let alone when the economy turns down (which it is guaranteed to crash magnificently within 10 years or so). I'd give it an honest, serious 50-50 odds that this administration starts rounding up trans folk and removing their citizenship rights. Not that I'd mind running away from this backwards ass country, but do it with what money?

That isn't even looking for things like, passion. I have no passion. There is no enjoyment in things anymore. There's only escapism and binging on the next new thing until I've exhausted it and need something else to occupy my mind to prevent it from looking at the shame that is my life.

A few days ago my landlord died. He lived across the hall from me. The first thing after the shock of the news to hit me was jealousy. I'm just so incredibly exhausted of this life. Of the seemingly endless cruelty and harshness of it all.

So, in like, trying to be an optimist, what's the base case scenario? Say I get another fulltime job, and then what? I go back to slave labor and spending the vast majority of my life working for generate profit for some corporation that exploits me and its consumers to benefit some unimaginably rich asshole who will set himself up in a bunker to outlive the rest of us. Until the climate genocide or economic depression forces that to end, and then what?

What difference does it make in the end anyway, it's not like I enjoy my life as it is, I might as well sign it away to some shitbag for pennies on the dollar.

Amidst all that weight on me, all that I just wrote, why bother trying to play guitar, or trying to write fiction. Who can have passion for anything?

On Spinning Plates

It's hard describe the feeling of being under constant stress and lingering doom. I once likened it to the idea of trying to hold the doors closed against a horde of rabid zombies. Eventually you're going to be too tired and you're going to lose everything.

That, is sort of the summation of how I've felt for about the last six months. I'm watching the slow drain on my finances and see how I draw negative income month after month, and seeing the deadline approach for when I can't make my rent payment. Then the holidays came and my parents gave me some cash to push the date back a bit, but, the problem still remains. In less than six months I'll not have enough money to pay my rent. This has never happened to me before, and I'm terrified. I have no real backup option solidified, though there are some options that are being discussed. Neither of the two are ones I'm particularly fond of, but hey neither am I much of a fan of living on the street.

I have lived off the kindness of strangers before, having lived for a time exchanging manual labor for rent (in this case cleaning/cooking). But then I had my own room and a shared bathroom (not a bad gig all things considered). The balance there was that there was enough space for me, among relationships I was ambivalent towards.

Now my options are much more precarious. Both involve putting the bulk of my possessions either up for sale or in storage. One sacrifices personal space for relationship security. The other the reverse.

I'm hate the idea of someone having leverage over me in situations that require discussions of sensitive topics. It's hard to have an honest discussion about your feelings, and navigating poly and kink dynamics and relationships when your partner has the ability to make you homeless. It isn't that I think that is a likely scenario, It isn't and I don't, it's that it is a possibility, and in the back of my mind that chills the conversation and silences things. I begin to police the words I use and when and how I say things because I don't want to risk that conversation being brought up.

If there is anything I've learned about myself these past few years, it is that I absolutely cannot stand being inauthentic to myself, and "playing the game". You know, that "I know, that you know, that I know, but we won't say anything about it" bullshit. You see it in job interviews (Why do you want to work here? Oh because I just absolutely live to make cheeseburgers for assholes for minimum wage) and in family shit holiday dinners (we all know uncle jack is a homosexual, so we just don't ask about his life at all).

Both of those new situations feel like some version of the above. I have no idea what to do about it other than just, deal with it. Compartmentalization is how I dealt with trauma as a child, and it's apparently how I deal with things now. I'll put all those terrified feelings and emotions (along with all the rest) in a small little box and deal with them later, because right now I need to solve the issue, and I can't do that if I'm in a catatonic depression wanting to end my life.

I think this is why I find anytime someone asks me direct questions about my status or how I'm feeling to be so jarring or upsetting (since we as a society can't use the word triggering in a serious context thanks to fucking shitbag man babies on the internet). It's someone asking what is inside the box (WHATS IN THE BOX! are you happy now?) it's someone asking me to open the container and let those emotions out, that have been stewing and compounding this whole time.

Meanwhile, the relationships I'm in that require access to those emotions is suffering, and while I can keep those plates spinning now, the stress and emotions that come from that also then need to be compartmentalized. You can see how this cascading system of boxes starts to eventually pile up and explode.

Which leads me to here and now, in which I want to burn everything down and run away to join the circus. Though, I doubt I could afford the rent there either.

On Christmas Dreams

I want to talk about Christmas, gifts, and how and why efforts ring hollow for me.

So, if you read back a bit, you'll know that I have a rather extensive history of emotional neglect in my childhood. My parents, were more or less, unavailable for me and my needs. I make no attempts to justify that, or to qualify it with reasons or examples, it is an old issue that I don't need to explain.

One of the things I do want to share though, is how that manifests around this time of year, and what I take away from it these days. One of my earlier Christmas memories is of receiving a gift that was ...not great. I know I know, spoiled rich white kid gets gift, doesn't like it, is traumatized forever. Let me clarify.

The issue, wasn't that the gift wasn't what I wanted, the issue, was that it was something I already had. It wasn't the item that hurt, it was the lack of knowledge from my parents, or lack of effort, to know what who I was. And yes, that alone, is small potatoes out of context. However, it's just another aspect, and color of what my childhood was like growing. The lack of attention, the unavailability of my parents, and the overall lack of making an effort is entirely in character for them.

IT was another example of them not knowing who I was, and not caring enough to find out. Now, flash forward a few decades, and they wonder why I don't reciprocate their gestures. Why I find concepts like duty and familial obligations as such trivial notions of effort. I get cards from my parents containing money, and honeyed words that ring hollow when the same people routinely advocate positions against my interest.

Which, goes back to an ongoing issue with my father. We haven't spoken since the election, and I have no real interest in doing so. Our lives are so entirely separate that I don't see the point in repairing that bond. He has his life, I have my life, and outside a shared history and some DNA, there isn't much there for me. I don't have the emotional energy to educate him on how and why his views are damaging and hurtful.

If I did, what benefit is there for me? I still don't feel a great connection to him, It's not like we've had a long great history or relationship. He barely knew me then, he barely knows me now.

One of the other trends for gifts have been board games, or fantasy games. Google Heroes Quest if you want an example, and a hilarious video. I remember getting dozens of these fantasy games between my brother and I. and I remember being consistently sad and disappointed when I would want to play them, but no one be around, or up for doing such. They would get maybe one or two uses before being relegated to a closet. I'd then raid them for their miniatures/figurines to use for my own play and stories. I find this still happens though. Many times I remember myself buying things with the thought that it would be a fun group activity for my chosen family, only to have it fizzle out and sit on a shelf to be used a few times but rarely as a group of us.  I have this same fear for new gifts this year as well.

I find myself torn between the optimistic view of wanting that family bonding time over games and drinks, spending the money and emotional investment advocating for a time for the four/five of us to get together. And the pragmatic view of realizing that everyone has their own job and life and time and energy to spend on their own, and rarely is on the same thing the rest of us want to do. It feels on one hand selfish to ask them to spend this time doing something they may not enjoy, despite my marketing attempts towards them, and my not-so-subtle "hey we should do this" prompts, on the other, it's hard to deny myself that craving for family bond that was so oft denied growing up and that waxes hard this time of year.

And outside that, is my monologue, which says it's dumb to even ask for such, when if they wanted to, they would invest the time to do such. I don't know. We all want to feel like we belong, and maybe I'm wrapped up in trying to cover my chosen family in the bonding methods of my failed biological one.

A stray thought: In context, it seems of course reasonable that I would be the one to move away, I was the one who had the least keeping me there. It's not difficult to do when you have no strings holding you to a place that actively campaigns against your kind. Maybe my brother never managed to move away because he felt the connections to family more strongly than I.

Maybe, I'm just a cold hearted bitch who thinks she is owed something from the world for the shitty circumstances of her life.

Mescalin, It's the only way to fly

As the long term effects of dropping my medication comes to reality, the existence of reality starts to become flimsy to me. Let me clarify, My senses continue to function, I can reach out, touch, and all the synapses continue to fire as they normally would. However, there's a layer of distance or fog between everything that makes the synapse signal..unclear. Something about it all seems unreal.

I've managed to keep this in the realm of derealization and depersonalization so far. I fear the moment my mind starts to say, "well, if it isn't real, I can just make stuff up" and begin to hallucinate, that it will cross over into the realm of psychosis.

That in mind, Apparently, I avoid boredom at all cost. I recently found myself turning down things I felt I should and wanted to do, because it might end up in a situation where I would have nothing to do. Instead I opted to do something I thought would be more entertaining. I mad an active choice, that I knew would hurt someone's feelings, so I wouldn't be bored.

That, is an alarming realization for me. As it wasn't just boredom. I entertained the idea of engaging in said situation, if it involved playing more video games. Something I find I end up doing unconsciously. More and more I'm witnessing myself doing these things out of habit, or addiction, or compulsion. I don't realize I'm doing them, but I can't turn down the option of turning my brain off. Of putting it into a low grade hypnotic zone of focus. It's strange that when I play games, Half the time I am zoned out of what I'm playing, and retreating my mind to somewhere else, thinking of something else, while my body and lower brain functions play.

I relive the same idiotic two second Simpsons clip in my mind, over and over, for hours while killing monsters in Diablo. For, no real reason, that I can discern, other than the following.

Twenty years ago, I learned that the only way to deal with my trauma, was to ignore it. The best way to do such, was to turn my mind off, to zone out, to immerse myself so heavily into a different world, a world where I didn't have to deal with being trans, or being depressed, or alone, or battered, or humiliated. As long as I was playing games, I didn't have to think about all that, my goal was simple, Collect the thing, Rescue the person, Kill the bad guy, etc.

Do the thing, solve the problem. Clearly stated goal, clearly stated reward, do the action, get the result.

Fast forward, and here we are. Mired in the ambiguity of adulthood, where myriad reasons for job denial exist in vaguely stated emails, if they are even sent. Why? No reason. Why did you not get the thing? You'll never know, what can you do to adjust your performance to get the thing? You'll never know.

Adulthood is nothing but vague responses to questions you didn't ask. The coping mechanisms I developed en masse have no use here. So I have to make new ones, which, not only do I have to develop all over again, but I have to put to use on my current issues, as well as all the ones I never addressed growing up. I have to be both adult me now, taking care of myself, as well as who my parents should have been, to child me then, to repair the damage that was done and hopefully heal that trauma. It is, exhausting.

How does all that fit together, well it's easy to ignore that ugly growth in your neck if you never go to the doctor. As such, turning your mind off is an easy coping mechanism, and it's easy to slip back into rather than addressing anything that takes energy or effort.

I don't want to process through the years of rejection. I don't want to process through the years of isolation and abandonment. I don't want to process through the feelings of inadequacy.

There is no easy process for that, there is no reward in sight for doing such, there is no getting better, there is just understanding the puzzle, and knowing how and why it hurt you. There is no healing an ugly emotional scar.

So. Where do we go from here.

Uninspired.

Again, I find myself attempting to jump start my creativity by writing in my traditional blog style. I have been neglecting it compared to how much and how often I used to write. Part of me worries that I've simply lost my touch with the craft. Maybe all the creativity was burned out of me long ago by disappointment and depression.

My best writing was done in my most low of places, and part of me worries that I won't be able to produce like that again unless I'm back in those depths. Writing is sort of what I've been latching onto as a hope for passion this past year or so, and I keep calling myself a writer, yet I haven't written anything in months. More so, I don't even know where to start writing. I've set out today to just sit down, and write, write anything, write crap, write amazing things, write for fun. Yet, I come to  a blank page yet again and I have nothing.

My lack of ideas and my ongoing addiction to escapsim seem to be correlated pretty positively. It seems the more I turn my mind off to what is going on around me, inside me, the less it's able to produce anything on it's own. Muscle metaphors not withstanding, is there anything left of it?

Perhaps what I'm missing is simple inspiration, I know there is a story I want to tell, but I don't know what it is, or how it unfolds. I know the things I like and enjoy, and want to incorporate, and I know no one else can tell the same story like I can, I guess the issue I'm having is that someone is asking me "then what happens", and my answer is always "I don't fucking know". Hell even having writers block (which maybe this is a form of, but not how I imagine it) would at least have me writing something, even if it's crap.

Faling asleep

I've been using these entries as a prompt to get me writing again. Lately, being the recent two weeks or so, I've found myself incredibly tired almost all the time. There's a number of factors, working a job for one, now, is draining some. I've also had to take variations in my typical medications. That, and the typical caffeine addiction. Even know, it's....what, 3pm-ish? And I feel like i could just lay me head down and pass out. Granted I did accidentally stay up later than I intended, but the sentiment is the same.

It echoes an existing fear and feeling I have that I'm sleeping through my life when I should be working on things. Mainly, writing. I feel like i have made no progress on it recently, and it's causing me some distress as I try and rationalize it. I'm also starting to notice just how unproductive and zoned out I get when I'm at home. I'd never really considered my escapism a problem, but now it may start to become one if I actively end up doing things I don't want to, simply out of habit.

Over-arching that however, is this ongoing sense of cloudy-ness. It feels like there is a slight haze between me and everything else that is making me feel weak. Like all of my sense are dulled, and I'm disassociating, but I'm still present and conscious. Maybe my body is, but my mind is being held here by the medications? I don't know.

There are all sorts of possible rationale for said feelings, but it's a long and boring list of things that are your typical stressors. I feel like citing my mental illness as a reason I have trouble managing the things most people can do normally is a cop out. It's something I have to deal with sure, but it's ...I donno, I feel like I should be able to do these things regardless.

On that line, part of me is worried that without the intensity of depression, that I can muster up the same prose and writing that I could before. There's a desperation that comes in that mind set that has always pushed me to write and express those feelings. Now that I'm medicated, I worry that push is gone, and I can't muster up the same talent. Maybe that's all just an excuse to not write, as after all it is easier to give up and say it is too hard than it is to continue through something.

As I write, even now, it feels like there's a drain at the bottom of me that is slowly leaking through all of my energy and willpower to do...well anything. Is that simply a decrease in dopamine reuptake? or is that my soul simply giving up on yet another passion in the face of my own mediocrity.

It just seems so easy to blame all of my apathy and exhaustion on mental illness and give up to escapsim. It feels so easy to just say I can't do X because of depression, and that feels authentic, so it's not like I'm using that to excuse my lazyness. I donno, sleeping just feels so much easier when you're tired.

retracing my roots

Seems like it has been forever since I've written, but I'm not sure there has been enough to be worth writing. The haze that I normally get from day to day is still there, and as my financial stress increases I find myself more apathetic towards everything. What's the point of doing anything after all if I don't enjoy it. I've been doing some introspection and reflection on what things were like as a child, and just how and when I began to feel so isolated and alone. I can remember telling my parents about not having any friends, despite having friends. I believe now that I meant that I did not feel connected to them, or anyone. When my mom tried to encourage me and help me by practicing social skills I backed away from the issue. Whether that's because she missed my point, or I felt she wasn't understanding me, I'm not sure.

What I do know, is that for as long as I can remember I've felt alone. There's a period of time where in I can be absorbed into another person. If I'm around other folk, I can sort of tune out of myself, and focus on them. I put on this facade of a person that Is like me, but not me. There's a large gap between that boundary and where I find myself when I'm alone. Somewhere in that gap, is where I find myself often these days. Adrift in that chasm unsure of what is real and what isn't. Is the facade myself, and I'm just asleep, am I behind the curtain and just hidden from view?

When I'm alone, I'm more honest with myself, or, authentic maybe. I don't feel like I'm having to put on a falsehood of health for lack of a better term. I feel free to frown and have my normal resting bitch face. I don't feel the pressure to be happy or be entertaining or compassionate or care about other people. I can focus on myself and being authentic to that.

To contrast, when I'm around close friends or family, I shut that part off from the rest of me. The two parts have been so separated for so long that I'm not sure how, or if possible, to merge the two together. Which leaves me feeling detached and disconnected to those who are closest to me. Not to say that without caveats, there's the possibility that this disconnected feeling is due to my current medication putting a dampener on my emotions, making everything feel more compressed than it would be normally. It cuts off the highs and lows, which is great when you have nothing but lows, but not as much when you're in periods of highs. So there's that possibility.

In discussing this with therapist I was asked if I can ever remember feeling deeply connected on both levels to someone. I do, but, it was in an abusive unhealthy relationship, that I had invested all of myself into. She was my reason for living, and when that ended I was broken for a long time. It's very possible that I'm still shielding myself from experiencing that pain again.

Which leads me down some interest thought trains. For one, maybe the only way I can feel deep emotional reactions and connections is through power exchange and putting someone before myself. I'm hesitant to call "deeply emotional reactions" love, but that's perhaps a more adequate phrasing for it. Though in using that, I feel it reduces my other relationships in status and significance, so I'll stick with the DER for now.

Does that then mean, I'm only capable of really feeling connected to myself on both levels if I give up control and put my faith in someone else? I know there is validation for me in that, and the feeling of being desired and accepted and as belonging to someone, as someone with value.

Or maybe that just means that is the only way I know of currently to connect both aspects of myself. Having the choice taken from me is much easier than trying to make the choice myself after all.

It's easier for me to worship someone, and have them ask me to better myself, than it is for me to push myself to do the same thing. Perhaps that comes down to not having any self value, or poor esteem from well, life. In valuing my own desires so low, it becomes harder to even do the things I want to do for myself.

Maybe that's another reason I enjoy masochism as much as I do, as it pushes that boundary between myself alone, and myself with others via physical pain until the facade comes down. It's the main reason I enjoy it, and the catharsis that I get from doing such things. I guess I just want that same sort of emotional connection out of other intense activities (i.e. sex).

But then, maybe I'm just stressed and overthinking things. I haven't had any real catharsis though in about six months, and the feeling of having emotional asphyxiation is starting to creep in.

Fuck mental illness.

I feel like I've been out of touch with a lot of my emotions lately. Maybe because I haven't written here but once in the last six months. I was out earlier today and saw something that cued a depressive wave. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe just the remembrance of it all.

I saw one of the TV dinners that are designed to appeal to kids, and that I used to eat all the time growing up. Something about that, and that image, just felt incredibly lonely and isolating. Which is how I felt a lot of my childhood. Just the toxicity of those awful meals, parallels a lot of the toxicity of my childhood. The neglect and isolation and the image that cooking prepared meals conjures in my mind.

And the knowledge that these things are still being made, that somewhere out there, is another poor girl who's being fed these things, and ignored and dismissed. It's, just heartbreaking.

It also strikes home in my current isolation and touch starvation. I find myself hypnotized and distracting into a blur of days. Without anything to really mark one day to the next, it all blends together into one haze of unproductive screen staring. Transitioning from computer to laptop to TV to laptop and back. I feel like my mind has been injected with Novocain. I can't seem to think straight, or focus on anything other than the fact that I should be doing something. I feel like most of my conscious mind has gone into hibernation and everything is on autopilot. Even now, writing this, I'm not consciously thinking about the words, I'm just letting the stream of thoughts flow. There's no analysis, there's no cognition there, it's just...flow.

I know some of this is likely disassociation in some form, where I tune out everything because it's uncomfortable to be here. The world is an extremely uncomfortable place right now. It's so much easier to stay in bed and sleep for 12-14 hours. I do my Yoga, which helps, but it doesn't make me feel awake.

I want to say this is depression sneaking back in, as it has all the normal signs of it. But, if it is, despite the medications, I'm wondering just what I can do about it. There's just this wellspring of despair that rushes out of me like a geyser that I can't really place most of the time. It's the feeling of heartbreak, but I'm not sure over what. Outside of past injuries or just straight loneliness. And amidst those sobbing spells, the old familiar comes strutting back into my mind like an abusive lover. After those thoughts, it's never quite a question as to why my natural instinct is to constantly busy myself with tasks. Still, as much as I want to focus on my writing, or my guitar playing, or anything else, it all comes back to a feeling of emptiness.

It's not too surprising that someone who was neglected and dismissed as a child would feel uncomfortable on her own, and essentially alone for long periods of time. That instinct has always been clear, but having it then embellished, ripped apart and torn open by an abusive relationship there after just makes things worse. Not only can I not function on my own for periods, but then I also keep people at an emotional distance because the last time I really opened myself up to love someone they shattered me with their carelessness, selfishness and stupidity.

I'm really beginning to loath mental illness.

Retrospective

Looking back,  2015 was a year of healing, of growth, of change. Yet, 2016 felt very much like a year of stagnation and death, and depression. I don't mean in notable deaths, but in that it started off with a break up, that I didn't see coming. Followed by the death of a grandmother I shared no love for, but that affected my mother deeply. Then, just, nothing. I worked, until I didn't. I dated, until I didn't. I coped, until I didn't. And now, that period is over.

It feels in some way that the past year has been one long hang over from the radicalism that was 2015 and the change I accomplished then. But now, I'm anxious to get started again. Not that, I feel I have the emotional strength or tolerance to be on the front lines of the upcoming war against fascism. I used to, but part of this is accepting my limitations in terms of mental disability. Fighting a war does me no good if it makes me want to kill myself.

But, it does me continuing to rip down the walls that are put up around me, by family, by society, and by anyone else. I've already got ideas on where to start, it's just a matter of having that conversation with people. No one likes hearing they're enabling or participating in a regime.

One of the other aspects I've been thinking about is how different I feel as I enter my thirties. I find myself letting go of the social fears that plagued me for years. It's a complacency that I think comes with the constant rejection one faces being trans. You get used to being alone, to being unwanted. It's disappointing, it always is, but, you start to become numb to it. Callused, even. But also, more secure in who you are.

The main villain I face now seems to be the ennui and dread that comes with having nothing to do. The torture of having endless choice but no real inclination as to which way to go. 

I find I take peaks at the old wounds underneath age old bandages. Yet, I don't dwell on them as much as I used to in years past. The time it takes me to heal seems to be decreasing and that feels good.

Yet, as I feel better and secure in this boat I call existence, I find I still have no real compass to navigate my destination. Only the lost hopes of stars that I continue to grasp at for fun.

The lows are there, of course, they are always there. But, they don't seem as deep as they used to be. At times like this I feel calm, relaxed, and just adrift. Let's get started with this year, and see what we can build.

My Handwriting.

I wish I wrote about being happy. I wish I wrote about how great and fantastic my life is. How wonderful and fulfilled I am in all my adventures.

I don't write about that. I don't get that life. So I write about what I am, and what this life is like. I write about how hollow I feel, how I subtly hate everyone I know who has things I want, but can't seem to ever get.

I write about I feel restricted in talking about my suicidal thoughts because of how much people worry.

I write about how I think out scenarios that will end the pain of life as fast as possible, and then don't act on them.

I write about crying, alone, in a house that I once came to think I could love, with subjects of such imagined devotion sleeping on the floor beneath me. I write about running out of sushi restaurants because the femme lesbian couple sitting behind me represents everything I could have ever possible wanted, to be, and to have, but never will.

I write about being unemployed again, and having the mere idea of a job or career I might enjoy being ripped away from me on the basis of "qualifications". I write about the obscenity and snake oil that is a college degree, and how pointless and useless it is.

I write about how I feel guilty for simply asking people to respond in a timely manner, for fear of being a nuisance to them. I write about having to go above and beyond what people expect for fear that any misstep will see me rejected in favor of someone not trans. I write about how I have to downplay my expectations, and forgive people who take advantage of me. I write about having to give and give, while taking nothing, because trans gals get held hostage by their loneliness.

I write about how the only validation I can seem to find in this miserable life is through the physical affection and connection to other people. About how that need goes unfulfilled constantly. A validation that has me crawling towards twenty different people who can between them maybe find time to care about me once every six weeks or so. I write about being a second class citizen, and an invalid. An other, an undesirable, and a reject incarnate.

I write about I'm a modern slave, with no real choice in anything. If your options are starve, or not starve, that's not a real choice is it.

This depression, is crippling. The grief, is too much to bear. The isolation and void, has such immense gravity it seeks to consume me.

I'm taking a plane to see my family tomorrow. I sincerely, hope it crashes on the way. At last would spare me the indignity of not having the courage of my convictions.

No win scenario

I honestly don't know what's wrong anymore. It felt like for about six months now that the medication was really helping. Now though, it feels like I stopped taking it, even while I continue my normal dosages. Perhaps my system has adjusted, but I wouldn't think it was have such drastic effects.

I know, I could be doing more to help it out. I've struggled to get my body moving again, the yoga and exercise I had been doing so regularly is now a monumental struggle. I haven't written anything in months either. Both are things I thought generally helped me feel productive, and helped my mood, but lately I haven't had either the energy, motivation, believe in, and capacity to do.

The time I spend alone, I find myself wincing through as if in constant physical pain. I've lost the enjoyment of nearly all the things I used to enjoy, and I flutter from distraction to distraction as soon as possible much to the chagrin of my wallet. I've basically come up with any excuse possible to stop going into the office because there's no point in doing so.

My negative self talk is constant, and the violent visions and fantasies have crept back in. I am cognizant that these aren't normal, aren't reasonable, and aren't healthy, but you can only tune out the background radiation of self-loathing for so long before you believe it.

Every now and then I will feel a sense of conflict over it, and an urge to fight back, but it feels a bit like seeing someone else's arm plunging into the water as you drown some hundred meters down. You could, if you chose, make an effort to reach back, but you're so far gone there's no point in wasting the energy. Easier to just let it all go and stop fighting it.

And I am so so tired of fighting it.