We All Fall Down

The Brittle Veil

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I try to wall it away; tell myself it doesn’t matter, that I’m not affected; I just walk away and create this distance from others—but the thing is, I’m really fucking manically hyper-sensitive to rejection. It’s to the point that I can’t stand it. And over the smallest shit.

My inability to deal with even minor conflict plays into this. I freak out and immediately feel like my life is over over a slight change in tone. I can’t handle it. So for my basic day-to-day sanity, I have to just… not engage, ever, with anyone, emotionally. Because I know it will never go well.

And I tell myself that’s fine. That it’s just the way that things are. I’m so used to it by now, being alone, always—because I know it’s for the best. It’s the only coping technique that has ever worked.

But God, does it suck. I’m not used to feeling actual loneliness. That’s new, as of maybe… December or so? But now that that’s in my repertoire, it’s really opened me up to some deeper problems in my life.

I’m just, I’m sick of living like this. Of being scared of myself, being scared of everyone else, assuming that I exist on sufferance in every scenario—just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for the people in my life to realize what I’m really like and to snap and leave me alone again.

Fuck, I want an honest emotional connection with people. I don’t even know how to do this. I never learned how. I know there are a few people who actually like me for who I am, who don’t treat relationships like some kind of business contract they expect others to maintain—the same way that I approach people, right? There must be other people who look at me the same way as I look at them. I just don’t know how any of this works.

This whole thing here, I don’t mean it to be fatalistic. This is me, recognizing a problem here, right? This sensitivity is a basic structural thing that I’ve been terrified to admit to myself for basically my whole life, that I think I need to understand for me to be able to move forward.

All this stuff lately is tied together, right. It’s about recognizing all these things that I’ve never really understood in so many words or been able to admit to myself—because what’s the point, right?

I deserve better than I’ve been habituated to treat myself. It’s just, how?

Again, I’m fine. This is all just… unpacking shit that’s better unpacked than left crammed where it’s been for 40 years. Which is to say, I’m not fine. I really need to stop pretending that I’m okay, that things don’t affect me, when everything hurts all the time on levels I’m not really able to articulate. That’s the only way that I’m going to wire up a system that actually works here.

Anyway. Figuring it out.

A Cultural Divide

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I genuinely have never known what it’s like to be male. I was never raised as “culturally male,” as the TERfs would have it. I have never had any interest in masculinity. I have my whole life shied away from thinking of myself or being classed as a dude. I just never quite understood why it bothered me.

I had no connection with any gender, really. I tolerated other people’s assumptions about me, though it made me feel gross—but I had none of my own. The start of my transition was me, recognizing and accepting and exploring this lack of a relationship and what it might mean for me.

My gender is a bit weird and wibbly still, but I do have one now. That’s the thing, though—in every way that matters to me, this is my first gender; my only one. The one that’s always been latent, and that I’ve spent the last couple years grasping toward. It’s still a work in progress to define it and understand how it applies to my life. but it’s not a moving target. It’s always been pretty stable, even when I’ve had no active connection with it.

In a sense it feels funny I’m considered trans, as I’m not really transitioning from anything that I think of as real. It’s more a matter of finally paying attention and growing into myself, after putting it off for my whole life.

This is the only me there has been. Yeah there was this protective husk, stumbling around for decades. but that wasn’t me. It was the parcel post shipping container. It had no awareness, no sense of self. It didn’t feel anything, want anything. It was just layers of swaddling, to get me through the long exchange.

I don’t know anything about my assigned gender beyond what I can read in a book or see on a screen. Experientially I can’t tell you how it feels any more than I can describe what microwaves look like. It’s an alien concept. It has nothing to do with me.

Lending Name

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I feel like depression is less its own discrete condition than it is the material consequence of pathological unhappiness. It’s this helpless normalization of living under that pain and internalizing its effects on one’s ability to function as one’s own inherent flaw.

When i say pathological unhappiness, I don’t mean to say the unhappiness is unjustified. It’s probably a very real response to circumstances. I just mean it is so strong and so constant that it becomes difficult to see for what it is or understand or address in a meaningful way.

I think if I start to understand my unhappiness as abnormal, not as a natural state that I should just expect to be in but as a genuine situational problem that no one should have to deal with, that may help me to make small steps to address and correct for the things causing it. Like, this may help me to at least identify discrete problems and start to think about solutions—even if they’re out of my hands immediately, or not things I can manage on my own. At least then I know, and am not completely at a loss for the why, and blaming it all on myself.

What do I actually want from life?

Now that I know what happiness is, what do I think would be a healthy set of conditions that would allow for its normalization—as opposed to its almost total absence?

Negative Space

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It’s funny. I never actually felt happiness for the first 42 years of my life. This past September I felt it for the first time, and I think it really changed me as a person. Until I knew what happiness felt like, I had no frame of reference to grasp how deeply unhappy I am.

And, I am absolutely crushingly rendingly unhappy about almost everything in my life and the world at large. I like myself, now. So, that’s one thing. I like some specific people. I like specific things, and some general concepts. All of this helps. But boy, it’s hard to carry.

And, that’s the damnedest thing: I get it now. This is a big step up, just getting to the point where I can wrap my head around how awful I feel every day. To be able to engage with it, rather than it just being this constant formless gnawing pain that made life impossible.

That doesn’t make things easier in and of itself. But it’s such a change to be able to say, I am not happy. To know what that means.

It’s a start, anyway.

A Visible Girl

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I know I can enjoy parts of my appearance now, but it always baffles me a moment when people say it to my face, as happened unprompted this evening. Somehow it’s always on the days where I feel like I’m struggling to hold myself together, which only makes it weirder in the moment.

That kind of timing, it doesn’t come as a pick-me-up. It’s more like, “Wait, what, what’s wrong with you?” combined with someone peeking over one’s shoulder in the middle of a sketch that isn’t working out. No, God, this isn’t the real drawing yet! Argh, don’t patronize me! I’m getting better at nodding and thanking and moving on, but there’s this moment of stun like I’ve been socked in the face with no warning.

I’ve spent my life, like, locked inside for weeks at a time because I was so ashamed to be seen—such bad skin, so deathly awkward. General insecurity about my frame, and limbs, and torso and face. There’s only so much I could hide, without hiding entirely.

I’m not saying they’re wrong in what they see. I’m not blind, and I’m not going to tear myself down unnecessarily. It’s just weird to hear from someone outside of me. There’s almost an element of, wait, you can actually see me? The hell? I thought it was just me.

I am so unused to existing.

I mean, I guess I never have been a real person until recently. That seems to bring a lot of adjustment.

Coriolis Force

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I know in my bones that to what extent my ex may be aware of my gender and sexuality, my disability, my poverty, they’ve convinced themself it’s all an act. I’ve just been on estrogen the last year, I’m just spending all of my time in therapy, refusing to pull a normal job off the job tree, to rack up marginalization points so I can try to maneuver for the moral high ground, for the purpose of… making them… look bad? To deny them what they’re owed? While I cackle smugly?

Just, you know. For… reasons. Because that’s how everyone thinks, in their world. It’s all about power with them. Everything is a calculated move, angling to some kind of a showdown.

I think through all our relationship, they saw me as an enemy agent of sorts, that they could maybe bend to their will as a special weapon—like I carried this great innate power, that I defiantly refused to wield for their benefit or my own out of some mix of laziness, spite, and pride.

As compared to this disabled queer from a disadvantaged background, with no resources or safety net, who was fucking terrified day in and day out, unable to understand what I was doing wrong.

But that made no sense to them, right. I was just being willful, clearly. And one of these days they’d find the way to break me.

And, well. They broke me, all right. Not quite in the way they planned, I reckon.

It’s cool, though. Sometimes the only way out is through.

And here I am now. Still not really functional, but at least I know who I am.

Rounding the Curve

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On one of the many occasions I had to drag myself out of bed last night to pee, I glanced at the mirror and—heck, my side-boob is looking really nice. There are all these artful curves now that I didn’t notice before. That whole arc from the armpit, down and under, is all filling out in this neat way. Gee whiz.

I’ve talked a little of the stages, where first all this mass builds up—this rough heap of tissue—then more recently that tissue has started to take more definite shape. Where there had been lumps, we’re starting to sculpt all that same stuff into more confident curves. It’s this slow process, hard to really notice day-to-day; hard to measure. Then one morning at 3 am you look at your tits from a new angle and realize, whoa. How long has that been a thing? It’s so fascinating!

And for that matter, since when did my butt look like this? The heck? That kinda came out of nowhere. Even when I stretch into a more masculine posture—which is starting to feel a little awkward now—there it is. It’s just, there are these curves now. All over the darned place.

Then, it’s a work in progress, but—I’ve always worn tights or stockings under my skirts, right. Beyond the whole issue of cold, I’ve just been deeply insecure about my legs my whole life. Like, it really really bothers me. And now, it’s… not terrible?? I yanked my tights off, and I was like: huh!

I’m not gonna say they’re rocking my, uh, socks off… aside from… my… just… doing that. But, it’s not making me want to die, to look at them! They’re just sort of there, and fine, and whatever.

So. That’s… something. I guess?

The birthmarks still make me feel weird, and there’s no real doing anything about them. But again, better. I’m starting to look almost look human!

I guess it has been a year, huh. A year and a day.

Happy birthday to me.

A New Introduction

  • Reading time:1 mins read

My name is Azure Korrigan. I study the language of art. When I’ve the wind, I write, edit, draw, and design. I code and decode, compose and arrange. And in those rare moments I can coax my eyes from the horizon, I even like the results!

I’m neurodivergent and queer. My mind is autistic and it wrestles with ADHD. I’m a non-binary girl, despite what I was told. I’m aromantic and asexual, but all the tertiary attractions I feel regardless of gender.

The power that shapes our world is the force that keeps us apart. That sets us against each other. I aim to diminish that power wherever I can. All of us are just people. The only measure that matters is whether you’ve been kind.

I’ve been through a lot—but all I have is a future. The person I was no longer exists and the person I am has hardly begun.

Small Talk

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On reflection—sex is a conversation, right. It’s a kind of communication one works out with one’s partner(s), pooling the mutual appreciation you hold for each other into something bigger. At least in theory. Ideally.

I don’t think I have had proper sex. It’s more that in each case I have been used as an elaborate masturbation aid for the other’s benefit. No connection. No communication. No foreplay, no exploration, no fondness. Just, be expected to read their mind and satisfy their unstated urge while they zone out. Then go away. Fail any of these steps, and be punished.

Which is not to say that sex is a thing I need or desire in my life. It sure as heck isn’t, and I sure as heck don’t. At all. Ever. But, I guess those are some of the words for some of the distress that I associate with it. None of which, really, has anything to do with sex itself, or with me. Rather, it follows the personalities and values of the other parties.

As I’ve been saying, I want to be saying no for the right reasons, from a position of calm and understanding. I don’t want to just be reacting with fear to everything; I want to make good decisions, that reflect who I am and not just the damage I’ve been dealt.

So. Here’s a piece of that, I guess.

Girl Now: Second Muse

  • Reading time:5 mins read

I guess what all this is, is I actually had no sense of or relationship with gender at all until this past year. At first, recognizing that I was non-binary was about noticing that lack of a relationship beyond this vague resentment and disgust toward the thing I was expected to be. I realized I didn’t get gender, didn’t care. It had passed me by like so many things.

As I aged I never learned how to be anything in particular, and I sure didn’t want to be what was expected of me, so mostly I ignored it. It was clear that I wasn’t male and never had been, but until recently I’ve never had the liberty or awareness to explore other options, and wasn’t thrilled with the concept of a hard binary just in principle. Which I never will be. It freaks me out. Feels fashy.

I just preferred not to think about myself any more than I had to, to keep safe. Ergo, even after concluding everyone was wrong about my gender, I didn’t know that I was a girl until I knew what it meant to me to be a girl. Other people’s examples, their descriptions of what it was like… well, they weren’t me. They sat weird. Ideologically and just constitutionally I don’t do binaries, but now that I know some of what gender is and how to relate to it, there is no question that I have always been a girl. I have just been… regularly misidentified, as people will sometimes be before puberty hits.

I have talked about how underwhelming my first puberty was, and how poorly it stuck. I never went through those thoughts and feelings or really major body changes, beyond my absurd height and a decades-long creep of thin, weird facial hair. Now I finally am having a pronounced puberty—and God, I am feeling it. I feel myself becoming a person, finally taking some kind of a solid form. I am developing ideas about who and what I am, what I like, what I want, what I need to be healthy. I am becoming real.

I feel like a teenager, in a way i never did before, and all this stuff is rushing around inside me, and it just feels so obvious where this is going. How right it is. On my own terms. Like my life is just starting now. I am waking up into what it means to have a gender—which is a new experience to me. As far as transition goes, it’s not that I’m undoing or reconsidering anything, much. I was just basically in suspended animation for 30 years: physical and existential limbo. Now I’ve woken and am proceeding broadly as other people would have decades ago.

So until very recently I didn’t have the emotional language or connections to be able to conclude, yeah, I’m clearly a girl, especially since my only understanding of that came from examples that didn’t quite apply to me—but I am growing up now. And in my own way, this makes more sense than anything ever has.

It’s only now that I actually have a gender. It’s like I sort of grew one, emotionally, over the course of transition. This is my first gender, really, and it was weird and slow for me to recognize, same as all these strange feelings I now have: this happiness, boredom, loneliness—things I never really experienced.

I guess that’s the flash I had just now. Words are hard sometimes when you’re decompiling something irrational. It’s that I finally do have a gender, now that I understand how gender works and now that I can feel it. And it’s not one I landed on lightly, but rather with an enormous resonating thud.

This is part of a natural process of evolution, of my finally developing as a person—and it’s nothing like arbitrary. Now that I finally get it, the it I get is so obvious. It’s not even a question. Of course, this is what I have always been. I just never knew what it was, how describe it, how to related to it. The only uncertainty is, how to be me—what else do I not know about me yet?

I feel like this is all a lot of nothing, but, well. I’m working through a vague yet to me vitally important point here. I didn’t decide on a gender; I grew one, same as I grew my breasts—though independently of those signifiers. (Bodies are just bodies, yo.) And, it was always latent. Always there, always me. I just had to grow into it to understand.

And now, I am growing. Now I get it. I finally get to be me.

I used to be non-binary in the sense that I had no real internal gender and that gender completely baffled me. Now I’m non-binary in that I have found my gender—and though it falls in a spectrum that a word can meaningfully describe, it doesn’t conform to this preordained binary reading. I am unambiguously some kind of a girl—just, on my own terms.

Girl Now

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So this is going to sound pretty weird and uneventful on the basis of the last two years or so, but as indicated yesterday I guess I’ve figured out for sure that I’m a girl here. Like, non-binary always. but also, I’m not just trying on femininity like it’s a costume or a phase. This is me. Me: girl.

At least, of some sort.

“Yeah, and? We done know that. Duh.”

Which I have been saying, sort of loosely and semi-fatuously for months now. I guess I’ve been trying it on existentially ever since that six-month mark with the HRT, where whee, this all hit hard and I began this psychological hand-over from my predecessor to the person I am now, the person they’d been protecting all these years. But I’ve been a little tentative and insecure in just declaring these things.

It’s like. I’ve been holding onto the idea for so long, not fully believing it could be true but leaning over, claiming some aspects of my own femininity. Tacking these lost pieces onto my new self, to try to give her form. I mostly use she/her for my own purposes. I keep saying “girl” as a handwave generalization for my whole thing. But it kind of felt like, who am I to decide these things? Even after years of transness, nearly a year of medical transition, psychologically it was so hard to stick that landing.

But, no. I’m not just a femme-leaning enby. Though yes, I am that. I’m also genuinely some kind of a girl. It’s clear to me now. After saying it informally for so long, almost making a joke out of it, finally it clicked. There’s a reason this feels so right to me, makes this much sense. It’s because it’s not a joke. It’s not me being cute with gender. It’s actually true.

I guess I’ve just been really slow to accept the obvious, even after recognizing that this is the only thing that’s ever really made sense to me, ever really made me happy in 42 years. That all this glow isn’t just from, like, superficial enjoyment. It’s because it was right.

Gender’s all made-up nonsense, right, except in the meaning we give it. And, this is meaningful to me as it turns out.

So, I’m a real-actual girl.

Because of course I am, Christ. This isn’t some major revelation, except in that the last part of me finally went, “Oh. Okay, sure.”

So that is, I guess, a subtle reorientation of my perspective on things.

Nothing changes externally. Still non-binary. Still femme. Still aroace, and pan with all the tertiary junk. Still autistic. Still wrangling with ADHD. Still gorgeous. Still Azure. Just me resolving a few things, going back and dotting a few stray umlauts.

Copy editing my gender, as it were.

For Why This Sight

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I have a lot of internalized homophobia. And it sucks. There’s no mystery what it’s doing there, of course—four decades of defending myself against accusations that, well, turned out to be true after all. At least I can grapple with it now, and understand what it’s covering for.

It’s so irrational. I’m not even male, right. If anything it’s become more and more clear to me that I’m not just non-binary (though that too, now and forever) but an actual girl as well. Still, there’s this deeply ingrained discomfort and fear that I have to work against when I find a guy attractive, even just aesthetically.

There’s this Portishead lyric that’s always stuck with me; for decades the way I thought it went was, “Did you realize / No one can see inside your view? / Did you realize / The world inside belongs to you?” As it turns out, that’s not at all what she’s saying. But still, as a closeted queer you can imagine what sort of terror I had over my thoughts, their implications, and what would happen if I got caught thinking the things I was thinking.

On top of a few major tasks and changes of practice for this year, I’m trying to make it a project to get over most of this deep-seated shame I’ve been lugging around in regard to every aspect of who I am and how I think and behave. The fact that I have a body with biological functions. That I have emotions and senses and ideas about things that may not be what people want me to be thinking or feeling, but that are true nonetheless.

It’s like, just shut up, amygdala. Trying to appreciate a thing here. I’m not gonna die. Stop making me feel like that.

Weirdly I also feel a similar, if way less pronounced, freak-out with attraction to binary women. That also feels like this terrible no-go zone, like what if anyone catches me. It’s only that wibble room of enbies and gnc folk where my brain unclenches a bit and feels safer. Which makes very little real sense, but here we are. Emotions. Trauma. They make their own rules.

I have a lot of aversions, some of which are genuine and constitutional and are a part of who I am as a person. This garbage, it’s always been this way—but it’s dumb. This isn’t me; this is just damage.

I don’t have to be afraid of myself anymore. And I know this.

There’s just a lot of wiring to strip out still.

Oh FFS

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So I guess as of like five years ago, the state Medicaid covers facial feminization surgery, with some reasonable hoops. (I think one needs two letters from doctors or mental health services, to contact insurance first for approval. Have to blame it on dysphoria.)

I’m not saying it’s a thing I want to do. But, fuck, the option is there. Certainly not a thing for the immediate future anyway. It’s just, wow, okay. Interesting.

It is the one surgery that’s not unthinkable to me personally—especially if we work in a tracheal shave (terrifying as that may sound in the abstract). I don’t like the idea of elective surgery, and the risks and process wig me out—but this is the hormonal damage that does bother me. And, well. We’ll see how I feel after a few years.

For the short term, HRT has done a bit for me already, even at not-quite twelve months in. I know things should continue to change for another 1-4 years, probably, so. We’ll just let that play out. Best to avoid anything really invasive if we can, right. Still, it’s good to know that I do in fact have real options for once in my life.

It’s all about repairing damage suffered through neglect. We’ll keep on going until we hit a plateau—then see what I still need when we get there.

Mirror Mood

  • Reading time:2 mins read

It’s really hard to capture what I see when I walk into the bathroom, unprepared every time. with the motion, the dimension. With only the lens of the eye to distort things. It doesn’t come across in a still, flat image. The body I see, it’s so different from the one I averted my gaze from for 40 years, the one that made me feel so ashamed.

I can’t really communicate what it is that strikes me so deeply every day now. It’s astounding that I am awake, and that I am not that old nightmare but am myself. I’m not even that far along; there is so much more of me to be. Yet, there I am. And this is maybe the only thing that has ever made sense to me. And it just brings this sanity to my entire world. This grounding.

Every time I walk in and flick the light, someone’s standing there. And she makes sense, and I love her. And we have so much work to do, so much still to repair. But, we’re getting there. We’ve comes so far, no reason we can’t keep going.

Even my depression, it sucks but it’s bearable when I have me.

Thrown for a Loop

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So I just learned that spinner rings are a thing that exists.

.

…

Uh-oh.

Look, I already commented on the stim value of bracelets. I figured that out like ten weeks ago. I had been wondering about rings, since really my only experience is with… one I will not be wearing again. Like, what their deal was; what was out there that fit my whole deal.

And, uh.

Yeah, okay. That seems… unexpectedly practical. Considering, you know. This autistic brain.

Well, it will be a while before I invest in anything else for myself, but after that experience a couple months back, jewelry is among the next things on my radar—to the extent that it makes sense for me personally. And, I guess this business will have to be one of the big things to explore when we get there. That, and—

…

I, like.

So.

Okay, I—I still feel pretty weird and anxious about this, but for a few months I’ve been throwing around the idea of getting my ears pierced. It’s not gonna be, like, tomorrow. There are a million other things I wanna do way before. But as a notion, it has become distinctly not-unthinkable.

Just putting words to it, even if not for the first time, is actively making me shake here. It’s so weird that I’m even arriving at this, considering how I did not understand, and was vaguely against, the whole idea until… about the time my boobs started to come in. Like, I never understood tattoos or piercings at all. But, I get taking ownership of one’s body now. And, this aspect… keeps entering my mind. I’m just still grappling with the whole concept. It somehow feels like a bigger leap than HRT for me personally. The hormones were a medical necessity. It was an important move, but an obviously healthy one. This kind of body modification is a new realm.

It’s so fucked-up that this seems to be a common trans experience, our not feeling like our bodies belong to us. For four decades I just… didn’t feel like I had a right to do anything but try to keep it intact—not for my own benefit, but for a nebulous someone else’s. It’s like my body was a rental.

Bodily autonomy has been making my brain fucking melt the last several months. I never knew what it was like; what I was missing; that this is a thing that other people feel all the time. It’s so confusing, and makes me feel so giddy, and so sad, and so angry all at the same time.

But, jewelry, right. I kind of feel like that—the notion of some eventual piercing situation—is some kind of a threshold that this all is building up toward. It’s like. once I’m better acquainted with the world of jewelry and the idea of wearing this stuff and how to decorate my body in a way that I enjoy… well. That is a potential major waypoint to the journey. If it’s going somewhere, that’s probably where it’s headed.

Again, though, I feel like that’s not gonna be on my radar until after I see about zapping my face bald. That and some other more essential medical and practical business are sort of the focus for this year. After that it’s just… crazy town, I guess. Just do whatever with myself. Be a person.

On the way there—spinner rings. bracelets. necklaces? Lots to explore.