#sober queer

[stonebutchooze]

when someone asks you "rough night?" but you've been sober for 2 years

[lemonenema]

Sobriety!

I'm working on 16 months sober and it's incredible.

My bedroom: same.

My income: same.

My body: same.

My life: 180° different. 100% different.

Working a program has given me the life I thought I'd never have. I feel like I have a purpose again. For all that I've struggled and for all the hard times that have happened in the last year, I can honestly say that recovery is worth it. I'm grateful to be alive.

[stonebutchooze]

sobriety is so constantly changing. I am someone who ferociously represses my feelings and spent most of my life walking around holding in a lot of emotional pain but also holding in my good feelings because I was scared of how they'd be received. I'm 2 years and 3 months sober as I write this. in a lot of the community im still a baby sober. for two years I haven't been able to just obliterate my anxiety or discomfort or feelings I thought might disappoint me. and don't get me wrong I've still been not feeling my feelings for two years — swinging wildly between numb and overwhelmed— but I've had gently increasing spells of calm. of feeling feelings. only tiny increments, but accepting those tiny increments. and they lead to more. to trying new things and surprise joy and being and having a safety net when it goes wrong.

sobriety is joy and suffering and knowing you need one to have the other.

[stonebutchooze]

This month I'll be 11 months sober and I have never felt so goddamn powerful, never felt more like I know my own mind, never felt more like I can handle my bad thoughts, like I have a community, like I connect with people in my own, small, one on one autistic way.

When I was drinking it worsened my suicidal tendencies, and to be honest now that I'm sober and have done so much trauma processing and CBT type stuff with SMART, those tendencies are infrequent visitors.

I've deleted Instagram, not because I think people should, but because for me it was just weighing me down and making me compare myself to others.

I've learnt tools from SMART and sober memoirs such as Playing the Tape, ANTs, PIGs, etc and going to each meeting takes me out of my head and reminds me my problems are not overarching or unique. I am not alone.

I'm more independent, but lean on others in healthier ways. I'm still working on communicating my feelings and asking for help when I need it, instead of assuming that no one wants to hear what I have to say.

I'm trying new things, like craft club and painting for the fun of it. And I have a varying relationship with my journal.

People have seen me grow and it feels wonderful

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

-killian

[stonebutchooze]

It can feel weird going from celebrating every week, month and then the 1 year milestone in early sobriety, to then only celebrating subsequent year marks, so....

I'm about to be a year and four months sober! That's a year and a third! And I'm proud of myself!! I've learnt so much since early sobriety and I am so proud of my past self for having the courage to read and think those thoughts and make a big decision.

And if you're a very specific number sober... Like a year, seven months and a day... Or three years and a month.... Or eight years and eleven months... I am just as proud of you now as people should have been when you were a year sober!

[lemonenema]

It's been a long walk to this point. I shuffle my deck of pronouns and adjectives incessantly, always handing the top card to whoever has power in my life, hoping one will stick, hoping to be legible and understood and stable. I want so badly to be All One Thing, All One Way, the same person in every room I enter. The same whether I'm with my mom or my best friends.

It's heartbreaking when that isn't an option. It's more heartbreaking to internalize that belief that because I am different degrees of open or authentic based on relationships, I'm lacking in integrity.

Maybe internal coherence is a myth. Maybe legibility/being out/being understood IS contextual, and not somehow a signifier of something wrong with me.

Maybe changeability is understandable, given the fractured nature of social life: of course I'm not out to my troublesome family; they aren't trustworthy or emotionally safe. Of course I'm more Butch at home, more happy among my friends. Of course I'm more honest in places that can withstand and support my authenticity. Doesn't make me a liar. Doesn't make me any less real. Just makes me feel... Lonely. Disconnected. But still lovable, still more or less known.

I'm coming to understand my gender and sexual identities as performative and that this isn't a bad thing. I have a fluid presentation. That's fine.

This is a photo of me in my restaurant, which is empty, and I'm playing Fall Out Boy loudly on the speakers and it's pouring rain outside and I feel very masculine and whole and safe.

[lemonenema]

I can't afford to think about my gender too much. I can't. It hurts.

So I'm gonna focus on enhancing and developing and strengthening my character, my spirit. I need to. It's hopeful to think that my dysphoria can be dealt with some day, but that first I need and ought to do things to grow as a whole person. So that I'm not thrown completely off center by either being on hormones or never taking hormones. So that I have the life I want whether I ever transition or not. So that I can meet daily conditions and catastrophes with the same integrity. So that I can stay sober through getting everything I want, or getting nothing that I want.

I don't know. I'm doing my best right now. But good goddamn, dysphoria is really affecting me this week.

[lemonenema]

Worst dysphoria in three years

Why is my trans identity contingent on my degree of negative gender experiences and emotions?

Fucking sucks. But I'm sober and can actually feel my fucking feelings for once. And I'm at my service position so that might help.