Filed under: Thinking Thinking
I don’t spend time looking forward. I don’t know how to. I always feel like I’m just coasting towards something, but don’t know what that something is, until I bump into it.
I’d like to have a plan. When things get real shitty, it’s easy to make plans that are reactive… but of course those ever go through. What does it look like to make a plan for your life, when things are stable?
Filed under: lessons learned, People to remember, Things to notice, Thinking Thinking | Tags: feelings, people, relationships
Holy fucking shit.
I made it through 2016 and things are so much brighter on this side. Okay, maybe not brighter, but their is far, far less shit over on this side.
Last time I was here, my friend had just died and I was still struggling with the feelings that I had developed for my (best) friend/fuck buddy for many, many years.
In October, I made the decision to entirely cut ties with that boy, until we saw each other for NYE. I unfriended him everywhere and we didn’t talk, text, or anything. While I knew this was the smartest decision I had made on this topic all year, it was also the hardest.
Seeing him at NYE wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. I thought I was going to cry. I thought that we would both have this incredible hunger to catch up on each other lives. I imagined that we’d walk off into the distance and spend so much time catching up that people would wonder where we had gone. I thought a lot of things, but none of them turned out to actually happen. We hugged and chatted for just a bit and that’s all the catching up we needed. No emotions rushing back, no nothing.
My life moved on and so did his. Holy fuck, I just want to shout that out to the entire world! Our lives moved on! It actually happened! The plan worked! It feels amazing. Sure, I lost my best friend in the process, but I was so in my feelings about him that it was tearing me a part. At the rate we were going, we would both hate each other in a very short amount of time. This is better than that for sure.
I made a good decision and I am really proud of myself.
Loosing him has forced me to reach out and build stronger bonds with the Queer & Trans folk in my life who I had been neglecting. I am so happy that I’ve spent the past few months building (and rebuilding) those relationships.
Maybe we’ll become friends again. Never like we were, but maybe something closer than the distant acquaintances we’ve become.
Time, you do your thing and let’s see what happens. But I’m going to put my time and effort into the folks in my life that love, affirm, understand and care for me.
This is how I’m spending my 2017. How about you?
Filed under: People to remember, Southern life, Thinking Thinking | Tags: death, suicide, vulnerability
We grew up together. We discovered our Queerness together. She introduced me to the intersectional politics that has shaped who I am, to this very day. She gave me my first radical Queer book that changed everything for me. She gave me my first Mattilda book. We danced together. We laughed. We cried. We lived together for a while (not a good idea). We learned from each other. I learned so much from her.
She died not knowing how important she was to me. She died without me ever properly explaining to me how important she was to me being the person I am today.
She is fucking dead. She will be dead, forever.
For however long I am alive, I’ll always know one thing. I will never see her again.
I can never call her for advice. I can never hear her laugh. I can never process fucked up situations with her again.
My entire life, I was told that people die of a) age or b) a very serious sickness.
People don’t tell you as a kid just how fragile life is. People don’t tell you that when you grow up, your Queer & Trans friends will be living in a world so horrible, they are forced to end it, because they just can’t take it anymore. They don’t tell you that as a kid. They fucking lie.
I have no idea how to talk about suicide. My immediate response was shock. I thought no, not her. Never her, this must be a mistake.
I’m worried that was my initial response, because I thought she was ‘stronger than that’. But I have to check that shit. Suicide isn’t weakness. I have to remember this.
I already miss her so much. I can’t stop thinking of her in that last moment. I just hope that she found the peace that she wanted. The peace she needed. If I can just believe she got that, then I’ll be a bit better.
It feels like Queer & Trans folks are dropping all around me. What do I do if I wake up and realize that everyone I’ve ever loved is dead? What will I do?
Filed under: Faggot Rant, lessons learned, People I wish I could forget, People to remember | Tags: relationships, southern living, southern pride, that boy
These past 6 months have been very hard. Looking back, I can say that they have easily been the most difficult time in my life. BUT, I made it and that is what I’m most excited about.
I’m coming out on the other side and I am so, so thrilled that I can now see everything more clearly. It isn’t crystal clear, yet, but I feel like it’s getting there and I am absolutely fucking ecstatic about that.
In April, I discovered that the term “fall in love” is actually very accurate. Overnight, I, for some reason, fell in love with this boy that I had been friends/fuck buddies with for 3 years. I’ve talked about him quite a bit here during this time, you know the one. I woke up one morning (literally) and could not stop thinking about him. I have never felt so helpless. I knew it wasn’t right… that we weren’t right… but none of that could stop these incredibly intense feelings that developed. I now also know what people mean when they talk about the heart, as if it is capable of thought or emotion. I really did feel out of control, as if my heart was overpowering all rational thought.
These feelings happened to develop when I felt like my friend group(s) were becoming weaker (I’m certain all of this is connected) and I didn’t feel like I had a lot of people around me I could talk to about these new feelings. Normally this boy was there to hold space for me, but that just didn’t work in this situation. I felt lost and very lonely, which only made my desire for him and that closeness greater. I had some pretty dark thoughts during this time and ended up thinking a lot about death (not suicide, but just, death in general).
All of this lasted for several months and only in the past month have I worked through those feelings and discovered that he was right… we don’t need to ever be a thing. I’ve also realized that I am incredibly grateful that a relationship never bubbled up, as I can now see that I would have gotten hurt and that would have left me in a very bad place. Not maliciously hurt, necessarily, but passively hurt, for sure. Does that make sense? I don’t really know what that means, but it feels appropriate.
Can’t say much more about that, because he may still read this (sharing this was not my best idea, but not one I regret). But just know that things are better and I finally feel like I can move on. A few times over the past few months, I’ve told folks that I thought things were getting better with this boy and while that was partially true, I made things sound much better than they actually were. But now, I can honestly say that I am moving on. I now have the clarity to look back and identify some not great behavior that I need to be on the look out for in the future.
I absolutely can’t wait for folks to ‘come around’. Sitting around and waiting for folks to discover what I already know only makes me look like a fool. I’d really like to work on better sticking to this idea of “fuck yes or no“, but I need to talk to my therapist more about that. This has also been a really good reminder of intent vs. impact.
I’m not sure what the future of our friendship looks like, but I will take that one day at a time. I must put myself first. Always. This is the most important thing for me to remember.
I listened to this song A LOT over the past 6 months. Not accurate to how I feel in many ways, but still felt really good to sing this real loud walking around outside. I don’t regret meeting him, I’m actually incredibly happy that he came into my life. He’s helped me learn so, so many important things about myself over these past 4 (at this point) years. Thank you.
Towards the end of this boy shit happening, some very, very fucked up things happened at work. For the first time, I considered leaving this job. For a lot of reasons, that was really scary and I wasn’t sure what would happen to this job if I left, since I made it. I was then having thoughts about what happens to me if I leave this position that is keeping me here in town. For the first time in 12 years, I wondered if maybe this was a sign I needed to leave. Maybe this was a sign that I have taken enough abuse from this town and it was time to just go. Just the idea of leaving this job and town I love so much threw me in to these episodes of debilitating sadness and I really lost it for a few weeks.
Things calmed down at work and I was able to identify the fucked up things happening and let people know what was going on. Things feel better and seem to be getting better, so I now have hope that I’ll stay at this job and this town for the foreseeable future. I’d love to talk about all this more, but I really would honestly like to not think about it anymore.
So here I am now, on the other side of this shit that had me real fucked up and I feel great. I just got back from the longest vacation I’ve ever taken (a week!!!) and I now have so much more clarity on all these bad things happening around me, it’s wonderful. These past 6 months have been very difficult and at times, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it (or that I even wanted to). But all of it was worth it for this very moment, where I can look back, identify abusive things people did to me and work on ensuring that never happens to me again. Or, if they do, that I’m able to identify and call them out earlier.
You know those times that you wish you could go back in time and just shake some fucking sense into yourself?
This is absurd and focusing on this is obviously not productive, but this feeling is something I’ve been focusing on, a whole lot, lately.
One or two things in particular, I just can’t believe how fucking stupid I was.
The feeling that things could be better right now, if you had made better decisions in your past is pretty upsetting.
Filed under: Thinking Thinking, Uncategorized | Tags: Faggots, orlando, self care, shooting, violence
It’s so easy to talk about self care. I talk about it and it’s important, all the time.
But practicing self care in a world where you are regularly reminded that you’re wanted dead, is hard.
I sometimes hear from (usually white) LGBT people (I don’t agree with) that they are “more than their LGBT identity.” Somedays, it seems like that must be nice. I can’t leave my identity behind, anywhere, because it is the most important thing in my life. How could I ever leave it behind?
But this identity also makes it hard to have a positive view on the world, because I’m constantly reminded that, someday, this identity will kill me.
News just broke of the shooting in Orlando. It’s these sorts of days that I think about how nice it must be to leave your LGBT identity somewhere and walk away from it. I don’t want to make it sound like I think that my identity is a burden, but, especially on these days, it makes everything feel especially heavy.
I can’t imagine how nice it must feel to be able to leave that heaviness behind.
But, I can’t. And I know that I really don’t want to. That heaviness is what gives me the energy to move forward.
Somedays it’s just too much. Somedays I wish I could just view the regular murdering of LGBT people as an outsider. I can’t and I’ll never be able to. But it sure sounds nice.
Filed under: People to remember | Tags: Poetry, Sad Girl Poems, White Girl Sadness
I can not get enough of this interview.
“I want to believe that love is not about surviving with someone, or getting resources from them. Love should be more than that. Maybe there is love in the poems, the love that the narrator was capable of at that particular moment in time.
bell hooks writes, in All About Love, “Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.” Maybe, writing and living as a queer youth, I was unable to recognize my ability to accept and reciprocate the love which was given to me. Maybe that is what’s captured in this chapbook.”
It feels like so much of this interview is things I want to say, but don’t know how. So many of these are things I’m feeling, or have felt, but I typically don’t feel like I have someone to say them to. Aside from places like TSF.
I’ve never had a desire to read poetry, in my entire life. This is a strange feeling.
The past few weeks have been really rough for me and I’ve been having a very hard time. I’m not suicidal, but my mental health has been worse than it’s been in a long, long time and I have to figure out what I can do to work on this.
The world is a horrible, horrible place and normally I can know that, without focusing on it, but lately I’ve been focusing on it an unhealthy amount. I’ve been thinking about Reecey, a Transwoman recently murdered in Kansas. I’ve been thinking about all the Transwomen that I know have been murdered. I’ve been thinking more about all of the Transwomen who have been murdered without anyone knowing.
I don’t want to live in a world where Transwomen are brutally murdered each day.
I don’t want to live in a world where I am regularly forced to think about my own death.
I don’t want to live in a world where I believe I will be murdered one day, simply for being a GNC person.
I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t use the bathroom without worrying about my own safety. I don’t want to have to constantly think “Do I have the energy to use a public restroom? Am I emotionally ready to have to defend my existence?”
I don’t want to live in this world, but I do… and I am not suicidal, so I’ll be around for a while.
I’m not sure where I go from here. I feel a little helpless, honestly.
I don’t think anyone reads this anymore, but for those who do, you know that I’ve never really wanted to be in a relationship. I’ve always done things on my own and for my entire life, I’ve thought that translated to my relationship status, as well.
The past several weeks have made me realize, I don’t think this is healthy for me.
I need someone around that I can pour all of these feelings into.
I need someone I can share every aspect of my life and all of my thoughts with.
I need someone who can help me process all of these things.
I need someone I can go out with and we can just look at each other and both know what is going on in each of our minds.
I need someone who challenges the way I view the world, but someone who won’t judge me for my (some would say overly) critical view of the world.
The scariest part of this, for me, is the beginning of each of these sentences. I need someone.
I’ve never thought this in my life. I’ve always viewed myself as a solitary creature. I’ve always taken a bit of pride in that, but I’m realizing, that just isn’t true. I *do* need people. That makes me feel weak… but I know it shouldn’t.
These past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about a relationship that I could have had, but never allowed to happen. The past few weeks I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve been feeling so, so angry at myself for being so fucking stupid and not allowing this really amazing thing to happen.
To give myself credit, I didn’t think I was ready. In reality, I know I wasn’t ready.
But I am now. I think. I think I am ready, but I wanted too long and now that isn’t a possibility.
Joke’s on me, I guess.
I want to be patient. I want to say that I can wait. But it’s hard to wait for something that you feel like you need *right now*. But, I have to wait. So, I will.
I’ll just keeping listening to 1989 and thinking that every single song is relevant to my life and situation right now.
Filed under: eh, Faggot Rant, my head hurts., Rants, This town | Tags: friends?, saddness, Taylor swift
I am so, so fucking emotionally exhausted all of the time as of lately and I don’t really see how that is going to change in the near, or even distant, future.
I live in a world where each and every second of the day, I am reminded that people don’t think I should exist.
I can’t go into any bathroom, ever, without wondering what sort of shit I’m going to have to put up with.
At work each day, I work with young folks who are *much worse* off than I am, yet I have to try and convince them it will be *okay*.
But I don’t know if, or when, it will ever be okay. How the fuck am I qualified to try and tell people things will be okay? How much longer can I go on trying to tell people it will be okay, when I’m not sure when, or if, it will ever be okay.
I want to curl up and just cry all night long, but I know this won’t make anything okay, so it’s hard to justify that to myself.
I think a lot of this is coming from not seeing my friends a lot lately. Having this friend time is the only break I get in life, from being continually reminded that I shouldn’t exist. I need these people in my life to remind me that I belong here.
Without them, my emotional well-being is suffering greatly and I really don’t know how to feel about that. In my mind, I am such a solitary creature. But this past month has been a painful reminder that this just isn’t true.
I gotta make some changes in my life. I know that folks *are busy*, but I can’t go much longer without seeing the people in my life that are so important to me.
In very related news, I finally started listening to 1989 and this album is my everything right now.
I’ve been thinking a lot about L today.
When she died, we were both just kids. We were both 20 and still had so much growing up to do.
I’m spending time thinking about that and thinking about how mad I am that she wasn’t allowed to ever grow up. I simply can not fathom what an adult L would be like. She was such an amazing ball of energy, I want to know how she would have harnessed that energy.
I’ll never know. No one will ever now and that is fucking infuriating.
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