azure

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.

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.

Ten Thousand Siblings

  • Reading time:5 mins read

The thing about Twitter is that it’s provided so many shitty people an opportunity to tell on themselves and clarify how it is that they think, that I feel like I understand a hell of a lot more now about the ways that shitty people think and behave, and what is and is not my fault.

Recovering from trauma, all of the stuff I’ve internalized over the course of my life—to see the way that garbage is employed, where it comes from, how particular it is to a particular kind of a person, it really does a number on this part of me made to feel alone. Being able to link arms with a bunch of other people who see the fuckery for what it is, and to point at it, and to collectively recognize what it indicates about that person rather than about reality? That’s something I’ve never really had before.

Regarding “bean dad,” (if you don’t know the reference, consider yourself lucky) honestly the kid’s predicament is how doing almost anything has felt my entire life—especially that incredulity and dismissal in response to her plea. Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world means constant low-key ableism and frankly torture for the littlest, dumbest fucking things. Even when I manage to diagnose the problem and to what extent it’s affecting me, and think to ask, historically the best response I’ve tended to get out of people is, “Oh, yeah, I guess I can see how that might be hard to figure out.” Then they turn their back and continue as if I had never said anything. In the event I do manage to work out a solution, it’s not celebrated; either they conclude I was feigning helplessness the whole time or they’re like, “See, you did it eventually. Isn’t that better than asking?”

End result: I am terrified and ashamed of ever asking for help, no matter how dire. Which is not a good state to live in, especially when things are in fact pretty dire. I’ve been told my whole life that I basically deserve what I get if I’m unable to do everything on my own.

Regarding the other main character of the day, the “tall mommy” (again, good job at avoiding the topic)—well, I dunno. I’m something like 6’5″, so hard to know what to say here. I wish I was about six inches shorter most of the time—not because of attractiveness to others, since who gives a fuck. Just because, you know, head injuries. balance. Individual dysphoria.

(Also to the woman’s point, dudes not be caring. If that is somehow a concern.)

I say “something like 6’5″” as I haven’t been measured in a while and I know I’m shorter than I used to be. My perspective when walking around is different. I’m not looking so directly down on the top of the fridge. I can see in the bathroom mirror without hunching over now. And, this happens to some extent, right. The bones don’t change that much, but connective tissue does. My feet are 2-3 sizes smaller now, so it figures my spine would be having its own adventure.

Height is the one part of my self-image I’m never gonna be able to address, So I just have to come to terms with it. It’s always bothered me. Until I was maybe seventeen, I was shorter than everyone my age—then suddenly I was ducking tree branches everywhere. It sucks. Also aesthetically I don’t like the length of my torso, though the other recent changes—the tits, the hips, the change of the shape of my pelvis—help to break things up a little bit so it’s less of this endless antarctic landing field. Again it sucks that nothing ever fits me, but it’s better in women’s sizing.

This lady clearly has a bunch of problems, and judging by her timeline history is used to projecting on any number of groups (races, ethnicities) according to factors they can’t control. If she’s got her own dysphoria and is weaponizing it like an English young adult writer to hurt others, well, Sucks to be in her head, I guess. I hope she gets help eventually.

I’m not saying it’s good that I’ve learned to fold all of my problems over onto myself, but, like. I’m dealing with my own shit; I don’t want hurt anyone else, I don’t want to make my problems theirs if I can avoid it. I wish I was shorter for my own sense of self—but I’m not, and I can’t control that, Whatever. It’s nobody’s fault. People can’t control everything. Sometimes things just are.

I’m not gonna begrudge someone who’s got what I don’t, I’m gonna be happy for them, so long as it’s something that works for them—and if not, I’m gonna feel some sympathy because I know some part of what it’s like. Just, from a different angle. But then, i guess i’m just not… a shitty person?

This is a thing it’s taken me a long time to put together, after what I’ve been told for the last 40 years, but on observation I really don’t seem to be that bad, haha! I make mistakes like everyone, because I’m human. I have my weaknesses. But seeing the way that some people are? Seeing the way they weaponize their own problems to vilify everyone who causes them an inconvenience, however slight or imagined, and turn it into some kind of a conspiracy of the marginalized against the privileged?

Unlike Bean Dad I’m not saying that abuse was an effective learning tool, but I guess that developing a constant paranoia about doing everything wrong and doing all I can to correct my oversights as they arise will do that. Not everything others are angry about is my fault, but neither are my own problems theirs.

And again, it’s just… so novel to have this perspective for once.

Opportunity Cost

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I think I have tended to attract people who are insecure in their gender or sexuality, who see me as a novel sort of toy to work out their issues but then freak out when I turn out to be a person with her own ideas about things—and also freak out at what I threaten to reflect about them. It’s like, they use me to explore some unspoken dimension of themselves then—well. The response has had a different balance in each case, but there’s this baseline weirdness and anxiety that I guess I always saw but never quite understood or connected from person to person, that small collection of others I’ve allowed close to me in that way.

Ergo, this inevitable controlling behavior. They didn’t really see me as an independent person to start with; I was just an accessory to them. But now? After they’ve realized I’m technically my own human being with my own agency? Now, I was a dangerous, rogue accessory who might at any time, intentionally or otherwise indicate what they were really like, and then Everyone Would Know.

I guess it was always obvious there was something “off” about me, leading people who had their hang-ups that they dared not voice to project their own interpretations into that and go, hmm, there’s some fucking plausible deniability right there, in mobile form. And what a rube! What an opportunity.

White Christmas

  • Reading time:6 mins read

It is of course Known that HRT changes sexual function. The way it’s usually described, because of course it is, is in pathological terms—which is dumb. Dumb, and misleading, and potentially harmful for so many reasons. Not everyone’s got the same interests or ideas or life goals, yo. Sometimes things just are what they are, and what meaning they carry is what you read into them.

It’s worth stressing that people are people, that there’s little meaningful difference between the Big Two sexes as popularly defined, and that what little difference there is comes late in natal development (or even after!). Everyone is carrying basically the same hardware. Whereas things get lightly specialized in terms of size, placement, and some high-level utility, they are equivalent in purpose and function—because they’re the same parts; just baked a little differently at the very end. so the real difference isn’t hardware; it’s software.

The penis and the clitoris; same organ. prostate and skein’s gland; same basic structure. The testes have a channel through the prostate—and it turns out that the vestigial equivalents of the vagina and uterus are located in the prostate. It’s all there; just differently specialized. So what specialized their form to suit their mature functions, and what continues to guide that function? Hormones, of course. Your penis knows it’s a penis because of the message it’s sent. Your skein’s gland knows to get lubricating because of a chemical beacon.

And—yes, broadly speaking the feminine parts are gonna be told to focus on lubrication, to keep on going even through orgasm—so there signal there is about a sort of opening of the floodgates (both literally and figuratively, with the ongoing free full-bodied sensations and so on). The masculine parts get the opposite instruction. Their task is all about building up pressure for launch. Most of the fluid and sensation there is reserved for a brief moment, after which the mission is done and it’s not only difficult but sometimes physically painful to continue.

So what happens if your specialized hardware starts receiving a different set of signals? Well, again technically it’s all the same stuff. It’s going to be more or less compatible with whatever commands you throw at it. After a brief reorientation, it will learn to obey the software it’s fed—at least, as well as it can. It’s like, you take a black mage and reclass them as a berserker, you may have a curve to deal with.

So in regard to changed function, it’s also fairly well-recorded how differently the feminine penis will behave, compared to the masculine one. Tou may not get random erections so much, if at all. They may not be as firm or last as long. Orgasms change from this narrow one-and-done thing focused on the genitals to a sort of repeatable, full-bodied scalp-to-toes revelation. What I did not fully understand, though, before going into this was the fluid issue. Because, yo, this is no longer a story about semen—that’s not what the body cares about anymore—and that changes things in some curious ways.

Since they’re the same organ with the same basic purpose, the fluid that the prostate produces is basically the same as the fluid from the skene’s gland. Add estrogen, it’s no longer building up pressure to release and it’s not inclined to stir up a batch of semen; all it wants is to lubricate. That’s what girls do, right? Righto! So there’s going to be oozing: slow, fairly constant. the body thinks it’s doing a thing. When we get to orgasm, again we’re probably not doing the spurting here. There’s this sensation radiating from the chest and the brain sort of melts, but not much likely comes out. If anything does, it’s going to be thin and slick and clear—just more of the same lubricant, right.

Granted everyone’s different, and if you prowl you’ll see some trans women who are, like, playing Splatoon somehow, but that’s not the typical programming.

Now, the upshot of all of this is that—let’s be honest, whatever your predilections may be—semen is pretty gross, and fucking impossible to clean up. It stains anything it touches. It quickly becomes cement. It gets everywhere. Don’t let it near hot water or it will clog your drain forevermore. But, this clear fluid, the lubricant? Water-soluble, baby. A little greasy, but it comes right out of fabric; will not ever clog a drain or cake in some weird place; doesn’t carry a strong odor. It’s so easy to deal with! On a 1-10 scale of gross annoyingness, it’s maybe a 2-3, tops.

For all that the literature likes to demonize sexual changes and hold them up as a warning of what could happen, there are so many things that just work better, to my purposes and sensibilities. No randomly getting turned on! It’s possible to enjoy things, rather than just furiously trying to reach a goal! And best of all, no more gross mess!

I almost never feel the need to indulge anymore, which is a relief of sorts, but in the rare event it does makes sense emotionally, psychologically, it is so much less of a hassle. There’s no more of this ugh, what was that even for; now i need to clean up, but i feel like dying instead. Now it’s just about appreciating my body and its functionality, enjoying an occasional intimate moment with myself. Showing myself some care and consideration. No pressure, no fast destination, and no punishment at the end. I no longer feel gross or ashamed or overly embarrassed. I’m in control of myself at every step. And then, it all just washes away: no evidence, no harm, no foul. Ready to move on—energized, enriched, rather than half-dead and ready to cry.

I just like myself so much now. I like the way i’m coming to think, to feel. I’m starting to like the way I look. I like the way my body behaves. Everything makes sense to me in a way it never did. I am so glad to be the person I am continuing to become. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this.

Again, everyone’s wired a little different, responds to things in their own way. so this story isn’t gonna apply everywhere—and maybe it’s not what everyone will want. That’s cool. People have their priorities. But, whee. this would have been a selling point if I’d known. And I never would have, because of the way it’s always been pitched—with every bit as much judgment as everything else I find important in life.

Rolling Gender

  • Reading time:2 mins read

My identity feels like it’s on a rolling 90-day window. Anything older than three months, I feel increasingly out-of-touch with that person as I continue to develop at this rapid rate—existentially, emotionally, psychologically, physically, physiologically.

I know the six-month mark back in August was the turning point, where everything started to click and I just became a new person and left that old shell behind. That’s when the body changes really started to kick in. That’s when I completed my first round of voice training. That’s when I made the connection that all my natural body language, the way I’m wired to behave, is super feminine—that to be the person I want to be is mostly about letting go, letting the scales fall away. That my existence is proof of itself. That’s around the time that I noticed people had gotten way nicer to me than I’m used to, apparently because they were starting to respond to the real me rather than that awful husk.

But four months on, I look back at that person and I think, gosh, they had no idea. They didn’t have my experiences. They weren’t me yet.

Right now, the edge of the person I currently know as myself, that probably sits around late September. That threshold of current me, I think it’s feeling actual happiness for the first time in my life—and just… all that fallout that’s come from that. All the feelings about myself, all the other new perfectly normal emotions that I’d never known before. (Also, haha, my first bra.)

Really I’ve got this buffer of about a month where I can say, yeah, this is roughly still me; I recognize her. Beyond that, it’s like looking at a childhood photo and thinking, who is that kid? And who on earth dressed them that way?

Bounding Box

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Every sexual situation I’ve been in, I’ve been so scared—and the more scared I’ve been, the more angry that’s made the other person. the more they would yell and berate me and threaten, all while I was completely exposed and helpless.

It’s like how people explode at you for daring to have an anxiety attack in public: how dare you embarrass them like that; what’s wrong with you; you need to shape up right now and apologize and stop having emotions of your own, or there will be consequences. Except, worse.

Part of all this is—I’m aroace, right? So any time I’ve wound up in a scenario like that, it’s because I’ve been coerced into the situation. and I’m doing my best to placate them, avoid upsetting them, by trying to give them what they want. And, it just… never goes well.

All of which is to say, I’m—I have a lot of trouble framing, finding the language for the experiences I’ve had. I don’t want to be dramatic, or to claim a kind of victimhood that doesn’t apply. But the experiences I’ve had, they’re not good. I have regular nightmares.

I feel like every relationship in my life, romantic and otherwise, there has always been a huge imbalance. I am used to being at a disadvantage where someone else controls all the money, the mobility, the plans, the terms. I have nominal input if any. I agree, or I am a problem.

Which is not to say that I want to exert power either. That’s gross. It’s that it is always made clear to me that I exist on sufferance, and that this can be remedied at any time. Since I was a child, this has been my baseline understanding of life. And, I don’t want it anymore.

It can be really hard to tell what’s normal when one doesn’t have a reference, right—and boundaries and self-respect are just about impossible to measure out when one comes to understand one will always be wrong about everything.

It’s hard for to process all of this. I am all for sex positivity, for other people. You, do whatever you need to, to live a healthy consensual life. But, it’s so hard for me to wrap my head around what I’ve been through. There’s nothing but negative association here.

I just want to wish it all away.