#so happy when ppl recognize my cosplay tho!!!

[sucktacular]

Went to Anime North this weekend! Kinda just loosely hung around but here's a vest-less bunch of selfies of my Matt cosplay!!

[the-amalgam-house]

I love Halloween and Christmas pretty equally, but I was never allowed to celebrate Halloween. I never went trick or treating, never decorated a house all spooky, never handed out candy to kids, never went to a Halloween costume party. Tho, granted, I've cosplayed at conventions and it's probably similar except on a smaller scale and everyone is drinking so it doesn't actually sound THAT great lmao.

Even so, I feel like I missed out on a big part of being a child by never being allowed to participate in Halloween stuff. I think I was allowed only once and that was for school, probably first or second grade, dressed as Belle from beauty and the beast. Usually, we went to the church harvest festival instead, never in a consume tho (some kids did show up in costumes and I was always jealous). I did win some delicious pastries that one time tho.

Anyway, I still wish I could have experienced so many things that other kids were allowed, or even took the initiative to do literally anything outside of The Rules. I wish I would have skipped school a couple of times. I wish I told more ppl off. I wish I asked to sleep over at more friends houses, even if Mami always said no. I wish I would have recognized a crush I had on a girl in middle school and maybe said something about it...or maybe that was for the best, both being in the same church sponsored weekend sleepover and thus likely surrounded by homophobes (having been a girl myself at the time). I still think about her sometimes and how kind she was to me in school. She didn't even go to my church, I just invited her and she said yes.

I wish I could have explored such feelings without the thought that the world would come crashing down around me cause I broke a rule. I was never interested in sex at those ages, not even curious, but I liked feeling happy about liking someone, something I never in my life expressed to my parents out of fear. My parents asked me separately of each other if I liked girls in high school and that it would be okay if I was a lesbian (I was very butch at the time, but that's cause I didn't know I was a boy!). I wasn't even interested in anything outside of my debilitating depression that I didn't know existed lmao! Plus I was only interested in fictional boys.

Sometimes this longing for lost bits of childhood is in the form of not having a boyhood. I appreciate my upbringing as a girl for the sense of perspective and certain things I will always love no matter how feminine, but there are certain aspects of growing up gendered correctly that I'm sure I missed out on. Plus, an aspect of the stunted childhood can definitely be attributed to being the Oldest Daughter™️. The third parent. The kid who had to figure out how to feed their siblings cause their drunk parents both forgot to not drink too much and come home and make dinner like they promised (a memory my brother unlocked that I'd forgotten entirely).

I miss the childhood I never got to have. I'm an adult, a disabled adult, who no longer has the same ability and vigor that I did when I was young enough to take it for granted. Even as a poor family, there would/should have been different opportunities granted just by virtue of being a child that I never got to experience. I'd say it's likely the same for both my siblings too, though idk to what extent.

I guess sometimes I can still connect to certain bits of reliving or reclaiming childhood through No, sometimes? It's not the same but it's something.