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.
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.
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.
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.
Since the spring it feels like I’ve been caught in this material eddy, unable to make any big steps, barely able to maintain the day-to-day. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the things outside my reach, as modest as they may seem. But as much trouble as I have coping with big and small things and ghosts from the past, there are times where perspective clicks and—
I’m a girl (sort of)
with maybe 40 years of life left
living in a small apartment
by herself
across from a large park
close to downtown
of a major city
in the northeast
in the autumn (currently).
It’s just, this is so close to a life that I’ve wished for since I was little, that I knew would never be available to me, that for years only ever seemed to get further and further from reality. In the ’90s I wrote stories with characters in almost exactly this scenario—yes, who were female, and had gender issues.
The main missing piece is an ability to support myself, and in such a way that I have mental reserves to do creative things again. (In the stories, money was always vague but I figured maybe she did computer stuff?) Other than that, it’s all just… continuing. Working on the transition, working on the therapy. maybe even piecing together my own social circle, once the plague dies down. Making this city the home I’ve never had, building a world I want to live in.
But on a basic level, like. I’ve more or less done it—including the parts that seemed, when i was younger, physically impossible. This was the escape I dreamed about, where after high school I would finally sort myself out and become alive… and where I was a girl somehow in these fantasies, which was absurd of course, but whatever.
Hell, with how drawn-out and reluctant my first puberty was, people regularly assumed I was maybe 20 until I was close to 40. It’s catching up a little now, but—it feels like even on a cellular level I was just hibernating; waiting until the moment I could truly live.
I talk a lot about this dividing line, and how I am not the same person as the previous caretaker for this body, but seriously, all my memories prior to maybe a year ago feel so unreal. It’s getting harder and harder to remember specifics, like grasping at a dream.
I may have mentioned that my taste for food has been shifting since my transition. This is pretty normal, of course. Change your body chemistry, your body is gonna start bothering your brain for different complementary materials. In practice it still feels so odd.
It’s hard to navigate. I’m autistic, right, and I’m very particular about what kinds of sensory input I can deal with. It’s taken decades for me to explore and branch out and work through what’s acceptable to me. Since my tastes calcified somewhere in adolescence, they haven’t really changed; they’ve just expanded. I’ve managed to tack things on, break through barriers, develop things further. But it’s all hooked into the same architecture, same basic assumptions that have never shifted. Now I can’t safely fall back on any of that.
I used to be all about sugar and carbohydrates. Whether it’s my metabolism or my neurology, I dunno, but I couldn’t function without a constant input of quick, easy energy. (Even then, functioning was a philosophical matter.)
Now the things I naturally assume I’ll want, I kind of shrug at. They’ll sit there, and I can’t really imagine eating them. In their place, I don’t always know how to read the new signals. It took so long to figure out the old ones. But definitely acids and oils and fats. It’s all about savory things now, which… really weren’t a major concern before. I’m super into stinky cheese and fermented things. I find myself drawn to just, raw vegetables in a way I wasn’t overly. Stereotypical as it may be, I seem to crave as I never have. I was always into, like, gummy and hard candy, right? All sugar, no fat. This is almost the flip of that.
All of this is comprehensible, right. I know what my body is doing and why. It’s just, there’s a lot of identity in this.
As I say, Azure is not the same person as that shell she stomped around inside, or that stomped around on autopilot as she largely slept. If you could even call them a person.
I hadn’t factored how much of my prior sense of self, such as it was, had been scrubbed by that last decade. by this total breakdown of my humanity. Which… in hindsight was weirdly helpful for finding the person buried beneath all that and clearing the room for her to finally grow properly.
But she still inherits all these memories and notions and understandings, and many of them no longer apply, or are fading in ways that are hard to predict. And it’s… really confusing. I’m starting from zero on so many things. This life is just so completely new.
I don’t know what’s even in my head anymore or why I think the things I do or what I like or want. Everything seems to be up in the air, occasionally landing arrow-side down to pierce my skull with some new whim that was not originally a part of my makeup.
To that end, for my own purposes at least—I’m not judging people, as usual; just describing my brain—I’ve never understood piercings. They wig me out, feel like… obvious sorta institutionalized rebellion, and I don’t get wanting to permanently harm one’s self like that.
But… like.
The thought has come to me more than once recently.
I think it’s since the boobs, honestly. They seem to have catalyzed a whole genre of thought that I don’t know how to manage, and only understand from the surface and at at distance. There’s an overwhelm of unreason.
This is a lot of words about something stupid. But I’m going through a thing, okay.
The thing about measuring for a bra is, it forced me to recognize what was going on in this empirical way. I think what still stuns me is how they feel like they leapt at me out of nowhere. I was vaguely aware of their development, then all at once I had to address it. While I was otherwise preoccupied, these two separate mounds of flesh slowly began to aggregate. And, you know. When it’s not supported, stuff’s gonna spread out. Shape isn’t gonna be as obvious.
So they progress to the point that one finally turns their attention to these deposits and goes, huh, guess they’re growing a bit; should look into this. And by then… those modest rolling bumps, they consist of so much material. And if you just gather it up, give it a little support? The slightest pressure and suddenly, wait, these are actual breasts. When did that happen? What? Like, just lightly cup your hands underneath and hang on, there’s a shape here. Cleavage appears.
What I’m saying is that physics play into my obliviousness, then my sudden realization. This tissue is malleable, right. It deforms like a Japanese pudding with any pressure, including and especially gravity. (Which is in part why one wears a bra, yes.) And the reason I’m dwelling on this again is that I checked and despite the destruction of our postal service my first bra still seems set for delivery in three days. And, that’s gonna change things. It’s gonna be this leap where suddenly these untamed lumps are collected and contained, and… there’s a lot there.
In just a few days, I’m… my whole profile is going to change. The way I carry weight is going to shift. There’s going to be visible cleavage. This is becoming real, you know.
And it’s just.
Again it’s not even about the breasts, right. Not in and of themselves. The significance here is more symbolic. It’s kind of a landmark in reclaiming myself, healing my damage. Becoming myself, at last. It’s this objective metric, helping me to see the change in me in much the way the measuring tape was an objective metric allowing me to clearly see them.
I am so bad with measurements without an outside guide. I am so bad with intuition and emotion and vague mushy notions about things. Like how despite the blinking neon lights it took someone dragging me aside and pointing to them for me to see my queerness. I just shrug and accept and don’t really know how to quantify the qualia that make up my world. I appreciate every bit of proof I am who I am. The breasts to my sense of self, the measuring tape to the breasts—it’s all measurement of a measurement of a measurement; this existential train dragging me to the acceptance of my own fucking reality.
More and more, the reality keeps crashing in—showing me that I’m right. That I am me, despite everything. Despite all the denial and harm.
At the end of it, it’s just boobs. Like half the people on the planet. Big deal, right. But I’m going through puberty here. If I’m a little juvenile, I think it’s warranted. There’s a lot wrapped up in this. More than I realized until it was impossible to ignore.
I’m sitting here, feeling overcome at just the thought of claiming that piece of ownership over myself. Putting on that bra, shaping my chest, understanding that this is the new normal, we’re really doing this, and a hearty fuck you to everyone who tried to stop me for 30 years. Who accused me of being myself, like it was the most reprehensible thing.
It’s a point of reference.
I’m making progress. Measurable, objective, real, meaningful, visible progress.
I’m so swimmy, all the time. Flailing in the void. But it’s working. I was always right, even when I didn’t know what I was right about.
I’m going to be okay, maybe. I’ve got this. I’m fixing things. It’s not too late.
Things are finally going right.
It just so happens that this landmark is goofy and comical and… sort of neat, in a visceral way. Which in itself complicates an already complicated set of emotions wrapped up in this. I feel so strange for feeling the way I do about something so base and silly.
This all crept up on me. I had no clue what value or significance it might have. I just wrote it off, until there it was. It wasn’t on my agenda at all. But apparently it’s what I needed anyway.
I’m sitting here, crying—but from happiness. Which is itself unfamiliar. Yes, crying from happiness is unfamiliar. But also, just… happiness? That has to be what this is.
I’m starting to realize I may have never felt actual happiness. That has to be that I’m feeling, and this is so novel.
You know when you, say, bang your shin and you freeze and cradle the affected area, and do nothing until the drowning, blinding pain subsides and you feel like you can move again? There has to be a word for the emotional equivalent of banging your shin, and that response. Seems all I do all day is blunder around, banging my mind’s shin on all the misplaced furniture, sucking in my breath, curling up, and clutching until it washes away. I swear I even see stars the exact same way.
Went out for groceries today. Finally crossed off a bunch of things I’d been waiting to get because I actually wanted them rather than strictly needed them. Got to the register; found I’d forgotten my wallet. On the chagrin march home, got mildly hit on again. So. Generally, fuck.
You see, I’d moved my wallet from where I normally keep it, because of those building inspectors yesterday, and—I. Just. I haven’t done this kind of thing in a long while, because I have my systems to work around my limitations, right. Things are where they need to be. Mess with the systems, and everything goes nuts. First thing in the door, I put my wallet back where it’s supposed to be.
Then I put on a comfortable robe and just ate a fucking block of cheese.
Not pictured: the cheese.
My mother is the kind of person who ruins it for everyone. Like, she’ll carry around this L.L.Bean Boat & Tote the size of an actual boat, and anything complementary she runs across, she’ll dump the whole thing in there until the people just stop making concessions for anyone. Both my parents have severe boundary issues, to a level of pathology where no matter how you explain it, no matter how often, they just keep doing their shit, all the while mocking and badmouthing you for suggesting maybe they could think about someone else’s needs and feelings.
I think a reason I have such touch and personal space issues, when I pick at it—yeah, autistic sensitivity, sure, that. ADHD issues. But also, just. Stop touching me. Back off. I said no. How can I make you understand, stop.
I stopped communicating with her for like a decade because anything I sent her she forwarded to every person in her address book, for commentary that she would then forward back to me. My ex-spouse forced me to resume contact. I cut it off again pointedly within a year. Both people I relied on the first half of my life, so fucking needy, and they just took what they wanted. It wasn’t just me. They were this way to each other, and to anyone else unfortunate enough to interact with them. At least when they were screaming at each other I knew where they were and could be somewhere else.
What I’m saying is, I have never known full, meaningful, practical consent from people with power over my life. Emotional, physical, systemic. The only thing that matters is what they want, and if you aren’t aligned then they’re gonna find a way to take it or make you the villain. The loudest and most indignant person controls the narrative.
So I just, like. You could say I have trust issues. To the point of my brain exploding when someone touches my arm or tries to hug me. I get so confused when I interact with people and, like, they listen to me. Remember basic things about me. Don’t launch off on a tirade at every blunder. Don’t keep score. Ask permission. Ask me how I’m feeling. I’m like. What are you doing? What planet are you from? It makes me so wary. Where are we going with this? What do you want?
I don’t want to be that way. I want to be able to trust people. I want to be able to build a life that I want to live, and populate it with cool people who are earnest and care about each other and have interesting perspective and meaningful principles and ideals. Other people can do this. I shouldn’t have to be exempt.
…
Though yeah, random street dudes can absolutely just fucking stop.
God, even on a relatively good day it’s all up and down with me, sometimes from minute to minute. When the tears start coming, I just curl up and start muttering over and over, “You’re not my best friend, you’re not my best friend.” I don’t even hear it until it’s been happening.
I don’t need that garbage. I’ve got myself now. I’m finally building the relationship that matters the most. But the pain, it never really goes away. I just sometimes manage to forget. For a while.
Anyway, I’m actually feeling emotions these days, so that’s something. They are what they are. They’re neutral. It makes sense that I would feel them. Better than I not. They don’t apply to my current reality. There is no danger attached to them. They’re just normal grief.
One has to grieve, and grief isn’t linear. Change doesn’t work like that, when you’re human. I broke my wrist when I was fourteen. Dumb bike accident. There’s no visible scar, but it still aches sometimes. Even when it doesn’t, it feels odd. Some alien sensation I still can’t name.
I don’t want an unkind person to make me bitter, make me lose trust and hope. They’re just them. They act this way to everyone. I had no reason to think I was exempt. It has nothing to do with me, or with anyone else. I was never responsible for a cruel person’s behavior.
You’re never responsible for another person’s behavior, no matter the relationship, no matter what they say to you.
I want to think most people are earnest. Dumb, self-centered, and oblivious to anything outside their experience, maybe. Misguided. But well-intentioned at least. There are predators, and I guess I am getting better at spotting them, but it can’t be that many.
I don’t subscribe to the reality they insist we live in. I can’t accept such a broken, wrong view of the world. The only monsters are the people who think everyone is a monster but them.
…
The thing is, both romance and sex-based attraction are fundamentally about reducing the other—and often one’s self—to a function. It’s this act of objectification, encouraged by the structure of the culture that we live in. It all confuses me, and strikes me as so upsetting. I don’t want someone to treat me like that, and I don’t want to objectify anyone else. I just want to appreciate and be appreciated by virtue of who one is as a person. Like. I don’t want to be a thing to anyone, and I can’t view others as things to me. It doesn’t really register.
There’s a distinction here. I can understand the role of sex as communication in an existing relationship. It’s not for me, but I get it. A physical language, based in consent and affection and mutual appreciation? Why not. (If one can tolerate it personally.) But sexual attraction as such? The viewing of another in terms of personal arousal? Basing one’s interest in another person on that premise? It’s a big yikes here. It heebs my jeebies right out of my bones.
It does well to stress that I don’t intend this as judgment; more as an attempt to clarify a cultural disjunct that causes me personal distress. There’s a boundary issue in all of this that I have real trouble navigating, and it has resulted in… problems, at times.
In the abstract I see sex as this hilarious folly. Like, what are you even doing, you silly dummies. Its appeal lies in its absurd bathos. There’s a sincere place for that kind of whimsy. I am unsure if the place I’d choose is where most people would expect.
For other people, there’s this transactional nature to certain things that I just… can’t resolve. It doesn’t work with my brain, and it scares me a little because I don’t easily see it except in hindsight.
That understanding of a transaction causes so many people feel Owed, and it, like—this is my body. This is my person. I’m not here for you. I can be with you, if you’re cool. We can do neat stuff together. No one owes anyone anything except recognition of their mutual humanity.
I just don’t get power dynamics. Other people can play these roles and navigate these rules and have fun doing it like it’s all a game, and fine. So long as they’re all consenting and respecting each other, so what. Go nuts. But, like. I can’t.
Yet there is this underlying unspoken presumption: of course I can. I must, and I will, and if I say I don’t, I’m lying or there’s something wrong with me that needs to be fixed. Everyone’s playing the same game, people seem to think, and there’s no way to opt out. And, that can be fucking dangerous.
There are levels to this. There’s the… like, the reaction I’m starting to get from randos when I walk to the grocery store, right. The overt angle. More insidiously… I am getting better at spotting and understanding coercion, at a pace. Not so much when it’s in my face. Like. I don’t know how to clearly signal that I am not playing. You’re not getting anything from me. I don’t want anything from you. I’m just a person here. Can’t we be cool?
I’m just saying, living in a system where this is the norm causes me distress, and I can’t get with it. Don’t want to subscribe. It’s not a moral issue; more a philosophical one based on how my brain fucking works and how I navigate the world. And, like. There are consequences to that disconnect.
The dynamics of consent are complicated, and I expect I will be picking through my history for the rest of my life.
I make an awesome girl. I made a complete garbage train wreck of a boy. But now that I know who I am? I’d want to know me.
I think from about the age of eleven I was really just waiting to die, surprised when I woke up each day and wondering how many more I had left. I burned through a lot of days. I feel like I should make better use of what I’ve got left.
This is a thing I have trouble explaining to people. I’ve never been suicidal. I have never had that much agency over myself. I only just took ownership of my body, after 42 years. I’ve just been waiting every day for the end. Sometimes but not always hoping. Always waiting.
I am very good at waiting. I’m used to it. It’s all I have known. Increasingly since the spring I have been feeling impatient. Which is… new.
Now, I actually want something. I want to be a real person. I’m no longer waiting for it all to end. I’m looking for a way to make it start.
So no kidding, the key that lodged in the back of my head and led me to recognize my queerness, some 30 years after it would have been useful to know, is this whole scene here—the dynamics of which we’ve all seen discussed in abstract, right? But to see it dramatized like this, and to recognize these thoughts and feelings so deeply…
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 17
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 18
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 19
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 20
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), pages 17-20
This is precisely what I’ve felt whenever someone’s gotten close to me, and these are exactly the thoughts that have always run through my head. Even when the relationship lasts for years, that thought hangs there, coloring every single interaction: how long until they see me for who I really am, and then what will happen?
Like… it took a bit of unpacking for me to understand why I identified so closely with this business, based on what I had come to recognize about myself. The first step was recognizing the aroaceness, as reflected in the early interaction here. That wasn’t too tricky. I had empirical data to work with, and had been wrestling with years of browbeating for my lack of sexuality in relationships, which I just sort of interpreted as queerplatonic situations, without knowing the term.
The transness took a little longer to click, but then it was the biggest fucking “oh†in the world. My pan business… well, that took longer still, and isn’t directly informed by this comic, but after everything else it was more of a shrug. Sure, we’ve gone this far. Let’s just collect all the flags. Why not.
I think what really sells it is Steven’s awful, brain-dead avoidance strategy, which… yeah… followed by, “Maybe, instead, we should talk about what we want to do?”
What we want to do?
…
Oh.
…
OH.
…
oh?
Like, I genuinely never understood that I had a choice. I thought I just had to play with what I was dealt, go along with other people’s expectations for me. When people gave me an ultimatum and told me we couldn’t be friends anymore unless we changed the terms of our relationship and did things I didn’t feel comfortable doing, I had the option to say no, you go coerce someone else. I’m fine here. I didn’t have to actively suppress everything I was in order to make other people comfortable all the time. I didn’t have to deal with abuse. I didn’t have to be who other people wanted me to be, and were angry when I wasn’t.
The autistic masking sure as hell plays into the above as well. like, there’s always this anxiety in the event one manages to “pass” that one is just working one’s self into a bigger and bigger problem, so that when they notice the truth, some real shit is going to go down.
“… what we want to do.â€
Like, that kind of shook me. and for several months after I stumbled over the comic, I kept dwelling on it, putting myself in the place of Stevonnie, making analogies to all these scenes from my own past—thinking, what would I want to do? What do I want to do now? Does this apply in a real way? Is it too late? Do I have choices? What are they?
It turns out, yes. I had choices. Choices that I didn’t know enough to make. And then, I did.
Christ, I’m looking at pictures of the person I was two years ago and I don’t even recognize them. Their features look all strange to me; they look a decade older, and so haunted. Even a year ago, I’m like, who the fuck is this and why do they look about to shatter?
This is making me uncomfortable, and I’m not inspired to continue with this spelunking because holy shit, but, uh. I get what my therapist was saying, even at a glance. I have a long way to go, lots of things still suck, and I can’t hold more than one idea in my head per day, but damn if there hasn’t been progress.
I’ve often mused about how age has been catching up to me, how for half my life I’ve looked sort of vaguely 20-ish maybe, and up to a couple years ago people kept assuming I was still in college. Now this body is 42, and I think it looks about that. That’s fine. It is what it is. But holy hell, in fall 2018 that person looked like they were one foot in the grave. It’s just so alarming.
It’s not just an abstraction. I think my former situation, it was literally killing me. Now? I’m actually alive. For the first time. It’s just a start, but—better late than never.
The thing about bodily sensations—pleasure, pain, excitement—is typically I have trouble telling them apart, as with this autistic brain everything is so extreme for me. It all just parses as various degrees of “too much,” that I have to grit my teeth and weather through until it ebbs to a manageable level. Social overwhelm, sex, injuries, overly strong scents, high temperatures, they’re all the same to me. I’m hit with this wave of shock, and my whole body shuts down. I tremble, start to black out. I can’t process what’s happening. It’s like a DDoS for my nervous system.
I say this because I feel like I’m suddenly become a little sensitized to caffeine. It’s never affected me much in the past, beyond kind of calming me down and clearing my head. In college I used to drink a couple cans of Surge to help me sleep. Maybe it’s my changing chemistry. But the last few days, I’ve had one mug of coffee and I feel like crying and taking a nap. I didn’t make the connection until now. My body feels like someone’s been yelling at me for an hour.
So, I guess that’s one more thing to pay attention to now.
Post published:Saturday, September 12th, 2020
Reading time:1 mins read
So much of my life takes a different focus when I understand it’s not my responsibility to convince bigots that I’m human. It doesn’t matter who they are, how they may be related, what leverage they may carry over me. They were always wrong. And I survived, and I’m here now.
It was they who failed me, not the other way around.
