self-possession

The Neverending Suck

  • Reading time:12 mins read

I find it increasingly unavoidable that much of the trauma that I have such trouble detaching from sex as an act of communication is based in my relationship to gender—specifically in the expectations that it sets me up for when engaging with a person in this way.

So I’m a girl, right. Non-binary, but still. Obvious as my gender may be to me now—and to anyone else, it would seem—I didn’t always know it. I had no sense for what I was, beyond what people told me. The things they told me… didn’t seem quite right, and made me deeply uncomfortable, but as with so many things I didn’t want to argue so I shrugged and tried to play along.

Like the act of sex—like most of the things we do with our lives—gender is a conversation. The way that you frame it defines a role, and the role suggests a kind of a relationship. Much like art, when we define ourselves by our actions, we unavoidably embody a certain philosophy or ideology within our identity.

At the risk of getting reductive, every role that we embody serves to signal a set of expectations for how we mean to behave toward others and how we expect them to behave toward us. The coding can get complicated and conditional. But it’s there. A big part of understanding one’s relationship to gender, at least to my mind, is in coming to grips with how one wants to relate to one’s self and others; how one feels about the world; what behavior one considers constructive and important, and makes one feel good to perform. The identities we build through our actions represent a set of apprehensions about how the world works, or how we want it to.

To that end, when one is compelled to behave as someone other than who one genuinely is, that is on some level a breach of principle. You know that you’re doing something wrong, that you’re betraying something important, even if you can’t quite articulate how or why. For me, constitutionally the expectations put on me most of my life made me feel ill, and wrong, and like a horrible human being. Which isn’t to say those roles are awful in and of themselves—there are people who can rock them and make good out of them—but they did not fit my view or ideals, and just made me more and more upset and disgusted with myself. To project them onto me in particular, and expect me to follow them, was harmful.

This definition could be a discussion in its own right, but where I’m going with it here is that, to maybe even a greater extent than my sexuality, these sorts of gender issues may be the source of my biggest problems with sex.

I say, with good reason, that my asexuality is key to understanding everything else about me. This is absolutely true. It also is complicated to understand, and a little misleading until you get there. After, all aces can and will and do fuck—some of them—without it necessarily being this big traumatic ordeal for them. So my asexuality isn’t in and of itself the answer here, though it is of course relevant.

Where trauma comes in with a thing like this, it’s not really to do with attraction or orientation. It’s from how you’re treated, what happens, and how it makes you feel. It’s a matter of the individual relationships that you form, and the patterns and associations and expectations that you take from your experiences. And those specific dynamics—about what feels right and wrong and good and bad and healthy and harmful and how it affects you and changes your ideas about yourself and others and the world that you live in—those are based in that ideological coding that you carry around with you, that gender in part serves to express.

With that ideology of self in mind, when you’re expected to act in ways that feel wrong to you, and due to whatever power dynamics you feel no real option to refuse or negotiate, that constitutes a violation. Whether by direct threat or unspecific fear, consent can’t be compelled. And for me—from the gender dynamics at play, the expectations put on me, the threat of punishment either expressed or implied or readily tacitly understood—sex was a horror show. Because I was not who I was told. And the person who I wasn’t, carried certain narrow expectations, for how they should act, what they should want, none of which were negotiable. If I didn’t want those things, I was lying or I had some other agenda, and it didn’t matter because that was my responsibility.

More and more I understand how my evidently hard-coded sexual roles and interests are interwoven with my gender—with my femininity, my sense of myself as a girl; with my relationship with myself; with what kind of a person I want to be, with how I want to relate to other people. As far as roles go, how much of my being 100% bottom can be triangulated with my asexuality and how much to my ideas about power and fairness and truth and sincerity and trust and openness, I don’t know. I just know I hate to impose myself onto others, and that I spend all of my time taking in others’ worlds. In essence I am made not to assert but to receive.

For me there is a natural and kind of obvious line between the way I feel comfortable communicating sexually to the way I feel comfortable communicating in any other way. All of this is an expression of my sense of self—which by that definition above is an active process, tied to my ideals.

Which is not to say that for another person femininity or being some kind of female is this deferential mode of being. I’m just talking about Azure here. My gender is my own. My ideals are a part of me in particular. This is how all of this ties together for me, as this coherent whole.

Likewise my whole overwhelming, if you will pardon me, thirst for cock—it’s always been there, basically since I became aware of sex at all. It’s a part of me, whether I’ve acknowledged it or not. And—well, it’s both complicated and not at all really. Sometimes one just has a special craving. But a big part of that craving is again just my whole concept of myself, in relation to myself and in relation to others and in relation to the world. It’s rooted in my mode of interacting with things, in how I am inclined to interface. To be receptive is, like, the basic thing about me. If we’re talking sex, then I’m gonna want to take things in, accept them. So to me a fascination with this particular structure… well, it just naturally feels like it follows everything else that makes Azure Azure.

So to the extent that sex interests me at all, I have… favorites. And it’s all part of this same system, the best I can tell—this “correct” way of relating to others. A monkey wrench in all this is my equally ideological tendency toward panness, for most of the exact same reasons, and all the tricky business with gender and anatomy and so on. (I mean, genitals aren’t gendered. As a girl with a dick of her own, it’s difficult not to be sensitive to the complications here.)

Of course in practical terms I’m aroace and I’m never gonna actually pursue a sexual relationship with anyone in real life. All this is a thought experiment more than anything; it’ll never affect anyone outside of my head. And yet it all does lean into some of the historical trauma that I associate with sex—with the dynamics that have felt so wrong, and how they relate to my concept of who I am as a person. And so, abstract as it may be, this business can’t help getting a little messy as a result.

I’ve only had two actual sexual partners. Depending on how we define things, I might have had… I don’t know, a few more romantic partners beyond them. Things were often weird, what with that ace/allo misalignment. Their ideas and mine never quite lined up. However you count, one common factor is that they were all cis women—which, you know, sure. Fine. Cool. Though that homogeneity feels a bit… off, considering all the things about me.

The other common factor is that I never went looking for any of this. Generally they all pursed me, and normalized themselves as a part of my life until I started to think of them as friends, then intensely close friends. From there, any romantic or sexual development was always a change of terms. Suddenly I’d have this choice: either to lose this friend I was getting to rely on so much emotionally, or to make this compromise, step outside of my comfort zone, and accommodate these new expectations. And then, to keep accommodating. Keep playing along, to make them happy.

An ultimatum is not a good start for any stable relationship, but that’s the only experience I’ve known. Sometimes it was more pointed than others. Sometimes more was at stake. It’s always been coercion, though. And built into that coercion was this demand that I perform this alien role.

And, I was awful at it. I didn’t want to do it. I felt miserable. I felt like I was betraying myself. I felt like I was doing something ethically wrong somehow.

This is a little hard to find the right words to express the way that I mean to. My experience has been narrow, and it’s been entirely focused on my sorest pressure point, and it has really really sucked. As a girl, 100% of my association with sex and romance has been of other girls pressuring me to pretend I was a boy and punishing me when I failed to do it correctly. And that’s just. Uh. There is nothing good about any of that. Beyond girls generally being awesome of course. And it creates these unfortunate associations for me.

It’s like. In a scenario where in fact I were not aroace down to my teeth, I would say, yeah, great, let’s have a balance of everybody. Keeping in mind who I am and the dynamics that I need to be healthy, let’s get in some men, some women, some enbies, cis, trans, whatever. Anyone who’s cool and kind. I’m polyam, even. Party on. Then with that kind of a broad net established, one can narrow down special interests and favorite parts and dynamics, and it doesn’t really matter because everyone is different and people are just people and one will appreciate something new with every individual.

But like. I never got a cock in there, y’know.

Not only did I never actually get the kind of dynamic that I’m most specifically—though not exclusively!—wired to favor. Every relationship was also another riff on the same sucky dynamic that served to deny my humanity, to work against my sense of self, in service of someone else’s whim.

It’s frustrating on a certain level, as I’m never going back to that well again. I know myself well enough now that I’m not going to be in another sexual or romantic situation. I know this isn’t for me. So what I’m left with is that the entirety of my experience is defined by this trauma—and by never once getting what means the most to me. Like, the energy balance I need to feel well, I never got it and I never will. That’s not an experience I’m going to ever have.

And, you know. That’s fine, in the sense that I know this isn’t a part of my life. The future is more important than the past, and I have a good handle on that. It’s just that on some level it seems like a shame, and to be real it’s kind of annoying, that in that whole… er, brief novella that is now closed, I never got a chance to relate to anyone on my own terms, as a girl, in a way that felt healthy and enriching to me.

No one has ever treated me like me. And what they wanted from me, I couldn’t give them. Because I wasn’t that person. And it hurt. And made me frankly want to die.

Most of that is just, yeah, the people who’ve macked on me against my wishes have, surprise surprise, been awful people. But gender, it’s not an insignificant part of that.

I’m a girl, dammit. Of some kind, anyway.

And you know. Hypothetically I like girls too, it’s fine. But, just—even then it would be different if they’d allowed me to be myself. But they didn’t. They made up their own minds.

I was only ever a toy. And a broken one, because I never worked the way they assumed I was meant to. And it was always my fault, for failing to fit that mold.

And it sucked.

It just sucked.

And it’s over now. And I won’t have to worry about it again.

But the suck stays with me.

Incubation

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Well gee whiz, I sure did have horny dreams last night. And they sure did reflect my last couple years of firmware upgrades. I have had sexual dreams before, and I have increasingly been myself in my dreams. This whole situation was a bit, uh, new though.

So much cock. Gee willickers.

When I said I was doing progesterone mostly for the brain stuff, this isn’t exactly what I meant.

Is is kind of getting ridiculous at this point. If you will pardon me in my own space here, since starting progesterone I basically just want to suck all the cocks all the time. For weeks now it’s never not on my mind. And it’s so present and palpable in the way my senses and my headspace work—every bit of it. Taste, smell, warmth, texture, pressure. It’s so real. And it’s like a gum-chewing habit. It’s always there. Always on the verge. Like I am continuously primed.

There are other places to put a penis, yes, and those are all engrossing as well—but those moments come and go. This specific buzz never seems to dim, whether awake or asleep. In my actual literal dreams now, there they all are. And there I am, as me. And just one offering after the other, almost nonchalantly, almost inevitably, it’s just what I do. Almost like a handshake.

I kind of feel like my brain is melting a little. I’ve never felt a thing like this, and it just never seems to turn off anymore. If I didn’t know myself as well as I do, if I had an ounce of impulsivity, this could be a real problem. It’s like, beyond an urge. More of a mania.

There are worse things to drive a girl insane. This is basically positive I guess. It’s a good feeling. But god is it distracting. It’s just—God, I, uh. Again I guess it’s good that I understand myself fairly well now, and that I am almost a complete shut-in. Like, if I had an impulsive synapse in my brain, and were even a little more confused than I am about what I really wanted, I might be making some bad decisions these days. There is a part of me that is a little permanently insane here, it seems.

I mean, I guess I might as well bask. No shame in being who I am. No good in denying. It’s just, this has become constant and overwhelming. Not entirely sure what to do with all this energy. But I guess it will find its outlet somewhere. There is certainly some creative work I could undertake here.

Of course the feelings behind the urge are nothing new, really. What’s new is them making sense to me, and my choosing not to push them down into the unthinkable zone. As I understand me now, shame does me no favors. I’m just me. I’m wired the way I’m wired.

I remember feeling like this as far back as maybe 13, 14. As soon as I could entertain any detailed thought of sex. I just couldn’t cope with the things my brain dealt me. People were already accusing me of stuff, in confused bits and pieces—of being some funhouse mirror of who it turns out I am. The thoughts gave me a kind of panic, a sense my brain was terrifyingly out of control. I was like, “This is not helping me here. Can we just not, please?”

But, well, Well that’s the thing. Who I am isn’t a thing to be controlled. It’s not possible to do, and trying can only cause damage. So, one leans into the curve.

Like many people I am a girl who loves cock… at least in the abstract. Which makes sense, and is fine and normal and generally positive. And I guess there’s still this novelty in being open with myself and letting my feelings just do what they need to without judgment. But also, I am hormonal as shit here, and a little bit insane from the rush. And it’s kind of—

a lot

—to figure out what to do with.

Neutral and human and healthy as it may be, this thing that my head insists on doing these days, it is not a thing that most people want to hear about. Reasonably enough! When I do bring it up, it’s most often as a punchline, with mind to how inappropriate it is to spring without warning. Because this is my level of humor, somehow.

(Penis.)

I’m not even sure what there is to say that’s constructive beyond a point. Beyond just acknowledging how I’m feeling, affirming that it’s cool, that this is just how I’m built and these things are a part of who I am. Which, yes, I feel does need a degree of ongoing reinforcement. The person I am is amazing, and I love her, but there’s gonna be some friction from the four decades of garbage I was fed.

I just want to assert the pieces of who I am, whenever they present themselves to me, whenever they hand me a challenge. Each one of these segments, it comes in all fragile and vulnerable, and there’s this implied question—I’m gonna accept this, right? I’m gonna embrace it. The more I acknowledge it, the more normal it becomes, letting that wound finally heal over. And I don’t want to hide it.

Inappropriate humor aside, I’m not in this to make people uncomfortable. But sometimes I just gotta stress a thing. When I really feel I shouldn’t be ashamed. When I want to be clear about who I am and what my own boundaries are.

Sexuality is a weird thing for Azure. I still don’t really understand what makes me tick, or why. I have been making a lot of progress, but there are these constant surprises. It’s an alien zone of my humanity, that I’m not used to giving any careful or enthusiastic thought. It’s this big weird void, that is kind of overwhelming me to acknowledge at all—to admit that as a real person I have this dimension, and that its dynamics are both natural and unique to me. And as a part of me, those dynamics are important to develop a functional relationship with, wherever they may carry me. I can’t force them. I can only listen and accept the reality.

So anyway. This is gonna be nuts for a while. It ain’t going away. It’s not going to be a primary topic, if for nothing other than my bafflement at finding words for any of this material, but I need to respect Azure here. And she is uh… well, this appears to be where she needs and happens to be right now.

If you’re here, you love me. You’ll be fine. We’re all learning to adapt.

The Tools to Tell

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So far as I know, there was never a time that I didn’t prefer to be a girl. I mean, who wouldn’t; it’s so obviously better. Yes, the world is shitty and horrible in reply. But existentially, it’s so absurdly stacked that it never seemed fair. Why couldn’t that be me? The gender I was given sucked so much. The mind reels at how life might have been for me, had I ever been given a choice—been told even in passing that gender was a thing that came from inside you, and no one had the right to say you were wrong. That other people didn’t get to tell you who you are, and anything they hand you is only a suggestion.

Like, just to have that concept of autonomy in my head, to understand I didn’t need to accept what I was told, that I was not obliged to play along. That there was no wrong answer, except what didn’t feel right to me. Just given that basic support, there wouldn’t ever have been a question. If who I am really is up to me, then oh my God. Well yeah, duh. How is this a question, then? No takeback. Forever. Get me out of this bullshit. Please.

I just—I never got that message. I never knew that I could just choose to be the person I wanted, and that by virtue of wanting that and making that choice, that person would then be who I was. That I wasn’t doomed by other people’s impossible expectations. That I could just say no. Set a boundary. That I didn’t need permission to be a human being.

Nobody ever once told me that, until right around when I turned 40. Nobody told me that if I wanted to be someone, I probably already was that person. And all I had to do was embrace it. That was the biggest, most alarming reality shift in my life. For four decades, I had never been permitted to be fully human. In consequence, I never was.

We really need to do better at giving people options when they’re young. Just letting them know what is possible, what is allowed without being bad or letting anyone down; give them choices for what they can be and do if they want, and for what no one else ever, under any circumstance, has the right to dictate to them.

Not letting people make up their own minds about themselves—it’s fucking abuse, is what it is.

You hear this canned story about trans people always knowing who they were even when people told them different, and though I’m sure it’s true for some—for those with a certain personality or a healthy home environment—it feels like inspiration porn for the cises, to me. Some kind of a bottled feel-good narrative about the human spirit that doesn’t force them to question their belief in the system. I’m shy and nervous and I want to be good. I’ll do almost anything to avoid causing problems. I never had the benefit of certainty, because I never got that message, that I even had the right to be myself. What I knew instead was unending melancholy and frustration and surprise every fucking day when I woke up and I somehow had not reached the end. I did not understand the point of it all. Why was I even alive?

If only someone had talked to me. If only they had asked. Ever, once. My entire fucking life.

I was never not trans. I just.

I didn’t know that I could be a real person.

Grace Notes

  • Reading time:6 mins read

So after a stuttering indecision as to whether we’d actually do spring this year, it seems we’ve gone straight to summer. And, well. Fuck. But okay, fine. Normally summer is a special kind of a hell for someone so wan and brittle and northerly inclined. But, we’ve now been on HRT for close to 16 months. All that dissociation I lived with for 40-years began to clear up last August. This is the first full summer in my life where I actually like my body.

If I have to take my clothes off to make it to fall, for once I think I can handle that.

Dumping a fuckin Mariana trench of shame from my checksum has all these unexpected perks. I got nothing to hide anymore. Certainly not from myself. Instead of suffering the heat, I get to just shrug off the shrouds and enjoy the minimalism in a way unavailable to me at any other time of year—not without getting me in a shiver.

I mean I absolutely cannot fucking tolerate hot weather. Even moderately warm makes my brain short circuit. Give me 65 degrees and I’m a peach. But until now, even the simplest and most obvious coping strategies were off the table. The dysphoria and the shame were that much worse than the heat stroke or whatever. Now that I’m awake, and I know who I am, and that who I am and I have this whole positive relationship here, suddenly I have these options for dealing with the most basic things.

I was unable to take care of myself when I was wired up so that acknowledging any part of me sent me into an anxiety attack. But now it’s kinda, you make your choices. It’s like how I can’t seem to leave the house without unwanted attention these days—which sucks, but you know what sucks more? Not being myself. Without me, I’ve got nothing. I’ll take the creepos if it means that life is worth living, and I’ll do what I need to cope with the heat now that perceiving myself is no longer the greater threat.

I mean, this is maybe good actually. A sort of a win-win at least within the scope of what I can control. I will never love summer, but the methods now available to handle it are—you know. I like me. So it’s just a prompt to engage myself in a different way. Which is fine.

So if it’s gotta be a tits-out summer, that’s what it is. We adapt to circumstance. Because we can do that now. And we know we’ll be gorgeous any way we approach it, haha

With all this flesh laid bare around me, I’m reminded of all these weird little issues with my body, that I guess most people have. There’s no such thing as a “normal” person, right? That ain’t how averages work. Every body is an individual, with its independent quirks, that just tend to fall along various kinds of patterns. Being the way we are, with the relationship we do to this gated culture with its extremely prescriptive sense of propriety over a sense of reality that does not fully apply to the observable world, we all have these little things we feel are wrong with us, that make us uneasy.

I think most of us cope with some kind of dysmorphia on some level, usually unprocessed. Even if we manage to ignore the wash of these broad cultural standards in regard to body and gender ideals and calls to be sexy, and appealing, and thin, and fit—whatever mythology might be in vogue right now, there’s always this little shit where we feel like we’re all alone. For me my toes are strange. I’ve got these birth marks that have always made me uneasy. There’s this odd cartilage bump on my sternum (now more than obscured by breast tissue, so hey!). You have your own stuff that feels wrong, or makes you uneasy to focus on. Everyone probably does.

Most of these features, I’m coming to accept. Enough of the broad sketch of me is starting to fill out and take a shape that no longer causes me anxiety and that I actively enjoy inhabiting—so the little quirks? They’re not so important, so long as that foundation is solid. They’re just accents.

Like, medically I guess this is anything but uncommon, but I have a mild sort of supernumerary nipple thing going on. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you probably wouldn’t think twice. At a glance it just kinda seems like, huh, got a few moles there, running down the “milk lines.” I guess this is a thing in like one out of a few hundred people. And it’s not super pronounced with me. But when you’re in a place where everything about you feels disgusting, the basic shape of you feels wrong and you can’t explain why, these eccentricities really leap out.

Now that I’ve got, let’s be honest, these pretty big tits here, and the general contour and topography of my torso are so different from that gaunt straight pasty flat plain of the past, this small stuff just won’t stick out the way that it used to. The eye will tend to be drawn elsewhere. And the overall shape of things is pleasing.

This kind of deemphasis, it’s happening all over. Wherever a strange little thing felt like this massive beacon, inviting active scrutiny, now it’s overshadowed by a much more interesting and welcome topography. With all the changes, it’s just becoming so much easier to accept the whole package, including the things that I can’t easily change.

I mean none of these features were ever really flaws, because a flaw implies a perfection that doesn’t actually exist. Bodies are just different. Every one of them. That doesn’t make them unhealthy or wrong; that’s how we work. Everyone’s got some kinda thing that sets them apart, because of course they do. The stray pieces are just accent marks of my individuality.

All this feels obvious to say, but the point is that it’s getting easier for me to accept these eccentricities. It’s easier when they’re not the only parts of my body that do any work speaking to me. It’s easier when I barely even remember they’re there most of the time, so they when I do clock them they become grace notes. Little hints of discord, adding interest to a beautiful harmony.

Everything about life is so much easier when you like yourself on a basic level. There’s always something to go back to. I’m always gonna be me. Azure ain’t going nowhere. From up here, everything else looks that much smaller.

The Potential to Jazz

  • Reading time:5 mins read

It’s just astounding how much more sense everything makes when I know who I am. Just the whole world. Every thought I have ever had. Every problem I’ve faced. The way I want to talk to people. The way I understand that things work. There’s this universal sort of clarity now.

These last few months I keep getting comments on this striking confidence that people see in me. And I don’t know about that, but there is a clarity that I’ve never known. I’m not even sure I know what confidence is, but so much uncertainty seems to have abruptly fallen away.

And where I’m no longer uncertain, things just are the way they are. I’m autistic, yo. If a thing is true, I accept it as true and it doesn’t occur to me to mess around. I’m not sure I even know the social codes around playing coy with stuff that’s evident to me. Why lie?

I’m still this dysfunctional bundle of nerves and everything scares me, and I don’t know how to do the most basic things—and even if I do know, I’m not well enough to do them most of the time. But, like. For once I know who I am. And I get why the problems I have are my problems. And there’s so much that now I know I don’t have to worry about anymore—like, it turns out that dynamic doesn’t actually apply to me. It’s someone else’s garbage; why should I care? Okay, call me a “little gothic steam-punk diva,” sure. But this isn’t a front. I’m not making some kind of a statement. This is just me being comfortable for once.

And yet, well, it seems like me no longer being terrified and confused, and just existing in a way that makes me feel like I’m finally alive, is seen as this audacious act. Is it really that astonishing for me not to hate myself? I mean, I’ve done that. It sucks. I didn’t deserve it. Moving on.

I just find it so amazing to be me. I’ve never known this kind of a feeling. I’ve never known the security of a love like this. I’ve never felt like anyone has cared about me in the way I’ve begun to discover in myself.

I’ve never been this grounded in a sense of truth. It all connects.

I don’t know how, but I want to share this. I think I always have, what fragments I’ve been able to scrape together despite the undertow I’ve been thrashing against most of my life. Truth and love are kind of the same thing to my mind. Intimacy and sincerity. All these fragments; all these dumb articles over all these years. Every little fascination in every work of expression. Every dumb little thread on social media. Every meaningful conversation. It’s all a piecework. Trying to condense, organize, pass on what love I can scavenge.

I feel like I’ve always kept so little of that for myself. Like I didn’t deserve any of it. The best I could do was filter it, annotate it, and hand it off to people who would likely still be alive tomorrow and maybe could use the love for something better than I would ever know.

And that’s always important. But, there’s also truth in me. I just never got to see it. And oh God, it just about overwhelms me. I not only deserve it; I’m a part of it. Like, the truth is the substance of my very being, and it’s so amazing. And it all ties in with all I’ve seen.

And I just.

I want other people to know this. Not necessarily to know me, because whatever. But to know this dynamic in themselves. To build their own relationships to the truth. To everything that ties us together. To know this kind of a love. And for them in turn to pass it on.

How else are we ever going to survive?

I feel like, it’s worth being alive if being alive means being honest. And I don’t know how to not do that, and also to keep going. And I feel like this is the most important thing in the world; the thing I’ve always been building toward.

Is that confidence? I don’t know. That word sounds like some kind of a social game. Some power thing. I don’t really get that nonsense. Truth is truth. It is what it is. The hard thing is just finding it. Once you do, it is a force of its own. I don’t see what my feelings have to do with it.

Anyway. Tomorrow I get to download some more alien proteins. Gimme a couple weeks and I’ll be ready to jazz.

…

Or more likely, to continue to sit in my apartment, doing next to nothing as usual. But, I will possess a renewed—and possibly newly informed—potential to jazz.

So hey.

Pivot Points

  • Reading time:9 mins read

On prior form it may take a couple weeks to see how the second laser session pans out, but even 48 hours later I can see some funny results like a clean circle in the midst of a darker area on my chin, leaving a sort of crust around the fringe. I can assemble the story easily here; where she put down the laser, lost her place, moved on.

The face thing, it’s striking for me. It’s not just the decades of intense dysphoria around the hair, or the general sense of moving on in the transition, though all of that is important. It’s that taking action to repair this damage also represents a sort of qualitative shift in my body autonomy. I have of course taken many steps for myself, most significantly getting on HRT some 15 months ago. But there’s a directness here that feels different.

HRT, I took mostly for the mental, emotional, health benefits. I knew that physical changes were possible, some were even probable, but I wasn’t planning that far ahead; didn’t dare to hope; didn’t fully know what to think, even. And I knew that I was old; knew not to expect anything. This whole process is one step at a time; focus on the moment, and accept what may come.

The intervention sure has brought some changes, gee whiz, but that’s been less an active process on my end than my body doing its thing, responding in the way it feels best to the basic attention that I’m finally giving it. The consequences to my just taking care of myself are removed enough to be almost incidental. Even the dramatic, permanent changes are just kinda things that happened on their own, because they wanted to inevitably happen. All I did was hold the door open.

Even my boobs, which are so very eager to exist, I didn’t know to anticipate or put any kind of thought into. They’ve now become so central to my identity—this sort of symbol of my freedom and awakening, this clear irreversible change that my body decided it wanted to make, when allowed to make that choice; this indicator of who I really am. But like everything else, they were just a side effect. I didn’t even know what to want, and my body made its own decisions. All these biological changes are just me, growing, healing. What happens is what must happen.

The face, though—yes it’s also a kind of medical care, also about repairing damage. But by comparison, this is a direct, conscious operation. I’ve made a choice to actively change my body. Superficial as it may be, this also is irreversible. That’s the point. There’s no undoing this action, no going back. And yet, here I am. Doing it.

When this procedure is done, no one will ever hold that control over me again. Already after two sessions I’ve ruined this unwanted part of me that I’d so long been told I had no right to touch—and the only way out is through. There’s no salvaging this. I might as well finish burning it off now. Finally I have taken control of my life, drawn my own boundaries. This body is my own. It’s a part of me. I’m a real person. I get to say what happens to me now, same as anyone else.

To that end, since last August, maybe September, I’ve been dancing around the question of piercings. We know this. I’ve talked about it. I never understood the practice before; why people would do such a thing. But as soon as I began to wake up, and realize that I was real, my head came full of all these questions, all this potential. Who was I? What was appropriate? What did I have the right to do with myself? And why would I want that?

Turns out it’s about making a claim on yourself. One of many ways, but an ancient, relatively harmless, and extremely normalized one. With that, suddenly it make a kind of sense—so I kind of put a pin in it (as it were), realizing that while I was doing this reclaiming, that was a sudden option. A novel one, possibly an exciting one. On the edge of becoming a fascination.

Since then my mind has kept going back, so it feels less a possibility than an inevitability I’ll get at least my ears pierced, and probably sooner than later. It’s just a matter of when. The concept is starting to thrill me. This time, this choice, it’s not even about healing. I’m not doing necessary maintenance. There is no medical need to poke holes in my ears. For once, this claim is 100% elective. This time it’s about me. It’s about what I want for myself. About who I am. About being allowed, allowing myself, to make that kind of a decision. For maybe the first time in my life.

After that second laser session, this kind of euphoria swirled in my head for about 24 hours. The fact that I came back, that the first session wasn’t a fluke—I was committed to this thing. I was really doing it. I had this kind of a power over my life. Over my own body. On the evidence of this experience, I have the ability to enact change, to make decisions, to cause things happen to me. So the next day, I looked into that tattoo parlor that my therapist had recommended me.

From the look of things, this is actually one of the most renowned shops in the area; almost universal praise—and yes they do piercings, of course. She told me of their professionalism, how they’re the go-to for all the queers, etc., and from the look of things, yeah, on both counts. It’s always a kick when local places rock a big “LGBT+ Friendly” tag front and center. Which shouldn’t be a surprise here on the basis of what I was told. I just didn’t realize what a big deal this place seems to be, for its particular field.

No prices online, but how much can a simple piercing be? Nothing fancy. At least to start. I still need to resolve a few things in my brain, puzzle out a few weird angles that still bother me. But there it is, when I’m ready. Sometime this summer, maybe?

Step by step, it’s like—it’s not that I’m getting myself back. I never had myself before. I always existed for someone else’s benefit. (Or their burden, depending on how they felt at the time.) This whole concept of autonomy, I’m figuring it out from nothing. It’s so new to be, and so strange and kind of surreal. What kind of dream logic is this? How can this be possible? But I’m getting over this terror of failing to keep myself mint-in-box, at the risk of being discarded as worthless. Finally breaking that seal, you know.

Nobody owns me now. I’m all on my own. I guess I’m theoretically an adult, whatever that means. So this whole process, it’s not like it’s random rebellion or anything. I mean yeah I have the hormones of a teenage girl, and my body is going through all these wild changes. But this isn’t just a reaction against crappy circumstances. This is me, learning to make decisions about myself. And goddamn, such a simple thing is such a wild reorientation of my whole relationship to life. To start to accept that I can, and have the right to, make these decisions.

It’s almost too much, you know. This floodgate. This realization of what it means to be my own person, living for my own sake rather than exclusively for someone else. To choose who I want to be, what is right for my health, not for someone else’s comfort. To follow the things that I enjoy. To understand that I have the right to enjoy things, to want things for myself. That I can just do things that make me happy in some way. That happiness is a thing worth looking into at all. That I don’t have to apologize for any of this.

Each one of these decisions I make, to another person they might be mundane. But to me they’re these mind-shattering pivot points, that challenge every bit of toxic, abusive, neglectful garbage that’s been put on me for my entire life. And each one makes the next choice a little easier. If I want it, then yes, I can do that too.

Does Azure even want earrings? Well. Maybe. I mean. Yes? I think she might. They can be pretty. We are starting to enjoy our jewelry, and this is unexplored turf. Our ears are shaped a little strangely, and I’m still not sure the best way to handle things. There are some considerations, a few things that give me pause. But the point is, this is our decision to make. No one else gets a word in. Ever.

For all the seething and spittle I’ve absorbed about how stupid and irresponsible it is, that I have taken so unfortunately to heart, this is a perfectly normal thing, that people do all the time. And it’s not that big a deal, cosmically speaking. It will never make the world explode. It will never hurt another person. I am a real person. I get to make choices. And this is a choice.

We can explore things. We can figure out life. We can figure out us.

I just want to be me, whoever that is. I just want to be her. We just want to be alive. We’ve never been allowed that before. And now we’re starting to get it. It’s becoming clearer why people put so much value in living. It’s different when you actually want to be here.

So. One thing at a time. I’ve got so much garbage I’m dealing with, right now. And I’m not even fully vaxxed yet. And the year is still young.

But I’m starting to get a grip. Bit by bit.

Just let me be alive.

Feminine Phase

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So we have now, at least in principle, completed our trifecta of girl pills. The insurance is another issue, but we’re working on that. In the moment, my latest follow-up went smoothly—if a little strangely. Everyone I met was different from before. New, kinda rad physician (don’t know offhand if she’s a doctor or NP or what), unfamiliar nurses. Different procedures, different room. But it was all straightforward and so supportive: just walk in, say that things are great, ask for what I want, and get it. No hitches at all! I brought it up to her and she nodded and was like, “Uh-huh! Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we usually want to wait until about where you are now. So, you know how this works? You do? Okay.”

The practitioner was complimenting me on how reliably boring my bloodwork is. It’s always the same, she said; nothing of any note with general body stuff. Hormones remain in ideal range. If I feel fine, then there’s nothing to talk about. The new pills complicate things a little, otherwise she wouldn’t even have me come back in person for a while. But with the change, we’re following up in another three months as usual.

August again, already. Cripes, 18 months!

It only comes in 100mg or 200mg capsules, I’m told. The starting dose is 100; the max is 400. So on prior art, I’m guessing I’ll be gradually stepped up over the next year, such that on my second “birthday” I’m likely to land on 400mg. Yet another landmark for next February. This will be a big day.

On the way back I picked up some groceries across the way, then the bus driver took a second to say hi, and complimented me on my “chain”—he gestured to his neck. Which was nice. Some non-creepy random affirmation, for once. Dude seemed all right; I later saw him chatting to someone else. Just an amiable fella. However he also did not stop when requested, and drove like four blocks further. Which uh was less than wonderful. But still, girl got so much cheese. It’s nuts.

So things were at a high—and then next day, reality hit. The prescription was showing up strangely online, and I had to call and talk to the pharmacist. I did so (waiting on hold for 15 minutes), and the fella was like, “Um, I’ve never seen this before, but it says your insurance won’t cover this for males…” I told him that, erm, I was transgender actually and that this was kinda the whole point, and he was like, yeah, this was weird. It didn’t seem right. He said I should call my insurance and see if I could get an override or something, because this was super irregular as a policy.

So I called my insurance; after 10 minutes of infuriating menus, the rep I got was flabbergasted. She also had never seen such a thing—and there was nothing in the system to account for it, for her to know what to do. So she called her supervisor. Her supervisor was equally stunned. Maybe it’s a prior auth issue, he ventured; I should contact my provider and have them request a prior auth; see what happens with that.

So, fuck. Fine. Next I called Planned Parenthood—and, as it happened, got a trans on the other end! I explained the situation and she was all, WTF! She had just started progesterone herself, and also had never seen a thing like this. She said they’ll work on this for me, and call me when it’s sorted out.

In summary: health care. Even under the best conditions, we now must navigate health care while trans.

Anyway the pharmacy has the pills in stock. They’re perfectly ready to fill this. They just need the insurance to say okay—and it’s unclear why they’re not, because no one has ever seen them not, in regard to this medication, for this reason before. But Planned Parenthood is good, and is gearing to fight for me. So I just have to trust this will work out fine. It’s just weird, and may take an extra few days.

I am sure I will be alive in a few days. This will be the smallest of bumps. And I am encouraged by how very baffled and sort of upset everyone has been on my behalf.

I’ve said this before, but I feel like people have been a lot kinder to me since I’ve come out than they ever were to my precursor. I imagine that living in New York helps this a bit. But in general people do seem to genuinely want to help me now, to an extent that surprises me every time. Why this is, I don’t really know. But there’s this sort of a protective tone, in the space where I’m used to getting suspicion and scorn and dismissal. I’m used to being so alone, being brushed off no matter what I’m dealing with.

And, sure, okay. I will accept being treated like a person. This is good. Confusing, but I sure will not complain.

Anyway, this is just a nuisance. The progesterone is happening, and I’ll have it in a few days probably, and I am so excited. Like, I’ve got nothing left to do with my estrogen levels, and my T levels—which ideally I should be keeping under 100, are at uh, nine, last I saw. So this is the last thread. Supplemental girl juice, adding the art to the rough architecture hewn by the estrogen. We’ll see how this it goes, but transfeminine legends well precede it.

(Of its indicated effects, I sure could use some mood stabilization, cripes.)

The nature of progesterone speaks to what is I guess my year-two mission: refinement. Next February is gonna be so good. My face stuff should long be done. I’ll be up to final dose on everything. My ID issues will probably all be resolved. At least for the short term, there will be nothing really left to do except to keep going. Even as changes will likely keep on churning for a few years yet, the actual transitional phase of transition will be done. I’ll have the basic elements of me all checked off and can move on to figuring out how to just live.

I have so many frickin drugs now. Goddamn. Fixing me up. Making me who I need to be. It’s all good. I’m proud of myself, tending to my needs after a lifetime of neglect.

You know how when you meet someone special you’ll have this sense of, if only we could have met years back; we’ve missed so much time together? That is kinda what gender euphoria can be like sometimes—this sort of, gosh, what could have been, had I met myself 25 years ago? Appreciating the moment, looking forward to the future, while dreaming idly of the past you were denied. What would it have been like?

It’s not so much lament as it’s a matter of wanting more. It’s about having trouble quite believing that relationship wasn’t always there, because it’s so obviously right and true and natural that it’s hard accept a life without me. Wanting to fix the history I know, so that it makes a sense I can accept in light of the present.

I can hardly believe I’m on progesterone now. Two years ago I was like, clearly I’m not cis. I didn’t know what I was, beyond that I’ve never been what they tell me. That the gender I was handed had never worked, never fit; it grossed me out, made me not want to be alive. But I didn’t really get gender, had never had a chance to develop my own relationship to it, and was reluctant to commit to any conclusions.

I was so nervous. Clearly I was a kind of non-binary. Beyond that? Well. I had… thoughts, feelings. Were they real? Were they reasonable? Was I just confused? Did I dare own up to them? How much sense did any of this jumble really make? Did I even understand it properly? There was so much, I hardly knew how to chip away.

For an age it was just little, cautious gestures. One by one. Step by step. Stitch by stitch. Does this feel right? Does it hold together? Does it follow from what I know to be true? Is this leading in a direction that I like? Yes? To all of that? Is it secure? Is it gonna hold? Okay, then. What’s next?

And at the same time, every bit of femininity that I embraced, I had to reconcile it with this fundamental disagreement with the concept of a gender binary. What was I even doing? Why was I doing it? Was it for the right reasons? Was it truly coming from inside me? What did it all mean? I had no goddamned clue. Just grasping in the dark.

I had these idealized notions, but they were like some pipe dream, surely just beyond my grasp. Surely it was a folly. Surely that could never be me. Surely I wasn’t that much trans. Surely it was way too late. Surely I’d never have the support. Other people can do things. I’m not other people. I’m just me. I don’t have any options in life. I’m not allowed happiness. Whatever that even is. Anything good is a forever what-if.

But, well, I kept asking: okay, but, what if? Just, one small if at a time. Gnawing on the question. Refusing to move on until I got an answer that made sense. Take another bit. How did it feel? Did I die? Was it a mistake? No? So—one more nibble, then?

I mean, we make our own gender. We figure out our own ideas about ourselves. I kinda knew I was some kind of transfeminine, from the moment I realized I could be trans; that all I needed to be trans was to want it to be true. I just, I couldn’t allow myself to think more than a yard in front of me. It was too much. I had too many obstacles, and I cannot multitask.

Ultimately I am just Azure. I’m not quite a woman; that doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe someday it will. Maybe if I ever grow up? I can’t know yet. But I am exactly the kind of a girl that I want to be. On my own terms. A person I can love.

Damage aside, I am the person whom I was always so depressed that I couldn’t be, that I wasn’t allowed to be, that I was cursed not to be. The only thing I’m lacking is a past—all those years that I lost, when I was asleep. I mean I was always in there. I’ve always existed. I’ve always been me. But this other person was steering the ship. Badly.

And God, I genuinely am this much trans, huh. Specifically, this much transfeminine. We’re not even sticking with the basic HRT; we’re going for the good stuff. And it’s the correct thing to do. For a non-binary girl, there is a heck of a lot of girl going on in here, goddamn.

I mean, gee whiz, it just keeps going. More girl, you ask? Why certainly, yes. More? Absolutely. Bring it on. Keep bringing it. This is working. This is good. This feels good. This is what it’s like to actually feel good. This is what it means to be human.

And I am allowed. I get to define myself. I get to make the rules of me.

Two years ago I was aiming at androgynous. Now I have no clue where I’m going, but it’s making me so fucking giddy. I’m so deep into the forbidden zone now there’s no way to find my way back.

It’s just that every step I make is so right. I have never been so right about anything. It’s bewildering to me. I’ve never gotten so much out of trusting myself.

It seems though I’ve had little chance to articulate or explore or come to terms with it, deep down I have a very firm idea of who I am. Or at least, I know what’s right when I come to it—and I’m not prone to wild, incautious leaps. Everything true has to be based in something more basic, right. Piece by piece, there’s a logic to how it all fits together. I can extrapolate pieces by the empty spaces.

This is me, apparently. I am whoever Azure is. Quite reasonably I think, I am who makes me feel alive. And I’m nowhere near done with me. I’ve got half a lifetime to catch up on, and another half to enjoy.

What a goddamned thing, to be alive. I had no idea what it was like.

How alive will I be a year from now? How much love will I have in me then?

Making it Up

  • Reading time:8 mins read

My face has changed so much in just the last year. It’s so gradual it’s been hard to tell day-to-day, but yikes. Similarities aside it’s not clear to my eyes that it’s the same person. There is of course the feminization; I feel like my naked face is androgynous as hell right now, not clearly masculine or feminine, but whee is it a leap from last May. But also, I look much younger. Significantly so. I swear, like a decade or so.

And then there are the eyes. People have mentioned this to me, but God, even last May, even three months into HRT, they were so haunted and empty. There was nobody there. And whatever husk of a person there was, they looked like they were bracing to be hit at any moment. Whereas—well, I still obviously have all these problems, right, but as autistic-blank as my expressions will remain unless I force the issue, I can now see an animating spirit in there. Azure is actively alive, in a way that other person was not.

Of course I’m still super insecure about the facial hair, though we’re taking care of that. And there’s a lot more I’d like to see happening with the cheeks and the jawline, and so on. But gee whiz, I easily look better now without makeup now than I did then with it.

Makeup is such a word, isn’t it. I mean obviously all our notions of gender presentation are exaggerated, made-up nonsense. Even if you go with a binary model of sex, people really aren’t that dimorphic. Most people are kind of androgynous if they don’t take the time to build up and decorate themselves and behave and hold themselves certain ways. The differences are so slight and individual, and easily nudged. Culturally we lean into them to try to make them big, to set the genders apart and clearly mark out who lives in what camp, lest we make an error and mess up our power structure somehow.

Gender as we know it is so unnatural and difficult to navigate, even for cis people. You can find all these stories of cis men who freak out when they see cis women in the morning with their makeup off and they just look like people. The men feel lied to and start to wonder if the women are even really women. It’s so weird. It’s like we all mythologize ourselves and the other and grow upset at every piece of evidence that the stories don’t fully map to reality.

Which isn’t to say that gender, or even sex, aren’t “real;” it’s just that it’s more helpful to think in terms of language than rational structures: here is how I choose to relate to myself, to others, to the world; and here are all the ways that I signal this kind of a relationship.

We exist in the doing. None of us is a static object. We change every day, every thought that comes into our heads, every action we take, every new memory we form. We get to highlight the features we feel important, that inform our ideology about life and how we want to live it. To be a complete person is to choose the pieces that make you up and decide what kind of a person you want to be. What you want to stand for. What you cherish. How you want to behave. How you want to treat others and to be treated in return. And all of that can change over time.

My whole life I felt this numb bottomless shame that I was forced to be a boy—seemingly with no escape. I never asked for it, never wanted it. No one ever asked my consent before bringing me into existence and telling me who and what I was, and nobody cared if I hated it. And I did more than hate it; it revolted me.

I never got the message that I had a choice. That I didn’t have to be a boy if it distressed me so much. That I was allowed to just make my own decision. I knew that trans people existed, and they fascinated me so much. I envied them. I just never made the connection. Like, they were a fact; there they were. But there I was, also apparently a fact. And I hated it, but what could I do. I was what people told me I was, and nobody told me I was trans.

I had to be good, had to do what I was told, had to carry everyone else’s shit for them that they didn’t want to carry themselves. My life was not my own; my body was not my own. I was an object in one person’s life after another—a broken object that never worked as intended. Because of course, they always got it wrong. Their map did not fit the reality of me.

I just never had that self-possession to realize I could just do things, make choices, shape my own story. I never got the message that I could just be someone else. That I could just be the person I wanted to be—that I could just be myself, and that this was not only okay but the correct thing to do.

What kind of advice would that have been, thirty years ago? “Pretending to be a boy making you want to die? Well, maybe don’t do that then. Always thought it unfair you couldn’t be a girl instead? Well, maybe that’s because you are. Give it a shot. See what happens. Neither make sense to you? Then screw em! Whatever makes you want to be alive.” We really need to work on this messaging. People don’t need permission to be themselves; that’s not for anyone to say. You don’t owe anyone your identity. You never asked to be born. You get to set the terms for who you are. You like what you’re given? Great. If not, fix it.

I am a girl because I know that I am a girl, because I want to be a girl, because I have always wanted to be a girl, and because my whole understanding of what it means to be a girl, to me, suits my views of right and good and positive, in regard to my whole place in the world. To dress in a certain way, to make myself in a certain way, to hold myself and move in a certain way, it’s arbitrary to an extent. It all serves to exaggerate slight physical features that we all have, and that can be nudged with some dedication. It’s all just signal, really.

But that’s what gender is: it’s signal. It’s role; it’s ideology. Given this common humanity, it asks, how do we want to play this? What do we want to do with this life, this body, this person, we’re given? What message do we want to put into the worlds, and affirm within ourselves? When I dress in a way that gives me joy, when I use makeup to exaggerate my features ever so slightly, bring focus to the parts I like, draw attention from the parts that don’t suit me, when I move and act the way that I do, I am reinforcing what is important and real to me.

The first person I reinforce that to is to myself. This is part of how I underline and repeat and affirm that who I am matters, that my ideas about myself are valid, that my ideas about the world are good and true and worth caring about and making real through the doing.

I am as it turns out a real person. And so I tend to the parts of what it means to be a person, to be specifically a human, that inform and reflect my principles, and I cultivate them, refining the good, the message, the relationship, the principle. I seize the affirmative. And in reifying that conversation with myself, in becoming ever more the me that I can, I serve to sort of automatically communicate with others, and with the space and the situation around me, and tell them what I consider worth caring about. And I hope that it matters to them.

If it doesn’t, well. Everyone has their own thing going on. But I know from my own conversation, the more that I knock out the truth of it, refine what works, strip out what doesn’t, that what I’ve got reflects something real and important. Something worth declaring and owning.

I am Azure because it is vitally important that I be Azure. Because now that I understand who Azure is, at least to the point where I am in the story, I recognize that Azure represents something that needs to exist in this stupid fucking world. And I am so honored to be her.

I love myself so much these days. I don’t think it’s vanity. I think it’s earnest. I think it’s based in care and in principle and in very good assessment of what matters in this life. And I hope that I can pass some of this on to others. That they can love themselves the same.

The Sound of Silence

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Some thirty years ago I messed up my big toe in taekwondo class—the final excuse for quitting, which I’d been trying to do forever. The studio smelled like feet. The mix of students was strange. I didn’t really understand what I was asked to do, and was socially weird in ways that made everyone uncomfortable.

The instructor for those classes, he did try to follow up a couple of times. There were answering machine messages that I deleted. On the basis of earlier conversations, I think he was convinced I was being sexually abused. Which I wasn’t, at that time. Not as a kid. But, well. I guess there has always been something “off” about me, right.

This is really tricky and problematic to put to words, and I apologize for how it comes off. For a large portion of my life it felt really surprising to me that I hadn’t been sexually abused as a child—to the point I kept wondering if I had repressed or forgotten something important. Like, I always felt like so much about me would make more sense if that had happened to me.

In hindsight I sort of get it now. Like, it wasn’t that exactly. But I did suffer years, decades, of abuse and neglect—much of it dealing with fundamental aspects of who and what I am, and my concept of reality. This total denial of my self, this fear of allowing me to exist. This understanding that I was dirty and broken and wrong, and shameful for even considering my humanity as an individual. That everything about me had to be hidden and controlled. That I would never be good no matter what I did; that all I could do was pretend, to do my best to please. I was brainwashed, told to doubt everything except what I was told, by people who hated who and what i was. Filled with an essential fear and disgust of myself. I was basically ready to die from the time I was 11.

Some of that was to do with neurology and general mental health. A lot, though, gender and sexuality.

So this is, like—I absolutely do not want to compare my experience to other people’s violent trauma. I’m just trying to work out why it was that I always used to feel the way that I did. And, well, I certainly dive have my own trauma—much of which had to do with sex and gender, and gaslighting about the reality that I lived. It was just a different kind of violence. A different kind of self-erasure. I didn’t have the language to actually identify what my problems were. I didn’t have the resources or the models. So that comparison was the best I had available to me: some kind of abuse; something about sex (??).

Having made that comparison, though, all I could do was brush it off, because I knew that hadn’t happened to me. Or, I was pretty sure. I spent so many years going through that same weird routine: something was obviously very wrong, but the one thing I could identify that seemed to fit, didn’t really. So I had to be making it up. It had to be nothing. But if it was nothing, why were things to obviously wrong, then? Round and round.

How much this uncertainty plays into… later problems that I experienced, I don’t know. I’m not really in a place to speak to that, or begin to wrap my head around any connection. I’m just seeing a thing to note here, and going, huh. Well. There that is. But many things set me up for trouble. Broadly, not knowing who I was—except that I was broken and I needed someone to show me how to not be bad—basically guaranteed that I would wind up in ugly situations, with people eager to take me up on that dynamic; continuing to tell me who I was, and what was wrong with me.

So much of the abuse I’ve suffered over my life, I didn’t really understand what was happening. All I knew was I was failing, in ways that felt unfair but that apparently were all my fault. And I was too miserable to really question the circumstances beyond the message that I was responsible. Without the words, without the pictures, without the connections, I had no way to step away and see the dynamics for what they were.

Silence is how abuse is possible. Limiting of information. Stopping discussion. It’s about controlling knowable reality by force of will.

I make so many mistakes. I’m wrong about many things. For all my ideals, I can be as callous and petty and careless and inconsiderate as anyone. But, like. I try to deal in truth. I do my best. Because it matters. Even when it’s inconvenient, it lights the path away from harm.

It’s just amazing how knowing the right things, having the terms to communicate or look into ideas, completely changes one’s relationship to the world. It’s so empowering to be able to describe what you see and know it to be real. To be able to assert your own experience as valid

That is I think most of why I work all this shit out in public. What good does it do just in my head, or hidden away in some obscure corner of my own? That’s what abuse expects and hopes for.

I’m not afraid. I’m not ashamed of me. And maybe I can pass a little bit of truth on.

We all need help.

The Girl I Know

  • Reading time:3 mins read

A long way to go, but I am getting more and more pleased with my lower body. The shape it’s slowly churning around to. My relationship to it. The way I occupy space and move with it. Butt, hips, thighs, abdomen. It’s all starting to make sense to me the same way my chest has been

This has I think always been on my mind. From the moment I understood I wasn’t cis, to the extent my mind went to anything physical, it was my hips, my thighs, my butt. I got into hrt for the brain and mood stuff, but if it did something down there too, I felt that would be good.

It’s just, such a thing, my body actually feeling correct and familiar to me. Like, oh, there you are.

I never recognized that other person. They felt like such an alien to me. This body, it doesn’t feel new to me, like I’m creating a thing. It’s like I’m finding a thing I lost.

I feel I can’t fully articulate how right I am starting to feel. And how not-new it feels. How it’s this relief of empirical reality validating one’s memories, sort of. Like a thing you saw on TV when you were eight that you knew you didn’t dream or make up, but no one else saw. Then one day you stumble on it, and it is precisely, eerily as you remember, and you kind of go, oh my god, I’m not insane. This is the thing I’ve been carrying around all these years. I knew it. And you can show it to people and they understand what you mean at last.

I’m not eager to show my butt on the internet, mind. Or in person. But I’m just saying.

It’s not that I am feeling pleased with this whole thing that I am working to put a certain way that I want it. It’s that my body is reverting to a shape that I already understand as me. Like all the scales are falling away, and there I am underneath. This person I have missed so dearly, so painfully, even if technically I guess we never quite met until now. They’re still alive. I did not rot away from neglect. Not entirely. There’s a lot left to salvage.

I’ve got so much to do. But I have come so far, in such a short time. I have never had faith in a thing like I have certainty of the truth of me, despite everything I have been told, despite all the damage. I mean there she fuckin is. And I love her. Why was I kept from her?

Time Bomb

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I feel like I am so obviously trans, it weirds me out a bit when people don’t seem to notice. The people who are being strange at me from a distance or maybe just incidentally, okay, I can get that. But being two feet away, looking straight at me, having a drawn-out conversation?

Obviously none of the stuff I do with myself has to do with “passing” or whatever, right. Hell, I’m non-binary. I’m just trying to figure myself out, build a healthy relationship with me. Other people don’t factor into my mess. I spent my life pretending for their benefit.

It kind of messes with my head a little when none of the fuckin’ glaring signifiers seems to tip people off and contextually I know they’re not just being polite or treating me as Azure specifically, but seem to interpret me as some random cis woman I guess. Like, it’s one thing to be considerate to me because I’m a person and treat me like anyone else. It’s another to jump the fence and say, oh clearly she’s in this other box. I will project this new set of assumptions on her, rather than the set of assumptions I might have before.

How do you imagine that I am cis? I have no control of my voice when I speak to other real people. I am an alien insect giraffe, twice as tall as you. My face is maybe androgynous at best, and littered with hormonal damage. As for my throat, well. There it is.

I guess it builds up this pressure in my head. At what point will they notice? What will happen when they do? How much of their own nonsense will they then blame on me, as if I’m not just minding my own business, being myself? As if I’m responsible for the way their head works? Like there is some kind of a time bomb, and I don’t know how big it is or what the timer is set to. Like their not “Getting it” somehow becomes my problem. I am so used to accepting everyone else’s problems, accepting blame for whatever garbage they project on me. No more please.

I guess there may be ways to avoid accepting that kind of responsibility. Boundaries are still this strange and difficult territory for me. I guess Azure does deserve someone to stick up for her. It’s a bit of a puzzle how to do it, though. That’s not my native tool set.

Anyway, people are people. None of them are categories or functions or anything to do with you in particular. Each is an individual, and none of your expectations necessarily apply, so when you deal with them, do your best to wipe the board each time and take them as they are.

I’m just Azure. I’m not, whatever you want or expect or imagine me to be. I’m just me. Don’t try to get me to perform shit for you, to make you feel better about your grasp on the world you live in. That’s not my concern.

And same goes for anyone. Same goes for you. Be a person.

A Kind of Speech

  • Reading time:3 mins read

It’s not about a power dynamic, not really. I don’t do power stuff. I don’t get it. It’s about roles and ways to relate to another. I’m the receptive one. I’m so very receptive. Receptive to anything, if it’s true and it’s kind and it’s fond and made out of love for the other. I’m not the actor, never the active agent. I will not assert—except perhaps in reception. Active listening, if you will. Following up. Touching base. Making sure. Finishing a thought. Continuing the conversation. Demonstrating my interest.

There are so many ways to receive it’s hard to know where to begin. In my dreams, there is so much to do. Maybe start with four of them? One to occupy my g-spot, another my tongue. A couple on standby, maybe to lend me something to grab. And as things progress, so they swap in. I’ve been on the other end; I know these things can’t last forever. But I can, now. Or just about. As one finishes his run with me, and sends me his gift, the next steps in with his own distinct energy.

It all starts so gentle, then grows to such an eager pitch—the thrust and the slap and the rhythm and the pressure. Kind yet firm and overcome with the frenzy, sending the shudder through my perineum, radiating up all the nerves of my body. Warming my chest and my face. And that’s before even the warmth of the deposits—in me, on me, drizzling so slowly down my tummy and my breasts and what parts of my face they find. As the ones I’ve teased earlier each rotate in, find my main hole, and one by one give me what they’ve brought.

I want it. I want it all. I want the burning heat of it. The sickly slick of it. In my dreams it’s always love, it always means something. It’s never just the thing. It’s always a kind of speech. The semiotics can be so perfect I never have to question, never have to hedge. The semiotics of semen. All the signal, clarifying my being.

And as my face and my arms and my chest explode and my legs and my toes threaten to cramp forever, I want nothing but to live. To be. To exist. Right there. No rush to clean up. No shame. Just stars in my vision. Just me, being human. Just the fondness of the other. The hypothetical form to hold. The light and the music and the feel of the pillows. The lilt of the air of the fan on the ceiling, reminding me of my flesh. This awareness of the moment. This drunken existence. My femininity.

I am a real girl. As I have always been. It’s never been a mystery. But there I am. And I am reminded. And I am in love with myself, as I should be. As I was never afforded. And through that love, I love everything else.

It is worth being alive. I never really got that message.

Determination

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I’ve said this not infrequently, but I am very happy to be trans. Like, given the option to be some cis take on who I am, whatever that could possibly mean, I would say no. I wouldn’t ever want that. What I would want is to have understood myself and received necessary care some 30 years ago. But that’s different.

I am exactly the person I want to be, aside from the damage from the neglect and other people’s problems, right. I don’t want some other body in order to fit someone else’s ideas of propriety. Self-determination is more important than fitting into a broken, wrong-headed world.

I genuinely don’t understand cisness. For decades I played along with what other people told me about myself, because I didn’t know I had another option. But I didn’t like it. I did the bare minimum. I knew they were wrong. I just didn’t have the language to piece together how. I’ve never had a situation where people have known what’s right for me or acted in my best interest. Everything those with control over my life has told me has been wrong, often maliciously. I’m the only person who knows me. Why should I trust their judgment about my very being?

I want to be who I am, not who someone tells me I am. I don’t want to change any part of me so that my idea of who I am matches the ideas of someone who doesn’t give a shit about me. Why would I do that? What purpose would that serve? The only problem with my body again is the years of neglect, that I’m doing my best to mitigate now. Otherwise, it’s a part of who I am. And I like it. What’s wrong with it? Why should I give up what I have just to make other people feel better with who I correctly say that I am?

I just don’t get this narrative one hears, of wishing one were born in another body or whatever. It sounds like some kind of a confused cis fairy tale. Why the hell would i want that? What would it even mean, to a non-binary chick? What I want is love. I want acceptance. I want respect. On my own terms. I’m not going to apologize for my existence. I’ve already done that since as young as i can remember speaking.

I’m great. Being trans is a part of that. If I were to start over with a blank slate, the only thing I’d adjust is knowledge—not having to live in ignorance for all those years. To know that I deserve care.