#i've found so much power in being a transsexual no matter how others feel about it

[uncanny-tranny]

Shout-out to queer people who use "outdated" language, for whatever reason. It is okay to reclaim and use language that feels best for your experiences. I promise, the people who matter don't mind.

[mydreamdoll]

Queer loneliness and the life of an indoor cat

It's a Sunday evening and I find myself, yet again, in the midst of the brutal heatwave that we always seem to get during the should-have-been-end-of-summer in Michigan. Summers here are uniquely terrible. As soon as the thermostat ticks above 80 degrees, all of that lake water that surrounds our little state like an idle moat completely evaporates into the air, making it so that breathing feels closer to drowning than an act of survival. So in order to combat the horribleness that is being alive in August, I'm spending my night the same way that i spend most of them these days- doing everything in my power to forget that summer is happening. I've got my curtains pulled shut, a black amber candle burning, and my dusty pink salt rock lamp working overtime to light an entire room. As I sip my obscenely dark cup of decaf coffee and listen, once again, to the recurring mantra of the Twin Peaks opening theme I can almost start to drown out the sound of the air conditioning blasting through the vent on the floor. Almost.

I do wonder, though; is living this way somehow a sin in the eyes of the twenty-something gods? Is this kind of fantastical isolation a valid lifestyle for a young, sober introvert? or is it an affront to the sacred gift that is youth? A lot of my life over the past year has been driven by these kinds of questions. When I'm old and dying, will I regret all my nights of nothingness?

Right now it seems like we're seeing a real rejection of gay bed-rotting and a return to the good ole degenerate clubbing and party drug-ingesting that our dear community used to be known for. On a philosophical level I love this; I think that we've long needed a divorce from this chronically online, out of touch, discourse based lifestyle that has poisoned so much of our collective spiritual well. On an emotional level, however, I feel incredibly bitter about it. There's a strong "cool kids table" factor to all of it and I am decidedly, and hopelessly, not a part of it. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that I don't have many trans sisters or gay peers in my life, nor are there any actual gay clubs in the city that I live (the one that did exist got completely taken over by straight people), so meeting them is a pretty difficult task. I try my best to put myself out there and experience new things but god this city makes it so hard, and my own personal introversion certainly does not help. Maybe it's my own fault, maybe it's the worlds, or maybe (probably) it's a little bit of both. Either way, that feeling that I'm missing out on something never really leaves me.

-

After more than 60 consecutive days of dreaming about him, I had really convinced myself that our double feature at the downtown movie theater could have been the night that something finally happened between us. And then on the ride there he told me that he'd started talking to an old fling from college again. I'm definitely missing out on something.

So I guess that I am now starting from scratch on finding some form of real romance in my life. I don't know if I even have the capacity to think of anybody else right now if I'm being honest, but I have to try. I've got to find some way to forget about my feelings for him.

I've still yet to hear an actual answer from anybody about how it is, exactly, that young transsexuals are meant to find love in today's world. I mean we've made all of this progress, have all of these evolved men who would be thrilled to date a doll, and yet we have nowhere to find each other. And even when we think we might have finally found the right guy, how do we know if it's real? Being rejected is one thing, but being rejected on account of them being to ashamed of their attraction to you to date you? I don't know if my fragile little heart could take it.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to find a real love.

It often feels like I've been cast into this purgatorial state, where my only option is whether I'd like to yearn fruitlessly or to lie down. I almost always choose yearning. There's at least the warmth in my shoulders and the off tempo kicking in my chest that comes when he looks me in my eyes. But that feeling always ends up crashing down when I remember where all of this fantasizing gets me; which is approximately nowhere outside of abject loneliness. Yet somehow the hopelessness doesn't stop me from looking back up at him. I'd stare at him forever if I had it my way.

In a life as lonely as the one I've found myself in, I wonder- how does a girl find her way out of her fantasies and out into the sun? How does she embrace the harsh light of summer?