#dear diary tumblr

[painfullymeta]

Warning: I'm Gonna Be Earnest Now

I am deep in my feels right at the moment so I am actually making a post of my own on this, the deep in my feels hellsite.

I am late GenX.  (Not quite what gets called Xennial IMO but definitely in what gets called the Oregon Trail (Micro)Generation.)  And for all you young whippersnappers, you have to understand "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” ( - L. P. Hartley)

I am old enough to remember when AIDS was named GRID.  ("Gay-related immune deficiency.”)  I am old enough to remember ACT-UP, the Reagans’ abandonment, “If I die of AIDS just leave me on the steps of the FDA”, all those things that tired older people on tumblr try to remind people of when the TERFs come around to tell us to stop saying “queer” as if Queer Nation was a goddamn hallucination I had when I was a kid.

On the last day of high school, after the last exam, when none of us would have to ever see each other again if we so chose – that was the day that one of my friends, someone I had eaten lunch near every day since partway through freshman year, said to me “I have something to tell you.  I’m gay.”  And then he followed it up with “Is that okay?”

I hugged him.  He broke my goddamn heart and I hugged him.  "Is that okay," he asked me. Is it okay to be who I am, near you.

I was in college before I met someone who identified herself as a lesbian — and I went to a women’s college until I lost my shit and dropped out, and I expect that if I hadn’t done that I might have gone longer.

(Of course at the same time as I was clueless and not meaningfully connected with any sort of queer culture I somehow wound up with a friendgroup who, if we got bored and couldn’t come up with anything else to do, would watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show together.  This is what we did instead of going to Homecoming.)

By 2000, I was vaguely aware of trans things existing, and in fact met my first trans person while at Brighton Pride that year, though we didn’t really speak (I was there as the guest of some people in his extended social group) and I was vaguely confused and too awkward to try to do more than ‘observe and try not to fuck this up’.  I met a nonbinary person for the first time around then as well, and zie was the only one I knew of for nearly a decade.

By the mid-oughts I was with it enough to ask someone what pronouns she wanted me to use for her before sharing something about her on a message board.

(I am also old enough to have spent time on multiple message boards.  I’m old enough to resent the internet going through the world wide web instead of email and usenet actually.)

Sometime in the early oughts I guess I was at the subcommittee hearing in the Boston State House that was discussing, among other things, whether we might consider possibly condescending to allow same-sex couples to marry.  I was even going to testify!  (Please be impressed with my early twenties autistic ass I was terrified.)  There was a guy there - a senator on the committee - who was asking every person who came up if they were going to force his church to marry the gays.  Catholic, y’know, this being Massachusetts.  I revised my speech in my head to note that if we weren’t forcing the Catholic churches to marry divorcees yet he didn’t need to worry about it.

(Then my nose decided to haemhorrage all over my entire life and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding so rather than testify while looking like an entire murder victim I went home.)

I was in my thirties when pregnancy-induced dysphoria made me start seriously thinking about my own sense of gender.

I was in my forties before I bought a binder.

I am from another fucking planet.  (The past is a foreign country.)

I know kids - multiple kids - who knew enough to identify as lesbians at an age younger than I think I knew that word.  (And I am one of those humans of freakish and unreasonable vocabulary and always have been.)

I crack jokes with one of my kids about the Queer Kids Stairs at their school, because that’s where the GSA kids hang out together after activities get out.  (While GSAs were around while I was a kid, they started in Massachusetts according to Wikipedia and that is not where I was when I was a kid, and to my best recollection I didn’t hear about them existing at all until I was an adult.)

I live in a world where my social circles include queer people of my generation, of older generations, of younger generations, and oh my gods, I look at the kids and my heart tries to explode.

My oldest knows more than one trans kid.  More than one *affirmed* trans kid.  (And we’ve talked a bit about the social dynamics that might make it more likely for the trans boys to be out than the trans girls, even now.)

And I’m writing this because of one of those trans boys, who is in the Coming of Age group at our church, and who is, apparently, in his credo, citing that thing I’ve seen on the tumblrs more than once, about how being trans means being a participant in the holy, divine process of creation, coming into being as himself.

And guys?

I’m not from the same planet as that kid.

Because I’m in my forties and I don’t even know what I’m creating.  And I’m terrified.

And here’s this kid coming out there with that as a core statement of belief that he’s prepared to stand up in front of, as the phrase goes ‘God and everyone’, to claim.

(I need to remember to talk to him about how in my Craft tradition there’s a canonically transmasc god.)

I know I’ve got at least two teenagers reading me and I just.  Y’all got this.  I know it’s hard and the world is scary and it’s fucking coming for us all but you are amazing and I am so full of inarticulate alexithymic feelings about all of you. The ones I know and the ones I don't.

We've come a long way from "Is that okay?" and you heal my broken heart.

[painfullymeta]

People talk shit about pop culture paganism but hell, Bell Riots (Observed) seems to be a thing worth adding to the ritual calendar.

(Also if anyone else is in Massachusetts the Greater Boston Food Bank has donation matching through the end of August so *today*.)

THE BELL RIOTS

This is just to say the Bell Riots don't take place on August 30th. That's the day Sisko, Dax, and Bashir will have been being arrived* in San Francisco. The Riots will be September 1-3, 2024.

That said, instead of rioting, today I honored Gabriel Bell's heroics with a donation to a couple of charities that help the unhoused and the hungry. I've donated to the Hollywood Food Coalition and the SF Marin Food Bank:

Hollywood Food Coalition Building Community since 1987 - Hollywood Food Coalition (hofoco.org)

San Francisco-Marin Food Bank - Every $1 Donated Provides 2 Meals‎ (sfmfoodbank.org)

I made the donations "In Memory of Gabriel Bell." Please consider honoring Gabriel Bell with donations of your own to these or other organizations that helped the unhoused.

Thank you! Stay safe out there. Live long and prosper!

*Tense is tricky for time travel.

[livingisboring]

[enigmasandepiphanies]

i have so much to rant

[gleafer]

I BELIEVE IN LOVE AND UNICORNS!

More Poolverine nonsense!

[centralpark1981]

[h3llis4teenageg1rl]

that diary the only best friend, really

[jm-2406]

Please let me know that I am not the only one who has read [& continues to do so] fanfictions about the characters whom I know nothing about; I haven't seen the movie/series or read the books about them but I am crushing hard on them because one of their fanfictions landed on my "for you" page...

[pink111shit]

[lonelyohsolonelyghostgirl]

𝕋𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕟 𝕞𝕪 𝕝𝕖𝕗𝕥, 𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕟 𝕞𝕪 𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥

𝕀'𝕧𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕗𝕒𝕔𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕞𝕪 𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕖

[prettyparks]

˚₊‧꒰ა Good morning, angels!! June’s newsletter is here! I went a little crazy. Let me know if you like the extra stuff, the new layout, et cetera. Enjoy, lovelies! ୨୧˚｡

[painfullymeta]

I wish to note I was in the back row

After discussion with Minnow....

Me: So, about that last song Gold did?

Band director: Yeah?

Me: Was that just "uncork the fuckin' trumpets and let 'em go"?

Band director: [nearly falls down the staircase]

[passedaway44]

[k8mosss]

🎀

[alienateddotmp3]

Hey, it’s pretty impossible to survive right now. As a refugee, I literally need so much support to begin my life again. I started a goal on ko-fi to help me survive. I’m looking to raise 5000£

I need food, toiletries, home necessities, a new phone, to get my pc back, etc etc

Please, if you can’t donate directly I’d appreciate you sharing this

P.s. I’d love to eventually be able to make things to sell when I get permission to work, but for now, this is what I’ve got.

Kofi : Paypal : Cashapp : Venmo

Edit: the kofi is now @/flopiana

[gloomydiary]

I hate everything and want to disappear