You know, along with this second (much more aggressive) puberty, i feel like a teenager. like, I never really went through any of this the first time—these thoughts, feelings, realizations. I just sort of got older, and drifted through this traumatic haze for 30 years.

I didn’t experience this becoming—this shedding of projected trappings, and euphoria of new agency and potential—that seems to be written in our culture. I literally was never that hormonal. I didn’t develop a matured sense of myself as a person. I kept waiting for instruction.

I think I’ve mentioned how it just feels like 20 years are missing for me—which I guess isn’t uncommon with trauma. But, I imagine that also plays into this a bit, probably. I have been in this holding pattern for 30 years, waiting for just my teenage years to hit.

This may speak a bit toward why I feel such difficulty accepting the notion of myself as a woman, but am a little giddy at being a girl. Heck, I never have really thought of myself as an adult, regardless of the gender I’m wearing. Adulthood is a thing you grow into, and I never got that chance.

I’ve been on pause for so fucking long, and my life is just getting started now. I feel so amazing, being me. It’s so confusing and embarrassing, but I just need to run with it and figure it out. And, fuck it; this is my life. Why am I treading water, trying to be good and not bother anyone, and afraid of the smallest frown of disapproval from some misery?

A few weeks ago I cried with what must have been happiness, because nothing else made sense, which made me realize that’s an emotion I had never in my life felt. Since then, on and off, I keep feeling it. My eyes sting with it now.

Holy shit, I am a real person. I am alive. A pandemic is the most awkward goddamned time to come into all of this, and fuck this poverty, but oh my God, I don’t have words for the relief. The weight that has defined my understanding of being, it has been melting away like so much salt in the rain.

I just want to exist. For the first time, I want to be alive, and to feel all of the things I’m feeling. I don’t know what i’m fucking doing. I have so much going on inside me that makes my face glow red, and I can’t figure out how to frame or describe, that I have come to know bothers everyone when I try to talk it out. But, just. Whatever, lol. Teenagers are meant to be fucking dummies, right.

I am going to keep clomping around in my wooden clogs and there will be toes caught in the process. I don’t need to be proud of that to be able to say, look, if you love me like I love you, you need some patience. I am going to be a little nuts for a while. It’s long overdue.

Tou gotta know my aim isn’t to make things awkward or do anything malicious. But, like. Fuck. I need to figure out what it means to be alive. This is all new to me. And it’s gonna be annoying and embarrassing, And you’re understandably gonna want to look away. But where’s the fun in that?

I am going to just go with it. and I am going to regret nothing. I am going to be a complete fucking mess. and you are going to love me anyway. Because you get it. It’s finally my turn. I get to do this now.

For once, I’m not gonna do the suffering. I’m gonna be suffered. Azure is gonna paint the sky blue, and you’re going to grin and pretend it wasn’t always like that. Because this is going to feed something magnificent. I don’t know what. Beyond, you know, me. But maybe that’s enough, right.

So, yeah. I am going full cringe. And this is going to get so very stupid.