The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Debated whether or not to write about this because I feel like it makes me an asshole. But whatever. I can trust you, right blog? You understand me, right? So I’m going to talk this out, and we’ll see where it goes. If you don’t like me being extremely personal and diary-like, this is not a day to read this blog, I guess. Come back later! Anyway…

At work, we often have coupons going on. By often I mean “always.” Over the past few days, we had a “friends and family” coupon going on, that we were supposed to give out to, you know, friends and family. Of course, we have some at all the registers in case people forget theirs. We do this for all our coupons.

Basically, though, this leads most people to just automatically ask “do you have any coupons I can use?” any time they come up to the register. Which is fine, I suppose. Kohl’s would much rather have them come in thinking “well, surely they have a coupon so it’s okay to shop” than not. When they ask, there’s nothing wrong with giving them the coupon. It doesn’t hurt me for Kohl’s not to make as much money, and it makes the customers happier, so I guess there’s that.

But there’s a part of me that’s kind of annoyed at the assumption that there’s always going to be a coupon there, and I’m not totally sure why. I think it’s the way in which a lot of people ask me for it, like they deserve a coupon and will be unhappy without it, instead of wondering if I have an extra bonus for them. It’s a difference between “hey, do you think you could do me a favor?” and “give me my discount, slave.”

The point is, all weekend, I’ve been telling people there are no coupons. Not every person. Whenever someone met criteria I didn’t quite understand I’d tell them about it, and get them their discount. Like, if they made a mistake, and pulled out their coupon for later this week, and looked sad instead of upset, or took the news well, then I’d offer them the other coupon instead. If nothing about them struck me as whatever, I didn’t mention its existence unless specifically asked for that coupon. Then I pulled it out, of course. I wasn’t about to get in trouble. But I held the power of 20% off in my paws, and I wielded it like I wanted.

The way it happens, though, is just… strange. It really is an almost subconscious decision. I’d smile at the customer and immediately fall into one of those two roles, and I could not break from it at that point, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t ruin the illusion. The lie. Even when there wasn’t any lie. It was so much faking it, something I’ve done so much of in my life, and have worked hard to get rid of. But here was a chance to do that, with no consequences and no reason not to, and I jumped on it. I jumped on it, and wielded this stupidest of lies to keep a barrier between me and these people who are all nice enough, and whom I have no ill-will towards, but who love to punch me in the gut and knock the wind out of me with mentions of me off-hand to their kids, for example.

Believe it or not, I like customer service. I like interacting with people, and the vast majority of people I see every day are awesome, nice people. I don’t mind working the register at all. But my own problems get wrapped up in these interactions. People I may never see again don’t know what they’re getting into and what they’re doing to me emotionally. So I keep coupons from them in order to feel distance from them so I don’t feel as hurt. I guess that’s basically the scenario I have talked through here. Maybe I should be doing other things to protect myself. Maybe I should be going overboard with my appearance so there’s no fucking way anyone could make a mistake. I don’t know. It’s silly to take it out on others, even with something as trivial as a coupon. I should really stop that.

There are times when I am like, “I am a pretty damn good conversationalist. I can get my ideas across, I can be witty and funny, I can listen and give good advice, and so on. I got what it takes to conversate.” I go out. I turn on charm. I may not be the best, but I can charm some people. I can orate. I can give orders to my crew. I can make assignments. I get stuff done. I do stuff.

Being semi-competent in conversation has just been doing great things for me recently. I feel like I’ve been getting really close to Cara and Aesa with all this talking we’ve been doing. Deep conversations. Good conversations. The kind of conversations where you leave knowing there’s a connection there, a strong one, that’s only going to get stronger.

Then there are conversations with my parents, where my wordskills completely fail me. When I can’t get across what I need to say because they won’t listen, no matter how I put it. Where every time I talk to them, it becomes more and more clear that wanting to be close to my parents is not a mutual feeling. I leave each encounter feeling the gap between us widen.

Words, like Space, have a terrible power. Good and evil, all in how you use it. All that shit. I spend hours at work thinking of petty and spiteful ways to use words to get revenge. I think of scenarios where I can annoy the shit out of those in my way, or make them feel how they make me feel. Or maybe I just roleplay, in my head, screaming at them, loudly and insistently, telling them off and telling them exactly what I wish I could without insulting them. Just yell “Fuck you, you selfish assholes!” Just scream until things somehow get better. Like screaming ever helped anything.

I talk to people about things. I talk to them when I am tired, like now, and I tell them things that I wouldn’t say otherwise. I tell a certain someone about how I love them and wish I could move our relationship forward into something beyond online sexytimes. I tell friends how much they mean to me and everything I feel about them. I tell people about how I used to sing songs about how much I deserved to die and how I’d kill myself soon, surely. I sing those songs to myself. I argue with myself, then tell my puppy dog about it and cry. I make plans. I execute on plans. I laugh. I enjoy myself. I talk to people about things.

I’m talking to people about things.

Goodnight.

Are you going to say to me “This can never be,” are you going to say to me, Withered Hope?
Sad sack!
Sad sack!

A post of complaining. I recommend skipping. Here, watch this instead. You’ll have more fun.

Here’s what’s going on, I guess.
So Sunday, Jonathan and Shauna decided it would be a good idea to get Molly groomed, as it was obvious my mom never was going to and they were going to the dog groomers anyway. So they took Molly and did it. This really upset my mother, as she thought Molly looked cute all shaggy and stuff. Of course, she was ignoring all the matted, dirty fur and things like that, which is why Molly needed to be groomed in the first place. She was also freaking out about the idea of Molly being in a cage for any length of time at all, and was sure Molly would be angry at her. It… yeah. Anyway.
Molly gets back, and Mom is all moody that Molly looks different now. She’s clearly upset. We all try to cheer her up, but to no avail. She’s unhappy about this turn of events. This is when Cole arrives, and we go upstairs to play games and wait for Cara because we were going to get snowcones.
A bit later, Jonathan and Shauna come up, and they tell me the situation. Apparently there was a fight. Anger flared up over the fact that my mom worries so much about this dog, but won’t attempt to support me by even doing something like trying to call me by my name. She got told off, and started crying. Shauna and Jonathan just wanted to let me know. I hugged them and told them how much I appreciate their support. I mean, I don’t want us all fighting. I want us all to be the awesome family we are, you know? But still, the fact that there’s so much love for me there, and that they want everything to work out for me so much that they’d do that… it means a lot to me.

Anyway, this made my mother’s mood worse, of course. I tried to talk to her, and she asks me if I’ve been telling Shauna we’ve been fighting. I said no, because we haven’t been. But that’s just because I go way, way out of my way to not do anything in front of her that would cause a fight. I can sense fights brewing. I can sense how everything will explode if I do things the way I want or should. I feel like our relationship is so strained, so fragile, and I’m trying so hard to make it work. If I’m myself, it’ll break. Even the little things I do, like using my true gender when talking about myself, bother her. We haven’t been fighting, but I’ve been holding myself and my life back a lot to keep it from happening.
She said she’s been doing good in supporting me. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. She and Dad are being fantastic in helping me out in many areas, such as house-buying, but in this one? This whole being myself thing? They’re not with me. As far as I’m aware their position is still “I can’t look at you doing this to yourself.” Which is basically getting me out of their life. Which they don’t seem to understand still. Even though I’m teaching and working and doing literally everything but being around them as myself, and that someday that shit has to end.

I’m complaining instead of explaining. Anyway.

Now it’s today. Today was going pretty decent for me. I mean, I had to get up early and work the truck, but that’s not so bad. Hours and all. I also taught, and that went pretty alright, too. Things were going fine.
Then we were having a conversation with my dad, and for the first time today, Mom refers to me by my old name.
My stomach dropped out from under me. I felt terrible. It took me awhile to figure out why, but I think it’s because she had been yelled and screamed at, but took nothing away from that experience.
Either way, bringing it back to the song, it just feels like my hopes of ever getting my parents to understand are stupid at this point. It feels like it will never happen. It feels like I am going to lose my parents. They don’t want a daughter, and they don’t want me. I feel like I’ve tried so hard to keep that hope alive, that they would, and this is just another thing trying to blow out that candle. Maybe it would be for the best if I went. I don’t know.

I love my parents. They love me. I want them in my life.
I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of them being the only two people in my life who don’t understand. I’m tired of them being the only two people who make me feel like a freak, or that I have something to hide, or that I’m less than a person. I’m tired of his hope that they’ll understand someday that keeps me from doing something about it. I’m tired of worrying, every moment I’m around them, that we’re going to start fighting.

I talked with Ecks after I ran to my room, turned down Jonathan’s invitation to go play board games with people (I just wasn’t in an emotional state to meet new people. I’m sorry, Jonathan. I hope it didn’t ruin anything.) and just curled up in depression and lost hope. We talked, and he’s awesome, and he’s right. I mean, I’m not going to let this stop me. Nothing is going to stop me anymore. Not when I’m finally myself for the first time in my life. I will wake up tomorrow, and I will continue on. No thoughts of suicide, no inability to get out of bed, no overwhelming feeling of failure. My parents have done a lot, but I got rid of those things without them. I was responsible for becoming myself and succeeding, and still am. I don’t need their approval. If they want to be a roadblock, they can be, but they should get out of the way. I’m going anyway.

And that’s what’s happening in my emotional life. Did you see that funny video? You should have just watched that up there. Goodnight.

What do I want to write about?
I want to write about loneliness, I guess.
Just skip this post if you want, no worries.

I feel like things are pretty decided on the “I have to move out” front. I feel my parents pushing me away, not wanting me in their lives and trying to get me to go back on everything I’ve ever wanted, and I doubt they’re going to take me seriously unless I call their bluff, get out from under them, and start living my life. So away I should go. I’ve run the numbers. I should be able to do it, I think, without too much issue. I’ve got to find a place, of course, but I’ll get started on that soon. Things will work.

When I think about reasons I don’t want to leave, though, I find it surprising that Molly is kind of the top of my list. I mean, she’s very much my mother’s dog. But she likes me a lot. She’s always happy to see me. If I’m sitting here, feeling depressed and lonely, I can go downstairs and sit with her on the couch and at least cheer up a little bit. She’s just always so happy, so pleased that I’m there. I loved Frisky, our previous dog, of course, and he was friendly too, but I was much more one of the people he was watching over and protecting, if that makes sense. Molly wants to be around me, comes to me when she’s scared to hide. She’s just… yeah. I feel stupid that writing that kind of shit brings me near to tears, but here we are. That kind of devotion, so in my face, just melts me.

I’ve got fucking awesome friends and a boyfriend I love. I shouldn’t feel lonely, perse. Frankly, I enjoy alone time anyway, quite often. But even though life is going great, I still do break down from time to time. It’s hard not to sometimes. That’s just life. Molly is my escape plan. If I am feeling really unbearable, she’ll be there to make me feel loved. Silly, maybe, but effective. Losing that kind of scares me. I’m so used to doing it now, I don’t know how else I’d cope. Cara is like, “Oh, get somewhere that allows pets and get your own dog!” and I mean, I suppose that’s an option. I never really thought about it. I guess it might also be an excuse to make my mom accept me more. She’d put up with me for her “grandkid,” I bet. However, it’s also a lot of extra expense that I don’t know if I can handle. So much of that “extra expense” money is still going to be tied up in transitioning for a long while. And I don’t know if Brer wants a dog around when he gets here… I don’t know.

Anyway, that’s why I’m worried about moving out! Stupid, huh? But that’s what’s been on my mind since I decided dragging my heels would make things worse here. Might as well get out there and get the being murdered my mother assumes will happen over with, you know? No time like the present. Onwards to my apparently obviously imminent death!
(Times like this, I’m glad she doesn’t read this. I love her. I don’t want to be this snarky to her face, but fuck, I have to let it out somewhere. I’m allowed to be frustrated. Just not an asshole.)

I’ve got eggs in a basket.

I feel like, in a lot of ways, I am being pulled two ways. On one hand, I should be prepared. I should move forward and continue my life in a smart, intelligent manner. A lot of that should involve casting a wide net. Reaching out. Making sure things fall into place appropriately. I should be searching to find my own way, you know? Self-reliance, all that shit.

I don’t really want that, though.

Most of what I want involves other people, and involves other people falling into place and following along with the plan. Mostly Brer, yes, but many other friends and family too. Places of employment. All that shit. All of it needs to fall into place and occur. This is what I want.

Recently, I’ve had so much shit happen because of depending on other people. Assuming other people will do simple shit like picking up letters when they are sent them, and so on, and so forth. There’s a terror I have learned in waiting for someone to do something so important to you. The month (oh fucking gods, it was a month) of waiting for Dr. Friedman to write less than a page of text was terrifying. There was nothing I could do to speed the process up. I was powerless. My life was in her hands. It sucked.

But okay, so, I’ve always been a trusting individual, you know? I look for the best in people, because people deserve the best from me. People are awesome, and deserve respect. Unless it’s clear they don’t want my respect, I give it. I trust. But as I get older, the stuff being risked keeps increasing in scope, and I keep having to trust “professionals” to get my shit done. Sometimes this works out, and sometimes it does not. It’s slowly becoming more and more terrifying, to be sure.

In any case, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I’m banking my future on trusting people. I’m setting myself up for potential failure where, if I just pulled myself inside myself and bunkered down, I wouldn’t have to risk anything. I’m sure I could spin a life together that mitigated risk quite completely. But that’s not what I want. I want family, and romance, and the life I want. That life involves people.

Maybe I’m too nice. Maybe you have to fight for what you want and make people bleed in order to be happy. Maybe you have to rip and tear. Maybe being polite and friendly and dependable and professional aren’t the ways to get what you want out of life. Maybe it needs something else. Mistakes get made unless you accept no mistakes, right? Something like that?

Something like that.

I am doing a really bad job at saying I’m worried that I’m getting too attached to my get this bit of employment, get Brer here in December, move out and turn my life into the life I want plan. But I don’t know how to work towards that plan without getting attached to it. I don’t know how to move the plan forward without investing in it. If I didn’t invest in it, why would I be doing it? You know?

This is probably the kind of thoughts people have every day, don’t they? I am probably so boring. I want to be boring. I want the house and the dominant husband and the pet submissive wife and some pets and some video games and a job I can go to every day and come home and have that be enough.
So much of that is people, though.
Gotta depend on people.

Here’s my mood right now. In, you know, a progressive mixtape of songs linked on youtube. If you listen through it all, let me know. That’s cool of you. If not, well, no worries. Hopefully my mood will not be shit tomorrow, and I’ll write something.

Alternia from Homestuck’s AlterniaBound soundtrack

Hopeless Bleak Despair by They Might Be Giants

Failure by My Robot Friend

Un Dia by Juana Molina

Want It All Back from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack

Grace and Glory from the Jet Set Radio soundtrack

Advice [FLCL Arrange Version] by The Pillows

Skies of Skaia from Homestuck Vol. 1

Three Minutes Clapping from The World Ends With You

Up to the Roof by Blue Man Group

It’s Getting Better (Man!!) by Oasis

When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade by The Boy Least Likely To

Fear (Rez Version) by Adam Freeland

Killed by BR8K Spider!!!!!!!! from Homestuck’s AlterniaBound soundtrack

(I wrote this while I was really raging. Really angry and depressed. I left a bunch of really angry tweets and stuff in my wake. I’m still angry about it, to some extent, but have mostly chilled. Still, here it is, uncensored. I can’t bring myself to write something more entertaining and I’m just… yeah. Seriously, though, thanks to everyone who extended support on twitter and otherwise about this bullshit. It’s more than I deserve, really.)

Today I was supposed to start hormones!

Man, did that get fucked up!

I call to make sure they’ve received the letter to let me do this stuff today, just to be thorough. Turns out, no, they have no idea where it is. Nobody has it. It’s gone. I can’t have the appointment if I don’t have the letter. There’s a slim chance I could get a copy of the letter from Dr. Friedman before the appointment, but it’s very unlikely, as the appointment is before she’s actually up. I don’t have a copy myself. They lost the one I got in the mail. I had to cancel because otherwise they would charge me for the appointment anyway. Soonest I could get in again was next week.

Another week! Another week gone. Another 7 days of my life where I don’t get to be myself. Another 168 hours of not having what I’ve been wanting and working towards my whole lifetime. Just another fucking disappointment. Another fucking delay.

Seriously, at what point do you just give up? When have you been fucked around and jerked around enough? When do you just give up on life when life won’t give you a fucking break? I mean, what’s going to happen next week? Car break down? They lose the letter AGAIN? Won’t accept the copy I bring them? When does it end?

It doesn’t end. It never ends. Being yourself is a failing prospect in the world. Depending on another person for anything as simple as taking a fucking letter out of the mail is impossible, as it will never amount to anything. No amount of effort on creating yourself will ever be worth anything. No amount of hopes and dreams will ever come true. This is a world where you aren’t free to decide any fucking thing about what you do, where you go, or who you are, and if you dare to deviate, dare to hope that, at some point, life might work out and be something positive, well, you are fucking wrong.

Years ago now, I pulled myself out of depression. I pulled myself up, and I decided that I could do this. I could make things better in my life. I could be myself. I tried. I tried to do everything the way I was supposed to. I was patient. I was nice. I didn’t push anyone.

When do you let yourself be pushed around enough for being nice? When do you say that enough is enough, and bullshit is bullshit, and fuck you and how you’re keeping me down? When does that happen? When the fuck does that happen? At what point is “Well, it’s not that big a setback” no longer acceptable? At what point is “In the big scheme of things, this is nothing,” no longer alright?

I am telling you, that point is right now. It’s no longer alright. It’s no longer fucking alright. Everyone holding my life hostage can fuck off, get their shit together, or enjoy my fist slamming into their face.
Fuck.
I give up.

Yesterday was a shitty day. There were some non-shitty bits, caused by the awesome people I have in my life, but mostly shitty ones. As I write this, it’s still going similarly. I’m frustrated and tired and unhappy, and I have to write a blog post.

Well then.

For all the crazy-ass stuff I am doing with my life, transitioning at all, I will have to say that I’ve never really felt like a freak. I can pinpoint two moments when I felt this way. The first was when I dressed in front of Natalie for the first time. That went really badly for both of us, and I cried for a long, long while.

Let’s just say the second thing happened today, when I was attempting to do research based on suggestions from my psychologist. I can’t remember a time I have felt more like a fake, a liar, and a failure than when I was looking for fake breasts to wear, and how to determine what kind of buy. The idea that I would be wearing that sort of thing every day, that I’d have to wake up in the morning and deal with that? That crushed me. Seriously crushed me. I’m trying to be myself, not trade one fake persona for another. That’s the whole point I’m spending all this money, and time, and effort. That’s why I am trying so damn hard at this. To be myself. Not some fake person. Me.
I could not imagine something that would make me feel more fake than that.

So I’m mad at the world. I’m mad at my psychologist for making no sense to me and actively putting me down instead of helping me. I’m mad that I’m in this stupid position where I have to prove I can be someone I’m not before they let me be the person I am. I’m mad at waiting. I’m mad at life, and I’m tired to waiting for it to start.

Fuck you, world. Fuck you, life. I’m done with this bullshit. Do you hear me? I am done with this bullshit. I’m me, and you can’t fucking stop me.

Yeah, depressed bitching today, move along, nothing interesting to see.

There’s a saying along the lines of “work expands to fill the available space.” I kind of feel that way about my depression. If I have more time, it expands outward to fill all available time. It’s more diluted that way, of course, and not hitting me as a strong wave of panic or other issue, but it can still totally wreck my shit. I’ve had free time this week, and that’s nice, but I’m mostly spent it feeling awful, getting nothing done, and generally wanting to give up on life.

I’m just not sure what I can do. I tell people I don’t feel in control, and they tell me I am in control. I tell people I feel like I’m going to collapse in on myself, and I’m not on solid ground, and they tell me I am. I tell them I can’t do anything right and they tell me I do all kinds of things right. Do I really feel like shit? Surely not. I’m sure they’d tell me otherwise.

You can’t get anything done without smashing things. There’s no nice way to get anything done. Everyone will see you the way they want to see you unless you punch them in the fucking face, shatter their reality bubble, and force your way of thinking onto them. Maybe that’s justified sometimes when the reason you’re doing it is good. When you’re trying to make things better. When, in the short term you make people bleed so that in the long run they can be safer and happier.
But when what you want to change is people recognizing your weakness, and that you need help, well, what do you do? You can smash, but what’s the point in that? You’re weakening those who can help you for selfish purposes. It’s stupid. It serves no purpose. So you sit, isolated, and rot, unable to do anything.

I don’t know why I was using the second person there. I’m obviously talking about me.

Nobody can pull me out of my funk and fix my life but me. That’s obvious. I’m not wanting a magic wand, because a magic wand simply does not exist. However, how can I confront something everyone thinks doesn’t exist? How can I get advice and support in fixing things nobody else can see? How can I face up to what I need to do when everyone denies I need to do anything?

I have no idea. It would be nice to know.

I get this kind of rage any time something frustrates me, but there is nothing that frustrates me more than my tech not working.

I guess I should explain.

I was having some very nice conversations with my boyfriend, with Cris, with Ecks, and I was trying to write a blog, because hey, I haven’t missed a nightly blog post since I started this bullshit like 2 years ago, so I’m not going to miss one tonight either! However, apparently our home phone line has been down. Nobody noticed, because it’s a waste of money that nobody uses, but she found out it wasn’t working, and tried to fix it, as well as getting my father and me on the case. Since we’ve done that, my internet has randomly disconnected once or twice a day or so, though not for long spans until this time I am about to tell you about, and the phone still doesn’t work as a phone.

Tonight, I was trying to do this stupid Xbox Live test thing, because why not? I like stupid Avatar items. I was running this, and at 45 seconds remaining, I get kicked off. Frustrating, sure, but it comes right back up and I start it again.

Then it kicks me off again.

I’ve been fighting for awhile now, trying to get this to work again. It’s been connecting and disconnecting, and keeping me from finishing my conversations, as well as writing a blog more interesting than this one. I was ready to throw my router across the room. I wanted to scream and wake everyone up. I wanted blood, and, frankly, if this doesn’t go through and post like it should, I will want the heads of everyone who gives DSL to this house. Every single person.

I get so angry. So fucking angry. I hate being angry. But you don’t fucking keep me from the people I love. I don’t care if you’re a modem or a person. You are not going to fucking do that.

Bleh.