"Structure"

lol hay guyz remember when I used to post on this blog sometimes before I started T and became able to focus only on that?

Yeah well. HARK! A POST!

I suppose this would fit better on my unschooling blog, except it's a bit disjointed because a) I'm still figuring out how I feel on this topic, b) I have one of these really frustrating backaches I get sometimes where it feels like it would go away if I just stretched one particular muscle but I cannot for the life of me seem to get into a position that stretches it, so I spend 90% of my time contorting myself into positions that make it look like I am suffering from a serious neurological disorder, and c) I am also distracted by my cat Dot, who still looks like a kitten despite being 2 1/2 years old, because she is doing that thing cats do where they tuck all their feet up under them and puff up like a bird and make this face: ^______^. Also I just noticed one of the rocks Litsong gave me has been knocked off the top of my book cabinet and I need to go and find it.

Crisis averted. Not that any of you knew I was gone for a minute because this is a blog post. But I found the rock, in case you were concerned.

I think it is ironic that a post that was intended to be about structure has become so rambly. But then maybe that is perfect because it kind of self-demonstrates the point I was going to make.

See, I am pretty sure I have some form of ADD or suchlike, a point I have carefully avoided mentioning to my psychiatrist because I do not want to be on Ritalin or anything like Ritalin. I've been on Ritalin before, when I was in college, and I did not like it. It sort of made me feel like a robot: I was really, really focused and productive, but I became totally devoid of all personality traits other than being really really focused and productive. Now, I am not one of those people who does not believe ADD is a thing, nor am I anti-medication, because I know some people really do need ADD meds in order to function. Personally, I need antidepressants in order to function. When I was not on them, it took me massive amounts of energy to do anything, so my days didn't require much planning. I just got up and went "ugh, what thing do I have to drag myself to today?" and then spent the rest of my time doing more or less nothing.

Now that I am properly medicated, I have a lot more energy and a lot more things I want to do, but I do not have much capacity for focusing that energy on those things. So while on the outside I still appear to be dragging myself to necessary activities and spending the rest of my time refreshing Facebook, on the inside my brain is running around like an understimulated dachshund going "I want to paint abstract watercolors and study calculus and bake banana nut bread and do chin-ups and learn how to skateboard and play seven musical instruments but WHAT DO I DO FIRST OH GOD?!"

So, making lists and schedules and things is extremely helpful to me. I enjoy making these. I do not enjoy following them, because what happens is on Thursday I will make a list of things I want to do on Friday, and then it will be Friday and I will become engrossed in an entirely unrelated thing that is suddenly 1000x more interesting than the things I thought were interesting on Thursday. Then I will be sad because I didn't have time to do the things I wanted to do on Thursday. I am bad at this. It is also worth noting that I have opened a new tab to look at Facebook approximately a dozen times during the course of writing this post, even though I am not expecting any messages or comments or anything in particular right now. Um.

I think the point I was *trying* to work myself around to is that, since my life is not currently well-structured in terms of being involved in activities and such, and since my brain is currently in LEARN ALL THE THINGS mode, I'm trying to put together some kind of schedule based on things like Khan Academy and MIT Open Courseware and such. Except I haven't even picked what kind of things I want to study. I just want to be doing stuff.

I do not think this post ever actually made a point. Well done me! \o/

Facts!

Because I'm bored enough these days, here are some fun facts about me:

1. I can talk to squirrels. I make a little clicking noise and they will run right up to me and climb right up my leg. (The LaPorte/Sylvestres and Michael have seen me do this so I have witnesses!) I don't know what I'm saying in squirrel-speak that is so compelling. I hope it is not sexual.

2. The Boston Common & public garden is basically my favorite place on Earth. When I lived in Dorchester I used to stop there nearly every day on my way to work. I would basically live there if Boston ever had temperate weather for more than five minutes at a time.

3. I have enough autistic tendencies to really like the idea of routines and order, but enough ADD to hate actually following them. So I tend to obsessively make lists and schedules, follow them for about a day and a half, then throw them away.

4. I love swings more than anything in the whole world. If I owned a swingset I would never do anything else. (I do live around the corner from a park that has swings sized perfectly for a small adult, but I don't go there often because I don't want to be that creepy adult who is always hanging around the park by himself.)

5. I love slow, pretty, new-agey music like Loreena McKennitt, Secret Garden, Helen Jane Long, and George Winston. The older I get the more I listen to stuff like this instead of rock and pop music. I think I went directly from being 15 to being 75.

6. Even though I don't feel good about the way it's been appropriated by white Western middle class culture, I love doing yoga.

7. Growing up, I hated math and thought it was the cruelest form of medieval torture. Now I find it oddly therapeutic. There are no feelings involved, nothing to get upset about or be triggered by, and it takes all my concentration. Sometimes it's the only way to clear my mind.

8. When I was a little kid, I had an imaginary twin brother named Bobby. He was basically exactly like me and did everything I did, except he was a boy. Make of that what you will.

9. I basically think adults and adult culture suck. I'm pretty much an overgrown kid and most of my friends tend to be overgrown kids, or actual kids, or parents who are really devoted to their kids. I want to devote my life to making the world better for kids but I haven't figured out in what capacity I can do that and also earn a good enough wage to support my own family.

10. I've always wanted a guinea pig but I will never own one because I cannot tolerate that wheet wheet noise they make.

I Am A Boy

I feel really good this morning. I finally realized I am a boy.

But Elisha, you have been living as a boy for months.

I have been, but I got to that point from the outside in. I started dressing like a boy and using male pronouns, and decided that felt good, so I was like "huh, guess I'm a boy then." But I was apprehensive about it, always afraid that if I looked deep inside I'd realize I was actually a woman and I was just fooling everybody and I was going to look like an asshole later on.

Today I am a boy from the inside out.

Let me explain what I mean. This morning I was looking at a friend's pictures from "before", from the days when we were both living as girls. (We started transitioning at about the same time.) I just ended up there because of that thing Facebook does where it's like "hey look at these old pictures of your friend that they probably forgot are there!" And then I looked at his boy pictures, and was kind of like "ahh, that's better, that's my friend" even though I knew him as a girl for longer than I've known him as a boy. And I realized it was because he has become himself.

I then went looking through my own pictures and quickly realized I have not become myself yet.

Cue angst, etc. Long story short I end up on my old MySpace, reading through blogs from times when I felt more like a whole person. Last night one of my best friends made a comment that she just wants her friend back, like I used to be (this was a comment about the state of my mental health, not my gender!) and it made me so sad I had to go back and figure out what I used to have, emotionally, that I don't have anymore. Even if that meant looking at the days when I was identifying as a woman, even if it meant having to accept that I might still be a woman deep down.

So after skimming about three years' worth of blogs I realized that I was not reading a woman's blog. Regardless of how I may or may not have chosen to dress during that time in my life, I was not a woman. In fact, the only clue to my gender at all in three years' worth of posts was a "random fact" stating that "I was never into ponies as a child, I failed the girl test I guess." Ha.

And, I don't really know what it was in those posts that made me realize it, but I realized deep down I have always been a boy. But my upbringing caused me to bury that more deeply than maybe even most other trans guys do, because I wasn't just taught that I should be feminine; I was taught that masculinity was something to fear, something associated with mean, scary, stupid people who treat women like dirt. My only good masculine role model was my grandfather, who was my favorite person in the entire world, but he died when I was eight.

Because of my upbringing, I learned to fear the boy inside me. I knew I had a boy inside me when I was very little, but I stuffed him down. But now I know that even when I played Barbies and took ballet lessons, I was a boy.

And when I threw a tantrum in the middle of Kmart because my aunt was forcing me to buy a bra, I was a boy.

And when I played chess with my grandpa, I was a boy.

And when I was trying to become a teacher and I dressed like a woman, but all the little boys instinctively came to me with their booger jokes, I was a boy.

And when I tried to be a beautiful woman for my ex, all the while wishing we could just be buddies and ride four-wheelers together, I was a boy. And when he struggled with fears that he was gay and I was a lesbian, I was a boy.

And today I am a boy. Today I have realized that for all my joking around about being a "fag" and for all my going on about how I can be FTM and still wear nail polish, I'm really not very femme at all. I feel most myself when I'm just wearing black t-shirts and playing video games. Not that I'm gonna be all "oh that's a feminine thing, I can't do that", because fuck that shit. But I need to tell the little boy who's been hiding away inside me since I was five years old that it's okay to come out now. And I need to give him a chance to play in the mud and learn how to use tools and all the stuff I never did as a kid. Forget all my training in womanhood and just be what I am.

And then I can finally become myself.

A year and a week

I poked through some old Facebook messages and discovered that the first time I told anyone I was questioning my gender was just about one year ago as of last week. The moment *I* realized it was just a day or two before that, so my best guess is that my "anniversary" is June 8th or 9th. I don't want to recap all the stuff that's changed since then, because I already did that on my Tumblr which is a bit more private. But I do want to recap the stuff that's happened this past week alone, because that's a lot all by itself.

Thursday I started gender therapy (as in, "sit on that couch and spill your guts" therapy - a trans kid on Tumblr thought I meant hormones) and then went and met with my minister to come out to her. Not that I was not out at church, per se, but I'd also never actually said to anyone that I'm trans or that I use male pronouns. So anyway, both those things went well and I felt really good about myself after.

Friday I baked rainbow cupcakes, and I got my first real masculine haircut (where "real" is defined as "one I didn't do myself in the bathroom with an electric clipper"). I was nervous about asking for a male haircut, but it went absolutely fine. I just went in and when they asked me how I want my hair cut I said "A little more masculine, but not cut too close" and the woman was just like "Okay so we'll trim this part here and then do this and this." Didn't flinch at all. And - okay, this will confuse everyone except Michael and Kyle, but I promise this matters - she cut my sideburns straight across, so I know I was not being treated like a woman. This is good.

Saturday I went to Pride service at church, and then marched with MTPC in the Boston Pride parade! I would like to say I marched proudly, but mostly I marched wetly and coldly because it was pouring and I didn't bring an umbrella, and nervously because a certain someone was late and missed the parade so I had to be all WOO LOOK I'M TRANS all by myself, and crankily because I had to pee so bad I ended up having to step out of the parade and go use a porta-potty in the park. So, I didn't exactly march proudly. But I marched, and that's what counts.

Sunday I went to a regular church service and for whatever reason, midway through the service I realized I want my middle name to be Aster. That's a big thing because not knowing my middle name was my biggest obstacle to pursuing a legal change. Now it's just a matter of fees and paperwork.

Monday I made the actual decision to go ahead and be Elisha at work so I can pursue the legal change, but I didn't get to bring it up that day because people were fighting and things were generally chaotic.

Tuesday I had another therapy session in which I came to some decisions about what changes I want to make long-term, including eventually coming out at work. I then went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of foods which are rich in zinc and B-vitamins, which ostensibly help raise testosterone levels, although frankly I know plenty of women whose diets are probably rich in those things and so far as I know none of them has grown a beard yet. Still, I figure it can't hurt, especially since I got foods which have a good amount of protein and I'm trying to do some strength-training*.

Also on Tuesday, I finally changed my name at work! I kind of did it as I was leaving, so it was awkward - my 14-year-old laughed at me, which he later explained was because "something weird was happening" and he didn't know how to react. But all was fine, and no one suspected it had anything to do with gender.

Wednesday (today) was my first day actually being Elisha at work. It was a bit awkward because one of the kids kept calling me "Alicia" and my poor 10-year-old kept trying to learn how to spell my new name but kept switching to my old name out of habit. Like, she'd ask how to spell Elisha and I'd help her type "El" and then her fingers would automatically go to other letters that are in my birth name, which I would probably find fascinating from a neurocognitive perspective if it weren't my kid and my name.

Tomorrow I'm going to tell my 14yo that it's okay to call me Elijah if that helps him remember not to call me Alicia. He called me like every possible variant today and will likely do so tomorrow, so if he tries Elijah I plan to mention that a lot of people say my name that way and I don't mind it. I'm not ready to come out yet, but I totally don't mind them knowing I'm okay being called a masculine name.

So! That's a lot of changes in a week, eh? I think I angsted over my identity for a long time and now I've hit a point where a lot of things are coming together all at once. It feels good.


*The strength-training, I want to add, is partly for +3 to manliness stat, but also largely an effort to continue being able to lift a rapidly-growing preteen at work. Strength-training is supposed to help raise testosterone, especially in conjunction with the zinc and protein, but again I know plenty of women who are pretty ripped, so this is questionable. I raise my eyebrow at it in a Spock-like manner, but I figure it's worth doing anyway. Muscles, like B12, are good whether they put more hair on your chest or not. (The third component of "natural transition" is supposed to be supplements, but fuck that, I'm not taking advice on supplements from people who think Hydroxycut is a good idea.)

Sweetness

I go to a wonderful queer-friendly and trans-friendly church, which today was all decked out in rainbows for the annual Pride service. Let me tell you, if I ever needed proof that I am in the right church (and the right city), nothing could possibly top watching middle-aged gay men dancing to Lady Gaga between the pews.

Another reason I know I'm in the right church is that a few days ago I went to speak to my minister about being trans, and she was not only accepting, but completely unfazed. I told her I was nervous about transitioning at church (I started coming in December, when I was still "she" and only just barely Elisha) and she was like "Oh, people do that all the time here." Most of what she said was on the mark and made me feel lots better, but a couple things were off. One thing that's stuck in my head was this comment:

"I try to tell my trans guys to hang onto some of their God-given sweetness when they go on hormones."

That sentence obviously didn't sit right with me, but as I've thought more about it, I'm glad she said it, because it made me realize something about myself. See, when I was living as a girl, I was NOT sweet at all. I actively tried not to be, because I recognized that sweetness was part of the cluster of cultural expectations that are thrust on girls. "Be pretty, and be delicate, and be demure, and be graceful, and be sweet. Don't talk too much, and when you do talk, for God's sake don't actually say anything." And from a very young age - perhaps the first time someone told me little girls are supposed to like pink, perhaps even before that - I rebelled against that. Fuck being pretty, I want to play in the dirt. Fuck being demure, I want to yell. Fuck being delicate and graceful, I am not your goddamn porcelain doll. And fuck being sweet, I have things to say and if you piss me off you are going to know about it."

When I was living as a girl, being sweet made me dysphoric. I didn't know what dysphoria was at the time, but I did know it made me feel squicky and skin-crawly and it made me want to kick and scream. The idea of being anybody's sweet little girl made my stomach turn. And the more people admonished me to "be sweet" (and growing up in the South, you hear that a lot), the more I wanted to act like an obnoxious little ass. If I was an obnoxious little ass, I won. If I was sweet, the people who thought I should be having tea parties in some fucking English rose garden had their way, and that meant I lost. So I spent a lot of time being an obnoxious little ass, and stepping all over other people because that was the only way I felt I could find a place to stand.

It is only in the last few months, as I've begun to be recognized as male by most of the people in my life, that I've felt free to be anything close to "sweet". Being a sweet girl might make me feel like clawing my skin off, but I love the idea of being a sweet boy. Maybe that's the rebel in me, feeling more comfortable smashing gender stereotypes than conforming to them. Maybe that's the part of me that made me spend my teen years fascinated by guys like Freddie Mercury and Christopher Lowell, the part that never wanted to be a pretty girl but always wanted to be a fabulous drag queen. But isn't that my gender identity? Isn't that a more important fundamental part of who I am than whether or not I yearn for a dick? That whole "born in the wrong body" narrative leaves so much stuff out. If being a boy makes me want to be sweet and being a girl makes me want to fight my way through life with fists of barbed wire, isn't that reason enough to be a boy?

And if I decide to go on testosterone, so that everyone will know I'm a boy and I don't have to try so hard, and that makes me feel even freer to let the light inside me shine out, I will be able to let more of my God-given sweetness out into the world. Maybe I won't feel as much like talking about my feelings or hugging strangers or whatever, because that does happen to some guys. But it's even more likely that I won't feel the need to prove I'm male by standing in the corner with my arms folded when I really want to go dance to Lady Gaga between the pews.

It's only just now, as a boy, that I'm starting to learn the value of sweetness. One of the ways I'm healing my broken parts is by focusing on the sweetness in my life and how I can bring more. I used to focus on love, but we use the word "love" for so many emotions that it's hard to really know what another person means by it. Love can heal, but love can also drive you mad, or make you think other people belong to you. Love can make you want to abuse other people or take abuse from them. Sweetness is what it is. Genuine sweetness - not the syrupy manipulative kind - is free to give and free to receive. It doesn't ask you to give yourself away. You can give it to a stranger, even anonymously. You can be sweet just inside your own head, and that alone will make your life better and everyone else's around you, too.

But you can't do that when you're concentrating all the time on trying to prove you're not going to be what other people want you to be. You can't be sweet when it means someone else wins and you lose. And sweetness doesn't come from estrogen. It comes from the light inside your soul that shines out through the holes in your armor. And the less armor you have to wear, the more light you can show. If taking testosterone means a guy can trade in his heavy suit of armor for flexible chainmail, then testosterone will allow that guy to shine out much more of his light. And that's really what it comes down to: Give people the freedom and the tools to be comfortable being who they are, and sweetness and light will follow.

I missed it

I see my friends the LaPorte/Sylvestres every few months or so. I have never mentioned this to them, but somehow every time we get together I get a sign from my mom. I'm not a particularly religious person, in the sense that I tend to be fairly agnostic in terms of what happens when people die. But I know a sign from Mama when I see it.

At the 5th anniversary party for the Harry Potter Alliance, which happened to be on the one-year-anniversary of my mom's death, there was the memorial for Esther Earl and then Harry and the Potters sang "You Were the Best We Ever Had" for Esther, and I could absolutely feel my mother there.

At the Harry Potter Yule Ball, the background music on the PA between bands was, inexplicably, my mother's favorite Elvis Christmas album, including "Peace in the Valley", which was her funeral song. So I know she was there, too.

(Lest you get the impression that maybe my mom has just chosen to spend the afterlife following wizard rock shows around, I should stop here and point out that she was not remotely interested in Harry Potter. I tried to get her into it, but made little progress. No, she definitely comes to see me when this one family is around. I don't know why.)

So I was looking forward to seeing them this weekend, because they are lovely people, but also because I just knew my mom would be around. So what sign did she leave me this time?

I don't know. I forgot to look.

I forgot to look. I didn't even remember until this morning. I was too caught up inside my own head, worrying about other shit. Lots and lots of things happened that day, and I could comb back over my memory and try to find the sign, but it's too late now. I have to feel it when it's actually happening.

I'm sorry, Mama. I know you were there. I'll have my priorities in line next time.

Incidentally, I did on one occasion get a clear sign from my mom when the LaPortes were not around. It was a few weeks ago, while I was folding laundry at work and listening to the 60s music channel on the TV. It started playing "Baby Don't Go" and I was like "Man, I haven't heard this song since I was a kid!" I remembered my mom liking it a lot... and when I looked up and saw that it was by Sonny and Cher, a bunch of stuff hit me at once. How much my mom loved Cher and wanted to be like her, ever since childhood, and how I knew when I came out as a lesbian my mom took comfort from knowing Cher had a daughter like me.

Mama didn't live long enough to know that Cher's daughter and her own daughter are both sons. I can't explain it, but right at that moment I knew my mom was telling me it was okay. Cher has a son like me and it's okay.

And to anyone who thinks I'm silly looking for signs from my mom through wizard rock concerts and Cher songs? All I can say is, you obviously never met Mama. That is exactly how she was.

To Me, At 13

I'm trying to learn how to like myself, and I think the first step in liking who I am now is to go back to the kid I used to be and tell her (because I was "her", then, although a lot of trans guys were "him" even wrapped up in that pink blanket in the hospital) how fucking awesome she was, even when no adults in her life were willing to do that. Thirteen was an age where I felt like nobody saw me for who I was, so I figured that was a good place to start.

Dear Self,

I just wanted to tell you what a cool kid I think you are. Yes, the real you, the one you think exists only in your room. I think you are really clever and beautiful and wise. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to explore religions besides Christianity. I'd love to take you to the big library in the city and get you lots of books on Wicca and Judaism and Buddhism and all the other religions you think are interesting.

I love your sense of style. I think you are so creative with your makeup and your clothes and the way you decorate your room. Don't give in to the pressure to do "pretty" makeup like the other girls! Anybody can put on blush and pink lipstick. Not everybody can do what you do. I am amazed at the ideas you come up with - red eyeshadow, silver nails, mixing Vaseline and eyeshadow to make blue lipstick? So cool. There are people whose job it is to do cool makeup like that, you know.

I also like your taste in music. I have noticed you are really drawn to music by guys who seem like they're both male and female, like Marilyn Manson and Boy George and Michael Jackson and Pete Burns. Do you ever feel like you wanna be a guy like that? Because that's okay. Those specific guys haven't lived their lives in the best ways, but I think you know that. I know Marilyn Manson appeals to you because he's intelligent and he's honest enough to say that the stuff adults tell you is bullshit. I know Boy George makes you want to stay far the hell away from heroin, not try it to be like him. It's about the gender stuff and the fashion and fucking the rules. Can I help you find more of that stuff? You shouldn't have to hide it away in your room! Come over and let's watch Rocky Horror and dress up like drag queens. I think you loving that stuff is so cool.

You make up the most brilliant, complex stories. I know you never tell them to anyone because they're around themes of mental illness and stuff like that, but I think stories like that are interesting. Have you ever read any Edgar Allen Poe or HP Lovecraft? Let's go to the library and pick out some of that, and maybe The Shining and A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and maybe a biography of Vincent van Gogh. Some of the best literature and art in history centers around the dark side of human nature. I'd be happy to listen to you tell your stories anytime.

It's okay that you think about sex, and it's okay that you have a crush on your friend Heather. It's okay for a girl to like another girl and it's okay for a genderscrewed glam boy-girl with a vagina to like a girl. It's also okay if you're confused about the difference between a super good best friend and someone you want to go out with. Your body has a *lot of hormones* in it right now and I can pretty much guarantee everyone you know at school is confused too, even if they seem sure of themselves all the time.

If I could give you any advice, it would be to remember not to let go of who you used to be. This goth stuff is fun but I know you still love kittens and going to the beach and playing the piano and even sometimes playing with toys. That's okay! Everything you love to do is something you should do. Don't cut off any part of yourself to fit into somebody else's box.

I wish you had people in your life who you could tell all your deep thoughts to, because they're really brilliant and wise, especially for someone so young. I wish I could pull you out of school so you could spend all your time doing makeup and listening to music and reading about stuff you love. I wish I could take you to gaming stores and thrift shops and buy you a computer and take you to meet practicing Wiccans and professional makeup artists and take you to a record store. There is so much out there that you'd love. I want you to believe in who you are right now, because you are so cool, no matter what anybody says.

This Means War

Here's the thing: I have a demon living in my head, and I don't like it.

No, I'm not about to start vomiting pea soup. But I do have something, some part of my brain, which likes to attack me from time to time. Sometimes the attacks are very severe. Some have almost killed me. I've been putting up with this all my life and haven't really done all that much about it.

But lately it's been attacking my friends. And I have decided that that's where this ends. Demon, you are going down.

My previous attempts to fight back against this demon were more like halfheartedly swatting a fly because you know you're not going to hit it anyway. This time, it is war. And you don't win a war without some pretty serious strategic planning. So right now, I am attacking this thing from all sides.

I'm writing stuff just for me, where I used to never write unless it was going to be a public blog post. I've been doing 750 words every morning and a gratitude journal at night. I've also, in general, been trying to reach for a journal when I need to just dump my brain, and reach for friends when I actually need to talk to another person. Learning the difference between those things is a big thing for me.

I've been meditating every morning and every night before bed. I've also been going to church again - something I specifically stopped doing because I didn't respect myself enough to tell the hip, radical people around me that I go to church. And I've actually been talking to people at church! I forced myself to go introduce myself to the young adults group, whose meetings I now plan to attend. I'm making plans to actually become a member - something I was pursuing before I sort of fell off the wagon back in the winter. Tomorrow night, I'm going to some kind of "self-compassion" workshop. And I've scheduled a meeting to talk with the minister about some of the problems I'm having and about how to feel comfortable as a trans person in the congregation.

Now that it's (kind of) summer, I'm trying to get outside more. Today after work I went for a walk around the reservoir by my train stop, which helped a lot to burn off some angst. And I've been going to the park with a notebook and art supplies and lunch before work sometimes.

I'm still on a waiting list for therapy, and in the meantime I've found a support group that might help. I'm also trying to expand the pool of people I reach out to when I need help. When I first realized I was trans, I narrowed my circle of friends quite a bit, which resulted in me leaning on just a few people. Now that I'm out, I can - and really need to - talk to more people and give the ones who've already been helping me a break. More importantly, I'm focusing on spending time with people who accept me exactly as I am, not ones who only like me if I play along with their idea of who I should be.

And finally, I'm making sure I have stuff to look forward to. Now that I have Saturdays back off from work, I'm trying to fill them with fun things. My next three are filled with Memorial Day and Pride activities, and then I can figure out more stuff from there.

So those are my plans for winning this war. Give up now, demon. You cannot win.

Reasons why I love my church

I go to a pretty big UU church in Boston (pretty big by UU standards, which is probably kinda small by evangelist Christian standards) and this morning's service reminded me of a lot of reasons why I really like my church:

• The guest speaker was Lama Surya Das, which is the sort of name you expect someone very serious and monk-like to have, except actually he was this very white Jewish guy who had a thick Boston accent, used words like "schlepp" and made fun of yoga.

• During one of the hymns (please note UUs use the word "hymn" very loosely; see below) they asked different sections of the congregation to sing different verses, but instead of saying "men sing this part and women sing this part" they said "people with lower voices sing this part and people with higher voices sing this one".

• One of the "hymns" today was a rousing singalong of "Let It Be"; this was designed to tie in to the theme of Buddhism.
  

• The lead baritone in the choir was inexplicably in drag today. This already seems like a perfect situation, but it was made even better by the fact that this person also had a major solo during a very traditional Jesus-oriented hymn.
  

• When I was having lunch with the young adults group after the service, a guy came up and took our plates away for us; when he left one of the people at my table informed me that his name is Batman. Batman soon returned and made a comment to the effect that "all of our transporters are online".

I like my church.

I don't know what this post is going to be about

The reason I am blogging is because I drank a cup of coffee this morning, except actually it was more like noon, and then started yammering to a friend (who is inordinately patient with my various forms of madness) about starting a religion based on cake and how I should be made a major prophet in this religion because I know how to make rainbow cupcakes, and my friend's response to this was to ask if I am interested in some unwanted energy drinks he has in his fridge and then advise me to go blog, which I think actually meant "you are really amusing right now, but probably not in the way you are trying to be, and you should record this for posterity." Or it meant "you are hurting my head please go do something else." One of those.

So I decided to leave him alone, mostly because I needed to go to the bathroom real bad and then I had to do laundry, but while I was in the bathroom I realized I can't do laundry because I didn't charge my cell phone last night and I have to do that first or I will be ultra bored at the laundromat. So I put my phone on the charger and I decided to read this old Hyperbole and a Half post because we had also been talking about ADD and how I probably have it. And then I decided to blog but then as soon as I started writing my other friend sent me a text asking if I'm feeling better today which reminded me that I had a paranoid freakout last night which reminded me that maybe caffeine was a poor choice today. And I said I'm fine today and then she started texting me about how she is going to Phoenix Comic-Con and is going to see Leonard Nimoy and George Takei and I was like "omg you are a jerk" and she was like "I want a costume, I want a Harry Potter costume" and I advised her to go as Naked Dumbledore from Potter Puppet Pals which reminded me that I saw PPP live in December which I had totally forgotten about because mostly what I was concentrating on at that show was the fact that various strangers kept inadvertently putting their butts and crotches near my butt and crotch and probably most of them were under 18 so that was weird.

I'm pretty sure I did intend to go somewhere with this post besides recounting conversations with people who have not consented to have their conversations shared except it's probably okay because they are the only people who read this blog.

Oh! I could tell you some things I am going to be doing soon! This Saturday I am going to New Hampshire to see a friend's kids in some kind of children's art festival. The following weekend I am going to a friend's Memorial Day gathering all weekend, and then the next two weekends after that I am doing various Boston Pride things with other good friends. Yay.

Also I stopped writing just now to go to the bathroom again and while I was in the bathroom I started thinking about how I like seeing drawings of layouts of things so I decided to draw a map of my kindergarten classroom because I can still remember how everything was.

Key:

1 - Big ugly pink carpet square on which we had morning circle and also where we had to do these evil "games" you played by yourself that no one ever told me how to do and I couldn't pay attention long enough to do them and always got in trouble over
2 - Chalkboard
3 - Location of American flag which we were supposed to look at while we recited the Pledge of Allegiance but I spent most of my time trying to understand where to position my hand so that it was on my heart without being on my boob because in kindergarten I was already starting to get boobs
4 - Play kitchen which was my favorite thing in the world but I didn't want to play in there with other kids so one time I tried to drag all the kitchen things into the middle of the room and the teacher yelled at me
5 - Kidney table at which I remember getting in trouble for coloring human skin yellow and was told instead to just "leave it white"; this table is also where I tried Apple Jacks for the first time
6 - Kidney table at which we did activities where an adult actually bothered to help us so I have neutral-to-fond memories of this table
7 - Sandbox at which I used to play with plastic dinosaurs alongside two quiet boys who would've probably become my friends if elementary school culture didn't make such constant efforts to prevent boys and girls from seeing one another as potential friends, but it does so I just didn't have any friends in kindergarten
8 - Window
9 - Main doorway
10 - Wall of cubbies and coathooks
11 - Some type of computer which was crappy even by the standards of 1991, which we never got to use
12 - Big circle table which is just two kidney tables pushed together which is where we sat when I had my class birthday party to which my mother brought a cake with pink frosting even though I hated pink frosting, and every time I brought that up later in life she just started talking fondly about how this one boy in my class loved the pink frosting so much. At least until the end of 6th grade when that boy got hit by a truck and died, after which point we didn't really talk about it anymore.
13 - Door to the bathroom, in which on St. Patrick's Day we all arrived to find "leprechaun poop" (green Play-Doh) left in the toilet
14 - Counter and sink for doing arty things
15 - Kidney table at which usually an adult sat at the back and several kids sat around and did stupid "art" projects which actually involved following very precise instructions to create things which all came out identical, which to me sounds like the opposite of the definition of "art"
16 - Door to the ~secret teacher room~ where no student was allowed to go except this one time during nap when a girl for some reason started choking on a nickel
17 - Record player
18 - TV

So I know I have a bunch of friends who never went to school and a few crazy friends who really enjoyed school, so I want to clarify that despite all the talk of dinosaurs and strawberry cake and leprechaun poop, kindergarten was actually hell for me. I am pretty sure most of the psychological problems I am currently trying to overcome began in kindergarten. My teacher was mean and would yell at you and punish you for crying, which I did a lot because I had separation anxiety from being away from my mom. I got headlice one time and the teacher gave my parents a condescending lecture about how they needed to wash my hair every other day when they'd only been washing it once or twice a week, which I think is why I have decent hair in all my pictures before kindergarten and a horrible frizzy tumbleweed in all the pictures after. I was constantly in trouble for not finishing work I didn't understand how to do, and if I asked how to do it I'd get yelled at for not paying attention the first time. And my teacher was obsessed with coloring. I'd do all the problems right on a math paper but get points taken off because I forgot to color the puppy at the top. One time I wasn't allowed to have a cupcake on some kid's birthday because I didn't finish coloring a picture of McGruff. (If you don't remember McGruff, he is brown. He was the only thing in the picture. That is not a fun coloring page.)

I still hate her.

I am a special snowflake!

(Video is tangentially relevant but mostly here because I think you should watch it.)

Almost my entire life has been an internal war between trying to make myself be normal and trying to figure out why I am so weird. I've slowly been peeling off layers of the person I was raised and socialized to be, to reveal the person I actually am. When I was twelve I realized I couldn't be Baptist and when I was sixteen I realized I couldn't be Christian at all. When I was thirteen I realized I wasn't heterosexual (and then again when I was 15 and again when I was 21 - I kept going in and out of my own internal closet). When I was 17, I realized I was probably not neurotypical, something I had suspected even as a little kid. I always knew I hated school, but I didn't quit until I was 16 and I didn't find the unschooling community until I was 22. And, since this is mainly a blog for close friends, I may as well come out and say that in the past year I have discovered I am not cisgender (meaning: my body says I should be a woman, but my sense of self says I am not.)

The process of figuring out who I am has mainly been a matter of hearing the right words. I've felt weird and funny and square-peggish my whole life but I couldn't know who I was without the words. I knew what my spiritual beliefs were but I didn't have the word "Unitarian"; as soon as I learned it I immediately knew what I was. I knew what sorts of people I found attractive but I didn't have the idea of "queer" (as opposed to lesbian or bisexual); once I did, I knew that was me. Sometimes I had half the idea but it wasn't enough. For example, I had the word "trans", and while I was inexplicably drawn to it I didn't see myself there, but the word "genderqueer" struck my soul like a bell. I had the word "autism" and I knew it was like me, but I didn't have concepts like "Asperger's" or "sensory integration disorder" or "highly sensitive person"; once I knew those, I knew where I fit. And I knew I left school to learn on my own, but I didn't have any word for what I was doing ("dropout" only being a word for what I wasn't doing).

Each of these discoveries has freed me initially, but the problem is that claiming them requires a lot of self-confidence that I don't always have. They're not only outside the mainstream, they're outside the words for being outside the mainstream! I'm not straight, neurotypical, schooled, religious, or a cis woman, but nor am I gay, homeschooled, atheist, or a textbook-approved sort of trans or autistic person. It takes a lot of courage to accept yourself as being outside the mainstream, but it takes even more to embrace living in all these in-between spaces. I don't do well with being in-between, and I've spent a lot of time trying to force myself to be completely gay or completely a boy, telling myself I'm either more disabled than I am or not different at all, and so on. One of the hardest things about collecting so many labels is that you tend to get accused of just wanting to be special and unique, of just wanting attention. No one's ever directly accused me of those things, but I've definitely thrown that accusation at myself. The first time I told someone I was questioning my gender identity I spent the rest of the day telling myself I was "such a fucking girl" and that I had some nerve coming out to a "real" trans person. I've spent the last eight years going back and forth on whether I'm "impaired" enough to call myself autistic, which results in long periods of denying and neglecting my needs until I sort of shut down and become impaired. And of course there's all the times I ignore my spiritual needs (admitting you go to any sort of church or believe in anything is just not cool in a lot of the circles I run in) until I have an existential crisis and become deeply depressed.

So I'm trying to start treating myself better and taking my needs more seriously. And maybe where that starts is by standing up and saying, goddammit, I'm weird. I like wearing nail polish while being called "he", I could spend the rest of my life listening to music in a rocking chair in the dark and be happy, I'm agnostic with regard to the fairies at the bottom of the garden, I'm attracted to quite random sorts of people with little regard to what genitalia they have, I think K12 school ruins kids and higher ed perpetuates the kyriarchy. I don't do any of these things to get attention, I do them because they come naturally to me, because they're what I enjoy doing or what I genuinely believe. But if I need to seek attention and make a fuss in order to have the right to do them, then I will fucking well do that. I believe in a world where everyone is free to be exactly as weird as they are, and if I'm going to help build that world, I need to start by living it myself.

Gratitude Post

So, my friend/mom of two of my friends (that is hella awkward wording but I'm never sure how to express being friends with a specific member of a whole family I love) posts a list of five things she is grateful for at the end of each day. I love that idea, but I am horrible at doing anything on a daily or weekly basis (see Exhibit A: this blog). But since I'm in a happy, lovey mood today I'm going to do one big fat list of many, many things I am really enjoying in life right now, in no particular order:

The really genuinely sweet kids I babysit (when I say sweet, keep in mind one of them is a 14 year old boy, so that's saying something)

"Tension Tamer" tea, of which I presently have a mug which is larger than my head

Housemates who have my back when other people are not so nice

Lavender incense

A rapidly increasing understanding of "love" and "friendship" as meaning so much more than anything in our culture ever tells us they should

Living in the part of the country I wanted to live in ever since I was a kid, seeing beautiful houses everywhere I go, feeling the seasons change (especially to spring!)

Looking in the mirror and genuinely liking what I see

Spending lots of time recently with people I really love

Rediscovering my love of creating music and art - I honestly don't feel whole without them

Being *thisclose* to driving again, but also appreciating how nice my ass looks I feel after walking two miles a day

Being called Elisha - finally for the first time in my life, being proud when I say my name, when other people say my name, when I write it, when I see it written...

Living in a nice cozy basement - yes, I actually like living down here!

Earbuds that don't fucking fall out of my ears every few seconds

My beautiful rainbow bracelet that my Buncy made me, even though it currently has an unsolvable knot in the cord

Finally having an appointment to start therapy

Feeling loved, respected and understood

This was going to be longer but Buncy and Roni and Fez got online and totally ruined my blogging mojo. I am grateful for them anyway though :p

I really need to blog but there is a horrible clacking noise outside

This is a visual representation of what my brain is currently capable of being aware of. Think of it like one of those horrible tag clouds, except clicking on it won't force you to post it on your Facebook with a link to my blog (OR WILL IT?!):

I feel kind of bad now because I opened this with a mildly amusing MSPaint image and probably made you think I was going to write something quirky and whimsical that might make you think I was ripping off Allie Brosh or The Oatmeal, but instead I'm going to write about how I paid a bunch of bills today and how I'm mentally unstable and need therapy.

:D!!!!

No, I really did pay a bunch of bills today. That is the good news. I paid the property tax on my house in Florida, which had been hanging over my head like an angry frowning cloud of doom, and also my cell phone bill, and I put insurance on my car which I was supposed to do like four months ago. You would think after getting that many things off my chest my emotional state would be similar to that of Jimmy Buffet on laughing gas, but instead I am sitting here fending off an anxiety attack because:

• My housemates decided to listen to "Struttin' That Ass" while I was trying to decipher an insurance form
• Someone on Tumblr said something irritating
• While I was trying to complain to a friend about the thing on Tumblr that was irritating, Google Talk decided to shit its pants
  
• CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK

White people problems, I have them.

But no, seriously, I am way way oversensitive and have actually been having a really hard time emotionally these days. I am going to call tomorrow and try to make a therapy appointment. I've needed to do that for a long time, for various reasons, but lately I'm just freaking out way too often. The other night my roommate found me weeping on the couch for reasons I can't even remember now, although I'm pretty sure they boiled down to "everyone hates me and I will die alone". All of my emotional crises boil down to that, even when someone is clearly sitting right there demonstrating that they care about me.

The thing is, when I'm emotionally healthy I can be remarkably clearheaded, intuitive, even wise; I'm good at defending my beliefs, and people around me are even convinced I possess some sort of emotional tenacity that exceeds that of most people. When I'm emotionally healthy. When I'm not, which is far more of the time than I would like it to be, I am deeply insecure and ready to believe the worst of people. The more clear it would be to an unbiased observer that a person loves me, the more I become convinced they actually hate me and find me annoying and want me to go away. This of course tends to be really hurtful to those people because they are trying so hard to show they love me and I'm basically like "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" But the thing is, in that mental state, I really can't. No matter how loud or how often they express it. And that's scary.

So I'm going to get into some therapy. I really wish I had enough capacity for self-love* to be doing it for my own sake, but really I just want to stop hurting the people I love. In the meantime, I am trying to get into some more hobbies. I obtained a guitar via the means of someone in my house going "Here you can have this guitar nobody uses it," and I'm learning to play very slowly. I reorganized the craft closet so I can find art supplies when I want them. I'm trying to figure out how to get Minecraft to work on my computer, and I restarted Pokemon Pearl because I'm too cheap to buy the new gen. I've also been thinking my brain and body need more exercise, so I've been looking at math and physics videos on Khan Academy, and I want to find some sort of sport or martial art or dance or thing to learn. Anything to occupy myself with things that make me happy instead of just ruminating over all my fears all the time.


*Shut up, Kyle**

**I really enjoy the fact that adding a footnote telling Kyle to shut up resulted in Kyle following my blog

Weird Kids

Last night out of nowhere I had this sudden memory of my two best friends from second grade.

One was a girl, I'll call her D, who I was in Girl Scouts with. She was extremely tomboyish, and for a couple years in elementary school she asked everyone to call her a very boyish name because she said she was supposed to be born a boy. We used to play at each other's houses all the time and she taught me how to do cool stuff like climb trees and build forts and pee in the woods. She was also kinda mean and would tell me lies just because she knew I was too trusting and would believe them, or would make me do stuff "or I'm not your friend anymore". At the time I was too naive to realize it, but when I look back at things that happened at her house I'm pretty sure her stepfamily was abusing her in some way. She moved away in middle school, and I've never been able to track her down again.

The other was a boy, we'll call him B, who was older than everyone else because he'd repeated a grade. B was very shy and bad at sports, and only seemed to make friends with girls. He was an adorable, sweet boy who D and I both always had a crush on and would fight over sometimes. I caught up with him at my favorite gay bar a few years ago and gave him a hug. He's still sweet, but his life doesn't seem to have gotten much easier since second grade.

I think about childhood and childhood friends a lot, but what struck me was how all us kids who were so queer (or at least got treated like queers) found each other and stuck together. And I started thinking about my other friends in elementary school. There was my best friend S who was so hyperactive most people couldn't stand her (I thought she was fun). Then there was my fourth grade posse: MM, who had an extremely odd sense of humor; her best friend R, who was a boy who took gymnastics and, like B, had only female friends; and J, whose dad was in prison. There was MH, who was as poor as I was and whose mom I later found out was schizophrenic like my mom. (Her mom, at one point, was my mom's only friend.) Also in my life were the class "fat kid" J who once begged me to be his friend because nobody else would; and RM, who once threw a desk at a teacher and eventually got put in classes for the "severely emotionally disturbed". I was never close friends with either of them but I always thought they were nice, sweet boys who didn't deserve to be treated like they were. Later, my best friends were SB and SG; the former was the only Jew in our whole town, the latter had a delicate family situation and was being controlled to within an inch of her life all the way to adulthood. Both were "goth kids" who couldn't fit into the extremely Christian culture in our school.

My whole life my friends have been the people who weren't hanging out with anybody else. I just naturally do that; I go past the big crowd and find the people sitting on the edge with no one to talk to. I don't do it out of pity, and I didn't as a kid. Those are just the people I most want to be around. As a kid I absorbed a lot of cultural messages that said this is just proof that I was only good enough to make friends with people who are desperate for friends. But maybe that's my gift. Maybe going directly to the people who are invisible (or visible for the wrong reasons) to everyone else and finding something good in them is what I'm good for, what I've always been good for. I feel like this is coming across as "oh look what a do-gooder I am, being nice to the weird kids" and that's not what I'm trying to say at all. I'm saying I love the weird kids *for* being weird, not in spite of it. What I'm trying to do is remind myself that I matter. I'm trying to look at the little child that I once was and see what's really special about her the same way I would do with a child in my life now. And I think maybe that's it. That little kid I used to be was always going around loving people who thought nobody would love them. And she never had any idea how important that was.

Hi! (Why I Have Not Been Blogging)

Yeah, so I seem to have totally ditched BOW'11 the last few weeks. I didn't forget, exactly, I've just had other stuff on my mind. The last couple of weeks I've become unhealthily absorbed by one large, looming issue in my life. I spend pretty much all my time thinking about this issue, to the point where I have no other real hobbies or activities going on at the moment. This has resulted in me being a bit depressed and very anxious. It has also resulted in me being overly needy and clingy toward the few people in my life who are like me in this way, while shutting out the ones who aren't. (I'm sorry for being so vague - if I gave any details you'd be able to work out what was going on.) It's even gotten to the point where I am focusing on this issue at work rather than on how well I am doing my job.

I'm trying to accept myself where I am, by realizing that during this phase in my life it's natural to be consumed by this issue and to cling to those friends. I'm also trying to ground myself a bit and remind myself that there are plenty of other aspects to my life and who I am, so that even when this one issue gets rough I have other things that can make me happy. But it's really, really difficult to think about anything else. I don't have much emotional energy.

So that's what's up with me lately, and why I haven't been especially present or interesting to talk to. Once I work through some shit I will be my old self again. Or, hopefully, I will be my new self and be secure and happy that way.

I promise my life is more fun to live than to read about

So I am about due for another post that is not about alpacas and I think what I want to do is show you a little bit of how I live. I wish this post had some pictures or something but it does not. Weep.

I get up usually around 10am, sometimes earlier if I need to go to the laundromat or do other errands before work, or if I am woken up at 9am by a text message from someone who has no sense of what are appropriate texting hours, Valerie.

Then I check my email and go take a shower and maybe eat something small, get dressed, feed the cats, etc. I leave the house generally at 11:30 or 12 and walk about a mile to the train. On the way there I stop at either 7-Eleven or Dunkin' Donuts to stuff my face LIKE AN AMERICAN. I get on the train at 12:30-ish, go a couple stops over and then walk a few more blocks to my job.

I babysit and clean house for a living, but I don't have my kids until 3, so for two hours I am alone in the house. I do menial chores like washing dishes, folding laundry, and so forth. While I am cleaning I listen to stuff. I used to listen to Radio Free Burrito until my iPod died a tragic death, so now I've been listening to my Barenaked Ladies station on Pandora on my phone instead, or to country music on the cable music channels. (Yes, country. Deal with it.) If there is an hour's worth of laundry to fold (in a house with three kids you would be surprised how often this happens) I watch Doctor Who while I do it.

At 3:00 I get J10 off the bus and read the notes her teachers have sent home from school. I get out her Dynavox (a computer she uses to communicate) and put it on her wheelchair for her, and then we set up to play Monopoly. This takes an extremely long time because she likes me to read all the instructions to her, and to explain them in detail. Around this time T14 gets home and gives J10 a hug and then goes off to play video games for the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes he brings a bunch of friends over and I get to work in a house full of happy, giggling teenagers. Those are my favorite days.

About halfway through playing Monopoly it will either be time to take J10 to the bathroom, which takes a long time, or she will stop playing and decide she wants me to show her how to spell all of the words on the Monopoly board. The rest of the afternoon is usually taken up with folding even more laundry (her choice), giving her medicine through a G-tube, and putting her in her prone stander to watch Barney. Generally this is the same Barney video every day. I've had dreams about that video. She has dozens of them, but she wants to watch the same one over and over.

Once the parents arrive and I've given them any relevant updates on what the kids have been doing, I go back to the train and either walk or catch a bus home from there. I'm usually home by 7, and unless it's my night to cook dinner, I go straight to my room to decompress a bit and chat with friends. This goes on until either something interesting is happening upstairs (I live with a lot of people, so sometimes people are hanging out) or the people I am talking to go to bed. So around 9 or 10 I either venture upstairs or decide I am feeling hyper and need to listen to music and jump around for awhile. If I am being responsible I will do some housework around this time. And then it's round 2 of chatting with friends, usually either west coast people or my friends in Singapore and Australia (since it's late morning/early afternoon for them). I get to bed normally between midnight and 2am, sometimes later if interesting shit is going on.

Those are work days. Days off are spent doing errands, playing video games, blogging, and hanging with people. My life is kinda predictable and routine, but that doesn't mean I don't have a LOT of fun. I love my job, my house, my friends, and even my walk to work each day if the weather doesn't blow goats. Yay.

Alpaca!

My teacher died and I am sad and will also be doing many things this weekend in between being sad, so this week I am going to simply share with you some fun facts I have just learned about alpacas. See, I am only just learning about alpacas, so we can learn TOGETHER. Unless you are some sort of alpaca expert in which case you will probably find this post unamusing and maddeningly full of errors.

Fact #1: Alpacas are totally adorable and I want to hug them.

Their huggability is actually science.

Fact #2: Despite the apparently obvious sheepliness in the above photo, alpacas are not sheep.

They are however related to llamas and CAMELS.


Fact #3: Immediately before being shorn, alpacas resemble giant puffy sheepdogs.

An actual unshorn alpaca

Fact #4: Immediately after being shorn, alpacas resemble Colin Mochrie.

An actual shorn alpaca

Fact #5: I am just going to directly quote this fact from Wikipedia: "Because of the high price commanded by alpaca on the growing North American alpaca market, illegal alpaca smuggling has become a growing problem."

illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling

Fact #6: I am tired of learning fun facts about alpacas and I want to go back to bed.

GOODNIGHT INTERNET SCOUTS

Re: My Brains

In a recent post I alluded to my gifted teacher (as in, teacher of the gifted program, although she is also gifted at teaching), who is in hospice. I was in the gifted program from 2nd grade until I left high school, so I spent lots of time in her class. (Lots, but never enough.) We did lots of great activities in there, like logic sheets (you know, those things that are like "Benny sat next to Mimi, who sat next to the person who ordered pasta with meatless balls" and then you have to figure out who ordered what and who sat where?) and playing with magnets and making our own bubble solution. Another thing we did a lot of in her class was personality tests, so I've always had a fondness for them.

I'm thinking about this right now because Whimsy posted about Myers-Briggs types, and out of all the various personality tests I've taken, I've always found that one to be the most useful. I almost always come out an INFP (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving), although occasionally I'll come out INFJ (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging). In all honesty, I feel I do a lot more judging than perceiving, and in reading the descriptions, it seems that I am opinionated like an INFJ but disorganized and "floaty" like an INFP.

Here are some things I find fit me very well from these types:

• "They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things." (INFP)
• "They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they're feeling on paper." (INFP)
• "Situations which are charged with conflict may drive the normally peaceful INFJ into a state of agitation or charged anger. They may tend to internalize conflict into their bodies, and experience health problems when under a lot of stress. "
• "Because the INFJ has such strong intuitive capabilities, they trust their own instincts above all else. This may result in an INFJ stubborness and tendency to ignore other people's opinions. They believe that they're right."
• "INFJs are rarely at complete peace with themselves - there's always something else they should be doing to improve themselves and the world around them."
  

And stuff I find to be less fitting:

• "Generally thoughtful and considerate, INFPs are good listeners and put people at ease." [I would call myself a willing listener, but not exactly a good one. I zone out easily.]
• "In conflict situations, INFPs place little importance on who is right and who is wrong." [hahahaha no.]
• "On the other hand, INFPs make very good mediators, and are typically good at solving other people's conflicts" [EMPHATIC NO.]

So what I gather from combining the two types is I live in my head a lot, I am ~thuper thenthitive~ and I have a smidge of a messiah complex. All in all, that sounds absolutely correct.

An interesting thing about INFP and INFJ is that, while websites usually claim these types to be rare, an extremely disproportionate number (maybe 80% or more) of my close friends fall into these types. (Another close friend is an INTJ, which is also supposed to be rare.) I suppose it's just a matter of a bunch of sensitive nerds banding together, but it's interesting to think about, anyway. In fact, I have very few close friends who are extroverts, and I've found the few who are to be the relationships that have taken the most work (on my part) to maintain. That doesn't mean I don't like extroverts, just that I relate to people on a very different level than they usually do, and it's a lot harder to find the place where we can meet in the middle.

Another personality thingy I find pretty interesting is the Enneagram types, of which I seem to be a Four. I rambled on about Myers-Briggs quite a bit so I won't go into this much except to say that the description fits me very well, but that I don't like Enneagram as much because it focuses too much on your weaknesses and what you can change about yourself, where I feel Myers-Briggs tends to be approached more from an angle of embracing who you are. In any case, the tests are fun and can help you figure out how you relate to the world, and how best to connect with other people whose personalities are different from yours.

This post is pretty boring if you are not me

This morning I woke up feeling angsty. The specifics aren't really relevant, but basically I was comparing myself negatively to other people and making myself feel inferior. I hate when I get like that because it can easily turn into a spiral of "everything about me sucks and is wrong and everybody hates me!"

But this time I didn't let it spiral, because I have to work today and I'm moving this weekend and I need to stay calm and not waste my emotional energy on stupid things. I decided to do a meditation instead. And I'm not very good at meditating, but I did actually manage to unstick myself a bit. I still feel sort of crappy, but what I did become aware of is how rarely I feel that way these days. I mean, I still get down pretty often, but a few years ago I basically lived my entire life comparing myself to other people and feeling bad about it. Everything I did was an effort to be "better" than I am, which meant I could never spend time developing who I actually was. I'm not sure how I got most of the way past that, but it seems like I have, since feeling that way is now an unusual thing instead of my default state.

My God, It's Full of Words!

Have you ever seen The Fairly Oddparents? It's one of my favorite cartoons to come out... I wanted to say recently, but then I realized it's at least ten years old now. But anyway, there is one episode when Cosmo and Wanda (the fairies) can't grant wishes for a long time, and the inability to let the magic out causes them to get "magical backup" and explode into a pile of fairy dust.

This is basically what happens to me when I cannot write.

Usually it is lack of either time or inspiration that keeps me from writing. Lately, that is not the problem at all. The problem is that I feel like my head is so crammed full of thoughts that I cannot possibly organize them into words. Like, if you have a pot half full of soup, you can stir it easily, but if the pot is totally crammed full of ingredients you can only sort of feebly nudge it around. Right now my brain is like a pot crammed way too full of vegetables without any broth for them to float around in. And I need to dump it out.

But brains are harder to dump out than pots of soup, because there are only a few ways to dump them. You can do art if you're good at that. I'm not. I do words. But when I get magical backup I cannot make my thoughts into words. I have no idea if most people are like this or if it's an Aspie thing, but my thoughts don't start as words. They start as kind of incoherent goop and I have to translate them into words to get them to other people. Which is why I write more than I talk, because that gives me time to think about what I'm doing. It gives me a backspace key. I learned to write because I need to write, because I just can't fully express myself verbally sometimes.

But lately I'm having the same trouble with writing that I have with speaking. I try other ways to empty my brain. I tried meditating today but I ended up thinking too much and giggling at the way the guy doing the podcast says "your body." (Relax your booo-dy. You might start to feel warm in your boooo-dy.) I tried drinking some Kahlua after going down into the cellar and trying to fix the problem keeping us from having running water and realizing more than one pipe is broken. I try watching TV or listening to soft music or listening to loud music. The worst part is, I felt lonely today but I could barely talk to anyone because I just couldn't make the words. Nothing is helping. I wish my brain was like a trumpet and had a spit valve I could just dump out.

And I don't know how I've written so many words about not being able to make any words. I just have too many damn feelings. Feelings about my family, my friends, my job, the house I live in here, my house in Florida that I want to go visit soon and get some more stuff. Feelings about my body and my identity. Feelings about linguistics and architecture and middle school. They're just all so tangled and I can't sort them out and I can't put them anywhere until I do.

Love and Star Stuff

I'm thinking about love tonight.

I'm thinking about somebody I love, who loved me as a child even though she didn't have to. Somebody who's fighting for her life. Somebody who's the last person alive who helped raise me. Somebody it's been too long since I last saw. And I'm crying and knowing I might never see her again, because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you love them and you can't tell them and you sit there and love them anyway.

I'm thinking about somebody else I love, who I love as a friend because that's the only kind of love they need from me. Somebody who I can see myself in, and by loving them I can't help but learn to love myself. And they know who they are, but I hold my feelings back to keep from ruining the beautiful thing we do have, because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you love people the way they need to be loved instead of the way you want to.

I'm thinking about somebody else I love, who I love as a child even though I don't have to. Somebody I could think of as just a paycheck, but instead I give her everything I've got, even though it's gonna hurt because someday I will leave and go on to other work. I give her everything I've got because that's what you do when you love somebody. Sometimes you cram as much love into a little heart as you can in the hopes that when you move on they'll still have enough stored up to last awhile.

I learned that last bit from all the people who loved my heart when it was little and then moved on to go be star stuff again. I learn how to love all the time, mostly from people who never came all the way down to Earth to start with. Those are the easiest people to love, for me. The people who landed and never shook off all the stardust. They let me know it's okay to hang onto some of mine.

I LIKE BLOGS

So I'm in eleven million places on the interwebs, but all of my other blogs are about stuff, and mostly they're like serious activist shit. But actually my favorite kind of blogs to read are ones where people just talk about random things they have been doing or thinking about, and my friend Whimsy is doing Blog Once Weekly in '11, or BOW'11, and I was like what the heck I'll play too. Technically I've ALREADY FAILED, since I am starting late, but whatever. I always fail things like this anyway. The point is, I will be blogging more than I would have if I didn't do it.

This would probably be a good time to point out that the writing on this blog will be more, err, loose than my usual writing. Which means abusing run-on sentences a lot. ALSO CAPSLOCK. I AM SORRY.

So, internets, here is what I am up to these days:

• WORK. Lots of work. Okay, really I only work 20 hours a week most weeks, but if there's a holiday or a school vacation or a snow day (I babysit) then I have to work extra. Like tomorrow is MLK Day so I'm working nearly ten hours. Also I have a crazy ass long commute. I spend almost as much time commuting as I do actually working. I am looking for solutions to this, including ways to make my time on the train more useful, which is difficult since I often get motion sick trying to read or write on the train.
• Church stuff. I recently found a fantastic UU church and began singing in the choir, so I have choir practice twice a week, plus actual church, plus recently I've had new member classes (yes I joined the choir before I joined the church, because CART BEFORE HORSE IS HOW I LIVE MY LIFE).
• Tumblr, which is actually more important than it sounds because it is where I "study" social justice issues. Recently I have been reading up on cultural appropriation and Native American cultures because of a discussion that came around about mohawk haircuts. Really. (Before you ask: No, I will not put a link to my Tumblr here. Privacy, yo.)
  
• Looking for a new home! I'm checking out local co-ops and other cheap, progressive housing arrangements. I recently applied for one I really, really wanna get into. I'd be living with like a dozen other people in an enormous house. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure a TON of people applied so I probably won't get the spot, but I'm hoping.
• BEING SICK. Aside from a few quick forays out to help a depressed friend, interview for the aforementioned co-op and buy jugs of water after a pipe burst in my house, I've spent the entirety of the last five days in bed. I have a chronic health problem that tends to flare up around this time of year, and it makes me really nervous that I'm going to lose my job or something if it gets too bad. I'm trying not to worry about it too much, but it is stressful and it means I have to rest more than I really would like.
  
• Hanging out with people, when I have the time and the "spoons" (see here: The Spoon Theory).

And you people wonder why I am so behind on Doctor Who. Sheesh.