We All Fall Down

Upward Maintenance

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Considering how old this body is and what a young trans I am, I think I look pretty good mostly. Some things will never be perfect. Other things are a work in progress. Generally, though, i am in good spirits about this. (Which again is so novel to me.)

I say this, as I am not having a particularly pretty day, and it has been frustrating me. But you know. not every day is gonna be a winner. It’s up and down, and today isn’t the end of everything; it’s the beginning of everything else. We’re done with the doom. Azure doesn’t need it.

For decades I’m used to every day being the start of the end. But it’s really not. It never has been. It’s just the start. On prior record, I’ve still got plenty of good days ahead of me. Probably my best is far ahead—way over the horizon available to me today. Yesterday was fine. Nothing is consistent, but there are patterns. and I’ve finally caught mine. not ever gonna let it go.

Being this new in a body this old, it’s kinda like getting a used car or a fixer-upper of an old house. you got a project ahead of you, fixing the damage and maintaining the bones of the thing, but you can make anything your own. Play up the strengths. It’s all in how you wear it.

The Gully

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The what-seem-to-be period symptoms were ebbing today, so I figured, fine; might as well get some more groceries before the plague gets groovy and it will be unsafe to go out at all again. Took a larger than usual tote bag with me; one I hadn’t employed before. As usual there were no fucking baskets, so I threw the food directly in my bag, to procedurally unload at the scanner and more sensibly repack.

As it happens, about ten feet from the self-checkout, the bag exploded. Handle came right off, pulled the stitching right off like a zip cord I had to ask the lady there (luckily not the one who has acted… oddly to me) for a couple paper bags. Problem was, the bags here are really thin—and they have no handles. They’re not made for actually carrying. Still, I scooped them up and did my best.

It was a mile’s walk, with two heavy bags—lots of jars and fluid cartons, right, and no reasonable way to carry them beyond cradling them in the crooks of my arms, adjusting every few seconds as they continually slipped from my grasp. Hips were of little use; I was busy walking, and the bags were thin and irregular. I was terrified of tearing.

I got maybe a third of the way, and had to take a breather. Luckily my neighborhood is well-stooped, so from there I could rest every block or so, wipe away the sweat, try to get some feeling back into my deadened arms. No schedule; as long as I made it back, I was fine.

Way up often here on my street, I happen by this lady, out to garden at concrete or lug about great sacks with her gray hair and her elbows. Today she was down sweeping a concrete gully against the apartments—off and below the front steps where I panted and groaned. She tried gently to shoo me, till she learned I was resting. From there we moved to light patter—she aiming to keep her distance and most of her business, but with a certain ease.

It was nothing much, really; just me and this old lady, in social-distance nicety while she cleaned up a planter disaster. I couldn’t have been more than three, four minutes to gather myself. but it was nice. She was sweet. Distant, busy, yet compassionate. Just a little moment of human connection, you know, in all of this. I don’t get that often.

With my front door at my back, I just fucking crashed. I barely had it in me to put away the freezer and fridge things. Even now after a short nap I can barely lift my arms; it’s awful. I keep feeling tears streaming down my cheeks, from the sheer effort of moving—but that journey, and that respite, sort of confirmed my resolve to do something once we’re out of this whole nightmare. I want to make more contact. There are a lot of kind, sincere people out there, if you wait and listen for them and allow yourself to be a little vulnerable.

Sometimes all you need to do is share a stoop.

We’re In This Together Now

  • Reading time:5 mins read

When Trent Reznor sings “you,” in most cases he’s talking to the other part of himself—call him, Mr. Self Destruct. After Reznor’s own downward spiral that bottomed with a near-death experience on his Fragile tour, his 2005 album With Teeth is largely about recovery. 2013’s Hesitation Marks is about that battle’s return after an age, his musical avatar’s id reasserting itself and the struggle for control resuming with a little more self-awareness this time around.

With Teeth in particular is to me one of Reznor’s most fascinating albums. The whole thing exists in this dazed, sober limbo where Reznor seems to gaze around him, notice how much time has passed, and wonder exactly how he might function as a real person after he’s missed so much along the way.

“Only” (2005, With Teeth)

As fatuous as “Only” may be—the subsumed comedy to so many NIN songs a right up front this time—it’s also weirdly affirming as a recovery anthem. The music holds this uneven smirk while Reznor asserts that, no, that person doesn’t exist; it’s only him now. It almost needs to be as silly as it is, to undercut the drama of the old persona that he means to peel away. “No,” the song says. “You don’t get control here. I’m allowed to mock you.”

The chunky 2/4 backing serves as a loopy funhouse mirror of “Closer.” The lyrics quote “Down In It,” then twist the lyric into a reflection on his behaviors that led him to this point. Musically, Reznor seems to be taking a step back and going, “Yeah, that… that whole era of my life was pretty absurd, huh. Christ, that wasn’t me; that was never even a real person. I can’t let that affect me anymore. Well, I’m here now. It’s okay. I’m fine. I guess.”

You take Reznor’s (character’s) sort of ongoing dialogue with the other unwanted aspect of himself, and pair it with his curiously persistent themes of transformation or becoming—when I say that NIN often feels really super transy to me, this is what I mean. It’s a starting point, anyway.

“Everything” (2013, Hesitation Marks)

That concept to “Only” sort of comes back eight years later in “Everything.” This time, though, there’s a dark undertone. The assertion here—I survived everything—it’s less triumphant than it sounds. There’s a shade of denial; of pushing down that unwanted persona away as it threatens to bubble back to control—pretending it’s gone while it sits, waits.

You never really recover from mental illness or addiction, right. That’s not how it works. You just learn how to cope and manage better. The scars will always be a part of you, lurking as part of your base code. Being so incautious as to say, ha ha, I’m better now; it’s fine—you’re setting yourself up for problems.

There’s this interesting sequence to Reznor’s albums. His big opus that he’ll never live down is of course 1994’s The Downward Spiral. And that’s both the anchor and the weight that affects everything in its wake. That album has at least three direct sequels: first comes 1990’s The Fragile, then With Teeth and Hesitation Marks—each replacing the previous one and telling a slightly different story. The “Downward Spiral” theme from throughout that album keeps reemerging in odd, distorted forms as Reznor tries to escape its shadow—the seeming implication in Hesitation Marks being, for all his growth and change, he will never escape either that legacy or the damage that its story represents. There’s a part of him that will always be Mr. Self Destruct.

That push for recovery, it starts as early as “The Fragile”—weakly, helplessly, almost as a plea, as the album traces its own roller coaster of emotion. “We’re In This Together” strikes me as a particularly curious read, when you take what I say about Reznor and “you.”

“We’re In This Together” (1999, The Fragile)

Once you accept that most of Reznor’s music is about his own mental health struggles, in particular his relationship with his self—and then once you notice how very transy how much of his music feels, one gets some kind of a vibe from lyrics like “You’re the queen and i’m the king/Nothing else means anything.”

None of this of course is to impose any particular reading on Reznor himself as a person. Whatever his deal is, it’s his own deal. I’m not his therapist; I’m not in his head (thank God). I have no interest in projecting anything on a real person. I’m just noticing the way that his art hangs together, and how well it lends itself to reflect a certain set of ideas that… I guess always made an unspoken sense to me.

Bracing

  • Reading time:5 mins read

I’m going to need a bigger bra soon. This isn’t gonna be viable forever. When I measured back in September, my bust was just under 40 inches. It’s now at just about exactly 42. which would in stupid American sizing make me, what, 36DDD. (In UK sizing, 36E.) Which is to say, that estimate of about a cup size a month still holds. For how long, until we reach stasis?

I’d been sort of wondering what was up with them. Again I’ve no sense of proportion, and they haven’t been actively sore for a while—and also I keep having these distressing detransition dreams, which leave me in a weird state on waking, wondering if everything is still as it should be. As it turns out: yes.

Beyond the breasts, I’m starting to gain a little shape in general. Still early, but it’s a real start. Since I did those measurements, my hips have gone from 40 to 42 inches. Which is… not insignificant, for two months of growth.

I need to get a better mirror, and a camera lens that doesn’t flatten everything out, and lighting that replaces some impression of the depth lost to two dimensions. But, yeah. Once I’ve got the concrete numbers in front of me, I can see it.

So it’s finally happening. We’re really doing this. The boobs are great of course—really, really good, as it turns out—but what we’re really here for is the hips. The hips and the butt, and the thighs, and the face. As for that—well. It’s harder to measure for sure, but it’s becoming clear to me that we’ve got some major changes there too. Beyond appearances, even. When I press my tongue into my cheek, the flesh is easily twice as thick and resistant as it used to be. I’ve noticed some difference since way back, but lately, it’s unquantifiable but so obvious.

And having absolute data for everything else—the breasts, hips, thighs (which, oh yeah, are a little bigger too)—sure does help support that idea, even if i can’t easily check it. What are the chances that this one thing that’s supposed to change at roughly the same time as that other stuff, and looks like it is, actually isn’t?

I mean, look at this. I did not use to look like this:

No makeup or anything. Fresh out of the shower. (Though, after my first-ever go with a hairdryer!) I feel like that moderate asymmetry from over-engagement of the jaw muscles on one side is starting to smooth out, the more hollow side filling in and the other slimming down. Just a bit. The lips, the eyes. Just all this subtle stuff I can’t put my finger on.

With all the empirical changes, the verbs are also starting to click. All these facets of posture have fallen into place for me, basically at once. In the past, I’d always considered posture to be this stifling concept—holding one’s self rigid to this expected form, for the benefit of other people. A masking behavior, to present a false image that matches what people expect to see.

But there’s another side of that, that’s about not performance but self-affirmation, self-care, holding one’s self together; asking yourself who you are, and trying to back that up so that you feel good and that the physicality supports and reflects the mentality of it all. Creating this physio-psycho feedback loop.

It’s also interesting just how many elements there can be to posture. It’s not just standing or sitting up straight, right. It’s about engaging your body toward certain kinds of desired readiness, removing stress where you don’t want it. And the dimensions to that are everywhere! I’m noting and working out posture issues in my lower back and my hips; my upper back and shoulders; my neck; my jaw, throat, and tongue; my eyes, my lips; my legs, my arms. I’m just actively holding so many things differently, consciously reshaping my form so that I can carry myself the way that I want to. And for all that, despite my ADHD and lack of of executive function, it’s not as much juggling as you’d think.

And again, this habituation, it’s not for anyone else’s benefit, or to match some kind of a social code. I’m not performing; I’m conducting system checks. There’s all this information that goes back and forth, as I settle into the person I know I am and whom I want to be, and as I existentially embrace her.

This is a lot happening at once, as things have tended to be since maybe August, but it’s good. I feel like this body language business is some basic shit I’ve been lacking my whole life; the art how to Be.

So much of my transition, so much of my adjustment to what’s actually right for me, seems to be a matter not of taking things on and forcing issues but of just letting go. The posture business, it’s less about manipulation than about learning to let go of tension—allowing myself to snap back into a natural and comfortable and healthy form, as compared to how trauma had taught me to hold myself. It’s exactly the opposite of holding stiffly in some some uncomfortable position. Hell, my changes in posture allow me to move in ways I never knew I could. who knew that hips were hinged like that?

There is an ongoing sort of monitoring, at least until the habits form and I can free that space to think of something else—guiding one’s muscles and parts and even more existential mental moving parts. But that stiffness and discomfort, that’s not what we want at all. This is more like a brace, to help heal from injury.

Critical Mass

  • Reading time:3 mins read

For a while there I was almost concerned. That ongoing breast tenderness had ebbed down to a whisper, barely noticeable at all. Was this it, were we somehow reaching the end of the story after mere months? But—okay, never mind. Tits back to fire again. I haven’t mapped it out, but it feels like it moves in cycles—a certain number of days on, then off.

On top of that, generally I feel so fucking crampy and gross.

Which… with a more than a cursory understanding of biology, would make sense, right?

So yeah, I guess I should probably start to keep track of this business. Because on the basis of… really every month since February, but absolutely since August, there is a clear cycle going on.

It is established, if not particularly well-studied—because, trans healthcare; who gives a shit, right—that regardless of your genital situation, once you got a certain level of estrogen in your system, you start to experience periods. It’s not about the hardware (which is all basically the same anyway); it’s about the instructions that the firmware sends around. Of particular note is that at a certain threshold, breast tissue begins to produce a cyclical amount of estrogen, along with some other compounds that contribute to the process.

And, uh. whee:

It’s hard to get a good sense in two dimensions with bad lighting…
but yeah, we’re entering the active cleavage zone. Bringing the gang together!

I guess my breasts are at critical mass already? I mean, seven months into my regimen they were at a size that the literature tells me a trans femme half my age might expect to reach after 2-5 years—and today they’re two cup sizes larger than that…

As I say, the real monthly roller coaster kicked off in maybe August, September? Which, yeah, would line up, right? And good grief, the soreness I’ve been getting since last night. It’s that kind of tenderness where you feel if you poke it too hard you’re gonna barf. Like a pair of giant cystic pimples, connected to nerve lines running from my toes to my teeth.

I guess It follows that it would build in intensity, month on month, as development progresses, right. And I mean, I’ll take it. Whatever! I’m used to feeling like shit every day of my life. It’s fine. If the trade-off is that life is worth living? That finally I don’t feel like this the other 80% of the time? Sure, whatever, lol.

On top of all that, today I… seem to have entered the chocolate zone. I’ve talked a little about my change in taste and food preferences, some of which has been weirdly cyclical as well, and… yeah, okay. We may have an answer to some of that as well.

Due to fairly systemic ignorance about this topic I was not aware that this feature came with the territory until I got here. But, I, uh. I guess I’m part of the club now, huh? One imagines a uterus just makes this all the more fun. At least the discomfort doesn’t come with a mess over here.

It’s just…

Yeah. so. With how much more bothersome it’s gotten month on month, it will be an adventure to see where these waves will go in the future.

So, I’m. For now…

I’m just—i’m gonna… stand in the shower and groan for an hour, I guess.

The Question of Me

  • Reading time:10 mins read

Continuity of self is a weird thing for me these days. I’m not kidding or exaggerating that I, Azure, am a different person from the last custodian of this body—but I’ve inherited all these second-hand memories and feelings, some of which translate fine, and some which feel so alien.

A model of self-Azurance

My mind is often very different from theirs. In a real sense, I have to keep asking myself, is that how I feel about this thing or is that how they felt? I know they liked this food, but does that mean I do? Am I doing this activity just because they did, or am I getting something out of it?

This also raises all sorts of odd existential questions about experiences. If they experienced a thing, does that necessarily mean it happened to me, just because I remember it? I wasn’t there, and I likely would have had a different experience if I had been. How much of my memory applies to my reality?

This sounds a little nuts, I know, and if I weren’t living this I would start to bring up denial, dissociation, and all manner of diagnoses that make sense from the outside. As a lived experience? Uh, no. Kind of the opposite. I was dissociative, in denial, for like 40 years. Now, at last, I’m not. I’m actually here.

That whole persona I built as a defense mechanism, that empty lumbering shell—that wasn’t even a real, full person. Now it’s like I’m woken from a coma, and I’ve got all these weird fucking dreams to sort out. I know they literally happened in some form, to that hollow entity—and I know in objective, certainly legal, terms that that person was me. But, in mind terms? No. It wasn’t. I wasn’t there for any of that. If I was, I was asleep. Everything before a few months ago feels as real as my dreams last night of running from home as a teen, which (unfortunately) I know didn’t happen either.

So many things feel reset, that in real terms aren’t. Except—in even realer terms, for many of them they might as well be, since there is no practical element, so the only thing that makes them real is persistence of memory. And a lot of those are related to trauma.

A lot of trauma is tied up in this notion of being in various ways ruined forever, right. Nothing will ever be okay. This tarnish will never scrub away. this defines me now, not by my decision. To be able to step around that and go, huh, that sucked, but it doesn’t apply? That’s… novel. This is a world unfamiliar to me.

There’s so much baffling stuff going on in my head, like moving into a new apartment and trying to figure out where to put everything; how to manage the space; how to organize old memories and tools so they’re useful and they reflect the new circumstances. Maybe selling a few. It’s this question of how to push forward as myself, without lying to myself or anyone else about the legacy I’ve inherited—yet without lying that any of this was really me either. It’s fuckin’ weird, and not a thing I expect makes a lot of sense to others.

All of which to say—I don’t like to talk about sex, right. though I am making an effort to lately in parts and places, for my own good. I have so much wound up in this topic that can easily bring me to a panic. But also, what horrible funhouse memories I have—those aren’t mine. It is with some relief and with great caution that I observe the distance here between me and my predecessor. I don’t want to misrepresent myself, but insofar as my person, there is no real lasting effect to any of their experiences beyond my terror, And that feeling, it isn’t even mine.

I have this big, scary box of crap to sort through, when I can be bothered. But that jumble, it’s all just stories to me. It’s, it doesn’t directly pertain to my own lived experience, or to who I am as a person. Azure wasn’t there for any of that. It didn’t happen to her. It’s abstract now, like a gross movie I watched when I was younger.

Again this isn’t the most important topic in the world, and there’s certainly no rush. But, while I am going through this whole process it makes sense to whittle at this big, scary pile until it’s all filed away and not so scary anymore. None of that defines me, as heavy as it may be.

I can take what charms, talismen, advice as I find quaint or reassuring or useful. But, it is no small thing to be able to step away from the box and go, yeah, not gonna carry that around. Not gonna give it my energy to unpack. Radioactive as it may be, it’s really not my problem. Me, I have nothing to regret because I’ve only been alive for a matter of months. So how much of that pile of yikes I choose to own, we will see. But that sum will be my decision, not something that was done to me.

Well, that’s terrifyingly real.

Another way this all manifests—this notion of me—is with the question of age. This feels like a bigger issue for me than it reasonably should. For this question there is of course an empirical, objective answer; my body has been around for so-long, it has grown and decayed so-much—whether I was there or not. Even if we take for read the thorny issue of self, and that all these things I assert the stronger each day about how I just inherited this body, we’re getting into misrepresentation material if I start to mess with the serial numbers, as it were.

But it’s not that simple of course. Though as a baseline I’m more present and less dissociated from my body and the reality around me than in my best of memories, and I accept that this flesh is a part of me and I a part of it, a mind can’t be carbon dated per se.

And it’s like. I don’t want to lie, right. I know how old my body is. I know how long some version of me has been around. I remember government cheese and the days before widespread VHS rental—but also I know I’m running off a new install here, and those memories are all just backups spooled from a tape drive.

Without makeup disaster, getting a little closer to subjective reality…

Mentally, emotionally, then, how old do I think I am? Again: complicated. It’s funny; I think for 40 years I sat in a sort of limbo, waiting around to grow up—and now with all these hormones in my system, I’ve finally reached adolescence. I’ve never felt like this before. This is so weird.

But clearly I’m not a teen, right. In no way does that make sense. I’ve got way too much lived experience, even if much of that is drawn from an archive. Also this decaying body is a pretty strong signifier, if not enough to tell the full story.

An even bigger and perhaps more useful cue is this new bodily autonomy and emancipation. I’m in a stage of my life where for the first time really I’m choosing where I want to be, who I want to be; what kind of a life I want to make for myself. You know, the sort of thing that young adults do.

Help, the robot is drunk.

I know I have six years of college behind me (Christ), and I’ve still-too-recently escaped from a really bad situation, to live by myself near the downtown of a city that I like… with no job, or prospects, or particular skills, but with a new sense that there is something ahead of me.

That’s a pretty major shift. Since middle school I’ve always felt my whole life was behind me. From about the age of 12 to 40, each day I woke surprised that it all was yet to have ended. I couldn’t imagine any kind of a future. Now that’s all sort of flipped, and all there is for me is future.

So let’s say, given six years of college, how old would that make me when I’d be a person like me? I’d be about 24 now. And—yeah, that registers. It makes sense in a lot of ways. Everything after 2002 does feel like a thick, chalky Vaseline smear in my mind. And if we conflate me with my predecessor, I also think I’ve had only about six years of my life living alone and away from any controlling party: my last two years at university, two years in Oakland, and the past two years since… the incident.

Even physically, though this body is getting up there, that muted and delayed and drawn-out first puberty sort of complicates things. Let’s face it, I did not age normally for like 30 years. (Though I did age like a decade in those last couple years of my marriage.) There are so many ways my growth has been stunted, and whatever angle you choose, the math keeps working out just about the same, such that I am the person I am now.

As it happens—as science progresses and people and culture slowly evolve—do you know the age when adolescence is now understood to end? 24. And when I walk around, as myself for the first time, starting my life as a real human being, that’s just about exactly how old I feel.

hahaha seriously?

So we’re stuck in this sort of a reality gap, right. Developmentally, mentally, emotionally, Azure seems to be about 24, maybe. That seems right. She’s a new person, but everything considered, that’s what she seems to add up to. But to assert that beyond my head would of course be dodgy; in practical, real-world terms i’m clearly not 24. It’s just not true in any measurable sense. I’d never want to make a real claim to it, because I’m not delusional or prone to deceit. But in equally real existential terms, in regard to the software I’m running, yeah. That’s about Azure’s age.

For the things that don’t matter, then—online surveys, login forms—that is the age I use. Because multiple things can be true in different ways at the same time, and if we’re just measuring Azure, as a person? It’s accurate enough. who cares. I am who I am. And it’s got nothing to do with your rules.

Every day I’m struck with how strange this all feels. I arrived here way late for the party—but here I am now, and I am spectacular. Now it’s up to me to make the most of the mess that was left behind.

Skirting the Center

  • Reading time:5 mins read

So yesterday for my nine-month follow-up, we went on a little adventure. Got a little bold. Previously the only time I’d worn a skirt outside is that once, to the mailbox around the corner—and at the time it felt like I was running through fire. But here I figured, I’m basically a girl now. It’s getting kinda hard to hide, even when I dress androgynously. The more femme I go, the better I do psychologically. So why not just do it.

And I did. I wore a skirt and tights. Put on a lacy top. Did my above-mask makeup. Walked the two miles to my appointment. Only got hit on once.

The whole time, I just felt chill. No one gave a shit (aside from that one creepo), because why would they. People are people; everyone’s got their own thing going on. I am who I am. It’s fine. It’s whatever. I can just be myself now.

I got there a few minutes early and after waiting over two and a half hours, I got to see the… less helpful doctor for like five minutes. She barely titrated me up at all, though it seems there’s plenty of headroom. We’ll get back to that, though.

Everyone there did, however, keep calling me “ma’am.” That was novel.

After my session, I walked the two miles back, then halfway to the CVS to fill my prescription—before I realized I’d forgotten my wallet at home. So that’s halfway back again, then all the way to the CVS and back. Altogether that was like seven miles in a day, and oh my God I do not have New York legs anymore, never mind lockdown torpor, and I may never walk again after this.

So, I only got my estradiol bumped up to the level I had been unofficially taking anyway, which blows because I was looking for a tangible increase. Every time this goes up, I feel a little bit more human, a little bit less gross and ill, a little more myself. But, we’ll take what we can get I guess.

What’s interesting here is my hormone levels, which I don’t think I’d been given before. So the goal is to get my T down below 100, into a normal feminine range, right. I’m just on a moderate dose of spiro—150mg out of a theoretical max of 400. As it turns out, my T levels are… 9.

Nine.

I don’t know what they’d be without the spiro, but that seems… uh, low. Considering the modest dose I’m on, and that the target is below 100. This of course does not surprise me in the shape of it—I know I’ve never been brimming with testosterone, right—but the exact number strikes me as hilarious.

I guess this would help to inform why I have suffered so little damage, broadly speaking, to the point where I figured my shit out and started to get my health in order.

So yeah, they felt no particular need to mess with my spiro dose. And that’s fine.

In terms of headroom for estrogen—okay, the ceiling is vaguely defined, but for an adult woman it’s around 350. Right now, my levels are at 170—so just under the square middle again, right? We can double my estrogen and I’ll still be in a healthy range, if close to scraping the top.

All of which is to say, in three months I’m gonna make a right old fuss about increasing my dose. There’s no reason to trickle this out, guys. I’m fine, I’m getting healthier. And this is what I need to get there. Just gimme my darned hormones, jeez.

But there’s a sort of nutty day. My legs are dead, but my hormones are awesome (if not quite where I want them yet) and very normal for a healthy adult woman. And, like. That’s what I am. I can go outside, dress how I want, act in a way that comes naturally to me, and no one cares.

On the way back from the CVS, I felt this weight fall from me despite my fatigue. All of this, everything I was doing, it was under my control. This was me, living my life. And it was fine. I didn’t have to watch the way I walked, try to control my autistic arm movements to avoid weirding out passers-by. If anything, all my neurodivergent tics seem that much less strange from a girl than from a boy—such is the culture we have, and the associations we make.

I just felt so relaxed, and inside myself, and present in the world. I saw all the young people walking around on a Friday night… in the middle of a pandemic… none of them wearing a fucking mask… living their lives, chatting, laughing, going to restaurants, and I realized, holy shit, I’m a real person too. If not for the plague and poverty, that could be me. I could have friends. I could be going out and doing things. And no one would care that I am me. If anything, they’d probably be nicer to me than they ever were to that awkward lumbering shell.

Like, I could be doing this. I could be alive. I could have a life. One of my choosing. I could make a world for myself.

But first, well.

Let’s get the world in order, I guess. And see if I can find a way to support myself.

God, though, when all of this is over? Everything is going to be so very different for me. For the first time, I feel so much potential. I want to be here. I want to live. I want to be free to simply fucking exist.

And I can be. And it will be good.

…

Eventually.

Prose of Pagnosia

  • Reading time:4 mins read

My face-blindness is a fucking cartoon. Even if i know to watch for someone, I don’t recognize them if they change their hair, their dress, their posture, their accent. If I see someone who looks vaguely similar, I’m like, am I going mad? Did they always look like that?

It’s bad enough with, say, actors in a TV show. Where things really get strange is with people I know in real life—even people I really should be able to recognize, like my parents or my (now ex-)spouse, right. But, welp! Brain has other ideas.

Say I’ve known you for thirty years; see you on the regular. Then you show up where I don’t expect you—maybe wearing a new hat? My brain: who the everlasting fuck is this, and why are they talking to me like they know me Though I should add, if you talk in your normal voice, I’m likely to figure it out in a minute. Voices, I’m okay with.

With my ex-spouse, they’d do their hair differently and I had to just stare. Was that really them, I wondered. It had to be, right? Was this some sort of a trick? I felt like I was talking to a completely different person; like someone else had been swapped in. It freaked me out, put me on edge. Anyone could claim to be them.

Once at—when I was a teenager there were these strange, depressing parties held for dial-up BBS meet-ups. There was a girl; we were in this weird nebulous relationship, and I think she eventually lost patience with me and my aroace dithering. (Not for the last time!) Once as I arrived at one of these shindigs, a person who looked not at all like her, but had kind of similar hair, ran up to me and hugged me for some reason—and I was freaking out. It’s not just the unwanted contact. It was my brain, going, fuck fuck is this actually her? Did she always look like this? Why do I not remember?

The scene was weirder still in that I don’t think I knew that person at the time. so I don’t know what she thought she was doing. Maybe she had the same problem as I?

Probably not.

But, like. You can see how I always have felt like reality is shifting under my feet, like I’m living in some kind of a dream. Nothing feels nailed down to me, or to act along any kind of consistent rational logic. And here we’re just talking faces.

Holy shit, reality is hard. I can tell you, this is part of why I have never felt motivated to do recreational drugs. The effect I am promised there, that’s the opposite of what my head needs. I don’t need perception to get blown open, man. I need to be able to consistently wake up and expect that I’m living in the same universe as yesterday, which it almost never does. Everything is new to me all the time. There’s no history and reasoning to any of it, and it’s so fucking hard.

That is to say, historically speaking. From recent experience, I feel like Azure has an easier time of it than her predecessor. It’s still hard for me at times, but by God I’ve never felt this rooted. They sure never did.

Between the above and my inability to remember names, you can see the how social situations might threaten to wash over me, carry my sanity away with a hiccup and a gurgle—even before we get into, like, social mores and performance and expectations, and having no idea what anyone means or what they think I do.

It’s scary, man. I don’t know how people do it. I guess their brains just work right, huh?

Me? Why, I get violent anxiety attacks. It’s rad.

Then people scream at me for embarrassing them by having an anxiety attack. Which helps a lot. Remember what to do if anyone you love happens to be in distress.

Ha ha.

Anyway, that’s why I never talk to anybody ever. The end.

Writing the Unspeakable

  • Reading time:23 mins read

So sex, right. I don’t like this topic. It makes me cry, and not happy tears. There’s so much built up in and around this, that hurts and scares me to examine. It’s fortunate, sort of, that being aroace means I don’t have to actively contend with it much, except in my own head.

As I’ve unraveled elsewhere, there are a couple ways to frame the relationship and the distinction between my aceness and what has become clear as my pansexuality. One approach is more granular and is about modes of attraction—I don’t experience sexual or romantic, and my neurology and trauma complicate sensual attraction, but there’s an element of aesthetic and platonic is definitely on the table. The other is an innie/outie thing, sorta like gender—you know, like identity versus presentation. That’s an inexact parallel, but it gets at the idea of this outer practical awareness and expression (aceness), versus the theory and fantasy and inner life (panness) that never thinks or wants to cross into real behavior—which doesn’t make it any less a part of me.

The aroace angle is easy enough for me to manage. That was just a matter of identifying, oh that’s why my interactions have always gone this way; that would explain these other things that never added up. Okay, cool, so it turns out that’s just how I’m wired and there’s nothing wrong with me. Phew, good to understand that at last.

The inner modes of attraction are harder, for so many reasons. There are so many layers of shame, and fear, and bad memories and past violence and trauma and blame and accusation. and it is weird and difficult to realign my feelings with my current understanding of my gender.

I grew up ostensibly male in the 1980s and ’90s, in a rural area. It’s not just that “gay” was the ultimate insult; it’s that it was a pathology for those with power over one’s life to be concerned with: You’re not one of them, are you? Do we need to send you somewhere? I had all this other stuff going on as well, of course. I was neurodiverse and I was badly, reluctantly playing out the wrong gender. For reasons beyond my understanding, everything about me was wrong, and I could never betray a word of my full, true thoughts or feelings on any subject, without putting myself at risk.

The most terrifying shame out of all the things I shouldn’t be thinking and feeling, and here we get to the point of this discussion, was my fixation with dicks—a topic I always tried to dance around and not to dwell on, but it would always surface. So here I demystify it: I have always liked dicks, okay. It is what it is.

In the year 2020, with our current nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality, and with all the discourse and controversy about genital preferences, this is sort of a different world to be breaking this down in. but in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, masculinity was super not appealing to me—which made it more confusing. How was I to resolve this attraction?

Back in the present, I know now that I am pan. My block against attraction to dudes on principle has to a large degree melted with time and hormones and understanding of my own gender in particular, though still it feels so fucking strange and triggering to wrangle with. And with that dam down, it’s now clear that my attraction to people—in theory if not in real life, where again it simply doesn’t happen—has everything to do with who they are as people; that gender doesn’t really enter into it meaningfully. (Trauma-based hang-ups aside, of course.) But it is also clear to me that on a personal level, though I can appreciate any equipment based on its attachment to the person who’s sporting it—the person being the only thing that really matters—all things being equal, given a choice, I have an obvious preference and fascination for the penis. And it’s clear that this fascination ties into a lot of other things about me.

I am of course passive as hell in most things, even the topics that engage me, and the aroaceness sure as heck indicates a lack of active engagement with sexuality or attraction. It’s more that sometimes, ideas come to me. and then, there they are for me to manage somehow. And in all this ideation… well. A thing I have observed a few times, with increasing clarity, is the possibly strange way i have always engaged with porn. As I’ve explained before, I tend to see the central figure as the protagonist like any story, and to identify with (usually) her on her journey. And, as it turns out—oh. That’s not just an abstraction, huh. Like, it’s more than empathy and narrative analysis.

Not to cross lines between porn and reality, but, well, again reality doesn’t much enter into my sexuality. it’s all in my head, all the time. But all things considered, I am so clearly a bottom, right. Almost exclusively. It’s all about navigating things done to me, rather than seeking to do them. Which, whee, sheds so much light on my history, such as it is. Which has exclusively been with cis women who insisted on perceived gender roles, and so expected me to take on the behavior of a certain cultural narrative, growing more and more frustrated with my timidness, reluctance, confusion. It had nothing to do with attraction to them or otherwise. In each case they were at that time the center of my life and my attraction was proportionate to my all-encompassing love. That’s the only motivation that matters, right. It’s the performance that freaked me out. Had they initiated rather than always expected me to and grown furious when they felt forced to lower themselves to ask me, and had they taken the lead, I would have let them carry me anywhere. Instead there was this tangle based on assumed roles, that they would not deign to discuss.

To equate the penis with action is of course reductive—I have a dick, and I like my dick, and we’re having this discussion here—but there are connections going on with all of this, right. It’s not the realm of binary black-and-white objective labels, as we’re talking about people. And likewise not everyone with a penis is male, not everyone with a vagina is female, and it’s all complicated and that’s great and weird and as it should be. Again, case in point: me. But my preference for dick, it makes a kind of sense that wends through every part of my being, touches so many things.

It is perhaps messy to be pan, yet to have a clear and unambiguous preference for one mode of genitalia—but we’re messy, right. Of course attraction isn’t based on what’s in a person’s pants, and even if it were, a preference isn’t exclusive. Once you get that far, who cares? It’s messy in the same way that I can be pan but far more importantly aroace, and that it all makes a sort of sense because people aren’t math problems. There is only so much external logic you can apply to a person. It’s not about the outside, about all these boxes and labels. All of that is just death.

But yeah, this is all me coming to terms that i’m a girl who dreams about getting railed by hypothetical dicks even as she recoils from any actual touch. And, like. I shouldn’t feel shame about who I am, right. That’s what I am trying to get past, so I can just fucking live here, goddamn.

I like dicks. That’s a part of who I am, and it’s normal and it’s fine. Because people are fucking weird, man. I have talked about this all a little, in bits and and pieces and behind ciphers and in private conversation that has unintentionally gotten weird, for which I feel I hope appropriate chagrin. But here’s me thinking it straight through, finally; coming to terms with it all.

Of course in real life also, sex is gross and unsanitary and awkward and emotionally overwhelming—and with my sensory issues, it is viscerally unpleasant. Perfectly normal behavior just hurts to the point of weeping, in the manner of whacking one’s shin or funny bone. So yeah. no. Fun thing about keeping it in my head is, one can overlook the practicalities like that and work on the basis of aesthetics and fascinations without having to deal with, like, suffering and disgust and a big mess to clean up.

On which note, HRT has also been amazing to me. I swear, nine months in, I have not experienced one adverse effect. Nothing at all. Everything is the way I want it to be, and that I have always felt awful that things weren’t since I was about twelve. It’s a little bizarre how it even affirms my basic attitudes toward sex—which my body did struggle against a bit, when on the wrong hormone path for so many years.

Sex is gross and undesirable and overwhelming and unpleasant, but a feminine penis is so much better-behaved, it’s superb. All the literature they hand out is framed to make this sound like a scary, undesirable side effect to put one off of treatment. But, uh. no? It’s very good. It is such a relief to no longer experience random arousal, and that in the rare event I feel compelled to engage nonetheless, hardly any mess now!

See, the thing about the feminine penis is that it wants to behave like vulva and vagina. It’s all the same hardware basically, right, and the hardware gets its instructions from the hormones it’s sent. so the priority shifts toward lubrication instead of ejaculation. So in all this there is way less of a sense of urgency. It becomes more about the journey than the destination, as it were. (Though yes, multiple destinations are entirely feasible, if one’s brain can handle it.) Which is also in part why it doesn’t demand attention the same way.

Even in the event of arousal, which again is way less frequent, it comes more of a decision point. It’s not a case of, Christ, guess I need to take care of this huh. It’s more like, oh. Well. There’s an option. Do I feel like making time for this right now? 90% of the time if you’re like me, the answer is probably no—because there are other things to do, it’s a hassle, it’s time-consuming, and it’s not very important. For that one time out of ten you do make the time, it’s way less annoying and gross and… depressing, than before.

I feel like I have control over my body for the first time, or rather that I am on a level with it and we are able to communicate clearly and agree on principles and priorities. It’s so wild that everything now works how I want and expect. I guess some people who put a lot of stock in sex might be frustrated, but it’s so cool to me that all my aspects can be friends now rather than constantly argue. I am a greater whole than I used to be, as a result of dynamics like this—of which this is just one dynamic example.

So for like three decades my physiology was one of a million ways I felt like I was fighting myself. This sense of calm that I feel now that all my parts are alight may contribute to my ability to finally step back and take tally of my sexuality and attractions; figure out what I really feel and want for myself.

This shift in function, it plays into a broader shift in my self-image. There are of course a few angles to this: general self-worth, confidence, fear about asserting boundaries, shame about my general weirdness—but my body plays into it big-time.

Historically I have had big old issues about being seen. There was a sense of danger and vulnerability, and also of this disgust and shame I felt for my form. I didn’t want to see or acknowledge myself. I definitely didn’t want to be touched or commented on. I was horrible.

It brought me to tears to be stripped down without my protective layers. Shorn of jackets and waistcoats and sweaters and shirts and trousers and everything else, there was no hiding my horribleness: my long, bony limbs, my weird chest, my birth marks—and of course my terrible skin. It was bad. It took such trust to get me that far—and if trust faded?

It’s funny how late, even into my transition, I processed what all that was. Somehow I’d never connected my body issues with my transness, even after accepting that I was trans. There was just so much rewiring to do, I guess, and it took a while to get to that particular wound—one I had no interest in touching. Appropriately enough.

About six months into my regimen, I decided that I actually really like my body and where it’s going. Suddenly now I am not ashamed to have arms and legs and a torso and a face. (Well, the facial hair is a problem still, but.) It’s all on a knife’s edge every day, and my mood is up and down and all over the place, but I have never felt this before, and like so many things lately it makes me drunk with novelty and glee: Hey wow! I’m not completely disgusting! I can apprehend myself as a person worth seeing and touching. With my hips and my breasts and the changes to my face and posture, I enjoy the way I am now shaped. I can dance naked in the mirror, and think, wow, I love her.

So that would seem to be another hangup in the can—if one were to desire sex, which, still: no. For all the reasons. But, like. Since we’re clearing house here, sanity dictates that I work through the issues that aren’t really about me or my wiring and wants and needs. And my body issues, they aren’t innate. I’m dealing with them. They don’t need to affect the choices that I make.

The goal is to get it down to the necessary hang-ups only; the things about me that I can’t, and don’t want, to change. I want to be making decisions based on truth, not trauma, even if the answers turn out the same. When faced with something as big and confusing and momentous as sex, I want to be able to confidently say, nah, not for me—not to melt into fear and uncertainty.

Wound up of course in all of this drama is the age-old question of what it means to be trans and to have gendered attraction. The paradox being, by lifting my mental block on a gender in order to nullify gender as a factor in attraction, my brain goes into these gendered conniptions.

It can be hard enough to wrap one’s head around the meaning of gay or straight attraction if one is just flipping polarities, right, from one binary gender to the other. There’s the label logic, but none of this is rational. One’s perception is all based on a lifetime of emotional appeals and enforcement. If you’ve got decades of people incorrectly calling you a boy, then attraction to girls doesn’t feel gay even if mathematically is sort of works out that way. And vice-versa, one presumes.

To be non-binary, though, the labels all become sort of a mockery. I guess, Logically to be non-binary and gay would be to feel attraction to other enbies, right, but, like. It’s more complicated, right, in part because these terms and categories are inadequate. Again, people are weird. So of course the sensible thing to say is, fuck the labels. You’re queer; just do you. Feel what you feel. Who cares. And… right! Sure. if we’re going to be sensible, absolutely that. But, what’s sensible about any of this? To assert that, we’re just dismissing our natural emotional response, which is a sucky kind of a solution. Due to the way this fucking society works, there can be (and in my case is) a lot of trauma and headfuckery to untangle and work through to be able to get to the point of just shaking it out and saying, yeah, lol, whatever, love is love—as true and perfect as that ideal may be.

All of which is to say, to accept myself as in some capacity pan means wrangling with the very visible and visceral hangups over this one angle of attraction, that have been so long wrapped up in fear and threat and accusation, and the labels that I’ve absorbed that go with it.

It’s funny in a way. Because I was (ineffectively and erroneously) raised to be male, I can’t help but read attraction to men as gay. What’s funny about this is that, this should in itself be a good thing, right? Let’s all be gay! Hurrah! And in any other context, it transparently would be. But there’s so much wrapped up in this. For me this isn’t fun-gay. This isn’t happy-gay, iconoclast, freedom, anarchic empathetic human acceptance rainbow self-direction gay. My brain wants to process this to at least some extent as weaponized, accusation, terror gay: the thing to be denied at all cost.

The other funny part is that, like. It… kind of really isn’t? Again if we’re just going mathematically—which doesn’t work when we’re talking about people, but here the architecture serves a support purpose so let’s go with it—how can attraction to males be gay if I’ve never been male?

So it is that there’s all this internalized garbage, that elicits a certain protective panic to surface the moment I start to relax and think, you know, it’s fine; this is true; this is just how i’m put together; I can appreciate all people the same way—yes, even dudes, okay; it’s fine! I try to bring down the wall and make things equal, and just admit what’s in front of me, and something in the back of my head begins to sputter and go, oh no, oh shit, oh God, I can’t be thinking this, no one can know about this, I’m going to get in so much trouble, help. So that’s a reflex I’m going to have to keep working on. It’s nothing inherent to me. it’s just an injury. with a really strong immune response.

To go back to the labels, everything is a big old shrug here. Nothing feels straight; every kind of attraction is some kind of queer. I’m in this weird old gender space where, like, I’ve taken myself outside of normal kinds of polarity, even as I continue to recover from the above garbage. so just the act of feeling any kind of attraction at all becomes—like, no attraction will ever be straight again.

In a sense being non-binary makes it easier to just go, yeah, whatever. Gender is a fuck; people are people; find attraction where you will, or don’t. It’s all the same; don’t worry about it. But to embrace this also adds extra pressure when I recognize my hang-ups. I don’t want any of that mess guiding my thoughts and my feelings, since it really has nothing to do with me and just ideologically it’s gross, right. With all this rumination on dudes and dicks, I feel like I’m putting way more emphasis on this one angle of attraction than it probably warrants, to the point where it comes off as a little weird and fixated—but that is, I think, because it bothers me. I’m trying to wrangle this deep terror, in the face of reality. It’s so hard to admit. I feel like I have to keep looking over my shoulder, like I’m going to get in trouble. But this is one of the last pieces in the puzzle of me, I think; one of the last facets to embrace until it can stop hyperventilating and accept that everything will be okay.

It was so much easier to accept my asexuality, followed a little later by my clearly non-binary gender. Accepting my femininity was more of a drawn-out, mildly terrifying struggle, but I think i’m pretty well committed to that concept now. (Like, seriously. This is amazing.) In broad terms, recognizing myself as pan feels like it should be simple—but then, this. It’s so hard to talk about, especially as I have such a strong aversion to sex and romance, right. On top of the more present and visceral issues, I have all this trauma wrapped up that I don’t know when if ever I’ll begin to unwind. Then admitting this in particular? Oof.

Which is of course why I have to do it. God, I have absorbed so much crap—but I need to fucking accept myself for who I am. I don’t want Azure to have to deal with any of this. She is a new person. We’re dealing with our shit, so Azure can just live her fucking life.

So in terms of my innate qualities we’ve done my lack of attraction and interest in anyone ever, which are 100% valid and important to recognize and assert. We’ve also addressed the neurological issues—the physical discomfort to sex and sense of ickiness about the whole business. In terms of things have been done to me, we’ve gone through body issues, shame, confusion over my orientation and what it means. What I think is left is a sense of physical fear.

To be sure, this isn’t entirely unwarranted. It can be dangerous out there, for men as well as women, but especially anyone femme-coded—and especially if they happen to be transgender. And likewise it is not unwarranted to place much of that fear in the lap of men. I do not, for instance, to get get enbies and women honking at me trying to pick me up outside the grocery store, and that’s far from the scariest this could get.

But it is also true that despite a certain share of bad actors, the world is not a field of bogeymen and most people are not in fact monsters. Despite what some first and second-wave feminists may assert, this includes men—because people are just people, right. No one has to be a certain way; largely people behave as they think they’re expected to.

Now that I crunch the obvious, I think that historically this whole patriarchy thing has also helped to unnecessarily gender my attraction. It’s so easy to equate men with toxic masculinity and physical danger, right? In which case, zoop, there goes any interest for me. I’m not going to consciously put myself in a dangerous or violent situation, if I can avoid it—and threat is anything but attractive to me.

But that’s a gross and unfair attitude, and yes it feeds right into patriarchal notions with the presumption that boys just gotta be that way. And to be sure, our culture does create an element of yikes that i don’t want to think about navigating. But since were talking about intrinsic and extrinsic qualities, that’s not the former, right. Dudes don’t gotta be like that any more than I need to be shamed and traumatized over being the person who I am, feeling the things that I do.

I think that engaging with queerness and the variety of ways that everyone can ultimately just kinda be as one—coming to grips with my own gender, having interactions with trans men, and all of this stuff that goes into interrogating the systems that we’re living in—it’s helping to loosen up that deep associative fear, which has helped me come to grips with my reality. If I’m not terrified, it’s a lot easier to let other feelings in.

All things equal, people being equally cool and non-threatening—yeah, in that circumstance it really comes down to the individual. Gender’s not a significant factor. Of course we don’t live in an ideal world, so complications and fuss and worry do abound. A big problem in my marriage was, I did not feel safe. Like, ever. But especially not at my most vulnerable and under the closest scrutiny imaginable. That’s not going to help any sort of attraction or desire. But as that also demonstrates, that fear and danger are not exclusive to a gender. It’s all about the people, as individuals. The fear is individual, just as appreciation can be. Anyone can be a monster, but that’s up to them, and it’s not determined by any objective factor. There’s nothing rational or empirical or necessary about being a cruel person. It’s a choice that people make. That anyone can make, or not.

As I say, 90% of my reason for putting this stuff all out here in public is to help me push through the thoughts in a linear form and lock them into place so I can understand them all better. The other 10% is thinking, maybe there are some other people like me whom it could help—other neurodiverse queers out there, just trying to make their own sense of all this garbage they’ve been handed. Everyone’s different and will have a different experience, but gosh I’d be a lot better off now if I’d had something, anything to work off of when i was younger. So, as I help myself, maybe this is my addition to the global data bank.

Drizzled over all this of course is this glaze of defiance. Just, seriously. fuck all y’all, trying to shame me and force me to be something I’m not just for your comfort. I’m awesome. and I’d never have known that if I hadn’t dumped all that baggage. I deserve to be myself.

In the end it’s hard to see how anything will change. There’s no real visceral end to this introspection. I’m not gonna bang anyone, I’m not likely ever to enter into an intimate relationship. That’s just not what’s happening with me, and it’s such a fucking weight off to understand that part of my wiring. There’s no compulsion, there’s no desire.

What’s important to me is that I make the decisions I do for the right set of reasons. That my actions are guided by what I want and need and I think is best, rather than by fear and trauma and denial. And likewise, I want to be free to appreciate myself and others and the world in general, in the manner that I choose. I’m a grown woman, even if I don’t feel particularly grown, and I have a certain well of compassion and I know I’m not gonna be objectifying others. I’m not gonna be shamed for the things I think and feel. I am who I am, and I am beautiful.

And sometimes, not altogether infrequently, I dream of cocks and all the places they might go. As a healthy living person well might. Such is the folly of our lot.

Just, nobody touch me, please.

Girl as a Verb

  • Reading time:2 mins read

It’s interesting how “feeling like a girl” and “feeling human” are basically the same thing for me. I had no idea how much pain I was in until it started to lift.

Gender is such a weirdness. People take it as a noun, as a thing that is, when nearly all of it is read in terms of doing: how one holds one’s self and moves; one’s vocal timbre and tone and speech patterns. Just posture is this absurd, huge signal. I got into this recently, when I tried on that dress and bracelet and realized how different my face looked in a different context. It’s not about the fact of things; it’s about what they have to say.

To change how I sit or stand, it changes how I breathe, where I hold my tension, and sort of shifts the wiring that tells me who I am, to myself. (And based on how people have reacted to me the last few months, I know it changes the signals to others—mostly but not entirely in good ways.) I feel so much more well, and so much more me, and so much more feminine, when I tend to my posture.

We are all verbs, right. We’re never static. We exist in the doing. Who we are is a matter of procedure: our thoughts, our actions, our feelings, in response to our environment. Change the way you do things, you change the person you are, in your own perception and in others’.

Who we are is a matter of software, not hardware. (And what we are is a matter of opinion, which is its own process.) Act as the person you want to be, and that’s who you will be. The more that you do it, the more that you’ll feel it—and the more that will reinforce what you know to be true.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

  • Reading time:4 mins read

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.

Pan Between the Ears; Ace Between the Sheets

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The thing is, I am non-binary but i am also a girl. I am aroace but I am also pan. The second, deeper part of each is the scary one to embrace and contemplate and perform, even for my own benefit and familiarity—but to do so is necessary to be a whole, unashamed, self-loving person. For me it’s this big fucking leap in each case, and I just have to trust in my knowledge of what I know to be true about myself—and in the patience and kindness of the people I choose to assemble.

I don’t know if there’s existing terminology or theory around this, but my efforts to square the circle of my sexuality lend me to think in terms of internal and external attraction. I want to make loose parallel to gender identity versus expression, as point of reference.

It is simultaneously true, I am finding, that I am aggressively and proudly aroace, and that my well-being is tied up in embracing this—and that I am also obviously, confusingly pan. I can and have whittled this down to all these granular modes of attraction, and fine, yes, but. Really what it seems to come down to is outer and inner identity. In theory I can be attracted to anyone, gender being no particular issue, and in creative terms have been kind of melting over this realization. but in reality…I don’t. I won’t. I can’t. It’s not how I’m wired. And I don’t want it.

This is, I sense, a thing many aces struggle with. There’s the real and practical side, then there’s this breezy theoretical side that finds its outlet in art and literature, that is genuine and valid and important—but there’s this boundary. It’s appreciation, with no desire to act. That appreciation is equally valid and important and true, and both that and the internal side are parts of who I am.

I feel like I am invisibly growing queerer and queerer inside my head, burning up with all this baffling new insight and appreciation and potential and dying to explore it creatively or whatever. But in practice, expression? Just. no? I will never be attracted to a real person. Never mind the active aversion, sensory issues, trauma, and all of that. Don’t feel it, don’t notice it, don’t want it, kinda freaked out about it, find it super unpleasant.

As for the nuances of the internal side… whee, uh. There have been a lot of realizations there. but they feel so weird to talk about, and it seems to create the wrong impression when I try to put it all into words, so I’m gonna have to stew on that a while longer, I guess.

Planting the Forest

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So there’s this online clothes service… thing, where you give them your measurements and vague preferences and on request or stated interval they send you a mystery box of curated stuff with a free return envelope for whatever you don’t want/can’t afford. I got a $35 credit, so I figured what the hell. Worst case scenario, they send a bunch of stuff I don’t like; I send it back, and don’t pay anything. Best case, I get one or two things I do like, that are covered by the $35 credit, and I send back the rest—and still pay nothing. If I get just one piece of free affirming clothing that I like, it’s worth a trip to the fucking mailbox.

Right?

Turns out, I was both overly and inadequately optimistic.

Like most places that carry women’s clothing, this service, their sizing is all weird and byzantine and bespoke, but I did my best with the fairly rigorous measurements I have assembled—which to my surprise mostly worked out. Sometimes astonishingly well.

I woke after a few days to a phone alert that the box had been delivered. And—well! As it happens there’s no fucking way I could afford any of this, but the experience did make my head swim with new ideas and help me to confirm a few things about this new person whom I am.

Like, say, jewelry. I mused earlier about piercings, and have rattled on internally about necklaces and rings and bracelets—and this package has only solidified those thoughts.

As would become a trend, the piece they sent was… not quite right, and I doubt I’d have kept it even if the price had been other than ludicrous, ($74?! Haha! I’m no expert, but I’ve passed mall kiosks before.) But more importantly, it felt good to wear. I liked the weight and the movement. It just feels good to have something like this (if not this in particular) on my wrist.

There is, as it turns out, a real stim value to jewelry, which—the concept feels like a revelation to me. I want to associate jewelry with, like, Christmas trees, right? I’ve always thought of it as pointless baubles and decoration. But there’s this visceral quality that matters, on a nerdy psychological level. It’s so soothing to have this jangly thing on me that I can fuss with as needed. The sensation makes me feel more grounded, more present and real.

Getting more into the meat of the wardrobe, bottoms have long been an issue for me. It’s hard to find men’s trousers that are both long enough to fit the limited range of acceptable cuff lengths and thin enough to fit me without tying a fucking rope around my waist. Also my hips and thighs and waist and butt are changing, if ever so slowly, and it would be nice to get something that I can wear outside when it’s no longer skirt weather. But, well. Here we start to run into some well-documented systemic issues.

These things are still cut a little low for me personally—I want coverage up to my navel, so my hips are taken care of—but otherwise the fit is… absurdly close yet exactly right. It’s funny; my leg length is completely normal in women’s pants, yet causes all these issues in men’s sizes. And with the stretchy material, these sort of mold to my thighs and calves even. I don’t know if I need all my clothes to be as tight as all that, but now I do know my measurements, and that I should be able to find something in my size with little trouble. Finally.

Thing is, I’m used to paying, what, $20 for a new pair of jeans? More often $5-10 from a thrift store. So what do they want for these? $78.

hahahahahahaha get real.

It’s then that we get into the particulars. I start to make concessions and excuses, and think, well, these pants are kind of nice, and maybe the waist isn’t quite what I want, and I didn’t expect them to be this tight but there’s a place for that, and maybe if they cost $55 less I’d keep them. As I strut around, though, I notice all the little things, most prominently that famous bugbear:

There are no pockets.

I don’t mean the pockets are stitched closed (why does this happen?), or are shallow but could maybe be extended with a little seam work. I mean, there are stitches that indicate the appearance of pockets but there is nothing actually there. It’s entirely cosmetic. A false front.

For seventy-eight dollars, fancy dress pants that are entirely useless.

Whee! Yeah, okay. This is the world we’re living in now. Okay. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but as with so many things sometimes you just need to live it for it to click entirely.

So frustration aside, we now stroll into the realm of confusion.

I don’t know what this top is supposed to be, but, uh. No. I guess I like the whole paisley print thing, but I don’t understand the cut and the fabric is strange, and… it doesn’t suit me in general. On the upside it’s the cheapest thing in the box, at $38—almost affordable! On the downside, it’s not my thing at all. I mean, paisley is good in principle. Otherwise? Yeesh.

Two interjections before we move onto more viable territory:

  • Excuse my bedhead in all of this. As I say, I literally just pulled myself out of bed to find the package delivered.
  • I swear, my mirror cannot be un-gross. I clean it, and ten seconds later it’s magically just a wall of handprints—even if I haven’t touched it (so far as I know). Must be the ghosts.

The next thing is nearer to a thing I might conceivably wear. Thing.

I’m told this shawl-smock whatever is meant to be a kimono. I don’t really see how that makes sense. But whatever it is, it’s rad and I want to see more like it. But, probably not for $44. Because again: i am poor. Chop off, like $15, and maybe we’ll start to think about it. Even then it’s pricey.

If this is meant to go with that paisley top, I’m… like, that seems like a dangerous intersection of patterns. Confuse your enemies. Dazzle your friends. With a flat color it should be fine.

And finally, the centerpiece:

I’ve never actually worn a full dress before, and this one confuses me to put on. I keep burrowing into the wrong holes. But, haha, the cut is novel and it seems to fit just right.

I mean, the dress isn’t super duper interesting in its own right, but gee does it open my head up to new ideas. It seems to fit just right. And I don’t think I’ve worn anything more flattering in my life. It is… a little scary how accurate it is in terms of what it feels it should emphasize, and not.

As with everything, the problem here is the price. I guess maybe $68 could be reasonable for someone, but not for me. That’s just money I don’t have, and if I did it would be going to keep me off the street and to keep the power on. If I could afford it, though? I guess I would be exploring more dresses like this. Because, jeez Louise.

So although I don’t get to keep any of this, the adventure has been constructive. I know I have my sizing correct. And I know that a V-neck is good, for the way I’m shaped now. I guess I work well with a low cut, even. If I go for a dress, a wrap style might not be a bad plan apparently. And now that I know how good I look, it’s hard to keep my mind off of it.

Just as a garment, this is so comfortable and natural to me. I mean, yes, the fabric is soft and warm and stretchy and nice. But also, I just feel confident in a way I’m not used to. It’s like, wearing a dress like this, everything clicks. I make sense to myself.

So! Guess this is fully my thing now! Every day, becoming a little more human, huh.

I think if I had a dress like this, I’d want some kind of a necklace to break up that space. I guess we’re entering the jewelry zone, huh. (It’s mostly gonna be silver. Or, you know, white metallic.)

All in all this was a reasonable, if not quite right, menagerie. That top is kind of weird. The rest of it, some good beginnings of ideas at least. I like the feel and cut of this dress. Turns out, I like a jangly bracelet. Everything beyond the ideas, it needs to go right back before I do it any damage or wear. (This is making me a little paranoid. Better hope the return mail works properly.)

Altogether that’s $302 they wanted for those five items—which… you know, I’d hope to have paid like maybe $75 for, by whatever impoverished fantasy bubble my mental calculator currently lives in.

Someone out there surely will mock me for this, but I don’t get paying that much for clothes. If we weren’t in a pandemic, thrift shops are of course a thing that exists. Often you can get a decent top for a couple bucks. Maybe five, for a pair of jeans?

So yeah, this service ain’t gonna work out. But hey, fun dress-up session. Again also, it’s also good to know that my measurements seem to be right on—and that it is possible to find clothes that fit me! This is such a novelty! And an important point. I have never in my life found masculine clothes for my frame. And, that’s because, not only am I not a dude; I’ve never been shaped like one. And now I’m really not.

All of which speaks to—hrm.

A thing I’ve been learning just recently is—presentation-wise, my tendency has been to play it slow and safe, right? Dress down in public, even as my tits become harder to hide and my face changes and my hips grow. I’ve been reluctant to go too overtly femme, as I didn’t imagine I could pull it off and I felt kind of vulnerable to think about it.

But, turns out. It suits me. Like, this is actually me.

It’s not only fine; it’s not just that it works okay and I shouldn’t worry about it. It actively works really really well. way better than the half-steps I’ve been settling with and way better than anything I’ve worn in my life. And I feel amazing. Like, I found something here. Maybe if I could dig up something similar, but cheaper—and with a bit of lace? A dress, and maybe some cheap, stimmy white-metal jewelry. I hadn’t at all considered the stim factor, and now I want to keep going with it. (Again, god, I wish thrift stores were a thing one could reasonably visit in the year 2020.)

I just had this flash. Imagine waking up in the morning and actually being excited to get dressed—like, it being a fun thing that served to enrich one’s day, rather than a thing one had to do. I bet that’s what it’s like for some people, assembling themselves each day.

It also is becoming clear to me just how much clothing affects one’s presentation. I mean—duh, right? But normally I don’t much notice clothing. It’s just a thing that rests atop the essence of a person, and my attention brushes right past it like the furniture of an entryway. It’s decorative, not structural.

The thing is, no detail exists in a bubble and clothing isn’t just about the clothing; it affects how everything else is read. Weirdly I think even my face looks different when attached to well-fitted, clearly feminine-coded dress. The brain, it picks up all these different peripheral contextual clues, which add up to change the overall perception, the meaning of any component detail. Change the bulk of the signals, and that changes how one reads what’s left.

Even a face, it’s relative, not absolute in what it serves to communicate. My face is more masculinized than feels comfortable to me—the jaw, the brow, the chin—but much of the significance to those elements seems to dissolve next to a form-fitting, low-cut dress and other distractions.

Masculinity, femininity; they’re arbitrary and exist on a scale. Different people have different faces, and even with testosterone damage mine is fairly androgynous really. So take a broadly androgynous face and surround it with all these other signifiers, and one’s perception shifts to fit one’s expectation. It’s kind of like color theory. The features look different as dimensions in a broader context than they might seem on their own. Lots of women have an angular face, and if everything else is coded feminine nothing seems all that strange about it.

Figuring out a lot here that I hadn’t really thought about. I’m going to be chewing on all this for a long time.

Appendage

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Seriously, how did I go over 41 years without breasts? How is that a thing that happened, where it never occurred to me, hey, something’s missing here? I know these things are sexualized in this culture—and I squeam at sex stuff, including words and basic ideation, when it involves me—but, like, that’s not the point of them, either biologically or in regard to why I’ve been going so mental about this lately.

It’s just, imagine suddenly having hands after never thinking about them much before. Boobs aren’t quite as versatile, but there’s this element of, oh, holy shit, that’s it; we’ve got it now. How did I not understand that a piece of me was missing? (Two pieces, I guess?) Now it’s just so obvious.

Have you ever met someone and immediately you sort of forget you didn’t grow up with them? You feel they’ve always been there, and it’s weird to think there was technically a before-time? It’s that, but with an actual physical piece of yourself. This is rewiring so much, so quickly. There’s so much “oh.”

I am literally becoming a more complete person here, and it is so fucking wild, I can’t stop obsessing.

To that end…

I swear to god, don’t expand this post.

Orientation

  • Reading time:5 mins read

A thing I didn’t account for about transition is, okay, it’s one thing to have myself figured out more or less. But one forgets, so easily and so quickly—especially with this addled neurology I’m rocking here. Old habits are hard to break, even when they’re clearly wrong. One begins to doubt one’s self, often one’s basic sanity.

Having physical reminders? It’s amazing. It’s so helpful. It takes away such a cognitive, emotional burden to be able to look down and see, oh, right: boobs. Or feel them brush against my arm when I reach across. To mutter to myself, and for my voice to come back… well, closer anyway to how I want, without my thinking or trying. Having a daily routine, maintaining myself, doing my hair and makeup. Getting dressed properly.

All this grounding, it’s like writing a list and realizing, oh, I don’t have to carry all that in my head anymore and work myself up out of fear I’ll drop one of the balls. All this tangible aspect, it offloads so much burden, and at the same time confirms it’s not just imagination. I can relax.

I am so unused to anything in my head mapping to the world around me that I didn’t know what it was like or how much of a fucking relief it is to be able to just have reality taken care of, so I don’t have to hold it every moment of every day, afraid that it may shatter. I am so used to living exclusively in my head because there has been no interface. Now it’s like reality is spilling out of my skull into my waking, sensory world, and it’s so weird and trippy and makes me feel drunk. If this is reality, and it makes sense to me, what was that world I was living in before? This is why I say it’s like I’ve woken up. It really is. It’s everything before that’s now in question, fading into the cobwebs of a decaying dream.

It’s so strange to rewire my sense of being in the world on such a basic level. Like, this is what it feels like to be alert and aware and to feel things and know things and for all this to be confirmed instantly, viscerally. Is this what it’s like for everyone else, always?

I had no idea how much burden I was holding at all times, and how much space and power and resources that ate up. How it left no room for me to just exist, and breathe, and feel, and want, and be an actual human being. I didn’t know what it meant to be alive.

There’s so much overlap among PTSD, ADHD, autism, gender and sexual dysphoria. It’s common for them all to be… I don’t love the term comorbid, but you know. You’re toting around one of these disorientations, the chance you’ve got another one is that much higher than if you didn’t have any. And each one just adds another layer to the yergh.

There’s this sense of carrying around one’s own reality all the time that doesn’t match the models provided, which one has to learn to entertain and navigate while translating all the way. And until the disjunct becomes clear, there’s just this continual knowledge that something, everything is wrong, nothing is working, your ideas never seem to match the physical world, and you don’t know how or why. And it’s such a fuckery. It’s so isolating. Nothing makes sense.

For decades I’ve made the analogy that my waking life, it’s like watching a TV screen. If I fell hard into identifying with videogames as a medium, that’s because that’s basically what life was like. Sitting apart, pushing few limited buttons, hoping they do what’s intended. You want to take these other actions that aren’t pre-programmed in? Step over that police tape, see what’s up that hill, talk to the creature instead of stabbing it? Tough. Those aren’t the rules of this world. Learn to play the game right if you want to get anywhere.

It’s no accident that my reckoning with all of the above pretty much has happened in one rolling wave. It’s all tangled up, intertwined. And letting it out…

There’s also this anger, that I’ve never been allowed to feel. Like, anger is one of the Bad Feelings, right. Except it’s not, of course. Emotions are neutral. They just are what they are. They’re signals. What isn’t neutral is one’s behaviors; how one acts on them. Denying the feelings, that’s basically the first step to major dysfunction.

There’s a lot to be angry about. And it’s fine.

One of the overwhelming narratives of the last month or two is, how dare they keep me from myself? All of them. How dare they. And that’s really what it comes down to. This is what I could have been this whole time. It didn’t have to be the way that it was. I lived through that for no reason.

I barely can wrap my head around what I dealt with, for so long. It’s a lot. There’s so much that I’ve accepted as normal, that’s just… clearly not something a person should have to put up with. But it’s getting better. I’m finally putting together this world that I guess comes pre-assembled for others. Becoming human.

It turns out, reality is intoxicating. And I want to feel it, encourage it, declare and define it as an ongoing work. I need to keep this moving.