jackironsides

My parents had friends around for dinner tonight. Two of them, R & J, I'd met before I came out. One, Monica, a lovely woman from Berlin, I'd never met. I was fairly sure that R & J hadn't been told I was transitioning, but Monica had never met me before! Maybe she'd guess my gender correctly; who knows.

It was a pretty nice evening. And then, just before they all left, Monica told me that she thought the enormous picture my parents have on the living room wall was a good one of me. It was taken about six months before I came out, and I am dressed in high-femme mode, with lipstick and a sundress.

I had forgotten it was even there.

I can't express the crushing feeling I had from this one well-meaning complement. I don't know how it came across to Monica. I don't know if I managed to say something polite.

I really wish my parents would take those fucking pictures down.

My mum made me a patchwork quilt for my 30th birthday. (It was meant to be for my 21st, iirc, but got, uhh, delayed). My middlest sister got one for her 30th. And my youngest sister’s 30th birthday quilt is in the planning phase (Mum has two more years to get it done).

Tonight we were chatting about patchwork – she was watching a tutorial on “disappearing” quilt blocks – and she said, “I’ll have to make you a new boy quilt.”

Considering that although she’s mostly getting my name right, she’s not got my pronouns right once yet this trip, it was actually one of the nicest votes of support she’s given me.

I'm not even wearing my binder. Truly a Christmas miracle.

I picked up Becoming a Visible Man again this evening. I got about halfway through before putting it down last time, but it’s been perhaps a year, so I thought I’d begin at the beginning.

It hurts. The beginning of BAVM, like many trans books, talks about the author’s childhood experiences, and how they slowly come to terms with their identity.

But when I try to reach back to my childhood, there are few clues. I remember a couple – like being so happy every time I got to play a ‘male’ role, both in ballet and in theatre. But mostly it was heavy suppression of who I am.

I tried so hard not to be trans. I tried so hard. And the memory of that still festers in me. It’s like an old wound that is still rotting below the surface, never properly healing.

When I really want to hurt, to press the wound so the pain flares up, I try to think how I would have been if I’d transitioned earlier, even as a teenager.

I don’t know what to do to ease this visceral pain. I feel like beginning my transition should’ve helped, but it only helps with my discomfort with how I present now, not with my discomfort with my past.

It’s a hell of a time for my psych to be on holiday, I guess.

Me on tumblr dot com: WHERE IS MY TOP SURGERY DAMMIT

Garbage blue hellsite, three seconds later: boy have I got the perfect ad for you! listen here: BOOB JOBS, going cheap! You could be a G cup in no time!

Me: I want to go on T so I can have carefully curated facial hair like Gomez Addams or Tony Stark

Me @ me: You know that within five years you'll actually have the Morris Man's Look™ of long hair and a full unruly beard instead

Guess who’s crying on their couch bc they’re dysphoric as fuck and not at all sure that they’re genderqueer and not just a straight-up trans dude

fuck i wish i had someone to talk to about this

i just want to feel normal

fuck fuck fuck