i cant stop thinking about the dress scene. and yeah typical transfem reaction to it but god. isabels genuine almost fear reaction to taras prying into her memories. do you remember the pink opaque? the memory is tinted in nostalgia, a softer yellow than the rest of the harsh bar. the edges are frayed and decorated almost like an old film left in a dark room for too long to waste away. tara knows where it is, and puts it into the tv slot. theres a prey animal reaction from isabel of remembering, of being remembered, but there's also a realization. she knows what tara is saying even if she doesn't admit it for twenty years. are you sure that's all it was? the tape clicks play

I made it all the way to Phoenix on the money I had saved. The trees looked different, but everything else was exactly the same. I started using a new name. Sleeping at the cheapest hostel I could find. The Pink Opaque was over. I got a job at the mall. At Build-A-Bear. Filling the dolls up with stuffing. I got out of that town. That place I knew would kill me if I stayed. But something was still wrong. Wronger, even. Time wasn’t right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls, asleep in the supermarket. Stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD. I told myself… “This isn’t normal.” “This isn’t normal.” This isn’t how life is supposed to be. I thought about running away again. About moving to Santa Fe and changing my name one more time. But I knew that everywhere would be just the same. I had seen how it ended. I knew where I was. A little bit after my 22nd birthday, I paid this burnout kid who used to hit on me in the food court $50 to bury me alive. I mean… he didn’t know he was burying me alive, but I doubt he would have cared too much even if he did. I bought a coffin. I dug a hole. I got inside and I closed the lid. I said to myself, “This is crazy.” “What you’re doing is crazy.” But another part of me knew that it wasn’t. That it was survival. And that I didn’t have much time. That what felt like years in this world was actually just seconds. So I waited. And then finally, the first spadeful of dirt hit the top of the box. And then another. And then another. I sang songs to myself. I counted to 10,000 without skipping any numbers. I pissed and I shit my pants and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva it could muster just so I would have something to drink. I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing. And I begged God for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy had packed the dirt in too tight just like I had asked him to do. And then, after I don’t know how long, I felt myself start to leave myself. And it was like I was watching myself on TV from across the room. And I was moving further and further away from the screen until the screen was so small that I couldn’t even see myself anymore.

ALSO!!!!!!! the ending is horrifying but not hopeless. like Isabel still sees herself inside of her own chest and then she leaves the bathroom and apologises for her outburst . she knows she’s dying but there is still time and I think that is fundamentally the only thing we can say to ourselves as trans people