#after it had been turned into a constant source of pain and dysphoria

[skebbles]

Aaaaah! Im late again! Have a headcanon! Happy trans day of visibility!!

[sylvaridreams]

Speaking of Auruim, (nobody was speaking of Auruim, but I just came off of a 12 hour shift and I need to talk about the reform process and the tragedy of its shortcomings before it becomes too vague of a memory for me to recant,) speaking of Auruim and my reformed mordrem in general: why are they *like that*? Let's discuss.

The easiest answer is of course to look at Auruim and his rage, and his hurt, and his trauma and say that he has misdirected his anger towards Alba and the Pact and the guild as a whole and determined that they are at fault for his pain. And to some degree YES that IS why Auruim is like that on the surface layer, he has nowhere to point his anger over his pain, he has no one to blame, and he has to find The Source of his agony, and the easiest thing to point at is The Commander who didn't protect him.

But I also think that it's too easy of a cop out, and it disregards the overarching theme of why is he LIKE THAT, though? and for that matter, why are the other two reformed mordrem like that? Darlio has no pre-blighting memories. Venasis had zero connection to the Pact or the Commander before meeting him during Icebrood Saga. Neither of them have Auruim's same experiences, so why are all three of them still so incredibly rough around the edges for several years after leaving the lab?

And I am certain that the answer to that lies in the question "what does the reform process for mordrem DO?" At its base, the reform is meant to turn them back, physically. It severs them from the mordrem hive, mentally. But that is where the process ends, and that finish line is where all three of them were failed by the process. It ended before it had completed, in some ways before it had begun. To call it an ego experiment is not a massive exaggeration; the krewe involved wanted to see if they COULD do it. Turned out they could, and so they called it a day at that point.

Taimi mentions to Alba on one of his first visits to the lab that this is the case, though not in the same verbiage. "The physical process is basically over, and mentally they're severed from the mordrem hive and aware of themselves, but socially… well it would be dangerous to just let them go, obviously. They need constant supervision and correction right now, and honestly, this krewe doesn't have people to spare to babysit."

Constant supervision and correction, babysitting-- for mental and emotional issues that remain. What she fails to bring into this is any plan to close the gap. They've changed the three physically. They've severed them from the hivemind. What more could you possibly want them to do? Provide emotional recovery and rehabilitation? Mental exercise and support?

Because in those ways the three mordrem are still 99.5% mordrem. They don't have emotional regulation or impulse control; they don't have the mental capacity for complex thought and decision making. They are hive creatures taken from their hive. They do not know how to handle the very harsh world they've been forced back into.

I put a lot of personal allegories into writing my sylvari but especially my mordrem. There's the theme of societal otherness and intense unregulated emotions that I can point to and say yeah, that mirrors some of my autistic traits. There's the themes of physical and mental disability stemming from sudden violent trauma that I can point to and say yeah, that's my TBI. There's the intense dysphoria, the disconnect of physical body with what "should be" and that's where we hit my transgender narrative. There's more but I've made the point.

So it comes back down to WHY does Auruim continue to be so cruel and hateful towards Alba and so "stupid" for years after Icebrood Saga; why is Darlio so similar without the reason of "hating the Commander," why does Venasis also struggle so hard with the same things-- or more importantly when and how does this begin to change?

The answer to which is "basically, as soon as they leave the lab, but very slowly, and ultimately not for a long time." Auruim only begins to improve in how he thinks and how he relates to others after the end of EoD, even past the end of SotO. Between Icebrood Saga and EoD, he's sent on his quest to better empathize with Alba (by going through his memories of HoT through LWS4,) and learns compassion for another person, though he struggles to express it appropriately. EoD sees him learning new outlets to exercise his mind and fine motor skills; writing letters to Deidre allows him to regain some pre-mordrem literacy skills and practice the art of holding and using a hand guided writing instrument like a pencil. He spends most of SotO comatose, and deteriorates physically and mentally while in that state; afterwards, as he struggles to regrow his missing limb, he is again relearning fine motor skills, speech, communication, emotional regulation, etc.

Things the lab failed to notice he was lacking and provide him with. Similar to their failure to provide him adequate medical care; post-reform saw him as chronically ill and physically unwell, but there was a refusal to see him as a person in need of treatment for conditions he could not control versus a specimen that needed observation and a cattle prod to approach. Something that has failed to come up on here is mention that there were not initially three mordrem captured in Auruim's group, there were five. The missing two both died within a few months of capture; one of them overnight while the others slept, separated from Auruim by a wall, and no one was aware that anything was amiss with her until late into the next morning. For the lab, this was a minor paperwork annoyance, but for Auruim this was terrifying. This was a fresh trauma, one of his own kind dying in a cage less than a foot away from him as he slept, seemingly for no reason. The fifth mordrem passed a couple of months later when the krewe refused to enter his cell to help him unless he assumed a surrender position; the mordrem was unable to stop convulsing, and no krewemate entered the cell until he had already died, while Auruim and the other two survivors pleaded with them to do anything to keep him alive. Even after the physical reform eventually leveled off and finished, these three were not people but specimens of beasts, and they eventually had to be carefully retaught so much of what being mordrem and being prisoners in a lab had stripped them of: personhood.

(And then there are a number of physical issues that Alba starts to notice during Icebrood Saga but which he fails to address promptly; it's not until after EoD when Auruim is living with Canach for several months that anything gets done about most of them. Both times, Taimi is consulted, and the answer boils down to that "you can't expect my krewe to have dealt with that" -- i.e., it wouldn't have been safe for them to treat Auruim's physical ailments, even the ones that they noticed were causing issue. Then of course there are the issues that fail to be noticed; no one realizes Auruim is very close to legally blind, because his communication that "I can't see it" and "you didn't show it to me" are taken as obstinance and push-back rather than admission that he *isn't* seeing things that are being held up to him. It's not until close to EoD that anyone realizes he's being literal when he says he can't see something directly in front of him and thinks to do anything about it.)

I think Auruim has a uniquely sad and frightening perspective of having had his identity as a sylvari stripped of him by the war he was handed off to, surviving as a feral thing for four years, and then being ripped out of his territory, tagged and collared, and told to act like a normal member of society. He was acutely aware of what he was lacking but had no way of knowing how to correct those things and close the gaps, and no one who understood or wanted to show him how to do so. And I think this is also why he clashes with so many people, but especially Alba. Alba fails for a long time to see that Auruim is lacking in things in all departments. He wrongly assumes that Auruim is just not trying hard enough, or that he's intentionally being difficult out of anger, leading to a lot of tension and distrust between them. It would not be incorrect to say that Alba is openly cruel and cold to him at times, because he perceives Auruim as treating him the same way. What he fails to see is Auruim's struggles with understanding his emotions and thoughts, and he fails to acknowledge that this is a person who relies entirely, 100% on him for care and guidance, which Alba falls short on often early on.

For example, during much of Icebrood Saga, Auruim refuses to wear a coat or sleep off the floor. Alba quickly gives up on both topics, deciding that Auruim has made the decision and can suffer the consequences. He fails to understand that Auruim cannot make these decisions, that mentally he cannot process the information or understand the unspoken implications presented to him of "this climate is intensely cold and very harsh" which therefore means "you can and will get sick and even die if you don't do these things." From Auruim's perspective, Alba attempts to dress him and give him a bed to sleep in out of some kind of roundabout cruel streak; he is rubbing Auruim's face in his "domestication." It is once people who don't like Alba (Meisi) become aware that Auruim is not being taken care of to meet these needs and kicks up a fuss that it begins to somewhat click that such points are possibly for his own good, or might otherwise benefit him somehow.

There is a certain gap between him and Alba bridged during EoD while in Cantha; throughout Icebrood Saga and the time between the two adventures, personal hygiene has been a point of conflict between the two of them. Auruim hates bathing because 1. he's lost his mordrem pheromones and identifying smell, and clings to this belief that maybe if he can regain it somehow, he can also regain his rightful place in the world (as a mordrem.) This leads into point 2; hygiene proved to be an issue early on in the reform process as well for the same reason, and the closest the krewe could offer to a shower was a cold spraydown of him and his cell with a hose. There's trauma in the act of bathing from "this is what they did to me in the lab too" and also "this is how my identity was stripped away from me." Alba does not get this until EoD; and until that time would also gladly take any opportunity to spray Auruim down from afar. While in Cantha, he actually attempts to communicate at Auruim's level and understand him past the surface level aggression and hurt, and is able to propose compromise, though it proves unsatisfactory-- Auru essentially tells him that the smell of soap is "wrong," so Alba takes him to a specialty shop to pick out his own. When that proves to not be the full answer, he also eventually coaxes out of Auruim that the imbalance of "power" in being bathed makes him upset and uncomfortable; Auruim does not want to be alone and feel cornered in this retraumatizing experience, and so Alba joins him in that vulnerability and they bathe communally, allowing Auruim to see him as an equal suffering through the same horrifying process (a bath.)

But it takes a certain amount of first admitting that Auruim is trying to communicate, and carefully presenting the right questions, prodding at the right angles to get information out of him, because he doesn't understand essential and appropriate communication skills. Auruim's idea of communicating wants and needs is to stare from a distance in silence and then start angry crying if you eventually ask what he wants. He is not The Talker-- because again, they failed to re-teach him skills that he needed to go back into the world.

I have more to say, I could discuss Ven and Darlio furher too, but like I said, 12 hour shift and at this point I'm meandering. TLDR the krewe in question when it comes to mordrem:

[vcrtigoes-a]

anon sent  /  Drabble about how Mike feels in regards to each of the other entities besides the vast. which ones does he prefer? which ones does he hate? if he had to pick another one to serve? etc.       —  meme

blanket cw for not super explicit mentions of body horror, dysphoria, death, unreality, and too many tense errors i don’t care to fix. 

the corruption started with the little things. of course, anymore he does not fault himself for not knowing ( though he did, he did, he carried that weight like a pair of body bags wrapped around his neck for years before he recognized how pointless it was. anything was. ) food went bad within hours. roof shingles crumbled to dust and flaked apart. the sickly-sweet odor of rot seeped in brief whiffs from the very walls from an otherwise very well kept family home. of course there was the book, slick with something unknown, causing agonizing pocks and rashes upon his hands, but for a blue sky he found it a trivial price to pay. struggling from the ruins it caused, tome clutched in his scarf, listening to the chorus of earthworms and boring beetles and silverfish that had made their home there, it turned his stomach, but he did not answer their song.

the dark was his next attempt at refuge, a venture he regards undertaken with a childish mindset. he knew just because he hid beneath the blankets the world with its flickering, flashing light only seemed all the more brilliant and hard to adjust to. its laughter still sounded like snapping wires, and he left it nearly as soon as he found it. 

the flesh - viscera, he truly thought was his first break. he had been searching for months, tangled in infinite dissertations, the branches between magic and madness, mathmatics and spiritualism, and with the buzz of blood in his ears he pressed through the boneturner’s tale like it would hold the answers. it does, though of a different sort, and he learns several truths to himself:  to be made one must be unmade first and he is marked at the very bones. for two weeks he tears himself apart, strips skin from muscle from marrow and realizes that he is branded, cracking everywhere his fingers touch with jagged lichtenberg lines. the other, that he could stomach doing what he needed to, if he needed to, slaughter tastes like bile with iron and holding a man’s twitching lungs outside of their body in a split reaction of panic is somehow not the strangest thing to happen to him. 

he knew then, there was something of flies and rot, something of flesh, and if there were a thing of darkness it did not hear him. so what, then, did the thing that followed him belong to, made of lightning and laughter that sounded like television static? the spiral lived nestled in his flesh, in his very bones, the thing of doorways and blinding white pain, of breaking storms, the dizzying edge of madness and constant twisting nightmares. the scent of ozone trailed after him like an afterimage, a ghost and legacy he would grow into one day, but today staring at his reflection in the mirror he does not run from it. he does not give it the satisfaction. 

it is the very nature of this aversion that leads him away from the stranger, the edges between the unknown and lying too close to warrant anything closer than a morbid sense of curiosity. 

the eye finds him of its own accord in hand-bound leather he could not read, and for awhile, he didn’t mind it. certainly it was more quiet and unobtrusive than what he had dealt with so far, and was he not himself desiring of knowledge? still more than that, of course, beholding meant to be seen, known and realized in ways he did not want to be, and while mike did not do much secret keeping, he did not enjoy feeling so transparent on terms that were not his own. it was too close, perhaps, to the chords of anxious paranoia already plucked away upon during the sleepless witching hours already.  mike was not sure why he gave the book to the lonely, in turn. ignorance, perhaps, or maybe some vague sense of kinship, for had his feet ever really touched the ground? for all lives fallen in and out of, there was nothing, no one at the other end of the tether. it was not with joy he considered his lack of companionship, it was not how he wanted to live. he put the book in the ground and moved on. and on.

the buried he elected to pass after, he doubted there were enough earth to ever bury his history and found himself a little nauseated in tight spaces. the hunt went around the same, if not with more disdain, for he knew what it was to be prey, and relished in no long-lasting pleasure to imagine himself on the other end. 

desolation was no stranger to his life; senseless, total loss, the white-hot pulse of flesh constantly burning. he found himself something of a guest to the lightless flame for a time, an observer, complicit, seeking something like family in the arms of that searing heat that split him into fractalling, spiraling shards. immolation was its own art form, but pain was never any true calling to inflict. theirs was an admirable dedication to their patron, and one, all the same, he could not find himself participating in. it made parting, understandably, not on the best of terms.

the end was, in its rightful place, the end of things. always there, a patient shadow in his peripheral, somehow, coldly, the only source of stability he would ever claim to have ever held. it did not change, waiver, or disguise its intent - it simply was, in all its forms, and for that mike found some macabre source of comfort. death would wait, so incredibly liminal in a life lived in infinites, and with every step into open skies he begs the question, how long?

[a-room-of-my-own]

This is an edited transcript of a talk given by Dagny on May 9, 2019, at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver, B.C. The audio from the full event, #GIDYVR: Gender Identity and Kids, can be found on YouTube.

My name is Dagny, I’m a detransitioner. I’m here to demonstrate what can happen when we allow a teenager to make major medical decisions that will affect her body for the rest of her life. I’m also here as one-fourth of the Pique Resilience Project, a coalition of four detransitioned young women — Jesse, Helena, Chiara, and myself. We all identified as transmen in our mid to late teens, and by 19 or 20 we had all desisted, detransitioned, and returned to being women. Three of us took testosterone for at least nine months, and I actually started testosterone six months before I turned 18, after my therapist diagnosed me with gender dysphoria at 16. The Pique Resilience Project was founded in January after we all came together to share our stories, our similarities, and our differences. We discussed what we could do to share our stories with everyone — with the people that need to hear them.

As we’re all aware, this is an extremely heated debate, and I’m going to say some things that a lot of people are going to disagree with. But ultimately, everything I’m going to say comes from my own personal experience and from what I believe as a result of that experience — an experience that too many people are unwilling to take seriously. We, the Pique Resilience Project, have been called liars, attention-seekers, right-wingers, and bigots.

We’ve unfortunately been profiled numerous times on far-right Christian journals, and not once, to date, on mainstream, leftist news media, which I find interesting, given the amount of coverage trans issues have received these last five years. I think that this indicates a fear of straying from the path — a fear of saying something, even if true, that goes against the grain.

 We’ve been absolutely inundated with one narrative, one option, one story, since this issue hit the mainstream. We’ve been given only one option, at the risk of unspeakable, devastating consequences: if a teen says she has gender dysphoria and wants to be a boy, then she should — must — be allowed to transition.  That’s the story we’ve been sold, and it’s the only story we’ve been sold. And detransitioners are an inconvenient contradiction to this story.

We’ve been given only one option, at the risk of unspeakable, devastating consequences: if a teen says she has gender dysphoria and wants to be a boy, then she should — must — be allowed to transition. 

I’d like to discuss my experience being a trans teen. I did have early instances of what would now be called gender dysphoria in my childhood. At 11 or 12 I felt incredibly humiliated by the fact that my breasts were growing, and that I would have to start wearing bras. My period was a source of angst and hatred from the moment I first started menstruating. I’d heard that these things were supposed to be exciting for young girls, but they just made me angry and afraid. I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling that way. And maybe most predictive, I had a Yahoo answers account, and when I was in grade seven, I made a post with a title that was something like, “I’m a 12-year-old girl but I want to be a boy.” I remember that the answers were mostly dismissive, but there were a few that instructed me, a 12-year-old, to look into transsexual surgeries. But I didn’t like any of the answers; I wanted there to be a boy-button — something I could click that would just make me male. My family wasn’t religious at all, but I remember being that age and lying in my bed at night, and telling God in my head that I would start going to church if I woke up a boy.

My dysphoria exploded when I turned 15. This was when I started to actually identify as trans. Like so many other trans teenagers, I first started courting my own trans identity because of of two factors in my life: One, I had trans friends — two of them, both older than me, both female-to-male (FTM), like me, and two, I had a sharp increase in my social media use. I was never very active on social media before I turned 15, but within months of creating an account on tumblr and following several LGBTQ resource blogs, I had decided that I was non-binary.

Within months of creating an account on tumblr and following several LGBTQ resource blogs, I had decided that I was non-binary.

This identity felt like a game to me. It was a fun distraction — a quirk that made me special and interesting, if not to others, then at least to myself. But then that wasn’t enough, and I wondered, “Should I take this further? How far can I take it?” Then I graduated to fully identifying as a transman and I threw myself headlong into the traditional process of being trans: new name, new pronouns, new clothes, new binder. I started to get very, very serious about starting hormones. And it stopped being a game.

The first place I tried on this new identity — a transman — was online. And I just want to say that I think that it’s incredibly important for everyone — parents, yes, but also teenagers and therapists and lawmakers — to understand what kind of impact social media can have on a developing mind. I, in essence, became a different person after I started using tumblr. It’s an unhealthy, upsetting, and toxic environment to even observe, let alone participate in, as a teenager. Unfortunately it’s also way too broad of a topic for me to fully cover right now, so I’d recommend reading Helena’s exposé on tumblr’s culture. Part one is available to read on our website, and there are two more parts to come. It is vital reading if we’re going to begin to understand how so many teenagers feel and how they regard the world after using social media.

My online experience, having been affected by that level of group think, that level of moral policing, and the constant implicit threats of social exposure and ostracization made me an intensely internal and anxious person. It made me paranoid about the motives of people around me — I saw my parents as bigots because tumblr told me to; because they held out for so long to prevent me from starting hormones. Anyone that slipped up and misgendered me was, according to tumblr, an enemy. 

My online experience, having been affected by that level of group think, that level of moral policing, and the constant implicit threats of social exposure and ostracization made me an intensely internal and anxious person. It made me paranoid.

One incident — one “she” — had the ability to make me absolutely hate someone. Tumblr’s version of morality and justice made me — an impressionable, insecure teenager — feel like my only safe place was in my head, where I would never be misgendered. I didn’t feel safe online either, but I couldn’t allow myself to critique my online peers. Even though I had learned all these unhealthy beliefs and behaviors from them, they had also taught me that they held the moral high ground. So I adopted and parroted tumblr’s ideals, and my identity was unconditionally validated.

One of these unhealthy beliefs I held was the belief that if you have gender dysphoria, you must transition. And anyone that appeared to stand in my way was a transphobe — an alt-right bigot. If I, myself, questioned my actions, I was suffering from internalized transphobia. No matter how much genuine concern others may have had for me — by now, a miserable 16-year-old — they were committing an unforgivable act if they just asked me, “Why”? Why do I want to be a boy? Why do I want to change my body?”

My answer was invariably, “Because I have gender dysphoria and I have to.”

Anyone that appeared to stand in my way was a transphobe — an alt-right bigot. If I, myself, questioned my actions, I was suffering from internalized transphobia.

And that’s the context we’re living in now, the only one that we know. Until now, with so many detransitioners coming out, the only narrative we’ve really heard has been the same, over and over and over: I had gender dysphoria, and so I transitioned. I had gender dysphoria, and so I transitioned. That’s the context we’ve been living in for about five years now. But we have to move past that. It’s been three years since I detransitioned, and I still have gender dysphoria. It’s rare for me to make it through a single day without thinking, at least once, “I wish I was a man.”

But it’s so minimal compared to what I felt at 16. And now, I have no intention of transitioning. It was ultimately a mistake for me to transition in the first place. I thought, at the time, that I had no other choice. Living and being content without medically transitioning didn’t feel like an option for me, or for so many other detransitioners.

It’s time to change that. It’s time that we become aware of how much pain and negativity this narrative is causing. The fact that I thought I had only one option was an incredible source of misery, desperation, terror, and obsession for me. I was already an unhappy teenager; I didn’t need the added pressure of a life choice I felt had to be made and carried out immediately. And this — my experience — was back in 2013. A long time before now, when we’re transitioning eight-year-olds in California, and giving eight-year-olds mastectomies. I can only imagine the pressure that kids feel now… That parents feel… It’s time we stop telling kids that every single one of them that experiences gender dysphoria as a 15-year-old will still be experiencing that same level of gender dysphoria at 21. At 20, or 19. That’s what I was told — by activists, and peers, and medical professionals. When I went to my endocrinologist for the first time, my dad asked him, “If my child goes off testosterone, what changes will be permanent?” And the endo essentially cut him off and said, “Oh. No one ever goes off testosterone.”

It’s time we stop telling kids that every single one of them that experiences gender dysphoria as a 15-year-old will still be experiencing that same level of gender dysphoria at 21

There’s this belief that telling teenagers that their dysphoria may pass is wrong — ethically and factually — and I just want to know why? What’s so wrong with telling a teenager, “One day you will feel better.” There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that if the activism that pushed for teenagers’ ability to medically transition truly cared about kids affected by gender dysphoria, they would allow for a discussion that doesn’t manipulate teenagers — that didn’t make impressionable, insecure, unhappy kids feel like they have to transition now, or else.

So we need to change the narrative. That’s my intent. And that’s a larger intent of the Pique Resilience Project: to diversify the narrative. We only have one mainstream story, and we need more. And slowly, we’re getting more. The detransition narrative is growing. It’s getting bigger — more people are hearing detransitioners’ stories every day. And, by extension, we’re starting to see the first glimpses of a third narrative. The PRP has received at least two messages from parents telling us that after watching videos about detransitioning, their teenagers decided that they have Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria and that they would not transition. They realized that pursuing different options was a better solution for them and their experience.

One fix is not going to solve everyone’s individual problems. Medically transitioning is not going to help every teenager feel better. In my view, the proclivity to provide teenagers with hormone replacement therapy and instant affirmation ignores the larger problems. Why did I want to change my body? Why did I hate being a girl? Why was being a man so much more favourable?

Ultimately, the opportunity to transition made my teenage dysphoria worse. This narrative told me that my hatred for my female body was justified — positive, even. It told me that the only way to feel better was to destroy my body — my female parts. 

My role models were all older transmen who had, like me, been lonely, angry, weird girls. Hearing and identifying with their stories taught me only that holistic self-acceptance was a sham and that real authenticity could only come from synthetic hormones and surgeries. There was no room for me to love myself if my identity depended on self-hatred.

We need to start treating teenagers with patience and compassion and maturity. We need to stop telling them that their suffering will last until they buy a new body. More than anything, we need to stop telling them that they have only one choice, and only one chance.

[fortunatelyfresco]

It has (mercifully) been a while since my last oversharing personal ramble but I need to get some stuff out of my head.

I haven’t had a T shot in 66 days because I developed a fear of needles that just got worse and worse over time, and I feel... okay?

Two of my biggest sources of dysphoria were my voice and my lack of facial hair. I’m much more comfortable with where my voice is at nowadays. My facial hair isn’t The Greatest, but it’s there, and from what I can gather by reading through the “stopping” tag on this blog, it won’t stop growing altogether even if I shave it, which I have no immediate plans to do anyway.

I am... concerned about the fat redistribution, because my other two major sources of dysphoria were my hips and my boobs. Even on T I’ve never been completely satisfied with my hips, but we’ll see.

I don’t actually know how I feel about my chest. In theory, I don’t want boobs. In reality, surgery terrifies me and I can’t personally justify putting myself through one for cosmetic purposes. I always planned to, because the dysphoria was so bad I would start getting World-Ending Dread in the shower, but that lessened considerably after I started T.

Right now I’m like... just a hair’s breadth on the negative side of “indifferent” about them. I’m very lucky in that they’re pretty small and I can get away with a tank top or sports bra for binding, though even doing that much for more than a couple hours makes my ribs and back hurt. I only bind in public and I don’t always bother if I’m wearing, like, a very opaque T-shirt.

In general I’m nervous because going on T alleviated so much of my dysphoria, to the point that I know there are aspects of it I don’t even remember, and I worry about them coming back. But the dysphoria going away also allowed me to explore my gender identity more fully, culminating in being able to embrace the fact that I’m nonbinary, even if I don’t know what to call myself any more specifically than that.

So I’m hoping this will just be... it? It’s been two months and there haven’t been any catastrophic changes.

It never stopped my period anyway, which is just... I know it doesn’t for everybody, but the fact that it never did was a constant letdown and did not motivate me to keep up with my shots, and to add insult to injury the T made it very painful to use tampons, which uhhhhh FUCKING SUCKS when you have heavy periods! To vent my frustration by unnecessarily quoting a bird dating simulator, Fresco has suffered a deception most vile! A wretched betrayal! Ousted, scorned, betrayed! Dragged into the street and shot by those he trusted most!

Anyway.

I do feel... weird, but less weird than I did in the immediate aftermath of officially deciding to stop, as opposed to “oh, I just missed a shot” or “oh, I’m just putting it off.”

I think just the knowledge that I was On Testosterone let me bypass a chunk of internalized transphobia re: what A Man’s Body is “supposed to be like.” My current relationship with that entire concept is a huge mess to the point that my preferred pronouns at any given time have an inverse relationship with my presentation.

Idk. Maybe going without for a while will give me a chance to untangle it all. At some point I might end up going back on shots if I can stand it, or gel if I can afford it, or neither if it turns out I don’t want it.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

In the midst of winter

It’s far from summer here in the valley today. A gentle, steady rain is falling outside and we’re all wrapped in winter jumpers. It’s dark as late afternoon although it’s only two o’clock. 

a couple of nights ago, I heard a car hit something outside. The car’s occupants promptly turned around and stopped to have a look, but after that came silence. The next day I saw a little wallaby in our garden, obviously injured around its back legs and alternating between hopping and dragging itself along the grass. Today, it was in our garden again, but closer to the house, lying semi beneath one of the rhododendron bushes and in a heartbreaking state. It had completely lost the use of its back legs and could only drag itself a tiny distance before flopping back down in exhaustion. Even worse, evil blowflies had already begun to attack it while it was still alive. We asked one of our neighbours for help and he fired a bullet through its head to end its suffering. We stood there for a minute, waiting for it to stop twitching, and then it was unceremonially heaved over the steep bank where our properties join. The house was filled with blowflies.

I dreamt I gave birth to a dead fish. Mum looked at it and said it was sickly, or infected, or some words along those lines. It had a horrible face with lifeless, half-closed eyes and it was about the length of my hand. I felt violated and scared and was still uneasy when I woke up. 

I have a lot of chores to do, and I’m getting through them slowly. Although I’m not tired anymore, motivation refuses to lend a hand and I feel like I’m doing everything in slow motion. We went for a quick visit to the local cider house last night, and then for a brief drive down to Cygnet to have a look at the folk festival. It was stunning along the river, still and glassy, as the light faded for the night. The festival itself wasn’t in full swing yet and an ominous mood lingered in the half-light as people scampered around and a surprising number of police patrolled. A few marquees and vans were set up, but a feeling of darkness and deadness hung in the air.

I’m cleaning up and cleaning out a lot of stuff. In boxes and nooks and crannies I find little trinkets and mementos of times gone by. Some friendships are still strong; I look at a pair of earrings one friend gave me for my birthday, which I wear whenever I feel like I need a bit of her strength with me. There’s a card that was given to me by another friend on New Year’s a while back, and it’s nothing special in itself but it reminds me of her smart, kind presence. Then there are gifts from friendships that have drifted, dissolved or shattered, and I can’t help but flood with mixed emotions when I see them. After months or even years of closeness, one day you suddenly realise that you’ve grown so distant that it’s like watching a ship disappear on the horizon, and you only recognise that little spot as what it is because you knew it close up. Even more hurtful are the memories of “I’ll always love you” “You’re my best friend” or “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you” that ultimately turn into nothing, sometimes with frightening swiftness. I’m proud of my current group of friends. They keep me sane and I treasure them and hope I can help them in any way, whatever happens in their lives. It doesn’t stop the pain that flares up when I’m reminded of those dead friendships, how one person who used to be your world is suddenly like a ghost. Although it’s hard, I’ve slowly started throwing out old objects that no longer hold any relevance, and hope that on some weird psychic level it is beneficial. It’s painful because it’s like casting aside the last remnants of my childhood. I falter when I come across some things from a friend who used to be my partner in crime in pretty much everything. She was always the younger, dominant one and I was always the older, placid one. We were performers who both loved the stage, and performed quite a bit together. We joked that we’d make a good Jekyll and Hyde. Later on, her constant need to be the star of the show got on my nerves, amongst other things, and her ego blew up as she grew into a 5″8, size 6, model-perfect physique and started to attract the attention of boys. She moved to the other end of the state for uni and we more or less disappeared in one another’s lives. She developed a nasty alcohol habit which contributed to a panic disorder that had been simmering beneath the surface for years. She gained twenty kilos and for the first time in her life understood the dysphoria that myself and the rest of our peers experienced years before. Her dreams of being an actor and a model slowly dissolved as real life hit her the way it hits us all, and I’ve got the feeling that she’s a gentler, humbler soul than she was when we drifted apart. At the same time, I’ve no motivation to get back in touch. I just want her to succeed, and be happy, and healthy, and never lose that streak of craziness that I fell in love with right at the start.

Digging even further into the past, I find a little bracelet that I was sure I’d thrown out long ago. It was the first week of uni and I ended up standing in a circle with a bunch of semi-familiar faces that I’d seen at law camp the week before. One was a boy with an odd accent and a ready laugh. Very quickly, we discovered that we both had a Filipino mum and there was a high-five and a few rapid words of poorly-pronounced Tagalog. We were only born a couple of weeks apart and we both were obsessed with Ancient Egypt. I was stoked. I loved his bear-like presence and funny way of describing people and things. Since he was quite sheltered and fairly religious, he was also the unfortunate target of many light pranks which in retrospect were probably a bit wrong. 

Far too quickly, however, those early sunny days clouded over. Our mutual friends noticed something was up before I did. I saw nothing wrong with guy/girl friendships, and I still don’t. I think it’s stupid to assume that just because you’re friends with the opposite gender, you’re planning on banging. There’s this thing called liking someone’s personality. Unfortunately, lack of communication on this front meant that we had increasingly different ideas of what was going on; we’d go to the movies and meet up for coffee or hang out at the library, and although for me it was just spending time with a mate, he’d firmly chalked it up in his head as a date. In what I realise now was grossly inappropriate and a violation of my own innocence at the time, he managed to get it out of me that fact that I was a virgin and constantly went on about how rare and special it was that I wasn’t one of those ‘slutty girls’ - I feel like driving around to his house and punching him when I think of that now. Eventually, it all got too much and I made it very clear that I only ever saw him as a friend, not even one molecule of my being thought of him as boyfriend material, and I was more than happy to stay friends but nothing more. 

Once again, my lack of experience backfired and I realise that I should have just cut contact completely. More or less overnight, he turned into a vile creature. He criticised every aspect of my personality; my looks, my academic achievements, my choices in life. He made every effort to make me feel awful. The old Filipino connection, which used to be celebrated and was a source of pride, he now ground into the dust and tried to say that Filipinos were dumb and embarrassing. He still stayed in contact, constantly dropping hints about himself that were somehow meant to suggest that he was a wonderful boyfriend and I had missed out, but it got more and more irritating until one night I was at a party, a few drinks in, and sent a massive long text telling him everything I disliked about him. After that, it was completely over and there was no more drama. I wasn’t really harmed by the experience at all, I think something like that had to happen to make me more aware of life and relationships, but the lessons I learned stayed in my brain. I made a promise to myself that if I were ever in that situation of finding myself “friendzoned” to use the modern parlance, I wouldn’t do a full 360 and turn into a monster simply because the other person isn’t as smitten. It blows my mind how violently someone’s thoughts can turn in a confused reaction to lack of reciprocation. Not loving someone back isn’t a personal flaw, it’s just a fact of life. If you think someone is amazing enough to fall in love with them, how come that all has to shatter when you know they don’t feel the same way? I suppose it’s a reaction to pain, and like many emotional reactions, it’s not a rational one. I still don’t understand it.

Life has sometimes been described as a tapestry, or a long thread, and in many ways it’s true. Some people come into your life and their thread weaves a blaze of colour into your tapestry, but it doesn’t last forever. Humans are a clingy species and we don’t take kindly to a beautiful coloured thread petering out into a new phase, which can sometimes feel dull in comparison.

It’s the middle of summer and my thoughts are full of death, and darkness, and winter. I’m not actually depressed - not properly - although a friend of mine is starting to get concerned after our conversations the past couple of weeks. There’s talk of ‘seeing someone’ and ‘getting help’, which I’ve already done with no benefit whatsoever. I’m not in danger. I simply need time. Life’s tapestry gets tangled up sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do except sigh, sit back and unravel the unruly threads so you can go on your way again. 

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger — something better, pushing right back.” - Albert Camus