A HYBRID CAN WITHSTAND THESE THINGS

LIZZIE MCGUIRE YOU ARE AN OUTFIT REPEATER ~alternatively~ she did Lydia Deetz again 🤷🏻‍♀️ (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHB2sd5jlJM/?igshid=njtizbngkya5

insect drink (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHB0zFXjNyx/?igshid=mxv2viot2ktl

-filed under sad musings and whatnot- . From my lil chapbook “disembodied.” available to read for free on blurb, or you can buy a physical copy or ebook there as well 💚 https://www.instagram.com/p/CAJGJvPpv-2/?igshid=qgde4fxko765

Oh hey, I threw together a lil book of sad musings, poetry, and scribbles and now it’s available. 🖤 The title is disembodied, and I made the entire thing readable in a free preview or if you wanna throw a few dollars at me you can buy a physical or ebook/pdf copy 🤙🏻 link in bio or at blurb.com/user/beeauntsay . Also @ me, finishing projects???? Whomst? (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_xfAy4JY92/?igshid=fbnjrwxks6s1

Cut and dry. (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/B843O7qpsLB/?igshid=5c40aphvx0u5

How the binch stole bonchmess ✨ - I just remembered I never actually posted this weird lil green devil baby grinch self portrait thing I painted last December, so like here we are. It could be commentary on how trans bodies are looked at as disgusting, unnatural, and vilified in our white supremacist-cis heteronormative-capitalistic-patriarchal hellscape. It could also just be me painted green, who knows 🤷🏻‍♀️ (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/B586xcxJ-ot/?igshid=wu62d63iyyke

Today a man walked up to me and I smiled as we made eye contact, even though I didn’t want to. I said hi and giggled when he spoke so he knew I wasn’t a threat. I was warm even though I don’t have the energy to be warm with myself so he knew I didn’t want to challenge him. I sweetened myself so he felt better. I did everything I could in 0.3 seconds to calm any of the other possible interactions we might have had. I make sure he is comfortable so he doesn’t feel the need to display and assert his masculinity with aggression. . I wrote this in 2017 during a weird period bridging where I was dealing with a lot of harassment every single time I was in public, and the fucked up realm of what is deemed as passibility. I just remember reading and connecting to Femme in Public by @alokvmenon and feeling so empowered and seen, which no doubt influenced this lil whatever I wrote to myself in the middle of the night. Anyways this has been sitting in my hard drive for years since I typed it into the notes section of my phone and took the photo, so I figured I’d finally just throw it up cuz why not? https://www.instagram.com/p/B3NQpyKp_JY/?igshid=9ef7ooie09pk

Sometimes I sit and ask myself “what’s it like to feel so broken you pay someone to cut you open and break you for real?” I’d rather smash dysphoria literally in the skull than walk with my head down. We call this look working through complex emotions following the scheduling of what will be a dysphoria reducing procedure, but like a bitch is uninsured and can’t afford therapy so collages and self portraits it is. Mixed media over a board I originally painted in fourth grade. Layered with prescription labels, pre/post op instructions, acrylic paint on vinyl, prescription bottles, beads, glitter, rhinestones, and parts from a broken smashed camera. (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/B27KH5uJcyN/?igshid=1s8810kas7rdu

Oh hey, I made a causal art heaux™️ spoken word moment reading a piece I wrote for @lumoszines you can read it and see the other stuff I submitted there, and the full video is on YouTube if swiping through 6 slides is too obnoxious lmao https://www.instagram.com/p/BvXLhkXhY4q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1rp3xrr7gx63w

It’s so weird how something can go from seemingly unimportant to a knife in your side. I feel like it’s such a trans experience to go through these weird tRaNsItIoNs where you can be like “Whatever I don’t care about pronouns, it’s more comfortable for me to not make other people uncomfortable.” Or “idk my name is whatever, I don’t really like it and it doesn’t align with me but whatever. Changing things is scary and is difficult for everyone involved blah blah.” Which I guess is like the residue of denial and internalized transphobia/not thinking you have any value or worth as a person, and inherently your comfort doesn’t matter… But like maybe that’s also linked to childhood trauma wHo’S tO sAyYyYyy??? But going from that to the decision that your discomfort and overall wellbeing is actually more important than other people’s hypothetical discomfort. Getting to the point where suddenly every time you hear the wrong pronoun your throat clenches. Even when it’s not in reference to you there’s that split second where your brain just has no idea if it’s you… If you are in fact the amorphous pronoun floating in the air? Or when you come to a conclusion on the wild ride of picking your own name, that when you hear the one given to you it’s a weird wash that comes over you. But like in that weird space between your muscles and you skin. Above and also underneath. You can feel it pour through as you try to process it as you always have, but suddenly every part of you is so completely aware of just how wrong it is. A reminder of how wrong it always was, but you were left with the concept that you never had the power to change such things, that what was right never mattered. A reminder that you aren’t you in the eyes of other people’s perceptions. A realization that whatever decisions and changes you were tied into believing weren’t yours to make are just that, yours. And struggling through all of that and the rope burn to that place of “Wow, I can actually do whatever I want and need to” is really daunting. To suddenly realize you have the power to click your heels three times and go home. https://www.instagram.com/p/BtOsNSZBqmF/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1cfwfekt6m7f5

I was talking to @thursdaymorrow about this recently, aka like over the last few months, and they told me not to ignore the trauma of being called the wrong name for the sake of other people’s comfort. Being called the wrong name your whole life is truly the test of being invisible, of never being seen. Trans people honestly are some of the strongest people, don’t come for me. When every label/title/name/sticker put on you is wrong, it’s amazing that any of us have the strength to do anthing but crawl into the deepest shells of ourselves just waiting for it all to cave in. Or maybe that’s what so many of us do? We crawl into ourself and try to mold a different person to assimilate into what the world wants from us. And then when the facade cracks and cracks and you’ve run out of spackle and plaster, a bitch just has to break through. When all the dust settles you’re left with everything you’ve had to hide away. And that’s not to suggest that trans people who come out later in life, or trans people who never “transition” aren’t strong. Or aren’t this or that, we all have different journeys, and situations, and experiences, and just… life. But I know at least for me, the shell has broken and the lid to the nail glue has accidentally glued itself shut again. I guess there’s just no patching this one. So yeah, all of that to say here we are with a casual new name. It’s obviously a riff off of my given name as a chill somewhat non committal way of making the unthinkable … a decision (shock and horror.)  But I kind of see it as a way of making peace with the acceptance I came to sit in with that name over the years combined with my need for change. This isn’t some new introduction or anything like that, this isn’t a “Welcome Zena” post because it’s literally just me. The same old anxious bitch who posts exactly never. If anything this is just a lil update, a lil hey everyone here’s a change, thought I’d let you know. k thx. Zena, a new twist on an old classic, a rebranding if you will. https://www.instagram.com/p/BtOsLclhqDB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=hznrl4cuubpr

Before coming to a decision about my name I spent months struggling on “Is wanting to change my name to something more typically read as feminine just assimilating?” I feel l in the weirdest way and as much as I fight it, assimilation always finds a way to try and play some role in every move I make. I mean I guess that’s how it works really, the homogenous white/thin/ablebodied/cisheteronormative cloud looms over us until eventually we crash our head through the wall. It’s always trying it’s hardest to fold me up, tape me into a little box, and throw it into a car compactor. Assimilation is a toxic relationship. No matter how much I don’t want it and try to get away from it, it’s always there to remind me that just as easily I can be nothing without it. That my access to safety so often relies on it. There’s safety in hiding and the iGnOrAnCe Is bLiSs illusion of it all, that any of them would actually let you truly be jUsT LiKe ThEm™️ And that’s not something that interests me, being stealth isn’t my ideal. To a degree it’s also something that makes so many decisions for me, or at least it leaves me thinking that it does after backing me into a corner. It leaves me having to dig through the debris and try to figure out all of the ways things would be different if the pounding fist of assimilation was never there to block off roads, slam doors, and change the locks Updating the gender marker on my documents wasn’t the emotional experience I know it is for a lot of trans people. And maybe that’s because I wasn’t doing it for me, it was something I needed to do first and foremost for safety. It was a process that the whole time I knew why I was doing it but I couldn’t help myself from asking if it was all just assimilation. Changing my name has been a kind of similar experience. I deferred to this place of “It sounds like too much hassle.” That even though I can’t say my given name outside of an auto generated response that involves dissociating, it was whatever. Even though it makes me feel a sickly shade of play dough where all of the colors mix together and theres some of the crispy dried out bits and hair from when it fell on the floor… It is what it is https://www.instagram.com/p/BtOsHlkh4fo/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1istlmdo3w8lj

Do you ever think about how expensive it is to be a trans person? Granted not every trans person has the same journey or milestones or goals or whatever, but like wow … Honestly who can afford to even breathe? As the year comes to a close and the new year approaches I’ve been doing the obvious and thinking about the future and trying to set goals. And with all of that comes the moral to every story, money ruins everything, living is too fucking expensive, someone please send help lmao Making the decision to “medically transition” is something that wasn’t much of a decision at all, I knew that without out it I wasn’t going to end up making it. So then its a no brainer, right? Except medically transitioning and my budget don’t quite line up. I was bumped off of Medicaid earlier this year when I turned 21 and since then all prescriptions and appointments and blood work and whatever has all had to come out of my pocket… and there’s only lint in there, maybe an old gum wrapper. Then add on laser appointments that are supposed to be every 4-6 weeks, but like a bitch can’t afford almost $500 every 4 weeks, so the burning off of my hair is an even more prolonged experience. Then throw on the legal funs of gender marker changes and name changes and court fees and blah blah blah. Then throw on trying to save up so a doctor can peel off my face and cut and grind my skull just so I can feel slightly less trash. Cuz that’s what it all comes down to at the end of the day, all of this, all of this expensive ass shit just to try and relieve some of my dysphoria. #blessed But with all of that and then never ending and extremely expensive hurdles trying to drown me, I’m actually really lucky and privileged to be able to do any of this at all. To have access to medical care, to have supportive family and friends, to have a supportive me lmao So like wow, being trans is expensive and tbh idk who can actually afford this and still be a person 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ https://www.instagram.com/p/Brnpn5_B_E6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=z1brz51sylid

PS capitalism can choke. In what world does it makes sense that people are starving because they don’t have enough numbers in their bank account or pieces of paper in their hand while we have grocery stores throwing out excess food every day? Where people don’t have roofs over their heads and clothes on their backs but others have literal billions of dollars? Where people can’t afford the medications that are keeping them alive? Where corporations profit off of the suffering of others and locking up people in cages? Who wants to live in a system where for you to have something means someone else can’t? And that magical mystical elusive ‘something’ is just the right to existence. Like imagine a world where everyone had access to what they needed, wouldn’t that just be absolutely terrible and disgusting??? https://www.instagram.com/p/Brno9vfBcju/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=126bkoa9jduqp

me? doing? a? look??? So this year I took part in @riplyofficial ’s annual makeup competition and the theme was Hollywood Madame. So from there I jumped off of the references to money and came up with this concept of like a money/capitalism virgin mary and here we are now lmao. Floating halo made out of the credit cards that sustained my childhood via my mom’s debt and an old broken lampshade. Then I did some kind of paper mache with fake dollars featuring the scratched out eyes of some crusty old white dudes, old jewelry, rhinestones, and sequins from a @patmcgrathreal prize I won previously into a collar lol Makeup inspo from the iconic goddess that is @imp_kid and the awe inspiring @isshehungry https://www.instagram.com/p/BrnoVG8he7k/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=lca5y6fsq500

(3/3) Little things like that makes me think about how being trans and trying to navigate the medical field so often involves the question of how many parts of yourself are you willing to break? How many scars are you willing to pretend don’t exist? How many comments are you willing to ignore? How much can your body and mind be invaded in order to be treated like a human being? How many time are you willing to be traumatized in an effort to handle your trauma? Because ultimately so many of us know that navigating these spaces to get what we want and need to live all comes down to a transaction. How many times can your existence be twisted in order to pay for what you need? How many times can your body be examined as an anomaly in front of the class before you run out of credit and can no longer pay the fee? How many times can you awkwardly laugh it off until you can get what you need and you can go home? How many days before that first appointment are you having panic attacks about what to wear so they take you seriously? So they don’t think it’s just a costume, and so they don’t think you’re lying? Where you’re trying to predict their understanding of transness and you consider reshaping yourself to fit that, even if just for the day so they believe you. I’m not 100% sure where I was going with all of this, but I guess what it comes down to is sometimes to navigate medical spaces you do have to kind of lie. Sometimes you have to code switch, and laugh it off, and be overly understanding of their attempt to be overly understanding. And even though cis people love to believe this narrative that we’re fake and trying to trick them, little do they know the only reason they’re being lied to, or given a fake smile, or a constructed facade is because they’re making us. You might think I’m fake, but the only fake think about me is my laugh at your dumb jokes -throws fake smile across the table- #trans #transisbeautiful #oneofthem https://www.instagram.com/p/BqVOPCWBqW1/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1te1ccui465mr