#so i spent all of adolescence going “well it looks like being a teenage tomboy he/him dyke is getting me results so ig im just this now”

[kirbear]

thinking abt compulsory transmasculinity (a thing that affects me and only me and is not a real thing at all)

[redsdawn]

( jessica chastain. forty. cis female. she/her. ) in stratford, dawn wright  is more commonly known as red. they’ve been living in stratford for thirty years and currently work as a nurse. some say they are malapert  & rancorous but i’m more inclined to believe those that say they’re ballsy  & dependable. if you walk by their house, you can sometimes hear cloudbusting by kate bush playing from their window. ( the sting of comments better left unsaid, driving with the windows down, subjecting oneself to the unknown, and never knowing when to stop. ) 

hello, all! i’m dee, your local goblin whose hands are shaking as they type this! :-) i hope everyone’s having a good evening / morning / day. here’s to writing some good shit together! 

disclaimer: i have dawn’s stats here, which hopefully gives you all the need-to-know info at a glance. the second section has death & suicide mentions, so please steer clear of that if need be. 

if dawn is anything, it’s restless. she’s always felt like a bird about to take flight, or like she’s looming on the edge of some great cliff. it’s like some current flowing through her bones, or some itch that can’t be scratched. she yearns for more & hates that nothing is ever wholly enough for her. 

dawn grew up trailer trash & she still was trailer trash when she moved to stratford after the death of her mother. her dad, nathaniel, was a drunken tradesman who'd never known what to do with the life he’d been given. he was hardly a father when diane was around & even less so after her passing. despite their blood relation, however, he & dawn were more akin to roommates than anything else. nathaniel provided the “essentials” [ bits of clothes every couple of months, piss-poor cooking, a place to sleep ] and little else. he wasn’t warm or particularly kind--not like he was to the girlfriends that’d come in and out of their lives. he didn’t know how to speak to children or how to be the mentor that dawn needed. he’d tried, but it wasn’t like dawn knew how to be the daughter he’d wanted either. she wasn’t diane. she wasn’t warm, obedient, and kind. she was gritty & spoke back, even when it wasn’t smart to. 

growing up, dawn was hardly ever home. a majority of her adolescence was spent being a wild cat. as a kid, she’d get up to shenanigans with other kids from school or the neighborhood. she was a tomboy through-and-through, covered in various scars and bruises from climbing & doing things she shouldn’t have. she was an okay student, but her report cards always made a note to mention attention + behavioral issues.

as a teenager, she was even worse. it was then that she learned the careful craft of chasing cheap thrills. always slipping from crowd to crowd, dawn was a social butterfly. she’d slip her way into any group that would have her, reveling in any and all attention cast her way. 

dawn was poor-poor. like, having frequent sleepovers at friends houses, because you want an actual real meal levels of poor. 

above all, dawn’s childhood taught her how to be hungry & that feeling’s never left her.

it was a particularly persistent set of teachers that really pushed dawn to be more than what she was setting herself up for. her chemistry teacher really made a point to speak to her in frank terms + helped her fill out college application forms when that time of year came around. at the time, dawn had brushed it off, as she did with most things, but she’s always been grateful. it was nice to feel seen for once. she kept in touch & got their recommendation when admissions opened up for nursing school. 

going to college & being in a new environment really forced dawn to get it together. she couldn’t just be a little shithead anymore--she had actual responsibilities & appearances now. she mellowed out some afterward, doing everything that she thought people were supposed to do. she got her own place, paid her bills, & worked like she actually cared about what she was doing--which she did, for once. 

somewhere along the way, getting stuck in that grind & facing the fears that rose from losing her father started to really get to her. that restlessness had come back in full force, & dawn didn’t know how to handle it. she fell into a bit of a destructive rut that resembled that of her teenage years, and sought help only when her boss gave her an ultimatum. she’s better now, but not quite how she was. 

dawn is unflinching. it’s extremely hard to unsettle her. are your guts falling out? is someone throwing shit + breaking chairs? is there a literal fire happening? well, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at dawn. she loves fixing things & finds it really easy to keep a cool head when shit hits the fan. she’s focused & nonjudgemental. she won’t question why you look like shit or why she has to stitch up a stab wound. 

dawn yearns to feel needed & is uncomfortable when she isn’t. that want is what fuels her friendliness. she wants to be in a group, she wants to be something to someone. she goes out of her way for others not out of an innate altruism, but as a result of her deliberate choice to be good. she wants people to feel that she cares for them, so they may in turn care for her, too. 

that being said, dawn’s decision-making isn’t immaculate. she has a blinding rage that’s a blight on her progress. it’s regressive & ugly & irresistible. dawn takes things too far sometimes & keeps pushing. she digs her fingers into wounds she knows are fresh & always keeps her knives close. she’s capable of a lot of good and love, but she’s also capable of a very white-hot rage. 

some random bits are that dawn is a karaoke queen. she’s a heavy-weight, but doesn’t like alcohol. she’s an excellent hugger. she has an excellent memory & remembers the little things that people tell her. terrible at accepting gifts. she takes life one day at a time. total chatterbox. thinks she has a great pokerface, but her eyes are a straight window to that which lies behind. she’s definitely not a very good driver. writes notes on her hands and wrists. 

some songs that make me think of her are

rock city

i bet on losing dogs

disorder

hounds of love

some wanted connection ideas !

a childhood memory -- maybe these two were a couple of ragtag misfits up to no good. maybe your muse’s parents felt bad for dawn, and would invite her over for dinner, regardless of how your muse felt about it. maybe they grew up in the same trailer park. maybe your muse’s mom dated her dad at one point. idk!! 

teenage escapades -- did they used to drive around without a care in the world, swearing they were gonna live forever? did they try to use their fake id’s to buy cheap liquor & then haul ass after the cashier wasn’t having it? did dawn manage to weasel her way into your muse’s life & fuck it up somehow? 

it’s a sibling thing -- are they related? no. does that stop them from acting like actual siblings? also no. dawn would do anything for this person, including, but not limited to, annoying them to death. silly, serious, and self-less. 

frenemies -- they say you should keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. either way, these two are relatively close. do they even remember why they sometimes-kind-of-but-not-really-but-also-kind-of hate each other? maybe, maybe not.

best buds -- everyone needs a best friend &, believe it or not, dawn has a lot of love to give. being her best friend includes unlimited venting sessions, on-call assistance, & free snacks. truly a once in a lifetime deal.

playing doctor -- listen, dawn doesn’t wear those scrubs because she thinks they’re sexy. she knows her shit & who else are you going to call at ass o’clock because you’re bleeding all over your carpet floor? besides, at least when you call her, you don’t get reamed with a 2k bill after.

we don’t talk about that -- sometimes, dawn is off being a lovey-dovey bitch, which is embarrassing, but when she’s not? well.. she wouldn’t be opposed to a rebound, or one night stands that maybe never should have happened to begin with. 

BUT REALLY I’M DOWN FOR ANYTHING AND THIS IS ALREADY SO DANG LONG SO IM GONNA END IT HERE AND SAY THAT ILY AND WANT TO DO ALL OF THE PLOTS WITH EVERYONE THANK U BYE SMOOCHES

[dateandmate]

The Avalanche Part I: The Gloom Before the Snow

Hey there.

So much has happened (well in fact, not happened) in my love life since I intended to create this blog just so that I have some sort of a vent to let some of the feelings out, I feel like I have the biggest backlog of stories to write about and at the same time, the biggest writer’s block. It’s like being so overwhelmed with all feelings you want to shout out loud, they leave you paralysed and speechless.  

So I thought maybe I can start with a little back story. But oh man, how does one summarise nearly 15 years of disappointment? I’ll give it a try.

With this first bit, my high school journal (which suddenly made a reappearance when I was moving to UK) was a great help. It made me remember that at the beginning of my adolescence, I was actually a happy kid! Had no insecurities whatsoever, despite the fact that I always remember myself being a slightly chubby girl. taller than others around me (boy or girl), not drowning in luxury as my family was rather lower-middle-moving-up-to-middle-class but just content with what I had and what I didn’t have. Then something starts to change in my tone of voice in all those silliest journal entries. The insecurities come up, friendships get complicated, some of the boys in my class start being more than just boys. It was quite eye-opening to read it in my 30s to be honest, and it’s not overly gruesome but that shift is just magnificently sudden. Guess that’s what adolescence is about... Anyhow, I think it’s safe to say that I was actually quite popular if popularity was solely measured with how many social platforms one’s involved in or how many friends they had. I aced those criteria. But I was never popular as in, ‘the popular girl’, you know who she is. I was best mates with the most popular boys (popular as in, ‘the popular boys’, you know who they are). I was the ‘matchmaker’, the confidant, the shoulder to cry on, both for  my female and male friends most of which had a lot more action in their romantic lives than me. When I say romantic action at that age in a slightly traditional if not conservative country, I mean love notes, Mc Donald's dates, shy chats over lunch break. I had more male friends than female ones, by far, and was kind of a tomboy and totally proud of it. I was a plain Jane.

Then came uni. I continued to be the girl running from one social activity to the other: Sports Committee, basketball team, music band, a few other student clubs, part time jobs in my senior year. Studying engineering, I did have a smaller close circle of friends from my class but wasn’t too close with majority of people in my department, I still had a reasonably diverse and big ‘entourage’ thanks to the social occasions I was involved in. Being the lead singer in a band gave a me a brand new perspective on life and a unique shot to put on a different attitude: being on stage required being the centre of attention and being ok with it, having fun as if no one’s watching and at the same time as if everyone is, and just having some genuine fun. It also required to act like I was having fun when I was at my worst because I had the task to entertain people every week (main band on a Friday night, folks). Having said this, my love life was less than impressive. Once again I was part of a big social circle as the slightly nerdy but moderately cool girl one could rely on. I started letting the tomboy grow up a little but wasn’t necessarily thinking anyone around me would have any romantic interest in me.

In my country all high school students had to take one big exam if they want to go to uni, and there’s no application/screening process, your only shot at getting into the universities you’d like to go to, was that one big exam. As a result there are many extracurricular tutoring facilities and almost everyone I know went to one. First week of uni, I remember looking at a catalogue my tutoring facility had printed with ‘success’ stories from their students that year, and seeing this boy. Everyone had written a little testimonial summing up how they prepared for the exam (yawn) and his was just... different. Being the teenage girl that I am, I looked at which uni & department he got into, and it was a different branch of engineering in my uni. Teenage girls are stupidly optimistic, so I said, “I’m going to meet this boy and he will see I’m different too.”. In the years to follow, I’ve had the biggest crush on him that was borderline unrequited love, bent over backwards to meet him and get close to him and failed miserable until my senior year where we took the same class. Needless to say, he was as cool as I’d imagined and had zero f*cks to give about me.

I have dated one guy in uni who kind of ended up talking to other girls online behind my back and blaming me for it (a long story I do not want to put in writing and eternalise). It was my first true disappointment, as he had chased me rigorously and almost convinced me to go out with him and give him a chance, was saying he’s in love with me and confronting me almost on a daily basis for not wanting to rush to say those bloody 3 words. He was coming from a very different social background than mine (which was ok at the time as I was a careless 20-something), and had a less-than-impressive history when it comes to loyalty. I was thinking he was head over heels for me and I had all the time in the world to figure out if I liked him as much. Turned out he was just looking for a challenge, one of a different kind, and I did not like him that much anyway. Nevertheless, I was heartbroken and shut myself down.

In the years to follow - best years of one’s 20s, the last 2 years of uni - I was completely closed off to any kind of a new love interest. I did not have the courage to risk it again, and my self esteem, which wasn’t very high to begin with, had hit an all time low.

So, as stupid as it sounds, breaking up with him led me back into a spiral of unrequited love to my first uni crush. I knew I only had that last semester to try to be friends with him and was foolishly dreaming that if I did, he’d see I’m quite ‘unique’ (read as: weird) like he is, I liked his quirkiness when everyone else called him ‘a bit weird’, and liked to think I’m ‘a bit weird’ too. After all, weird wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I did not mind weird. The right kind of weird intrigued me. I had no interest for the carbon-copy kind of guys. Or people in general.

So I spent 2 more years oogling him from the other side of the corridor in the engineering faculty. Trying to hang out where he used to hang out. Somehow believing that all I had to do was to meet him and the rest of the story would just unravel. This one’s quite interesting because at the lowest of my lows, I somehow had hope that my character would just prevail with the right person who was able to see beyond my mediocre looks. That’s seriously what I thought for most of my life. Now keep this in mind, it’ll get interesting once I’ll start living in a different country.

In the last spring break, I was away in the south of the country with a close friend of mine who insisted we visit friends in another resort one night. I complied. Turns out he was in the same hotel. I don’t remember how it happened but somewhere around midnight in a tacky hotel bar, I found myself chatting to him at the bar. Now by then we already had one class in common so we were acquaintances I suppose. Needless to say that semester had not revealed the slightest sight of an interest from his side to get to know me any better. But does that stop me? No, because I actively seek heartbreak and frustration, and am bloody good in finding it. 

Anyhow, back to that night. So there I was, chatting to him. He did not leave, we must have talked for an hour or two, at least. One of my close friends was winking across the floor. I was trying to calm my tits and just act all cool and normal. But there was a little festival inside me.

After a while the club got too tacky for us to handle and he asked if I wanted to go outside to continue chatting as it got too loud in there. “It’s happening”, I thought. We went outside, started walking around the resort. Continued chatting. He was what I imagined him to be. I don’t know what he thought. Anyhow. around 4 am in the morning it got too chilly on the bench we were sitting on. It was time to go back. I was going to crash on the couch in one of my friends’ rooms. He offered to walk with me. I knocked on the door for a good 5 minutes, tried to call them, checked the patio door, and everything. No answer. It was super awkward. Eventually he offered me to go with him (he was staying in a room with 3 other guys I was acquainted with) saying the room is not spacious but he’ll find a way to accommodate me. Before we went in he wanted to sit out for a cigarette and we chatted for a bit longer. Then we went in, he gave me his bed, offered to give me his IPod saying it may help me fall asleep, along with a sweatshirt because it was cold, and he snuggled up with one of the buys. Again, super-embarassing but I was kind of thinking, it’s happening and this lovely night is the first step.

I got up early and said bye, and left with a feeling that was hard to describe. Had breakfast with my friends before leaving the resort, saw him briefly in the breakfast lounge, he waived vaguely. I left with a slightly uneasy feeling, curious about what’s yet to happen, and what it all meant.

Well turns out, not much. He was just being kind and I had gotten ahead of myself. There was only one month left until the last semester was over and done. Didn’t see him much as we were in different departments. Was slightly disappointed thinking I’ll lose all contact when the semester is over. The last effort I made was to go up to him at prom and mumble something like “well today’s the last time everyone’s together, it was refreshing to meet you, I can’t help but think we’ll now lose all contact and that’s a pity...” - which he replied with a mumble that said something like “well, yeah you’re a great person, and I think if we met earlier we would have been good FRIENDS... if you want you can take my number”. I was crushed. Embarrassed. Full of regret, thinking I should have just let it go. I pretended to save his number, or maybe I did and then deleted it, I don’t remember. All I know is that that was the last time I saw or talked to him.

Once again, complete shutdown. I started working in a big multi-national. Was putting it a lot of overtime, and spending all my free time with mates, going out, having beers, not looking for someone to mate with. 

One summer, probably 2-3 years after graduation, a boy who was in the same class I had with my hopeless crush, and was in fact good friends with him, messaged me on Facebook about a song I posted on. We exchanged a few quick messages - very superficial, chit-chat about what each of us was doing at the time etc. Turned out he was in Netherlands doing is masters. A few days later, he messaged again, this time about something else I had posted. We chatted for a bit longer. A week later, again. So and so fort, we started spending hours just chatting about life. Music, relationships, long term plans, along with silly stuff. We were sooo similar. Or so I thought at the time. We had so many awkward occasions like both of us being online for a long time, then messaging each other right at the same second. Completing sentences and so on. Anything cheesy you can think of. Soon enough I came to the painful realisation that I was falling for him. He was talking about the difficult break up he had all the time, and that made me think once again I had the role of a confidant, a mate, a fun chat partner that had similar tastes in life as he did. That was a role I was too familiar with. 

I was trying to convince myself that it was nothing more than some friendship on an oddly intimate level, and nothing could come out of it, considering I did not think of myself as an attractive person who’d people would fall for just like that, and he was hundreds of miles away, preparing to move further away (across the ocean) for his PhD. My friends were insisting friends don’t spend talking to each other for hours in the middle of the night and almost every day. I had had far too many disappointments at that stage to believe that.

His story is one that would require more space and time for me to tell, if I want to do it justice. Long story short, we met a few times, had intimate yet awkward moments, like high school students who don’t know how to act, but nothing ever happened between us. I hated myself because I thought I had foolishly fallen for someone who did not feel the same way about me. He did move across the ocean indeed, which made staying in contact a little more difficult with 7hr+ time difference between us. We started talking less frequently, and he was saying things about wanting to focus on his new life while ‘keeping me around’, figuratively speaking, given the distance. It was the weirdest kind of unrequited crush/love I ever had. This went on for about 2 years. He kept hinting how special this was and how happy he was to get to know me, albeit having missed the chance to do so when we were in uni. But he also emphasised the need to make mature decisions and not ruin things with irresponsible actions, and his involuntary need to be in control of things. So he was kindly saying this will never become anything bigger than what it is, because I’m moving away. To this day, I think that was indeed the mature thing to do. You may wonder if there’s an ending to this one. There is a semi-bitter one actually. While he was doing is PhD he got ‘affiliated’ with another girl I also used to know form uni, who happened to be in the same country at the time. They were going on holidays together. I asked whether there was something going on, very very subtly, once or twice. He said they’re just friends. Then in one of my NYC visits, he came to spend a few days with us. We chatted a bit during the day, I asked how his trip was (I knew he went on it with that girl as I was friends with her on FB but did not mention this at all), I thought I’d give him one last chance to come clean. He mumbled, said it was ok, and changed the subject. That evening, we got stuck in our little apartment because of a hurricane that hit the city. I happened to see a message from the girl pop up on his laptop, with words of endearment, which meant he’d been lying. I felt betrayed. You ever knew someone that represented anything that’s pure and real in this world? Someone you thought has been so delicate with you that he’d be the last person on earth to hurt you? Well that was him for me. I am not exaggerating when I say I lost my faith in humanity when it comes to romance in this incident. The next 2 days (when we were trapped in a one bedroom apartment with 2 other people) were an emotional hell, and a cold war between us. None of us said anything, but both of us knew what it was about. I did not speak to him for 2 years after that, until one day, I received a very personal, honest, long and apologetic email from him, to my surprise. The most surprising fact was that he admitted having feelings for me all those years, but not having the guts to take it further because of his situation. What was less pleasant was that when he sent me the email he was still with the same girl. I sent an honest, open but distant reply, saying it’s water under the bridge, and hinting he’s not in the right place to bring this up considering he’s still with her, that we both had made some mistakes, and that we should celebrate the genuine connection that used to exist, but would struggle to survive all the hard feelings. Today, we wish each other happy birthday. and that’s it.

Of all the heartbreaks I had, this one was the most difficult one to shake off. I had invested so much in it emotionally, silently and insecurely, but with a tiny hope that he’d feel the same. I had never felt so connected with anyone. I had confided in him, and he did in me. Every other element of this story, apart from the two of us, was against us: time difference, life plans, both of us having lost a little bit of faith in love due to prior disappointments, both of us super conscious, us being in different countries to begin with and his plans to move even further away. We’re talking about 3 to 4 years here guys, and this was my mid 20s so I spent the best period of my 20s battling an unrequited live situation with my star-crossed lover who admitted he felt the same, only a couple of years too late. Bridges had been burnt by then and hearts had been broken. We had both been unkind with each other in our own little way. I guess the circumstances made it really hard for it to get anywhere but maybe we should have not let it get so far, emotionally, to begin with. It was super-exhausting, and when it came to a formal close I felt like I needed a good couple of years to recover from the emotional exhaustion, regain my faith in humanity and the odd chances of finding love, and remember that the right one is out there somewhere. He had seen my true colours, and while it ended up being a total train wreck, he did prove me right: The right person could see right through me and like what he sees. Still, I was too hurt to get back out there every again, until maybe 5-6 years later. This may sound odd to some of you out there, but it’s my coping mechanism with heartbreak. 

Then, I moved to UK.

After a while, i started struggling to find inspiration in the small city I’m living. I felt lonely. For the first time in my life I felt like I was wasting my life with something that’s just not letting me hit my full potential in life. Life was weighing me down. So i said, it’s time to get back out there. Explore this thing that’s called ‘dating’, which did not exist in my culture back then yet, thinking I’d at least be out having drinks with people instead of home. looking at the ceiling, 

Then i had a few underwhelming dates, with men who were clearly attracted to me (to my surprise), to whom I was nothing but an exotic bait. I continued to be my genuine self, hopelessly assuming they’d see how different I am, but they were after something totally different and had no interest in my personality whatsoever. A complete change on the course of things for me. I wasn’t used to being seen as someone men would be attracted to, let’s say on an app or in a bar, and it was happening. So far so good. But then, I was scratching the surface, and only found more surface. There was nothing genuine about those interactions, nor did any of them make me feel special. I did not know how to take this, seriously. What would be left if my personality is less-than-interesting? I had nothing else to hold on to.

So when I met ‘The Avalanche’, I had lost all the faith in love. In every sense of the word. I had actually taken a break from it all, and had recently installed a new app to give it one last shot. I was in fact planning to move away from the city I was living in, and was only thinking. I could use some company until I do.

But as the saying goes, life’s what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.