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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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 Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 8:08 pm
10.5.15
More good things are happening!
During my computer class, I was doing research on mascectomy, transitioning and so on and happened to stumble onto a very well-written, informative, and peer-reviewed article. It was titled "The case for bilateral mastectomy and male chest contouring for the female-to-male transsexual," which may sound very specific, but it outright discussed many other issues that transsexual people face during their transition. I will be linking it in the resource thread that nobody seems to be at all interested in contributing to. (Isn't it pathetic that, as much as we trans* people want people to understand and respect us, the majority of our community can't be arsed to do proper academic research to support their claim? Come on, people. If you're not going to do anything to solve the problem, at least stop your incessant whining so the problem-solvers can concentrate on doing your job for you.)
I emailed it to my mother, along with a link to the Montrose Center, an LGBT support center that offers very affordable community therapy. I explained to her that I needed this -- I've been having a lot of medical problems and, as I told her, a happy mind equals a healthy body -- and that, when I got home, we could do more research on the subject together.
I got home to find that she had read the email. She told me that she understood where I was coming from and could see my point; we could talk in more detail about the financial details in the morning.
I'm so happy. The first step to transitioning is within my grasp. Now if I can just get a physical scheduled for this week and find somebody willing to help me with my back and shoulder pain, things will really begin moving up.
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Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:52 pm
10.6.15
I have a pet cat now, I think.
She showed up randomly last Saturday, starved for both nourishment and affection. My little brothers took her in for a bit, feeding her, petting her, etc. until Mom found out. She immediately wanted the cat gone, but she wouldn't leave. She had decided that our home was her home. She lives underneath the old suburban now.
I picked up a few cheap Meow Mix cups at work and have been feeding her one or two a day. Every time I come home from work or step outside to go to school, she makes a beeline for me. She even tried to follow me into the house once. She rubs up against my legs, meows constantly, demands pets and belly rubs... There's nothing feral about her at all.
I'm fairly convinced that she's an abandoned housecat. I'm going to keep looking after her until I can either find her a better home or find a place where we can live together.
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:44 am
10.7.15
I know what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo.
An early 21st-century college student commits suicide after financial debt, failed expectations and social trauma cause him to lose the last shreds of hope and faith he had left in himself. He wakes in an unfamiliar location, dazed and uneasy. Over time, he gains an understanding of his new environment, finding himself in a unique version of the afterlife, the whole of which has become increasingly under threat by one of the unusual dead.
In this story, the afterlife is much more a case of theoretical physics. The time you were alive doesn't go anywhere, even if you do, so while your mind and body cease to exist and function in a linear sense, the time you were alive and did exist continues to be. Most people relive their life infinitely after death or revisit their favorite moments, exploring new paths with little to no memory of their previous course. (This may allude to the concepts of deja vu and self-fulfilling prophecies.) Those that die in unsettled, unexpected or disturbing circumstances may become more aware of their state and become more lucid in the repetition, manipulating their environment and using their state of infinity as a window of opportunity to do incredible things they never would have tried to get away with in real life. NOTE: It is not reality as the living know it; what the dead perceive as their life as it sits becomes a sort of a dream-like reality that, over time, is perceived as reality to them, or vice versus. Dead with ESP or highly-developed minds, either in sanity or psychosis, can sometimes cross over and even manipulate others' "lifeline" -- "Lifeline" being the term colloquially used to describe one's point of living in time.
I'm still working on it. I have a villain planned, a story, a plot, several settings, characters, and even some scenes and important conversations plotted out in my mind. I can't wait to start writing.
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Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:03 am
10.10.15
I was playing with the cat, doling out plentiful amounts of ear-scratches, pets and belly rubs, when I discovered something rather unexpected -- a spiny little cat p***s rising out of the fluff.
His name is now Munkustrap.
I'm also getting trained today for service desk. Woohoo! We'll see how it goes. I can't wait to get started! Cashiering alone is so very ******** boring... I'm still waiting for them to cross-train me for softlines work. STILL.
BTW, my boss walked into work yesterday (during my day off) dressed as the cutest little mariachi shark. A friend of mine posted pictures of it on Facebook... I miss all the cool stuff, haha.
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:58 am
10.11.15I know there's a few feminists or supporters of feminism in this guild, but seriously, modern/third-wave/radical feminism is ******** ridiculous. They're a leviathan devouring themselves because they can't bear to admit that there is nothing else left to devour. They are ripping into their own ranks because they can't invent enough first-world problems to complain about. And they're ******** hypocrites to boot. Homosexual misogyny, everybody.
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Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2015 5:50 pm
10/13/15
"Ma'am." "Miss." "Her." "Girl." "Lady." -subtle hints, a polite joke or two- "She." "Ma'am." "Miss." My name tag says Lawrence. How many chicks do you know named Lawrence? =.= Still I smile, or try to. It's not their fault or my fault that nobody taught them manners. Still, though, I wish there was some kind of way I could politely get them to respect my identity without wearing a big label on my shirt that says "TRANSMAN".
I don't have the money to even start therapy sessions yet, much less get the HRT and all the other s**t I need to be respected by common, everyday strangers. How lucky you are, people who were able to afford the bills and start transitioning before they were thirty.
I was lying when I told my boss in my interview that being misgendered by customers wouldn't bother me. I still try to understand and be patient, I really do, but it's getting ridiculous and I'm starting to drift off into states of nonenergy and hopelessness at work, to the point where I don't even want to try or exist anymore. I just want to stop, leave the store, and not even make it home. If only falling off the face of the earth was an option these days...
I mean, I get misgendered by my family all the time, and even friends who I've talked to and should know better do it on purpose as a joke, so... Yeah, ******** it. I'm ready to just give up on everything and everyone and upload myself to the internet. At least there you get the option of total anonymity. You can change your name there and nobody bats an eye. You can change your profile picture, your avatar, your gender, your sexual orientation, and anything else official you ******** want, because there's true freedom online.
I'm not even kidding. I have this friend, Quinn, who recently decided to start making people use her middle name rather than her first name (Adrienne). Pretty okay, right? Well, old habits die hard and I've known her for a long time, so I accidentally call her Adrienne sometimes. Understandable, and will typically apologize and correct myself. One day, we're biking through my hometown and I ask her a question, addressing her as Adrienne. Instead of just reminding me, she says, "What? Okay, Laura!" in a very loud, deliberate voice. There's no precedence for this. She usually calls me Pop, a nickname I've had in our circle for a while. She then declares that she should have the right to call me Laura if I keep calling her Adrienne, and that if I keep slipping up, she'll keep deadnaming me.
EXCUSE ME, Quinn, but since when was your name change anything more than aesthetic-based? I changed my name because I'm changing my whole image to match my internal identity, not because I just decided on a whim one day that I liked the sound of Lawrence better. When I did use my middle name to introduce myself, it was because I hadn't come out yet and wanted an easy excuse for why I wanted to be called a male name. Quinn, on the other hand, isn't just obsessed with her own Mary Sue self-image, thinking she could never get sexually assaulted, thinking she could never be wrong, thinking she's oh-so-unique and in-tune with animals that she can break the law by letting her dog run around in the streets unleashed and uncollared because somehow her invincibility extends to the dog somehow; she also self-styles herself as an identity guru and has been telling me what my sexual leanings are, telling me what my identity is, telling me what this and that and the other "actually" means, and then spreading it about to our mutual friends that I'm bisexual, when, if anything, I'm biromantic demisexual, not that it ******** matters.
At work, there was also a moment at work when I wanted to backhand my friend and coworker. There was a run-of-the-mill bitchy customer who had obvious cognitive bias and, rather than trusting my advice, freaked out over the chip card system and declared I was obviously wrong rather than pay attention to what I was saying. She fetched her mom and they went to my friend. They complained, saying I didn't know how to do my job and I needed to go back to training, etc. etc. and then asked my friend, "What's her name?"
My friend responded, "Laura."
NOT ONLY did he deadname me; by doing that, he put another coworker and friend of mine in the line of fire. There is another legal Laura that works cashier who actually identifies as Laura, and there is no possible way that the customer could have learned my deadname on her own. I know he did it to be nice, but he needs to stop thinking he needs to take matters into his own hands, because that seriously pisses me off.
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2015 8:37 am
10.18.15
Why did I do this to myself?
It's not really dysphoria, not specifically, anyway. Sure, I tripped over a transphobic meme posted by a friend on my newsfeed while checking Facebook. Sure, I spent the entire day yesterday hiding in my room from my little sister's boyfriend because I was too sick to slip on my binder. But even after that, I decided, "Why not catch up on one of my favorite shows that I haven't watched in a long time?"
Supernatural is a guilty pleasure of mine. I know it's stupid, I know it's indulgent, I know it portrays Jews and atheists like greedy whiners and stalwart denialists, but goddammit, they've got a formula that keeps me coming back, and Charlie is one of the first LGBT characters I've seen on American television who wasn't represented solely by her sexuality. (I'm looking at you, hypersexual lesbians and gay high-pitched fashion freaks of the TV world... I'm looking and I'm judging). They're also the only show I know of that acknowledges that not all Jews are pasty white people with lots of money. Sure, I know, I just implied they're a bit antisemite, and I still hold to that, but it was an interesting touch.
ANYWAY. While watching the most recent episodes, I got to thinking of my relationship with my own siblings. Sarah and I are usually as close as can be, and we used to be closer, but after that outburst in front of her friend, I find it hard to confide even in her anymore. We used to talk all the time about road trips, haunted locations, and stuff like that, but now it's sort of fizzled out. She still misgenders me a lot and deadnames me like everyone else. She gets angry and sulky when I try to correct her, so I've stopped. I wish I had been born male so I wouldn't have to deal with this transition bullshit. I just want to be seen as my siblings' one short brother. That's all I want, and if I'd been born male, that's what I'd be, but because I have to transition, there will always be people who won't see me as a man, and that ******** irks me. I'll never really be male, no matter how much testosterone I inject into my body or how many operations I undergo.
I can still be a man, though. Being a man is a choice of mind. It's in the behavior, not in the body. That's what I keep telling myself.
So after I got caught up on the show, I wanted to ease myself out of the marathon slowly, so I decided to watch the outtake reels, all ten of them.
Then it really started to hurt.
I want to be an actor so bad. I want to have friends that I can goof off with. I want to be able to have fun with my job, make people laugh and cry and believe in something that doesn't exist for an hour. I want to be handsome. I want to have a perfect, healthy male body, with narrow hips, strong arms, a charming face and an awesome, contagious smile. I want to be seen not just as a man, but somebody who can joke, who can laugh, who can move, run and jump freely without fear of binder mishaps or his chubby, lady-like legs becoming too obvious. I want to be able to do push-ups and work out without feeling like my ribs just snapped into pieces, or like the skin holding my tits on is ready to rip off and drop to the floor.
I just want to be me and I want to be happy about being me. I know there's short guys out there, I know there's guys with long eyelashes and small hands and not-so-perfect bodies. I could probably live with being one of those men if I didn't look so ******** obviously like a girl.
Above all, I miss being able to have fun with my friends. I miss goofing off, going on spontaneous trips to Denny's or the mall between classes, fighting monsters together in an MMO while shouting about how much we ******** everyone else's moms... I miss the sleepovers, picking up a 24-pack of Smirnoff and watching bad movies, falling asleep in a happy dogpile as Happy Tree Friends marathons on the TV. I miss this so much. I wish I could have it all back. I wish I could be with my friends and feel that happy again, feel that free.
All this from watching the last eight episodes and all the outtakes of Supernatural.
I'm getting more and more pathetic and I hate it.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2015 12:43 pm
12.16.18
Wow! So much time has gone by! I didn't mean to just disappear like that, but, well...
Okay, so -- updates:
I still haven't called the Montrose Center to set up counseling or anything. I don't think it's because of my financial instability either. After all, I'm going to pay out the a** for a dentist appointment soon, and getting this therapy is just as important to my long-term health. However, I'm also reluctant because of the attitudes I see in the majority of people who get therapy. Maybe this is just generalization; maybe this is just because I haven't met the right post-therapy people, but this is what I've seen:
"I'm miserable and it's society's fault. Society should conform to me. I've been broken since I was a child. My parents say they love me, but they still make mistakes and tell me no, so they're obviously lying. I have the right to yell at strangers who insult me. I need my anti-depression pills more than I need a job or proper socialization. If you contradict me, I will insult you. If you point out my flaws, I will cry until you retract your statement. If I don't like something you like, I will go to great lengths to ruin that thing for you by involving myself and reinterpreting what you love to fit my definition of 'cool'. If you don't meet my absolute standards, I will shun you and tell lies about you, and you will deserve it, because I am the damaged one, I am the broken one, and no amount of superglue can fix me. I'm telling my therapist about this in the morning."
I don't know what therapists are doing to convince people to embrace their victimhood. I've always told friends who come to me for advice or comfort that they should grow stronger and move forward, that they don't have to let the abuse become their identity, that they can live a better and more memorable life by using their mistreatment as a way to learn how to never mistreat others. Maybe that's what therapists are trying to do and they're simply being mistranslated by their clients, or maybe they're making this sort of victim identity a thing so they can make more money.
I don't know. I guess I'll try for an evaluation over winter break. I don't ever want to become a professional victim, though, so I will remain cautious. I've got to do it for the paperwork...
In other news: I've met a lovely girl named Mara and I think we've become something of an item. She's delightful, supportive, and full of positive energy. She is dealing with some major physical and emotional abuse from her family, and it kills me that I can't drive yet; if I could, I'd drive over and pick her up and take her to Denny's every time things blew up and she needed an out, no matter what time of the day or night. I'm really glad she's studying out-of-district for college; it's more difficult for her brother to attack her there, and her neighbors and dorm head are aware of the problem and are ready to help her when visits get violent.
I'm trying to get a better job than the one I have. It's been a little over six months, so it's time for me to move on and seek better options. If worse comes to worst, I'll just take a LOA next semester.
Speaking of: I'm going to try to attend University of Houston Main, or perhaps UT Austin. I'm not sure which would be the better choice, but I definitely want to try going to a legitimate university and embarking on the next step in my education. I'm not walking the stage at Wharton, but I will have the qualifications for my long-awaited AA.
Once I've got my AA, I want to try getting a license. I also want to get a car, but I'm not sure I want to wait too long after I get my license. After all, if I get a license first and then have to save up for my car, I'll be forced to shell out $200 a month for my parents' auto insurance just because I have a license. In the meantime, I'll get rusty and by the time I can actually get a car, my driving skills will absolutely suck. Where's the point in that? I wish I didn't have to wait so long to gain my independence, but hey... Life sucks. That's just the way it is, LOL.
I'm not sure what else has been going on, but I'm sure I missed something. I'll update later when and if I remember anything else that's happened in the past two months.
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TheCreatureOfHabit Vice Captain
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