I genuinely haven't been on tumblr in about 2 months and my life has improved significantly. This is more related to the changes I made at the same time, but I still can't help but think that being away from this blog - and giving my head some space to focus on positive things instead - has made the world of difference to me. And focusing on positive things has brought fantastic positive changes.
- I finally got a promotion and I'm now earning a living wage - I'm regularly hanging out with Char again and she has made leaps and bounds in addressing her problems and therefore things have been easier between us. No idea what the future holds but the present has been pretty damn fantastic - I went to Glastonbury and had an amazing time, and fell in love all over again - I've just come back from Latitude which was much less amazing but still some brilliant moments - A week ago I cuddled on the beach, under the stars, while Amanda Palmer played us songs on her ukulele. Quite possibly one of the most awesome and romantic moments of my life, and all I could think of after was how grateful I am to be alive after how close I came to not being here at all just a few months ago.
Life is far from perfect - and I'm not going to pretend you can go from suicidal and extreme ups and downs to complete happiness so quickly, as much as I would like to say you could - but I don't regret any of the decisions I've made so far and I feel so confident for my future. Sadly - yup, unfortunately that is the best word for my feelings on the matter - I am stuck in Brighton until December thanks to silly housing contracts and my overspending on summer festivals/shoes. I'm probably going to be stuck with no friends for those remaining 4 months too, but it's a price worth paying to be honest with myself instead of trying to keep on the good side of other people who never even tried to keep me in their lives when I told them I had a problem. Well, I can live with that. I've learned plenty of times in the past that there's no point trying to keep other people happy at such a high cost to yourself.
I have big plans for 2014. Well, one plan so far, I want to keep what follows very open. But I'm bloody excited, proud, terrified, ecstatic to be choosing my own path for once, instead of being pushed and pulled into life situations.
The reason for this blog post, really, is to say that I won't be posting any more. Certainly not on this blog at least, although I probably won't be coming back to tumblr at all (especially not since this whole yahoo!/porn/lgbtq censorship, what the hell?!). I don't think it's good for me right now to dwell on the things that destroy me. Processing, analysing my life has helped in many ways in the past but the problem is - if you do that when you're in a bad way, you don't have any escape from it. You don't have the strength to deal with the emotions that brings up. I won't be running away forever - but I am letting it be until I am in a place where I have enough self belief, until I'm happy and confident and have built a whole new life and moved on from this situation where I still feel so vulnerable. So this blog, my 'therapy' space, is redundant for now. I have actually deleted all of my text posts and archived the whole thing on my comp as it is also a diary of my entire time at university - who knows, maybe some day I'll get a kick of reading through my journey of gender identity discovery? But I might delete this whole online thing within the next week or two. Its very existence kind of irritates me.
And I won't be on tumblr 'passively' either. I've been so much more productive since I quit - I'm playing guitar again, learning music theory, dead set on starting a band! I'm reading again, I've taught myself JavaScript (finally!), I'm learning more advanced French via a queer French graphic novel (it's awesome!), I'm cooking more, I go for walks and drinks after work and listen to new music and do all sorts of things I wouldn't bother with, because I would be sitting on tumblr all night. I learned a lot here - and I'll carry on walking around with my intersectional feminist values in my head and my heart - but I'm done for now. I don't need to spend hours reading about it every day for it to be something I believe in, and anyone who thinks that makes me less 'passionate' is a fucking ignorant hypocritical cockcheese anyway.
SO to get to the point. I want to say thank you to everyone who has followed me. especially those who have followed since the beginning when I was just a naive little teenager reposting skinny white lesbians - you have a lot of patience! Thank you to everyone who has ever sent me a message, anon or otherwise, and especially to those of you who reached out when I was not doing so well - even if I never answered you or said thanks at the time, THANK YOU THANK YOU for being a kind hearted person. I assure you it means the world and even now reminds me that there are good, well meaning people out there, even if those people aren't physically close right now. And thank you to anyone who ever read this blog and thought about the weird genderqueer behind it in a positive way, really. Even if you never messaged, or even followed. My favourite thing about tumblr was that I was always so aware of how human it was, how every person who visited or reblogged or messaged was this complete, complex, emotional human being with their own page full of their own expression of self. It took me back to myspace and xanga, even livejournal (sort of). But it was somehow deeper, it was more about content and less about showiness. Anyway. Thank you for being human. Thank you for following. Thank you for being there when I needed you. And thank you for inspiring me and entertaining me for nearly 4 years.
Anyone who wants to keep in touch for some reason - I'm on Twitter here.
I wish I had something inspirational to end with but I'm just not that creative in this temperature! I will leave you with the wonderful Amanda Palmer instead.
