springtime, even though it never was winter here.

hello! i have been writing blog entries in my head for months, but i never have the internet time to actually do it, it seems. i wrote a lot of really good ones and i LOST them, ugh, oh no. where did they go? i’ve been remarkably busy with my book, trying to get it out into the world in as many forms as possible, trying to get people to actually read it. the library! i would like it to appear at the library, any library, but mostly i have to find a distributor and i think maybe i need to pay a lot of money? but i’m really not sure. i wish somebody could do this all for me: fundraising, promoting, asking people to do things, technical stuff. i’m fine with mailing books, writing, and blogging about this process. i can do that part. i realized that i haven’t written anything besides blog posts for at least six months because i’m too busy trying to bring this thing into the world. that makes me sad.
in other news, i’ve started binding again for the first time since 2003. last time it was motivated by pure self-hatred and body dysphoria, it felt desperate, urgent. this time it’s way more casual. a gender hiccup, not a gender crisis. no desires for surgery or pronoun changes. i just like the way my chest looks more when it’s flat. it’s interesting how differently people perceive me–a lot more hatred (i’m pretty sure someone spit at me the other day) and a lot more embarrassing pity. as a (possibly-controversial) side-note, i’m pretty tired of hearing gender-conforming people complain about how nobody GETS their obscure gender. i’d really fucking like to walk down the street dressed the way i want without having to worry that someone is going to bash my face in, without planning what i will tell my clients who will inevitably be triggered by my bruised face, without calculating how much sick time i have left, how much i will need to take to recover. without stressing about how i’ve already had two concussions that fucked up my life and they’re cumulative, they’re cumulative and i think if i get a third there is a part of me that will never come back. i don’t give a fuck if anyone GETS my (strange) gender, I WANT TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE. i want to not be scared. i want to not have a history that includes a man at a train station whispering to me the details of how he will kill my faggot ass once these people leave, how he has a gun and no one will miss one less faggot….and how terrified i was to speak, to say one word, because my voice gives me away as female and what, what, what will he do to me then? i have tried to conform and i can’t, i can’t. there is a common misperception that people who don’t conform do it because they “like being weird” and while i do like it in some ways, it is mainly out of a lack of choice. i have tried and i have failed. the choices are: accept it or die. i don’t want to die, so that is my only choice.
the ex i love most once called me an “anti-drogynous boy in a skirt” which melted my heart, the way i was understood. i am not a boy, but…there aren’t any words for what i am, and in many ways it doesn’t actually matter.
ok, writing this blog post has actually made me very upset, i think i need to go home and drink some skullcap tea now or something. in other news, i got a crock pot and think it’s an important form of self-care. i am trying to prioritize friendship more. soon i will be able to catch up on my mail. soon, soon. i am getting somewhat used to working 12-hour days, being out of the house from 7am to 10pm (or 7pm to 10am when i work overnights). my home is still a sanctuary. i pretend that it’s a ship’s cabin. so tiny and so cozy.