i glance at the mirror to see if i have become a monster

s | he/him | leslie feinberg enthusiast | host of fags | url and title from journal of a transsexual | this is my blog where i write things  

[justmelookingbackatme]

Masterpost

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error

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drowning

feeling like you've stolen something

my name is a poem

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some days

listening

it wants to eat itself

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five stages of a mother's grief for her trans child

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breathless

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monster

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won't die today

sun

how long i've lived

metaphors

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Someone

break

heartbeat

[justmelookingbackatme]

we know the drill by now. another year. another birthday. it's time to get all self-reflective again.

my favorite band released an album on my birthday this year. i found them when i was thirteen and suicidal. i'm not thirteen anymore, thank god, and i think i want to live most days. i've come a long way and they've been with me through a lot of shit. the first album of theirs i listened to was called you are ok, and i think they might have been right.

it's been a terrible year for the world at large, but a pretty okay year for me. i've got a lot of really great memories. i'm making new friends. i'm still in my mush era, but i think i'm starting to grow into myself. it's slow, and it's far from linear, but it's okay. my friend left me a happy birthday voice message; "it's really good to see you thriving."

i think they might be right.

i've spent a lot of this year thinking about the future. regarding my education and career. regarding transition. it's not my strong suit. i spent so long doubting i'd make it that now i feel like i'm stumbling blind. i don't have any of my shit figured out, and that scares me a lot.

but i'm planning to stay for a while.

[justmelookingbackatme]

my mom took a photo of me, after my bat mitzvah, standing next to the tree in our front yard. i was wearing a shirt she gave me, one that used to belong to her. i didn't have a name for it, then, but i hated the way that shirt hugged my body.

my mom loved that photo of me. she said i looked so grown up.

i looked like a woman, and i hated it.

the first time i really remember being aware of my hips, aware of how i'd suddenly developed curves, i think i was ten. maybe eleven. i don't remember how i felt. i remember where i was and what i was wearing, remember looking in the mirror and noticing i was shaped differently now, but i don't remember how it made me feel. i think i was too detached from my body to feel much of anything. i think if i had felt something, i would have felt nauseous.

i found some drawings from when i was thirteen or fourteen. most girls i drew had curves. i was clearly aware of how to draw curves. but in all my self-portraits, the lines of my body were stick straight.

when i was in middle school, a girl told me she was jealous of my body. of my hourglass figure. she said i was lucky. i wanted to die.

there are shirts that i love that i can't wear because of the way they look on my body. because they make me look like a woman.

my mom asked me recently what i wanted from testosterone. and there are a lot of things i want, but the most important thing is i want to not be shaped like a woman. i don't want my body to look like the woman in that old photo. i want to grow into a version of me that doesn't want to crawl out of his own skin.

[justmelookingbackatme]

i don't quite know what i mean when i say that my other gender is butch, and i definitely don't know how to explain it to people. i'm not a woman, and definitely not a lesbian, and i'm not nonbinary either. i'm me. i'm a trans man. i'm bigender, and my other gender is butch.

my gender is the roughness of a fresh haircut. a dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. a carabiner. a muscle tank. armpit hair. old spice swagger deodorant. my gender is growing up knowing that, despite trying to wear femininity like a costume, there is something fundamentally masculine in me. my gender is butch down the bone.

[justmelookingbackatme]

I want things to be better for you than they were for me, and there will always be a part of me that resents you for it, and I hate that part of myself but I don't know how to make it go away. I want to protect you. I am so sick of throwing myself in harm's way so you don't get hurt. I don't think I could stop doing it if I tried. I don't think there is any version of me that is capable of not trying to protect you.

I don't talk to you about how I feel. I know it makes me distant. I don't know how to stop. I'm hopeless at saying how I feel, and I'm not sure I want you to know how I feel, because all of my feelings are ugly and painful and I hate living with my feelings and I don't want you to live with them too. I want to protect you.

I don't talk to you about how I feel. I know I should. But I don't know how to say it to you. I'm not sure the words exist to say it to you, and if they did, I might not say it anyway.

I help you with your math homework. I give you a ride to your friend's house. I ask you about your day. I offer to beat up the teacher who's giving you trouble. I lend you my favorite books. I let you show me your art and I tell you how amazing it is. I do a million little things and I wonder if you're able to hear what I'm saying without me saying it. I want to do everything right for you. You deserve better than me. You are a part of me. I would do anything for you, anything, without hesitation.

I should tell you, but I've never been able to say it. I hope that, for all we're alike, you're better than me. I hope you're able to say the things that matter to you.

And although I can't say them, I hope you understand the things that matter to me. I hope you understand that you matter to me.

[justmelookingbackatme]

my deadname

much like my body

is something in inhabit

but don't belong in

i have never belonged

i call it a deadname

but was it ever alive in the first place?

was i ever alive in the first place?

a ghost, or perhaps a machine

neither is quite right

there is nothing to describe what i am

(or more accurately,

what i am not,

because i am nothing)

i am a corpse that has overstayed its welcome

my body is as dead as the name they call it

i have never belonged

in my body or my name

i don't think i will ever belong

in any body

in any name

a body is someone

a name is someone

and I am not

these things- a body, a name

personhood-

they can never be mine

i am not a person

i do not exist

i am nothing at all

deadname, deadbody

i want nothing more

than to escape

to the world of the living

but i am not meant for that

i belong among the dead

and here i shall rot

[justmelookingbackatme]

you don't know how to feel about it, that you've celebrated six more birthdays than you thought you would. you can't shake the feeling that you might be a ghost, that maybe you were meant to die all those years ago. you're not entirely sure how you even got here. it seemed so inevitable, like it was only a matter of time before you ended it. you thought there was no chance in hell you'd survive this long.

and then you did.

you lived longer than you ever thought you would, grew into a person you never would have dreamed of. that version of you, that little kid you used to be, had no idea your name would be what it is now. he had yet to meet your best friends. he had no idea what it felt like to be at ease with yourself, even if just for a moment.

you don't know how to feel about it, that you came so close to missing all that.

you're so different from that child who wanted to die, but sometimes, you are still the same. there are days when your chest is hollow, when the world is black and white. there are times when you want nothing more than to set yourself on fire. there are moments when you're driving down the highway and it's pouring rain, and some part of you hopes you end up in a fatal car crash.

you think about those six birthdays you thought you'd never live to, and all the moments in between each one that you could have missed out on. and you think, i have no idea what will happen in the next six years. no idea who I'll become.

you should stick around long enough to find out.

[justmelookingbackatme]

they tell you

that you need a partner

that you need your "other half"

to complete you

and you know they are wrong

you have no "other half"

you are complete

all on your own

you don't want a partner

you don't need a partner

you have yourself

and your friends

and they are all you need

but your friends have partners

who are the most important thing

in their lives

you need your friends

and they need their partners

but they don't

need

you

you are complete,

but you are still

lonely

[justmelookingbackatme]

My old name has never felt right. It describes someone who is not me, someone who is not real. I hate it, but it's a familiar discomfort, the ache of pretending to be someone I'm not. Someone I never have been.

When I'm pretending to be her, the world is dull, the colors muted. I feel like I'm a ghost, like I'm fading away. It's horrible, and I am suffocating, but maybe that's not the worst thing.

I can finally breathe, when I am called my new name. My real name. The world unfolds before me, bright and vibrant in a way I have never seen before. It's nearly blinding. My eyes sting.

My name feels like me, in a way my old name never did. It makes me feel horribly, painfully alive, and real. And I am not so sure I want to be alive. Maybe it's better to be a ghost. Maybe it's better to let myself fade.

[justmelookingbackatme]

I am a straight man, and I am a dyke, and I won't change myself to make others less confused, to make them more comfortable. I have always been confusing, always been uncomfortable, always been a dyke, and I will be forever.

Some might think I should have handed in my dyke card when I handed in my lesbian card, when I handed in my woman card, when I gave it all up to become a man. But being a dyke isn't something you can give up. I tried, a million times, when I was younger, but it's not something that goes away, and I've come to love the fact that I will be a dyke as long as I live. Dykery is in my blood, in my bones.

Some wonder how can I be a dyke, when I'm not a lesbian? And I wonder, how could I not be a dyke? I have been a dyke since before I knew the word, before I fully understood the ways in which I was different. I grew up a dyke, grew up ashamed, grew up trying and failing to hide the obvious, grew up suffering for it. I grew up a dyke and that's a formative experience, something that stays with you for a lifetime.

Being a dyke is a battle scar, a badge of honor, a weapon I stole from the enemy. It's mine, and it always will be.

[justmelookingbackatme]

I don't like being able to feel my heartbeat.

I'm not bothered by the reminder of how fragile life is, the possibility of my heart stopping; it's the solid, steady, undeniable reminder that I am here, that I am alive and real and human that scares me the most.

It's a rare feeling, truly believing that I'm real. It never lasts more than a few fleeting moments, and those fleeting moments don't quite make me a person. I'm more of a ghost than a person. I feel distant, muted, half there and half not. A half forgotten dream, drifting in and out of existence. I'm a messy sketch of a person, not the solid lines and vibrant colors I should have.

I haven't been a person in a very long time. Before I was a ghost, I was nothing at all. That was worse. At least a ghost is something.

But my heartbeat makes me feel like I'm more than a ghost, and I think I should take comfort in that, but I don't. Being truly alive, being real, fucking terrifies me.

I'm not sure I know how to be a person again.

Maybe I do know. Maybe the real problem is I'm not sure I want to.

[justmelookingbackatme]

I have spent as long as I can remember feeling like it's only a matter of time before something breaks. Not necessarily until I can't keep living, though sometimes that is the feeling; sometimes my imminent destruction is more along the lines of an explosion. A confession I can't take back, a fight that can't be fixed, a pain so all-consuming I can no longer hide it. A fire that doesn't end my life, but burns it all down so that nothing will ever be the same.

I am on the last stretch of a run with my legs burning and my lungs caving in, unsure how much farther I can push. I am standing near a cliff, and the edge is drawing steadily closer. I am a rubber band, being pulled tighter and tighter and tighter, seconds from snapping. I am holding my breath, waiting for the inevitable. I know I am running out of time. It can't be long now before I collapse, before I fall, before I break.

But I have lived like this a long, long time, thinking any moment now, and that moment has yet to come. Maybe that means it will never come. Maybe I will keep going like this forever; this screaming exhaustion, this unsteady footing over a long drop, this pressure building and building and building with no release.

Or maybe I'm right, and I'm moments away from my explosion.

I don't know which I would prefer.

[justmelookingbackatme]

you are her daughter & she wants you to be her daughter & you want to be her son

but you know that as a son you will only hurt her so you try even harder to be her daughter but you're not very good at being a daughter

you're too much of a daughter to be a good son & you're too much of a son to be a good daughter & you've failed her in every possible way

[justmelookingbackatme]

Some days, I think about the future. Some days, I can’t see past next week, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I’m trying– please believe me, I’m trying– but I don’t know how many more times I can make it through the day. I don’t know how many days I have left in me.

Some days, I close my eyes and I try to picture myself growing old. My hair is greying and the lines on my face are deepening and I’m not whole, exactly– I will never be whole– but I have grown into myself and built a life, and I’ve survived. Some days, I can see it clearly. Some days, I have hope that I will make it.

Those days don’t come often enough.

How can I believe I’ll live decades longer, when there’s a version of me that died three years ago? Some days, I think I was supposed to die that day, as though the moments I missed death by were a fluke. Some days, I think I should have been gone a long time ago, and I’m just running from the inevitable. I don’t know how much longer I can run.

Some days, I can see the future, the destination I might reach if I just keep running. But my lungs are collapsing and my legs might give out, and some days I can’t think about the finish line, just the next mile, and I don’t know if I can even manage that.

Some days I just try to make it to the next day, and the next, and the next, and some days I can see myself doing this for decades, but some days I think I’m running out of time.

[justmelookingbackatme]

I want to write about grief, but I don't know what to say. It always comes out sounding flat. What can I say about grief that hasn't been said a million times over? Every person who has ever lived has lost someone. Nothing I'm feeling is unique. I'm not alone in this feeling.

I think that's supposed to be comforting.

It's not.

[justmelookingbackatme]

It's been a year, somehow, and it's time to light a yartzeit candle.

It's been a year since the month I spent my life in a haze of obsessively reading about cancer, and visiting hospitals, and trying to figure out how to say goodbye. I don't remember most of that month, except for the worrying and the anticipation, and then the awful moment when I didn't have to anticipate any longer. A lot has changed, and I know I've changed, but it also feels like I haven't changed at all. Like I'm still where I was this time last year, dreading the inevitable, except the inevitable already happened, so long ago.

The year has been long. Heavy with grief that, even after it lessened, never quite stopped hanging over me like a cloud. Some of the days flew by, and most of the days dragged on, but it's finally been a year. This year has felt like a lifetime, but her death feels like it was seconds ago.

Does it matter how long ago it felt? Whether it seemed like a lifetime or a second, it's been a year, and we're lighting a candle.

[justmelookingbackatme]

Why are you so afraid to let people know you? They will still love you; you know they will. So why are you afraid?

Even at the best of times, even when you know you are safe, you are afraid to shed your armor. And this isn't armor; this is your own skin. You're normally so happy to peel off your skin, but you always want to patch yourself up instantly. You can't stand to let people see what's underneath.

They won't hate you, if they see. They will love you, and you can stop hiding. Everyone will be happier if you just let yourself be seen.

But you can't. You can't speak, you can't show them, you can barely let yourself exist. Sometimes you want to erase yourself from the world. You don't want to be known. You don't want to be a part of anyone's life. You don't want to be a part of your own life, not really.

Why are you so afraid to let people know you?

Why are you so afraid to live?