The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I am hitting all the major genres! (?) Well, anyway, this is a poem in response to something my psychologist said to me, which is the title.

“Those Shoes Look Very Feminine, But You Could Go Further.”

Thanks, I guess?
To be honest, my current war
is being waged against overcompensation.
When starving, you want to gorge,
food shoveled into throat
without swallowing motion.
It creates issues.
Vomiting, projectile,
leaving you worse than before.
I will not lose my new-found womanhood
lurching over a toilet bowl
because I had too much cake too fast.

I understand your advice, though
as I really don’t fit enough stereotypes
for my new life.
Too tall, too geeky,
uninterested in makeup and dresses,
I break the illusion daily
by not playing into the reasons
everyone claims to know I’m doing this.
If I was born correctly, nobody would blink.
But now? Well.
Surely I could be more of a woman,
but here’s the thing:
Being a woman was never the goal,
just a visible side effect
of my real aims,
a beautiful, obvious scar
of the self-surgery I’m performing.
It’s life-saving
and the pills I gulp are oxygen,
keeping me alive.
Each inhale teaches me happiness,
previously unthinkable,
and each exhale
removes the constant urge to sleep
and never wake up.
I look in the mirror and I don’t see tears.
It was always about survival.

The breasts are nice
and the pronouns a godsend.
I should experiment with my options,
the new multiple guesses on my test,
and I do, daily,
but it’s less a mad dash
out of control.
It’s a marathon,
finding me in the sea of my world
and my female existence,
so if what you see doesn’t fit
with the supposed ideal
and I’m crashing into walls,
flailing into furniture,
with my chances of passing shattering
like so many vases on the shelf,
well,
I am alive.
It’s my mess, for once.
That’s why I’m smiling.