Bustling Blank Verse

This post talks about a new DM feature in youtube. What it fails to mention is that as part of this new feature is that when you send someone a link to a video, and they open it in the youtube app, they will see who sent them the link. Specifically, your channel name.

If your google account name is your real name, so is your channel name by default.

This means the new default behavior is that everyone you send a youtube link to will see your full name if they open it in the mobile app.

To turn this off:

Go to your youtube app settings

Go to Privacy

Turn off "Channel visibility for shared links"

I am in elementary school. I have discovered something in myself that is different from my peers. I have no words to express this feeling, so I instead live in discomfort for years and years and believe it to be normal.

I am in seventh grade. I have lost my entire friend group because a rumor was spread that because I am queer, I must be a creep. My last sleepover with those friends was spent sitting in the same room as them while they texted each other talking shit about me.

I am in seventh grade. I have endured homophobic bullying from snarky comments to food being thrown at me in the cafeteria, and today finally swing back. I get one of the bullies on the floor and the teacher breaks us up. I get in trouble for fighting while she continues to bully me. Nothing is done about the bullying when I speak up about it.

I am in seventh grade. I am being outed to my entire classroom by the people I share a table with. They are walking to every single desk and telling each classmate I am queer. I watch as every head turns to look at me in disgust. I am completely alienated from that class and spend my days working alone.

I am fourteen or fifteen. The discomfort I have lived with my entire life finally has a name: dysphoria. I have come out to my family as trans. I am in my room alone on my birthday, crying because every card has "girl" on it.

I am fourteen or fifteen. I get a tone with a family member because I am tired of her excuses for continuously misgendering me. Her husband corners me outside and threatens to hit me if I ever talk back to her again, and tells me my identity is made up. My family sides with him.

I am fifteen and sixteen. I wish I could die instead of living in stagnancy.

I am seventeen. My country is passing law after law to restrict my community. Trans people are going missing and being murdered, and their lights are snuffed without so much as a whimper. I am disgusted and afraid and grieving alongside my trans brothers, sisters, and siblings.

I am twenty. I do not speak to much of my family anymore, my mother has only ever called me my birth name, and I have lost every single friend I ever had except one, and had to rebuild myself and my circle from the ground up. Family holidays are hollow. I have self harm scars permanently etched on my skin, purple half-moons under my eyes that are like stains at this point, and I will never forget how I have been treated and what I have endured. My heart breaks knowing millions out there experience the same things and worse.

I am twenty. I am crying in my boyfriend's arms about not feeling like a real man. I am hearing him reassure me that he sees me for me and he loves me as the man I am. My small friend group strictly calls me by my chosen name and pronouns. I am in love, I have more support than ever, and for once, I'm starting to feel glad I'm alive, glad that I held on. For once, I have hope.

If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.

If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.

I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.

for the longest time my goals have been so blurry that they track into each other, their undefined edges slipping quietly back into the soft night. today i want to be a writer; tomorrow i will want to be a doctor, later i will wish i took that law school free ride. how the fuck do people just know what they want to do with their life?

where do you want to be in five years? i want to be alive; which is a huge step for me. ten years ago i would have said i want to be asleep and meant i hope that i'm dead by then.

but i want a yellow kitchen and a stand mixer. i want a garden and a fruit tree (cherry, if i can make that happen) and a big yard for my dogs to play in. i want to come home and read poetry out loud to someone and have them close their eyes to listen. i want a summer watergun fight. i want to make snowmen. i want to be the house to go to for halloween. i want my life to settle around me in a softness, for it to lay down gently. if i am very, very, very lucky, i want to travel; finally go someplace overseas.

of course i don't know what i want to be doing professionally. what i actually want to be doing is curling up beside my dog, settling in to read. i want to be making myself a cup of good coffee.

i can't answer the other questions. whenever people asked me what do you want to be when you grow up, i used to say i hope i'm happy.

i hope i'm still kind, five years from now. i hope i never get jaded and mean. i hope i have stayed in therapy. what do you picture yourself doing? when will you actually be an adult about this? why are you so afraid of being ambitious?