madelineariah

[madelineariah]

2023/April 14th - Creative

I have been a bit exhausted the last few days.

My sleep schedule got kinda messed up, though this is not entirely out of character for me when I get fixated on a new idea. I decided about a week or two ago that I would try to revitalize my interest in video production. I probably should preface this by saying that I tried running a YouTube channel back in 2020. Probably not the best time to get into it, but it was what it was.

When I did it, I was narrating some of the novels that I have written over the years. Writing is my passion, yet it’s not a compatible medium with many of the passions and interests of most people these days. People want interactive media – it’s why they turn to visual novels or YouTube videos or games to get their reading in.

The videos I made honestly never really felt like they were at their fullest potential. It felt like I didn’t have the proper tools to bring my words to life, and I became very frustrated by the outcome. While I reached 60 subscribers during that time period, I eventually became so bothered by the quality of my own content that I deleted all of it from existence and put the channel on hiatus.

Recently, though, I have had a change of direction in my life. I decided that because racing videogames have been a lifelong hobby of mine, I would like to do highlight videos surrounding my favorite racing games. As such, I’ve spent the last several days prepping videos for a May 1st debut. I have about seven completed already.

What I’ve noticed so far is that because I have better equipment now, that alone has given me more confidence in my abilities. In 2020, I was video editing on a Chromebook (which many of you might not think possible, but I assure you, it is). The videos were serviceable, but they lacked the kind of professional quality that I wanted of them.

Now, though, I have an enterprise-level Windows desktop with an enterprise-level GPU that I was using for CAD applications during my last round of college (see my post about going to college three damn times).

Since my drafting stuff is currently on hiatus, I figure that I should probably get my money’s worth from the machine, and it turns out that it can encode a 10 minute 720p video in about 45 seconds. Not bad. As far as the games, I am recording them on an Xbox One X which I have calibrated to record in 720p because Xbox DVR requires your clips be processed over the cloud, and my internet – while good in terms of download speed – is terrible at upload speed.

I learned recently that Xbox DVR files corrupt very easily. Audio sync issues are also very common. So… Not the best start.

Nonetheless, I do feel like the way I have things set up lends itself to my style of video production. What I’m doing is recording individual races and events in-game and then creating highlight reels from them. Some of these highlight videos have a story to them, even.

The audio sync is easy enough to fix using the video editing software. That said, I have lost a handful of good clips due to file corruption – which led to much sulking.

To prevent myself from going insane, I’m probably only gonna upload twice a week – Monday and Thursday. This gives me 2-3 days between videos to work on each one. So far, I’ve noticed it takes approximately 90 minutes to encode enough clips for a 10 minute video, and then editing takes two to four hours depending on storyboarding, effects used, and also needing to create the thumbnails for each video.

And of course, my videos are going to have overlays that show my channel name and eventually things like a Twitter link, Ko-Fi link, etc. If I ever decide to stream, those same overlays could be used to show stream-related info (I think that’s how it works). But getting that sophisticated is gonna take time, I guess.

For the first month, I figure I will use a compact overlay (just a banner, really). Then after, I will make a full-screen overlay in 1080p with the 720p gameplay footage in windowed mode. That’s the plan, anyway. There’s still so much I need to figure out, and I am doing all of this myself.

I would say that my goal is simply to attract people who love the same things I love and who I can share memories with. Like, as a gamer, I often play alone. I don’t really have “gaming friends.” I’d like that to change.

[madelineariah]

2023/April 11th - Not Smartest

(Slept all day, please forgive.)

So… I believe I mentioned that I went to college a total of three times.

The first of these times (all the way back in 2011), I decided to go to an out-of-state university. Now, if you aren’t familiar with how the American college and university system works, costs are tiered. In-state residents pay a base rate, out-of-state residents pay significantly more, but residents of “neighbor states” can pay somewhere in the middle.

I bring this up because my state university system had this thing where if you graduated high school in the top 5-10% of your graduating class, you were given guaranteed admission to the in-state university of your choice. This was a scam, however, as the cost of tuition alone for these universities would put someone in debt for life.

It was actually cheaper for me to go to a university in a nearby state, plus it allowed me to get away from most of the people I went to high school with. I would use my first year of university to start my transition, after all. That said, I had to take out student loans and I put myself decently in debt that first year.

The following summer, I was told I could no longer receive student loans for that university. I had somehow maxed them out. I still don’t understand this, as my debt was only around $20,000 and there are people with over $200,000 in student loans (I seriously do not understand the U.S. educational system). As such, I had to drop out of that university after just one year.

I was severely depressed after this, but my mother encouraged me to take classes at the community college in my town. I would have to pay for these out of pocket (I used a credit card; not smart but eventually paid that off), but it allowed me to – after another year and a half – finish with a general studies associate degree in social sciences.

One of the problems was that the university I went to was on the quarter system, while the community college was on a semester system. Not all of my units transferred, and the ones that did were sometimes counted as partial credit. This severely limited my course and degree options. (Again, this system makes no sense.)

I used that degree in order to get one job, and then I never referenced it again.

After getting that degree, I took a few more classes at that same college but failed to keep the momentum and dropped out again (by this time it was around 2016). For several years, I worked odd jobs – as the job I had used the degree in order to get, I had been fired from (you’ll hear about that one later).

When the pandemic happened, a lot of crazy things happened in my life that you will hear about later. Ultimately, some of these things convinced me to go back to community college (officially my third time in post-secondary education).

This time, however, I was lucky enough to get grants to help finance it. So, I did one year completely online and then I did a semester in person once the pandemic restrictions were lifted. I decided to study computer aided drafting and design, and I got my certificate for it in June 2022.

The certificate is displayed proudly on a shelf in my room. As for what I want to do with it, well… I wanted to use the drafting knowledge I learned to design tinyhomes for people with low incomes. I have a working design and white paper explaining implementation. I just lack the confidence to submit it anywhere yet. (Lack of confidence is a common theme with me, you see.)

For the past year, as I have been dealing with health problems and other stuff, I have been writing research documents in my spare time, trying unrelated things to show I am capable enough before gambling on what I consider my most passionate venture because I really do not want to fail.

However, so far, all of those research documents have failed. Miserably.

I don’t know if there is a point to all of this, but if there is, maybe it’s thus: there really is no discernable difference between what you learn at a cheaper community college versus what you learn at a more expensive university. In either one, you will have professors you love or professors you hate.

And when you finish your degree or certificate program, the real world is still going to kick you in the teeth if people feel your contributions are not worth anything. This is the part I am struggling with the most right now. I think what most people really use college and university for is networking opportunities, because I noticed this at each institution I went to.

At the most recent college I went to, my classmates were scouted for jobs in respective industries and managed to get hired on as a result of my professor putting in a good word for them. My professor did the same for me, though the company I interviewed for wasn’t the best fit and I ultimately had to decline the opportunity (made worse by my health problems worsening around that time).

So, if you are currently in college or university, my advice? Make friends. Seriously. Befriend your professors as well as anyone who could potentially specialize in getting your name out there. You only have so much time before you leave, and that window closes for you. If I’d had more time, maybe I would have found the place for me. I wonder…

[madelineariah]

2023/April 10th - The Elastic Girl

I kind of want to get something out of the way – because it’s something I’ve talked about like, six or seven times in the last fifteen years but nonetheless continues to keep me up at night to this day. As I mentioned previously, flexibility used to be everything to me. In many ways, it kind of still is.

Around the time I was fourteen, I found that I could put my ankles behind my head with relative ease. This got me very interested in contortion, and seeing as I was coming to terms with my gender identity and had come out to my parents, I began trying to stretch more in order to better tap into that elasticity.

However, prior to my fifteenth birthday, I was screened for scoliosis – only to discover that I had a rare form of kyphosis, which is a lot worse.

My brother also had it, and we both ended up having spinal surgery to correct it. I’ve brought it up in morbid detail several times in the past (the stay in the ICU, the complications during recovery, the lifelong health problems, and so on). I think I’ll spare the details this time, or I’ll perhaps expand on them more in a different post.

The thing is, I never gave up on wanting to be more elastic – even when my flexibility was cut in half. Mentally, I formed this alternate representation of myself who never had the surgery and in-fact progressed more and more into being made of rubber. I began to perceive a reality in which my body could stretch limitlessly, fold in half, twist like a corkscrew, melt into a puddle, and fit into any small space.

It actually got so intensive that one day, I actually visualized this experience where the scar along my back turned into a zipper, and I hollowed out, shapeshifting into a rubber bodysuit. As I carried out this visualization, I could feel someone wearing me, and I began to fixate upon that person to an insane degree – their shape, their warmth, their motion, their scent.

People who have known me for a while (eg. my close friends who somehow still put up with me) know that as I got into my early 20s, I began to get involved in hypnosis. I began using self-trance as a means to further immerse in the sensorium of these alternate realities where I was just a completely elastic and malleable woman who also could transform into any object I desired.

This became my focus for more than a decade.

I experience a certain degree of disillusionment as a result of the disparity between what my physical body can experience and what my mental shape can become. As my health has deteriorated year over year, it has made it harder for my physical senses to operate. I struggle to feel things because my nerves are just completely shot at 29. I cannot engage in various activities because doing so causes chronic pain. 

Like, two years after my recovery, it was discovered on the X-rays that my spinal fusion had been placed too high and one of the metal rods was pressing into my right shoulder. As such, I get pinched nerves in my neck pretty regularly which cause severe tension headaches. A few years after that, it was discovered that one of my lumbar discs had developed a herniation which caused sciatic pain.

What most people don’t realize is, when you live a life of limited mobility and chronic pain, it adversely affects your ability to connect with others. In my relationships, I began to feel like I couldn’t keep up with those I was intimate with. I couldn’t feel what they wanted me to feel, and I couldn’t maintain the physical energy to keep up with them. It always felt like my body was so old despite my age.

Eventually, I stopped dating in real life because I just hated this disparity too much. I would still have the occasional fling, but I just did not feel confident in myself anymore. I doubled down on this elastic self who resided completely within the Net and could do literally anything she wanted.

For a long time, I was able to get by, but the experience also changed me in ways I never would have expected. After a while, I began to think less like a person and more like a rubber object. I became fixated on my own malleability and having others exploit it. If I were to describe anything as my addiction, this would be it.

The reason I am writing about this is because I realize that after a while, I stopped having friends in the traditional sense. I only approached people with the hope that they would either leverage my elasticity or see me as an object for their own utilization. I became so hooked on that life that I didn’t really care for the things that normal friends do.

It’s only now that I am realizing how much of a mistake that was.

Over the years, I lost so many people who meant so much to me. It’s caused me to be more and more alone. Coming back to social media through Twitter and Tumblr is kind of a last-ditch effort to embrace a bit of normalcy, but it’s hard because I don’t know when those urges are going to come back.

I keep telling myself subconsciously that I don’t want a normal life, that I want to remain the same delusional rubber girl I have been for more than a decade, but I know doing that is unhealthy and will destroy me. I just… don’t know how to stop.

[madelineariah]

2023/April 9th - Self Image

I had some other stuff I wanted to talk about, but then something happened yesterday and kind of threw me off in a major way.

Over the years, I have tried my hardest not to fall into the trap of envying others who are prettier/wealthier/more successful/whathaveyou. We’re all just doing our best, and it’s all luck if any of us make it to a better or more privileged position. I am aware that living in a first-world country, my life will already be infinitely more privileged than that of someone living in the developing world. I should just shut up and accept that on some level.

That said, I kind of just lost it yesterday, and I feel bad about it.

In conjunction with making a new Tumblr, I also made a new Twitter (@MadelineAriah). I haven’t been on Twitter in many years, so I decided that I would start by following my favorite Vtubers because I was curious about the communities surrounding them. Apparently, there were a bunch of anime conventions this weekend, so a lot of Vtubers were tweeting about their IRL shenanigans at these venues.

I guess what I didn’t expect was that a lot of these Vtubers, irl, are incredibly beautiful. Like, so beautiful, they could literally stream as their irl selves and I have no doubt their audiences would be just as large, if not larger. And that’s on top of them being funny and talented and charismatic and all these other amazing qualities that draw people to them.

Suddenly, I looked at myself in comparison, and I felt like I am, well, nothing.

There was a time – in my early and middle 20s – that I pushed myself to be attractive in the eyes of others. That’s a recurring theme in the struggles of my transition. As I approach 30 and life has decided to kick me in the teeth by chipping away at my physical health, I no longer feel attractive. I no longer feel as pretty as I was 5 or 10 years ago.

I think the thing that started to draw me into the Vtuber community was it allows someone to be someone else for a little while. If they aren’t confident in their irl self, they can put on a new self and go wild with it. On Twitter, there are bunch of accounts of people trying to go that route with varying success.

Yet the ones at the top – the ones getting signed by agencies – they have the irl qualities to back the virtual persona. Nor are they subtle about it. There was a tweet posted by a Vtuber showing how one agency would not hire anyone over the age of 30. That just boggles my brain. Like, why would it matter that a person is older if they are taking on a different persona altogether?

Except, maybe, it’s because they aren’t. Seeing that just makes me feel ambivalent to the whole thing now. Society is really obsessed with vanity. When people talk about how social media makes us all feel uglier, I think this is what they were talking about.

The thing is, I have always wanted to share parts of myself with others. In the past, I have written stories, and I tried to use YouTube as a medium for telling those stories. I feel like my lack of attractiveness is part of why it didn’t do so well.

After having an emotional breakdown last night, and waking up this morning still feeling pretty bad about myself, I find myself scared to even try and create the things I was thinking more recently about creating. I wanted to try YouTube again – to make some fun videos that are in line with my likes and interests. Now, I am just unsure whether there is a point to doing that.

I don’t feel animosity toward the Vtubers who I still very much idolize for the opportunities they have been blessed with. However, I do very much hate society for tilting the scales the way it does. Being trans excludes me from so much simply because people think I am a freak. I always thought that communities around games and anime would be different. Now, I’m not so sure anymore.

[madelineariah]

2023/April 8th - Perception

One thing I have come to understand is I am never going to present myself in a way that is considered “socially acceptable.”

If I am out and about, I tend to dress rather conservatively, I am very tactful and polite in how I speak, and I keep a respectful distance from people who I am not all that familiar with. I don’t wish to rub people the wrong way; therefore, I tend to wait for them to make the first move.

Nevertheless, people will cast judgments on me based on my being a transgirl – without even trying to get to know me. There was a time, about five years ago, that I was working in a retail store. As I was working, an elderly woman came up to me. At first, she seemed sincere – saying that I was beautiful and that my spirit was beautiful. I respectfully thanked her.

She then followed up by saying, “I will pray for you.”

Immediately, I felt so embarrassed that I had to struggle to keep my composure so I could continue working. It turned out this woman wasn’t being sincere at all; she was just ridiculing me because I was – in her mind – a filthy heathen who needed divine intervention to “cure” me.

I bring this up because to this day, I struggle to secure opportunities to improve myself and my situation – all because people aren’t willing to perceive me as trustworthy or as a good person due to their own prejudices toward transpeople.

I have lost count of all the times where people have essentially told me, “You would be treated better if you just go back to being male.” They do so in rather roundabout ways – telling me to “go to the gym more” (I weigh 145 lbs and was relatively fit before my health declined) or to “get a new wardrobe” (hinting that the wardrobe should be more masculine).

When I was able to work (again, before my health declined), I found myself being forced by society into more positions where I was less likely to interact with people. I found that if I did interact with people, those same people would then try to get me fired simply because they could. It wasn’t because I had wronged them in any way; it was because my being a “he-she” offended them.

One thing that terrifies me the most is, if my health does improve and I can start working again, that the bullying and abuse is just going to start again no matter where I apply to. In 2023, transpeople are so hated that promoting trans rights even indirectly can cause considerable backlash against a business. Businesses are no longer going to want transpeople to work for them, so I can expect more rejections than ever before.

The only winning move for me is not to play.

If I wish to survive, I have to come up with my own means of sustaining myself. I feel like I am under considerable pressure to develop a venture of my own that would allow me to improve the lives of others but does so in a way that they would never know who I am. It’s like, I have to come up with something amazing, but I am also not allowed to take any credit for it.

I don’t think life was meant to be lived this way.

When I look around and see so many people able to live their lives authentically – to truly be themselves without judgment – I feel such envy and pain. That’s something I will never have. Outside of my parents and maybe a small handful of close friends, I don’t think I will ever be accepted unconditionally.

Many people who claim to accept me do so for only as long as it is convenient for them. As long as I supply them with whatever it is they want at the time, they won’t hate me. When I get tired of that, I am no longer of value of them, and they tend to either ghost me or tell me what a horrible person they think I am.

It’s no wonder my self-worth is such a dumpster fire.

All I want is to be able to say “I made it.” I want to be able to arrive at where I need to be in my life in order to experience some sliver of happiness. I don’t know why that is something the world doesn’t want for me. Maybe I’ll never know…

[madelineariah]

2023/April 7th - First Feelings

I first realized I was transgender when I was twelve years old.

Prior to this, I’d never really considered the difference between boys and girls. I spent a fair amount of time in elementary school having boys as friends and girls as friends. When I got to middle school, that was when the differences started to become more apparent for me. It led me to discover this superstition that if one could lick their own elbow, they could turn into the opposite gender.

When I realized I wanted this really badly for some reason, I began to scour the internet for answers. I found out that some animals could actually change sex during their life cycle, and then I found out that humans could change their physical appearance using hormones and/or surgery.

At fourteen, I came out to my parents. They didn’t take it well at first – thinking it was a phase. My teenage years were rough as result, and it wasn’t until age 18 that I was able to start living as a woman full-time. Thankfully, my parents became more accepting as I entered my 20s, and I am fortunate enough to be on good terms with them even now at 29.

It was at 26 that I changed my legal name and legal sex. Because my home state had allowed a change to non-binary, that was what I changed to. I did so because while I see myself as more female than male, I don’t feel like the binary has ever really fit me.

As I flesh out this blog, I am going to talk a lot about the challenges I faced starting in my teenage years and continuing all the way into the present. A lot of these memories are very painful for me, and finding the right words is going to be difficult at times.

Society has never been very kind to people like me. Many people assume the worst in me, and many others will only recognize me as a girl if they think I am attractive. This has led me to do many reckless and risky things to try and appear attractive to others – often with consequences to my health and well-being.

I feel like, in order to be comfortable in my own skin, certain conditions have had to be met:

My face needs to appear feminine at all times. I want my face to be as soft and smooth as possible, and I get very dysphoric when I have blemishes or if even the slightest amount of facial stubble is visible. One thing I didn’t mind about the pandemic was I could keep my face covered to hide the dysphoria I felt. As for the hair atop my head, I keep it longer in winter and shorter in summer, but I always agonize whether my hairstyle fits the shape of my face or not.

My arms and legs need to be smooth as well. Hair removal in these areas becomes an obsession for me. I often do not feel comfortable showing my legs, and I often wear tights under shorts to cover them up.

While I have conditioned my voice to be more feminine, I can’t help but feel like I sound like a smoker. I have a mid-tonal, nasally, almost throaty voice that is only mitigated by the inflections of my speech. Some people say they love my voice, but I can’t understand why.

At the core of my feminine self are the facets of flexibility and bodily motion. Women are naturally predisposed to a greater flexibility than men. As a child, I became obsessed with stretching – even after having spinal surgery (more on that in a future post). As I get older and my mobility atrophies due to some chronic health problems (again, more on that later), I become a lot more critical of my body and my “worth” as a transgirl. It has in the past led me to push my body to the point of injury, and I regret that I couldn’t stop myself from being that way.

Throughout my life, I have sought validation and approval from others by showing off my body to them. I can’t undo these actions, and I have to live with the fact it has shattered my self-worth more than it’s helped. When others reject me because of my body, it makes me feel like I don’t deserve to call myself a woman. Yet when people accept my body, it leads to me allowing those people to sexualize me and to take advantage of my vulnerabilities.

Throughout my life, I have considered myself an object for others to enjoy. I have dehumanized myself over and over again. It has taken me to some incredible extremes that I’m sure will raise a few eyebrows when I bring them up in the future.

Once you take all of that away, however… I don’t know what truly defines me as a woman. I am aware it has nothing to do with social roles – men can like girly things, and girls can like manly things. It’s like… being a woman is something that is intimately felt for me.

When I close my eyes and introspect upon my spirit and how it relates to the universe, there is a feminine shape which stands before me. There is a feminine self which resides within me and embodies the identity of Madeline Ariah. I feel affirmation in being perceived as feminine. The label of woman isn’t what makes that true for me, but it’s the closest thing I have to codifying that existence.

Even if I can’t be the ideal woman, I want to be the ideal me. I hope that isn’t too much to ask, to want, to strive for…

[madelineariah]

2023/April 6th - Common Questions

Before I really get into some of what I want to talk about, I think it would be best to help you all get to know me a little better. I want to use this post to answer some of the most common questions I get asked whenever I meet new people. If there are other questions you want to ask me, feel free to leave a reply and I promise I will answer as honestly as I can. So, without further ado, let’s begin.

Q: What is it like being transgender? How did you know, and when did you transition?

A: I first realized I was transgender around the time I was 12 years old. It came about because of an old superstition that if you could lick your elbow, your gender would change. I became fixated on wanting to experience it, and then I stopped and asked myself, “Why do I want to be a girl so much?” The rest is history.

I began living female full-time when I turned 18. I started on estrogen around my 24th birthday, and I got my name legally changed just before my 26th birthday. (Note: Madeline is my real first name; Ariah is not my real last name. Good luck googling me.)

I would say most of the time, I fly under the radar. I pass as a woman nowadays, and people who feel otherwise thankfully tend to leave me be. That said, I have faced a lot of discrimination in regards to employment, healthcare, and the occasional threats of violence. It ain’t easy, but it’s the life I live.

Q: What is with your avatar? Are you really that flexible?

A: When I was younger, I was insanely flexible. However, when I was 14, I had spinal surgery which cut my flexibility in half. I still stretched a lot even after the surgery and could put my ankles behind my head for years. Due to poor health, I am severely out of practice right now. That said, the picture is based on an older photograph of me – from around the time I was 25, if memory serves.

Q: Are you a gamer?

A: I own an Xbox One X (and an Xbox One S). My most played games include “No Man’s Sky,” “Rune Factory 4 Special,” “Cities: Skylines,” “The Crew,” the “Hitman: World of Assassination” trilogy, and most of the “Need for Speed” games (except “Unbound” because I refuse to buy a Series console just for one game). Racing and life simulation games are my infatuation – even when that life may be a bit unorthodox (such as traveling the universe as a space pirate in NMS).

Q: Are you… lewd?

A: No lie, I get asked this a lot due to my penchant for flexibility and skintight outfits. I will be completely honest here: sexuality was a major aspect of the choices I have made throughout my life. You will see that in some of the journal/diary posts that I make. However, the older I get, the more I find myself detaching from that life. There’s just too much pain in the memories of what was and what is now gone. I hope that makes sense.

Q: You mentioned research projects. What are they?

A: I am fascinated by science, technology, and the environment. One of my goals is to do research on new tools that are being created to address things like climate change and resource scarcity. I want to come up with proposals that implement those tools in ways that can help communities which are currently struggling. I will talk in more detail about those projects as time goes by.

Q: Why did you go to college three times?

A: I went to university in September 2011 – shortly after graduating high school. I did a year before my financial aid ran out and I had to return home. I then went to community college from 2013 on so I could get an Associate degree in Social Sciences. It was used to be hired for one job then quickly forgotten about.

Then, in 2021, I decided to go to a different community college to learn CAD/3D Design. Because of the pandemic, I had to do a year online, and then in spring of 2022, I was able to attend classes in person to finish the certificate program I was in.  I wanted to design tinyhomes. I actually have a full design document for a hexagonal tinyhome layout, but I haven’t really been able to do anything with it yet. I am hoping in the future, that will change.

Q: What do you really want?

A: Honestly… I don’t know. I don’t care much for a fancy house or a fancy car. I don’t care much for traveling the world or attending big social gatherings. I question whether romance is the right thing for me. Things that most people spend their whole lives striving for, I am just… lukewarm to. So, maybe y’all can help me figure that out.

I suppose that’s it for now. Like I said, if you wanna ask me anything, my comments are open. Thank you. I appreciate you.

– Madeline Ariah

[madelineariah]

2023/April 6th - Introduction

My name is Madeline Ariah. I am a transgirl, age 29, and this is – well – I suppose it’s the story of how my life fell into darkness.

For the longest time, things have been… difficult. Granted, I would say it’s that way for a lot of people right now. I’m sure that all of us are harboring the same fears about our lives and the same questions: “Am I making the right choices to live the most fulfilled life?” “Am I able to leave the world at least a little better than I found it?” “How will history look back upon my actions?” “Am I good or bad?” “Do I deserve the opportunities I have been given, or do I deserve the calamities which have befallen me?”

“...Do I deserve to exist?”

There are a lot of times where I find myself questioning these things. I can’t help but feel like many of the things that have happened to me were the result of some karmic action – punishment for not making the correct choices at various stages of my life, until I was left with the person that I am in the present day.

I don’t exactly love myself. I don’t feel as though I have any talents of note. I don’t feel as though I contribute a thing to society. It hurts a lot when I look at myself through that lens. It was never for a lack of trying; all my life, I have tried my best to be ambitious. I have attempted to push myself through college on three separate occasions. I took jobs that pushed me out of my comfort zone time and time again. More recently, I have taken to writing research projects in my spare time.

So, I am trying. I am trying. I am trying…

I remember when I was younger, there was a statistic that over 40% of transgender individuals – two out of every five – would seek to end their own lives. I can say that I have come close more times than I can count. Yet I am almost thirty years old, and somehow, I am still here. I don’t even understand how or why.

All I know is I want things to get better. In spite of everything, I still want to seek out some sliver of happiness. I want to believe happiness is possible for me.

I think I plan to use this blog to talk about what happened. In the event that something does happen to me, I just want someone out there to know I lived a life. I am tired of feeling like a ghost. I am tired of feeling like I shouldn’t exist.

That said, I don’t really know what I am doing – for lack of a better word. I’ve tried Tumblr a few times before, but I’ve never quite understood how it works. I don’t really understand how to get my voice out there, so this will all be trial and error. Please be patient with me as I figure things out, okay?

Thank you. I appreciate you.

– Madeline Ariah