personally, the term “it gets better” is not helpful. there are many things in my life and in many, many others that may not. they might get worse! they might stay the same! and that sucks ass!!
but here’s a line from a song me and my best friend love. “it’ll be this bleak forever, but it is a way to live.”
that line (and that whole song tbh) has gotten me to keep going through some very rough times so i thought i would share it. managing forever shit and living through forever shit-holes will never be paradise, but it can be survivable. it can be a way to live.
the song is “haunted” by spanish love songs. their other songs are really awesome too. highly recommend
Pride doesn't feel like a celebration to me. I'd like to say not for now at least, but I don't feel that hopeful. Because when the month starts and people dare to see us, I've already been doing it for my whole life
The trans woman kicked out of the bar,
the young lesbian kicked out of school,
the gay man out of his home,
and the trans guy kicked off the road.
The bi girl told she's confused,
the enby kid to get over it,
and the aroace that it will change.
At my young age I've seen this all and worse, so yes...
My queerness doesn't want to celebrate, it needs to heal first.
My queerness doesn't want to celebrate, it needs to breathe first.
My queerness doesn't want to celebrate because it needs to be free first.
This Afro Pride Month is one for the books! So freeing, spiritual and alive. I feel like I bore a second skin of myself to discover and learn about! Glory to God! Truly! I'm not off my high, and probably won't be all week! I love being queer in every lifetime!
my mom will never understand why I almost cried when I went to my first pride event but I know that Tumblr, the queer club of the internet, will understand
Hello maggots I was thinking Thoughts and there's been one thing that's been on my mind lately in a really positive way and things have been grim so it was nice to have that Thought. Long post incoming that involves old age, little me, Tracy Chapman's Fast Car, being trans, fanfiction and chronic illness.
TLDR: I feel like there has been so much I gain as the years pass, not just loss and exhaustion, and I am more myself than I was before even though it can be more painful, and you are loved, and things can get better, and even when they get worse there are pockets of something that feels a lot like hope.
So! Like many people, I have always been scared of growing old. Death, not so much, it's scary but it is (like Socrates said in the defence he gave before he uh. died) an unknown, it could be worse than life, it could be better, it could be nothing, it could be the same. But growing old is known, and the idea scared me. This is starting out grim but it gets better in the end.
I didn't like the idea of looking so different, being weaker, being ill, being dependent, anything that is generally associated with growing old. Except the white hair as a kid because I really wanted blond hair but that's a whole Other story about internalised racism that we ain't going into here.
The only thing that made me slightly less scared of it was remembering that my then best friend would grow old with me, too, and I wouldn't be alone. This was all before I realised I was trans, and all before my chronic illness set in.
Now, here we pause for a musical interlude that is relevant. When I was a child, my father showed me a concert performance on youtube. He told me the girl there was Tracy Chapman. She had finished her show to a smaller crowd earlier that day. But then the main act (Stevie Wonder, I believe) cancelled last minute, and she was asked to fill in, and she stood in front of a massive crowd who were restless at the cancellation of the as a relatively unknown artist and then, my father said, with just a guitar and her voice, she captivated the entire audience. Most of you probably know the story.
This, of course, was the Wembley 1988 concert where she perfomed Fast Car. Here it is:
I didn't really find it memorable as a child because it wasn't the kind of music I liked back then, and the reason my father had shown it to me to begin with was because I played the guitar.
Then! Fast forward several years. Well, first, I realised that I was bisexual and that I was trans, and suddenly I didn't even know what old age would look like for me, whether I would have the life I wanted or whether I wouldn't. I didn't know what middle age would look like for me, or even the next few years.
I didn't know if my extended family would come to my wedding should I get married. I couldn't get married here in India at all. I then also realised I was aroacespec and what looked like marriage to me was very different to the societal norm of it. In addition, that childhood friend did something Very Not Good and I eventually cut contact with her. So much for growing old, etc.
This is getting very long, so to spare your dashes, I'm putting the rest under the cut. Yeehaw! Spoilers: I end up happy, you are loved, and there is hope.
Then, I got ill. I got weaker, and I got sicker, and I was entirely dependent on a system that doesn't really care to support me. But it didn't happen in my 70s, it happened when I was 20. And it was scary. It was everything I had been afraid of.
Now I was living with chronic illness, and I had to deal with the fact that I would need to convince and educate the people I was dependent on transphobia and supporting me, and hope for the best. There were months when I was so sick all the time it felt like I was dying. Old age was a joke.
But! I managed to get through day after day, due mostly to all of you and the family I found here. Things weren't as bleak and I was not alone.
Brief literary interlude that is also relevant: I read the Drarry fanfic (note: fuck JKR, do not support her works with your money or time. back to the story) called Running On Air by eleventy7 and it changed something fundamental in my soul and I grew so enamoured with it that I made a playlist for it. Into that I put songs about circles and running away and cars and drives. Spotify offered up Fast Car. I didn't remember the childhood video, and I added it in without really listening to the end of the song.
Things happened. I started testosterone at the end of January 2026, and I am now five months (!!!) on T.
Then while on a train journey in February I actually paused and listened to it specifically, and realised the grim ending of the song, about the cycle of income inequality and struggles and how the person's hopes of leaving the town for a better life are eroded. I also realised that this was the same song that I had been shown as a kid.
Life continued. My body started growing up once more, this time in a way that felt filled right. My muscles grew stronger, too, and my stamina increased, and I could go on walks and even runs without the crutches, even though I still needed them for standing.
Eventually, I looked up the 1988 Fast Car video again.
It was different, seeing it as an adult. I could see the nervousness, I could appreciate the music, I could wonder at the way the sad song was now interwoven with hope as Tracy Chapman did make it out, made a name for herself.
Then I saw something about the 66th Grammys, and a recent performance a year ago (I am very much unaware of what goes on in the world and social media outside of here). So I found this video:
Less than 20 seconds in, I wanted to cry. Because she looked happy. She didn't look nervous anymore, she looked at peace with herself and the world. She looked beautiful and kind and was smiling and emotional and strong. Her hair was longer and grey, and her face older, and it was so wonderful. The crowd and even Combs singing next to her looked at her with awe and she looked back with confidence and gentleness.
She looked happy.
And yesterday when I saw my reflection in the camera I realised that I looked like a man now, I didn't look like a child. The testosterone has changed my face, and I have a beard, and my body is much more sturdy even when it is in blinding pain. And I wear flower crowns in my hair and I only speak to the people I want to and I wear what I want to and I say the things I want to.
And when I first fell ill, I wondered how I could go from being so happy as a child to so miserable and tired at just 20. But now I look at who I was when I was 8, and when I was 15, and when I was 20. And who I am now.
And I may be more tired now, and have more stress, but my happiness is also more real. It doesn't feel forced or faked. It doesn't feel like being naive or in denial of all the horrible things in the world. It feels like knowing all of that, knowing the world can be awful, feeling scared and angry, being stressed, tiring easily, and still finding pockets of joy.
Happiness, now, is something that is interwoven with the reality of my life instead of a mood that I fall in and out of. Alongside are woven grief and anger and fear, but happiness is still fundamental to my life now, in a way it wasn't before. Because it's born of feeling hope in a shit world, and feeling like I've learned lessons that I didn't know before, and feeling like I am doing my best to be myself, and knowing that I am surrounded by people whom I love, not blindly, but genuinely.
And that is something that can only grow as I age, because it is dependent on time passing and memories being made and things I learn.
And I still don't know what the next few years will look like, or middle age, or old age, or how long life can be. But I hope that whatever number of months or years or decades into the future, I will look back at who I was when I was a child, and have that same smile as Chapman did in the video, because I am so different and so similar and both are okay.
In the novel I wrote, When the Touch-Me-Nots Open, the last sentence is And real was beautiful.
If you read through this entire ramble, I apologise for its length, but I hope that it made you smile a little bit, maybe. And inspite of and because of everything, real is beautiful.
I love you. There is hope. You are not alone. And thank you for making sure that I am not alone. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
For our trans joy zine, Miq will be illustrating a genderfluid person trying on makeup and feminine clothing for the first time, possibly aided by a very appreciative partner. And it’ll likely have a Victorian vibe! 💄
I received real life proof that befriending fellow queer people (no matter what flavour of queer they are) is truly amazing.
I am a non-binary Butch lesbian. I am friends with a bi cis guy. He told me the other day that being friends with me has really helped him feel more comfortable with being bisexual.
This is the reason why I will continue to be as visibly queer as possible, especially in a world where the fascists are taking over. I am fucking honored to make at least one person feel more comfortable with their queerness. I hope that I can make many other queer people feel more confident throughout my life.
