some life update stuff and rambles
my head is too loud. it always is. that seems to be always the place i start when i try to write. because it's always true.
i feel very confused and conflicted and doubting. it's not nice i don't like it. too many things in there at once getting tangled. some related to each other but some totally unrelated just adding to the noise and mess and tangles.
and i can't write any of it i can't seem to get anything out anymore barely. except for these rare occasions of random blurts of words that rush to me and i rush to get it out as fast as possible, and still don't feel satisfied like i emptied my brain, there's always more that's stuck in there. even the things that i can get out feel only partially captured by the words i manage to wrangle to my will. i can never express enough. i do more things in real life especially physical but then stuff that takes mental energy and effort and focus i just can't seem to do at all barely.
physically i like doing more and moving more. it makes me feel better and happier and stronger. dad is helping me do exercises for my arms and chest and back muscles for before my top surgery (it will help me with recovery and also give the surgeon a better guide line for my incisions if he can see where my pec muscles are). i like that a lot, i want to get stronger.
my sitter seat is gradually getting more upright angle - previously dad took off the back wheels to make the angle more tilted back but i am building up more strength and trying to improve my sitting, so he puts gradually more notebooks under the back legs to raise the angle and now i am nearly at the height of the wheels! i hope we can put them back on eventually and i can cope with sitting more upright. it's hard work and tiring but i'm doing really well. i'm trying hard to be positive about this because i really want my body to be able to do more things and i feel more hopeful than i ever have before that i might actually achieve some improvement.
i am still growing my hair! it's getting quite long now. i still have to clip back the front bits to stop it being in my eyes all the time. i don't really like how it looks clipped back. i like my curls and waves of my hair and when i twist it and clip it at the front it makes it look quite flat and straight. maybe once it gets longer i might consider a fringe of some kind... to show off the waves in the front and to avoid the front strands falling into my face so much. i'm not sure though. it's also hard to get the right balance between feminine and masculine for me with my hair - i imagine it will continue to take time to figure out. for now it's just focus on letting it grow. mum jokes that my hair just keeps getting "bigger" rather than longer cause of my curls/waves and how thick my hair is. especially when i brush it on bath days before we wash it, the brushing makes it get HUGE and like a big fluffball around my head. it looks really funny.
in the process of doing the gender clinic appointments and doing all the work for communication for that, i did a lot of searching and processing my thoughts and feelings. and realised some things that have changed since i first started attempting to express my queerness. i have decided to go back to she/her pronouns. when i first started going by he/him, the choice was mostly because i needed it to be different than it had been before. and several years of he/him gave me the space and time to process a lot of things with some space between me and some of the complicated difficult feelings i had around my name and pronouns etc. etc. i feel like now that i have had the time to work through it, it started feeling mostly strange to be called he. not bad, just a bit odd. and i realised i think i am okay with she/her again now. it still doesn't feel "perfect", but it is the best option for me now i think. it's easier all round, it fits better than he/him and for me they/them always felt strange and not right. i am still Ezra though. i still love my name (even though i also have very complicated feelings towards my birth name... but i don't have words for that yet).
i feel guilty and sad and upset and frustrated that i can't write much anymore. i feel guilty and ashamed that i spend almost all my time playing repetitive mindless games on my ipad with either music or random youtube videos in the background, instead of doing anything that i actually WANT to do or ENJOY doing. i feel shame that i can't seem to make myself stop doing what i DON'T want and start doing what i DO want. i feel guilty that i haven't written a letter back to my friend in so long even though they continue writing letters and postcards. i feel frustrated and upset and so BORED that all i do is waste time until the next section of my routine in the day - the next snack/meal, the next swing time, the next bedtime.
now that i am no longer quite as trapped and stuck as i used to be, and i am living a bit more of an actual life (or something close to resembling a life), i have realised just how much i was repressing and distracting myself from constantly. my perspective has changed on many things now that i am a bit older and having more actual experiences rather than just constant non-stop escapism and distraction and avoidance of anything real because my real life was too painful and awful and horrifying to be able to truly live in it.
i feel that it was impossible to know myself or my own mind at all during that period of time (at the old house when i spent all day every day in my bed in my dark gloomy bedroom, never even going downstairs or anywhere except the odd medical appointment). i feel like it stopped me from growing up in many ways. i think you have to be participating in life to some degree and having some kinds of experiences to be able to grow and change and develop and learn. i was really quite young when my health first got bad, and even before that i was significantly behind others in terms of social experience and many other areas of life experience. i simply didn't have the option of participating in life for so long and during such a pivotal period for development and growing up in so many ways, and i now deal with the consequences of that.
it is occuring to me now just how much those things compounded have affected me and my ability to develop, grow, change, and learn about the world and myself as a person. i don't really know what else to say about this but i have lots of feelings about it i guess. and i'm feeling many of those feelings more intensely for the first time because i'm not repressing and distracting and avoiding quite as much anymore. and it's really really overwhelming. i think i feel grief for my younger self and all what could have been. i find myself doing the "what if" and "if only" spirals of thinking a lot lately. "what if this one small thing had happened differently when i was a kid, then what would my life be like now?". "if only someone had done something back then, i wouldn't have so much damage now". there are SO many what ifs and if onlys.
there's more in my head i can't get out. there's always more. it's always loud. and messy. and tangled. i don't know what to do about all these feelings. i'm struggling. my very rigid structured routine is often the only thing that keeps me moving through each day. i wish i could be more positive and say more good nice happy things cause there are good nice happy things in my life. i have more happiness and joy and freedom now than i have ever had before. but it's hard to focus on that or even give the brain capacity towards writing those things with words when the difficult loud messy stuff is so much more urgent and pressing and demands more time and effort and energy and capacity to getting it out.
i don't know if i already said about AAC stuff but i'm going to get a new keyguard for a different page set with less buttons on the screen. i think it might be better than the current one in some ways but i'm not so sure in others. i barely use my AAC device anyway. so i'm not too hopeful OR despairing about the difference it might make. because i probably will still barely touch it at all. i have many frustrations about that which i have ranted about before but it's not my biggest concern at the moment and i don't have the energy to be upset about it just now.
this seems to be all my brain will allow me to exorcise for now.