The Orange by Wendy Cope

attempting vulnerability, making something real

[bibibtch]

I would let her rip open my rib cage and build a home there

[bibibtch]

I so often hear trans women hate the way they look, the way they sound, the way they move, the way they take up space, even their own appetites.

And I watch and I think to myself, how do they not understand that is the experience of every woman on the face of the planet. We all believe we are women wrong.

We are all taught that we are woman wrong

[bibibtch]

the way her stubble scrapes against my skin

that is a religion unto itself

I don't have time to do it justice

The vulnerability

The imperfection

The beauty

The way it's real

Her stubble scrapes my skin and my brain screams

The love

The love

The love

[bibibtch]

untitled

I have seen

the most beautiful woman

to grace the face of the earth

this beauty was not apparent to me

through mirror or lense or naked eye

but rather was found--forged--

in the curl of her fingers around a paintbrush

the calloused pads on hands that create

the reckless laughter without care for an imaginary voyeur

I could not see her beauty until I knew her, loved her

[bibibtch]

I am not going to let the kindness people show me go unremarked upon. It is the most important thing in the world. I will not let kindness be viewed as mundane.

Kindness is a radical, and deeply political act of resistance against a system that would have us fight each other instead of protect one another.

Kindness is solidarity.

Kindness is unified protests.

Kindness is wading through the bueracratic red tape to call your senator.

Kindness is the most important thing I have ever experienced in my life.

[bibibtch]

actually I am watching my bestfriend warp and distort into someone I don't recognize anymore in real time

loosing a frienship and at this point I am unsure it existed to begin with

was I her friend or just a coveted possession?

did she listen to anything I ever said or just wait for her turn to talk?

was she excited to tell me about something she cared about or did she think I was stupid and needed to be told what to think?

did she buy that because she thought it would fit or was it an excuse to get me into something she thought would be nice to look at?

did she say it unthinkingly or did she say it to tear me down?

was my exfriend talking behind my back or was she socially isolating me?

is she trying to get better and asking for help or is she weaponizing incompetence?

was I being dramatic when I said the way she was treating me as a live-in cleaning lady AND ALSO making "jokes" about revoking my greencard was racist?

was the critisism of my attempting to cover an insecurity a rejection of the beauty industry or her way of telling me I'm stupid and vain and should be grateful for the attention she was throwing my way?

I am painstakingly reliving every single interaction we've ever had and the longer I look, the less it seems like she cares.

and of course--OF COURSE--she's just going to scapegoat the fact my girlfriend moved in. Of course it's the "scary angry transwomans" fault.

Can't just brush shit off as me being dramatic anymore because there is a witness who isn't just going to be a passive bystander? Oh the horror /sarcasm

Maybe she(my bestfriend) is fucking mistreating me and has been the whole time. Maybe she was happier before but I was fucking miserable. And more than that--why does her happiness get to be contigent on my suffering?

Why did she just not fucking care that she was hurting me?

Why does she get to ignore every single one of my wants and needs infavor of her own personal comfort?

I have killed myself trying to make her happy and it was never fucking good enough and now I am too fucking tired and disabled to do it anymore and of course that makes me evil.

My health issues of course are something that I made up to get out of spending time with her because it makes perfect sense that I would spend tens of thousands of dollars pursuing adequate medical care and endure numerous invasive procedures just cause I don't want to hang out /sarcasm

I'm so tired. I'm having seizures on the regular and can barely scrape up the energy to go to work, I just managed to get out of my very abusive birth families living situation. I'm already constantly paranoid and fatigued and trying to recover. I thought she cared and understood but more and more everything just looks like she's been exploiting me.

I am so tired of people treating me like a decoration. I am not some fucking ornament you get to parade around and show off.

I am a real, whole, entire person.

A person with needs and wants and desires of my own.

I get to make my own choices and be selfish actually.

And maybe it's not even selfish to lay down when I get home from work instead of playing computer games with you.

I am tired of being treated like I am horrible and cruel for trying to protect my own health.

I thought I was finally safe to act like a person and the moment I quit being a doormat she made it a problem.

I shouldn't fucking be hiding between the mattress and boxspring from her like I did from my alcoholic Father when I was 6.

I really fucking trusted her and it feels like she has taken every scrap of vulnerability I have ever shown her and begun to leverage it against me.

And I am so afraid to keep replaying our interactions like I have been because I geniunely think she may have been hurting me and I am blocking it out. But I can't actually fucking talk about it and be taken seriously because I'm just some poor crazy little schizo freak girl who can't be trusted to narrate her own experience.

I am so tired and afraid and I want out. I need help and no one fucking wants to help people like me, just drug us up into quiet little victims or put us in fucking institutions where polite society can forget about us and leave us to rot.

I'm so tired

I'm so afraid

I just want out

I just want to be safe

I don't want to be living with her anymore but I don't have the means to get away

I just want it to be fucking over and I don't know how I am going to survive 14 more months of this

[bibibtch]

did Christ hate his Mother for watching him suffer at the Fathers hands?

I hated my mother more for not protecting me than I hated my Father for making me bleed

did he resent her tears and deride them as false?

my mother couldn't have loved me, you don't love people and watch them suffer like that

Did he call his Mothers name at the end? Did he wait for her comfort? Did he let go of that resentment and want nothing more than to hide his face against her like a child?

is the way that God made his child suffer part of the image I was made in?

[bibibtch]

looking through old photos from my childhood and seeing the way the most beautiful woman ever to have lived (my mother) used to hold me, used to look at me, used to love me

realizing I did something to mess it all up

[bibibtch]

Everyone wants to talk about the mortifying ordeal of being known. About how love is embarassing. About how it's cringey about the vulnerability and whatever.

I'm over it. Love is hard. I was conditioned to protect myself in a way that made love impossible because no one knew me.

I'm over that

I will not be ashamed of loving without reserve

I am going to love people and my life and no one gets to stop that

I am going to be vulnerable and weird and cringey and uncool and earnest and one of the only people in the world that will experience love

Because I am going to let people know me

I am going to get to know myself

[bibibtch]

I touch her face

I count her eyelashes

I try to find a word to describe hazel

I trace her jawline

I revel in the way her stubble scraps against my skin

I hold her hand

I kiss her nose

I make her a cup of coffee--I try my best to get it right

I hold her while she sleeps

I remind her to take her medicine

I listen when she talks

I planted liliac bushes for her

I've listened to so many albums for her

I learned to make curry because she mentioned missing it(I burnt my fingers frying the Katsu but the way she smiled in seared into my brain)

I stay up late to dry her tears

I wait to split the cheesecake in the fridge with her(cheesecake is my favorite)

I buy the green tea icecream (I can't stand green tea but it's her favorite)

I show up for her

I'm in her life on purpose

I finally told her that I love her for the first time and she was suprised

[bibibtch]

I spent so long hiding everything about who I am that I don't even fucking know who I am

[bibibtch]

maybe love is terminal

at least the way I love her is

[bibibtch]

I crave a world full of people so far removed from the kind of violence that I have experienced that they could not comprehend the cruelty I have seen firsthand.

I was trying to explain this to my partner, and I used myself as the measuring stick because she--I feel--understands my character. And so I said I wanted a world full of people so gentle and kind and good, with standards so high they would look back and think me the devil himself.

How do I explain this is not a form of self hatred? but rather a love for her and every other person I have ever been close enough to to hold.

I want a higher standard. And I know that as I am now, I do not measure up.

[bibibtch]

I think I would've liked to have been born a man. Not because I want to be a man, but because I think I could want to be a woman if I killed the voyuer in my head. And I am afraid that I will never be able to kill that voyuer without ensuring that they never existed at all.

[bibibtch]

my childhood was shaped by fear with no tears to cry, no voice to scream with, no words to describe it

All I knew was the dark quiet places no one else wanted to go, with the endless well of desire for something I did not understand, and a bone deep certainty that the things that I craved were not awarded to people like me

[bibibtch]

i used to have a mother that loved me

[bibibtch]

for so long I thought that I just wanted an older sister. I really thought I just wanted an older sister.

I wanted someone to talk to me about life and give me advice and say this is what to look out for. Men do these things to people who are born like us, here is how we stay safe. I wanted an older sister to lay with me when things were hard and tell me it's going to be okay, that I don't have to figure it out alone. I wanted someone else to do the laundry while I played and pack lunch for me and make sure I did my homework.

I thought that I wanted an older sister but really I wanted a mother that cared.