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October 2 2024

i've accepted that i'm transgender. i think.

(im a notoriously bad speller.)

i'm not sure how i want to write all this since my mind is jumping around to different thoughts that make sense to me, but i know will be incoherent to anyone else if i tried to verbalize it without some forethought, but i'm too lazy right now to plan out what i want to say in the most efficent manner, so bare with me, if you're reading this. if anyone is reading this.

i wouldn't consider myself passively suicidal anymore since the simutanious feeling of emptiness and dread i am so used to feeling isn't there anymore, but considering my overall nonchalant attitude towards life has been very prevalant these past few years, give or take, i guess you could classify me as someone that is passively suicidal.

there are things that i want to do while i'm here, alive. i want to create art and have enough money to achieve financial freedom and independence so that i don't have to worry about it. i do have a lot of financial trauma relating to moving around and eviction and bullying that i'm still having to contend with 10 years later. but those things, especially more "miniscule" things like creating art, trying fun drugs, seeing the world, etc... for a while they've felt more like wants because i want to want them so i feel like i've done something, rather than those things being something i actually want because i need it. my relationship with art specifically is way more complicated because i often flip-flop between it feeling like my life's passion to it feeling wholey unattainable, but maybe everything else can be in this category, too, because a lot of my interests and wants do feel like passions in the moment i'm doing them. however it's always fleeting. the passion always escapes me, and nothing ever comes from the effort i put into said passions. i'm always stuck in this loop.

life as a whole feels like this. striving for something for weeks, months, years, yet seeing no fruit of my labour and i'm left feeling empty. it's been like this for years. i always feel like life finds a way to humble me when i'm feeling my best, when i'm finally feeling confident or sure of myself. i can't handle rejection well and most people dislike me, and i dislike them for the most part too, though i don't hate people.

and because of this loop i've been stuck in, on this slow, gradual decline or descent into the position i'm in now - somewhat depressed, somewhat passively suicidal, somewhat disinterested in most things - i think i've given up on everything. yet i still try to delude myself into thinking i havent. because i don't find it hard to get up everyday when im back at my parent's house and i can spend hours and hours programming, or hours painting, and it's like, look! i'm doing something. but it still ultimately leads to nowhere. i'm so scared of advocating for myself, and i have such low self-esteem and confidence. i didn't even like looking in the mirror for a while and didn't care how much weight i gained. it's not like i left my house to begin with. for a moment in time, i did identify heavily with the neet/hikikomori label, though i wasn't nearly as extreme as other neets/hikis.

i say all this to say that, i think over the course of this past year, as i've began to present more masculine, use masculine pronouns, allow myself to be percieved as male and think of myself as a male... i wouldn't say it's improved my mental health just yet because i don't pass and no one really knows besides my online friends who are also all queer and GNC in someway... but it's opened a door for introspection that i think i've been searching for all this time, and trying to find the answer to the big existential question, "why am i here? why do i exist?"

ultimately, i know we won't know why we exist as humans. believe what you want to believe, i don't give a fuck, but faith and truth aren't synoymous, though they do overlap. and thus, we don't know, and possibly won't ever know, why we're here on this fucked up planet living out our fucked up lives.

however, i think i am part of the group of people that believe in creating our own meaning and purpose for us, as individuals. i also don't believe in coincidences. (most of the time.)

i don't think it's a coincidence that i grew up a tomboy my whole life, rejecting femininity for myself because of how uncomfortable and performative it feels, regardless of the few instances where i did feel pretty and attractive in my own femininity.

i don't think it's a coincidence that, before i was even born, my mother secretly wanted a boy (at least for her first child) and had male names already lined up, but i, unfortunately, came out a girl, and she decided to modify a male name she already had to make it sound more feminine.

i don't think it's a coincidence that i spent a portion of my childhood pretending i was a boy, even using the bathroom like one because i found it funny, even more so when my family would get angry.

i don't think it's a coincidence that i think i've spent a lot of my youth mourning being born male in different ways as i've gotten older. and even when that mourning became more extreme about 3 years ago now, when i stayed up late at night sobbing and crying alone in bed wondering why i just couldn't be like the boys i admire, i still tried to accept that being a girl was just who i was and i needed to accept it.

i don't think it's a coincidence that i've always identified more closely with men and boys, in real life and in media, and always found ways to vicariously live through them, such as my fan fictions and my own characters.

i don't think it's a coincidence that one of my closest friends, who we're all pretty sure is at least a little bit psychic, had a dream about me not too long ago about me as a man, and told me i looked happy. really happy, for once. joyous. not happy.

i don't think it's a coincidnece that even now, as i'm writing this, there's this painful and scared, yet bittersweet feeling in my chest, like i'm mourning again because i'm ultimately scared of change, but knowing somewhere, somehow it's a good thing.

fuck, i'm crying so hard.

i keep replaying this one imagination in my head of what would happen if i secretly medically transitioned without my parents knowing, now that i'm out of Florida and have no plans on coming back any time soon (even if i miss my parents so, so fucking much.) i'd call my mom first and she'd answer and hear my low voice for the first time. i keep wondering what she'd say and how she'd sound. like if she'd speak to me with that familiar annoyance, because she's just as quick to anger when confused as i am. or if she'd accept. i always try to stop thinking about this before it gets too detailed.

i keep on wondering too why it took me so long to realize this. it's not like i was sheltered from queer people and queer spaces at all, not even in real life. i accepted i was bisexual in middle school, dated girls, had no issue with it even when peopled called me a dyke. i had a friend that for a moment in time identified as FTM and was accepting of them, yet still thought "i mean, i sometimes feel like a boy, too, but i don't think that's me." but to be fair, i fully believe i wasn't very self aware until about 15 years old anyway. when all the anxiety and insecurities and angst kicked in. i wonder who i could've been had i started questioning earlier. seriously questioning it. maybe life would've been better. maybe it would've been worse, considering my dad's ambivalance and my mom's distain for the LGBT.

for so long, i've been stuck in this loop of negativity. this mindset of, "nothing works out for me no matter how much effort and time and love and care i put into it, so fuck it. i won't even try anymore." but maybe there was just an obstacle i wasn't seeing and i think i've figured it out. i forget i have choice, because a lot of things were out of my control. i've grown complacent. i'm simutaniously content and miserable. afflicted with a malaise i couldn't find the right treatmet or cure for, let alone the cause.

i still don't know why i'm here. i don't believe i have an inherent purpose and i don't think i'm fundimentally obligated to do anything, just as anyone else isn't obligated to do anything either. at the end of the day, we're just little animals on a planet. but i think i figured out what would make me the happiest while i'm here for this tiny fraction of time. i think i figured out a goal i'd like to reach, one that really motivates me to reach it.

i think i owe it to him.