The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

On Monday, I had my last meeting with Missy about the semester before I left for the summer. There is a chance (it’s not for sure, but I’m certainly trying) that by the time I get back from summer break to teach again, things are going to be different. Transitions will be in full swing. Etc. I decided that you don’t tell people this sort of thing over e-mail, and thus I need to talk to her in person before all that got started. This was likely going to be my only chance until I set up another meeting. I was going to tell her.

Now, Missy is awesome, and it really was no big deal when it happened. She understood. She said she may have to ask some “stupid questions” to really get it, but that’s a perfectly fine response. Still, I got so worked up over it, it was making me sick. I felt worked up and anxious all day afterwards, too. It was a somewhat big step to tell my boss that, right? Something like that?

I am just so wrapped up in anxiety. I cannot remember a time, besides those initial fights with Natalie way back when, and maybe when I broke up with her, where I have felt so nonstop awful for such a long period of time. These last few weeks have been deadly with nervousness, and honestly, I’m really, really sick of it. I’d like to move on. I keep telling myself that once I finish all my homework the feeling will go away, but I’ve been knocking more and more of it out, and things haven’t improved, really.

It’s frustrating as fuck.

Basically, I’m really tired of being nervous and anxious, and if I’ve been an ass to you, I’m sorry. That’s my bad. I shouldn’t be like this. I really shouldn’t. I’ll handle it.

I’ll handle it.

Tuesday fucking sucked.

It’s been a long time since I felt so out of control in my life. Everything started crashing down. I was sick in bed, assignments were due, I had been too sick to get them done… it was pretty awful. I was driving myself crazy with panic.

Maybe I’ve bitten too much off if 3 or so days of sickness can completely ruin me. Maybe I have too much going.

Maybe.

I’m going to catch up over the weekend. I’ll be okay. I’m the kind of person who is okay, and who will get things done correctly. Of that I have no doubt. But man, the panic I felt was… crazy… it was awful.

I really don’t want to feel that again.

Maybe I should think about rescheduling my stuff next semester to stop this… so it’s not like I’m working 3 jobs or whatever.

My parents still disapprove.

I guess I should have known this would happen when they were faced with something more… real relating to these issues. It only makes sense. I know where they stand, and they aren’t going to like me moving forward. It’s not surprising.

They tell me I’m moving too fast. I try to tell them I’ve been working on this for a decade, but they don’t seem to take that as fact.

A lot of what’s frustrating with this situation is that I need to take the high ground. That means that, in a lot of cases, I can’t point out the flaws in their logic. From this last conversation, apparently I can’t even offer counterarguments or explanations, or suggest things to help them, without being some evil manipulator who is only trying to further my own goals. Granted, I am trying to further my own goals, but it’s really less sinister than that. I don’t want to trick them. I don’t need to trick them into loving me. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help and I don’t want to explain myself.

I’m not mad at them, perse. I’m really frustrated with them, sure, but not mad. This is fucking traumatic stuff we’re talking about here. It’s natural for them to be upset, and I’m fine with that. I just wish they’d realize I was an adult, and that I wasn’t jumping into this. That’s really the part that gets me, when they tell me I have absolutely no experience in the world and am absolutely clueless, when they know that isn’t true. Plus, I’ve put way, way more thought into this than I think I should have. I did my time, and I am doing this right.

To my credit, I didn’t back down, and I won’t. I am going to do the best I can to make myself happy, and to deal with this shit. I’m not going to let them stop me. I love them, and I appreciate their worry. But I have to do what’s best. I can’t make this convenient for everyone, unfortunately.

We had another night of Munchkin on Monday, and it was mostly good times. We played the original, which I picked up (which apparently made Shauna playfully angry, since she had suggested getting the game for me and Jonathan said that it wasn’t my kind of game) and I’m sure you’ll see a review of that tomorrow. Because it’s apparently Munchkin Week here at the bloeg. But for now I’m going to talk about something pointless, stupid, and depressing related to Munchkin. Ready? Okay.

I hate gender-based mechanics in casual games.

Okay, that description really doesn’t describe the phenomenon I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is casual games where game mechanics are based upon the player’s actual gender. This is normally done for funny joke time, to break the ice, or to give female players an advantage because the designers are assuming their boyfriends tricked them into playing or some shit.

Obviously, I’m a bit sensitive to such things. They put me in awkward situations.

Example from Monday. We were playing Cthulhu Munchkin again. I draw an early game Chibithulhu. I can easily beat it at the “male” difficulty, but at the “female” difficulty, I don’t have enough equipment. Everyone knows I have this card in my hand, due to a weird drawing snafu. If I am male, the right thing to do is to look for trouble, play Chibithulhu, take the extra treasure from being an Investigator, and level up. Everyone knows I have the card, and everyone knows I can kill it if this is the case. If I hold onto the card and don’t play it, I am, in their eyes, making an obvious play mistake.
This really, really, really bothers me for some reason. I try to learn rules and master them. I find that fun. I also don’t believe in playing at anything less than the best of your ability, as I find throwing the game only insults the people you’re playing with. (There are exceptions for humor value, of course, but in general, I feel this way.) I tried holding onto the card in reality. I didn’t play it for two turns. It drove me crazy. I didn’t want to seem like I was handicapping myself.
At the same time, I could have insisted I was female, I suppose. All but one person at the table I had had the talk with. That, however, seemed like I would be intentionally disrupting and ruining a fun night. We were all having a good time. Why should I be ruining it with my stupid bullshit?

I ended up playing the card, and asking for help to kill the monster. Everyone at the table complained. “What are you doing? You don’t need help to kill that.” I gave in, took my treasure, swallowed my feelings on the matter, and kept playing.

But it obviously bothered me enough to write a bloeg about it.

And that is why gender-based mechanics suck. The end.
Okay, I guess I didn’t actually prove that. Just that I hate them. I understand why they exist, and I think that’s a fine thing. Nothing wrong with breaking the ice in such games. But dammit, it’s stupidly hard. Annoying. Yes.

And that’s it for that rant. Stay tuned for more stupidity.

Let’s be honest. Everything has a very real possibility of exploding in my face. Everything is made of gunpowder. I’m risking igniting it.

I stared at the ceiling for hours, realizing I don’t have a plan if this fails. My life, for the longest time, has been leading up to trying to make this transition happen. If it fails, if I can’t pass, if nobody accepts me, what happens then? The correct answer is, I guess, that I continue on in some capacity. Somehow, I keep going. I survive.

But that seems so unbearable. Things are already unfair. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do. I shouldn’t have these problems. The idea that I can put it all on the line, and do literally every single thing in my power to fix this, and then still not succeed is… it would crush me completely. I don’t see anything after that point. I’m sure I’d keep going somehow, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what life is for me after that point. I don’t.

I can’t let the worst-case scenario stop me, though. I know that if I don’t try to fix this, I will hate myself. I will always worry if I could have removed this cloud over my life, that ruins all the fucking awesome people and awesome things in it. I will never feel like I did the right thing. I need to proceed. And I will proceed. As I’ve said before, nothing is going to stop me now. I’m doing this.

Is it a comfort, though. Is it what reality is. I don’t know. Maybe I have less of a read of the flow of things than I had hoped. Maybe I should expect doom and gloom. I don’t know. I just want to be able to claim myself, and maybe that won’t happen.

But life goes on, I guess.

Ugh… sorry… I haven’t been right all week. All depressed and shit. Don’t let me drag you down.

I came home from the press yesterday and I passed out for several hours.

I guess you could call it a nap, but it certainly didn’t feel that way. It was a stumble upstairs haphazardly, hide in bed, and then where did 3 hours go kind of affair. I had debating skipping and just not showing up to work to sleep, but I was good, and went. Yeah. Good.

Anyway, basically, I’m tired. I’m running constantly all day doing things, so I stay up late to have free time. Then I wake up early so I can get things done so I can stay up late. I slowly whittle away more and more.

More and more and more.

And I’m pretty tired.

It’s spring break now, but I have plenty of shit to do during it anyway. I’ll still be waking up, working, and not having enough time to really unwind.

I’m awesome like that.

I think I’ll go to bed now.

My TA friends were nice, and invited me to go work on homework with them this evening.

I turned them down.

The idea of leaving the house filled me with dread. I was supposed to relax this evening, but already I was drawn to a family dinner and seeing my brother’s new house. I already had to commute up to St. Louis. I already had to do a lot of things. None of these things are things that I hate. I wanted to do all of them.

But what I really, really wanted to do was relax.

I wanted to sit down and beat my game. I wanted to snuggle and unwind. I wanted to not be running constantly, and not have to worry about doing anything in particular.

I turned them down, and went back to my game, but I can’t concentrate on it. I feel like I have failed by not going to get my work done. I can’t relax and play any more. I can’t ever relax. I have so, so much to do. I have so many nice people in my life, but they want things from me, and I’m already stretched thin. I have so much I need to handle and take care of.
So much.

Fuck this.

I should not feel like this.

Fuck this.

…guess I best get to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow.

Sunday night, I got home late, and I was greeted by my dog bounding out of the parents’ bedroom, dashing down the stairs, and jumping all over me excitedly. She was so happy to see me, and we sat down and played for awhile.

And this made me very sad.

I called up Brer, and I told him his, and he was confused. “That’s a good thing.”
“I know. She’s happy to see me. She wants me here. She’ll always want me here. Maybe… others won’t.”

It’s stupid, I know. I have my parents assurance that they’ll always love me, and be there for me, and I know they weren’t lying to me. I know they’ll be there. At the same time, it’s that idea that, once things get into fuller swing, they won’t want me there… that idea is upsetting. I thought it had gone away once I told them, but it hasn’t.

I mean, I have plenty of support. I have plenty of people that love me. Hell, even Ian left me a message of support out of nowhere, which was kind of shocking, but nice. I have people behind me, and I will survive.

But it’s always been about my parents. It’s always been about worrying about my parents. That’s always been what’s holding me back. And even though I’ve taken control, and I am not going to give it up, it’s still where my problem lies. I need to start getting electrolysis and stuff, but I’m worried about freaking them out. So I stall. It’s still the same damn thing. Same worries, over and over again.

Comparing that unconditional love of a puppy to the love my parents have for me is unfair. They have their own hopes and dreams. They have things that are important to them. They’re people. They do love me, but they’re going to have reactions to this stuff. They aren’t going to be jumping up and down, happy that I’m doing this. It’s normal. It doesn’t mean they don’t love me. I understand that. Sometimes the voice in the back of my head doesn’t, I guess.

Before my session today, I had homework to do. I had to write a script about how I was going to talk to my parents about the whole gender identity thing. This seemed like a great idea. I mean, I’m a writer. I write from time to time. Some people might even say I write every day on some sort of “bloeg.” Surely I could come up with something effective, especially since I was prepped on a good method of doing such a speech, and it seemed completely logical and effective to me.

I then went about putting off writing this script for the entire week, and wrote it at something approximating the last minute. I just finished it a second ago.

And now I kind of feel like I’m falling apart.

In some ways, I almost wish I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. I almost wish I didn’t give a shit about what they think. But I do. I really do. And I feel like they’re the biggest obstacle I have. Just attempting to write something that explained my situation to them, and how I love them, this isn’t a personal attack, and I can’t help it, and I have to do something about it. Dammit, just doing that put me on the verge of tears.

How the hell am I going to talk to them?

I know I’ll do it. I know I’ll move on afterwards. I know my parents are completely awesome, and they will, eventually come around once they understand. It just… the idea of fighting with them over this again makes me want to hide under the covers all day.

I mean, nobody, least of all me, said this would be easy.

I don’t claim to have always been a rock, someone who has no issues and who doesn’t break. Far from it. But after the past few years, I’ve gotten my confidence back, and I got to a point where I felt like I wasn’t going to fall apart every day, and where I wasn’t going to have panic attacks time and again. I got to a point where I was working and I was accomplishing things.
Now I’ve moved to accomplish so much more. And it’s brought it all back up.

Starting to deal with my gender issues is bringing so much depressive ammo to the forefront of my mind, and my mind, being the dick it is, is restarting with making me feel nervous and bad about it. Things I haven’t worried about for years and years are coming back.
It’s frustrating, but I know it’s a good thing.
This is all stuff that I’ve repressed for so long just to survive, and get by. It’s not like they were gone, and they magically reappeared, although it feels somewhat like that. It’s just that all the little demons in my head that were always constantly draining me quietly from the background, that I had bottled up, are out in full force. They have to be, or I won’t be able to fight them.
It’s the first step in stopping all this shit and being genuinely happy once and for all.

It’s just so scary, though. I have complete confidence in myself. But the voice in my head sure doesn’t. I know I’m strong enough for this. I’ve been waiting for it for years. I know I can pull this off. But it’s not going to be the easiest thing. I know that. And my head knows that. And is really trying to use it against me.

But I’ve got forward momentum now. That’s something I’ve wanted for such a long time. I have forward momentum, and no amount of “sick to my stomach” nervousness is going to deter me. Because I am fucking going to take control of my life, be who I am, and love myself for the first time. I am going to make things happen.

I can make things happen.
I can.