blocked almost everyone irl who followed this blog so i can use it like a "private" on tumblr to type long things
so anyway. thoughts on expression? there's gonna be a lot here but i already feel good about putting it into words
man i have so much stuff i'm thinking about rn! and it's not necessarily bad but it's just so much at once that until i got some decompress time with my bf today, just a few hours of sitting alone being overwhelmed and blank was Too Much for me to handle
so the logical thing to do is to try and put words to some of what i'm thinkin about:
i'm becoming aware of a bunch of miscellaneous things about how i've treated myself that were passively influenced by who i thought i "had" to be bc of my position alongside my now-ex partner. but because they weren't directly stopping me from being how i wanted to be...
...I feel really strange about using this breakup (& surrounding situation) as a push to experiment with myself? because i don't want to give off the vibe of "oh now that I'm """free""", look at me changing!". There's a little bit of a 'freedom' feeling, sure, but it's more a freedom from the version of my ex I had created in my head, rather than from the real person, so I don't want to project anything & make them feel bad.
BUT! I think if I let that stop me from exploring how i can change, i won't change, and I would like some change! And it's simple stuff. I wanna get my hair cut a new & more androgynous way. I want to handle the moderately upsetting re-masculinization my body is doing to me with grace, and kinda embrace being of indeterminate gender more. I want to dial in what's comfortable for me so I can be more confident in my own body, and therefore be (hopefully) a more charismatic & composed person to others.
I have a lot of internalized shit about not feeling like i live up to the good things people say about me. I don't project that back to them often, bc that's not good for anyone, but it does bug me internally. Like I simultaneously want more validation from people, but I also feel innately uncomfortable with the validation I get, because I look at myself & my actions, and don't feel the same way. That sucks, but I wanna work on that! With that said....
I'm not sure whether changes to my presentation/appearance and how I carry myself are good ways to remedy this problem? Because of course it's easy to want to change when you feel bad about yourself, so that people will validate you. I don't think that would be good for anyone, either.
I also think there have definitely been times where I lose control of myself bc I'm overwhelmed by all the feelings inside me that I'm trying to let out, because I never plan how I'm going to change or communicate with people about what I want to do differently with myself. Like I'm looking for someone else to tell me what my next step should be to become the version of me I want to be. But I have to take those steps for myself, and that was one of the things I talked about w/ my ex when we broke up. So I guess that's another way this all ties in. Becoming a more true version of myself is an effort I have to make first & foremost.
So in summary! I still wanna make some steps with my presentation & let that influence my identity in whatever way feels natural, if at all. I've been thinking a lot about my identity & labels recently, and I think that I've been feeling more strongly gendered. Not necessarily as any particular thing (though I've been communicating it as feeling more fem bc that's the only gender I know how to feel strongly), but just more defined. Like I know that there's a strong identity somewhere in me, but that I can't pin it down. I wanna embrace the part of me who's a messy, horny, overly open, gay, emotional woman(?), because those are things that I suppressed in myself (to varying extents) as a result of the complex I built around my now-ex partner.
And the best opportunity to reveal more of myself to the people close to me is the one I actually take. <3
