#i put in vacation time for halloween that got approved earlier so someone at least was at the store today

[risaonda]

also so many stoplights are still out and so many roads still so flooded. sat at a red light at a turn for 2 cycles before accepting the sensor is more than likely fucked and the light will never turn green, so I just have to use my own judgement. also still haven't heard from either job yet 😭

[nationaldvam]

After the New Year a few years ago, I bought myself a copy of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It wasn’t a book I actually felt I needed; if anything, I’m almost annoyingly tidy already, a veritable Roomba of a human. I’d moved fifteen times in the decade since I’d turned 18, each time trying to shed whatever I no longer wore.

I bought Kondo’s book mostly as a ploy to get my boyfriend, Rob, to clean out his nightstand. Our courtship had been a steady reclamation of his less-tidy space by my relentless wave of tidiness. (Whatever’s going on in Marie Kondo’s brain that makes her say “I love mess!”, I have it, too.) His nightstand, though, was The Place He Put Things. A place I ached to clean.

The book arrived, and after weeks spent suggesting he read it, I finally decided to live by example. I did as Marie Kondo prescribed: I emptied my closet and bureau into a pile on the living room floor, separated their contents into a peak of jackets and a peak of dresses. One by one, I picked items up and asked myself whether they sparked joy. If they didn’t, into the discard pile they went.

I didn’t take me long to see it, what the discard pile was. It was only the skirts, only the dresses, only the flowers and lace and sparkles. It was everything I’d bought hoping that some colleague might say: Isn’t that cute?

I burst into tears, shame filling me entirely, and then I laughed about the fact that this book had made me cry, this silly, stupid cleaning book.

For months — well, years — I’d carried around a stack of telling moments in my mind, ones I’d shuffle periodically, ones I knew told me something but something I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself, let alone admit. For example, there was this one moment back before I’d quit my job. I had worked at a start-up media company. It was the sort of office that looks fun and has fun snacks and there’s pressure to dress up on fun holidays like Halloween. One Halloween, I’d come as Ace Ventura.

After lunch they were giving prizes to those who’d really gone above and beyond costume-wise, myself not included. I stood in the crowd next to a colleague who’d come dressed as her boss. Earlier her costume had gotten a big reaction, though, because it was her dressing as him: sneakers, jeans, glasses, of course the hoodie. Everyone laughed. Now we were standing around, drinking booze, eating sugar. I told her I liked her costume and she looked embarrassed.

“I feel so awkward. Don’t you feel awkward?” she asked.

I didn’t get what she meant.

“Dressing like a guy!” she said.

“Oh,” I said, and without thinking added: “I always dress like a guy for Halloween, or at least a lot of the time.”

(I mentally flipped through prior Halloweens: My first costume, at age three, an authentic lederhosen. In elementary and middle school, I’d dressed as a male nerd, a male tourist, Charlie Chaplin. When I was in grad school in Iowa, in my mid-twenties, I’d won second place at a roller derby halftime costume contest dressed as Justin Bieber. When I said “Justin Bieber” into the judge’s mic, someone in the crowd shouted, “That’s a chick!”)

“That’s funny,” I said to my colleague, “I haven’t noticed that before.”

Which was funny, because just getting dressed, day-to-day, I struggled with, always. Most mornings my bedroom floor would be lost beneath tops and skirts pulled on and torn off. I’d apply eye makeup or lipstick, then remove it, then change my mind again. I’d pause at the door and cringe and end up back in my room, eyeing the clock, and pull the shirt from the day before from the laundry. It had always been like this.

Back then, I was always sweating. At work I sweated through shirts and cardigans and sometimes jackets, too. If I thought about the sweat it seemed to get worse. In the summer especially I’d go hide in the bathroom a while, wait until the whole joint was empty so I could crouch with my pits beneath the hand dryer. Sometimes I told myself little lies about how I was getting better, generally — getting better at having style, getting better at faking confidence.

I knew deep down this was all a fiction. If anything, I sensed I was getting worse at even leaving the apartment. It grew harder to dress for work; I eventually wore the same few items over and over: a black maxi dress, lace-up sandals, a jean jacket to mop up sweat.

But then I sold a book, and realized that to finish it, I had to quit my job. This meant no more office or coworkers. It meant I didn’t have to leave the house at all. This idea — never having to dress for work again — was appealing for reasons I still couldn’t quite explain.

Now with no office to go to, I rarely dressed, and if I did I wore sweatpants. The days I did go out, for an appointment or a meeting, I might force myself to dress up. Tripping down a cobblestone street one afternoon in heels, I wondered who the hell I was trying to fool.

I eventually ran out of the one makeup item I still sometimes wore, red lipstick, and now found myself incapable of making the trip to Sephora to buy more. The place had always make me melt with nervousness, but now, so unpracticed at being in public, I felt somehow incapable of going inside. I finally convinced a friend to come with me. I found myself trying to explain to her that doing something like buying lipstick was very hard for me. I don’t think she understood what I meant. I don’t think I understood what I meant.

A few days later I wrote about the lipstick incident in a blog post. I published it hurriedly, before I could talk myself out of it. In the post, for the very first time to anyone, I acknowledged what that day I termed “my gender stuff.”

A month later, kneeling and sobbing before my Marie Kondo discard pile, it felt silly, sure, that this book is what had finally done it, but I also couldn’t unsee my actual preferences: so much of the feminine clothing I owned did not spark joy.

I donated it all. I hung and folded the items that remained: flannel shirts, baggy jeans, t-shirts. I had kept a few dresses and heels and feminine winter coats, ones that had seemed really special when I’d bought them. I knew Marie Kondo wouldn’t have approved of my choice to keep them. Each day I passed them and they stared right back at me.

During the months that followed, I steadily shed feminine things. One day, all my makeup: gone. Another day, all my earrings: gone. (My ears had been pierced when I was two!) I tried to do as Marie Kondo said and thanked these items for what they’d given me. I guiltily threw them out, and then felt wonderful.

One August day, I donated the last of my heels and dresses, the ones that had once been my absolute favorites. I happened to run into someone I knew in line at the thrift shop, and he offered to take my box of things to donate. I put them in his trunk and watched him drive away. I didn’t say to him, nor could I have articulated, that I was throwing out the last of me pretending to be a woman.

Walking away, I felt joy, an almost ridiculous joy. I also felt terror, like when a cartoon has walked off a cliff and is standing blissfully on air.

A few days later, Rob and I happened to be flying to another city on vacation. I packed a mostly empty suitcase. When we got there, I said, I’d force myself to go shopping.

Rob knew I’d gotten rid of a lot of my clothes, and I’d begun to talk about gender, but, like me, he didn’t know where I was going with any of this.

The first store was GAP-like. To my left were waifish white mannequins wearing blouses and skirts, cashmeres and scarves; to the right were slightly bigger ones in belted khakis and button downs.

I walked straight ahead, wanting to turn right but afraid. I broke left through the dresses, feeling immediately disappointed in myself, Rob following behind.

I swerved back to the right, hurriedly walking through the men’s things now, wondering if anyone was on to me. I looked at a pair of pants, willing myself to pick them up. How would I ever figure out my size? How could I ever work up the nerve to walk back to the dressing room? I felt like I was going to throw up or pass out. I marched back out the glass doors, with Rob behind me.

We found a café and I cried and tried to tell him some of my story, the first I’d ever told anyone any of it, really. I recalled being three and learning my bedroom walls were painted green because my parents had expected me to be a boy, a fact I had always loved. I recalled how the nickname I’d had since birth, Sandy, was a name for boys and girls both, another fact I had always loved.

“For as long as I can remember, this is who I’ve been,” I explained to him: internally not-female, or not just female, though I didn’t know what this made me instead.

“I love you,” he said, “I support you.” He seemed less surprised than I’d have guessed he be. What fear I had that he would love me less if I were honest about it all was quickly dissolving.

I finished an iced tea. I felt better.

We resolved that I could try going into a second store. He held my hand. I nervously felt along the side that had masculine things. The woman behind the register was wearing a ballcap herself and didn’t seem bothered. I went into a dressing room and tried on item after item. Every time I emerged, Rob beamed.

I couldn’t afford to buy much of anything that day, so when he took out his card, I didn’t stop him; I’d never felt so grateful.

That evening, we went on a date. I wore a new button down, trousers, Oxfords. We moved down the street, his hand in mine, which was shaking, so terrified by the question of what we must look like to others.

Nobody much noticed, or if they did and cared, they didn’t show it. This, I’ve since learned, is often the way of things.

Before that night, I realized, I had never before been both “dressed up” and comfortable.

“You look hot,” Rob said, and unlike how I’d always reacted to such sentiments, I didn’t want to swat away his compliment like a gnat.

The best feelings are the converse of this cisgender othering: the moments of communion, however brief, I share with other queer and trans people out there in the world. Like last June, I walked down Sixth Avenue during the NYC Dyke March, one body in a long splay of bodies, bodies with voices, bodies with drums, and I felt, for the first time ever, like I was surrounded by my peers.

That year I didn’t leave the apartment much because there was always work to be done, and because what would I wear? Because what was I even doing? Because sometimes I’d cry so hard.

I had learned words for myself, words like nonbinary and trans, but I couldn’t yet imagine saying these words about myself to anyone. Trump was elected. The apartment was high in a building with a terrace. I’d stand on it barefoot and study the traffic on the avenue below.

That year I read books — books for the book I was writing, but also books about gender, books I’d finally let myself get after years of not buying such books. When I finally read Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl, I reflected a long time on my choice of Halloween costume that time at work, Ace Ventura. Serano reminded me that the entire plot of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective turns on the “reveal” of a transgender woman. At the movie’s climax, Ace outs a trans woman for the “fake” that she is — literally spinning her around to show her tucked genitals — at which he and everyone else vomits profusely, including Dan Marino and the Dolphins’ mascot, a dolphin.

I recalled other transphobic — specifically transmisogynist — cultural artifacts that attracted me when I was younger, realizing in fact that so much of the comedy I loved growing up hinged on the joke of crossdressing: Mrs. Doubtfire, Monty Python, Little Britain. Also the joke of gender non-conformity, in the case of It’s Pat. I probably loved these things both because they brought up the topic of gender, which did greatly interest me, and because they shamed me, bullied me away from acknowledging my own truth.

Sometimes I would be forced to leave the apartment. I’d put on new clothes, ones that made me feel a flutter of pride. Friends wouldn’t recognize me. Strangers would stare. Or they’d call me “sir” and I’d be stunned but also unsure whether I wanted to correct them. I also felt that these were the first times I’d ever dared to show myself honestly to the world.

Sometimes I’d run into someone I knew — a girl from back home, a guy from grad school. I’d see them avoid my eyes, sure that they didn’t know me. I’d feel hurt, and then I’d see them realize, say something like, “You got a haircut.”

Sometimes I’d have to attend some event or occasion I hadn’t since the change, like a job interview or funeral. Attempting to dress, I’d fall apart, totally lose nerve. Rob would stand with me, tie my tie, wipe my tears. At that funeral, some relatives didn’t recognize me, and others thought I was my brother. But then they did see it was me.

“Sandy!” they said. After, I’d feel a supreme relief, like at least now they know, even if they don’t get it.

I worked up all the courage I had and made an appointment at an actual barbershop. For years I’d gone to a salon that smelled like chardonnay and chemicals, pretended the whole time I wasn’t having a panic attack.

In the barbershop the men didn’t seem to notice me. I got the cut I wanted. I exited feeling something like pride, rubbing the buzz on the back of my neck. Walking through the park on my way home, I stopped and did something I’d never much been tempted to do before, which was post a selfie. I shook with nerves.

I never used to picture myself in middle or old age, but now I do. That began happening after I came out. Another new thing I started to feel was that I love myself. Not just how I look, my haircut, my style, though I do love those things. I now love my body itself to an extent I’d never have imagined was possible. Before I hated everything about me, body included, totally, powerfully, if for reasons I couldn’t quite spell out.

Presenting myself now, in a way that’s honest about how I’ve always mentally straddled the gender divide, I also feel the cruelty of gender-segregated spaces more sharply. I hate the TSA and avoid changing rooms. Cis women in bathrooms sometimes look shocked or horrified when they see me, or they make frowning remarks (like “This the men’s?”). I contemplate going into men’s rooms but frankly, I’m too scared of men. If I’m being honest, I avoid being in public still, as much as I can.

These days, I’m called “sir” and “ma’am” with equal frequency. Sometimes people think I’m male at first and then realize I’m not, usually when I talk, and sometimes I then see a wild anger in them. In those moments, I feel my vulnerability. Though in other senses I feel safer; I am no longer constantly catcalled, as I was before — that drumbeat of male violence, muffled. All the time I feel how arbitrary these categories are. All the time, I know this is all just about power.

Some who see me now are excited about my apparent difference. In a restaurant, a waitress ran over, grinning, nearly shouting, “What are you?”

The best feelings are the converse of this cisgender othering: the moments of communion, however brief, I share with other queer and trans people out there in the world. Like last June, I walked down Sixth Avenue during the NYC Dyke March, one body in a long splay of bodies, bodies with voices, bodies with drums, and I felt, for the first time ever, like I was surrounded by my peers. I felt really quiet that day, like no words would work. I still find myself unable to describe that feeling of having community. Suffice it to say, it sparked joy.

I’m 31 now, and living a life that a few years ago I couldn’t have imagined. My book’s paperback calls me Sandy and they/them. Rob and I married and moved to an old farmhouse in the country. I now have two floors of rooms to tidy. I often wander delightedly for hours, scrubbing and straightening and vacuuming cat fur and flies and once, with a whoosh — to my great surprise — the skeleton of a baby mouse.

Rob and I write out our chores on a big spool of brown paper by the fridge, to ensure we contribute evenly. I am proud of us, of him, for how we’ve managed to share the responsibilities of maintaining this home. And yet, through all this change, a constant remains, bulging with wires and papers and who knows what else, the one place I’ve accepted I’ll never tidy: his nightstand.

[dontkillbambii-blog]

Bad Things Happen to Good People

The Beginning:

I have always been this super shy but really nice person as long as I can remember. I met a guy 9 years ago who was also really nice but instead of shy he was really outgoing and smart. I loved that about him and now we are married. My husband has always been really smart about making money as long as I’ve known him and was always passionate about technology. I knew he would go far one day. 

Eventually he learned how to work on cell phones on his own. He studied multiple YouTube tutorials and researched all that he could. He began practicing on his own phone to ensure he knew what he was doing before working on another persons phone. Before long he was repairing phones for people out of our small 2 bedroom apartment and he loved it. Of course it turned into a career for him and suddenly he was in high demand, making new friends, and only getting better and better. Customers loved him because he was honest, kind, and fast. They always wanted to come to him and would call him all hours of the day for his help. 

He really is an amazing and hard working guy, which of course began to make me feel like I didn’t deserve him... I was a girl that could be the nicest and most thoughtful person ever, but when it came to talking to people or working... well that was a different story. Why would this amazing guy want to be with someone who can’t keep a job or save money? When it came to work and money we were two different people. I felt like I was dragging him down and that caused a lot of depression on my end.I always thought, what if he would have met someone who was as much as a go getter as him and more sociable and successful? He could be rich by now and we wouldn’t know because here I am dragging him down. This man always had really great and smart ideas and no matter what it seemed like he always had money and I felt safe. Was it fair for him to be making all the money and I doing nothing to help? Of course not. It isn’t fair at all. But me being this person that I am just ignored it and let it keep going this way.

I worked countless retail jobs, them only lasting for a few months at a time and then me thinking of excuses to get out of it. Working in retail or with the public has always been a nightmare to me. Having customers meant having to talk to people and some of those people weren’t kind no matter how kind you were to them from the beginning. Having coworkers meant I felt like I was always being judged and talked about. I never cared about what people thought before, until it could effect my job. I always thought it would be awesome if I would make friends wherever I worked because I hadn’t had a friend for a long time. My friends had all moved away or passed away and I was all alone. Which beings me back to my husband... my best friend and my safety blanket. We worked together a few years back for a couple of years at a temporary Halloween store where he was the manager and it wasn’t too bad at all. We made it fun and I had someone there who really liked me. 

Every time I would leave a job for really no good reasons, it would always seem to arise in conflict with us, Usually not right away, but in the long run when money started to run low and I would just lay around all day like a bum. I loved my freedom but once again, it wasn’t fair. 

We always lived with roommates so that money was a little easier because everything was split between everyone who lived there. It wasn’t always bad, in fact there have been a lot of good memories, but guess who found a way to screw all of that up too? You guessed it! The roommates were always my husbands friends, who I knew very well because we were all friends before and after my husband and I started dating. I’ve known them for years. They were all great guys in their own ways but of course they all had things about them that bothered me. Did I stop to think that maybe there were things about me that bothered them and they just let it go for the sake of us all living together? Probably not. 

The long term goal was that my husband and I would finally get a place with just the two of us whether it be a rental or a house. Of course our own house was always the biggest thing because that means it was all ours and we could finally start our own family. When we lived with other people of course I felt like we had no privacy and I felt like I couldn’t have my husband all to myself. He was the only person I had to talk to when I came home, unlike him where he had his friends there. 

I should probably add that while our living situation was with roommates, we lived in really nice apartments or houses. The last house we lived in was over a thousand a month (of course that was split 3 ways). We were living it up! On top of all of that we were going on vacations to Florida, Alabama, and Cedar Point pretty much every year. I don’t regret it because I wanted to do these things and live life a little before we did settle down in our own house and start a family. 

When it comes to starting a family... I always wanted to have a baby at a younger age. By younger age I don’t mean being a teenager, I mean early to mid twenties. I wanted to be a younger mother who could relate to my child when it got older, just like most of the mothers in my family. My husband always wanted to wait until we at least had a house first and he had always wanted his own phone repair shop before getting a house. But don’t worry, here came annoying me pushing the baby thing because I wasn’t getting any younger.

At the end of 2017 the timing seemed perfect to begin trying for a baby. I was 23 years old, we had just went on a Florida vacation with some friends, we were living with my husbands parents to save money for a house (in a terrible upstairs room which was kind of two rooms that were no bigger than a persons living room put together. I hated it there), and then life gave us two big surprises for our future that we had been waiting for. Not the baby, yet, but we were per-approved for a house loan and my husband was getting his own shop. Things were finally lining up for us and we were so excited. Maybe too excited. Another baby plan of mine was to announce to my family about the pregnancy on Christmas. Well it was around October and that time was coming up. So either we had to start trying or wait another year. Here came that “too excited” thing and we figured, of course we should! We were already pre approved and hubby was getting a shop. Why should we wait? Christmas was coming and my family was going to be so excited, and we were too of course.

On December 15, I took a pregnancy test and discovered 2 little pink lines. There it was. Right in front of my face. I was pregnant. The shock was unbelievable and it didn’t feel real. I surprised my husband and you could see his excitement. We couldn’t believe it! After all of these years together and being best friends we were finally having a baby! A little me and a little him. Needless to say my family was over the moon and there were a lot of tears of joy. There hadn’t been a baby in my family in years. Now all we had to do was wait to look for a house and everything would be perfect! 

Growing up I had noticed that it always seemed like whenever you would get good news, it was always followed by bad news. Or vice versa. If I woke up having a terrible day, something good always seemed to pop up in there somewhere. Or if I woke up having a good day, it usually didn’t last long. That’s probably not the case with everyone, but it was for me. Of course I am mentioning this discovery because when 2018 rolled around... our dreams had came to a end. I shouldn’t say all of our dreams, the baby was healthy and my husband had a shop. What’s missing? We started looking for a house... the first thing we looked at was a trailer on really good land in a really good location. Did I want to live in a trailer? No. But everything else about it was okay. We decided to go for it so husband calls the bank and wants to use our loan to put in an offer. The banks says ‘okay great! We just need your pay stubs and W2s for the past 2 years’. The last place my husband worked before getting a shop was a terribly managed phone store by a kid who didn’t know what he was doing and lied about taking taxes out while he worked there. So just like that it was over... we had no pay stubs because my husband got paid either with cash or directly into his account with no taxes being taken out most of the time, and the same goes for the W2′s. Feeling at a loss, I had him asked him about reapplying for a loan, maybe we would just get pre approved for less or maybe there was a different type of loan that we could get. We had good credit and enough for a down payment. We tried to stay hopeful and do all that we could, but then he said the one thing that there was nothing we could do about..they can’t give him a loan because he just started a business. We would have to wait another two years.

The house wasn’t going to happen. I figured worst case scenario, we will just have to rent. We have to do something, for there just isn’t any way I can be carrying a baby in my tummy and going up steep stairs at his parents while having no room for any of the baby’s things. Renting can’t happen either. Due to me quitting my job, like I said happens a lot because I am a terrible person and thought I would just have some leeway before getting another job in the city where we planned to move where my husbands shop was that would be okay with me only working for about 5 months before the baby is born. But also because my husbands shop wasn’t making a lot of money. It was a new shop so a lot of people didn’t know about it and I knew it would take time to get going. Like I said earlier, he always wanted his own shop and now that he had one I was so proud of him and just had the strongest feeling that he was going to do great. And he will. 

For right now, though, we. are. broke. This had never happen to us before. We were always pretty good about having money for bills and everything that we wanted. I should say my husband was anyways, I never kept track of any of the important stuff  because he was always way smarter about it all than me. 

So here we are. Living in a place that is probably the worst place I’ve ever lived. Every hope of getting out is gone. We have no money so we are most likely having to sell anything valuable that we once owned and loved just to be able to pay the bills. And possibly the worst part of it is that I am 18 weeks pregnant... why did I do this? How could I get pregnant on top of it all and bring a baby into this world with nothing to give it except love. Which of course babies need, but they also need a lot more than that. Everything was looking so promising and then was over before I knew it. It is all my fault. I quit my job and am having trouble finding another one. I pushed to get pregnant right away. I have nothing to give. I don’t know if it’s a mental thing that I can’t be a better person than I am... or just the way that things happen for me. My husband is doing everything and I just sit here feeling useless and like a failure. 

My family has been trying to help us get a place by getting a loan or buying a place with their own money... of course I appreciate the generosity, more than anyone can know, but I can’t let them do that. How amazing is it that your family can come together like that to help? I am blessed with a family that is so caring, but a house? It’s too much. They shouldn’t have to give up their own money or loans for the things that they want to get us a place just because we screwed up. We did this, and now we have to live with it. 

I don’t know if we’ll get by with paying our bills and not having any money or not... but I am just going to have to live with the fact that my old life is gone and I am just going to have to be stuck with where I am and what I’ll have to stick with to get by. I don’t really remember that last time I truly felt happy and secure with life like where I live or our financial status. I remember feeling excited when we found out about the loans and the baby, but now that small bit of happiness is gone too... It’s over and I don’t know when everything will be okay again. When I don’t cry or stress over my life everyday. Maybe it will go up from here, I just don’t see how... no matter how good of people my husband and I are, recently it has only been bad things and that’s all I expect now. Where did it all go wrong?