Until Then

the sads

“better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”

and sometimes i just want to yell, “this isn’t ABOUT you!” because it’s not. all these things i’m feeling. that i have not been able to let go of, that i want to now scatter, like lettuce seeds over hot earth.

to let you be a bed of earth and me, the plow that works the land. to do over with who we think the other is and simply integrate.

to let off with the misconceptions of what makes one “human,” and what makes one more human than the next. i want the politic of equality, and i want to enact it in my daily life. just like a real feminist anti-racist person who cares about things.

and i want to turn, turn, turn over and be so full and sweet with visions, like in post-sleep. i want the dull sad things that people have promised me to be true of life to be wrong, and for all to instead in color explode. I want to enact my reality, in strands of repetition, over and over again, and have that be the thing.

the casual repetition in a life of domestic routine.

things i wish everyone knew and respected about my life

• i am me. i am not your other trans friend, so there’s no need to even bring them up to compare.
• i have the right to be offended about whatever i want, and if you care, you should listen, apologize, and learn.
• to the straight girls, i fuck like any other guy, you just have to wait a second while i adjust my equipment.
• to the gay girls, i wouldn’t feel emasculated if you decided you were attracted to me. i understand sexuality can be fluid and lesbians go for cis guys, sometimes, too.
• to the bi/queer/pansexual/non-identifying girls, well you’re the least of my problems :)
• i will not fuck you just BECAUSE I am trans.
• alternatively, i do not have the same proclivities, interests, etc. as the other trans men you’ve fucked. or at the very least, begin on the assumption that i don’t.
• i am not queer-identfied, but i identify with the queer community.
• i am not female-identified, but i identify with women because of my past.
• i was treated like a girl when i was raised, and that will always rub off on me. mostly, it means i was taught to listen, to wait to speak, and to not act like an entitled dickhead to everyone around me.
• if you’re into entitled dickheads, i guess you’ll have to look elsewhere
• i don’t like sports
• there is nothing about me that is “trans” except for what’s happened to my body. there is no “trans narrative.” everything hasn’t “changed” for me in some magical panacea of betterment, except that i feel better about my body, and people respect me more now because society is fucked up.
• i don’t bask in male / white privilege, and will spend a lot of time speaking out against it, actually. not okay with sexism OR racism.
• if you disrespect me, there is no rule that i “have to” forgive you. i have enough friends already.

great, i feel better already. a lot of people try to mess with you, label you, or otherwise disrespect you when you’re trans, and the worst of all are the people who do it under the guise of being “super trans-accepting and friendly.” i’ve been really hurt by people who’ve acted like that. but the only person who is accountable for standing up for myself is myself, and i realize that now. so i choose empowerment. and i choose to empower myself with this list that i will continue to refer back to whenever I’m having a hard time remembering that.

revelation

i’ve realized the reason i’ve been blinded by these fears (rejection, being trans, etc.) is that I am merely using them as an excuse. an excuse not to get creative (yet,) an excuse not to WRITE.

well i’m running out of excuses as to why I’m not writing short stories if this is, in fact, my current dream. it doesn’t matter whether I keep publishing with «big-name online mag I freelance for,» since those are not short stories. it doesn’t matter if i send query letters to other authors I know, because they have already explained that they can’t really help me. especially with no work-samples as attachments. it doesn’t matter whether or not I apply for an MFA in the fall because if it was Fall right now, let me tell you, the shit I have would not get me in.

and the reason it would not is not because I suck; I know I don’t; but because I haven’t written enough yet. Haven’t written enough of these things I want to write to even constitute a considerable body. I have an idea. And I am writing, I swear I am trying, but I am mostly a really fucking busy employed person who works a kind of crappy though decent-paying hourly job in order to make ends meet in New York City, and half the time when I’m not I’m suckered into socialization, and the other half of the time I blank out on the internet, attempting to recover from all the life I’ve been living. but these two weeks off so far have been like air; crack-cocaine. i finished the FIRST short story that I thought I would never see done, a story I started in November. and it feels so good to have done it, to know it’s on the page now. to know that it ultimately needs a shit-ton of editing and re-tooling but knowing that I can do that, because it’s out there.

i’ve never written a short story before. murdered baby; focused photograph of corpse. these are my goals setting into a writing project like this. not exactly a great feeling but like it has to be done.

i felt “tied” to poetry but then I realized my poems were breaking into something more complex than a poem itself could contain. Not willing / able to re-write Song of Myself, here.

so this is all very tangential and dramatic but what I need to remind myself is that, it doesn’t matter if I am meant to attend the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, whether I am meant for some other MFA, or whether my path is (X). what really matters is that I do what I need to do which, as Hemingway has already saved me the trouble of formuating, is merely to sit at the typewriter and bleed.

…

the funny thing is, this new flat chest feels like it rightfully belongs to me. no adjustment period whatsoever.

i had it from birth til age 12, and now I can rightfully reclaim it at age 23.

don’t even know

having one of those need-to-journal-so-badly-i-don’t-even-know-where-to-start moments.

wow. BREATHE — thing

i’m back in that place of vague articulation where I don’t know the difference between feelings and thoughts. i don’t know if this is a good idea — a lifes’ work study of each emotion as it passes me by. what are all these things? why do i feel the way i feel? i must evade my classic problem of feeling instead reasoning, and reasoning during all the times i ought to listen to my heart.

i don’t know how to trust people. anyone. or i feel like i constantly trust only the wrong people. am i not a person to be trusted? is that why i’ve ended up where i’ve ended up in the past? should i revoke trust from people i currently trust if i feel it’s doing me no good? or should i scale back.

i feel failed. is this common?

i don’t know how to find middle grounds. it’s either black or white. i hate gray, i hate it so much. i don’t want to accept it. will i have to?

how do i forgive? only love can help me. this doesn’t only mean romantic love it means all love. it means Bell Hooks. it means that Frank and I should live in a little hut together where we can exchange books and ideas before each setting out respectively on our little dalliances with the outside world. it means letting go. it means moving on.

end rant?

do you *HAVE* to forgive people?

it always comes down to this for me.

like i am mad, hopping frickin’ mad at someone and while it’s not completely their fault i still retain my right to be angry. i OWN it.

but friends say, popular culture says, “forgive and forget.” well i’m not a fucking Christian so I don’t turn the other cheek. Forgiving and forgetting seems like a recipe for self-destruction: forgive, forget, trust again, and find yourself as fucked or even more so as when you started. What else is new?

But I recently had to remember that I’m a Jew. I’m no waspy Connecticut bitch who can’t talk about feelings (…or sex). It is my God-given right to bitch about things until the end of time, and I have to be honest that I legitimately feel healthier for it. Let’s be real, my people carry a grudge that’s over 4,000 years old, so if you dicked me over in 2011, expect to still be on the shit list. I’m not over it and according to you, that’s okay, which is just dandy, not that I needed your permission.

so what do my followers think. must I forgive? or can I rage on happily into the setting sun.

things that I “don’t” do: a bulleted list

• read my exgf’s blog every day
• sleep til 2 PM on the regular
• go to bed at 4 AM on the regular
• worry that i will be *this* broke for the rest of my life due to my “career choices”; entertain nightmarish fantasies of such
• set aside 4 hours for writing; proceed to write nothing
• stalk my idols via emotionally unhinged e-mails
• double- and triple- book myself
• eat my roommate’s junk food instead of going grocery shopping
• consider “bagels” the cornerstone of my balanced diet

This is a brief list of things that I am looking to correct at some point in the future.

it’s silly

it’s silly to call it “Until I Make It” when I don’t even know what this so-called “making it” means. because it seems to me to be less about career success than ever. and i said this a post or two ago, tried to vocalize what I’m trying to say. my obsession with “making it real”. with “becoming a real person,” and trying to know what that means. it’s 3:49 and i just took a benadryl to try to help my mind with racing and so now i write as my biochemistry testily fights the self-made clock.

and i don’t think i can handle being the type of person who medicates to go to sleep. none of us want to be that. i just want to believe that in your head there is a real heart in lieu of a soulless void. i don’t want to think of the toes you’ve stepped on in order to get to where you are. and i don’t want to lose you completely but my heart says “scale back,” and I need to manifest a reality full of only people that i respect. and to get my respect i need to feel like you respect me, which i don’t right now.

i am not upset by any given turn of events, because i see what is realistic. or hey maybe i’m used to being let down. but i am cracked and molten on the inside. and when i wrote that entry about being cracked and molten last year abbey wrote me to say “what are you talking about?” and i just found that unfathomable. i think people can choose to ignore, and i felt she was doing that. so i would speak of the disgusting to her because i knew it would bother her. tried to make live for her the chunky, wet cement that was all of me. not pretty nor packaged; not merely words, things, lettered. she liked my writing and she liked me, but the former doesn’t ultimately matter and the latter, without stronger commitment, was not enough. i write and write and i bid for control. wild reins; an ordering of emotions, the most horrifying thing i’ve yet to know.

there are so many things that have happened that account for why i am standing here today. i want to let go but i can’t seem to forget. nikki says “i’ve had 13 years to see the kind of things that you just can’t know about yet,” and well while that scares me he is right. my roommate. someone who invited me into his home and then lent me his truck just so that i could move in more cheaply. how could i not believe in the goodness of this person? there is no motive. i am just kind of an idiot. paranoid tendencies of the Taurus coming out to play.

because as much as i wanted to be “just” venus in gemini i am still Taurus. and i must own it. i’m sturdy and i’m standing here. as annoying as it was for mori to say that. but i believe some of the things she says now, she’s been right about a few. and i am a reserve well. i am standing more still than many people. and all i can do is watch the world rotate around me; i feel like an axis. and i do not mean to say i am the center of any particular world excepting my own, but simply that i feel an axis. and also that i need to manifest agency asap, or else i’ll become a drowning pool.

read: attempting to conquer a narrower worldview

read: the things you’ve said to me, that you know i’ve thought about

and i’m so afraid that someone will one day know that i have emotions

and i’ve been so afraid to have them

but i’ve done so much to be standing where i am right now that i don’t think it’s wise to turn back.

somewhere between turning 12. between depressing puberty #1, going to prom, reading a whole bunch of bullshit and getting drunk (some call this kollege) and meeting people who take themselves too seriously (or not seriously enough.) but also meeting best friends. between getting a job at a maine-themed lobster shack in new york city and still drinking too much. drinking and smoking my fucking days in, just to avoid feeling anything. somewhere between convincing myself that it didn’t bother me at all that my parents wouldn’t acknowledge my transition and somewhere between pretending it didn’t hurt to hear my sister say that “maybe i want(ed) to be a man but i wasn’t one now,” while i stood there defenseless. unbound. and i’m supposed to forgive. but somewhere between the pronoun errors of people i was supposed to call friends, because it’s all just the same to them. and trying to gauge who was trying and who was not. and who respects me vs. who would rather just ignore who i’m becoming. somewhere between feeling like my life was always a lie vs. the more triumphant version in which i reclaim what is mine and has every right to be, because i have every right to do this. and no one says i don’t, yet little things still gird up insecurity. and yet i’ve done this. i’ve made decisions and i “haven’t given up,” which people act like is a possibility. but i won’t deny that this did all happen because i made it happen. it happened because i finally realized i would never wake up different. it happened because i didn’t say “no,” the Rules of Improvisation 101. it happened because that therapist said “where do you see yourself in 10 years” and I said i don’t know, but my body will not be this way anymore

and at the end of all my words, it seems to be a road

one that i’m apparently traveling down

because for so many years i stuffed those emotions. i wrote suicide-themed letters that still languish in marble notebooks with coffee stains on the cover. and that diagram of a brain is still in there. and so is the line “i have never felt this much sadness and pain,” july 20th, 2009. so i guess it was all real, all of it. and i don’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt. i can still have the hurt and be a person who moves on

i don’t have to pretend it was easy

i don’t always have to feel forced to make art out of it

i can just be sometimes.

and so i just want to have this now, i want to be. i want to have my life.

and so i sit on a couch, earliest hours, and i write my life. there is a suitcase standing in the corner and, say it with me now, “this is real.” everything that is happening. the tiredness, the censoring, the non-censored endingness of it all. and i’d write more, but late. the cement will continue. but i must believe there will be time. without this belief, i will be powerless to let things unfold in the way that they must.