Life after the wake

I'm a wreck lately. I feel like all the regrets, guilt and traumas of my life are crushing me and I'm just retreating deeper and deeper into fictional worlds, be it the ones I consume or the one my mind produces.

I read 'They both die at the end' today. I'm a little surprised I can still enjoy casually reading books as I mostly have been pushing through academic writing for the past few years which is anything but enjoyable. No spoilers but the book just ends in such a way that it's really heartbreaking. Especially when I related to one of the main characters a lot.

I've been dealing with flashbacks for more than two years at this point. And I finally got a therapist which I promised I would get right after what happened happened. Yay me.

I keep thinking what I could've done differently, how I could've changed my life and myself around so that I wouldn't feel so lonely and empty all the time. It's hard to actually think about those things when my mind is fried, I lose the sense of time and my memory is worse than Swiss cheese.

Today I thought about how in few months is my twentysomething birthday and I prayed that I would go before that happens. I hate my birthday. I never do anything fun, all my friends are scattered, it's the worst day of the year even with my partner supporting me the best they can. It's a bleak day for me. I just feel the weight of time on myself and I grow even more resentful towards the world. I've always had it comfortable - financially supportive family of origin even though most of them are either emotionally stunted or straight up narcissistic, a circle of my girl friends I could always talk to and spend time with, even if it was sometimes taxing, a person who took me under their care when I needed it the most and who have been looking out for me for the past eight years, even though I've been a dick to them on more than a few occasions. I feel like I have no right to feel as broken as I do. I desperately push down most of my stupid complaints in daily life. And still I make so many mistakes. Still I never learn. Still I feel so lonely, even though I don't live alone. Still bring out the worst in myself. Still do things I will regret my whole life.

Dear diary, dissociation of sleep deprivation upon me.

This has been the most unrewarding, humiliating and physically destructive semester of my academic life. This is the second year of my master's in education/upbringing/care studies (English doesn't really have an adequate noun) and so far it's been a nightmare. I'm overloaded with compulsory classes even though we should have time to write our theses. They forced us to come early and my sleeping cycle is in bits and pieces. Tonight I haven't slept and I do not know if it's because of anxiety that I'll miss a morning class or because I've simply fucked myself again.

The whole institute is based on punishment and hierarchy. The very thing at least humanist side of academia should oppose. Majority of my classes are to waste our time and make us miserable. Though my fellow students seem to be impervious to the fact that we learn nothing and the sources we're being made to read are worth less than a very cheap cup of coffee.

My dog died on the Day of Christmas Eve. Or rather I've called a doctor to come and kill her. She's been very sick for about a month prior. Not taking food or vomiting what she ate, her lungs slowly filling with mucus, her muscles slowly disappearing. I've stayed with her until her very last breath. Once she fell asleep on sedative the death was swift. I could feel it very clearly. The moment tension left her muscles and her skin came loose. Death.

I'm fed up with this city. With its arteries clogged with cars due to lack of regulation. With the lack of space design. Raging investor furies. Air pollution. Dry skin. Ever cold winds. Twisted so that they always blow but never clear the sky. Isolation. Isolation.

The bus ride was as nauseating as ever. Of course no one opened the window. Why would they. Better our brains boil and lungs fail.

AaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaA

a punchhole in my stomach rising to my heart tearing up shellflaking shaking hands head painsplitting unhealed wounds unlicking

September seeped into my room in many forms of chilly air. After this hot, alarming summer the cold came as a shocking surprise. It brought a sigh of relief as well, as it has proven that it's not the definite climatic end of the world yet.

I've always liked September. My birthday is up, leaves will soon get yellow and red and fall off the trees, with them the walnuts and chestnuts, and the raindrops, and the still warm golden rays of sunshine. I can recall as if it was yesterday as I walked through the withered fields of wild grass in my hometown, playing with my neighbour. Hiding, exploring, taking in the world as it surrounded me with the extremely tall nettles and reed by the stream, with the thistle fruit that we threw at each other, with the cold ground and sounds of the airplanes passing by over our heads.

I used to idealise my childhood a lot and I still think that I have many good memories from that time. I'm also aware that there are some inaccessible ones, and ones that are not very nice, mostly the constant feeling of... having to submit to expectations. Sickening.

Apart from that... I don't know. Things changed with time. At some point I gave up on throwing birthday parties, I think when I started secondary school. Then I started to celebrate them again in high school. And now... I don't remember what we did last year. Two years ago either. I know that that last September was a very difficult month for me that started off a series of traumatic events. I'd like to cling onto something. I should talk with my partner about that.

I don't feel particularly old. Just... I'd like my birthday to be really exciting. Something I look forward to. Not a day that I have to service all my family members in a pleasant matter and recieve few bank transfers from them. I asked some of my friends and acquittances to send me postcards. Officially to have more evidence for legally changing my name. But the longer I think about it the more it comes to me that I just wanted to be noticed and to feel at least somewhat special. I miss friends. A lot. It's also grief after the time that has already passed. But I can't mourn forever.

future.

I wanted to write about love because I had a bit of a stream of consciousness but I’ve checked one of the posts on a facebook support group for trans folks I’m in and it’s all I can think about right now.

A confused amab person is looking for help in figuring out their gender identity. Fine and dandy. I almost jumped to write a long ass comment on that but then I became discouraged. In general being active on this group has been bittersweet. I joined mainly because I was looking for university project respondents. Since I am myself gender non-conforming I became active. But I mostly respond in the comments, from time to time I ask a pragmatical question. Sometimes I comment giving away a little more of my personal experiences.

it’s becoming tiring. Practically every day someone appears to post about their problems or start a conversation on a trans-related topic. Some of these posts are unique, some of them are repetitive af. I feel frustrated with the fact that many of the posters aren’t as familiar with trans topics as I am. I’m not an expert but I have dabbled in academic writing on transness, sexuality and gender, I have strong opinions on many aspects of these topics. I don’t know if it’s frustrating because people think and learn at different speed and in different ways than me, or it’s because I’m envious of how simple it is for many people. How you can just treat gender as strictly biomedical matter and believe in neopositivistic sciences paradigm. How many people just... do stuff, transition, go to the doctor. While I’m sitting around undecided.

I feel weak and confused about my gender. I do not know what I am. I am not a man and I dread that the hairgrowth on my skin will accelerate indefinitely and I will become a rectangular piece of misery because of the fat and muscle shifts progressing throughout my life. I am getting older and part of this dread is simply linked to not staying young forever.

On the other hand I am not a woman. It feels better to be a she but I do not feel very socializable to that role either. If I am a woman I am more of an angry lesbian (well, in my case pansexual) feminist. And I like that idea but it feels like you can’t just be an angry pansexual feminist like that. I feel like this is an option reserved for people who were raised as women and emancipated themselves. I have a completely different set of cultural stereotypes and habits to emancipate from. And sometimes I just feel like such an awful human being who is destined to sooner or later become one of the awful disgusting males.

I’ve settled on queer after identinfying as bigender for some time. I believe in being queer and I see queer when I look in the mirror. But I do not quite feel there yet. Inside I just feel lost. I feel like a vast book with much data but little experience, with much knowledge but no wisdom. What was the word... phronesis. Right. Not much of that.

In general my life right now is like a protective bubble that is inevitably going to burst. One more year of studying. Then what? Today it’s a black hole. I want to teach philosophy and ethics, I want to use drama techniques, I’m getting my masters in education studies. But I’m also probably going to migrate west from Poland. Where will I go? What will my degree be worth there? Education is always very country-specific. Wages are universally low. What if I won’t be able to provide for myself? What if somewhere along the way we will drift apart with my significant other? What if I will just break down at some point because I’m tired of constantly keeping myself together?

Tw: self loathing, suicidal ideation

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I've become a burden to myself. And to others. I don't know if it's true but it feels real. I've unlearnt how to share my tears. I went on a long ride and came back to the starting point. Older but still childish and helpless. More than ever filled with gut and shame. I feel like I'm fading every single day. University bores me. I float through social interactions like on autopilot. Even at home I'm disconnected. Does it show?

I'm getting worse. I cry alone and I don't know who to talk to. Sometimes I feel like I simply don't want to because I'm a coward who'd rather imagine being even slightly honest than actually do it. Sometimes I just don't know how to speak. Have I ever learnt to speak my mind when it comes to how I feel?

I lay in my bed and I cry and again all I can think of is how I should die. And how it would probably be even more of a burden if I actually did kill myself. I'm pathetic. Instead of doing anything to make things better I'm stuck and I just repeat the only things I know. Nothing has changed. I've never moved on. I'm no one. I've never tried to change anything for myself. All I ever do is conform to other people's ideas about what would be good for me. All I ever do is talk with people to disagree with them. I'm not okay, I'm never going to be okay, I'm going to have a mental breakdown in a year or two once the bubble bursts. I'm never going to be satisfied with what I do. There will always be mistakes invalidating anything I do or think. I'm just a menta leech incapable of thinking on its own. I'll forever stay a maggot confined to its loneliness and repulsiveness.

So I’m at a friend’s house for a party. She had birthday last week so me and my partner came up with an appropriate present, asked the guests whether they want to join in, we split the costs, I got the present and got there (moderately early).

I’ve recently changed some things on my facebook so that it reads more feminine but I haven’t really talked about it with my friends yet so I’m really not in a position to argue against introducing me with my boy name. I guess it would have been nice if someone asked me but it’s more or less fine.

The party... well just goes on. More people come in. I talk to some, I avoid some. I discuss feminism, some anthropology, drink some wine, talk about university yada yada. Eat a lot of gluten cause life is stressful and people don’t have any snacks other than those. Apart from herring that was brought by my friend’s parents later but yuck, fish.

At some point I start using feminine verb endings (we’re not anglophones, we conjugate). Cause why not. I feel somewhat okay with it, at least around people I’ve more or less recognized as safe. Had they asked me why I’d tell them, why not. So it’s going okay, we talk about the academia, then I start talking about my masters, about gender of the brain, we move to the couch.

One of the male guests decides to sit by at some point. He’s drunk, most likely hetero, smaller than me. A person I wouldn’t normally talk to - there is just a certain type of aura around some men that I avoid, it’s hard for me to name it. I’m sitting with two girls, one of them my friend, another a girl one year younger than me who came with her husband. So he sits by and shoots me up with “Are you taking hormones?”.

It was so sudden that I just angrily replied “No.” To which he says either “If I were you I would be.” or “I think you should be.”

So at first I freeze, fuss a ltitle. Then I get angry and ask why does he feel like he has any right to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my body. He is defensive about it. In general he was coming up with bs that popped in his head. The more I tried to talk about why does he feel that he should give me his expertise the more he was going the route of “oh so you feel special” “oh you must have had a hard life”, asking me have I wished my mother happy women’s day to which I reply “no because I don’t have good relationship with my family” (which is true) to which he goes “that’s what I thought”. It’s just fucking unberable. A random guy with whom I haven’t even talked that evening gets up my goddamn medical business, while misgendering me throughout, victimizing me. Fucking pity from a cis-dude who has “friends like that” whom “hormones have helped”. This is fucking XXIst century, people. This is the pinnacle of fucking social progress. A heterosexual cis dude telling a person that reads at least as gay if not as gender nonconforming to go get her hormones therapy.

For what fucking reason should I get my hormone therapy? Do I go right this moment? Shoot myself up with whatever the fuck? To alleviate my dysphoria or to make him more goddamn comfortable with himself? And when my beard stops showing am I good enough then or not wearing makeup is still a sin? Do I speak in a higher tune and become more receptive to the words of critique? Is that good enough?

Since when is he an expert in telling me what to do with MY BODY. Maybe he is fucking right about me being wounded and anxious. But he wasn’t the one having each symbolic and physical hand of his fucked up mother on his body. He wasn’t the one bombarded with contradictions about how he should be. He wasn’t the one denied the right to be his own person. I was. I am a property. I am raised a property. A doll, a shell, a trophy. A music box to say what is expected. A mind to expect and to fear what must come.

And maybe I would like some pity but not from someone who comes in and shoves it up my ears. Not from someone who came to be oh so helpful to a transgirl while calling her with her boy name and using male-gendered verbs. Not from someone who brags how he has friends whom HRT has helped. I don’t know how they still call him their friend, maybe they are normative as fuck and it’s all fine and dandy in that weird word.

That made me angry.

But what made me sad was my friend and the other girl sitting with me explaining how it doesn’t matter, how it’s an opinion from a total stranger whom I don’t even know. ‘If you knew him and came up for an advice then you would be right to feel angry if he had said something insulting’, ‘it doesn’t matter’. I even asked my friend, attempting to somehow explain how I felt, ‘[name] shouldn’t you have a baby soon?” (obviously acting out an unfortunately popular scheme and I made sure she was aware of it). She brushed it off. She said that people say that to her sometimes and she doesn’t feel the need to fight them. That some people say those things.

I do not want to live in a world where people, especially women, are blind to policing of their bodies. In a world in which they get BANGED OVER THEIR HEADS WITH CULTURE SO LONG that they become completely desensitised to it. To someone else telling them how they should be.

The other girl sitting with us said that when, after coming back from abroad, she put on her husband’s coat and hat to go for shopping (because they were unpacked) he asked her ‘Are you going out like that? This is men’s coat!’. And she brought it up simply to say that she doesn’t care. That some people say these things.

Men and women say these things and I don’t know which is more enraging. Women say these things because they were taught to believe in them, taught that is how they should be, how a woman should be, and, by proxy, how every other woman should be. And men say these things not even thinking twice.

We are the panopticon but it’s always a man gazing. A man, some men - looking, objectifying, policing, victimizing, justifying, having expertise. Having oh so much expertise.

I am sad, I am angry, I am sick. No amount of estrogen will calm this feeling. I may be coming from the outside into what we call femininity but I certainly don’t feel like this is something to brush off or just accept ‘as it is’. I want a world a little better and a lot less male-centered than the one we live in.

My women’s day wasn’t happy. I didn’t call my mother and I won’t.

Memory.

What is your first memory?

I do not know mine.

Since I was elven life has been a neverending cycle of being and forgetting for me. I would live, the time would pass, I would grow, change schools, fall in love, forget. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. In the space between there would always be a summer camp to keep my gears running, a two week or month long workout, a rest for the mind constantly living under pressure of school and family. It was almost like being someone else during these times in between.

I wasn’t paying that much attention to it or rather I was trying to avoid thinking about it. I am terrified of how many things I’ve forgotten. Good things, bad things, important and meaningless ones. They are all somewhere in my head, at least some of them I believe. But I constantly have access to only a chosen few. Only some highlights of my life, rarely do I remember something as a whole, in context...

My memories are usually in third person. Which only means they aren’t really memories but rather my own imagined pictures of these memories. I stand beside myself, I look at the room, the forest, the lake, my parent’s house. I change perspectives, I can see faces and sceneries. If I have photos I can almost drown myself inside of them. But am I remembering or am I just imagining how it went?

I have flashbacks. Sometimes. I do not know if I would call them flashbacks, really. They are feelings, voices that do not speak comprehensible words but rather tunes and emotions, movements, pain, tears, lightheadedness. Sometimes when I look at the old photos where I can see myself as I was when I was only 1 year old I feel like I can connect to that. If I close my eyes, if I let go of everything around me I can feel that moment inside of me. But I can’t think it. I can’t name it. I can’t talk about it. And I can’t remember because memories are strings of words and narrations that are somehow fiit into us - us as a whole.

I’m not whole at all.

There is fracturing inside of me. In my core. But on my surface as well. In my contradicting actions, facial and vocal expressions, words. I’m a paradox, I’m impossible. Sometimes, when I feel really bad, really really bad, the world feels fake. My body feels fake. My mind feels like I’ve manufcatured it. I can’t anchor myself to anything. There is here and now but who am I in that moment? Who are the people that matter to me? Who am I for them? Are we a family? Are we strangers pushed around by fate? By coincidences? Did we choose this or is it something else that pushed us into those constellations?

Questions remaining without answers.

I am oscillating between the past and the future and I cannot grab onto the present hard enough. It is a storm that has been swaying me, swaying my feelings, swaying my headspace. I am but a troubled and tired wanderer of my broken fantasies. A prisoner of my mind. A mourn at my own funeral.

One of the memories that for the longest time I believed to by my first was a memory of going down a small hill in a forest during the winter on a sleigh and falling flat on my face. I thought I remembered the tears, the pain, the redness of my face... How would I know my face was red? My nose? There wasn’t a mirror there. Did someone snap a photo? I haven’t seen it. Has my nose been red all the time until we returned to wherever we were sleeping? Or am I standing inside that memory and feeding myself a vision that never happened? At some point in that memory blood was running down my nose. But blood never run down my nose, it ran down my nose a few months ago after tonsillectomy. But before that? The blood is hot usually. Viscous. In the vision I had it all over my face. But that never happened.

So what happened? What the hell did happen?

I do know I fell from that sleigh during the winter. I’m not sure if my parents laughed at me or tried to console me. I was crying hard and I think they gave me their usual ‘come on, nothing happened’. Well, something happened for me...

So I thought this was my first memory. But a few years ago we were going through my old photos and I saw the pictures of my first birthday. And a video. They blew a lot of balloons for me. I really didn’t know what to do with them. We were staying at my great grandmother’s back then, my parent’s house was not even under construction yet. I was looking at it and I remembered distinctly a conversation my mother and grandmother were having. But I couldn’t understand a word. I would understand it now but since language is weird for children I guess I remember the sounds. I can’t recall it at the moment but I’m sure it was a memory when it hit me.

I learnt to speak fairly early into my life. At least that’s what my parents told me my whole life. I believe I could use sentences before I was two years old and I was pretty good with words. I wonder if I even knew what I was saying back then when I was saying things. I know I had some imagined words that had specific usage and my parents were trying to figure out what I was saying. One of them was ‘makapkat’ (sounding “mak-” as in the name “Mac”, “-kap-” as in “captain” and “kat” as in “cat”). I remember what it felt like to say that word but I don’t remember what I wanted to say. I’ve been told I used this word pointing at the wall near the sink. It is possible that I simply enjoyed what my mouth felt like when I was saying it.

I want to say that memory is becoming more and more important to me and the lack of memories is becoming more and more traumatizing. I do not know what is wrong with me. I do not know if it’s just the physiology in my brain that is not working right or trauma that is effectively blocking my memories. These factors do not rule out one another. It’s scary, especially when living in someone, being in an intimate relationship and just losing your memories with that person from 2, 3 years ago. Some of it is due to the fact that we went through a lot of stress and arguing in the past 5 years and it has for sure contributed to the fact that I forgot some things. But at the same time there were good memories we made. And they seem very distant right now.

Anger. Anger is a powerful feeling. It can destroy the bonds we have with other people but it can also motivate us to have courage to speak our minds about things that we don’t enjoy in life.

I’ve been afraid of my anger for as long as I can remember. I was actually terrified of it. I was a teenager who was constantly angry and in conflict with their parents but at the same time we were tiptoeing around the topics most important for me, focusing on the regular life and symbolic level of our relationships. My mother’s favourite topic I believe. How we don’t talk with each other. Great, then maybe she should’ve had something to say all those years.

I was raised catholic. I was taught that forgivness and compassion are important values in life. I was taught that when someone harms us we should turn the other cheek. And I believed that in the worst way possible. I was bullied in school and kindergarden. Not the hardcore kind of bullying that children hang themselves over, but I was fat and it was enough for kids to pick on me. And I was quiet, shy, played by myself, couldn’t get along with other boys or girls. I didn’t’ have many childhood friends, we lived in a suburban district where I had one friend one year younger who lived across the street. My parents had some friends with kids and we met together from time to time but usually I was the oldest of the bunch. It’s been lonely, really. I hated sports, I was raised to believe that I was some sort of a genius (which I wasn’t, I was better than average but not a genius at all), in an environment constantly bombarding me with contradicting communicates about body, sexuality, love.

My parents advocated love and self respect while treating themselves poorly. I’ve learnt a lot about diets moderately early since they were constantly on one, while being obese and living completely unhealthy. I was being scolded over a constant mess in my room while the whole house was usually a mess that was impossible to contain. May I add what my mother was doing my whole life was mostly trying to contain that mess and complaining how nobody helps her.

Probably the thing that messed me up the most was the constant need for finding the reason of an action/a feeling/a reaction. We were nose deep in invisible abuse bs. My parents act like big children since their parents never acted very maturely either. My role was acting like someone parent-like but not adult-like at all. I usually took the responsibility for how my parents felt. Almost always I’d say. If they got angry at me or with me I’d get some kind of guilt trip into the hateful wonderland. Combine that with catholic concept of guilt and bam you have me. Slightly egotistical neurotic capable of feeling but incapable of expressing those feelings in a healthy way. Sometimes in no way at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5S7i8SMArQ

the night was long and I want to go home

these words don’t come with ease

I have no home, I am stranded

I had a home for a while. they were the best thing ever and they were a cap on a bottle of boiling liquid. but I don’t blame them, I did it to myself

it’s been three years and a few months since I’ve left my parents house

it will soon be a decade of this feeling of homelessness

I go to therapy, I talk smart things and read smart people

the self hatred doesn’t go away

in fact it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just there

I thought I could outdo it and I thought I could ignore it

neither have worked and now I’m in hell

I’ve avoided the darkest things in me for the longest time and I’m slipping through the cracks of my inner cradle

will the next morning change anything?

I’ve done bad things I regret. a human showed me a piece of them and I spat on it. I want to kill myself because of that. it also hurt a different human that I spat on that as if I haven’t learnt anything

I am stuck in a loop

I’ve been trying to help

but I guess I just don’t know how to help myself

I’m back to where I cried alone. I didn’t have to cry alone anymore. there is a human who can hold me when I cry. but I made everything dirty and I can’t forgive myself

I don’t want to think like this

I’ve been ashamed of myself. I’ve been ashamed of my body and my actions. I’ve been ashamed of sexuality and of love. I’ve been ashamed of breathing.

and still I can’t even say it straight to the people who made me this way. I need a justification. I need an explanation to make it digestable. but it’s not it’s  not it’s not I can’t digest it but when I spill it there will be no one there to hold me because different people hold me now and different people did horrible things to me

and it was also impossible to live through. and I’ve done everything in my power to make people who hold me resemble the ones who did horrible things to me. because they did horrible things and they held me. so I don’t know holding without the pain and the shame. I don’t know love without doubt. I don’t know trust without price

and if it’s priceless I’m making it mine by putting a price on it

and if it’s doubtless I’m making it doubtful

and if it’s painless I’ll make it hurt and I’ll engrave it into the souls

and I don’t want this at all. I want to be nice. I want to be clean. I want to be free. I know I can’t and I know that I can’t have one without the other. but I’ve repressed it, I believed a lie. and in the end it made things so much worse. all the actions taken to put the mess together and it keeps falling apart because it was a mess and I want it back but I don’t want it to be the same but I kind of do... no I don’t.