amy rachel

femme trans thoughts

[rei-of-sunsh1ne]

Share this as much as you can everyone!

Got this from: Friend from discord

[thegingerpowers]

Forget it. It’s fine. 

[amyrachelena]

21 Lighthearted Questions

1] What's the last thing you did that made you feel proud of yourself?

One thing I’ve always struggled with is doing my own nails. When I could afford it, I preferred to get mani-pedis, but with the costs, especially if I wanted to do extensions, I went back to doing them myself, with mixed results. Then about 5 days ago, I tried a different method, and they turned out beautifully!

Achievement unlocked!

2] What was your last inner giggle about?

Last week, I bagged up for donation a bunch of clothes that no longer fit (lost 60 pounds), are not my style anymore, or aren’t pretty/sexy/feminine enough, and then looking at what’s left of my wardrobe, had this sudden moment of giggly relief.

3] What's your favorite flower?

Hyacinth. Beautiful, soft, and smells like happiness. 

4] A thing you accomplished today?

Added ¾” wedges to my wedge sneakers, because I’m like that.

5] What's the most beautiful word in the English language?

Yes.

6] Favorite way of dancing?

Slow, held close.

7] If a rogue managed to unlock access to the secret chamber of your home/lair/mansion, what would they find?

A somewhat embarrassing number of kinky toys.

8] What’d be your perfect sleep accommodation?

Spooned with my lover. I’m the inner spoon.

9] Favorite fruit?

Dark sweet cherries.

10] If you could grant one wish to another person, who would that be?

Mom.

11] One thing you like about your physical appearance?

Okay, I love my boobs, but I like my legs better. Am I cheating by mentioning two things (or technically four things)?

12] One personal trait you like having?

I’m compulsively creative. I feel life would be incredibly dull without that.

13] What happened the last time you got goose bumps?

It’s August, really hot, and I’m moving boxes into the new place, I’m all grungy and sweaty in a tank and cut-offs, and a neighbor guy chooses that moment to offer a hello from across the fence, so after a polite exchange of greetings, I escape inside to hide, and the AC is running…and goosebumps.

14] What's a movie you feel deserves more love?

These are not my faves, but they’re obscure.

Just One of the Guys. I first saw this like 15 years ago. The concept is a cis girl pretends to be a guy in high school because reasons, but it resonated for me because it soooo captures my high school anxiety (trans girl in denial, desperate to convince everyone I was just a normal guy). Except this is silly funny. If only I could’ve taken off my costume as easily as she does.

For horror fans: Assassination Nation. Major CW—the horror plot is driven by violent misogyny and transmisogyny. But this is actually a very well made extremely dark satire wrapped in horror.

Oh, and Hari Nef is in it, and she’s really great. I don’t know of any other movie that has a trans woman character (played by a trans woman) in this kind of storyline (no spoilers!). Little clippy:

15] What's a song you need people to hear at least once?

During transition, I heard “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon. It’s from like a million years ago, about when he left The Beatles (I think). But for me, I heard lyrics describing what I was experiencing during transition. (“People think I’m crazy doin' what I’m doin’…”)

16] If you were a dragon what would you horde?

Lemon popsicles.

17] What Olympic sport would you love to excel at?

Figure skating. I mean, I love skiing, but going fast is a rush for me, draws me right to the edge, and I’m afraid if I was doing it with Olympic-scale focus, I’d end up wrecking myself. Besides, figure skaters have the best outfits.

18] What do you think is the worst kind of minor inconvenience?

Pausing a movie or show while a friend uses the bathroom.

19] What's your favorite natural phenomenon?

First snow of the season. So quiet, so peaceful, so pretty.

20] Favorite childhood TV show?

TV show sucked when I was little. I pretty much hated all the shows at the time, so I spent most of my TV time watching old reruns, and I remember absolutely loving The Avengers not for the plots, which were meh, but for Emma Peele. Which is why I love this tribute song:

21] Which televised stereotypical high school group would you belong to; jock, cheerleader, goth, band geek, nerd, punk, prep, other?

The snarky sarcastic outsider, too femme for goth, with only 3 friends, us against the world.

[leggingasslover]

[thegingerpowers]

[chandelyer-deactivated20241003]

Poem Bangkok  a/w 2019 “Eternity in an hour”

[amyrachelena]

It’s like a Pride line!

[whitepeopletwitter]

[followtheravens]

To celebrate Pride month, I made these Pride cephalopods. Feel free to use any of them as icons :)

[amyrachelena]

Love these!

[amyrachelena]

So writing

So self-indulgent, in these times, to focus on writing. But writing is what I do. How I cope. How I wrap my mind around it all. Writing is not all I do, but it’s the center of me. Without writing, without being able to write, I don’t know what I’d do. I have a day job only vaguely connected to writing, but there I’m working for others, serving their interests, and there’s value in that, I enjoy making others happy, but if that was all I had, if that was my center, I think I would lose who I am. I don’t mean to disparage service or helping others. I admire it more than all things. And I’d hate to lose the opportunity to help others. But my love, my impulse since I was little and drawing pictures of houses and people and airplanes and spaceships and planets and imagining the stories behind them, the stories they told, I wanted to write, I wanted to create imagined worlds of wonder and joy and excitement and adventure.

And now, as we pull apart the hard and sticky and festering rot of injustice and work to put together a more just world, I need my brief moments of writing for self care. Sometimes it’s hard to do. I’m writing a trans romance that is pulling me apart, often painfully, but it’s a hopeful story, an optimistic story, a needed story I think, at least for me, because most trans stories that delve into trans life itself seem to be either grim reality or erotic escapism—parts of trans life that need to be told: the difficulties of being trans in a transphobic world, and the joys of sexual pleasure as trans, a subgenre that’s often appropriated and twisted into something else. These two subgenres are the ones cis authors seem to want to tell for cis audiences. But what about real trans experiences with hope, with good people, filled with joy of living, things we see so often in trans memoir but the publishing world seems not interested in when it comes to trans fiction?

And now? In this American Spring. Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. Disabled Lives Matter. We all are entitled to equal rights. For the first time in my life, maybe ever, we’re all united and increasingly aware of the intersections of injustice that affect us all. The institutions sustaining and enforcing white supremacy and patriarchy need to be dismantled. Policing needs to be reimagined from the ground up. And the same for healthcare, civil rights, and so on. In these dire times, I feel so much hope in the connections between our marginalized groups! I ride the emotional rollercoaster of hope and triumph and outrage and despair fully engaged, fully committed, because we’re all fighting not just for justice and equity as people, we’re fighting for survival as humans. This pandemic is but one we are likely to experience in our lives, and probably not the worst. Climate change is only getting started—a few storms, some heatwaves and droughts, a bit of acidification of the oceans. As melting tundra releases long-frozen surprises, as oceans can absorb no more CO2, as temperatures rise, as flora and fauna migrate toward the poles, as death zones spread around the equator, as glaciers melt and sea levels rise, we as a species are going to be tested, and we will fail if we keep focusing so much of our energy on sustaining and violently enforcing pecking orders and denying the humanity of other people.

I am not a strong person. I’m pretty fucked up actually. I have PTSD from having grown up trans, and from sexual assault as a child and as an adult. I have ADHD, only recently diagnosed. Some days I find myself so far down the rabbit hole, I don’t remember how I got there or what I was doing before. All this is not helped living under nascent fascism or the gloom of a global economic depression, the way we’re going. Still, as one marginalized person who nevertheless has privilege in other ways, I do my bit. I try. I listen. I speak out. While working, to survive. While self-caring, to survive. My self-care is writing. (And ice cream.) So I write. Which means sometimes here I post things totally detached from current events. About me. About my writing. About things within my bubble. It’s healing. It’s self-care. It’s what I need to do.

[amyrachelena]

started to update my goodreads bookshelves. damn that’s a lot of work.

[captainmarvelstan]

Carol Danvers pride icon pack [Day 15]

Reblog if you save

[bi-trans-alliance]

Mila Jam (source)

Black Trans Lives Matter.

[hymnostic]

black lives matter and pride are intrinsically linked. the black trans community have done so much for us, we owe it to them to not forget their movement this month. without black lives, there would be no pride. black lives matter, today and always

[damianimated]

Pride was always a protest.

[amyrachelena]

...and Stonewall was a trans riot.

[twitblr]

“It’s not in the budget”

[whitepeopletwitter]

[amyrachelena]

The other side of the wall

Here I am, 18 years since transition, and you’d think I’m over it. These past years, most days I didn’t even think about it. And I needed that. So healing.

But then out of the blue, something—a scene in a movie or show, a line in a book, an idle remark—sends me into reliving a moment of childhood, and I’m gone, done, crumbling inside as the pain overwhelms me. I remind myself: this is understandable, it’s classic PTSD, this is temporary. But it doesn’t help, not really. Maybe this pandemic has eroded my capacity to absorb hits like this. But I clearly still got some healing to do.

It’s absolute hell, pretending all your life. Where everything you do—every single thing—is governed by fears over how others will react if you do it wrong. I got pretty good pretending to be a boy. I was a miserable fuck. Laid back on the surface but angry inside, always so angry. I found comfort in environments with rules and minimal toxic male behavior. So band, yes. Wrestling, no. Football, fuck no. Poker, sure. Strip poker, no way. In college, I thought joining a frat would “prove” me to safety, but frat bros were sickening. They wouldn’t have me anyway, and in hindsight I’m grateful, because I think that would have pushed me into serious self harm.

When I look back, my whole pre-transition life is a dark miserable angry storm. Casually, I can recall many moments, but I picture me in them, not the him I pretended at. If I press and remember him, I start feeling nauseated.

I’m amazed that I had any friends. Then again, when I came out and transitioned, 72 out of 73 cut all ties with me, and the 1 left was only curious enough to stay in contact a couple years. He was shocked when he saw me—I think he expected him in makeup—and for a while I thought I’d kept one true friend, but when we were with my family and he was consistently and persistently misgendering me, I realized he never saw me. I stopped communicating with him.

I can’t delve further back than that without losing it. I’m a deeply damaged person.