Nov 16, 2018
me at work, having a panic attack in the stairwell and feeling very guilty about it: is this "cringe"? is this what angry 13-year-olds would put in a video with "cringe" in the title?
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me at work, having a panic attack in the stairwell and feeling very guilty about it: is this "cringe"? is this what angry 13-year-olds would put in a video with "cringe" in the title?
that bpd/npd feel when the rest of the class is packing up early and the professor yells at them for it and you just wanna stand up on your desk and point at them and scream “I’M NOT ONE OF THEM! I WAS DOING THE RIGHT THING, LISTENING TO YOUR BORING LECTURE, AND IF YOU DON’T SEE THE GOOD IN ME, I’LL FIND THE MOST CORRUPT LAWYER I CAN FIND AND SUE YOUR ASS INTO THE GROUND”.
what they say: having a mental illness doesn’t make you cool, get help.
what I, a histrionic person who takes everything personally, hear: you’re not cool. you’re a fake. you should die.
I hope the people that invented the “DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER?!?!” ““““““joke”“““““ (yes, all those quotes were necessary) realize what they’ve done. in addition to worrying about public backlash - possibly posing personal physical violence, maybe losing my job, etc. -, now whenever I get misgendered, I have to stop before correcting people and additionally ask myself “will people think i’m going all “did you just assume my gender?!” on them?”. like, will people be able to understand the difference between me asking for the respect I'm owed as a human being, and the messages spread by people who don’t believe I deserve this sort of respect for the type of human being I am? will people go back home, open up their computers, and type an article or blog post about how some “transtrender” flipped their shit at them for looking at their curvy, wide-hipped, big-thighed, makeup-crusted, dress-wearing body and assuming they were a woman, and would this article or blog post take off and be used in hateful, harmful anti-trans rhetoric around the globe, even though in reality I probably just barely squeaked out “sorry, i’m not a woman”, and then pretended like it was nothing when I was asked to repeat myself? will the person i’m saying this to turn out to be a TERF, who will berate me until I cry, and then shame me for crying?
the point of “““”””jokes”””””” like “did you just assume my gender?!?!” and “lol triggered!” or anything like those horrible things is to take the experiences away from marginalized, stigmatized groups and make sure they stay down, and are punished for having the audacity to have spoken up about their experiences in the first place. they present barriers so that people feel too ashamed to seek out the help and respect they deserve: as a mentally-ill people, i’m afraid to refer to experiences as triggering, because internet trolls have taken that word away from me; i’m afraid to correct people who misgender me because my right to my own experience and comfort in my own life and body has been turned into a gag, and asking people for their respect could actually cause people to lose their respect for me, because the entire premise of the ““““““joke”“““““ is that people like me don’t deserve respect in the first place!
tl;dr: if you‘re someone who uses “DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER?!” as a joke to make fun of trans and nonbinary individuals, you’ve made a horrible mistake and you’ve gotta stop. thank you for your time.
my anxiety and my borderline brain don’t allow me to just take a day off from work or switch shifts with someone, i’m constantly worried that I have the times and/or dates wrong and I end up texting the other person like “hey! just double-checking” like at least once or twice. because, if I come in late, or come in looking like I wasn’t planning on being there today, or if I miss a day, then that makes it look like i’m not the best, and one single slip-up is, in my mind, punishable by death.
I hate myself so much for always giving people my deadname, even though I don't want them to call me that. person at starbucks? I give them my deadname. new employee at work? I give them my deadname. meeting new people at my new school? even though it’s now my home for more months outta the year than it isn’t, they still get the deadname too.
I mean, I know why I do it: i’m afraid - of a lotta things. i’m afraid it’ll get back to my parents and they’ll question me about it, i’m afraid people will make a big thing outta it when it really doesn’t need to be. i’m afraid people will assume i’m a fake or taking up space in the trans community where I really don’t deserve it, because if I did deserve it, wouldn’t I lose all the weight that makes my body “non-passable” and wouldn’t I stop wearing makeup and dresses and florals and pink? i’m afraid they’ll question me about it like my last shrink did, and then straight-up refuse to accept me when I give them the answer.
but I realize this is something that I have to work on; it doesn’t make me a bad person, it just takes a little more self-love. I need to get to a place where I understand that I deserve to be called by my actual name, just like anyone else does. if people conflate my presentation and my artistry with my actual gender and make narrow-minded assumptions about what someone who looks like me or someone whose body is shaped like mine could possibly be, then that’s their problem, and I have to learn that, even though this hurts, it isn’t a sign that I did anything wrong. because i’m not doing anything wrong: this is my life, this is all who I am, and I deserve to live it to the same extent that everyone else does, which means creating art out of clothes and makeup, learning to love my body and to shield myself from everyone’s incorrect perceptions of it, and being true to my own identity and my own name.
one time a customer got mad at me for saying “no problem” instead of “you’re welcome” and lectured me in front of my boss and the rest of the store about it and I had recurring intrusive suicidal thoughts about it for a week straight afterwards, plus I feel like killing myself whenever it pops up randomly in my conscious thought processes for whatever reason, but sure mom, i’m mentally-healthy.
i have this deep-seated need to be needed, and to be needed to do something. I have the day off from work today, and I don’t know what to do with myself between now and going out tonight. homework? I guess. but I just can’t get myself excited for that because it’s not for the benefit of and/or attention from someone else.