Tachyon Dreams

Followed your Insta! Good to see things going well for you!

obstinatecondolement replied to your photo “Hey. Remember me? �� I haven’t posted in over a year. There are a lot...”

I'm glad to hear you're doing well!

Hey. Remember me? 😉

I haven’t posted in over a year. There are a lot of reasons for that, but while some of them have changed, I’m not coming back. This Tumblr feels sort of like a time capsule to me now, something I associate with a particular (and particularly emotional) chapter of my life. Even reading through it is a weird mix of nostalgia and painful triggers that feels kind of like opening Pandora’s Box, which is not something I want or need right now. 

However, I do miss y’all a lot. You might be surprised how often I’ve thought about many of you and wondered how you were doing. I’m sorry I haven’t kept up with you, but I hope you know that you’ve all had an impact on me. There was a time when Tumblr kept me alive, and that was largely because of all of you. 

A lot has happened for me in the last year. I got a job (working from home). I’m on YouTube now (follow me here!) documenting and talking about all kinds of stuff but, primarily, my transition. Yeah, I’m doing that. I was on low-dose T (testosterone) for a few months earlier this year, and I just had top surgery in October. Despite the general suckitude of the world state and some other things that have happened recently, I’m doing really well. I hope you are too!

Things could change in the future, I suppose, but for now this is probably going to be my last post here, not counting responding if anyone comments. I’m sorry it took me so long to post any kind of update (there was an actual reason for that, but not one I can go into right now) but I always hated when people I followed just disappeared without a trace, so I really wanted to not be one of those people. 

These look awesome!

So I got back the pictures from this little photoshoot I did at Dragon Con (super casual, a photographer I really like and follow on Flickr posted he would be in a certain location if anyone wanted him to shoot them) and these are just a few and OMG YOU GUYS I LOOK SO COOL!!! The lighting is so killer. You can barely even tell this is in the middle of Downtown Atlanta. And I can’t believe how fucking badass I look. (With some mild-ish dysphoria but still!) 

omg i knew millie looked super familiar when i was watching ST THIS IS WHY

I feel kind of weird about updating since I haven’t been keeping up with any of y’all, but on the other hand I always hated when people would just disappear off Tumblr and I never knew what happened. So here I am. I honestly don’t know when/if I’m ever going to come back in the capacity I once was. Tumblr just sucks up so much time and I’m a lot busier now than I used to be. This past summer was especially packed, between raising all those caterpillars/butterflies (over 60 successful releases by the end, as well as a pet I kept for 5 weeks because she couldn’t fly) and working on all my cosplay stuff for Dragon Con, which was last weekend.

As you can see above, I had two new costumes this year! For the first time ever! I’m super proud of both of them — Nathan Drake has been a dream costume of mine for years (since I first played Uncharted 2) and in addition to putting the outfit together (including dyeing and modifying the shirt and weathering everything) I also made the belt buckle, watch cuff, and holster from scratch. Nobody could believe the holster wasn’t leather (it’s craft foam) so seeing people’s reactions to that was pretty amusing. It was also my first time cosplaying a male character and um I LOVED IT. Like a lot. I feel 384789347 times better about myself in a binder, omg. But that’s a story for another day.

My other costume was Eleven from Stranger Things, and OH MY GOD people FREAKED OUT. People are still freaking out. People are still commenting on Facebook (on other people’s pictures of me!) to tell me how perfect I was. All weekend long people were stopping me in the hallways (even when I wasn’t wearing it!) to compliment me. It’s a little bizarre to me because, while I am very proud of the costume (my mom and I made the dress from scratch, modifying almost every single piece of a vintage pattern I found) there were a lot of other great Elevens there too so I don’t 100% understand why I seem to be getting all the attention. Not complaining, mind you 😉 it’s just strange and makes me feel a little guilty! Although I think it’s probably because deep inside part of me will always remain a wounded, angry, protective 12-year-old girl and so that made her really easy to embody beyond just the outfit (and is the same reason she resonated sooooooooooo much with me). Anyway, two of the best reactions I got were Chris Gore taking a picture of me and posting it to his Instagram, then stopping me again the next day to tell me it was the most liked photo he’d posted, and I went and it had 250+ likes 😮  and also this dude who LITERALLY fell to his knees open mouthed like he was meeting his favorite celebrity and was like “THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS. THANK YOU.” It was super adorable and the next day he shouted to me across the street to compliment me again. Hahaha.

So anyway, all that was great, and also since Joey and Chris from *NSYNC were there as guests we went to their panel and also met them but mostly Chris since you had to pay $20 for a selfie with each and we only had $16 (I borrowed some from a friend who was a few ahead of us in line). So, I mentioned these teddy bears my friend and I made for *NSYNC wayyyy back in the day (because they were essentially mini-cosplay) and Chris told me he just found a bear in his garage when he was moving a few months ago and I’m like 99% sure it was mine, and I think he was even more excited about it than I was (which was a lot). Anyway, he was crazy nice and took the above selfie of us with my phone and we only talked to Joey for a moment but just a few hours ago we went to the opening of his new hot dog stand at the Florida Mall here in Orlando (yes, really, haha) and he totally remembered us before we even said anything, which was great (I mean he literally met thousands of people last weekend so...?). They’re both the best, honestly. 

Oh and the day we got to Atlanta we rented a car so we could visit Jason’s grandma and we made a little detour to the infamous grocery store from Stranger Things. I originally had planned to put my costume on and everything but after only getting an hour of sleep the night before and flying and everything I was just sooooo tired and had a migraine, so I settled for pretending I was El in my regular clothes. Which was fantastic. 

Hey guys, I know I haven’t been around at all lately. I had a really rough week after the Pulse shooting — just emotional exhaustion from the shock of the event and the public discourse afterward, plus some tragedies with my caterpillars (pesticide exposure killed over half of them — something like 30+ — over the course of a few horrible days). I know those two things may seem vastly different in importance, but it just felt for that whole week like death was all there was. It was hard.

But things have been busy in more of a good way since. As you can see, I’ve also had a lot of success with the monarchs! The two above we released today, along with three others, making 14 total. And I have so many more! I also have several black swallowtail caterpillars and chrysalides and look forward to seeing my first butterfly of those. But after this whole group I’m taking a break. It’s been fun and rewarding but, as I touched on above, also very emotionally difficult and heartbreaking at times, and it takes a lot of time and effort, especially with the quantity I’ve had. You guys should see my setups 😂

I’ve also found a few ways to make a little money (not very much yet, but still!) and am working on my cosplay. But more importantly, I came out as nonbinary on Facebook today! 😮  As with my aro ace post, I’ve had 100% positive response and quite a lot of it. It feels very cool to be getting closer and closer to myself and sharing that person with those around me. 

So even though I wasn’t personally affected by the shooting, it’s surreal to have had this happen here. To suddenly have Facebook notifying me of whether all my local friends were safe or not, and asking me to let my friends know I was. For the hashtags, the support, all these people all over the world to be talking about Orlando. I’ve done the same so many times for all these other cities and it just feels unreal to have my own city be the one talked about, and for something so unbelievably brutal. At least one of the victims was from my town. I could have passed him in a grocery store or sat next to him at a movie. Who knows? 

I’ve never been to a Pride event — that protest was the closest I’ve come — but I’ve thought about it a lot, especially now that I’m out as aro ace and will be soon as nonbinary. What’s kept me has only been my own social anxiety and closeted state. Never did I think about going to something like that in Orlando being physically unsafe. Never did I think that in 2016 in a city where Gay Days has brought hundreds of thousands of queer people to the theme parks every year for 25 years, something so simple as a Latin night at a gay club — one of many here in Orlando — would be the target of such an attack.

But as much sadness and terror and anger as I’ve felt the last two days, as many times as I’ve teared up with sadness, I’ve teared up more with hope. In the wake of something so horrific, it took no time at all for people to start organizing. Blood banks were at capacity within hours, local restaurants are donating meals to relief workers, realtors are placing victims’ families in rental properties for free, people are organizing to foster the pets of victims who either died or are in the hospital and unable to care for them — so many things so many people are thinking of, so many ways to help. While there is certainly a lot of awful online backlash as well — the usual Islamophobia, gun rights, and mental health commentary — for the most part I see, in the people surrounding me (both emotionally and geographically), love, compassion, and a desire to help each other in any way we can.