#this is a bit of an open letter to my girlfriend admittedly. Hence the last line.

[ashe-delta]

Obligatory "experiences aren't universal" warning.

I'm all for transgender self love; it's important, after all, to let people know that it does, in fact, get better.

But it also gets a hell of a lot worse, too.

Hormones will deconstruct and reconstruct your very image, day after day, and the bodies of who you thought you were will pile up fast. You'll catch a glimpse of her, for only a second, only for them to disappear when you hunger for more. And you see him again. Except it's not him either. Too far gone to say hes different, too far away to call yourself her. You're nothing, or, actually, worse, you're something, neither him nor her, but a mix, a glitch?, switching back and forth, desperate for a side to win so that you can either give up or say you won.

This "glitchy" period, different for everyone, mine lasting from around 8 months on HRT to 15 months on HRT, although some personal issues made it last longer than it should, was the worst time of my life. I hated myself more on hormones than I did while not on them. And this makes sense! To say nothing of the fact that hormones will make you more emotional, you have to essentially fight your demons literally every day. You can't run from yourself; I think most transgender people can attest to that, given the nature of the identity.

Hormones are not a miracle drug, although are pretty damned close. Reconstructing your body to be your ideal self requires deconstructing the self you have now—and that fucking hurts! When I say it gets better, and I promise it gets better, it always does and always has, I don't mean that "it's okay to be dysphoric, you'll be fine", because, no, you won't be fine. You're waging a war in your head, one you didn't ask for, or, actually, maybe you did? You took the hormones, after all.

He is dying. He is crying for help and begging for mercy and wondering where it went wrong. And it's not her or his fault for it, either. He was just not meant to be. And in this battle of the minds, a clash so long it spans months, when he begins losing his grasp on you, you can feel the scars he left on you. But scars does not a person make. And when you look in the mirror, and see her, for only a moment, and lust for more, know that she had not disappeared on you. Shes fighting the same fight she always had, and when it's all said and done, she will be waiting for you. When you can finally say you're fine.

The thing about wars is that they're bloody. There is death and decay, angst and agony. But there is one comfort to war, one most forget. War ends. Whether you have to spite him, or kill him yourself, remember that it will be over, if you give her time. It will get better. It's all you'll hear from your community. Those words will sound false and ring dread to you, thinking that you might be the 1% who loses. But the secret is that you can't. You can't lose. Winning is the natural conclusion of waiting. The only way to lose is give up. So simply don't surrender. Your body is a battlefield and it is doing incredibly strange, sexy things to you, and you cannot see it until the dust has settled. So promise me this, that you'll wait for her. I know I am.

[imdrew]

an autobiographical playlist

Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0969nlIzBIXZZB9ClnyYHN The telling of my personal story is much harder than I thought it would be, for several reasons. I’ve seen a lot, been through a lot, and conquered a lot, and finding music that helped tell that story actually ended up being far easier than I had anticipated. I, of course, had to leave numerous songs on the proverbial cutting room floor, but that’s the blessing of a deadline—at some point, I have to call it a day. I’m happy to report that I’ll be calling it a day with a triumphant smile splattered across my slightly aged yet youthful, angular visage.

The story I chose to tell was my coming of age, and my rise from intellectually gifted, mentally ill drug addict to intellectually gifted, medicated, sober, bisexual academic that rediscovered an appreciation for the gift of life that had previously escaped me. For years, I was a person who would consistently get in his own way, impeding the potential I was constantly told I had…seriously, teacher after teacher after teacher told me how much I was capable of accomplishing, “if only…”

However, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I chose to challenge myself a little more by telling my life story mostly through songs that have come out in recent years, rather than using songs from those earlier days that undeniably left an impact. Those songs are still very critical and will always have a special place in my heart, but I thought it might be a fun side experiment to see how music from the last few years can just as accurately communicate life experiences that pre-date it by almost a decade.

The first and last songs on this playlist come from the same album, Mac Miller’s latest and, unfortunately, final album Swimming. Released a month before his untimely death of an overdose, Swimming is the artistic peak of Miller’s career, an album made solely for him, to let himself know that he was okay rather than appeasing the rest of the world. The opening track, “Come Back to Earth”, is one that hit me square in the chest when I heard it for the first time. The opening passage says it all: “My regrets look like texts I shouldn’t send. And I’ve got neighbors, they’re more like strangers

We could be friends. I just need a way out of my head. I’d do anything for a way out of my head.”

From the age of six, I dealt with both auditory and visual hallucinations that increased in severity as I aged. When I was a junior in high school, my illness completely manifested, and as a result, I don’t remember a large chunk of my adolescence. Between the hallucinations completely obscuring the lines between reality and fiction and my rapidly increasing drug use (coupled with my reluctance to tell any of my loved ones about my mental deterioration), I was a complete wreck. I truly needed a way out of my head, and while I absolutely had friends, I felt a considerable disconnect because I was unable to open up about the most personal parts of myself. In addition to struggling with my mental illness, I was coming to terms with my sexuality while grappling with an internalized homophobia that had been reinforced by my Catholic education and the people I was surrounded by on a daily basis. I was in desperate need of an escape, but that wouldn’t come for several more years. I continued to suffer silently into my freshman year at Muhlenberg College, which culminated in me failing out after the first semester with a 0.00 GPA. My parents’ own Blutarsky—oh how proud they were (I hope my sarcasm is palpable).

The second and third songs on the playlist are meant to transport the listener back to my first college years. With what I saw as a new lease on life, I developed a persona that was the antithesis of the mild-mannered, even-tempered, very sick and awkward kid from my youth. Brent Faiyaz’s “Gang Over Luv” perfectly encapsulates my new “too cool for school” attitude, whereas the weird but wonderful “Cool” by Zack Villere harkens back to my more genuine insecurities that would pop up whenever I was by myself, which admittedly was more than I’d like to admit.

When I was away at college, it was my first exposure to what I believed to be true independence. I was indulging in everything that would come my way, be it drugs, sex or both. Despite having a bit of a novelty pick, Lil Uzi Vert’s (in my mind) under-appreciated “XO TOUR Llif3” and RAJAN’s “Cocaine Fantasy” paint that picture perfectly. I was lost in a drug-induced haze that painted permanent rose sunglasses on my face and allowed me to act without any worry for the consequences. Yet, at the same time, I felt nothing but isolation, which is the main theme in Benjamin Booker’s “The Slow Drag Under.” Everything about the tone of this song reminds me of how I would feel in those brief moments of sobriety, which would only last so long as I lived literally three doors down from my primary drug dealer.

Frank Ocean’s “Solo” is that lilting but not-entirely-transparent tale of a self-effacing kid trying to find any way to cope with his issues other than actually addressing them head-on—it’s not exactly a cautionary tale, but it certainly doesn’t glamorize the frequent weed smoking and sexual indulgence that I had been embarking on throughout the semester. The haze was starting to break, and I was realizing that pretending things were fine wasn’t a sustainable way to live. Hence, “Fake Happy”, Hayley Williams and Paramore’s foray into self-analysis and social critique, a summer-y yet brutally honest mirror being held up to the listener:

“Oh please, don’t ask me how I’ve been

Don’t make me play pretend

Oh no, oh what’s the use

Oh please. I think everybody here is fake happy too.”

By the day after Christmas, the illusion had broken. Sitting in my bedroom at home, my parents presented me with a letter confirming the inevitable: I had, indeed, failed out of school. I was asked to take a semester off and return in the fall on probationary status, but considering how severely my mental state had deteriorated, it was clear I wouldn’t be able to return. Eryn Allen Kane’s sobering “Have Mercy”, a completely acapella track, conveys almost perfectly the loneliness I felt; like I was floating in space counting my blessings yet failing to account for most of them. I was slipping down into the water, without a care or sense of direction. I needed more help than I realized, and finally, I asked for help.

Chance’s “Same Drugs” and Ariana Grande’s blissful “breathin” are reflections on my move from hard illicit drugs to mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and cognitive behavioral therapy. My hallucinations completely disappeared by the end of the spring, I learned how to meditate, and started seeing a therapist, which helped me find the mental fortitude to enter the first serious romantic relationship of my life, which lasted a year and I have learned, over time, to be tremendously thankful for. Frank Ocean makes his second appearance on this playlist in the form of his single “Provider”, a smooth, watery track that analyzes the role a relationship or loved one plays in the life of someone who is learning how to deal with feelings that hadn’t experienced prior:

“Feelings you provide, I know I know.

Tonight I might change my life, all for you.”

I thought I was ready to change my life for her, and in a lot of ways, I did. That said, even though I stopped using hard drugs, I still would indulge (secretly) in copious amounts of weed when I would visit my friends at my single-semester alma mater. Considering how much I fought to keep my drug dependency from my family and especially my girlfriend, I still had a good amount of work to do on myself before I could fully commit and make those changes. The relationship ended in tumult, but thankfully as we’ve gotten older the ice has thawed and civility reigns.

I also had more work to do when it came to learning how to love myself for every part of myself, and that included my sexuality. It was something that I still hadn’t explored, and frankly, I wasn’t ready to until recently. I met a boy named Kevin, and while things never took off for us, he nonetheless played a tremendously pivotal role in my path to the self-love I possess today. Daniel Caesar’s “Get You” is a slow, psychedelic love song that cherishes the passion and  intimacy that a fulfilling relationship brings, and Tyler The Creator’s “Garden Shed” is an anthemic, soaring coming out song that so perfectly puts my own experience into words I couldn’t have written it better:

“Garden shed, garden shed, garden shed, garden shed

For the garden

That is what I was hiding

That is what love I was I in

Ain't no reason to pretend

Garden shed, garden shed, garden shed

Garden shed for the garçons

Them feelings I was guarding

Heavy on my mind

All my friends lost

They couldn't read the signs

I didn't wanna talk and tell em' my location

And I didn't wanna walk

Truth is, since you kid, I thought it was a phase

Thought it would be like the phrase poof, gone

But, it's still going on.”

Kehlani’s acoustic celebration of same-sex love, “Honey”, continues this theme, echoed one final time by Whitney Houston’s timeless “Exhale”, which doubles as both an acknowledgement of my current emotional and mental state as well as a thank you to all of my previous romantic partners whom, though I wasn’t ready to love them all the way, taught me valuable lessons about both life and myself.

Enter the greatest song of all time (I’m only half kidding) in the form of John Mayer’s “Gravity”. I don’t really need to say much about this song, except that it means a lot to me. It’s a song that continues to bring me peace on every listen, a grounding presence when I need it most and one that focuses me and brings me back down to Earth, which if you’ll recall from the beginning of the playlist, I had been searching for my entire life.

The final three tracks on the playlist kind of wrap everything in a tight, pretty bow, and bring us back to the present. First we have Miles Davis’ “Take It or Leave It”, a quick, hypnotic instrumental track from his Bitches Brew sessions (a sonic palate cleanser, if you will), followed by “SAN MARCOS” by BROCKHAMPTON, a relatively new hip-hop group from South Central Los Angeles that I think is tremendous. This song sits near the end of their latest record and addresses everything from members working through their various mental illnesses, coming to terms with fame and realizing that while they’ve come quite far from where they started, there’s even more that life has to offer that they have yet to find.

“Maybe I'm broken, either way I'm clinging on closely

I know it's not healthy

Appreciate your patience, I know that I'm selfish

Do my best to be selfless, I know that I'm changing

I know that I'm changing.”

The thing that strikes me the most about BROCKHAMPTON is how unflinchingly honest they are in their lyrics. I felt the same way about Mac when he was alive—this willingness to put it all out there, to put your fallibility on paper, to epitomize humanity for the world to see is a show of breathtaking strength, one that I hope to achieve and am continually working towards.

The playlist comes to a close with the closing track from the aforementioned Swimming, “2009”, which shows Miller finding clarity and mental solitude that he had been chasing his whole life, much as I have. I see a lot of myself in Mac, honestly, but I’ll leave that for another time (that’s honestly a paper in itself…and maybe a therapy session or two.) “2009” is chillingly beautiful recognition that while we may not have it all together, that’s okay, because we’re getting there.

“Yeah they ask me what I'm smilin' for

Well, because I've never been this high before

It's like I never felt alive before

Mhmm, I'd rather have me peace of mind than war

See me and you, we ain't that different

I struck the fuck out and then I came back swingin'

Take my time to finish, mind my business

A life ain't a life 'til you live it

I was diggin' me a hole big enough to bury my soul

Weight of the world, I gotta carry my own

My own, with these songs I can carry you home

I'm right here when you're scared and alone.”

With that, you have a general idea of who I am, where I’ve been, and where I am today. I won’t sit here and act like I have it all together, because I don’t. With that said, though, I’m sober, mentally stable, in a happy and loving relationship with an incredible woman, and allowing myself to be vulnerable and transparent with the people I hold close. I feel alive, and ready to come back swinging. For the first time in my already very long and simultaneously short life, I am awake, and I am happy. I have a renewed sense of purpose, an appreciation for life and the things that bring me joy, and a desire to pursue a career in education or anything that involves some sort of writing/literary analysis…

…which I’m sure you can gather from the fact that I just wrote the equivalent of my usual eight-page paper replete with SAT buzzwords even though I swore to myself I wouldn’t. Oh well!