february 14, 2024
when people think about main character syndrome, they imagine someone who is self-important in an obnoxious and aggrandizing way. there is, however, a Type Of Guy who is much more common, with a different manifestation of main character syndrome. you have 100% met him, and i'm certain that you've probably also Been Him once or twice (or maybe constantly, if you're unaware that you ARE him), especially if you've spent any amount of time on the internet. he's probably even talked at you. not talked "to" you, "at" you. because he doesn't think of you as a fully realized human being with an internal life and thoughts of your own. he doesn't imagine any complexity in you, because to him, in that moment, you are nothing more than a video game NPC reciting scripted dialogue for him to interact with.
the characterisitics of this type of person crystallized fully in my mind after spending many years occasionally picking up on these patterns of behavior in other people at a distance, when i had an encounter with someone who treated me like, there is no other way to put it, a personless doll to speak at and vent his frustrations over some discourse or other that he thought wasn't generally being approached with enough nuance. nevermind that this person has never met me, has never talked to me, has no idea what my personal experience is with the subject (in this case, mental health, suicidality, individualism, venting, and acts of interpersonal harm and the nuance therein). he chose to use me as his captive audience, because to him, expressing his frustration to SOMEONE was more important than trying to have a reciprocal discussion with another human being.
when i told him that i agree with him that there is obviously nuance in discussions of mental health and interpersonal harm, he then continued to lecture me while claiming that the OP i was quote tweeting didn't "seem aware" of said nuance.
okay? so why are you telling me? why do you continue to talk at me while being plainly disinterested in what i'm saying, or might have to say? if you think the OP of the post i'm commenting on doesn't understand whatever nuance it is you're concerned about, why aren't you talking to them? again: why are you talking to me?
i was tempted to inform this person that he was treating me like i had no internality of my own and that maybe if he had something that was so important to say, he should make his own post instead of lecturing a complete stranger about whom he knows nothing on subjects i am intimately familiar with. but i didn't, because he was already treating me like a pre-written script, and many times people who are in the middle of doing that will see that you have reacted with some level of annoyance, and instantly construct a fiction about you, your person, and your motivations and beliefs, based on whatever it is they think you're most likely to have been annoyed by, and why you would be annoyed by it. again, it's not about comprehending the fact that i've been condescended to, and how that is Fucking Annoying, because what i think and feel, what i ACTUALLY think and feel as a PERSON and not a set of imagined traits, was never factored into the discussion from the outset.
this patronizing, condescending behavior is everywhere. i'm not going to pretend i haven't also acted like this about people i know nothing about. i think a lot of us have. probably, most of us don't do it intentionally. i think it comes from a place of seeing an aggregate of information and then grouping people together into broad categories, and making assumptions about who they are and how they must think if they believe a certain thing. i certainly don't think this person is a bad person for what he did, or that he necessarily acts that way all the time or is always casually dehumanizing random strangers he interacts with. to do that would be to do what i am trying to criticize here: dehumanizing random strangers into wholly constructed fictions in order to fit whatever narrative i'm building. i don't know that guy, and i don't care to know him.
if this sounds familiar to you, you've probably also started thinking about parasocial relationships. the effect of "making things up wholesale and with confidence about someone you've literally never met" is similar, but the difference is also quite distinct. the type of Main Character i'm talking about here is more the type of guy you see in social justice circles. they use other people as props in their arguments, though strangely, they do this actively to the other person. as if they're trying to teach their own strawman a lesson.
it's a very strange thing to see. and i see it all the time.
this isn't to say that i don't think you should never criticize the things other people say without first getting to know them. if you say some stupid shit online and people assume things about your motivations, you're the one responsible for hitting the post button. but what i do want people to think about and to remember is that everyone is still a person at the end of the day. you can take what someone said and say, "that was a stupid thing to say, here's why." but what you shouldn't be doing is constructing entire fictions about that person's life and personality, or about whatever demographics that person belongs to. you see, that's a thing bigots do to minorities. it doesn't suddenly make it okay just because you think the target or your dehumanization can handle a little bit of dehumanization, as a special little treat just for you.
someone i follow has begun reacting to this genre of main character with, "i didn't say that, that's a whole new sentence," and i personally really enjoy that because it gets right to the point. it's basically saying, "you have invented a strawman. i am not going to acknowledge your strawman. i'm a person. you can read what i actually said, or you can leave."
september 12, 2023
i don't like claiming nonbinary identity despite literally being nonbinary because of the intentionality of doing such a thing. one of the things about transness, in my opinion, is embracing something that is a part of yourself because to do so is freeing, or validating, or it makes you feel better in some way.
this was hardly ever the case for me with being nonbinary. i spent basically a decade (18 to 28) identifying publicly as nonbinary (agender), and it never brought me a moment of internal peace or self-actualization. okay, well, that's a lie; in some ways it did do that for me. but for the most part, it just felt like discarding one role that i was familiar with but hated, for a new role that was entirely unfamiliar with rules i couldn't fathom, that was cold and unwelcoming (to me, not as a general fact). the way your bedsheets are cold in winter, and you have to spend time in them for them to warm up.
except the warmth never really came. it was lukewarm to me those entire 10 years. some comfort, but very little.
being a man isn't very extremely different, though at least in these bedsheets, i finally feel comfortable. there are days when i fling them off to get up and pace around, but for the most part, i'm having an easier time. i enjoy my reflection, and i sometimes relate to other trans men and their experiences.
i guess at this stage, for me, it's just about accepting that, no matter how much i would like it to not be the case, i am an individual and there is no one else with a brain, life, or experiences that are exactly like mine. seeking myself in the many folds and grooves of other people's lives is something i do obsessively that i guess i should simply learn to accept as a spinning, winding, never-ending and ultimately fruitless task. i think this is why i obsess over seeing people's authentic selves. i want to dig inside and see the kernels there that prove i'm not an aberration. too often, i look at other people and see only the ways that we are different.
i think maybe the reason i didn't like primarily identifying as nonbinary is because nonbinary specifically does not have any roles. you can be and do whatever you want. there is no script, and no one can tell you what is right or wrong. it turns out that i don't like that kind of freedom. i like having a general outline of what i should be doing, maybe because trying to decide for myself was always impossible. i'm still very much genderless alongside feeling an affinity for maleness, but the maleness is the thing that helps me grope my way through the darkness. and sometimes when it's too bright, i'd rather recede back into the shadows.
it is what it is.
september 12, 2023
i was Thinking again, and i remembered an old feeling. i used to joke about how other people can't hurt my feelings, because there is no one who hates me more than i hate me. in those stupid memes you see on tumblr that are like, "what would you do if you met your clone," that are supposed to be bait for making tired jokes like "i would have sex with them of course," i always had a singular, very real reaction to them. if i met my clone, i would beat them to death with my bare fists.
one normal reaction to hearing that would be "haha, funny joke." no. not a joke. i very clearly remember feeling a very real, violent hatred for my own self. not myself as a physical body (not real), but myself as the abstraction of my personality (real). and i realize, that's the self-harm i've been doing to myself all these years. it's like living with someone you barely tolerate, but you hate virulently, except they literally occupy your meat-space so even the idea of excising them somehow is never entertained.
construct a stupid little strawman and puppet him around. call him names and make fun of him, and put him in stupid situations to make him feel bad and silly and pointless and unintelligent. draw myself beating the ever-loving shit out of him.
i think i have realized that all this time, i wasn't really progressing out of this mindset. i had simply come to accept that i live inside the personality of someone i loathe, and there is just no changing who you Are. what are we, if not clusters of neurons firing electricity in a clump of wet meat piloting a soggy bone mecha? how the fuck am i supposed to know how to fine-tune the idiot that lives inside me into something i don't hate? it's not like i'm an android. the wires and data that make me up are the rods of a microscopic double helix that exists in every one of my trillions of cells, and the utterly unfathomable and infinite grooves carved in the connections between my neurons. it's a lost cause, is what i'm driving at.
it's too late. the forces that shaped me have already left their mark, and we are all bound to the linear progression of time, whether we enjoy that fact or not. i was already fired in a kiln, the only shaping left for me is the weathering of time.
terrible mindset to have, but very persuasive when you already hate yourself and you are chronically pessimistic.
so these past 8 years, i've been spinning my wheels. i knew this, but didn't recognize the source. well, at least i don't hate my body anymore. i like it quite a lot, now, actually. the problem remains, however, that it isn't me. i still don't fucking live in a body that i think of as myself! not entirely, anyway. like, obviously, i look at myself and go "hmm, yeah, i sure have been living in this meat my whole life," and i certainly hate it less than i did when it was all estrogen and the consequences of that. but i don't think i'll ever stop feeling like i'm a consciousness bound to a material plane that means nothing and everything to me. anyway. that's a digression. some other time.
i've got things i need to work on.
april 4, 2023
maybe it's sort of morbid, but i keep pictures of myself in my phone in case i die. my phone doesn't have a lock on it, all it would take is a swipe and a tap to find them. i don't put pictures of myself anywhere, but i want the people who love me to be able to look at my face if something like that were to happen.
february 13, 2023
as someone afflicted with Disease of Can't Shut The Fuck Up, it causes me immeasureable distress to see someone else clearly in the throes of the disease wrecking chaos and havoc on their own life and the lives of those around them. being intimately familiar with the grip of the beast, i am aware that it is chronic and incurable. do not despair: there is hope - you CAN mitigate the worst of your brusque and irritating nature. however, you will have to accept the fact that you will occasionally cause unintentional harm to those around you, and the horror of not knowing what the fuck is wrong with you can be psychologically tormenting. but it is imperative that you learn how to situationally Shut The Fuck Up, where internal filters have time - those precious nanoseconds between yourself and the wack shit you're about to say - to activate and cut the worst of it off at the pass. if you too are stricken with Disease of Can't Shut The Fuck Up, but also have ADHD... i'm sorry but you may be fucked. may God have mercy on your soul.
[/joke]
there is both horror and fascination, for me, in looking back at my life and realizing exactly how unchained i was in the shit i felt okay saying to people. i blame it on the autism. the... total lack of self-awareness in the sense of being utterly unfamiliar with what most people would consider "appropriate" is pretty galling to reflect on, some 15+ years later. you could argue that most teenagers don't really Get It, as they are still just learning the ropes to the whole... *waves hand* all of that stupid horse shit we call socializing. but even the kids around me thought i was a fucking weird. they had no idea what was going on with me, and (this is me guessing based on faded decades-old memories) thought i was unnerving, annoying, or weird and funny. mostly, they really thought i was annoying. i think that's probably still true of most people. it is what it is.
not to paint the wrong kind of picture, though, i wasn't a freak and nobody thought of me as one (i'm sorry to any freaks reading). i was just A Weird Kid Nobody Liked. nobody understood me, and i didn't gel with 95% of the people i came into contact with. for most of my life, i had, at maximum, two friends. that is... kind of still true, actually. growing up, i always thought nobody liked me because i was fat. which, like, yes, that plays a part. but it wasn't that. people didn't like me because i was terse, uninterested in anything without substance (so, polite small talk or ice breakers or other forms of normal socialization), obsessive about specific topics, and disconnected from things like inter-personal drama and relationships. and yes, it did take me reaching adulthood to realize that there had been many times in my life growing up when other people my age absolutely wanted to date and/or fuck me, and i, being the person that i was, was completely unaware. i ignored flirting because i couldn't recognize it well into my 20s. this, in retrospect, explains why so often people would walk away from me visibly crestfallen or awkward, with me standing there confused about it.
i still think about the extremely horrifying thing that happened (to the other person) in college where someone sat next to me on a bench while i was reading and listening to music with earbuds in, then asked me what i was reading as a very clear opening to try to talk to me. i curtly said the title of the book, stood up, and walked to the opposite side of the room to stand and wait for class to start. that guy sat across the room from me in awkward silence for at least 10 minutes. if you just felt your bones crumble a little, that reaction is normal. what was i thinking in that moment? "man, if you wanted the bench to yourself you could have just asked me to go away instead of bothering me while i'm trying to listen to music." i know it's not the worst story you've ever heard, but it haunts me. to that dude: i'm sorry man. also i'm a guy now so. you know.
as you can plainly see, i have never been one to mince words, or actions for that matter. most people did not like this. some people REALLY liked it, and those people were my closest and most trustworthy friends. incidentally, the people who liked me for how i talked and behaved ended up all being either autistic or having ADHD. we get each other, so it makes sense. but there's so few of us, that i rarely encountered those people. but every close friend i've ever had that i truly treasure is also either autistic or has ADHD.
it has taken a lot of reflecting over the course of many years to be able to recognize my worst habits and try to get better about behaving appropriately in public, or behaving in non-harmful ways to my friends in areas of trauma and angry outbursts. i have a terrible ingrained habit of instantly blurting out something i view as Truthful And Correct in moments where there isn't much breathing space for brain filtering. this obviously leads to me accidentally hurting people's feelings by being a blunt weapon of an asshole for no good reason, and it's DEEP in my brain and impossible to turn off. i have identified them and i know what they are, but i have no access to that switch.
the thing that triggers my Can't Shut The Fuck Up Disease are simple: 1. don't say stupid shit to me 2. don't do stupid shit around me 3. i decide what's "stupid" and what's not. this is so bad, you guys. it's so bad. AND I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. okay, so like, in conversation i can navigate this because i have time to intercept my FUCKING brain and go "hey now... that would be really mean to say. you're making assumptions about people that are unfair. you're doing that thing, again, where you get sucked into your own little world and forget that other people have their own thought processes and aren't necessarily trying to Be Stupid. and also, you fucking asshole, you're dumb as hell and you know it!" and most of the time i'm able to cut myself off and stop this shit from blurting out. but there have been moments, retrospectively humiliating moments, where i've let something like this slip out and just totally made a bullish ass of myself.
the thing i truly struggle to control, though, is the second one... "don't do stupid shit around me." if i see someone doing something wrong, all filtration gets flooded and crushed under the typhoon of the shit about to fly out of my mouth. and it ALWAYS comes out sounding mean, no matter what! what the fuck is wrong with me!!!!! jesus christ. not "hey, i know of a better way to do that, let me help," it's "that shit ain't gonna work! get out of the way." like OHHHH MY GOD. STOPPPPP I'M GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!
sigh..... it's an ongoing struggle. and, okay, i have to make one thing clear, i ALWAYS apologize and point out what i did wrong. how many times have i said to somebody, "i don't know what's wrong with me, i don't know why i can't stop myself from doing that in moments so specifically like that, i'm really sorry." not to say this happens all the time, it doesn't. but it happens often enough that i feel terrible about it.
i guess the moral of the story is, sometimes people who have "no filter" are like me - hardwired to spout shit in reaction to very specific triggers. kinda like a video game scripted sequence. it's automatic and uncontrollable, and the best you can do is try to be aware of it and the moments that trigger it and control yourself when those moments arise. however, i think most people who claim to have "no filter" are just unapologetic assholes. they don't have Disease Of Can't Shut The Fuck Up, they have Toxic Asshole Miasma which is curable but requires learning how to wash your ass.
january 7, 2023
do you have intrusive thoughts like "what if i took this knife and started chopping myself up" or like "the bowl in the microwave will now super-heat and explode, killing me with the shrapnel"
november 29, 2022
"you're fat."
as somebody who grew up having this said to me like it was the only insult someone needed to cook up to instantly destroy me, it's interesting (in a "i'm about to animorph into a wolf and rip your throat out" type way) to examine the psychology of it.
you're minding your own business, existing, not thinking about anything negative at all, and a person will just walk up to you and look you dead in the eye and tell you, "you're fat." (usually thin white women). like they are reminding you that you are disgusting, in case there was a moment of your life that you had dared to forget. like they want you to shrink away and disappear. and make no mistake, they do want that. flat faced, dead eyed, lights barely on, delivering to you an irrefutable judgment that, according to the girth of your body, you should instantly feel ashamed and thus retreat. begone, fatty, you are reminding me of why i hate myself, and what i fear i will become, and that this repulsion i feel for you is what might wait for me in the murky depths of inevitable time, which is terrifying and intolerable.
i am instantly incensed every time.
maybe it is in bad taste to say that i imagine ripping you apart with my hands and teeth and fingers. grock this: you are less than nothing. you are less than nobody. to me. and you know, it's not like me feeling that way matters at all. after all, i am already subhuman to them. they don't consider the feelings of the cow that went into the burger they're eating, any more than they consider the breathing symbol of the Ghost Of Future Fatness to be a real person with thoughts, emotions, and judgments of their own. i imagine many of them could watch me die in some tragedy before their eyes, and the only thought trundling through their empty little minds would be "ew... who's going to haul that load off to the morgue?"
i've been on the internet long enough to see the kinds of things people spew into the void when they think no one is looking, or knows who they are. so yes. i do know that quite a few people's first thought about a dying fat person is literally that. sometimes worse things, in fact.
and you know, it is enough of an insult to instantly get under my skin - as i have clearly demonstrated here (lol). it always has been. i'm the maddest guy in the room and all it took was two words.
it's not because i agree with the sentiment that i am disgusting. i don't. it's more that, all it took for them to deliver to me a message of abject hatred and disgust was two words. instantly a gulf has opened between us. you don't view me as human, and with peak efficiency you have keyed me into that fact. you could have kept it to yourself and quietly dehumanized me at a distance, like everyone else does, but you made it your duty to remind me that you, and millions of others like you, view me as subhuman. were i still a child, you would have ruined my day. maybe even my whole week. as it is, all you have done is piss me off for the next hour or so, the first 10 minutes of which were an incandescent, murderous rage (the likes of which i am not confident i have the self control to contain were this to happen to me again in public in the forsaken year of our savior, 2022).
"you're fat," holds decades of overflowing meaning to me. don't worry, i got the message. maybe more than you have ever stopped to consider.
september 17, 2022
an overgrown parking lot at twilight. chunks of weathered light gray concrete scattered around your feet like gravel. thick shoots of dandelions, clover, weeds. cool to the touch. or maybe today they are dry and rustle like stepping gingerly across the floor of a barn when you toe them with your sneakers.
a low rumble. dark clouds gather at the edge of the sky. the long and scattered cries of crickets and grasshoppers and cicadas drift in the air around you. they are muffled behind the noise of your shoes scuffing the dirt and stirring the grass.
the wind is low and still. another rumble, a little closer. a gentle flash through a cloud. the sun sinks lower. the cries of the crickets seem louder now.
september 12, 2022
to kick this off i'd like to say: good luck to Ireland. hope you guys unify. godspeed to all of the united kingdom, except for england. fuck those guys.
that out of the way, (i love you english citizens i'm talking about your government of course ♡), i wrote a long blog in here in may that was like "aaaahhhh nostalgia... fuck... everything sucks and is boring and hard... i can't do ART anymore i just want to do ART" and it turns out i was not, in fact, losing my love of doing art, but was actually just burnt out. the last time i was that badly burnt out was in 2012 when the same thing happened. i thought that i didn't like to do art anymore and got very very sad about it.
i hadn't had burnout that bad in so long i forgot what it was like, LOL. i'm fine now. i can enjoy drawing again. i realize now, however, that i don't think i can do commissions again for at least a year or two. maybe more. i hate to whine about how HARD AND TERRIBLE!!!! (it isn't) commissions are, because i am very grateful for the ones i have gotten in the past, and at no point during the process was i being tortured or in pain or feeling hateful about the experience. the reality is just that, when i'm taking money for my art, it puts a unique type of pressure on me that i'm sure we all can relate to: the need to be Absolutely Perfect And Doing A Wonderful Job Because I Am Being Paid Money Which I Need To Live And I Want My Client To Be Pleased With My Work.
i've had a lot of fun working on commissions, and i've done some work that i'm really proud of. but unfortuanately, and exactly as you would expect, that pressure makes me perform worse (the art isn't as good as i would like it to be), and it is extremely mentally exhausting. i'm trying so hard that it circles around and makes my work worse and slowly drains the life out of me. my commissioned art isn't BAD, but when i look at it i see all the mistakes i can't seem to fix no matter what i do, and it makes me feel disappointed in myself and somewhat ashamed.
and just to be crystal clear: it is NOT the fault of my clients. absolutely no one but me is putting that pressure on me. and trust me, i have tried, and continue to try, to do my best to not load up a sisyphean boulder onto my back just because someone is giving me money about it. i have nothing but respect and gratitude to the people who have paid me to do some work for them!
art has always been a very personal thing that i do for my own pleasure. if other people also enjoy it, that's a bonus for the ol' dopamine receptors, but it's not even secondary to my primary goals. not even tertiary, really. the things that drive me to make art are the following: aesthetic pleasure, technical improvement, and deeper personal expression. i'm glad people enjoy it, but i also don't care that much.
so you can see how doing commissions is quite literally at the polar opposite of what i consider my driving motivations. money, technical impressiveness, and the pleasure of others. don't get me wrong... drawing something for a specific person for them to enjoy can be extremely gratifying. seeing people react to my fanart or my art fight attacks is one of the best parts of making those bits of art. but the added pressure of money being involved can make that gratification much harder to glean from a specific commissioned work.
sheesh... anyway. i don't like to talk about this because i don't want to seem ungrateful or like i dislike what i'm creating (which someone paid for lol). but i figure i should try to articulate it... somewhere.
also hey, if you want something that's actually nostalgic, you should listen to these guys. i've been obsessed with them since i found them months ago because they capture that very specific 2000s alt metal sound that's been extinct for years.
august 17, 2022
i fucking hate carpet.
there is literally nothing about carpet that can't be done better with hardwood and some rugs. sure, okay, wood floors can get creaky, and you have to worry about scuffs and finish and termites and shit. okay well unless your entire fucking house is built out of cement, you have to worry about termites ANYWAY so you might as well get rid of the fucking carpets.
carpets are glorified rugs you decide to glue to the fucking ground one day without ever thinking "gee, there's no way i will come to regret gluing this shit to the fucking ground!"
WRONG. YOU WILL ALWAYS REGRET GLUING SHIT TO THE FUCKING GROUND.
THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT A CARPET THAT CAN EVER JUSTIFY REPLACING THE INHERENT SUPERIORITY OF RUGS AND HARDWOOD FLOORS.
i don't care about cold floors in winter, that's why you have rugs idiot!!!!!
who decided that we should all start gluing fucking rugs to the ground, and that's just something you have to deal with in every god forsaken apartment building that exists today??? 100% i blame landlords. they know that the inevitable waits for the carpet and when you finally do stain the thing beyond salvation, there goes the security deposit up in smoke.
do you know what i would give to be able to pull a carpet off the ground and beat the shit out of it? no, i mean, the dirt. i want to beat the dirt out of my carpet. because it SHOULD be a rug. you can pick up a rug and shake the dirt out of it (because it was invented by smart people) instead of having to use a dumb contraption that has to SUCK the dirt out of it. you ever think about how stupid that is? why do we do this??
carpets and white tile (so you can see how dirty the bathroom is) are conspiracies to make my life, specifically, harder. this is true and factual.
carpet likers do not interact. this is a carpet-free zone. you are not wanted here.
august 10, 2022
how many lives have to be unjustly taken, stripped away, or destroyed before you can finally absolve your guilt and strike back?
when you do everything that you're told to do: you seek proper authority, you use the instruments of "justice," you play by the rules, what do you find out?
it seems that they can do whatever they wish without consequence, and, conveniently!, it seems that within the structure of the system you have no true recourse.
these people can enact policies that starve, maim, neglect, or kill, hundreds, thousands, millions of people. they can drop bombs in countries far away, drain food, steal natural resources, and install dictators who willingly allow them to plunder their own people.
they can strip away your human rights and call it "religious freedom."
it is pure, unbridled evil that causes the deaths of innumerable innocents.
but to raise your fist against it, now, THAT is true violence. what do you mean, "if they resist justice, they shall pay?" don't you know that makes you just as bad as them?
you saw the image of the burned corpses amidst blown out ruins, but true evil lives in the heart of the man who would raise his fist against another, even the person who paid to bomb those people's homes and then light them on fire.
and you're not an evil man, are you?
interesting how convenient it is for them that you seem so hesitant, though. must be a coincidence. we all know what is truly right, after all.
august 8, 2022
actually, you know what. i do want to talk about it. i deleted the tweet where i said that the cowards who defended the actions of mardoll and admitted to their own lack of moral integrity in their own lives were contemptuous enough to stamp out what little personal doubt i might have had, because i didn't want that to be misinterpreted as me deciding to do what's right because i don't want to be Seen as similar to morally bankrupt people (concerned about image over giving a shit about the lives of real humans being targeted by imperialism).
that isn't the case. the point was, i grew up in Bad poverty. i lived in 3 different trailers, all of which fell apart. the first one i lived in had holes in the floor that icy wind blew through in winter. my bedroom floor caved in when i was 16. i slept on the floor next to a kerosene heater.
i am keenly aware of how poverty coerces people into situations of compromising their morals to escape their suffering. i have empathy for people who live in rotting houses like mine, and join the army because their mother is dying and it's the only thing that will pay for her cancer treatment. i have family who have been in that situation. i don't value the lives of american recruits over the lives of the people they are hired to kill in the name of the western empire, but i understand how and why they are tricked into serving as weapons to the state.
to be clear, ana mardoll is not a soldier tricked into putting his life at risk for a meager minimum wage salary. he chose to stay at a death machine job through a nepotism hire, and not seek a new one for 15 fucking years. that is despicable. that is disgusting behavior at complete odds with what he has been preaching online for YEARS. he is a hypocrite. all of the backlash he has gotten has been deserved. he is not the type of person i'm talking about.
digression aside, having this empathy and feeling of wavering is a shameful thing to me that i feel guilty about. because i believe strongly in certain things. i'm a fucking anarcho-communist for christ's sake. but i also know what that suffering is like. seeing the people defending mardoll speak almost proudly for what they participate in, and perpetuate, sweeps that emotion out of me.
i watched my dad's side of my family disintegrate through poverty and drug addiction. my grandfather has lived in a rotting, torn apart house without working sewage my entire life. my brother almost fucking died from all of his medical problems. he likely will not live to see 50 because of his heart condition caused by addiction as self-medication to abuse enacted on him by my father who resented our poverty. when i first moved out here to ohio, i was so fucking scared of becoming homeless all of the time. i had panic attacks in the shower at the end of every month when rent was due, because in rural PA there are NO social safety nets, and i had no inkling that it would be - could be - different elsewhere. the rules are very simple: if you don't have money, you die, or you rot slowly until you die. i watched half my family rot for 23 years. if i could beam into your fucking brain images of the living conditions i witnessed my entire life growing up, you might understand why i feel so strongly about this.
so yeah, i do have a bit of empathy for people who take the devil's money because their existence is so fucking bleak to them, that at some point, it stops mattering. you live in a run-down shack in the town slum with no electricity or water for 4 years (how both of my brothers lived in the past), and at some point taking the devil's bargain seems not only morally justifiable, but like a sweet fucking deal. but that is precisely why you shouldn't, because you know better. you SHOULD know better. it's the fucking devil, after all.
not having a direct hand in the systems that create and worsen living conditions exactly - and often much worse - like the conditions i lived in as a kid, but in foreign countries, is the absolute bare minimum. the bar is ON the ground.
it is a truly fucking cowardly thing to get on twitter and act self-righteous for your willing, open, and direct participation in the death machine. it is shameful and disgusting. genuinely: it steels my resolve to see it. i may find myself tempted by the devil in the recesses of my imagination where, in some impossible world, satan dressed like uncle sam waltzes up to me to hand me a golden ticket. but i am not like you. i don't make excuses for myself or stand proudly in the mountains of blood-soaked shit i have personally hand-shoveled for the american empire. i have enough shame and compassion for the people who are victimized by the empire i live under to not to start shoveling in the first place.
how does my suffering justify theirs? it doesn't. it can't. i have more in common with the people being bombed, than i could ever have in common with the million- and billionaire demons that rule over us all.
admitting that i do not have a perfect mental armor against these feelings Extremely Sucks for me. nobody is perfectly morally pure. maybe i just feel guilty that i'm not morally pure, lol. call that my culturally christian white american upbringing.
july 29, 2022
we who are weak,
you abuse us and torture us and cast us out. shatter us into innumerable pieces.
we pick up the pieces. we create new selves, a terrible alchemy and transmutation, using the lessons you taught us.
when you see what we have made of ourselves, what we have accomplished--
you have the nerve to ask us for absolution.
july 12, 2022
i realized something recently: i dream that i am myself more often than i do not.
weird sentence. okay. what does that mean?
for my entire life, i have been inhabiting the bodies of random people while i dream. i have been every age, every race, every gender. i almost never dreamed in my own body. when i did, it was always to relive some highschool torment. i was only ever "myself" when i was dreaming of going to school without clothes on, or to have humiliating encounters in some other equally degrading way.
when i'm just having a normal dream though, i'm usually someone else. i once dreamed, as an adult, that i was an 8 year old black girl with afro-puffs, small and delicate as a bird. in another dream, i was an elderly man with bright gray hair, a mustache, and the type of hat you see cartoon barbershop quartets wearing. i've drifted through the bodies of tall, graceful women with flowing black hair, and faceless generic men.
i never really dream that i am these people, however. usually, i am merely inhabiting them temporarily to see whatever is happening through their perspective, because they are the main character. i've even been killed as the main character in several of these dreams, and immediately left their body to possess another.
this was normal for me for my entire life. i never questioned it, though i knew that most other people don't always dream that they are someone else. everyone dreams that they other people sometimes, but not... always.
i started taking testosterone on August 2nd of 2021. i had reached a point where i felt like if i didn't start taking T before i turned 30, i was going to sincerely lose my fucking shit. so i started T when i was 29 years and 8 months old, and that was good enough.
it's been almost a year since then, and i still dream about being other people. sometimes i dream that i am myself before i started taking T, and those dreams are permeated with a cold ache. but usually, i'm just me. i'm the me i am now, with my slightly altered hairline, my chest hair, and my fuzzy chin.
i kind of always assumed that i was dreaming of being other people due to depersonalization. it was just an idea i had, but not something i could know for sure. i always thought the depersonalization happened because of the horrific fatphobic abuse i've suffered throughout my life, and -- no doubt -- that is probably a large part of it. but i was honestly shocked when i noticed that i don't depersonalize anymore. i thought it was just going to be a permanent feature of my life.
if you've ever heard anyone say that HRT isn't worth it, that it brings more trouble than it's worth, i want you to know that i used to think the same. i didn't do HRT for 5 years because i thought dealing with my parents' reaction, or the reality of being visibly trans, outweighed whatever hypothetical benefit it could possibly bring me when i was already considered by larger society as an irredeemably ugly, unloveable, unsalvageable, failed woman.
it was worth it. i wish i hadn't waited so long. i used to hate being trans, but now i love it. i've never in my life been happy to be myself. i am now.
june 15, 2022
viscera and rot and the bones of my goat scattered across an embankment. he was eaten by a dog. he was one year old.
i found the dog chewing on one of his horns.
i wished for her to die.
eventually, she got rabies. she did, of course, die. so did the man who shot her (a mercy), incidentally. both very gruesome ways to go.
anger and sadness but no reprisal.
i found the dessicated carcass of a kitten on a derelict car behind the trailer separating our properties.
its tiny, fragile skeleton was surrounded by a halo of matted fur.
i found a stray cat under that same trailer. it was beautiful and orange. it was dead. i touched its ears, wondering if it was asleep, and found that they were stiff and cold.
i found my cat.
i put her in the earth.
i blame myself.
it's been 8 years. i still don't know what to do about it.
june 10, 2022
every person on this planet has an inner life as rich and varied as yours. as deep and complex as mine.
art is the ability to communicate that complexity to other people. how and whether other people successfully interface with that communication depends on the skill of the author.
i don't think people hate their own art because they think art isn't fun and they aren't enjoying themselves. i think people hate their own art because they continuously fail to communicate the depth of their own inner complexity.
in my mind i see a beautiful tapestry. when i try to translate it to paper, something bland, poorly constructed and ultimately worthless is what comes out. this is what we all deal with. this struggle is not unique. it is, in fact, so commonplace as to be trite. boring. obvious. honestly? who gives a shit.
i don't hate my art, but i am bored by it. i lack the tools and experience necessary to properly communicate my inner world. besides that, i'm too physically disabled and mentally unwell to be able to put in the work necessary to communicate what i want to communicate. i fall back on easy things which are fun to make and nice to look at, but have no purpose or deeper meaning beyond entertainment. this is fine to do. there is nothing wrong about it. some people are satisfied to do exactly this and nothing else for their whole lives, and that's great - i'm glad that they are able to do that. we all need entertainment. not everything can or should be more than that.
i am not satisfied with this. when faced with the task of actually setting out to do that which is actually fulfilling to me, the task is fucking daunting. failure is a given. i'm not going to do it right because i've never done it before. but how much do i have in me to be able to do it over and over until it's right? right now, not enough. i don't have the energy or the power to do it.
so i do easy things. there is no such thing as "saving up" energy. you either wake up and you have it for today, or you don't. so. might as well make something.
may 26, 2022
lately i've been feeling really nostalgic for a lot of things. the things i used to like, the person i used to be, and the ease with which i interacted with the world and the things i cared about.
because of how much dissociating i did from highschool age to about 25, i unfortunately don't remember a lot. it's unfortuante because it didn't save me from remembering the worst of things, it only ensured that i would only remember the absolute worst things and nothing else. when i was a kid, i was often very happy. there was a lot of joy in my life that i have a distinct memory of feeling that that was stolen from me at a specific point. i remember who and what stole my joy from me, but importantly: i had joy. that is a fact.
lately, i struggle with it. like, i get that this is what depression is. it doesn't matter what your living situation is, or how good your relationships are (both are good for me), if your brain isn't producing the correct chemicals, your life will feel like it sucks. this isn't to say that nothing makes me happy. i've never felt as genuinely pleasant and at-ease as i do when i'm in nature. part of it is nostalgia. i spent a lot of time in the woods playing with my little brother when i was a young kid. i grew up raising chickens and had goats for a few years. i've had well over a dozen cats over the course of my life. everything about the natural world feels good to me. this feeling is amplified many-fold by the fact that i don't live directly in nature anymore, and i have to go out of my way just to experience some trees and grass.
obviously, the other thing that gives me a lot of happiness is art. specifically, making art was the thing i was REALLY passionate about when i was a kid. into my 20s, that remained true. but i feel like my love of creating has been waning for many years. i don't "love" it at all anymore, it's just something i do sometimes either to waste time or to have a minimal amount of fun. early on i realized that turning art into a job sucked all the joy out of it, and i've been avoiding that for nearly a decade. it did nothing to stave off what feels inevitable at this point.
this sounds whiny to read back, like some poor pitiful unemployed shut-in is sad his dumb little hobby isn't fun anymore? boo-hoo, am i right? but you have to realize that i've been drawing since i was capable of picking up a pencil. i scribbled all over my bedroom walls before i even entered kindergarten, and my mom couldn't keep up with the amount of paper and crayons i used up. art, imagination, and creation have all been integral parts of my life and identity since before i could read. having it fade out of my life at once fucking sucks and feels like nothing. it feels like nothing because i can't seem to care very much anymore.
circling back to nostalgia, the reason i've been thinking about it so much has been in part due to the feeling that i'm losing something that was very important to me. it feels like a last-ditch bid to try to convince whatever part of my brain that is doing this to me to please just fucking stop, and let me have this. it's obviously not working because that's not how brain chemistry works, but i can't help but try anyway even though i don't even like 90% of the things i liked as a teen, anymore. it's just the principle of the thing, like, sparkledogs used to be fun and cool to me so i'm going to squeeze what little bit of dopamine i can out of that by doing the brain exploit of nostalgia. i'm totally apathetic of most of the music i listened to, but i'll sit and look at lists of songs i listened to and think, "haha, these were great back when i had shit taste in music."
what a fucking weird thing our brains are that you can just... do that.
i wish it worked. i wish i could save the things i love from this shitty fucking apathy taking over my life.
may 9, 2022
what is the point of reproducing that which already exists?
infinite permutations on the same things, over and over again.
over and over and over.
good fucking god!
whatever you think, it is correct, and i mean that.
i live in a small white room and look out of a window into the world. all i can see are your abstractions.
i am reconstructing all of society from puzzle pieces -- snippets, bits, fractured chunks, and individual houses built by your hands and the hands of those who work upon you.
i look into your houses through the layers between my window and yours, when you turn your lights on.
when it's fiction, it's harder. sometimes it's meaningless.
sometimes, it's your life again. this time the pieces are broken beyond reconstruction, reduced to gravel and sand and mixed into mortar and cobble to build something new.
i can't know when this is or isn't true.
we're all very similar.
i often feel alone.
we tell the same stories over and over. maybe just to feel less alone.
march 17, 2022
you can look at what other people say to try to convince yourself that something is worth doing or caring about all day, but if the conviction to care doesn't come from within, you might as well be pissing into the wind.
march 17, 2022
sit outside and think about the wood grains on a bench, the little bits of dirt stuck in the grooves. cobwebs in the joints where the limbs are bolted together, and the tiny flies that land to join you for lunch. i'm thinking about the patterns of dust etched across smooth concrete and boot prints tracking mud through them. the little bits of rotted leaves always stuck to vegetables when you pick them out of a garden. the smell of perfectly grown and ripened tomatoes and their savory sweetness. the fraying edges of a woodchip. the way you can see the pattern of an animal's skin when it leaves a hasty wet footprint somewhere, especially striking on smooth dry concrete.
how wonderful it is that you can get very close to something and see the little parts that make it up with your own eyes. the texture of the fibers in a piece of clothing. the millions of barely perceptible grains making up the surface of a plastic object. the pixels printed onto a ceramic mug. every single strand of fur growing out of a cat’s face.
i pick up one of my chickens and i hug her. she smells like dry hay and dander. her feathers are frayed in a lot of places. the other hens peck at her so she looks perpetually frazzled. a dog attacked her early in her life and bit the toes off of her right foot, so she has 4 little nubs where toes used to be. i love this chicken. she dies of old age when i'm a teenager. i find her and i bury her somewhere in the yard. probably in a quiet place under a tree. it's been so long that i don't remember, but it feels right.
i can imagine the black soil, smelling of fungus, rotted vegetation and dirt. i always hated that smell, but now i miss it. spruce needles of varying ages and decay are soaked through every inch of that soil. they’re hard and stabbing, and make touching it with bare skin unpleasant.
i have buried so many of the creatures i loved in that black, thickly smelling soil. when i smell lichen, moss, and rot, they jump into my mind again.
there are things i want to tell you about what lies underground, but i can't, and i don't know how to explain why i can't.
every thing i see seems to hold a memory. sitting on a bench watching a gnat trace the edge of a paper plate as the leaves from the tree above me break and scatter the light. the gentle click of chickens cautiously walking on concrete, and the near imperceptible brushing of skin on stone. the grind of boots. shafts of light from an evening sun shining on dusty tool boxes through cracked doors and windows. a neglected garden with half-scavenged and rotting vegetables hidden by clumps of dead leaves. birds' foot prints in a thin layer of snow.