BITSUHME

I went sailing for the first time

And have almost 4 therapy clients. Things are moving and shifting. The world outside keeps progressing and I keep missing things. I see many first blooms to my this year eyes each time I go out. It's beautiful tho

And hard to feel like things are going slow

It became this way in a week and a lifetime

Something shifted in the atmosphere

The plants BLEW up

I got to mow the lawn and am prepping 9 chicks for life outside and digging in the dirt and moving plants around

I get my first therapy client tomorrow 🫠

I'm in a new era. Still busy as fuck but less homework and the end is in sight....sorta. being a therapist still requires research and doing homework to know how to best help folks.

Getting off Instagram has been reollllllyyyy good for me

It's interesting being in public and seeing people that I....really don't actually know....who I feel like I know because I used to see their Instagram content. Now, having been months without that psudo-connection I feel more grounded in what connections I Do have. And what those connections mean, and their shape. And it all gives context to a layer of social anxiety of being out and about and like knowing things about people I learned ot Instagram.

I feel more desire to actually talk to folks. While im out.

Been making more art. And noticing a ' but where do I post it? Which is both a great practice in ' oh I don't have to, I made it for me'' and a bit of 'oh I can post on tumblr because it's also more for me'

Been moving through a lot of the mucky sticky hard parts of relationship. And loving it. Beautiful generative conflict and transition. By really sticking with and loving the hard im seeing doors open, love deepen, and feelings of ' holy shit it's worth it and it's working'. All on the other side of 'good lord how did I get here' and really sitting with deep feelings of internalizedshame hardened by experiences of abandonment and conditional love.

Having a good time

Went to a new folk dance weekend this past weekend and hope I stick with this desire to learn the banjo. My heart and time are getting pulled in a million directions and it feels like this will fall thru the cracks because it's a big time commitment....but long term investment in the folk dance scene sounds very values aligned and exciting. Writing songs on the banjo would be so so cool.

Kelly helped me process some things from my upbringing that I've hung onto for a long time. All of these memories have gendery feels and have surfaced over the years as I've unpacked the subconscious and conscious desire to express myself in gender nonconforming and feminine ways.

First my mom really wanted a daughter and my brothers wanted me to be their sister.

When I was in preschool I was friends with the neighbor girl. My brothers were friends with her older brothers. When I got to kindergarten, and got on the bus, I sat with her because we were friends. Other kids on the bus bullied me and told me that she was my girlfriend. My mom helped me come up with a response for the next time it happened, which was to let them know she was my friend who is a girl... (But this highlights the transphobic nature of heteronormativity)

Similar time period, was when the kids coming into kindergarten had a 'meet the teacher day' and one of the teachers told me that sheep aren't purple and scolded me for coloring sheep purple(my favorite color) on a coloring page. ( The other teacher, who knew my parents, witnessed this and took me into her class for the following year 💞)

There is a very cute photo of me in a little tiny flower-girl dress. I think the neighbors of one of my friends was babysitting me and they got me dressed up with lipstick. In the photo I look pretty happy, while my brother puts bunny ears up behind me. The whole thing feels representative of the spectacle that feminity was culturally for me. I don't think it took much coaxing to get me to put the dress on. I think I was thirsty for feminine influence. But someone thought it was a remarkable moment worth capturing, and there is obvious humor involved.

There was a neighbor girl who lived up the hill from me and once while I was over there the older kids got her to bend over and told me to kiss her butt. Bizzare... and another example of my older peers forcing me into romantic/sexual/inappropriate and importantly: non-platonic relationships with my same-aged neighborhood girls who were the closest and easiest access I had to feminine influence and the experiences of being raised as a girl. There are photos of me and this girl dancing together at a school event before we were in kindergarten. I look thrilled to be dancing with her. I remember into middle school feeling weird when I saw her because I had kissed her butt.

I vividly remember my mom convincing me to stop wearing tall socks, and telling me that my brothers friend, who was a boy, loves ankle height socks. The embodied felt-sense memory of this moment is having the autonomy to freely express myself stripped from me. Not sure tall socks are explicitly gendered but I remember feeling like I couldn't wear what I wanted to wear.

There's a whole photo album labeled, 'spunki's buzz'. While my mom was out of town my dad buzzed my brother and I's hair. I have a lot of curiosity about this moment and how much was your pressure and how much was genuine desire. I recall later in my youth wanting to grow my hair out long and not being allowed to.

I imagine that my emotions erupt into my bloodstream which invokes the sensation to cry. I let it overtake me. And the expression isn't enough. My emotions need to be seen more, so they rupture vessels and drip drop into the kitchen sink.

I watch the red spread, star-shaped drops form in the base of the sink, while I watch with astonishment. I am alive. I bleed blood with hormones in it. Chemicals I perceive from the inside as waves, clouds, stories, yet they lie invisible in my blood, hiding in plain sight, in the kitchen sink.

Stretches don't seem to help but that's said without routine

Hard to sleep before 11

Hard to wake before 7 honestly

Been a long busy stretch. Could use another day

But lovin' has been flowin flowin flowin

And that is really exciting and nice and cute and filling.

But havnt had my intention time with my besties in a while.