nice, first post on the new old imac i inherited.
i don't think i have a lot to say considering how late last night i wrote the last post. not much happened today. i went to shabbat service at the new synagogue i joined today, that was something. everyone was really nice there and it was helpful that there were so many out-of-towners there for a bat mitzvah so it felt a little less focused on my new-ness. it's a synagogue for ceasefire, which feels good to have joined, and one of the people i met there and talked to during the lunch afterwards was wearing a keffiyeh, so i feel like i made the right choice. plus the rabbis are both trans i think. excited to go there more. maybe i can drag h there with me sometime just to show him the cool windows and spend more quality time with him. i don't know if he'd be interested in going with me, but i think it was a successful first time going and i spent the whole time daydreaming about having him with me. sometimes the daydreaming would turn into fantasizing and i'd imagine us both old and wrinkly and it wouldn't be his first visit and even though he's not jewish he would have a couple of the prayer melodies memorized because he likes little songs and has a good memory for them. for a couple little blips i imagined having a kid that i was raising with him and he and i would ask our kid if they wanted to have a b'mitzvah or not. it felt nice to think about.
i've been trying not to rely too much on thinking about the future. i like dreaming about it and thinking about how beautiful it could be and how beautiful i could potentially make it but sometimes that can be dangerous if i start losing sight of whatever's happening now. there's a balance to be struck, though, and i like trying to operate in that balance as much as possible.
in my ever present quest to make something meaningful that i can share with other people i've decided to try my hand at coding a visual novel. earlier today i finished the main character sprites, which feels accomplishing. on the other computer i have the code for the thing itself, and i've already got the first screen done. i want the backgrounds during the non-dialogue parts to be videos i've shot on my minidv camcorder, and i want for the story to be a kind of sympathy/autobiography piece about me realizing there's more than just me in my head. i want to help the people who care about me get to know me a little better and i feel like this can be a fun way of doing it, and since it's a visual novel and doesn't really have any "game" aspects to it, i feel like it might be a bit more appealing to my loved ones who don't like games or are picky about gameplay and so on.
i think i'm just looking to be understood. i'm hopeful that the people who care about me care enough about me to want to get to know the other people who comprise my consciousness. i want to be known and i want to be loved, even if knowing me is a little complicated. hopefully this little project helps knowing me to be a little less complicated. one can only hope.
alright so i got hospitalized
i don't know if i'll want to get into it right away. maybe i'll get into it later. for right now the kids i work with had a lice outbreak and i keep mistaking my hair moving and my already existing itchy scalp for lice. i've checked. i've had other people check. i don't have lice. my former roommate who moved out in september left their imac and now i have another imac for free. i also found a tv on the sidewalk the day i voted, which has been nice. i miss my projector but i think she was getting a little tired and i like that it doesn't need to be nighttime in order to use the tv, which has been good for trying to occupy my time.
last month i got hospitalized.
i feel like it's a topic people around me kind of dodge. my roommates get uncomfortable when i bring it up. my coworkers know i was in the hospital but they don't know why and i think they just all assume i have some kind of sickness. h hasn't really asked much about it, which is fine, but i can't tell if it's a sensitive thing for him to ask about or if he feels like i won't want to talk about it.
despite the fact that i'm listening to car seat headrest and just watched neon genesis evangelion all the way through, this time with end of evangelion, i'm really trying to get better. i have yet another new journal that i use for keeping track of how my brain and its inhabitants work (confirmed, by the way !) which has been nice. i have a little whiteboard calendar next to my bed that i use to keep track of who was around and how we were feeling and what all we got up to that day. i don't stay up until 1-4 in the morning most nights anymore. i'm spending less time on social media, which particularly feels wonderful. i'm medicated, which makes the mood swings a little more stable and helps the fogginess of having 4 other people sharing my brain feel less weighty and more manageable. it helps my ocd feel less intense and controlling. i joined a local synagogue (first meeting with them is this weekend) and a local communist group in the hopes of finding, or making, a more robust community in oakland.
isolation isn't easy. i'm not isolated, i guess, but i feel isolated a lot of the time.
i think neon genesis evangelion fixed me about as effectively as at least two of the five days i was in the hospital did. in neon genesis evangelion the world is ending and it's up to a cripplingly depressed, sick little bastard boy named shinji. i don't like shinji, but part of that immense dislike is that he has character traits that remind me of myself, and if you've been a longtime ari fan, you'll remember that i simply don't like myself. so i don't like shinji. towards the end of the show (spoiler alert) shinji is given the godlike responsibility of deciding the fate of humanity. he gets angry and remembers how mean everyone in his life has been to him and decides that he and everyone else should all die, and their consciousnesses all horrifically meld together into a singular consciousness. while in the singularity goo his friends tell him that they didn't hate him, he was just projecting his own self-hate onto other people as a defense mechanism, and that the fact that he's alive and even has the opportunity to risk rejection in order to establish relationships is reason enough to exist. anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live.
i think i hate myself. i think i have a very hard time liking myself. my therapist frequently tells me how much the people in my life have failed me, whether it be my parents or my teachers or therapists or doctors or exes or friends or whatever. i often feel like i deserve all the hate and neglect that i've received in my life. i often feel like i deserve to be forgotten and mistreated and unwanted. it's very hard for me to feel like i deserve to be treated well and it's a lot easier for me to accept less-than-ideal circumstances and keep my head down and deal with it because it's what i'm used to and it's what i've learned to operate in. it's easier to be completely unseen and uncared for and survive on my own than to deal with the fear of being known by others, right?
the fact that i have the opportunity to risk rejection in order to establish relationships is reason enough to exist. anywhere can be paradise as long as i have the will to live.
h treats me how i've always dreamed of being treated. he's good to me. i don't think i thank him enough, but i hope he hears it whenever i say i love him. i hope i do a good job of being good to him in return.
maybe it's okay that i went to the hospital, because at least i'm feeling more able to be alive now. maybe it's okay that i went to the hospital, because now i feel better equipped to be a human. it's okay that i still have a hard time feeling worthy of love as long as i try my best not to assume that others see me as undeserving of it. it's okay that i have a hard time being nice to myself as long as i'm trying to work on letting people be nice to me, including myself.
maybe it's okay that i'm trying my best, and maybe it's okay that sometimes it's not quite good enough. i'm trying my best.
anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live.
editor's note: haha this one's hefty
so the good news is that i'm not obsessively suicidal anymore
i feel a lot of upset within myself. my own place within my body feels turbulent, uneasy, and generally just... unquiet. my tinnitus is louder and i don't feel very in my body, or that my connection to my body has been severed somewhat. in the grander scope of plurality i'm worried that i'm being replaced as the core personality, or that maybe i'm just experiencing heightened symptoms of depersonalization or derealization. i feel unsettled within myself.
mostly i think i just feel sort of alone. my coworkers don't seem very interested in being friends with me beyond just friendly-at-work. it always feels good to see hann, but i feel like i want more time with him, even though i'm worried about coming off as needy or demanding too much of his time.
i think that's what it boils down to. i feel burdensome and needy and demanding and like i expect too much from my loved ones but don't give enough back because i'm too depressed to be able to be present for people. is that my problem? is that what's going on? am i so depressed that i'm accidentally pushing people away because i can't think about anything outside of my own depression and how to cope with it in that exact moment or day? i feel clingy and i feel in want and need of more attention than i feel like i'm getting. i'm torn between desperately wanting for people to pay attention to me so i know that i'm wanted and just wanting to recluse and play video games all day to distract myself from the fact that i'm alive. it feels wrong to ask for attention or reassurance because it feels selfish and why would i ask for attention if i can just humor myself and keep myself occupied because i don't feel like anything i do is good enough, including the amount of attention i give to people i love and care about !
i'm spiraling, lemme divert.
an open letter to my mother and father
in a world painted so precisely to be either black or white, there emerges an endless sea of gray, and everything you have ever done blends together in a monochromatic paste. i hate that you neglected me for such a considerable chunk of my childhood that the only way i managed to psychologically survive it was by fragmenting my psyche into separate parts that could handle every aspect individually. i hate that your emotions were so volatile and so reactive and so demanding, yet so subtle, that i had to learn to instinctively translate the smallest and most delicate change in facial expression or voiced response into perceived anger, disappointment, and upset. i hate that, because of you, i still to this day interpret minor changes in how people interact with me as the first step in an imagined long road of disappointment and abandonment. i hate that you taught me that asking for attention was wrong and selfish, and that you conditioned me to expect that complete neglect was, and should be, my constant operational standard. i hate that you taught me that the way i should exist in the world is to sit down, shut up, and keep myself busy. i hate that you raised me with the fundamental understanding that i was a burden to you, and i hate you more for the fact that you voiced it and made it explicitly known. i hate you for the fact that anytime i expressed genuine consuming depression equal to the depression you, as my parents and "caretakers" felt, i was met with overbearing temporary solutions and told that i needed to just "suck it up." i hate that every "negative" emotion i felt was met by you telling me to just suck it up. i hate that, fundamentally, you refused to listen to or get to know me, enough to the point that the only basis you have for who i am as a person is what was accurate when i was 13. i hate that neither of you ever trusted me, and i hate that neither of you gave me the fundamental information or attention required for me to trust you. i hate that as a child you would almost never play with me and would actively and vocally express frustration with the fact that you were obligated to whenever you actually did, and then restricted and put no effort into getting me to interact with my peers in lieu of your socialization with me. i hate that you raised me to be as alone as i felt, and provided me no guidance or instruction for how to interact with the world, how to make friends, or how to maintain relationships. i hate that you verbally told me that you wished i either didn't exist, or that i was someone i was not. i hate that you both required me to listen to your problems, whether that be personal, marital, or career, and i hate that you expected me to offer input and guidance to you when none was given in return. i hate that you demanded my affection and gave none in return. i hate that the only footage i have of your interactions with me as a child are of you very clearly telling me you wanted me to go away. i hate that you simply did not allow me to keep anything from my childhood, be that toys, clothes, pictures, photos, or even outright childhood itself. i hate that you simply were not there for me. i hate that you gave me no foundation upon which to build myself. i hate that you abandoned me and outright refused to be my parents, and i hate you for verbally and very explicitly telling me that my existence was regretted, and that you fantasize about me having never existed. i hate that you expected me to be a source of attention, love, guidance, companionship, physical closeness and interpersonal intimacy, and then denied, shut down, and criticized any instance of me asking for support or affection of my own. i hate that you required me to be your child, your marriage counselor, your spouse, and your friend all at the same time. i was a child. i was a fucking child. i hate you for refusing to be my parents and then retroactively adjusting your own memories and thoughts about my upbringing to deny any possibility of your shortcomings and failures, of which there were countless amounts. i hate that you raised me to hate myself. i hate that you raised me to expect and ask for nothing from anyone else but give everything to everyone without any question or hesitation. i hate that i will never be able to fully escape you or remove myself from you. i hate that from the very core of my biology and status as a human there is no instruction i could possibly follow that would remove my want for you to have simply been better, or even for you to have simply been my parents.
i have to get ready for work.
things will get better eventually.
i am not doing well
i'd ideally like to try to start off on a happier note because i simply want to be better but before i do that i think i need to jump right into some ground rules. 1- bypassing any sort of requirement for "official diagnosis," i'm going to start talking about my inner world and my thoughts and the way i interact with the outer world as if i have DID, because, let's face it, the results are in. i'm in therapy for it. i see my therapist twice a week for it. it affects my daily life. it affects my daily life and it's getting to a point where the way i interact with myself and the world around me feels better and more accurate and more explained and consistent if i understand it through the scope of i have more than just me in my head and they have thoughts and preferences that are different from my own. that having been said: the person operating this blog is ari, this is ari's blog. this is ari typing. going back and reading through some of the other posts i can see hints of the others getting their thoughts out but generally it's just been me. i think internally we've all started discussing and agreeing upon the possibility of creating an overarching system blog where each of us can putz around and make our own things, and i think we all think that would be helpful, so we'll probably start on that soon. originally i had typed out a whole explanation of the system but i think i'd rather hold it and, once we make a system-wide page, lay it all out there instead. i digress. it affects our life and things feel a little less pressurized and discordant for me if i understand my brain as one with dissociative identities.
i know i said initially that i wanted to start everything off on a happier note but honestly in thinking about what i could type that would fit in that classification there really doesn't feel like a lot. i'm not doing well. i have to force myself out of the house and most days in the last two weeks i've struggled to get out of bed, much less to work. feeding myself only feels easy because one of my headmates takes over and gets me to eat. good things. good things. happier notes. i got approved for food stamps and state health insurance. i can afford food comfortably now. i had a really fun time going to target with h last week. i always have a nice time hanging out with him. i have a steady source of progesterone and estradiol now, and it's making my body change in the ways i want it to, even if i'm still insanely dysphoric about my genitals and sometimes i don't recognize who i see in the mirror, much less find them anything other than shamefully un-beautiful.
i learned more from my mom than i think i sometimes realize. my mom would very rarely express how she was actually feeling. my dad had "louder" emotions, or rather he made it our problem to know how he was feeling and treat him accordingly. however he was feeling had all precedent over how we felt, and i got used to that. sometimes h tells me he's inspired by how open with my emotions i am, but sometimes that surprises me. i try to be good about expressing my emotions but once things get bad it's hard for me to let anyone know. i don't want anyone to worry, and if someone i care about is having a hard time i REALLy have difficulties expressing any sadness i'm feeling. it traps me sometimes, i think. i bury myself in caring about other people so no one thinks i'm doing poorly. with h i feel like i can just feel whatever i'm feeling and talk about it with him openly but most of the time i get too excited about hanging out with him or too occupied with whatever we're doing together that i have a hard time saying how depressed i get. i feel bad not bringing it up with him but it always feels like a weird time to bring it up, or i'm too excited, or distracted, or whatever else that ends up just. it's not his fault at all i just have a hard time getting it out, or even remembering that it's how i'm feeling. does that make sense? am i making any sense?
i'm having a very hard time. i'm having a very hard time. most days it takes me hours to get the energy to get out of bed. i don't get any enjoyment from my hobbies like i used to. doing the website, doing the blog, watching movies, playing kingdom hearts, listening to music. it hasn't been feeling like anything. it all feels like distractions. i'm incredibly preoccupied with suicidal ideation, even though i don't really want to die. i feel intensely and sometimes distractingly suicidal, but i don't really know why. i feel alone, i guess. i feel isolated and scared of the future. i feel like i'm being kept in inpatient in my own head. my headmates won't let me front by myself anymore because they're worried i'll get impulsive and hurt myself. sometimes i come to and all of a sudden i'm in front of a journal or a bunch of art supplies and it's like they're trying to get me to therapize myself.
i don't know how to talk about how profoundly mentally ill i feel without worrying people i care about. i don't know how to talk about how profoundly unwell i am right now without feeling bad for not bringing it up sooner or in a more direct way. h reads this. e and c both know the link but i don't know if they read it. i don't know how to distance my writing from the percieved audience i feel in a way that both feels like it captures how bad it's getting AND addresses how bad i feel for the fact that, if this is how you're finding out about it, that i didn't just tell you directly. I don't know how to bring it up. I don't know how to bring it up without feeling like i'm hurting someone or worrying someone.
for the sake of journalistic integrity or transparency or openness or even just as a cry for help i'm going to just speak very frankly. i'm going to pretend that no one reads this blog ever and that everything i do here is just shouting into the void. i'm going to be fully honest about everything because it's what i need, and what i need from whoever reads this is to meet me where i am. i don't expect you to not get concerned or worried because you're allowed to feel whatever you feel, but i NEED you to meet me where i am with the knowledge that, with everything i might type out, i want to live. i want to live and i am going to fight to stay alive and even though it might sound scary, please please please please please please please read it with the understanding that i am going to stay alive and i am going to get through this and i am going to live. i just need to get it out. i need to get it out because it's just sitting inside me. it's just sitting inside me and no one knows but me and my therapist.
please meet me where i am. please know that i am going to live.
i am feeling intensely and inescapably suicidal. i am suicidal to the point that the people who share my brain aren't letting me have solo control over the body. my therapist and i have been looking for outpatient/php services that work with my state insurance. we have a crisis plan for if things get really really bad, which i've almost had to use-- once yesterday and once last wednesday. it's reassuring to myself i guess that i 1- know that i want to stay alive, even if my brain chemistry is trying to kill me, and 2- i'm experienced enough in coping to be able to at least take every day moment by moment at a time until i can just go to sleep and do it all again the next day.
i'm trying my best. i'm so incredibly tired, but i'm trying my best.
i want to get better. i want to live. i'm trying my best.
i feel less pressurized now that i've sobbed and typed out how bad things are internally right now. it's nice to think that my brain, fragmented and unusual it might be, is actively trying to keep me alive just as much as it always has. i'm trying my best. if you're reading this please know that i'm trying my best.
let's end on a good note. what do i have to look forward to in the near future. what am i looking forward to. i'm looking forward to seeing h again once he feels well enough to hang out. i'm looking forward to expanding and refreshing my website, even if i don't currently feel the energy or hobbyish joy. i'm looking forward to going to carving pumpkins with h. i'm looking forward to calling k again. i'm looking forward to seeing my body change and grow now that i'm back on the full hormone treatment. i'm looking forward to getting better at being myself. i'm looking forward to getting better at being alive.
i'm trying my best
haha it's 9/11
oh man i am really not doing too hot. on monday i called out of work because i wasn't convinced i was actually awake, or real. i didn't feel like i was alert enough to look after kids, even just for a few hours.
i'm glad i have therapy tomorrow because i really. i'm struggling. it's becoming difficult being nice to myself and i feel disastrously isolated and friendless. i'm having such a hard time making new friends but i'm trying so hard and putting in so much effort and i just. i don't feel like i'm good at making friends. it's getting to a point where i'm resorting to playing video games purely out of pretending i have friends like i did when i was a kid, but even then i'm not getting any enjoyment out of it. i feel like this whole week i haven't gotten any enjoyment out of anything. i feel outside of myself and depressed to a degree that's turning me into my mother. all i want to do is sleep and escape and just not be me anymore. i'm scared that i'm getting bad again.
i found an old minidv tape from when i was 9. there's footage of the apartment my mom and i lived in. there's footage of my mom actively trying to dismiss me and get me to go away. there's footage of me having to keep myself busy and occupied. it feels validating to have it exist outside of my own memories for the first time, or exist outside of the misremembered or completely forgotten memories of my parents, but it also feels sad to see. i deserved better. the kid i see playing with a video camera to keep herself entertained deserved better.
i want to feel enjoyment from doing things again. i want to feel like i have friends. i want to feel like i'm worth keeping around. i feel like i'm losing myself to my depression and i'm trying so hard but i'm scared of not being able to do enough.
feeling spacey and unhappy with my status as a living being today. feeling exhausted and lonely.
i spent 8 hours today designing a tattoo for someone and then giving them the tattoo, but i don't remember actually doing any of it. i know i did, i have pictures, but i feel like it wasn't me that did it, which feels disappointing.
i feel like i miss h even though i saw him yesterday morning. sab got mad at me once for saying that i missed them, and asked me not to tell them whenever i missed them. it's echoing around in my head now, which is less than pleasant. i want to tell h that i want to see him and spend time with him but i'm worried that i'll come off as clingy or burden him with the fact that i miss him or something. i'm worried that me saying i miss him will cause stress or sadness.
i spent 8 hours with somebody doing almost nothing but designing and giving a tattoo and they paid me $300 for it, which isn't bad, that's actually the most i've ever made on a single tattoo, but $130 of it went to the last two months' utilities and $50 of it is going to pay for my card's overdraft fees. so that's cool. that leaves me with uhhhhh $120 which will conveniently cover the entirety of my phone bill (thumbs up emoji)
money makes me want to die in a horrible violent way
i'm feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and i want to cry but i feel like my body won't let me. too tired to cry and too much that i want to do but never allot time for to cry. can't cry because that takes time away from all the other things i was hoping to do today before i realized that i told someone a month ago that i'd do a tattoo for them today.
can't cry not now can't cry not now can't cry not now
i want to be held. i want to be held and comforted
today i feel unhappy with and embarrassed of myself. i don't know why.
i feel friendless and isolated and lonely and embarrassed.
i have a rash of eczema blisters across my left hand and my roommate, who is suddenly and without much warning moving out in mid-september, is listening to a tv show on their laptop loud enough that i can hear it. and my tummy hurts. and i'm listening to my depression playlist, which i probably shouldn't do, but sometimes it's nice to listen to sogs that hurt you a little bit so you can tell yourself that you're human and you exist and you're allowed to feel things because you're a human that exists and humans who exist are allowed to feel things, and that includes emotional pain. the playlist is called "i'm growing tired of myself," and it's got all the ari self-loathing hits, but ends on two and a half songs that always make me feel better about being alive so that by the time i'm done listening to the whole thing it all feels justified or safe or whatever.
my hand itches.
i never remember work by the time i get home but i think it's really good for me. i think it feels rewarding. i think i feel good about myself for working there and i think i like my coworkers and i think i like that i've been sort of assigned to be the 1-on-1 buddy of the special ed kids that need a little extra help. i think one of the kids likes me because he doesn't listen to anyone but me, and usually comes up to me when he needs help.
i have an intake appointment with a therapist specializing in complex trauma and dissociative disorders next thursday at 10 in the morning. for the time being i'm operating under the assumption that i very likely have dissociative identity disorder. the voices i always thought were just the same background internal dialogue everyone else has have names and agendas and when they take the wheel i don't remember what happens afterwards and it startles me. my spacey dissociations are getting worse since i started researching did. in the hopes of getting better i feel like i'm having to crumble a little bit more.
i'm scared of being a system. no i'm not. i've spent my whole life feeling like a system. one of my voices who calls herself connie tells me that during high school we had a different host personality who knew about it all and even used we/us when we referred to ourselves. or so i'm told.
i'm not scared of being a system. what i'm scared of is the idea that i have a disorder rooted in the fact that i was not shown love as a child, and because of that, i'm unworthy or undeserving of love, or hard to love, or difficult to love or be loved by, in my modern current life. i want to love and be loved. i want to love and be loved and i don't want anything to change that for me or make that harder for myself. i just want to be good and i want to be easy to love and i want for the people i love to feel good about being loved by me. i don't want to feel like a difficulty or a burden. i've spent my entire life being told implicitly or explicitly that i'm a difficulty or a burden, and i don't want to be one anymore. i don't want to not be loved again. i don't want to not be loved again.
let's say i'm a system. let's say whoever is typing this is a system, and is one of six and a half personalities that exist in the headspace of a single human being. let's say i understand that, and know who i am right now. let's say i know who i am right now and can give you an actual, full, thought-through answer about what my name is and what i remember of my childhood or my adolescence or my early adulthood. let's assume that.
that having been said maybe there's a reason i can't remember vast expanses of time beyond just repeating bits of information i feel like my brain is feeding me. maybe there's a reason i feel like i'm watching myself from the inside whenever i'm doing something i don't feel like i would be doing. maybe there's a reason i feel upset and angry whenever i consume media where there's someone with split personalities. maybe there's a reason i have almost no concrete concept of self beyond whatever i have physical proof of. maybe there's a reason i can have full conversations that include new and original ideas i never would've thought to think of with myself. maybe there's a reason i feel like such a basket case nervous wreck failure of a human being most of the time i texted my mom a month ago apologizing for the fact that her only child had to be a problem child. maybe there's a reason i always feel most seen by media in which a protagonist struggles with their own existence. maybe there's a reason why my chemical romance always hit hard and it's because so many of their songs boil down to a theme of "i exist, i'm here, and i want to be listened to and seen." maybe there's a reason why my favorite game starts out with a character having a mental breakdown because he realizes everything around him is a digital recreation of false memories because he isn't supposed to have ever existed, and technically only debatably exists, because he's actually a half-person who split off of a main person. is kingdom hearts 2 actually a metaphor for having multiple personalities? am i actually, genuinely losing my shit? am i going insane?
i'm out of hormones and i guess you could say i've been out of them for about three weeks now, but e and c are nice and care about me and are sending me some while i finish doing my state health insurance paperwork. i'm already at the point where my migraines are coming back and i'm getting hot flashes and cramps and vertigo again. i'll live.
i'm scared. i'm scared. i'm scared that i won't be wanted anymore. i'm scared of being broken and unwanted.
that's a new memory i just unlocked. after my dad picked me up from my second therapy appointment with my almost entirely useless utah therapist brendan, he questioned why i was even seeing a therapist, and i said because i didn't feel good about myself and that i didn't want to be alive, and dad-- "i'm going to attempt suicide while my child and wife are home" dad-- denied that anything was wrong with me and told me to stop acting so broken. what a cool guy.
i want a hug. i want a hug and i'm scared. i want a hug and i'm scared and i don't want to be unwanted again.
what if i ignore it all? what if i just go back to the blissful unawareness of it all and go back to assuming that i'm actually a perfectly normal individual. i'm a perfectly normal individual who sometimes gets intensely depressed and um probably has autism and uhh likes kingdom hearts and toontown and is a little autistic about vampires and disney parks and uh i'm so easy to love! and i'm a bunny vampire ! and there's nothing wrong with me actually i definitely don't have any voices in my head and i definitely don't forget entire years of my life. there's nothing wrong with me and i've never had a problem ever and also i'm so easy to love. there's nothing wrong with me and everyone who's ever been in my life has found it so painless and easy to love me in gentle and kind ways because i'm just so fun to love
(thumbs up emoji)
i had this friend landon in elementary school and i kinda sort of a little bit completely distanced myself from my core group of friends out of nowhere one day because i wanted to hang out with landon and he was really into warhammer and the witcher series and rammstein and i thought he was cool and also he was like 6 feet tall even though it was 5th grade and um i would go over to his house just to listen to him talk about the witcher and warhammer even though at the time i had no idea what he was talking about but i thought it was cute that his bed was crazy high up and he got on it so easily but whenever i sat on his bed i'd have to bring out a step stool and um he introduced me to nutella and his mom liked me because he didn't have a lot of friends and one day when his dad drove me home after we had been hanging out he made me laugh because as i was giving him directions i'd say "turn right" and he'd say "left, right?" and i'd go "no, just right" and he'd say "right right? that's a left" and that made me laugh. he and i would spend all recess collecting different plants and giving them names and making elf potions with them. he'd listen to me talk about kingdom hearts sometimes. it was pretty soon after 358/2 days came out for the DS and it was right in the depths of when i was coming up with headcanons about how axel and roxas were my best friends and how they'd hang out with me in my head when i was home alone, and whenever we were playing together he'd address my internal axel and roxas as if they were hanging out with us. one day at school i got a bad grade on a spelling test and my bully at the time (besides my dad) kicked a basketball into my face and i saw a fence post and thought about impaling myself on it and that was the first time i ever thought about killing myself. the next day i hung out with my core group of friends again and they didn't ask any questions about why i had left or why i wasn't hanging out with landon. landon kept hanging out with our only other friend, darren, for a while, and sometimes i'd think about going to hang out with landon again, but i never did. a few months or so later we were in the same scout camp group and i still wasn't talking to him for some reason but he went into his tent and it was just him and i walked up and said it was me and asked if i could come in and he said yes and when i walked in he was just laying on his sleeping bag staring at the roof of the tent and i laid down next to him and just stayed quiet while he explained stars and how they work and how if it rains how the rain would come in through the roof and after a while he got quiet and i very shyly said "landon i'm sorry i stopped hanging out with you. i don't know why i did." and he very plainly said "it's okay i know you just wanted to play with your other friends again" and we spent the rest of the night trying not to fall asleep while we just laid staring at the roof of the tent close enough that we were touching arms. pretty soon after that he moved and i never saw him again.
i've been friends with m for 7 years and that means i'm able to have and keep friends. h loves me so beautifully and so kindly that it makes all the pain in my life feel worthwhile and that means i'm able to love and be loved. syd and i have known each other for 11 years and that means i'm able to have and keep friends. h and c and k are patient with me and reassure me of their happiness about my presence in their lives even when i feel difficult and that means i'm valued and worthwhile.
everything is going to be okay i think
yesterday was ed's birthday
my new job is going really well and i like my coworkers a lot. They're very friendly and seem to like working with me, which is nice.
i think i might have multiple people living in my head. either that or i'm completely going off the rails in terms of mental health. lots more to think about here but i feel intensely embarrased and ashamed of it and generally sort of just scared in a way that i don't quite know how to deal with.
turns out there's a free guitar hero copy called clone hero for computer that i can play while holding my keyboard like the world's clunkiest guitar. turns out it works pretty well. turns out i'm having fun with it.
i helped my cousins move on monday, which required a two-hour-each-way drive to monterey, but it was nice because monterey is more deserty than oakland is, and i was surprised to learn that my cousins are in custody of the chairs my grandpa used to have at his dining table, and i got to sit on the one that i would always sit on once again. it almost brought me to tears being able to sit on it again. the chair that taught me to love chairs, in all its stiff, wooden glory. they're my spanish-speaking side of the family so it was weird hearing everyone refer to my aunt and uncle or grandpa and grandpa as abuela and abuelo. even weirder were all the family lore revelations i was able to learn of, because my mom and her siblings refuse to talk about deep family secrets but my aunt monica considers it community wellbeing (shoutout tia monica te amo)
surprise surprise everyone in my family carries the bipolar gene because grandma had it pretty bad and was one of the first electrconvulsive therapy patients in the states. i didn't get the full story but apparently there were a few incidents regarding meltdowns she'd have during mixed episodes, and a few times in the 60s and 70s she ended up getting hospitalized? more research is to be done here. regardless, my cousin rachel has type 1 bipolar and has been hospitalized for it twice, and her daughter daphne has type 1 too, with some dissociative tendencies, which is the same as me. i felt really excited meeting daphne for what was essentially the first time, because she's got the same hereditary brainworms that i do, and she's part of the same family tree, which feels comforting in a way i think i've been lacking for a really long time, but it's pretty,,,, apparent that she's not quite as far along in her path of well-being as i think i am. it's hard seeing someone you're related to go through a lot of the same things and cope in a lot of the same ways that you did, and now that you're a little healthier and better-off, you want to very bluntly be like "hey whatever you do stay away from nyquil and codeine and also you should give dbt one more try" but you can't because you don't really know her beyond just being her cousin.
i think i want to hang out with that side of the family more. i felt related to in a very familial way, which i haven't really felt since the last time i talked with gay cousin evan, and even then, the last time i talked to him was the last time i talked to rachel. my dad hates his family and refuses to talk to any of the ones that are still alive, and my mom hates talking to people in general, so i didn't really get many opportunities to be set up for success in hanging out with my family beyond the few visits we'd take to see evan's family as a kid when we were living in florida, or whenever someone would visit granpda while i was living with him. i digress.
autistic hyperfixation on the beatles, mystery/horror stories, and legos are apparently as much of a genetic trait as debilitating ocd and bipolar type 1. Hoarding tendencies are also a common denominator in that side of my family, enough to the point that being in rachel's house felt a little. too close to home in a few regards. it felt familiar in a way i've spent a lot of my life trying to overcome and undo. also we all smell really similar. also also we all have frighteningly accurate memories, and we all apparently collectively use it to our advantages in arguments and disputes. much to think about.
i'm feeling exceptionally dysphoric. shaving my head again wasn't exactly a mistake, because i understand within myself that i do it because it's a compulsion when i'm stressed, but it doesn't make me feel great in terms of how i look. i'm going to be fully out of hormones soon and i can expect my body to start reverting again. if it's anything like the last time, it'll be a month-long menopause lookalike where instead of it ending with me not being able to have kids anymore, my arms get veiny again and my arms get muscly and i get gaunt and bony and masculine again. i'm scared. i'm scared in ways i don't know if i know how to handle, looking forward. i hope i get access to hormones soon.
i want to cut my clit off violently. i'm becoming hyper-aware of it. i'm becoming hyper aware of the fact that my body is not exactly how i want it to be, and i dislike it. i dislike that i have a weird thing between my legs that doesn't do a whole lot other than make me intensely uncomfortable. i dislike that it's mine and that it's not something different. i dislike that my neck has a lump in it that makes my voice lower than i'd like it to be. i'm scared. i'm scared and i don't want to have to look like a man again. i've been so good at not looking masculine. i passed at my last job. i'm starting to slip, and i'm not passing as effectively right now. passing isn't important to all trans people but it's important to me because I Do Not Want To Be Man, Or Formerly Man, Or Anything Other Than Woman. and i'm scared of losing that. i'm scared of it slipping back.
i have a job interview in a little while. it's the second interview for a preschool job with kids of low-income families, which feels like it'll be a lot more rewarding than working with the rich frenchies.
apparently the friends we made along the way was the treasure all along final paycheck i threatened legal action over was in my mailbox. better luck next time.
i had a dream last night that i went to some christmas party in the middle of the woods and the house it was at was filled almost exclusively with people i no longer have in my life for various reasons, but my mom was like. a guide for the whole party. so it was me and my mom just wandering around this house full of people i don't talk to anymore all trying to get my attention about how they missed me but i was for some reason unavialable to them. andrew was there and he just silently watched me the whole time. i woke up feeling unexplainably sort of morose.
when i was sitting on my back porch i had so much more energy to write and be writing and had so many ideas for things to write about but now that i'm sitting here actually typing it out i find that i'd sincerely rather be doing other things. remember the time i was almost part of a post-hardcore screamo band with my former coworker who i a little bit want to be my queer older brother because he reminds me of my gay cousin evan? guess who also plays final fantasy and kingdom hearts and likes screamo music! my former coworker. guess who's also gay! my former coworker. he's also a furry but i have no confirmation on if evan is or was a furry but i remember one of his exes being a pretty diehard brony and the overlap can't be that slim.
yesterday's post was a bit grim.
more to add:
hi, my name is ari and i get sensitive when i share my special interests with people because in the past i've had entire special interests decimated by my parents' disinterest in the thing i'm trying to vent my interest out in. one time i asked to go to gamestop just to look at games because looking at games and movies is sort of how i vent out my need to consume movie media historically and she snapped at me for asking her about it too many times in the span of a week and that was the last time i ever asked to go to a game store. i've always been really reliant on my stuffed animals as beings from whom i can obtain social sustenance (because they're my friends and i talk to them and feel socially fulfilled when i hang out with them) and one time my mom made me invite over the kid who lived below our apartment in our florida complex and he picked up a toy cowboy gun and kidnapped tedy and held him at gunpoint until i begged enough but i started having a panic attack so he went home and then my mom got mad at me for scaring him away. during the first great purge (a term i use to describe instances in which my parents forced me to get rid of my lifelong possessions) when i was 13 my parents made me go through all the stuffed animals i had accumulated over my lifetime so i could get rid of them and it took an entire day and i couldn't stop sobbing because to them it was them making their child get rid of their toys but to me it was choosing which friends i had to get rid of that i had known my whole life up until that point. it was not a good day for ari.
my name is ari and i'm leaning fully into a blog as a method of self-interest because i guess that's what a blog is inherently and i'd rather do this on an online space and try not to feel bad about it than say all the same things to someone in real life and watch The Face come over them that most people usually get when i talk about my childhood. It's usually the same face. most of the time people don't know what to do with the information but they know that it makes them sad so they'll just give me this look of "oh my god that's awful you poor thing" but won't really know how to keep talking about it with me so they'll put on this face of shock and sadness and confusion and awkwardly try to change the subject. i don't like The Face and most people don't like hearing all the things i have to say about my life.
my name is ari and i feel like i have a hard time maintaining friendships because i'm not a very fun person to be around and i have a hard time reaching out to people and sometimes when i do reach out, whoever i reached out to doesn't put a whole lot of effort into reciprocating so i end up feeling rejected in a way that just makes me shy away more. I've been friends with my teddy bear tedy for 25 years now and that's a nice reminder that i can keep friends and ive been friends with my pokemon encyclopedia for almost uhhh 16 or 17 years now and that's a nice reminder that i can keep friends and i've been friends with ma for 7 years now which is a nice reminder that i can keep friends even if sometimes we go a little while without reaching out to each other and i've been friends with syd for 11 years which is a nice reminder that i can keep friends even if sometimes we go full years without talking to each other and i'm still friends with sag which is a nice reminder that i can keep friends even though i think they hated me for a little while after we broke up but now we have tattoos on each other and we talk sometimes and they sends me pictures of utah when i miss it. i'm trying my best. i feel bad sometimes about my ability to keep people in my life though because i feel like a lot of my friendships for some reason or another end up pattering out after a year or so. neither of my parents had friends when i was growing up so i didn't really have anything to base off of and even then i don't like blaming my difficulty keeping people in my life on my parents. i'm trying my best
when i was a kid i really wanted to be a comic book artist and i'd make up stories and characters in my head and i had this accordion folder that i'd keep all my drawings and characters and ideas in. then for a while i wanted to be an architect because i thought buildings were cool. then it was back to comic book artist. for a while after that i felt really pressured by my parents to say that i wanted a real adult job so i'd end up just saying shit to get them off my back even though at that point it was sort of an "i don't see myself living long enough to have a job" kind of situation. sometimes i think about being a teacher. i think right now if i were asked what i wanted to be when i grow up i'd say a tattoo artist that also does comics or a teacher that also does comics or a comic artist that also does tattoos. comics and tattoos sometimes feel like the only art form i'm capable of doing without feeling tortured in some way. i used to really like making music and sometimes when inspiration strikes i'll try to make music again but generally i find the process to be very painful and i usually end up getting exhausted and mad at myself when i'm doing anything musical. for maybe a week and a half when i was 6 i wanted to be a baseball player and my great grandma never let me live that down. even until the week before she died she'd ask me how i was coming along in my pro baseball journey.
i'm starting to forget the faces and voices of the kids at the preschool i'd gotten attached to. the three i spent the most time with still hang out in my heart and run around. i've been thinking a lot today about if amar still eats the snack that i gave him the recipe for, or if he even remembers me, or if he asks about me. i wonder if et still likes airplanes and rabbits. i miss them. sometimes the past few weeks i'll find myself at target and i'll pass by a preschool-age kid and i'll smile in a way that i think i only smile when i'm imagining having a child of my own and then i'll start wondering about the kids i worked with and i'll get a little somber. it's okay if i never end up having a child of my own but i'd be lying if i said i wasn't aching for it. now's not the time and i don't know if it'll ever be the time or if the circumstances will ever be right but i think i'd make a good mother, despite my flaws.
i want to watch twilight with my husband
hi there, ari from the future here. this one's not a super big bummer (note: no linedog.gif !) but it does include a walkthrough of how my brain works, which includes a lot of heavy topics.
yowza two weeks is a long time
too much has happened in the last two weeks. three weeks if we really want to push it to the last time i actually put effort into writing an entry here. to be fair the last entry is a genuine expenditure of effort, i just simply have not been doing well.
key takeaways of the last two weeks:
1- i got fired for the first time ever from the previously-mentioned awful coffee shop job because i was having a particularly shit day last saturday and semi-jokingly made a comment to my goody-two-shoes coworker about almost snapping at a customer for asking which cup size was the medium (they were clearly labeled and i was having a bad day) so she ratted on me and the boss fired me over the phone later that night. jokes on them, i've been made aware of the california labor codes 201, 202, and 227 (3) which state that if i'm fired i have to be given my final paycheck day-of-fire and every day after that means that, payable to me, the company has to face "final paycheck penalties" which means that for every day since the day i've been fired i'm owed a full day's worth of wages, and so far the coffee shop owes me $550, which i plan on gleefully putting towards rent.
2- c and sis are dating now and besides a rather emotionally charged phone call and a message saying she's ready to talk, i have not spoken to or heard from sis in about three weeks. she checks this blog and i'm aware of that fact which makes me hesitant to say more, but for journalistic integrity i will simply say that i am afraid, and have not been mentally well enough to respond to her reaching out. for the additional sake of journallistic integrity, and since we're on the topic of her, i will try my best to write the rest of this post authentically and simply pretend that she doesn't read it, although if i'm speaking my full truth, it's in my wishes for her to not read the remainder until we're speaking again. both sis (e) and c told me to have grace for their grieving but i do not feel like much grace has been given for mine.
3- i have not been doing well
4- h and i went on this really beautiful hike to this water spot called the garden of eden and it was soooo beautiful there was so much to sniff around at and there was this really beautiful moment where an old timey train filled with people and kids and families rode past us and we waved to everyone and everyone waved back and it was so beautiful and made life feel valuable again
i have not been doing a very good job at valuing my own life lately.
generally speaking i keep between 2-4 journals active simultaneously at a time. right now i have 2 and it's this one, my pen-and-paper one, and a smaller backup one i keep just in case i'm out and about without access to my primary two. i digress. there's an entry in my 2022-23 journal from right after i moved out of kyr's apartment that says, and i quote, "there's something depressingly humorous about texting the suicide hotline number and it comes up with your previous conversation from the week prior." i haven't texted it again but last weekend i thought long and hard about it. they don't really provide any service for me besides a brief, free therapy that tells me very bluntly that i should not kill myself. i guess that's the point, besides maybe sending an anonymous tip for a wellness check, which i managed to avoid the last time i texted them. anyways.
i don't want to want to die. i think moving here is really good for me and there's a lot that i have here that, in due time, will allow me to have a much healthier and happier life than i did in seattle. i have so much for me here and it's all so beautiful. if i'm patient everything will get better. i'm just having a hard time adjusting. adjusting to change has never been easy for me, which sucks. it's not that i'm afraid of change, i'm just afraid of how i react to change. i get reckless and slutty and careless and self-destructive. i stop caring about myself and what happens to me. i wish i wasn't like this. before i moved i wanted so much to be prepared and to have been able to prepare myself for everything. i wanted to be ready to be better. i think maybe i expected too much from myself i guess but at the end of the day i'm alive and i'm trying my best and i think that's the best i can do, right? all i can do is try. i just hope i'm trying hard enough.
e and c getting together is fine. they make each other happy and i'm glad for that and i want them to be happy. they both deserve happiness and i don't want to drive any sort of stake or wedge into that or insert myself into it in any way that isn't just my own direct involvement being called into play. but it hurts in a way that i think i'm not sure how to handle. i feel wounded. i feel left behind, even though "left behind" feels like a really big word to be using. it hurt when c didn't talk to me for almost a week and it hurt to not hear from e for so long, although i can't hold against her the time it's been since she reached out to talk (again, i don't feel mentally well enough to add on any sort of "i need this from you" right now). it felt so tangibly like i was being abandoned without being told anything about why, only that i needed to give each of them grace and patience. it hurt to have them both explain how much loss and grief they've been feeling, which i'm more than able and willing to hold and be compassionate about, but when it's phrased in a way that feels like it negates my own ability to express grief, i feel stifled and unheard.
e says she feels like i don't understand or know her. she's upset at me.
i feel catastrophically alone. i have h and his roommates and i have my roommates and i even have like. two people i would ideally label as "friends" but would realistically describe as "people i know after having met them once or twice and then following them on instagram." i don't feel like i have a community or resources and i'm perpetually in a state of feeling burdensome to h (my thoughts, not his) because of how much i now have to rely on him socially. i feel like a drag to be around.
fun fact, i hate myself have a very hard time liking myself and showing myself kindness. i always have. i'm pathologically restrictive about what kinds of accomplishments i allow credit to be given to me for and i'm not good at thinking of nice things to say about myself and i never feel like i do anything right and above all else i feel eternally selfish for hating myself, which is paradoxical because it's not that i want to hate myself, i just do, but hating myself makes me feel selfish because of how much energy i end up unconsciously putting into hating myself. it would be so much easier and so much less self-obsessed to just let go and let myself be me without getting obsessive about it or mean about it or even just fucking thinking about it but i can't stop because this is how i was taught to exist! the act of journaling is selfish and the act of blogging is like journaling but somehow more selfish because i have the audacity to waste electricity talking about myself and expecting people to put time into reading it and i've spent my life having such little attention given to me that i have to be like this becuase for so much of my life i've been my own only friend and the only person i could talk to so at this point it's not even really me talking about myself as much as it is me (external) writing about me (internal) as an entirely separate entity. and before you ask, no, i don't think i have DID, but i'm not going to confirm or deny having a system. i am a bunch of past and present aris and other people i've loved all operating and doing different things inside me (tangible person). they all coexist and i feel like i can address them and talk to them and even hang out with them individually in my own internal world but in terms of interacting with the world around me, it's all just ari, even though ari as a person has almost no real concept of herself beyond what people tell her and what she's gathered and analyzed and learned about herself over time. if i don't have a physical token of my liking something, then how can i know it exists and is something i enjoy ? if i'm not surrounded by physical things that are important to me then how do i know i exist?
am i about to have a breakdown? i feel like i'm on the verge of some kind of breakdown.
let's recalibrate and learn a few things about ari so i can prove to myself that i exist.
hi. my name is ari. i call myself ari but sometimes i call myself aria and i like when h calls me ariadne and i don't like when people i don't know call me ariadne. sometimes people from college call me alex because that's my middle name. my fursona is named laney and when i'm selling my body for money i call myself lane or laney because if i didn't name myself ariadne i would've named myself elena and lane is a nickname of that. for religious purposes i use the name saadiya becasue in judaism it's normal for people to have names that are sort of divine.
when i was in high school -- i'm getting ahead of myself. i've been diagnosed with type 1 bipolar disorder, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and adult reactive attachment disorder. it's frequently suspected by myself, friends, and mental health professionals that i'm autistic. sometimes this is a cocktail that looks similar to borderline, but i don't have bpd. when i was 14 i had a full-blown mental breakdown that caused me to hear voices and feel physical sensations on my skin for two months, but this has been my only experience with psychosis. during this period i would verbally react to the voices, which made me lose most of my friends, and sometimes my mom would have to come in and keep me company because the voices would get scary and i'd have screaming episodes. ever since i was a kid i've had dissociative episodes where i forget where i am or what i'm doing or that i even exist to begin with. during these episodes i physically will usually just stand still or slowly look around and kind of go on autopilot, but internally it's just sort of a blank space of nothingness and the part of me that is ari has to go into overdrive trying to gently guide everything back into functionality. sometimes nowadays that doesn't work, though, and i end up forgetting when i am or who the people around me are, and it shifts from dissociation into flashback territory, and i get confused and delirious and become temporarily convinced that i'm re-living a different part of my lived experiences.
my name is ari and i'm almost always some level of depressed. i have a hard time distancing myself from the general assumption that i am hated and unwanted by the people around me, and often, both passively and actively, think about being the cause of my own death. i have a very hard time feeling deserving of the love i know that i'm given and have an even harder time accepting any sort of positive reinforcement about my accomplishments because very few of them actually feel like things i've really done, even though i definitely did do them. i was conditioned from a very early age to believe that i was fundamentally unwanted by the people who were supposed to care for me, and this has caused a great amount of damage in my ability to feel important or worthwhile in the lives of others, which i have put a lot of effort into unlearning, but is very hard to do.
my name is ari and i am frequently suicidal. this has been a persistent and frequent enough fixture in my life that it no longer scares me until it becomes an active threat or desire, which tends to happen about once per year. i don't want to be suicidal anymore. i don't feel comfortable with the fac that it's something my brain wants, and i try my best to gently but firmly guide it out of my mind, but sometimes it becomes overwhelmning to a degree that makes it hard to go about my day to day life. i am currently in one of these periods, and i would, at the moment, evaluate my active suicide risk to be a 7.5/10, which is not a cause for concern or alarm, but is notable and should be taken seriously. generally, once it gets to an 8.5 or 9, that's when it becomes concerning. i am quiet and shameful about when i get in these periods, and often express these moods by simply saying "i'm having a very hard time right now" or "i don't think i can be alone." generally the active desire passes in the span of a few hours or after i sleep.
my name is ari and sometimes i feel sad because when things excite me or make me momentarily happy it can make me feel self-invalidative of the depression that i'm feeling in a general sense.
my name is ari and i didn't have an abysmally bad childhood but i did grow up spending large swaths of time completely unsupervised and generally at home alone. i was left to my own devices and abilities and frequently resorted to eating rotting foods and inedible non-food objects. i spent most of my time watching tv, playing video games, or arranging my toys and then staring at them. on multiple occasions i ingested various substances at a young age, and have twice in my life made mustard gas due to a lack of supervision and household cleaning supply protocol. the second time i made mustard gas i made myself very sick and almost had to go to the er because i couldn't stop puking. i did not grow up with many friends and have very few memories of ever interacting with my parents between the ages of 5 and 9, at which point i was relocated to live with my grandpa.
my name is ari and i've always liked vampires and stuffed animals and my first stuffed animal was a monkey named monkey but my second stuffed animal and lifelong favorite (don't tell the others even though they already know) is my teddy bear tedy. he has for my entire life been my most stable presence and greatest confidant and i like to buy him clothes when i can because i think he looks nice in little teddy bear clothes. since i was 4 i've been a fan of classic universal horror monsters but dracula has been a lifelong favorite.
my name is ari and i'm scared of elevators and crab legs make me uncomfortable and i get panicky when i don't have an exit route. i like burgers and trail mix and long stretches of highway and i like drawing even though sometimes it feels painful to draw. i've always wanted to be a comic book artist and/or to make some kind of movie. my favorite music bands/artists are the cure, leonard cohen, and my chemical romance. my favorite movie changes sometimes but right now it's midnight cowboy and the 1996 dracula movie.
my name is ari and i'm trying my best
my name is ari and i have an encyclopedically autistic obsession with disneyland and vampires and the rest kind of cycles around but right now i think it's kingdom hearts, toontown, and comics. i get really shy about sharing my special interests because i'm always afraid that i'm boring people with it or that i'm forcing them against their will to learn about something, and i get sensitive when i can tell that someone doesn't like or have much interest in things that i really like, so sometimes it feels better for me to just keep my special interests to myself so that i don't get sad about someone not liking my special interests. i think i'm autistic and i spent the first 9 years of my life being selectively mute. even though i talk a lot when i'm excited or around someone i really like, i would most ideally be able to be nonverbal for most of the time because speaking feels clunky and weird to me and sometimes my voice is too loud in my ears.
my name is ari and i'm trying my best
my name is ari and i'm trying my best
my name is ari and i'm getting hungry
alright so the coffee gig kind of a little bit sucks. there's enough that my coworkers consistently ignore that makes me think i might be able to contact some kind of food safety organization funded by the city government. ideally i'll have a new job sourced before i do that though. income is important.
i'm thinking lately about comparatively silly things that famous artists of various ilks did right before they died. aaliyah co-starred in "queen of the damned", freddie mercury made "who wants to live forever" for the highlander soundtrack, and lou reed shared a my little pony meme the day before he died. there's some humor in that, i think.
i'm feeling better than i was four days ago but i still wouldn't say i'm exactly thriving. outside the office window where i'm sitting right now there's two birds on the roof hopping around with their mouths open the same way cats do after they take a real deep sniff of something. you know the face. :0. anyways i'm still not doing great but at least i'm not feeling an overwhelming urge to distance myself from everyone in my life as an act of misunderstood "protection" of them from myself. my brain gets loud sometimes and that's not something i can help all the time, but i'd like to get better at riding it out until it gets quiet.
on thursday since everyone had the same day off we all went to pacifica as a family beach trip-- me, h, h's other partner n, and h's queer mom/best friend, cl. the drive over was nice and the beach itself was beautiful. i built a sand castle, h and n went tidepooling, and cl took a nap i think. it was nice to be at the beach and be with people i love n care about but given my mental state it felt hard to really enjoy it. it felt less like i was having a fun trip to the beach and more like some old timey doctor prescribed me, a woman, a "trip to the sea" as a treatment for my feminine hysteria. smiling felt hard but it was fun playing in the sand. i made it ankle deep into the ocean, which is a step upwards for ari.
i used to love water when i was a kid. i used to love drawing as a kid. i used to love being imaginative and coming up with stories and characters and events and places. i used to go to the ocean whenever i could as a kid. whenever i couldn't i'd just go to the pool in the apartment complex i lived in. ocd is a killer, or it can be? maybe i killed my own enjoyment of water. maybe that's on me. maybe it's dysphoria. maybe it's the trauma of having your eardrums broken because you still had pool water in them when you went to see the blue man group perform at universal citywalk orlando. maybe it's the hesitancy to go swimming becasue that means getting judged for wearing a shirt because for some reason you don't like having your chest visible, which eventually makes sense becasue even in your distorted pre-pubescent view-of-self you still understood your body as that of a girl's, even though that full realization wouldn't come for another few years. i'm trying to learn to love art again. i'm trying to learn to love water again.
for the past four years i've been writing a graphic novel. i hide this fact a lot of the time because i'm convinced that if people know about it then it becomes less of a creation for myself and more of a creation for everyone else, and that dissuades me from creating anything. but for the past four years i've been writing a graphic novel. first it was a western, in which a cowboy named dan set out on a quest to kill god. then it was a psychological western where dan had substance abuse problems and sought out revenge against the man who killed his family. then i started estrogen and got introspective in a way that made the whole western revenge schtick less immediately appealing, and it became a sort of character study about a genderless protagonist named cowboy trying to win back custody of cowboy's daughter after years of substance abuse and pathological neglect. cowboy was me, and cowboy was my father, and cowboy was masculinity as a whole, and cowboy was motherhood when the mother is just trying her best, and cowboy was an amalgamation of everybody i've ever felt hurt by, myself included.
i think i just don't have any drive to finish that variation. i still have the physical copy i typed up and started scribbling on but nothing about the flow of it felt good to me, and now that it's been sitting on various shelves for a while, i really just have no desire to finish it in that incarnation. but for the past two days i've been exceptionally hyperfocused on a new one, which i guess is just a thematic continuation of the same overall ~thing~ of it, minus all the western bits. i can't draw cowboys (yet). i have 20 pages done so far, which comprises the first act (there are four in total), as well as thumbnail sketches for all of the pages. ideally i'll stay focused enough to at least finish the first issue so i can say i have THAT done and maybe, if i really feel like it or get insanely lucky, i can send it off to a publishing agent and get it picked up by image or boom or some other independent comic publisher. if that doesn't work i'll just keep it digital while i work on the rest of the issues. anyways it's a fictional autobiography, because i'm a derivative hack who only thinks about herself i think at this point in my creativity and lifelong desire to make a graphic novel, i really only know how to make comics that are, to a pretty clear degree, just me. i know me, i think, and in retrospect a lot of my ideas for comics and things to put together have been coming in the form of little bits i can put in a larger comic about something greater than myself, i think. anyways i'm calling it "lane blanke, deconstructed" and it's about lane blanke, who Totally Isn't Me, discovering that physical embodiments of her past self are showing up in her life. they can physically interact with her but she can only see and talk to them, and only two other characters can catch glimpses of them. the story is that initially she's excited about being able to interact with physical manifestations of her past selves because she figures she can fast track re-parenting herself and healing past versions of herself by providing whatever it is that they each needed at that stage of her life, but she gets obsessive about it and stops talking to the other people in her life in favor of hanging out with her past selves, which to everyone else just appears as her withdrawing and becoming reclusive. so i guess the whole story of it is her learning how to balance time spent with herself and time spent with the people she loves and cares about. something something don't look too hard into it i'll feel perceived and get scared. but i feel more confident about this story and my ideas for how to execute it than i have for any of the other scripts i've come up with so far. i'd like to save the revenge western/"i'm going to kill god" one for a little further down the road, though. once i get famous for my Very Fictional Not-An-Auto-Biography i'll put a little more thought into revisiting the western.
i also have a lot of ideas for a vampire story too but i don't want to lose focus on the current project by getting tangled up in new ideas.
i worry myself, i think. ed does this. he'll get consumed by an idea that he puts all of his free energy into finishing. he'll put the family into debt driving himself down the hole of pursuing his ideas. he'll cheat on his wife and abandon his child in favor of pursuing his little ideas. i don't want to be like him. i want to be healthy with how i do this. i want to maintain my other hobbies and interests and not shove people away in favor of working on it. i want to be healthy. i want to be better. i want to be decisive and controlled and balanced with how i pull this off. i don't want to get obsessed. i don't want to lose myself in creating it, or lose anyone in my life getting obsessed with it.
insecurity is kicking my ass. h is patient with me and does a good job of reassuring me that he loves me and wants a future with me and sees a future with me and wants me around. i still get shaky accepting it but i believe him. i want to believe him. i have a hard time feeling wanted. i want to feel wanted. i know h wants me, and i guess it's just my turn to work on helping myself ~feel~ it.
bear with me. i'm worried i'll become insufferable. i'm worried i'll become hard to love. i'm worried i'll become like ed. be patient with me.
hi, this is ari from 11 minutes after i originally finished writing all this out.
for the sake of journalistic integrity and out of respect to myself and my emotions, as difficult as they can be sometimes, i've decided not to edit any of what i ended up posting. it's important to me that it exists and stays written and, in hindsight, i needed to vent and let it all out and get it out of my system because that's what writing is and does for me.
that having been said, it's a spiral post. i feel like i end up using the singing dog header on some of my most depressing posts because frankly it's my favorite header and it makes me happy and makes things feel better, but looking back at the blog so far i feel like the heaviest posts are the ones that have the cute lil guys. they do their job well. i digress. the following post is a practice in vulnerability on my end and patience and understanding on yours. it's a spiral post, and i ask you to please keep that in mind. not everything i write is necessarily going to reflect the way i think about and process things rationally, but it is ~me, experiencing my emotions at their most raw and unfiltered~.
i bought a comic book today that's an autobiography of a comic book artist who is the same age as me and actually makes comics and she's depressed and
i think this post might get sad and i think i want the comic book i got to help me through that sadness, so i've stopped reading about 20 pages in to write this, and once i'm done i will go right back to reading it. i think i have a lot of grief i'm carrying and i need to be able to let it go, and what else is a blog/ online journal/ place where i can ramble until everything feels numb enough to start the recovery process
i wish i was happy. i wish things felt better. yesterday it was such a beautiful day and i went for a walk around the lake with h and we saw so many geese and the world was bright and wonderful and i love the city i'm in now and the weather here is always so beautiful and my neighborhood is warm and inviting so why am i feeling the way i'm feeling? is it because i have expectations that i should be happy because of everything going so well for me? is ari simply having expectations a formula for disaster (author's note: the answer is yes which is why i very actively refuse to have expectations)?
i want the ease at which i so freely found drawing as a kid to come back. i want it to be enjoyable again. for as long as i've been conscious i've wanted to make comics and graphic novels. there has never, no matter how much i've rewritten myself or rebranded or changed my interests or personal traits or qualities, been a moment where i haven't loved comics and graphic novels and there's always been a pang to want to create graphic novels and do it for myself and for others but why is it so hard? why does creating make me want to die? why does doing the one thing i could reliably ALWAYS do before now make me so violently upset at myself and so disgusted at my own abilities? i have so many ideas and so many wonderful little worlds and plotlines and characters in my head that exist and live and breathe within me but it's so hard for me to feel like i can possibly put the pencil to paper and just fucking create it?
i don't like that i don't like myself and i don't like that i don't feel capable of amounting to anything and i don't like that so much of my life has consisted of the people i've been so desperate to support me telling me that i'll never actually do anything that i want to do? why can i find a graphic novel about a mom putting in the effort to love and support her trans son coming out to her and starting his transition but find it so impossible to ever find the same support from my parents? why is it that the parents i have simply gave up on me so early because of their own ability to find comfort in existing their own lives? in transitioning and finding my own desire to live i've found that there are four things i want most in life-- i want to have a life where i grow old with someone i love and who loves me, i want to create comics to give back to the world and culture that taught me what art means, i want to have a body i feel comfortable in, and i want to raise a child, whether it's my own or one i can just contribute to the raising of, in the hopes of giving them what i simply never had so that i can feel like i had a place in existence. ari, in four life goals, are those four things. and i've never put that into words before but now that i have at least some relic of a will to live, i've discovered that that's what it consists of. but it's scary and it's hard to look at because there's still so much of me that is so scared of the reality that i am simply alive and trying my best. why would anyone reasonably see a future with me if the future i most desperately want seems so far away. why would h or k or sis or c or anyone ever love me if i can't see a reality in which i'm able to acheive the four things i want to acheive that somehow so many people before and so many people after me have achieved that i just. can't picture for myself but want so bad. i want to rebel. i want to rebel and i want to distance myself from the people who love me because if i distance myself from the people who love me then it alleviates the burden of expectation from them that i simply stay alive. you there. loved one. do you know how close i came to ceasing my existence literal weeks ago? do you know that i found the beauty of existence and the promise of my future so overwhelming that i lost all sight of what to do with it to a degree that i, in retrospect, find to be scary and dangerous? do you know that i didn't tell anyone because i was afraid of how i'd be seen or "handled" because the last time it got this bad i lost everyone i had in life because they didn't know how to "handle" me and i had to start from square one, and even then there were people i iddn't tell because i was so afraid of losing them? do you know how har dof a month may and june are for me? do you know how desperate i am to live but how dififcult i find it to exist? i want to live and i want to create and i want to give back to the beautiful world that has given so much to me but i don't know how and that scares me. it scares me so much. why do i find it so hard to accept the belief that the love of my life wants a future with me? why do i dislike myself so much that it feels impossible to grasp that someone so divine and so heaven-sent to me would ever want me to build him a home or a chair and why does it feel so difficult to accept that he loves me? i know and feel so tanggibly that he loves me and wants and sees a future and a forever with me and i know that i'm loved but it feels so hard to grsasp and believe its permanence because no one no one no one has put in the effort to make me believe their permanence in mly life until now and all of a sudden i have so many peopel working so hard to make their permanenence known and i onkndon't know what to do with it or how to treat it or how to hand le it and i feel so scared of it all but so in awe of the beauty of life and its gentl e divine gifts of granting me the beauty of love and the people who love me
i want to live and it scares me but i'm going to do it anyways because the world is such a beautiful place, even in all its terror
i'm sorry if this is how you find out how bad it's been. i've been tired. please be patient and gentle with me. i want to live and i love that you're in my life and i love that you love me and i love you but i get so scared and so tired sometimes
i love you, please be patient with me, and please be patient wiht the fact that sometimes loving me means being patient with me even when it's hard
the world is such a beautiful place
the new house is treating us well and i've been getting along decently with my roommates, i think, though i only ever really interact with them in the evenings. i have a call later today with the general manager of the coffee shop that suggested that they'd probably hire me, and i've cut my hair short again. i was feeling horrifically ugly with the hair that i had and did not like looking at myself in any capacity, so i cut it all off, and now i don't mind seeing myself. i have a generally hard time with feeling desirable in any way and often that's linked heavily to my phsyical self-confidence, but on a deeper level i think it's rooted profoundly in the fact that i really just find myself sort of unlikalbe, and i think it's surprising and honestly sort of doubtful to a degree that anyone else would find me particularly attractive. h says that he's obsessed with me, moreso than he was before, but i feel distant from the ability to fully believe it.
i'm hoping that the coffee shop ends up hiring me. i need a job. in an ideal world i'd buy a massage table and set up tattoo work here, but it takes a while to grow a following like that, and i haven't even been here a full week yet. my plan right now is to just work enough to pay for the things i need to pay for, save what i can, and in my free time try to market my tattooing as much as possible.
i've been playing a lot of kingdom hearts 2 and re-watching the twilight saga.
generally i feel my mental health getting a lot better but the weight of re-potting my life seeps in every now and then. it's a lot of newness to get used to. i'm glad i have h nearby and roommates to interact with and i feel gifted to live in an age where i can video call k or c or sis whenever i feel like it but i feel a little afraid still to really go about much adventuring or branching out. the existential and often self-endangering dread of being alive in seattle has been replaced with a soft and subtle gentle sadness. i feel sensitive and hyper aware of the things that are said to me or the way people interact with me. that weird womb feeling i get keeps happening. am i on my period? am i headed into a depressive episode? will my aversion to a depressive episode turn into a manic episode, or do i feel in control enough of my emotions and how they work to be able to stay stable?
yesterday at ikea there was a woman pushing a toddler around in a shopping cart. i wished that she was me and that it was my child. i wished i had a child to be pushing around. i wished i had the means to have a child to push around, financially and mentally. my aching to be a mother is present and unignorable the past few days. i'm missing the kids i worked with in seattle.
i don't know if i feel capital S Sad but i think i feel lowercase s sad. softly and gently and in a way that feels grieving. i'm afraid to label the grief right now, whatever it is. i'll figure it out.
it's official! i've moved!
beans had a bit of a rough time with the drive but LC handled it like a champ. My back hurts but besides that i think i did a pretty decent job for myself. Driving 13 hours by yourself isn't something to fuck around about but i'm glad to have done it, and the house i live in now is really charming, and the neighborhood feels warm and overall much more inviting than a lot of aspects of seattle ever really did. the sunsets here aren't quite like anywhere else. They're not quite up to par with the ones in the southwest (those are hard to beat) but the fact that the sun actually goes up, over, and down instead of just lazily across a third of the sky really makes a difference for how the city and environment and overall energy of everything feels and looks. my roommates are nice, too. br and sm are both 30, which surprised me, because they have a sort of mid-20s air about them, and n is really lively and sweet.
words cannot describe how nice it is to be back in the same zip code as h. my bones feel lighter and i feel like i can breathe and relax and be more at peace, although h would credit it to the fact that i'm less full of allergies here and i've started sleeping on the floor, which is supposedly good for your back. so yeah that too, but it's especially nice being so close to the literal love of my life. it was nice being able to see him the same day i got in and spend most of the day yesterday with him. i've never felt more at home than when i'm in his arms and next to him. everything feels so much lighter around him.
tomorrow i have to contact the guy who sort of uncommittedly insinuated that i had a job at his coffee shop. it'll be nice to have a few days off, i think, and even if he wants me to work right away, it's just a coffee job, and shouldn't be too incredibly exhausting. it's coffee, how hard can it be. i loved making coffee last time. i think i'm good at it.
emotionally i can feel that i'm definitely in an excitable and unused to the reality of the situation sort of phase, in a good way i feel, but i need to be sure to make cope-aheads for if i get depressed AND if i get manic. packing your life into a honda and moving across state lines is no laughing matter and i think i'm still in the "haha this feels like a vacation" stage of moving but i really need to prepare for the inevitable "i don't really know the place i'm living in and i need to re-learn my routines" stage. here, let's start.
things i'm going to miss about seattle
similar things i can find or do in oakland to help adjust
things seattle has that i like oakland NOT having
things oakland has that seattle does not that i'm really happy about
more on this later. hopefully i'm able to get more blogging time moving forward now that i'm not moving. i wish i had bigger tits and also different genitals.
the past few days have not been easy
i said goodbye to all the kids i spent the last few months working with on wednesday. none of the goodbyes got to me quite as bad as the goodbye with amar though. i panicked a bit on his last day because he wasn't going to be in the after school class with me that day so before school school ended i went into his class and told him that i hope he has a nice summer and that i need him to stay safe and be good and do things that make him happy. later that afternoon he came into the classroom while i was cleaning and asked if he could stay with me and help me clean, and i said no becuase i was using a bunch of chemicals and wanted to make sure he got outside time. he put on a big frowny face but held my hand while i walked him to the door. the last mental image i have of him is him smiling.
today my mom came by to grab some things she said she wanted the last time i saw her. she brought a letter from my dad with her, with my deadname very clearly on the front of the letter. she cried a lot and said that my dad wanted me to read it to her out loud so that "he knew i read it" but i told her i wasn't willing to compromise and that it made me uncomfortable that i'd have to do that, and that it just felt like another instance of never being trusted by my parents. i read it after she left, and he said, and i quote "i don't know who "ariel" is but "she's" not my son". if you're gonna try to write a "heartfelt" letter to me at least fucking get my name right and don't put it or my pronouns in quotations. fuck i have an asshole father. i hate that my parents spend so much time guilt tripping me about not talking to them but put no effort into actually having a relationship with me. i want a family. i want to feel wanted. i'm sick of being constantly reminded that the people who were supposed to take care of me on account of me being their child ended up just passing me around to whoever would take me. i hate that they've made me spend my whole life feeling so disposable. it's fucking with my non-familial relationships and i'm sick of it.
yesterday night was especially rough. i felt distant from myself and overhwelmingly anxious about the move and it got to a point where i checked out a bit thinking about how far away and inaccessible the love people have for me was. it felt far from me in a way that got scary. i let myself get scary about it. i know that i'm loved and wanted but i have a hard time feeling it sometimes.
i feel weird sometimes about my own transness. i saw a post on tumblr today that was like "i don't want to be out and proud and it makes me feel clocked and outed when people ask me what my pronouns are or if i have a preferred name. 15 years ago they would've seen me and just said "girl" and gone about their day." i think i kind of relate to that post a bit. i feel hyper-percieved by people sometimes in a way that makes me worried that i'll never actually be a girl. i'm glad i get to share transness with h and it really does feel like a cool, biohacking sort of divinity, but i also just want to be a normal girl. i want to feel like a normal girl. i want to be perceived as a girl and do girl things like feel normal looking at bras or makeup or have people assume that i have experience with babysitting. i want the idea of having a vagina, or god forbid, a child, to feel so much more attainable than it does, and it saddens me profoundly that it just feels so. distant. i want to be a girl. i want to feel like i'm a girl. i want a family that actually wants me and i want the love people have for me to feel close and near and present in ways that i'm having a disastrously hard time grasping right now.
5 more days until i see h. 5 more days until everything feels a little better.
i gave myself a tattoo on my arm that is reacting differently than it normally does when i give myself a tattoo and i'm worried that it's infected. i'm hoping it's not.
my zionist fuckass coworker outed me to one of our other coworkers today, which i'm not happy about, and yesterday he continued to yell at the kid i'm tragically attached to WHILE the kid was crying. He was already on thin ice but i think later today when we have to do after-school together i'm just gonna flat out tell him that i think he's despicable and that i'm bothered by the fact that we work together.
i got an apartment secured, which i'm excited about because i like having new friends and it's down the road from h and it seems like it'll be a good street to live on and a nice apartment that fits my lifestyle. i'm ready for the next part of my life, though i'm also trying to brace for the great amount of change it's inevitably going to come with. h would say that maybe doing a "cope ahead" strategy would be helpful, and i think he'd be right. i think i'll sit down and work on that this weekend, or some evening later this week.
i got to spend some time this weekend with c, who got back from his two-week trip to toronto on saturday. it was nice to see him and i'll miss being able to spend time with him but we got to call a couple times while he was gone and it feels nice to know that we call decently. i like knowing him and he's fun to talk to but i also get nervous sometimes because i feel very autistic around him and i think i get a little in my head about my transness when i'm with him sometimes. i feel hyper aware of the fact that his hands are smaller than mine or that i'm bigger or that my voice feels deeper and while i enjoy spending time with him i also sometimes just feel sort of.. clunky and boyish. that's on me though, it's nothing he's doing, and it's nice that he says i smell good.
sis isn't moving with me anymore, at least not in the same timetable that the original plan was. i don't think i want to say more right now both because i don't feel ready to talk about it and also because she reads my blog and we're still mid-discussion about it.
my last day with the kids is tomorrow and i don't think i'm fully emotionally prepared for it. it'll be nice to be able to focus more on packing and getting ready to move, and then moving, but i'm going to miss the kids i work with. they're cute and as scared as i think i always was of kids until i started working here, i've grown more comfortable being around them, and there are a select few (exactly 3) that almost make me think i might want to have a kid someday. i don't know if it's in the cards for me though, and thinking about it puts the same feeling in my gut as thinking about getting bottom surgery. i want it but it feels too far away to think about. it hurts to think about. i'm gonna miss one kid in particular, let's call him some silly name like amar just for funsies. he's a cutie and he looks like i did when i was a kid. i'm the only adult that he really listens to and when he cries he usually reaches for me. i'm going to miss him and i'm acutely aware of the fact that 20 years from now he probably won't remember anything about me, but i hope that he ends up having some specific affinity for hats or saying "silly goose" that he can't explain where he got it from but somewhere in his subconscious he knows it's me. i don't feel ready to think about saying goodbye to him for the last time tomorrow.
the past year has been filled with a lot of loss, i think. loss is a constant and i expect it to happen for as long as i'm on the earth but i'd at least like to have a bit of a break. before the break comes one more hurdle though. on the flipside there will always be love and there will always be meeting new people and lettin new people into my life, and i know that and i'm comforted by that, but the loss feels present and tangible and it's wearing me down. i'm trying to face it and ride through it and be okay with it but it wears me out. last year had i think a little too much. i think it got to me. i met the love of my life last year and simply knowing him makes everything worth it. everything i've ever experienced gets recontextualized and fits somehow now that i know him and get to love and be loved and known by him. i think that can coexist with the intense amount of loss i felt last year though. and i think moving states is going to feel cathartic and necessary to let go of the aching pulses of pain that come from everything last year, but oh man. oh man.
i'm ready for what comes next. i'm ready to move and move on
i tried to write a post for yesterday but i got tired and ended up taking a nap almost as soon as i finished writing the two words i did write
i saw s yesterday for coffee. it went better than i think i was fearing it would go but it still wasn't exactly comfortable. we didn't get into talking about anything i felt like i needed to talk about with them and it felt like a lot of the conversation was spent in awkward pauses because i didn't know how to politely see myself out and they wanted to keep talking to me even though neither of us were saying anything. i'm not someone who feels awkward about silence but yesterday's coffee was full of awkward silences. in an ideal situation i think i would've communicated everything i wanted to communicate with them and they would've listened and just heard me. i don't want apoligies for any of it because frankly very litttle of it is something i think needs or merits an apology, but i do want to be heard. at the end when we were saying goodbye it felt like they said it in a sort of permanent way even though a bit earlier in the conversation they had mentioned that one of their friends was moving to the bay and asked if they could reach out to me whenever they were visiting. i said it would be okay to reach out but i can't promise anything about seeing them.
i feel weird about a lot of the situation. normallly i like to be friends with my exes, or at the very least, friendly. one of my best friends is one of my exes. another one of my exes just came to visit me for a couple days. a handful of other exes message me sometimes when they think of me or are replying to an instagram story or something. i don't feel ready to be talking to s yet though. i still feel hurt and wounded and ultimately a little let down that i had built so much trust and affection for someone who apparently didn't feel much of the same for me.
in my dream last night i was at a low-budget alternate version of disneyland and i kept asking to kiss random goths i saw there. after a few random goth kisses one of them kept my head where it was and i felt one of their friends grab me from behind, calling it a hug, while one of the other ones approached from the front with a big needle and told me they were gonna share their morphine with me. i kept asking them not to and asking turned into begging and then they stuck me with it in the arm and i went under, then woke up.
on saturday night i had two dreams- one where i was with sar and she was holding beans the same way i hold beans and she was teaching beans words in arabic and helping me correct my pronunciation. it was a gentle dream and that's all that really happened in it. the next dream was of h and i sleeping over at his family's former house. he was still asleep and his birth father came in trying to talk to him and i became blind with rage, so i ran over to him and gouged his eyes out with my thumbs and reached down and broke his fingers. he keeled over in pain and dropped to the ground and something clicked and i started eating him alive, starting with his hands. halfway through eating him i looked over and saw h sitting up in bed, looking at me, and i paused before i kept eating.
i've had conversations with becca the therapist before about how i don't really have nightmares in the traditional sense as much as i have night horrors, like the nightmares i have that one would consider to be nightmares are usually scarier and more visceral than i've spent my life believing normal nightmares to be. on a simple level the nightmares usually involve elevators, and for some reason i'm usually unable to get out of the elevator, and then i die in the elevator (which contributes to my irrational and all-consuming revulsion to the very concept of them). almost all of my other night horrors involve hunting and predation. it's either i'm being hunted and followed by something i don't have a full visual of, or i know what i'm running from, i've seen it, and it's trying to eat me or consume me or some other horrific act involving the mouth and teeth. the only one of these i've had that hasn't involved teeth or eating is the one i had about my dad last fall where he had me chained up in my first bedroom and said "i've killed everyone you love. be my son again or i'm going to kill you too" and i escaped and he chased me down the street of the first house i lived in, shot me in the stomach, then stood over me and shot himself. it took a while to wake up from that one and i ended up just staying motionless in the dream for what felt like a good long while.
sometimes i get what i call death dreams, which are never really ninghtmares, but when i tell people about them they usually react with shock about how scary it seems. in death dreams i'm usually in some kind of situation, and then i can feel myself die, and then the rest of the dream is just black. no story, nothing happening, and i can't even see floaties or my room, so i know it's not sleep paralysis. just black. no thoughts no story or anything, but i can sometimes feel time pass, and in the death dream i can tell that it's just hours and hours of black nothingness.
i feel my excitement to move so viscerally that it itches and i feel it in my muscles and veins. it makes me wiggly.
staying in the current city is making me feel such a specific brand of discomfort and unsettledness that i don't know what to do with it. it's making me feel sad to be here. i'm ready for the next part of my life to start and for my life to be happier because of it. i'm ready to not feel so stagnant and so held back.
i feel holed up and rattling. i feel insecure about the way i talk to people and even though h reassures me that the loving things i say to him aren't getting old i still worry that i'm repeating myself too much. i feel like i'm living the same day over and over again here, and working 7 days a week isn't helping it at all. today's my first full day off in 3 weeks and even then i had to ask for it off. i'm tired. i feel tired. i'm ready to not feel like this anymore and i'm ready to not be in this stage or state anymore. i'm trying so hard to be patient.
i'm tired
i'd like to be able to have a little more time to be able to dedicate to blogging. i miss doing it on a daily basis.
i didn't get the room in the house that i wanted but i have a few interviews with a few different houses coming up this week, mostly involving elderly non-men who just want some company in the home. hopefully one of them works out, ideally one that has rent under $800/mo.
on sunday before work s saw me and started talking to me. they mentioned that i seemed anxious and kept talking to me anyways, which was a little uncomfortable, and texted me afterwards saying that they've been thinking about me a lot and that they felt like it was fate to bump into me and that they wanted to get coffee with me sometime. i didn't want to at first but i feel like part of me needs to communicate a few things so i agreed to a short little visit this coming sunday morning. i'm nervous about it. they greeted me so warmly and excitedly that it made me feel invalidated about how coldly and uncaringly they broke up with me. it felt incongruent that they'd be so excited and happy to see me when a few months ago they literally said, and i quote, "i just realized how happy i was without you" in reference to the week i spent bedridden. it upsets me to think that they'd think everything's all good between us. i still care about them and i think the fact that it hurts to think about them means that there must still be some dormant feelings deep down that i'm afriad to stir up and deal with but the way they broke up with me felt uncharacteristically unkind. how do you tell someone calmly that the way they broke up with you made you feel like you were broken, unwanted and inhuman? how do you tell someone that the two separate multi-month periods they spent scared to have sex with you because they were uncomfortable with your genitals really hurt and made you feel intensely dysphoric and fundamentally undesirable? how do you communicate what you need to communicate with someone who, after not interacting with you for almost 4 months, basically corners you against a wall asking you about your life and seems so happy to see you even though the last time you hung out together they spent the whole time ignoring you and telling you how astonished they were at the way you exist and how fearful and robotic you are, only to, a couple days later, flat out say that they gave up getting to know you because "it sucks when your girlfriend has a thousand walls up" even though you WERE opening up to them, you just have a hard time doing it in a human language because you're so used to just being ignored?
how do you have a friendly coffee with someone who makes you imagine telling them "on the behalf of all transfemmes and autistics, please never date another transfem or autistic ever again" because of how isolated and uncared for they grew to make you feel. how can you be a sex therapist who claims to be t4t when you don't like having sex with your transfem partner purely because of the anatomy she was born with and vocally detests?
i want to watch survivor and cry.
26 more days until i'm with h again. 26 more days until i get to be held by my husband in a new place that i get to learn and know and live in. i'm getting itchy for it. i want out of here.
i'm hoping that when i move to oakland i'll be able to find a little bit more of a community with other roma. also, tomorrow during the team meeting all of the people with my position are doing presentations and i think i want mine to be my favorite silly moments from survivor, or a ranking of all 43 states i've been to, worst to best.
i'd like to have a little more free time in general so that i can blog a bit more. in addition to this i think it would be wonderful to completely redo the look of my website, as i've accumulated a lot of information and need to figure out a way to organize it all, not to mention the shrines i have on the backburner that have yet to be completed.
i think i've been staving off mania to the best of my ability for a couple weeks, or at least since the week before my birth reminder, and i think i'm finally on the comedown from it. i like depression a lot more than i like mania because maniea makes me feel disastrously awful about everything i do even if it's something i want to do, and it's taxing to say the least, however depression still sucks. more manageable, but still with potential for danger. i'm doing my best ! i'm doing my best. i don't think not getting enough sleep for the past few weeks helped anything much at all. that usually makes things worse. my bones feel heavy and it's easier to think mean thoughts about myself today so i think it might be safe to say i don't need to stave off mania anymore. we'll see how i feel tomorrow.
went tidepooling with the kids from work yesterday, which was nice because i got to help the kids explore the world a bit and see things from their perspective. makes things feel a little brighter and more fun. last friday the other teachers decided to have the kids celebrate all three of our birthdays together since they're all in the same week, and that was silly and cute but in its own unique way it hurt a bit. it's hard to have 4 year olds celebrating the fact that you're alive and telling you to have a happy birthday when you've spent the last decade and a half celebrating your birthday by thinking of all the ways you can cease to exist. there's a part in a movie i like called aftersun where the dad, who has spent the whole movie so far hiding his depression from his daughter, has his birthday and he wants to keep it a secret from the other people on vacation with him and his daughter, and his 10-year old daughter, who is just starting to understand the surface of her dad's depression, gets everyone to sing happy birthday to him, and the shot of him hearing everyone sing gets crossfaded over to a flashback from the night before of him sobbing in bed. i think i understand how that scene feels now.
33 more days i think. wait no 31. 31! more days! wait no 32. because there's 31 days in may. until i move! i applied to a bunch of jobs and a nice trans-punk house, and i have interviews for both coming up this next week. i'm really hopeful that i get that room in the house. rent is cheap and it would be nice to have a reliable selection of company just sort of ~around~ to interact with whenever it gets hard to put effort into seeing people. having a job would be nice too. fingers crossed.
i tried making some music today. i think i've lost it all. i think i've simply just not practiced "making" music for enough time that i just don't really know how to do it anymore. it feels painful to do. i wish i could convince myself to just keep practicing so i can remember how to do it decently but at the end of the day i just don't really know if that's something i know how to do, or ever really knew how to do beyond a few lucky days of trying things out. i feel the same about a lot of methods of art, i think. writing i still feel comfortable with but every time i try to make music or try to draw something i spend most of the time feeling like absolute shit about it. i don't think i'm good at very many things, and art as a general concept is pretty high up on the list of things i don't think i excel in.
my body is good at telling me that it's a miracle i made it to 25. i'm glad i did, and i'm trying really hard to make my life into something that feels good to live, but i have a hard time feeling like i, as a person, deserve to have made it as far as i did. today i feel distant from the love i know others have for me. i'm safe and i don't feel like i want or need to hurt myself but my brain is being mean to me and making it hard to feel like i'm doing a good job. i hope tomorrow is better. i hope things line up with the job and the house that i have interviews for this week. i want to hold h again.
it's time to start getting ready to move and i've been applying for jobs. 36 more days i think. i just googled it it's 37. 37 more days until i get to be with h again and in a new place and with a revitalized life-- one that i'm hopefully a little more pleased to be living. i miss h more than i know what to do with and the aching occupies a profound space within me.
today is romani resistance day so i'm dressed traditionally and wearing a dikhlo and jhumka earrings, which traditionally mean that i'm 1: romani and 2: married, which feels nice to be able to broadcast in a culturally traditional way. the frenchies at school keep giving me disgusted looks, which i expected (theres a saying: no one in europe is racist until you mention gypsies), but i was pleasantly surprised when my older, less culturally sensitive co-teacher greeted me by saying that she loves the roma and that i look nice. so that was nice.
i haven't been sleeping well and for the time being have relocated to sleeping on my couch, which has a certain flair of incredible discomfort to it. it's helped me not dream for the past few nights though, which has been nice. my birth reminder was on monday and the night before that i had a dream in which my dad tied me to a chair and watched as my mom sexually violated me, which was, in regards to dreams, traumatic to say the least. not only was it deeply and foundationally horrific but it dug up a lot of the trauma from laura, and i've been scared to sleep since.
i went to the beach for my birth reminder. i put my feet in the water in the hopes of reminding myself that being alive is good, and that was nice. i think i'm having a hard time reminding myself that being alive is good and something i want to do. i'm not feeling That Sort Of Way, i think it's just the time of year and how it all went last birth reminder, but it still echoes and rings around a bit.
i'm tired. emotionally and physically i'm tired. i feel vulnerable and destabilized (not quite unstable just destabilized) and scared. the love that people have for me feels distant and i feel unbeautiful. i'm tired. i'm tired.
i want coffee, and a donut, and some trail mix. i want to feel beautiful. i want to feel loved. i want to feel comforted. i want to feel h's arms around me and the gentle touch of those who love me telling me that i belong in the world.
i want mac and cheese
i'm wearing a dikhlo at work for the first time today. the english teacher said it was pretty and asked if i was dressed traditionally, which was nice, but all the french fuckers i work with keep staring at me as they walk by.
46 more days until i get to hold h again. i've been having a string of bad dreams about people who were at some point important in my life continuing to be caring about me but by the time i wake up, i realize that it's a dream and that in reality they're just. not. not caring, not present, not x not y. it hurts to feel like i have them in my life again only to have them taken away when i wake up. last night s said they wanted to apologize about what they said while they were breaking up with me and tell me that i wasn't difficult to get to know (an actual thing they said irl as they were breaking up with me) but before they got to where we were gonna meet, ky showed up and apologized for everything she did to me and beans, and said that she misses me but understands why i don't want her in my life. on one hand there's that whole thing about visiting people in dreams to deliver messages but on the other hand it hurts to be receiving things that i'm not convinced are actual things these people are feeling. on monday i dreamt that my parents actually loved and cared about me and were using my name and pronouns not just correctly but effortlessly, and it was a convincing enough dream that i actually got hopeful and excited about it, but as soon as i woke up i realized that it was just a dream. it hurts.
my brain likes to be particularly mean to me leading up to my birth reminder. it's easy for it to tell me i don't deserve having lived this long if there's an annual reminder that i'm aging. i hope this year it treats me more gently than it has in previous years, and certainly a lot nicer than it did last year. last year was bad.
i want to cry and i want to hold h and be held by him. i want touch and i want closeness and i want comfort and it's something i really just have to be patient for but god do i want it sooner than it actually is. 46 more days. 46 more days.
this time last week i was with h and the fact that i'm not there now is tangible. i miss him achingly and i can't wait to be next to him again. i've started a countdown to remind myself of how soon the move is and how soon it is until i'm with him again. 49 more days. 49 more days until i'm near him again
my body wants change and it wants it now. in my preemptive desire to move and leave the city i switched to apple music from spotify, though this is equally also due to the fact that spotify keeps sending me ads about upcoming concerts and how i should be listening to drake or taylor swift. i don't care. i don't care about drake or taylor swift. i don't even go to concerts anymore. i can't hear them. if it's not someone i know or a show with nice loud drums, i can't guarantee i'd be able to enjoy it much. stop sending me ads on something i pay for.
i'm so ready to move my body gets itchy from it. my body wants to be out of this city so bad. i'm ready to move. i'm ready to leave. i'm ready to skeddadle. i'm no longer happy with the life i'm living in this city and its becoming increasingly apparent day by day.
having a difficult relationship with your own mental health over the span of a whole life gets difficult. i just told my mom that i'm going to be moving soon and her first reaction to it was asking if i was manic. that's been sort of a lifelong thing, and it's disheartening every time to think that so many of my choices since the bipolar discussions started get trivialized and are, to my parents, justifiably questionable on account of "oh she might be manic" "bipolar people can't make choices for themselves what if they're losing their marbles how am i supposed to trust that any of these big life choices are made with sound mind!" shut up shut up shut up shut up you're hurting my feelings !! i'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions! i'm perfectly capable of deciding what i want to do with my life and i don't appreciate my decisions being questioned or doubted on account of my mental health! i'm in control of my thoughts and actions!! i'm an adult who can do hard things! i want to cry! stop doubting my ability to do things! stop owrrying that i'm gonna derail my life because of a few very early instances of not knowing how to manage my feelings! i want to cry! my family makes me want to cry!
my birthday is a week from tomorrow. historically i don't particularly like celebrating my birthday because growing up my parents would usually find some way to make it about them, if they even remembered it (my dad very frequently did not), and i get uncomfortable with all the attention it puts on me, and historically the day has a bit of a streak of being one of my more-likely-to-ideate days. my parents were always more preoccupied with the fact that they made me, or, if we had money, they'd get me gifts that i wouldn't ask for but would be flashy enough that they could guilt me into feeling bad for not being excited about it. one year my dad got me a silver coin and assured me that if i held onto it it'd be worth something someday. he still fucking has it. in college he gave me some fancy ass painting of john lennon, not because i like the beatles (i despise john lennon) but because he likes that i was at one point into rock music and he accredits that to him (it wasn't you you deadbeat narcissistic fuck it was guitar hero 3 and my gay cousin evan).
this time last year i was losing my mind because i had recently moved out of the apartment i lived in with my abuser and the friend group i had throughout the whole thing was growing increasingly distant and insisting that they weren't (they were) (they all owned up to it and said that they were) ("we didn't know how to talk to you or how to help" fucking be there for me and absolutely do not withdraw from me and then tell me you're not withdrawing from me). last year a week from today will have been my most recent near-attempt. (author's note: i took a long pause from typing after that last sentence.) i feel better now. i'm doing better now. i think if ari from a year ago could see me now she'd be glad that she stuck around. that's all i can ask for i guess, is just knowing that some past version of myself would think i'm cool and be glad that things get better. i spent my life always wanting an older sister and i guess part of transitioning and working on yourself is becoming your own big sister. i don't miss being who i was a year ago but i know she was trying her best, and i know that she needs a hug. maybe a year from today i'll think the same thing about me now. i'm trying my best and i need a hug.
i’ve just been notified by the flight attendant that there aren’t any more free in-flight snacks, which means no more biscoffs, which means hungry ari, and i think that’s a pretty suitable summary of how i feel going back into the usual city. i feel stagnant there. i’m tired of the life i have there and ready to move on.
meeting h changed my life. he’s completely altered the course of my life in the most beautiful and right-feeling way— better than i could have ever dreamed of or imagined. i spent my whole life dreaming of you. dreaming of you and manifesting you and wanting you, and i consider myself infinitely lucky to be able to share in the joy of transness and existence and the unending beauty of life with you. you are the love and light of my life, and i am yours forever, and forever after that, and forever after that. i miss you already.
words cannot possibly express the beauty of time spent with h. i want an eternity with him.
sf is a gorgeous city and i count myself blessed to be able to witness it and explore within it. oakland as well is a stunning city in its own right. the rose bushes and lemon trees smell like the only geographic home i ever knew, and i was treated mercifully with the gift of a nearby enough mourning dove that i was able to hear. the architectural diversity of the bay is unyielding and storied and i don’t suspect i’ll ever quite have enough time enough to appreciate its full range. i love you california poppies. i love you lingering smell of the sea. i love you temperate humid coastal desert climate that cultivates a wide array of flora and fauna.
there are wild parrots in a tree outside of the transamerica pyramid, which h and i gleefully watched for a good long while. little italy is busy but its cathedrals are home to some of the most captivating archways and ironworks. h and i took pictures of each other in front of one of them. the building above cafe zoetrope is one of the most stunning examples of architecture i’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and i appreciate it allowing h and i to take pictures with it for so long. caffe trieste in little italy is a silly place, and i’m thankful for the patience of the fellows working there who seemed to be okay with how exasperated and hot i was and how hurriedly i made my order. why are there so many palm readers in the chinatown-little italy thoroughfare? i love you san fransisco. thank you for keeping safe so many happy memories of mine. i can’t wait to make more within your city limits.
i love you h. i miss you. i promise i’ll be back soon, and in less than two months it’ll be to stay. i love you. i love you. i love you.
it's 6:46am at the airport and last night i more or less successfully staved off the urge to spend the night at said airport, despite the fact that the primary reason for my hesitation was the realization that the last time i was in a transit port overnight was on my horrible manic greyhound trip to utah in 2019. realizing that was just the right amount of bodily horror to scare me out of getting to the airport 10 hours early. hehe ariport. my airport.
i'm so excited to see h ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i feel so close to him i'm literally at the ariport i'm literally so close to seeing him ohhhhhhh ohhhhh ohhhohohohohoho hhhhhhh
since last night i've been feeling sort of strongly like i have a really hard time making friends and keeping friends. growing up my parents never had any friends. my dad's paranoid and can't keep friends because he'll end up consumed by the idea that they're trying to use him for something or conspiring to take something from him and my mom just doesn't really know how to make friends to begin with. i think i follow much closer to my mom in this regard because i really don't harbor any conspicuity towards my friends (unless i have reason to like last year that was kinda fucked up guys). i just don't really know how to have friends. i don't know how to make friends or have friends, and i feel unequipped to be human sometimes because of that. i want friends. i want a group of friends and i want a community and i want a family. i just don't really know how to do that or how to really keep it after that, which makes me sad. i feel inhuman, and not just in a vampire bunnygirl way, but in like a fundamentally isolating way. it's easy to feel like i can blame my parents for a lot of that because they never set a very good example for it or encouraged me to make or hang out with friends (or really encouraged me to do anything. or raise me. they didn't really raise me at all) but i also just blame myself for not putting very much of an effort into it. sometimes i don't think i like myself very much and that makes me sad.
allen was cool. shoutout allen. he was my only real friend for pretty much my entire childhood, enough to the point that for the following few months after i moved out of florida he'd call me, and he stayed in touch in various ways for a while after that. i hope he's doing well.
i feel silly and i feel inadequate and i feel inhuman and i feel difficult and i feel hesitant and scared. perpetually and infinitely scared. ari living is ari fearful and if i am not in service to someone in some way i don't feel worth people's time. i'd like to work on that i think.
sometimes i get spiteful and angry and i half-assedly dislike things just because i have some sort of irreconcilable gripe with it but i don't think that's an aspect of my personality that i like very much. i want to make friends and be better at keeping friends while also feeling more comfortable about expressing my boundaries and comforts and discomforts and what i need from other people. i feel very receptive to criticism whenever someone else has something they need me to be better about doing but unless it's a matter of immediate comfort i have a hard time feeling justified in being able to tell people what i need from them, which i guess is what happens when you grow up with parents who fundamentally Do Not listen to you, but i'm getting sort of tired of blaming my parents for all the way s i'm a little fucked up, despite it largely being rooted in their sizable parental shortcomings. mmmm.
this isn't exactly the mindset i'd like to have while i'm at the airport to see my husband but i'm also running on four and a half hours of sleep and am simply just generally exhausted by life during this lil period of existence. things will get better. i'll get better. i need a hug from h. good thing i'm seeing him so soon
i think i'm going to sleep over at the airport tonight, i'm too excited to see h to not be even just a little bit closer to him and i want to make sure that i'm there on time even though the flight doesn't board until 7:20 the next morning but ohhhhhhhh i wanna be near him even if it's just a bit closer and oooohhhhh i love airports i love being one of, if not the only person in the airport that isn't there for work or for travel or for anything else except simply just being there oohhhhhhhhh ohhhhh i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited
i'm feeling thrown-off at work today because the parking lot they usually have us park in is closed so now i have to have lunch in a different place and account for different windows of time and also there was a fire drill so a lot of the normal parts of my day are funky today which is resulting in a lot of tension and anxiety in my body. i don't like when my routine gets disrupted
all i can think about is how excited i am to see h and hold him again and have him close to me i love him so much
i think while i'm at the airport i'm going to try to get some reading done and also i'll probably lose myself to the continuing swirling desire to get sucked into working on my silly little website more. next steps are making my utah shrine work again, followed by making a shrine for h so that we both have a little digital place to go to whenever we wanna feel sappy about each other
this lil website project has turned into a really fun way to spend my time. i like being able to feel like i'm pouring my industrious energy into something constructive and sorta tangible and certainly easy to share and show people, and i like how personal i can make it and how free i feel to make it into whatever i feel like
it's been a little over a week since i first met c, the guy i've been seeing who likes steely dan. i feel like enough time has passed that i'm starting to be able to put my feelings into words a little bit better. he's cute and fun to spend time with and i feel like in terms of media interests we match up pretty well, which is nice, but i worry (ari? worrying about something? never would've guessed) that it'll get uncomfy or sad or messy when i move. either way it's nice to have the company now. last year when everything with my old "friend group" imploded and shattered it left me feeling lonely and insane and ultimately very friendless. when s broke up with me it felt like i just didn't really have very many people in the city left to keep me company. i have my sister and i love spending time with her but i didn't feel like i had any. idk intimate physical nearness to anybody since the last time h visited, and that was months ago. h has his other partner and i'm glad that he had someone to hold him and keep him warm and safe and give him attention, but i think i was getting cold and lonely. three months is a long time to go without seeing the love of your life. i hope he and i never have to spend that much time away from each other again.
c is nice to be around though. she smells like campfire sometimes but not all the time. other times she smells like a grandma.
my autistic little body is feeling a lot of things right now, primarily excitement to be with h again and discomfort at the fact that so much of my day to day work routine has been thrown off. this time tomorrow i won't have to care though, because i'll be with h and i'll be holding him and being held by him. maybe we'll go for a walk or he'll take me to one of the shops he's found for me. maybe we'll watch a movie and eat kibble and trail mix together.
turns out there's this condition called persistent mullerian duct syndrome where someone with externally "male" organs also has internal "female" organs. i've never had an x ray but my gut tells me that i have something in there. otherwise my tummy wouldn't do the thing it does. i'm maybe a little scared to ever get an x ray though. what if i'm right? what if i'm wrong? ever since i learned what intersex is i've sort of suspected that i might be intersex. i'm already trans though, and i think i'm bi? i don't feel like i need another label i guess but i'd love to have a uterus. maybe i could fix it up and get it working. maybe my husband can get me pregnant. maybe i could get health insurance and convince them to give me free bottom surgery as an act of reclamation. i want my husband to get me pregnant. am i bisexual or am i a lesbian? am i straight in a lesbian way? gender doesn't exist to begin with and by extent neither really does sexuality but i don't know if the "queer" label fits me anymore and i don't know if i identify as bisexual because honestly i'm only attracted to queer mascs. which is still lesbian but like. hmm.
i've been up since 4 this morning because my cat beans decided it would be a grand old time to wake me up and do things that would keep me awake. plus i keep having dreams with the recurring element of my mom appearing and deadnaming me in front of a group of people that i either actually know or that my brain labels as someone i know. i think subconsciously i'm afraid of being outed at work and the lingering frustration of not having supportive parents is the cause. right before i was about to leave for work beans decided to pee on the floor. i have a hard time frequently feeling like i'm a bad mother to her because of this. am i not taking good enough care of her? ky didn't treat either of us very well and i'm worried that beans being raised around someone so violent and volatile made things stressful for her on a fundamental level. i get worried that my cat is more like me in some aspects than i like to admit or acknowledge, but i'm trying my best to be caring and parentally supportive in the ways i never was. i'm glad we're not living with ky anymore. she wasn't good to us.
a continuing thought in my mind for the past week or so has been the fact that i simply just wasn't raised. i think part of me still has internalized guilt about blaming my parents for all the ways they failed to raise me, and i catch myself feeling bad for thinking about or talking about all the things they simply never told me to do. the internal dad that lives in my head and refuses to die and the internal mom who is too self-conscious to actually own any criticisms or commentary on her parenting style like to get defensive and guilt trip me for saying things like "i grew up eating a lot of mold" and say that wasn't true but it was. i grew up eating a lot of mold. my dad, both in my head and in real life, likes to say i'm lying when i think about or talk about how often he'd hit me or yell at me even though i know that if i were lying then i probably wouldn't have such prevalent lingering issues of it. if i were lying i wouldn't have memories of it, right? i think i find it easy to doubt myself or second guess myself on a lot of things, even when i know they're real and valid. i think my parents liked to gaslight me and make me doubt things more frequently than i really have yet to realize. i trust my memory and i trust my knowledge of myself, so why does it so easily get questioned? why have my parents always regarded my thoughts and opinions and memories as debatable? i feel weak and angry and hurt when i think of them. i feel defensive and scared and vulnerable when i think of them. i feel weak and angry and hurt and defensive and scared when i think of ky too. i think some of my more unpleasant memories of her are starting to bubble back a bit. i don't like thinking of her but my body feels like i need to. a few months ago i broke down a bit talking to sis about her and basically said that i was having trouble accepting that my memories of her actually happened and detailed a lot of the things she did to me. it felt good to feel validated externally and i think it's gotten to a point where i'm aware of it having happened, and i know that it happened and that my memories are real, but my body is just. idk remembering it i guess.
i'm seeing h in two short days. this time two days from now i'll be in the same city as him. my heart is so full of love for him, and i love him so deeply and so much. i feel so safe and held with him and my love for him feels safe and comfortable. it feels good and right to love him and be with him and our relationship feels more secure and healthy and genuinely happy than i could have ever dreamed of, and i'm so full of gratitude for him and our love together. i want him in my arms and i want to be in his arms. he feels like home to me. i get the sense that maybe a little bit of him is having some difficulties reminding himself of all the things i try to make sure he knows, and i'm excited to be able to look him in the eyes and remind him of it all. i love him so much
i took yesterday off because i spent tuesday feeling incredibly distraught and emotional. yesterday i went on a couple of walks and deep cleaned my kitchen floor, which beans the cat peed on this morning.
the sun today is tiring in the same way that being out in the sun too long in utah and arizona will make you. it's bright and it's in your face in way that really just has to be felt, and it's similar here but less intense than in the desert. i want to take h to the desert.
it's another one of those stupid ass teacher-only meeting days today. i'd rather be curled up with my husband. i can feel how much he needs me and i need to be next to him and holding him.
i hate days at work that make it feel pointless for me to be at work. when i worked food service it was always really annoying to be at work just to be there on slow days when no one came in, even if i was getting paid for it. i need money, sure, but i'd rather have a day off to myself. they're currently showing a work of art with a girl and a bunch of animals walking through a neighborhood with a bunch of tags and gates over the doors and windows and all the french fuckers are talking about how it seems like a not-very-good neighborhood. one person said the girl was brave. i feel outcasted at work. my only trans coworker is a zionist and most of the other people are either rich, french, or both. the only people i would want to try to get along with just don't really seem like they want to talk to me much. whatever, i'm gonna be moving soon. note to self: i dislike the french. i dislike working with the french.
h says he's having a bit of a hard time and i'm desperate to hold him. 8 more days. 8 more days and then i get to hold him and keep him safe and tell him how much i love him and how much he means to me, face-to-face. the distance is getting to both of us i think. i want to reassure him and look him in the eyes and tell him how important and valuable he is to me. i want to keep him warm. i want to comfort him. i love loving him so much and it hurts to not have him closer so that i can show him through my actions how much i love loving him.
i'm drinking chamomille tea for the first time today. it's nice. i don't know how to describe the taste of it but it's a nice taste.
i want to cry. i want to comfort h and hold him and make things feel easier for him. i spend a lot of time feeling like an inadequate partner because i feel like i misplace so much of my energy and end up feeling so bad about not being as "there" for a partner as i can be. i can't solve everything for everyone and i know that and remember that but i at least want to be there for my partners and i just. i feel horrible when i can't be there for them.
last night i went on another date with c, the person i hung out with on saturday. we went on a little walk through one of the larger parks in the city and spent about an hour just looking out at the sound. it's a really beautiful view. overall a really nice night
i love being polyamorous-- i have so much love to give and it flows out of me constantly and without end, and i've deprived myself of so much love in my life that i hate denying myself the ability to feel and express that love. i get scared that i have a hard time balancing it all out though, and i get scared of that hurting the people i love. it makes me feel inadequate and unworthy of the love i receive. i want to be a good partner. i want to show love and do my best to make sure that the people i love know that i love them. i'm trying my best.
i'm trying my best
i'm in a meeting right now talking about adhd in kids and i keep chiming in about facts and figures regarding adhd. i feel annoying and i feel like a know-it-all. maybe i'm just feeling insecure.
car seat headrest has an album called "my back is killing me baby" and that's how i'm feeling now. my back is killing me baby. there's a song on that album where he says he wants to kick his dad in the shins and that's also how i'm feeling. the past few nights i've been having recurring dreams featuring my father. last night i dreamt i was on a road trip sitting in the backseat with my parents in the front seats and they were getting upset at me for whatever reason. they were frequently just upset at me for no real reason. i snapped and said fuck you to my dad and tried to ladybird myself out of the car but he stopped the car when he realized what i was trying to do and said he was going to take me to a special school where i'd feel so isolated and alone that it would knock me into shape. all of a sudden we were in france and i refused to get out of the car to go to the school and i started getting physically violent with him so my mom opened the door and my dad pushed me out. a couple seconds later they both realized what they'd done and tried to get me to get back in the car so they could talk to me but i had no interest in spending time with them so i ran away and tried to lose them in this big maze of a mall that was made out of brick. everyone was speaking a language that wasn't french and i couldn't communicate with anyone, which made me feel both hunted and alone. i ended up finding a corner somewhere in the mall and hiding in it, where i stayed until i woke up.
yesterday i woke up feeling an intense aching to be with h again, enough so to the point that i was getting physically anxious about it. i figured the best remedy to this would be to walk, so i ended up walking to a big park in the city that's about a 3- hour walk from my apartment. my body still aches from it which is fine because it distracts from everything else but god am i sleeeeeepy today. sleepy beepy over here. the park was really beautiful. it was nice looking at the water and imagining h next to me drawing and looking at the water and watching it reflect back onto him and in his eyes. i love him and miss him so much. 9 more days. that's one more sleep until it's a week's worth of sleeps
one of the kids at school just gave me a drawing he colored in and said i needed to give it to my husband i'm losing my mind at how sweet it was
ohhhhhh.......... oooohhhhhhhhhh .... . .. ........... ooooooooooooooooohohoooooooooo i'm so tired ooooooohhhhhh
look at this shark i found while i was digging around the old jimmy buffet web archives i'm gonna name him huggles he's huggles the shark
or should i name him cheeseburger? that'll be his nickname. huggles "cheeseburger" the shark
i hung out with someone new on saturday which went really well. we went for a nice walk and then went to my apartment to cuddle and watch the original suspiria, which was nice. nice time. it felt good to be held again and he's sweet and says i smell nice. i'm excited to hang out with him more. plus he likes steely dan.
i'm so sleep yi wanna sleep so bad
my zionist transmasc coworker needs to watch how he talks to the kids. they're four, you don't need to raise your voice if they don't notice that they just knocked over a book. take it easy n give em a break. stop yelling at the kids for being kids
for storytime today the kids asked me to read a book called the hickory chair in which a blind kid is raised by his grandma, who always says he's her favorite, and then she dies and he spends most of the book wondering why he didn't get anything from her will, until he ends up being her age and he finds the note saying that he was her favorite. i had to stop myself from feeling emotions for a little bit while i was reading it, it was a little too on the nose.
i'm feeling better today than i was earlier this week. i think it was good to finally be able to cry. i'm still feeling a little sad and detached i guess but it's less all-consuming than it was on like. monday or tuesday. monday and tuesday and even also sunday were not good days for ari. my body's been feeling weird too. since about saturday my face and fingertips feel weirdly numb, but in a latent and delayed sort of way? like if i'm scratching a bit of acne on my face i have to focus really hard on being able to feel it on both my face and my fingers and even if i'm focusing on being able to feel it there's a slight delay in how long it takes to feel it happen. if i'm doing something just with my fingers it feels like it takes a few seconds to register that my fingers are even moving or doing anything. the internet says it's a symptom of ms but i'm hoping it's just a result of taking expired nyquil and a cbd edible within 24 hours of each other. frankly i'd rather have liver damage than multiple sclerosis. it's feeling a lot better today and i don't feel as much of a delay or numbness with everything but as someone who's the type of autistic to be able to feel everything happening in my body at the same time i have to admit it's scary when that feeling suddenly goes away. it gets overwhelming sometimes to be able to feel all the aches and pains and gurgles and what not but suddenly not feeling them anymore is a jarring quietness i'm not sure i like very much. at least not when i'm sober. if i take a cbd edible because my back hurts at least i know that if i feel numb or delayed it's becasue i'm high but if i haven't had anything and all of a sudden i can't feel my fingertips or lips it's a little alarming. i hope it doesn't get any worse, and i hope it goes away soon.
the downside of this however is that suddenly all the sensations that bother me are suddenly things i'm feeling again. my back hurts again, as it always does, and when i get cold i get really overwhelmed. ari hates being cold. ari's autism hates being cold. being cold and feeling my skin shrivel up and hair stand on edge is insanely uncomfortable oooohhhh i hate even just thinking about it gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross
in the future when h and i live together and go places together i'll always have snacks for him because he gets hungry and if he gets hungry he gets uncomfortable but in return if i get cold i'm going to need to steal his jacket or have him hold me because being cold makes me really uncomfortable. i'm excied to love him and hold him forever. he feels so safe
right now i'm telling h about how tomorrow i'm meeting a new person for the first time and how anxious i get before i meet people and he asked if i was anxious the day he and i first met. the answer is yes because i am not only a rabbit who is scared of almost everything to some degree but it's nice being able to think so warmly about how he made me feel when we first met :') i remember when he hugged me for the first time when we met outside my apartment that i felt so safe and so held and so warm. being in his arms i felt what it meant to be held and even though it only lasted for a little while it felt like such a beautiful forever of time. he held me and i felt like i had known him and loved him and held him so many times before and in so many lifetimes and in so many forevers. it all connected and i could feel it all right there when i was in his arms. every time i've hugged him since i've been able to feel it. it's better than listening to a favorite song that takes you to a place and time. it's there and it's forever and always and it's him.
i miss being able to pull him back to the door as he was leaving even though i know he gets anxious about being places on time and being able to leave smoothly. being the domme i am it felt nice being able to pull him out of his flow just for a second (i don't want to make him anxious or too stressed) just to show him i love him. i love pulling him back to the door. if you're reading this now i hope you're ready to account a couple extra seconds into your exits for the rest of your life because i'm going to expect a kiss or maybe also a hug anytime you leave to go somewhere. be prepared.
i want shake shack.
have you ever been to margaritaville.? have you ever had the good fortune of mr. james william buffett serenading you with a model seaplane flying overhead while you eat a cheeseburger from paradise? have you ever looked god right in the eyes, taken a sip of a non-alcoholic pina colada with way too much sugar, and realized that the divine being that brought you into existence is actually a country-rock household name with a song about a geographic location so mythical that he ended up theming an entire entertainment franchise around it? is jimmy buffett god? where is the nearest margaritaville location and how soon can i get there? where is the nearest margaritaville to oakland? can i take my husband to margaritaville? can we get married in a margaritaville? i don't know if i want to get married in a margaritaville but i sure as hell wanna know if it's an option. i think i'd prefer like a backyard sort of thing or mabye a forest or a beach or a desert or somewhere outdoors so that i don't only hear jimmy buffett while my husband is barking his vows to me. does margaritaville do wedding receptions? where can i get margaritaville party hats for the wedding reception? i want everyone in matching margaritaville party hats. no i don't. maybe i do. much to think about.
every time i help a four year old put a bow in her hair i almost cry. i wanted that childhood for so long that it evolved into wanting to give that childhood to the kids around me. they're coughing pooping sniffing sneezing yelling and loud little runts but they're my little runts even if i have to face the inevitability that not a single one of them are going to remember me by the time they're my age. do you remember the time i put a bow in your hair and told you how pretty you are? they can't even remember last tuesday.
where is the largest margaritaville restaurant? why isn't it within a 20-minute drive from me? fuck it i'd drive an hour for margaritaville. i don't think i'd be able to handle the largest margaritaville though. i went to the vegas rainforest cafe once after i graduated high school. i had the time of my life. sky and sg didn't seem to like it much but sg enjoyed the frequent thunderstorm effects, i think. where's the second smallest margaritaville restaurant? not the smallest i don't want like an airport version of it. that would be too small. maybe it would be just right. okay yeah where's the second smallest margaritaville restaurant and why isn't it within an hour drive of me? fuck it let's go two hours.
after a brief google search i've learned something horrific. the nearest margaritaville location to me is in fucking lake tahoe. a moment of redemption: the nearest margaritaville to oakland is a two hour drive (shoutout santa cruz go banana slugs). is oakland the city of my dreams? the one place where i can simultaneously be near my husband, be near the beach, be near a beautiful city, be near a desert, AND be within two hours of the nearest margaritaville location? i think the answer may be yes however if h decides to move to vegas at any point then technically speaking vegas would also qualify (shoutout lake powell) however i don't see him wanting to move to vegas anytime soon. he gets hot and vegas is nothing if not frequently hot.
i love you h. i love you margaritaville.
pouring one out for jimmy
i think the sound of seagulls and the smell of a body of mildly polluted water makes a restaurant's food taste better but that's just me. was jfk autistic?
one of the kids today just got back from disneyland and it took everything in me to not infodump to a four year old. as an act of disaster control i've linked my favorite disney park history blog in the "links" buttons to the left and will likely start a disney park shrine (ooo i don't like the way that felt to type i don't like the idea of a shrine to disney) once i finish my utah shrine (work in progress). the disney world magic kingdom attraction "monster's inc. laugh floor" abbreviates to milf.
i've got myself thinking about weddings. maybe i'll type more later. whenever h and i talk about it we usually end up getting too sappy about each other to plan in depth but what we do have so far is a relatively small sort of shin dig with non-diamond rings. i don't like diamonds much anyways. h's pinterest board has a lot of opal rings and i like that a lot more than any diamond i've ever seen. now that i've transitioned i'm actually thinking about weddings for the first serious time. what would i wear? what would i even look good in? i think i'd look good with something with the shoulders cut off but i'd have to think more about it to be sure. i'm not used to wearing full dresses like that but i think i'd look great if i did wear them more often. i wouldn't want it to be too flashy of an event. the important thing is that i get to be there with h. maybe a sweet lil boquet of flowers and a handful of loved ones and a life spent with the love of my life. that's all i need for it.
last night i finally cried
i get consumed by fear sometimes. i don't know if i can call those times panic attacks because they feel different in my body but it's like an obsessive consuming fear that overcomes me. it's smothering and makes it hard to breathe and interact with people. i'm already feeling kind of reclusive as is and i don't have a lot of spare energy as of late. yesterday i said i'd hang out with a couple friends i hadn't seen for a while and it felt good to get myself to go spend time with them even if i didn't really have the energy to but by the time i was home i was physically and emotionally exhausted and just sort of broke down. i'm scared of h leaving me and i told him about my fear of it. he did a good job of reassuring me that it's not based in evidence and that he's not going to leave me and that he wants to love me forever and that was reassuring to hear. my body still feels fearful but my brain feels at least addressed and reassured. i feel insecure about myself and my ability to be loved and it's bleeding into how i interact with loved ones, which doesn't feel great. it makes me feel like a bad partner to ask for so much reassurance and support and i worry that i'm being overwhelming or triggering in some way by bringing it up so much and often in such a panic. i want to feel better. i want to get better.
i want to hold h and be held by him. i want to go on walks with him and feel him next to me. two more weeks as of today.
last night i spent an awful lot of time updating my website-- to the left you can find a button that takes you to my shrine of Leonard Cohen (it's a work in progress), a list of neocities "neighbors" that i've decided consists of neocities mutuals (you can click their name to view their cool websites :3), and to the right there's a webring widget that takes you to the transring, which is a community of other trans oldweb site creators (which i think is neat. it's nice to have community). anyways
i slept in a little too much after having a stress dream in which i was being chased by a bear near the local light rail station. i was with some friends who i didn't recognize but my brain told me were friends, and i saw that there was a bear with an unnaturally long tail, and i got scared and started running. no one else believed me when i said that there was a bear and i started getting more and more scared and frustrated that no one believed i was being chased by a bear. the bear followed me and so did my friends, who were confused as to why i was running, and eventually we got to the light rail station closest to me and there were a bunch of people all around me with really bright stadium lights above, and i was trying to escape the bear by running through the crowd and down to the light rail, but people kept stopping me to talk to me. i woke up and ended up being 15 minutes late to work because i forgot to set some of my alarms. oh well. it's a bunch of french-speaking four year olds at "break camp" and there's more than enough substitutes present to help out my zionist transmasc coworker. of all the things a trans person can be the only other trans person at work is a zionist. what luck. when he found out i was jewish he got a little too cozy calling himself a goy. i don't talk to him about my judaism anymore. i don't really talk to him in general much.
for the past few days i keep getting little visual flashes of this specific area near heber, utah that's basically just a hilly plain with a few sparse trees every here and there. the heber creeper is an antique train they've upkept since the 1800s that is still operational, and you can get tickets to go on a lil wild west jaunt on an old timey train. it's kinda neat tbh but i'm also autistic so of course i think a train is cool. anyways it's been popping up in my mind lately. maybe it reminds me of springtime or maybe springtime reminds me of it (note to h-- when i take you to utah it has to be in the late summer otherwise the cottonwood trees act up and make my allergies bad).
oh and i added an omori textbox and battlebox to my homepage. shoutout lilith thank you lilith!
i wonder if my gay cousin evan ever learned html to code his myspace. i just know he had a myspace. i wish i knew what his username would've been so i could find it. i wonder how he's doing. i wonder if he still works with my uncle at that company that makes blenders and dishwashers. i wonder if he ever thinks about me. does he know i'm trans? maybe i should reach out. much to think about.
in an ideal world i'd have all my belongings packed up and ready to go and right now i'd be roughly about 4 hours into my move down south to be closer to h. 4 hours would put me a few miles south of portland (i dislike portland) but if i'd woken up and left an hour earlier i'd probably be about halfway through oregon, likely around bend if i was taking the 5 or spending an extra hour to cross from bend over to the coast to take the pch. i've done both drives a few times before and frankly i can't decide which one i like more. pch is nice because it's coastal and you get to drive along the ocean and pass by that giant paul bunyan statue (and the much smaller statue that inspired the cover of my favorite beach boys album, surf's up) BUT taking the 5 takes you through inland california and wine country, which imo is pretty in its own right. much to think about.
pet sounds is my favorite album of all time and that one is pretty hard to beat. i don't know if any album will ever get placed higher in my personal "all time favorite albums" list (although marvin gaye's "what's going on" gets really close) but i don't think pet sounds is my favorite beach boys album, if that makes sense. my favorite beach boys album is surf's up. i like that it's weird and uncharacteristically depressing. i like that mike love only has like. one and a half songs on it. i hate mike love. fuck you mike love. the next shrine i make on this site will be a hate shrine dedicated to mike love. fuck you mike love. mike ock. anyways yeah it's just a good album. that one student demonstration time song sucks though. i hate you student demonstration time. if i had it on vinyl i'd use a rock to make it so that side a of the album ended right as student demonstration time was starting. gross song. does not fit the album. fuck you mike love.
i feel sad today in a less all-consuming way than it was last week. something something eclipse but i'm still feeling downtempo and maybe even a little morose. i miss my husband. i want to hold him and hold him close to me. i want to keep him safe and warm. he deserves safety and warmth and i want to bring as much of it as i can to him. 15 more days. that's one more sleep until it's two more weeks. so soon, so soon.
i wish i didn't speak french. french is a silly language.
i really like my new glasses but my face in relation to them makes me a bit dysphoric. i think i just need to get used to them a little more and figure out how to make them work for my face.
last night i dreamt that i took h to my grandpa's house where i used to live. we had taken a road trip to southern utah, or at the very least somewhere in the southwest, and h wanted to stop at my grandpa's house. in real life his neighbor charlene owns the house because it's still full of most of his belongings, and my uncle evan is still emptying it out. the biggest claim to any land i will ever have the possibility of inheriting from my family is the slim chance of talking charlene into letting me have grandpa's old house. i digress. in the dream charlene recognized me and i introduced her to h and she let us look around the house. i showed him around the basement room i lived in and it looked the same as it did when i was there, but more spiders and spiderwebs. my grandpa's collection of musical toothbrushes in the half-downstairs bathroom were still there. the mirror was still dirty as shit and the shower hadn't been used since i lived there. the hats he used to hang up near the kitchen-back entry-stair door were still there. all of my grandma's cast irons and old spices and stale noodles that never got cleaned out or refilled and the slightly sticky spanish tile floors and all the drawings i did and "do not resuscitate" orders on the fridge were still there. my grandma's collections of colored glass vials and birds, arranged by color along the kitchen and dining room windows, were still there. i showed h the handprints all of my uncles and aunts and cousins had on his hallway walls and all of the ties in the hallway closet and all the scraps of poetry he had taped to his bathroom mirror. when he started going blind he memorized all the poems so that when my grandma asked him to read her favorite poems to her he still could even though he couldn't see. that's when i learned what love is.
all of his dvds and vhs tapes were still on the bookshelf wall in his den. everything was still there right down to the entire series of "northern exposure" that came in the dvd-shaped puffer vests that were impossible to fit into the bookshelf but aesthetically very entertaining (and people wonder where i get my collecting tendencies). the living room was still the same except all the mirrors were covered (jews do this in the house of the person who's died until the shiva is over but in my dream apparently the shiva never ended-- a partial tradition in my family when the person mourned is still mourned. the mirrors in my grandma's room where my grandpa slept never got uncovered). the piano was still there and so was the painting and wooden angel that my grandma had above it. the colored window panes and dangling crystals on the top of the window were still there and shined the same wasy it did whenever the sun hit the living room just right. i think some of the first moments of genuine peace i ever felt were whenever the sun was shining through those windows and the heat of the sun plus the heat of living in a desert made it so cozy and warm.
if an alien ever abducts me and replaces me with a clone, h is the love of my life and my favorite band is the cure.
i miss grandpa's house. i don't think it's very likely that i'd ever be able to talk charlene into letting me have it, and frankly i don't know if i have the gumption to offload 101 years of hoarding tendencies (everything in his house were things he "used" or at least made it feel like a home-- everything in the garage basement was from 1940 and before, everything on the ground floor was either mechanical equipment or things from 1940-1980, and everything in the garage attic was from 1980-1990. he generally stopped accumulating things other than dvds and accessibility equipment after about 1995. the other members of my family have equally hoarderish tendencies and would probably find some excuse to keep everything in the house exactly as it was forever but if i'm being honest i think if i were given the house a lot of the belongings in the garage would end up either at an antique store, estate sale, or the nearest DI (utah's magical goodwill equivalent although even comparing it to goodwill does DI a disservice. goodwill doesn't charge $7 for everything in the store. DI does. anyways the nearest DI is on the other side of one of the local mesas about 15 minutes north kinda by the costco where all the local polygamists shop).
in southern utah there are a lot of polygamists because the offshoot of the mormons that still does the polygamy thing is based in southern utah about 40 minutes east of st george, so whenever you went to costco you'd see one guy that looked like a cowboy and like 5-10 women all dressed like they just escaped the dust bowl and their two dozen kids all dressed the same running around buying the next month's worth of costco goods. i don't know why i felt like i needed to explain the dynamic of southern utah polygamists and costco. long live the $1.50 hot dog.
i miss h. i want to hold him and be held by him. the eclipse is fucking with everyone's astrology, i can smell it. i'm ready for it to be done and over with. i want to hold my husband again. i want to go on road trips with him and explore with him and experience everything with him. if you're reading this, i love you so much
i've been on a nyquil comedown all day that's been making me real uncomfortable and frankly i'm not doing well mentally however i'm watching the 2002 syfy channel "dune" miniseries rn that i got for free from work and it's just the right kind of cheesy low-budget silly sci-fi show i think i needed. the cgi reminds me of 90s computer games and the soundtrack sounds like early seasons of survivor. also pomegranate juice is tasty.
i think i have the tendency to understate how i'm feeling a lot of the time, especially when i'm not doing well. when i was still living with my parents i got really good at knowing that if i showed any emotion to my dad he'd blow it out of proportion or use it against me, and i think a remnant of that is the fact that when i'm doing well i end up shorthanding it to like yeah i'm doing pretty okay and if i'm doing bad i just say i'm fine. as a practice of being better at actually saying how i feel, i gotta say, i'm not doing very well. i feel isolated and lonely and like i need to prepare to be left even though there's no evidence that anything's going to happen. i'm seeing h in almost two weeks, so why am i feeling this way? why do i feel like i'm being withdrawn from? no one is withdrawing from me. h reassures me so well that he loves me and sees a future with me and that nothing is going wrong with him and i but i just. i'm scared. i'm scared and i feel lonely.
in the dune universe the people who live on arrakis (the desert planet also called "dune") are canonically descended from actual-earth egyptians so why are all the fremen (people who live on arrakis) in this show white
last night i ran out of cbd edibles and had a hard time falling asleep so i took one of my emergency doses of nyquil. i'm almost out of it, which feels important and good, but today's been a difficult day to balance it with. i woke up still groggy and all day i've been feeling the distinct comedown body numbness that got me attracted to it to begin with. my throat doesn't hurt anymore and i'm not coughing as much which is great because for a minute there i thought i was gonna keel over but it's unsettling to go about my day not really being able to feel my body. i don't like being high anymore but whenever i have to take one of my emergency doses it ends up being hard to ignore what was so appealing about it in high school and college. today's been one of those days and that combined with how isolated and scared i've been feeling this week is just making for an uncomfortable day. i still haven't cried but i'm becoming desperate to. beans is sleeping really cute right now.
in the new dune movies chani (zendaya) is a badass warrior who isn't afraid to kick the shit out of the fuckwad main character paul and she's more of an independent "i'm gonna think for myself and what's actually good for my people" sort of person but in this show and the book she's more of just a generic "oh paul i know that you become a genocidal white savior dictator but i love you anyways" which is annoying. it's cool to see that this version has a lot more visual inspiration from moebius though, and he's my favorite comic artist. he does a really good job at coloring and making funky eco-sci-fi environments and wastelands, and i have like 4 of his books. currently thinking about how in the dune books paul and chani's son decides to become semi-immortal by turning into a half-human-half-sandworm monstrosity that rules the universe with an iron fist for 3000 years. currently thinking about the illustrations of him there were when the books first came out. i think if if a massive sandworm the size of vatican city decided to run for president under the platform of "i'm a worm" i'd probably be hesitant to vote for him in the fear that giant sandworm-human hybrids follow a general tradition of being evil.
distractions are nice for the most part. sci-fi and fantasy movies are what got me through a good chunk of my life, most notably lord of the rings and dune. i don't think i could read either book now because they're long and reading is hard for ari but they were valuable when i needed them.
the other day my zionist transmasc coworker drank a cup of milk and then said something about me not judging him for it. buddy i got news for you it's not the milk or transmasculinity i'm judging you for.
i want to be held. i want to be next to my husband again and i want to feel like my brain can rely on the trust that he really does want a life with me and that we feel the same about each other. it's weird- i know he loves me and i know he loves me as much as i love him but the feeling of it all feels,,, disconnected. i know it's there and i know it's true and that he means it but the like. clicking of it, the understanding, the "i know love :')" of it feels disrupted, like there's a staticy radio or a broken wire or something. i feel alone but i know i'm not alone. i feel isolated from the people i love and from the future i know is gonna happen because me and h both want it to happen. i feel like life is moving on without me and i'm getting left behind. i feel slow and stagnated and hard to want and hard to love. i don't feel worthy of being loved. i'm so full of love and so full of capacity to be loved but i have such a hard time feeling like i deserve it. i don't want to be like this. i want to feel worthy of being loved. i want to hear reassurance from my partners without being consumed with fear that i'm just getting my hopes up or investing more into it than anyone else is. i know h feels the same way about me as i do about him. i know he's invested in our future together and i know that our forever love exists and is and will be so incredibly beautiful. i want the wires to reconnect. i want the static to go away.
i want there to be more people of color in this adaptation of dune
i want my husband to get me pregnant. that's for another time though i'm getting sleepy
i think this lil gif divider is my favorite one but i'm always afraid of using it too frequently and i think that that says something about my general hesitations surrounding interpersonal relationships.
i'm not having an easy week or, if i'm being honest, a particularly good one. highlights of the week include getting a ticket to see h later this month and celebrating my anniversary with k, and it's always a nice time calling h or spending time with my cats, but i'm not doing particularly well.
i don't know what's wrong with me but i feel broken and unlovable, which i factually know is untrue, but my brain likes to say it anyways. i feel like i'm doing everything wrong and i'm paralyzed with fear that anything i do is going to be a massive misstep, which makes me not want to do anything at all. i don't feel worthy of love. i don't feel like i love people very well and i know thats not true because the people that i love love me too and they wouldn't love me if loving me was painful for them but i still feel unlovely and i still worry so much that the love i give people, particularly partners, is suffocating and painful and burdensome for them. it makes me afraid to talk to people and makes me hesitant to do all the things i would normally do to show love for people and i don't know how to stop feeling like that without asking for reassurance, and i'm scared to ask for reassurance because i don't want them to feel like i'm asking too much of them or being too emotional. i want comfort and i need comfort and i need to know that i'm not hurting the people i love but i've spent my whole life asking for attention and affection and being met with either anger or being ignored and i don't want to be ignored and i don't want to make anyone angry. i want to cry but my body won't let me. i want to cry but my body won't let me. i want to cry but my body won't let me.
and on top of all of this my fucking throat still hurts when i swallow. also my tummy hurts and frankly i'm tired of being brave about it. i don't have the bandwidth to be brave about it right now. my tummy hurts and that's that.
have you ever seen those videos where it's a dog getting rescued and it keeps showing body language that it wants to be held and wants to be cared for but when the rescuer gets close the dog snaps at them or runs away?
i'm not a dog though i'm a bunny. so imagine that but bunny. and the bunny is also a vampire.
i want to cry
my mom's birthday is on saturday and i'm feeling a little strange about it i think, but also i kind of just am feeling strange in general this week. my emotions and emotional regulation have been spectacularly out of wack and i'm needing a lot more comfort and reassurance from the people in my life than i normally feel like i need. i think i'm tired. i think i'm tired and anxious and sad and feeling progressively more and more and more exhausted with the whole working-six-or-seven-days-a-week-i'll-rest-when-i'm-sleeping approach. i'm tired and i'm scared and it's getting to me. i want to cry but my body isn't letting me and anytime it thinks about letting me, it stops after a few brief seconds. last night on the phone i asked h to tell me if his feelings ever changed all of a sudden and asked for his reassurance that i wasn't a burden or holding him back from the things he likes and wants to do and he said he's sorry that anyone had ever made me believe all that. i cried for a minute or so but it didn't really feel like crying, and i think i need to cry. it felt like something i needed to hear, though.
i'm scared of being abandoned. i'm scared of being replaced. i'm scared that someone i love will actively seek out someone similar to me for the purpose of them taking my place and leaving me with a lot of confused feelings of why i wasn't enough for them, or, more accurately, why i was too much for them. that's kinda what happened with m. they dated me because i was a replacement for their ex before me and then they dated someone like me because they were a replacement for me. they used to verbally compare me to their ex and say i wasn't doing something as well as their ex did, and then after we broke up they'd tell me about how their partner after me wouldn't do x or y as well as me. made me feel frustrated and confused at first but i think the lingering effects are just that i'm worried about being replaced. my dad always wanted me to be replaced. the kid next door, dylan, would come over to hang out with me and afterwards my dad would ask my why i couldn't be more like him and, on a couple occasions, mentioned how nice it would be to have a son like dylan. i don't think i have an individuality complex because i fully grasp the fact that there are so many wonderful people similar to me in so many ways but i get scared and upset when i feel like i'm being replaced.
nothing in my life is telling me that i'm about to be abandoned or replaced but my body is yelling at me about it anyways. i think it's a body memory. a year ago this season i was moving out of the apartment i lived in with my abuser, immediately followed by losing a large portion of my friends, which then spiraled into one of the worst mental health bouts i've had since i got sober. it wasn't a good time for ari. i'm doing so incredibly much better now, and i think i'm doing such a good job at having a life i want to live, but my body is remembering and preparing for the worst again, which makes me sad. being tired isn't helping.
h mentioned this morning the possibility of going on a road trip to the grand canyon with him and his family. i don't know if i adequately expressed when he mentioned it just how happy it made me. i want a lifetime of adventures with him
i want to be held and reassured. i want to be comforted. i want to be held.
i'ts me and k's first anniversary and that feels really good :') it's always nice celebrating pleasant anniversaries it's nice to be reminded that good things last and keep going. bad anniversaries aren't much fun at all but good ones are pleasant and soft and make things feel good.
my throat is sore and i swear to god if one of the little runts got me sick again i'm gonna melt into a puddle not unlike car oil when it drains onto pavement. speaking of, i need to change the oil in my car.
the sun + the wind + the temperature + the slight dust in my eyes is reminding me of so many road trips i'd take while staying within utah, and i'm missing it greatly. i miss getting in my car and being able to be in a flat, plains-y nowhere within a fifteen-minute drive. i miss stepping out and immediately getting dust blown into my eyes and dirt on my shoes. i miss driving up a canyon and having to pop my ears periodically becuase the altitude changes are so abrupt. i miss utah. i want to take h there and show him all the places that mean something to me.
i bought plane tickets to see him last night, which i'm vibrating with excitement for. i love my husband and i can't wait to be in his arms again. he feels like home and he feels like safety and i can't wait until i've saved enough to just drive down and be with him. he makes me divinely happy, and i feel so safe and comfortable in my ability to be myself when i'm with him in ways i've never felt with anyone, romantically or platonically. 23 more days !!
another cloudy day the same color and texture as yesteray, but today it actually started raining.
i forgot to mention in yesterday's blog update that in 2019 i took my mom to disneyland for the holidays because she grew up going there (her family lived one city away back in the day when tickets were a crisp $2) and i wanted to do something nice for her given the fact that 1: her memory is going and 2: she has to deal with my dad every day. anyways. it was as nice of a time as time with her can be, and i think she had a fun time with it. it was raining that trip too, which we thought was nice because it reminded us of the time i mentioned in my last post. i digress.
one of my favorite kids that i work with told me i was her best friend today and she's started wearing a mask at school because she wants to be like me. working here has made irreparable changes to both my estrogenized desire to have kids and also my constant desire to be the older sister figure i always wanted but never had. as a kid i had an imaginary friend that was my older sister and she always wore beanies. i wear beanies. am i my own older sister? i'm sure my sister has some thoughts.
the past few nights have been really bad i think. not like bad bad i'm not in danger but my brain is being mean to me. the ed that lives in my head that i've spent years trying to evict usually starts repeating things he's said to me before, which sometimes leads to me forgetting that i'm a person, and that i have qualities that make me a person, and if left unchecked, like how it got last night, my ocd likes to latch onto and obsess over for a while in a feedback deathloop of personal insecurity. it's still kind of echoing around today but i think i'm attributing that to autistic burnout today. maybe last night was also just autism. it gets tiring to be a constantly operational diluted shell of who i understand myself to be around people for so much of the day. sure yeah it's better than the fragmented, "i have to copy aspects of other people in order to know how to interact with people" sort of masking i did in high school, but it's still tiring nonetheless. my brain likes to tell me that constantly analyzing my own behavior makes me a robot, which internal ed likes to grab onto to justify that i am indeed inhuman and that i'm never actually feeling things, i'm just repeating the feelings i've seen in other people. this thought made me cry.
i don't hear them as voices but i don't not hear them as voices. it's all my voice and it's all just me talking to myself but sometimes there's like a little profile pic or icon of whoever i think the thought i'm thinking spawned from. the only exception to this is h, who is a fully visualized miniature mental version of his real self, and whose voice i've heard so much and with so much love that i can like. auto-generate things i think he'd say and then think it in his voice, which is a great source of comfort to me.
i don't like feeling robotic or computerish. it feels like internalized anti-autism (fuck you ed) just as much as it makes me feel even more like i'm just not a normal human being. i have enough troubles reminding myself that i'm a person who exists and is real and it doesn't feel great to think that all of my thoughts and feelings are just collected replays of things i've seen from other people. that's how everyone learns how to be people, right? we're all just collected rehashes of things we've seen and heard before, right?
i'm a collections autistic. i like movies and there's never been a time i haven't liked movies and i've literally, since childhood, enjoyed collecting physical copies of movies and then categorizing and sorting them. this is one of the few constants in my entire life. i think i get it from my grandpa, who was also a collection guy. he had the full series of "northern exposure" on dvd and could recollect entire books from memory and tell you, with words, how to reconstruct an airplane engine from scratch. i think he might've been autistic.
i like having collections not only because some of them tie into my interests (though this is a major driving force) but also because they remind me that i exist. that's normal, right? to have physical tokens of things i enjoy so that i remember that i enjoy it and thus if i enjoy something then i'm a person? hmm. .. did you know that if you ask me to draw you a map of disneyland from memory i can, in such specific detail that i can even correctly label where the the bathrooms are? i once took up a whole school whiteboard drawing it out. disney should hire me for novelty maps.
i think i might be autistic.
i often forget that i took five years of chinese in middle school and high school until one of the kids at school starts speaking it, and apparently i still understand it pretty damn well. whenever people asked if i was fluent my answer was usually "about as fluent as a 5-year old would be" and i'm learning that i was actually right about that. much to think about.
my lower gut is doing the same thing it was a while ago where it gets hot and painful out of nowhere. was the last time i mentioned that happening last month? around this time last month, even? am i having a period? have i always had a period? am i intersex?
one of my astrology friends told me that the eclipse this week is gonna throw me into the shits. was she referring to the fact that i've cried for the past like. 3 nights? or is there more of this to come? i don't think i'm neurotic i think i'm tired. i feel tired. i want to stim and be nonverbal and consume my special interests with no barriers and organize my movies and hug my husband i want to hug my husband i want to hold him i want to hug my husband. i'm tired and i miss him.
i think i'm doing my best. i'm tired and i'm sad and i'm lonely i think but i'm trying my best. do i want mac and cheese for dinner again or do i just want more spicy food? much to think about.
i miss my husband
earlier today it was the same color cloudy as it was the day my mom took me to magic kingdom. i think she saved up a lot over time or got a free ticket from school or something because we had the ticket way far in advance but when the day rolled around a tropical storm started and we were maybe two out of thirty people in the whole park. very little was open but we stayed as long as we could and went on as many rides as we could because it was the only time my mom and i had ever gone together and we wanted to make the most of it. the drive there i remember we were listening to radio disney and the only song the whole drive that i could hear clearly was 1985 by bowling for soup and even nowadays i still like listening to that song whenever it gets real rainy on a drive.
the only other time i went to magic kingdom was the time karie, my dad's ex who he'll never not be in love with, took her family to go and paid for me and my dad to come with them. it wasn't very enjoyable for me becuase i did not like karie's kids and one of them lost one of my guide books to disney world (an early-life object of special interest information) in the big moat that goes around tom sawyer's island and didn't seem very thrilled about having to apologize to me. somewhere out there frequently reposted onto ed's facebook is a picture of the whole group, me included, during this particular trip. i think ed likes to look at it and imagine that he was successful in getting karie to marry him. i don't think karie liked me much. when we moved to utah sometimes he'd drag me over to karie's house in the hopes that i'd get closer to her kids but i would always end up just sitting and not talking to anyone because if there's one thing i'm good at it's selective mutism and having opinions about what i spend my time doing. i remember one time he kissed karie out of view from everyone else but i saw it. later that day on the drive home he literally begged me to marry makenna, karie's daughter closest to my age. i never liked that he did that and i never liked makenna. she was always way too energetic in a way that made me intensely uncomfortable. i don't think karie liked me much either. she'd offer me snacks and one time she gave me a box of shrek twinkies (the cream was green inside and i never ended up eating them because i didn't like the idea of green cream) but i don't remember her ever actually talking to me. as much of my mother as my dad probably wanted her to be, if it had ever become reality i think i would've been the kid getting left at the gas station on the family hiking trip. on the third gas-station-leaving i probably would've gotten tired of it and just started walking back home.
i took apart two broken ps4s over this last weekend while i was sick and put them back together to make one fully functioning ps4, which i feel really cool about doing. it was kind of the same approach i took when i built my first computer out of scrap parts i found at the DI (goodwill for utahns) and i was always pleased as punch about having done that. sometimes the software engineering kids in college would make comments about me not being able to figure my computer out but joke's on them i bet they have no idea what a capacitor looks like or how to un-solder a bunky microchip.
thinking about karie always reminds me of the first time i ever thought about killing myself because the therapist my parents made me see immediately afterwards was recommended to them by karie, but she sucked. she kept trying to get me to use colored pencils and paper to draw out my thoughts and i kept very insistently telling her that just because i was 11 didn't mean i couldn't describe my feelings with words. i kept trying to talk to her and be like "please don't make me draw i am perfectly capable of talking" (i wasn't) (i had a really bad stutter) but she kept! on! insisting! that! i draw! !! anyways we could only afford the one session and i told my parents (and karie) that i didn't want to see her again so that was that but i think they interpreted it as "my child is no longer suicidal" (i was) so they dropped the whole therapy thing until i had my onset-of-puberty-psychotic-break that almost hospitalized me because i didn't want to have a penis or become a boy. that ended up with me seeing brandon or brendan or whatever the fuck his name was who kept trying to get me to do music therapy until i flat out told him that i hated him and we started doing actual exposure therapy and dysphoria therapy etc etc until he quit being a therapist to pursue music full time. he had me on the wrong medication for like 5 years. lithium sucks. don't give lithium to a 14 year old.
i'm looking forward to having the same over-spiced extra spicy mac n cheese that i made for myself yesterday. shit was immaculate.
dear diary
earlier today i was thinking briefly about my first irl boy crush gabe, who was best friends (possibly boyfriends? much to think about) with my favorite cousin evan. he was taller than evan and had swoopy scene kid hair and a hello kitty belt. at one point while i was spending some kind of vacation with evan and his family gabe came to hang out with evan, which of course also included me because evan was my favorite cousin, and we linked up our gameboys to have a pokemon battle. a couple days later i named my charmander after him and i never saw him again, but i know that he and evan were going to prom together because evan would practice dance dance revolution on his ps2 to learn how to dance every day for the rest of the time i was there, and when i called him to ask him about pokemon cards and how to beat super mario 64 levels over the next few weeks he'd tell me he was still playing dance dance revolution. at one point my mom and my aunt and i went to lunch at some americana-themed diner and i mentioned thinking gabe was cool and both my mom and my aunt just sort of gave me a "why do you like gabe so much" look before changing the subject. whenever i was feeling sad evan would get on world of warcraft and make his griffin do loop de loops into the ground and would say "shwoop" every time it happened, which always gave me a giggle. sometimes he'd let me beat him in super smash bros on his 64 or he'd help me play through final fantasy on the emulator he had on his computer while we listened to afi and flyleaf and other low-intensity intro-to-screamo music. i always told him he kind of reminded me of snorlax, which i think sort of offended him, but i think he knew i meant that i knew he liked snorlax. snorlax is still my favorite pokemon because of him. i found out he was gay when i was 11 because he and his family came to visit my grandpa and i and he brought his brony boyfriend who tried to introduce me to panic! at the disco but evan had already done that a few years earlier because "nine in the afternoon" on rock band 1 was easy to play on drums, which is always the instrument i wanted to play.
i think one of the runts at school got me sick again. my left nostril keeps feeling gooey. fingers crossed that it's nothing.
my dad got me my first game console, which was a gameboy advance i'm pretty sure he just found somewhere. it was the orange and green "shrek" edition and every day of my life i regret ever selling it. the only games i had were the finding nemo game and a shitty (but incredibly difficult) pirates of the caribbean licensed game that had nothing to do with the movie besides the names of the characters. once i moved to florida with my mom she got a nintendo 64, a gameboy color, and a haunted tv at a garage sale for real cheap. only games i had for any of it were super mario 64, spider-man, bass fishing 2000, and pokemon blue. over the next couple of years and amidst my progessively worsening acting-out i saved up enough points on the "i'm being good" reward pyramid my mom established to cash it in for a used ps2 my mom scouted out on craigslist that had kingdom hearts 2 and a couple racing games. pretty much all the other games i played as a kid were either through evan playing them with me or letting me borrow them, me saving up couch change (which is how i bought the copy of pokemon emerald that i refuse to ever let go of), or playing them on fridays at school because on fridays we could bring in our game systems to play them during extended day. some days, my best (only) friend allen and i would play pokemon together but on days when his mom picked him up early i'd end up playing final fantasy on my gameboy, always real hopeful that no one deleted my save since the last time i played it. joke's on everyone-- "final fantasy legends" is an insanely difficult and confusing game and it's a miracle that i managed to ever get as far as i did over the span of 4 years of friday extended day video game time.
allen's mom was sort of one of my adoptive moms while i was living in florida. she was a single mom of allen and his little brother austin, and she and the boys had moved down from manhattan after allen's dad left her. she was always really nice to me, and i think she knew more about my family's situation than i really had the comprehension of knowing at the time. sometimes she'd be able to tell when i was sad and she'd give me a kiss on my forehead when she was picking allen up or while i was hanging out with him. one time allen invited me to his family's christmas party because as much as allen was my only real friend i was his. i wanted to make sure i got him a christmas present but i didn't have any money to so i photocopied a bunch of my pokemon cards and cut them out, then stole a roll of tape from my mom with the idea that if allen taped the pokemon to his wall and moved them around it would be like a little paper pokemon playset. i talked to him a few years ago and he said that he still had it, at least as of 2021 or so. allen's mom was puerto rican and very proud of it and i distinctly remember a bedazzled camo peurto rico trucker hat she would always wear while she was driving. a hat like that is kind of hard to forget. sometimes i think about reaching out to him again, and technically we still follow each other on twitter and letterboxd, but i haven't talked to him since i transitioned. i think i'm scared that talking to him again and having to come out to him would end poorly and soil the memory of the friendship, but also he's definitely interacted with posts about me outright talking about estrogen, so maybe i'm just neurotic.
after a brief instagram search i've learned that he has a goatee now and his bio is a quote from ratatouille, so it's nice to know that he likely hasn't changed a whole lot.
i'm feeling emotional today. i think it started last night.
missing my hormone shot for a few days always leaves me feeling a little emotional and i'm sure that that's part of it but i think in general i'm becoming preoccupied about the idea that i might simply be "too much" for the people i love and care about. i try really hard to like myself or at the very least find things to like about myself but at the end of the day i really have a difficult time with it. i've been told that my affection is suffocating and overwhelming. i've been told that i'm "too nice" by previous partners and i think there's very little that makes me sadder as fast as my partner telling me i'm too nice to them. too nice too much too overwhelming. my ocd loves thinking about that. my ocd likes telling me that the way i love people is poisonous and unrelenting and that by loving people as much as i do i'm actually exhausting and degrading them over time until one day they give up and say that loving me and being loved by me feels like a chore. nobody ever talks about the gross parts of ocd like that. i don't think i'm taxing or exhausting. i hope not at least. i hope the people in my life now don't feel that way about me. turns out if your parents don't really make it known that they want you or love you and you go through a series of relationships where someone is verbally telling you that they'd rather be with someone who isn't you it kind of gets hard to re-write once you're in the "i'm trying my best and i think i'm doing an okay job at taking care of myself" phase of life.
i think i maybe feel lonelier than i've admitted to myself so far. i want to be held. i haven't been held in a while. hugged yes. hugs are nice. i want to be held though. i miss h. i miss the way he holds me and how safe i feel when i'm in his arms. i miss his arms. i miss his warmth.
i've been sitting in the bathtub for almost 4 hours now. i should get out. i want to cry i think. i wish i had more nutella.
i'm turning into a car dyke
i really want to start going to bed earlier because i like sleeping and i generally feel much better when i get enough sleep but i got distracted thinking of ways to change up my website (i feel like it could be more fun! maybe i'll change the colors) and also i started watching "there will be blood"
don't ask me why an almost three-hour-long movie about an oil tycoon is a comfort movie. i can't give you an answer. maybe it's the fact that the scenery is all just sagebrushed desert or the fact that the son is deaf and i think the accents are silly. if you looked at my letterboxd you'd assume it's my comfort movie becaue i think paul dano's character is a subby lil puppyboy and the giant metal oil spike is worthy of so much love. i wish i knew how to make fan cams. i'd make one for the big fucking metal spike. i've abandoned my child. loooouuuderrrrrrsay it say itttt I've Abandoned My Boy-louuuuderrr the lord cfan't hear you-I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD I"VE ABANDONED MY CHILD I'VE ABANDONED MY BOY hehehehehee what a silly movie this whole movie is just people in the desert with funny voices slapping each other and getting covered in oil and dirt
"!!!DO YOU ACCEPT YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR!!!" "yes i dooOo :333"
today at work i got to pick up a bunch of kids and hold them until they felt less sad. i think i'd be a good mother but i don't know if i'll ever actually be a mother. i guess i have my cats. sometimes i have friends that call me mama.
if there's one thing about ari it's that they'd rather learn everything there is to know about something and do it herself before she ever, ever consults a professional about the thing. in today's episode i've found divinity in the revelation that i can save like. thousands of dollars by learning how to repair my car myself with very minimal experience required and also i can save another couple thousands in uhaul costs if i attach a trailer to my car. oh the magic of car repairs !
i'm getting tired and i miss h and i want a hug. i want two hugs actually two really big hugs.
i cleaned my apartment today, and that feels good.
edit: i did my taxes today and feel like shit i swear to god nothing makes me ideate faster than money i feel so stupid i feel so stupid and silly and incompetent why am i so bad with money why does everything cost so much i'm so upset at myself blah blah blah i tiptoe the line between starving and impoverished and manically spending money i don't want to be spending on the silliest most stupid fucking things i am!!! finding it so difficult to not say that i hate myself!!!
i think anytime i tell someone close to me that i spent money on anything that isn't groceries, rent, or bills i should be shot in the foot with a 9mm
someone outside just fell on a lime scooter i hope they're okay. it's nice to see everyoone run to check on them. they look like they're okay.
i had so much more to type that i just deleted i'm going to shut up until i calm down a bit.
edit 2: technically it's march 18th now but i'm not asleep yet so i'll count it. i miss h more than i know how to put into words. he's sick right now and i want desperately to take care of him. i want to hold him and fix him tea and dinner and give him massages or rub his sinuses the way i do whenever i get sinus headaches. i've spent the whole day daydreaming about moving. i want to be closer to him and i'm excited to see him in the specific sunlight the bay area has again. i wanna see it reflect on his skin. i wanna watch how his ears glow with the sunset behind him. i want to take him to all the most beautiful places i know.
i smell like sunscreen and it's still the same tube of sunscreen i was using when h and i were still living in the same city. i can still smell him in it. we have a picture together that i think he still uses as his lock screen that we took at one of the local swimming spots he likes and i'm sure that in that moment i smelled like this sunscreen. my phone says it's 67 degrees out right now but you could convince me it's in the 70s. it feels like it's in the 70s but it's also the first genuinely un-winter day we've had since i guess before it was winter. my scoliosis is bad today but not as much as my yearning. in a way i think i'm glad that so many sunscreen products smell the same so that if trader joes ever decides to stop making their sunscreen (the orange tube lotion thingy one) then at least i know that the smell will more or less be able to be found elsewhere. it smells like the drive home from the first time we went to the beach together, literally i think the day after or the day after the day after our first date. it smells like hanging my head out of his window worried that my glasses would fall off but generally just pleased to feel so happy to be somewhere. it smells like dryly saying bark woof bark bark awwooo bark bark in the most monotone and un-doggish way i could in the hopes that it would make him giggle a little bit. i like to think it worked because he still brings it up sometimes. it makes me smile to think of all the different things i'll have in the future that smell like sunscreen.
for the past year or so i've tried to keep a disposable camera or a polaroid with me and take pictures of things that make me happy or at least that i notice. it took about a month and a half to finish the one i had last summer. the one i have now is taking a little longer but i've noticed i've been taking more pictures of myself or of myself in front of things on this one. i think there's something to be said about there being more pictures of myself but it's also taken twice as long to fill it so far and i'm still not done with it. a lot of my last disposable boiled down to pictures of my partners and pictures of flowers and not a whole lot else. it's nice to know that i was so physically surrounded by so much love last year. part of me feels a little lonely thinking about the comparatively more isolated film roll i'm currently working on but the other part of me is trying to be a little more optimistic in thinking about how many more film rolls i'll have in the future and how nice it is to have been loved so geographically close then. i miss my partners. i'll see them again soon.
second shift at third job today. spent most of the time adding price tags to records, which was fine. i like having mindless tasks. the last hour or so of the day he had me working the register, which was stressful on two fronts (some other sunscreens smell like bananas i'm smelling them now)— firstly, i fundamentally don't comprehend numbers so if the register isn't telling me how much the change comes out to i'm shit outta luck. secondly— he gave me a paper with all the price codes to memorize and i, being the busy goose i am, did not bother making time to read it over the last week. i jokingly asked if i at least did a 4/10 job on the register and, giggling, he said i did a solid 4/10. doesn't feel great but doesn't feel awful. i think i tend to be hard on myself when i don't learn things quickly, and it bothers me that i just got so paralyzingly startled by numbers and price codes.
went to see dune 2 with sis last thursday. my initial thought was that it was simply a fine movie but considering dune lore has been consuming my mind for two days i think i might regard it a little more highly. from a visual standpoint i thought it was great. 10/10 would own on blu-ray. i had a bit of a meltdown about the elevator/escalator situation both going in and going out of the theater. FUCK whoever put a theater at the top of a 4-story mall. i'm insanely and pathologically afraid of elevators to an almost debilitating extent. anytime i have a nightmare, like an actual honest-to-god nightmare, it's one of two things: being prey or being in an elevator. i can't control my dreams but i've had multiple instances where if i see an elevator in my dream, dream me will think “oh i know what's gonna happen if i go in here it's gonna fall and i'm gonna die” and sometimes i'll avoid the elevator or i'll be forced in somehow and it'll happen that way. i hate elevators. especially don't make me decide between an elevator and a series of escalators where i can look down four stories. i don't trust floating elevators and i don't like having my back towards drop-offs. out of nowhere sometimes if i have a staircase or something behind me my body will remember that i'm in front of a drop and i'll jerk forward.
i feel a little bit bad for saying it but i'm almost a little disappointed that what i thought would happen yesterday didn't, and there's a part of me that kind of hopes it might tomorrow. i feel a little out of my mind for spending so much time thinking it would happen, but i think it's more of an ocd sort of fearful obsession with the idea than any kind of delusion. i've had delusions before and they feel differently than ocd obsessions. i don't like wishing death on people but i do often think that i'd be less sort of subconsciously anxious if i knew that i didn't need to watch my back for my dad being there. if anything else i feel.. some kind of way about the fact that i let it get so consuming and scary. anyways.
above all else i miss h more than i know what to do with and i am tired
two more days until it's the day my dream told me my dad was going to die, or four more days if you're going by what his dream told him. if i'm allowing myself some unhinged ramblings that tiptoe along delusion, then i'd say that i'm right and it's going to happen this friday because my dad has incredibly sour luck with many things and incredibly good luck with other things and since sunday is the anniversary of his dad dying i'm of the belief that he will simply not be around to commemorate his passing because that's just how his luck usually turns out. i don't personally believe that any of this is in any way delusional because this has been a long-understood belief of mine and also my great-grandma knew that my grandpa (the one i lived with) was going to die soon because she saw it in a dream. roma will not steal your baby or read your fortunes but we will receive prophetic visions about emotional upheavals.
my therapist knows very well that i feel bad for thinking that i would be less stressed if my dad did in fact die. i'd worry less, i think. worry less about random texts from him and i'd probably be less jumpy around white cars. i feel embarrassed to say i'd almost be a little let down if my prophesy was incorrect, partly because of the disappointment of simply not being correct and possibly swayed by delusion but partly becaue i think knowing that he's sort of just... lurking in my life stresses me out. after his Incident when i was a teenager i became a little hypersensitive to his feelings in a way i don't think i ever recovered from. i've already prepared for the loss of a father because it's already happened, but i'm unprepared for the guilt i will likely feel afterwards. if it happens the way i think it will, could i prevent it? no, because i think interfering with whatever the universe has decided upon is silly. what i worry about is the blame i'll likely find it easy to place on myself for it being my fault somehow. if there's one thing he's good at it's manipulation and making things my fault, and having the guilt work. he raised it within me. whatever happens it is not my fault. whatever happens it is nothing i can prevent or change, and no matter what it's not my fault.
i don't think my coworkers like me much. i don't think i like my coworkers much. some are okay but i don't feel like any of them actually want to spend much time around me. i don't think they know what to do with me or how to talk to me or what to talk to me about. very few of them ever even ask me how i'm doing. the kids are sweet but sometimes they don't listen and after mornings full of being scolded to some degree by my supervisors or having kids simply not listen, sometimes i'll ask a kid if i'm invisible. i don't think they ever understand the question but shortly after, if i can, i'll usually escort myself to the bathroom and cry for a couple minutes. i am my mother's child. she's the second youngest of 6 kids and grew up with numerous stories about being conversationally stepped on and overlooked by her siblings. she was the quiet one of her family and it shows. i'm the only child and i still somehow ended up the quietest but i guess that happens when both of your parents are neglectful fire signs and one of them has crippling depression and the other is a narcissist with the emotional control of a 5-year-old.
it's 11:11. i'm wishing for h
i'm excited to move to the bay later this year. i think it'll be good for me. i like the color of the sun there. i like the smell of the air and the energy of the people. i like the trees and the color of the dirt and the variety of architecture.
i always wanted to be an architect growing up but architecture is hard to do when, on a fundamental level, you don't understand math. i still admire architecture. i like to take note of it when i find a building i like and i certainly have a lot to say about different sorts of architectural styles and histories and purposes. i own textbooks about it that i've actually taken the time to read (at least most of them).
good pal ron posted a thing on tumblr yesterday about patiently waiting for someone to ask about an incredibly niche topic you have encyclopedic knowledge of that just never manages to get brought up. i don't think anyone's ever asked me about the invention of the airport as a functional building and the direct pipeline it takes to the history of the disney parks as geographic locations. related to this, no one's ever inquired about the hours, if not days, of youtube videos and wikipedia articles i've consumed surrounding television broadcast networks, although if i'm being honest i don't think i can relay a lot of the information i've learned. i can tell you a lot about the history of disney channel, though, and i can tell you where i was when i first heard a variety of early-mid 00's pop hits from radio disney, and sometimes when i'm bored i walk around the almost perfect 3d scan of epcot (circa 2009) or disneyland (circa 2018) that i have in my head. am i a disney adult? i don't think i like disney characters or movies enough to be a disney adult. let me put it this way-- the way millenials feel about paris is the way i feel about disney parks. does that make sense?
did you know that the motion picture association of america (mpaa) took out an a from their name five years ago and now it's just the motion picture association. i don't know why.
after a brief wikipedia search i have learned that it's because they wanted to reflect their desire to provide global content and initiatives or something corporate like that. i don't think anyone told them that there are other countries that do movies. i don't think anyone told them that the united states is one of like. 3 countries that use the g/pg/pg-13/r/nc-17 rating system they came up with. did you know that the pg-13 rating was invented for indiana jones and the temple of doom? i don't care what you have to say about kingdom of the crystal skull-- temple of doom is the soggiest and hands down worst indiana jones movie. one thing i will say about temple of doom though, largely in part to the fact that i've only seen it maybe twice in my life (in contrast from the dozens of times i've seen the other three) is that it's a prequel to the first one. i didn't learn that until this year.
i think monorails are my favorite method of people-moving. they're fun and stylish.
i think i may be autistic.
today is my ex/one of my best friends' birthdays (happy birthday maps !) and if my prophetic dreams are correct my dad will die in a car crash next sunday taking the 522 back home through woodinville. one of the last times i saw him he said the same thing but that it was the 15th so who knows maybe it'll be two days early.
i'm preparing for the inevitable crushing weight of grief that is sure to follow as well as the eventual guilt of having not spoken to him in a while. i don't want to speak to him and he knows it, but there's a distinct sort of self-accusatory loneliness that comes from distancing onesself from a parent. after and also during the grief comes the rituals but the guilt will continue. make a ward, attend a cremation, comfort the mother/wife that once told you she frequently thinks about how easy life would be if you and your dad (in this scenario, dead) never existed. continue to grieve. continue to feel guilty. do everything you can to not lose emotional stability. write and write and create and create and do as much as you can to not ruin your life. upheaval is acceptable under proper conditions. things will hurt. it's okay if it hurts.
i don't think he ended up wanting me all that much anyways. there was a time, i'm told, in my early childhood, when he'd fall asleep watching tv shows with me on the couch, and he'd sit with me and try to get me to eat or watch me play computer games. i don't remember this. very few of my lifetime memories with him involve him actually listening to or paying attention to me. i was a reflection of himself and he hated me for it, but also loved that he could talk about himself and do everything he wanted to do without actually taking into account much of how i was feeling. in thinking of the best memory i have with him the only one that comes to mind is the two or three times he'd taken me to seaworld while i was living with my mom in florida. once every few months he'd have me for a saturday and if he had any money saved up we'd go to seaworld for an afternoon to look at sharks. this only happened twice and one of the times we went was the day i learned he smoked because he got so upset at the traffic that he started smoking. a disappointing day to say the least. after a while i think he just lost interest. once he realized i was my own person i think he lost a lot of his energy for being much of a parent.
i don't think i can say much about if my grandpa really liked being a father figure for me. i think he knew he couldn't be a father figure (on account of him being 96 some odd years old when i started living with him) so he focused a lot of his efforts on being my grandpa. he spent a lot of time telling stories and sleeping and i'd care for him as best as i could. i think he had a hard time relating to me but i think it was a mutual understanding.
i don't think i have a lot of very positive parental experiences, in the long run. my mom would help me with legos or toontown bosses sometimes and she'd take me to epcot after school just for me to get my energy out but i don't remember her ever really talking to me until high school when i came out to her and she said nothing could be done, so two days later i said i was just kidding.
i just told my coworkers that one of my top 20 movies is "nymphomaniac" which is a 6-hour very difficult movie to watch about a woman retelling her lifetime of sex addiction. i like that it's such a sympathetic and un-glorifying way of talking about and portraying addiction, intimacy, and emotional numbness. her dad dies in that movie. does it happen on march 17? i'll have to rewatch it.
i miss h dearly and if i don't see him by april 15 i'm gonna lose my mind. i'll have to take some time off to visit him soon. i miss his warmth and i miss holding him and being held by him. i want to be held by him again.
sometimes i get caught in a bit of a loop about people who haven't exactly treated me the best where i get reflective and mournful about experiences and time with them without fully checking back in with myself about how bad the bad parts were. i find it important to remember the good parts with the bad but it blurs together from time to time, i think. last night i got a little caught up in thinking about how peaceful and gentle a lot of the earlier times i would spend with ky would be. watching movies and tv shows together and playing through pokemon or mario games together is certainly ground for cherished memories but it kind of pales in comparison to daily abuse. it makes me happy to know that better things are already here and will continue to come. i'm trying to convince myself that i deserve it.
i forgot that the final fantasy 7 remake existed until yesterday when it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. i grew up playing a lot of final fantasy because i had it on my ps2 and even though i never got into anime or manga very much, i was neck deep in final fantasy games for a hot minute. seven isn't my favorite anymore but it was my favorite up until around college. there's nothing quite like a fantasy-sci-fi-role-playing-game where you play as a gang of anti-capitalist eco-terrorists. i wonder where i get my political views from. much to think about.
i miss h. my body remembers what he feels like and wants more of him. i want him next to me and every day i itch more and more to move to be closer to him. i think he knows. i hope he knows.
i bought a tiny lighthouse model at value village yesterday. exciting developments in the kitchen of ari. i love my tiny lighthouse.
i would maim and kill someone for a smoked turkey sandwich with dijon mustard and provolone right now. lots of tomatoes please.
i'm a simple woman. i love primary colors and infodumping and i dislike when people interrupt my infodumping to start talking about other things and then don't apologize or ask me to continue. did you know that the plot of "queen of the damned" revolves around lestat starting a nu metal band? no? oh well you would've learned that if you hadn't interrupted me.
i think i might have ovaries. this has long been a suspicion of mine. i started thinking i might in middle school, initially as a wishful begging that one day i might "wake up and be a woman" (tip: estrogen will do this faster than any divine intervention will), but i think it turned into sort of a genuine gut feeling (ha ha) pretty early on. i've never had any x rays or inspections done on my abdomen or waist at all and frankly i have no evidence to back this up but every now and then there'll be a period of 3-5 days where throughout the day i'll get this weird sensitive warmth in my lower gut where i imagine my uterus would be and it's an intense and sad sort of warmth. like when it happens i feel like i need to keel over in pain and also i need to receive a hug. sometimes it makes me cry, both from the pain and from just feeling intensely uncomfortable or sad. I know it's not the hormones, too, because it's happened since my first puberty. additionally i have some inexplicable marks and scar tissue along my genitals. am i intersex? much to think about.
thinking today about how viscerally uncomfortable i'd get whenever i had to wear a suit. i always hated wearing suits and ties, and anytime i had to, i simply would not. i'd refuse. sometimes i'd pretend to not know where the suit or tie was so i wouldn't have to wear it. i'd get so passionate about it that my orchestra and jazz band teachers let me wear cardigans and keep my button downs undone at the top two buttons just to avoid me putting up a stink about it.
i miss my deathhawk haircut and feel like i want to cut the sides of my hair again, but i'm trying to grow my hair into a bob. maybe i'll go to bed early or touch up some of my tattoos to help with the "change something" urge. maybe i'll say fuck it and cut my hair anyways. i really want a sandwich. i'm hungry and also i'm hungry. also i miss my husband. also i need a hug.
i'm in a meeting right now. said meeting began with three minutes of silence intended to make us realize how hard it is to sit still for three minutes without falling asleep or disassociating. frankly i had absolutely no problem doing this and even found the three minutes of silence to be quite nice. i think therapy took away my recreational dissociation. i used to do it on purpose for fun whenever i got bored and as a kid i'd call it time traveling because when i clocked back in it would be a different time even though i hadn't registered the time passing. i still dissociate nowadays though but it's usually a byproduct of getting activated somehow or starting to hole down into myself. i don't think i should ever try ketamine. this fact disappoints me.
i think i'm coming down from my almost hypomanic episode. manic episodes always scare me and they tend to scare me enough that it's hard for me to talk about them sometimes. i say almost hypomanic because i don't think it was hypomanic and it certainly wasn't fully manic but it was definitely a week or week and a half of feeling the same kind of phpysical feelings that i get when manic energy is bubbling. mania always makes me uncomfortable. it makes it hard to feel comfortable and safe in my own body, which then just feeds into the difficult impulse control. i feel good about being able to manage it and i think if what i felt last week was happening a few years ago it definitely would've been an episode, but i'm me as i am now and i'm so much better at controlling it ! so i'm pleased as punch with myself for having worked so hard on that.
manic and hypomanic energy in ari 101: it usually starts with diminished need for sleep- i usually try to be pretty good about getting 7-8 hours but if it dips below 6 hours for more than 3 days i've noticed that that usually means either i'm manic or i'm soon going to be. the only exception i can think of is when a few months ago i had a nightmare so bad i was scared to go to sleep for a few days, but that doesn't happen very frequently. after the sleep schedule changes i usually get a little more talkative or i talk a little faster, or i get more irritable and tend to get a little feistier in a more frentic and sassier way. i used to just be straight up mean but i've worked a lot on that. my impulse control gets a little harder and it feels easier to want to spend money, even though i really don't want to. i'll see things and instantly be like "ooh i need to buy that" and i've gotten a LOT better at managing that. nowadays i give myself allowances and think about how much i'd be willing to pay for a certain thing, and nine times out of ten the actual price is a lot higher than i'd be willing to pay for it, and that does a good job of dissuading me. i've found that redirecting my urges makes it a lot easier to cope with-- if i want to spend money and have the means to, i'll buy thing i've needed to buy for a while (underwear, socks, etc) or if i'm feeling manically energized i'll try to funnel it into learning things or creating and doing arty projects, and that always feels good. being manic makes it harder to ignore urges to self-harm or do my substances again though. my brain does a good job of telling me that if i can't do my substances i should get drunk or try smoking again, and that always annoys me a little because i like not being inebriated and i like being nice to myself. sometimes reminding myself not to be mean to myself gets hard but i feel good about distracting myself and using ice cubes and what not
i think my british coworker wants to get in my pants. whenever we work after-school together he spends an awful lot of time trying to get my attention. today the topic was the movie "akira" and the cool motorcycle slide they do in it. i've expressed to him multiple times that i hate the british, to which his reply is usually "fair." i have to hand it to him, he's suave, but i think if i was hatefucking him i couldn't get past the accent enough to make it very far. also i don't want to have sex with him. he does actually seem to enjoy talking to me which is nice considering none of my other coworkers really do all that much. i think the kids like me a lot more than any of my coworkers do. there's one in particular that i don't care much for. he talks about movies like he's an expert and shuts me down whenever i try to talk about them, but he only ever talks about marvel movies and blockbuster summer films like barbie or oppenheimer. i have him quoted as saying "the oldest movie i like is apocalypse now" which made me so upset i had to leave the room. talking to people like that makes me feel like i did as a kid whenever i'd try to make friends with people and i'd scare them off because i didn't know how to talk like a normal person. i've since learned to weaponize and sexualize my sass into a force to be reckoned with.
today one of the kids i spend a lot of time with got sad that i was leaving so i jumped in and out of view of him from the window where he was standing sadly because i had to go, and that cheered him up. earlier in the afternoon i held him because he scraped his knee up a bit. i worry a bit that i'm getting too attached to these kids. i don't remember very much from when i was 4 and i doubt that any of the kids i'm interacting with now will ever remember anything about me, but sometimes i hold a crying kid or play with them when they get sad about me leaving and i feel the pang of wanting to help a kid grow and learn. i don't expect to have a child of my own. i won't be disappointed if i never do. but sometimes i ache a little.
i once came home crying to my mom because i couldn't play in the sandbox at school because there were too many ants and they'd all bite me and i'd get welts because i was allergic to ant bites as a kid. one of the only times i remember my mom going out of her way to save money and get me something was when i told her about moon sand from an infomercial i saw on tv and she saved up for a couple months to get me some. i'd end up playing with it while i watched tv. it was nice of her to get it for me since she knew i had a hard time playing with actual sand at school.
i think working with kids has me thinking about my own childhood a lot, which is fun when it's things i think of fondly but not so fun when it makes me realize how neglected i was or how difficult it was for me to make friends. there are a few kids who repeat a lot of things from tv shows they like, which reminds me a lot of myself. once i started talking to people i had a really bad stutter and one of the ways my school speech therapist said might help break the stutter is by quoting movies or tv shows in the voice that the character says it in. up until i went to college i didn't really know what my voice sounded like genuinely because i spent so much time replicating other people's voices. for the part of elementary school that i actually talked to people for and most of middle school i'd just repeat things i heard from watching tv. i think that's part of why i'm so fixated on the role of movies in my life.
anyways, i'm about to watch an episode of curb your enthusiasm. i got to talk to h today after i cleaned my apartment. a good night. goodnight.
Today in class I sang a song asking all of the kids how they were doing today and in between each break of the song I said a kid's name and asked how they were doing. It's sweet to hear kids go quiet when their friends are saying they're sad, and it felt good to help them learn that it's okay to be happy and sad at the same time sometimes.
One of the kids I end up spending a lot of time with asked to sit in my lap during story time, and after a while of sitting still he flopped over and said my sweater was really soft and that he really liked it.
I have a lot of things working against me here, mathematically: intense breeding kink + recent estrogen injection + tgirl period + sweet kid interactions is all equaling out to some insane brain chemistry gymnastics. The ovaries I wish I had but have never been fully convinced of Not Having are bursting at the seams. Motherhood brain go brrrr.
it wasn't until I got on hormones that I ever really thought about the idea of raising a kid. I was always scared of it to a very sincere extent but I've grown to realize that I was more scared of being a father than having a kid. I'm not a father and I never will be, but I could be a mother if I wanted to be. It's nice to think about sometimes but I have no real plans or intentions to raise a kid. I don't make enough money for that and don't quite feel like I've graduated therapy enough. Despite begging h to breed me and the estrogen-induced fantasies I have of teaching a kid how to cook or be kind to flowers or pointing at airplanes through the sunroof, it's not something I've put enough want into wanting to actually have it be labeled a "goal" in my life. Sometimes I catch myself wondering if some of the ways my desires to raise a kid manifest are really just me trying to heal my inner child. Maybe it's both. I feel like I've done a lot of work and put a lot of effort into spending time with her in the ways that she never got time spent with her. Maybe there comes a point where you heal your inner child so much that you start wanting to test your work and practice and effort in a practical way. Maybe it's not even that selfish. Maybe you know what it's like to not be wanted by a parent and, since you've only ever wanted to adopt anyways, there's a desperation somewhere in you to provide something for a child that you never really got yourself.
maybe it's just survival instincts. Maybe you just want to have a kid. Maybe it's the estrogen talking.
i missed the anniversary of me starting hormones (it was the 3rd). happy anniversary to me i suppose. every day i get more comfortable with being alive and being myself, and even though sometimes it gets really hard to feel excited about continuing to be alive or be myself, i'm glad to be here, and i feel safe in my feeling that i keep finding new reasons to keep staying alive.
i just got a youtube ad for intrusive ocd thoughts. fuck off i don't like being clocked like that. take a step back. i have enough therapy experience to know how to monitor my intrusive thoughts, thank you very much.
happy valentine's day. i used to be an avid valentine's day hater but my heart has changed and it's one of my favorites now. today one kid gave me a valentine that was meant for a different kid who wasn't at school, and another kid gave me a coloring page she had colored because i said that i liked that she colored the otter's tail in green. this past week it's been hard to distract myself from how i'm feeling about myself. i feel burdensome and unlikable, and i'm finding little, if any, beauty in myself as an individual with a body. i don't feel beautiful. i don't feel worthy of the love i know i have from others. i'm trying my best to remind myself that i'm beautiful and worthy of love, but it gets tiring to keep putting so much effort into it. it would be nice to just know it or believe it. frankly i have little to no doubt that a lot of it is just feelings of rejection in the wake of a recent breakup, and i'm proud of myself for remaining stable in spite of it, emotionally, but i'm tired. i'm tired and i don't quite know how to stop being tired. i want to be held, and i want to be reminded that i am loved by those who love me. i feel needy, and i feel tired. i want to be held and cared for but simultaneously i feel scared to be touched or held. i worry that if i would be touched i'd get uncomfortable and snappy at the sudden intimacy and vulnerability. there was a point in my life when i'd use sex and intimacy as self-harm, knowing that i'd get uncomfortable, but forcing the bastardized, instantaneous intimacy as a desperate and self-aware attempt at grasping for love anyways. i've learned over time that whenever i feel like this it's generally a good idea to work on my own self love (duh) but it's a cold period of time. worthwhile, sure, but cold. i think i want to be better at opening up to the people i trust to love me and who i trust to be vulnerable with. i think that would be a good way of being helped. it's hard for me to ask for help sometimes, especially if i feel like i'm already asking too much from someone, or being too needy already. i find it important that i'm able to take care of myself and keep my own needs met to some degree, but i'm still working on learning when i need extra help from other people, especially in terms of needing affection. i don't know if i'm quite used to having affection met. it's new, but it's here. h and k do such a good job of meeting my needs and providing reassurance and affection when i need it or want it, even when i'm already feeling like i'm asking too much of it. i'm trying my best. i like to think i'm even doing my best.
i'm watching a youtube video about the american idol experience that was once at disney's hollywood studios in the early 2000s. i don't talk about it much because i always feel like disney adult is something that not only feels inaccurate to how i feel about the corporation, but also just carries a certain....... connotation...with it. tl;dr i dislike disney the company i do not care about most of their movies i find their constant devouring of other corporations to be horrifying HOWEVER i am the conglomerated result of a variety of attributes that led me to where i am today: 1) i was a low-income child in the early 2000s who learned how to speak by watching tv, particularly turner classic movies and disney channel. 2) i spent the most formative years of my childhood in an apartment complex 45 minutes away from disney world with a mom who grew up in anaheim in the 60s who had a teacher-discounted year pass to disney world's epcot park which would be utilized by her simply driving me to the park, letting me into the park, letting me loose for a few hours, and then grabbing me again when i called and said i was done. 3) sometimes she'd come with me, and it would be the only time in my most formative years that i'd get parental quality time. 4) i think oswald the lucky rabbit is a cutie pie. 5) i'm very likely autistic and one of my most permanent and lifelong hyperfixations is urban planning, themed areas, and the intersection of the two. little autistic ari spent YEARS of her life making imaginary maps to theme parks, and would "play" by staring at maps and brochures for local tourist attractions.
i never had a chance.
i don't give a shit about disney as a corporation. as i stated earlier, i dislike disney as a corporation. but i will not stand idly by and be told that i don't know something about the disney parks. you don't KNOW my knowledge of the disney parks. i am a walking encyclopedia of ever-expanding knowledge about the disney parks. i can give you a full walkthrough of the entire epcot park (as it was in 2009) from memory by simply closing my eyes. give me a starting location and i can tell you everything in the local vicinity. i can give you an equally full walkthrough of the entire disneyland park (as it was in 2019) from memory after only having been there twice in my life. fight me about it. one of my greatest annoyances in life is when fuckers think they know something i don't about the disney parks. i digress. i find it comforting. say what you will about my autism allegations but autism be damned that girl finds a great amount of comfort from indulging in disney park history. it's a source of comfort for me. one of my biggest sources of comfort. it always has been. it's the most direct method i have of hanging out with and healing the child within me that needed, above all else, actual care.
it annoys me that disney adults (read: people who stand by disney no matter what, only listen to disney music, talk down on people who can't afford disney things/aren't interested in it) occupy such a large and villifiable space in american context. that's not what i am and it annoys me when i tell people that i have a hyperfixation with the disney parks. i don't care about disney. i don't like disney. i don't even really like that the parks are linked with disney because disney takes away their safety in my perspective of them.
autism brain go brr when intentional fluidity of the movement of persons through an artisanally crafted and thematically cohesive space.
don't call me a disney adult.
on one hand i get why nobody likes airports. on the other hand however, i like airports. if there are one hundred airport enjoyers in the world i am one of them. if there is one airport enjoyer it is me. if there are no airport enjoyers on the earth, i am in space. this has been a source of great contention throughout my life.
i consider the time i slept over at an airport willingly to be a spiritual experience in my life. i had a 7am flight, so instead of doing the normal person thing by leaving at 4:30 or 5a to get there on time, i instead elected to arrive at the airport at 6p the night before. i checked in, got comfy, and just sat. sat and looked and watched. flight in, flight out, flight in, flight out. the airport is a building that is, to every detail of its design, intended to get as many people in and out as fast as possible, and by sleeping in it, you are the only person in the entire building that is simply there. the workers are working and the people with layovers are either in a nearby hotel or getting ready for their next flight. just arrived? get out. departing? get out. you're sleeping over? why are you here? i felt like the building got defensive in the same way i do. it's happy to be known and apprecaited, but confused. i like to visit the airport when i want to feel closer to h. it's a safe space for me. i always love when i have a flight because it means more airport time for me.
this caused some trouble with ky once. we had gone to los angeles to visit her friends for her birthday, and i, being excited to be in such a famous airport, had asked that we get to the airport an hour or so early so that i could explore a little and admire the architecture (airport architecture is just so distinct!). she seemed okay with it at first but as soon as we got through security she had some issues with it. i don't really know what the issues were beyond just being annoyed at getting to the airport so early fair) but she ended up very publicly screaming at me in the middle of one of the concourses. i don't remember the specifics of what she said but i remember there being something about me ruining her life and how she was embarrassed to know me. people watched and stared for a while. i don't know the extent of the truth of her saying she was embarrassed to know me but i was definitely embarrassed to be in the situation. i feel a little bad about it i think, just because i could tell she was uncomfortable, and i probably wouldn't do that to or with another partner again, but i fondly remember the arching of the ceilings, the tiling along the walls, the color of the carpet squares, and the spaciousness of the windows. there was a piano visitors could play publicly just outside the entrance of concourse d.
i have a love-hate relationship with the accuracy of my memory, and sometimes when i write out memories like this i feel a little shy, even if i don't know for sure if anyone will ever read it. i worry that the way i present memories is too depressing, or generally just sort of somber. i promise i have happy memories. lots of them, even. i have my grandpa's memory. i talk like my grandpa--i ramble and i meander and if given the opportunity to continue a memory (such as writing a blog) into a more fully-fledged thought, i can go on for hours. gotta make up for the 9 years of selective mutism. we knew he was headed out when he started forgetting things. the last couple days he was around he couldn't remember what he had done earlier in the day, and that's when the goodbyes started. my mom's sort of the outlier of her family, i think. the rest of her siblings have pretty decent memories but my mom can't remember much. i think in her youth it was more of a distraction sort of thing (she thinks she has adhd) but now that she's older it's gotten a little worse, and she'll forget entire chunks of memory that i have to remind her of. for a while she didn't remember anything since when i was 14, and was confused at how i had gotten so old. that was a hard few months. i don't know what "photographic memory" means and frankly i don't think i ever will. figurative language is tough for me. my memory isn't like a photograph because it moves and has sound and smell and touch. it's more similar to a video camera, but with smell and touch. i can tell you the qualities of the smell of everyone i've ever loved, even from childhood. i can describe entire rooms or buildings, and can draw maps of areas or houses or apartments in detail after only being there once. it's nice being able to remember things so accurately but i get frustrated when i forget and i get annoyed when someone says i'm mis-remembering things, a frequent problem when i was still talking to my parents.
wow i really put some time into today's entry. goodnight
today one of the kids at work told me he thinks i'm going to die
ohhhhh i'm so tired. physically and mentally. yesterday i gave myself a machine tattoo that is without a doubt the largest tattoo i've ever done, and that, paired with the general fatigue and desire to not be working, as well as the hunger from forgetting lunch today, is adding up to one big ol grumpy ari. i'm receiving too much physical stimulation and i'm getting cranky about it. harrumph.
the general purgatorial air of wanting to be somewhere that i can't quite be yet is particularly dormant in my lungs today. I'm feeling lonely and cold and wanting to be held and to have someone to care for and to care for me, and above all else, i want to be in oakland with h. i'm ready to move i am ready to move i want to move i'm ready for sunshine and new cities i'm ready for new places i'm ready to go but !! i have to wait. i'm a patient girl. i can wait.
there's a comfort in a place being so familiar that you know what to expect and where things will be. i was driving to work this morning and realized that there will come a point when i inevitably miss how on rainy days the clouds cover most of the buildings in the city, or i'll miss knowing exactly what street a cute garden is on, or where the nearest teriyaki place is. i love teriyaki. in the movie "the last black man in san francisco" the main character says you're not allowed to hate a city until you love it. i don't think i hate this city. i don't think i don't love it. i think my feelings towards it are simply that i'm ready for something different. i'm going to miss the furry graffiti everywhere, and the way everyone comes out of the woodwork when it's sunny. i'm going to miss all the dogs and bumping into people i only know from behind shop counters or espresso machines. i'll miss it, and i recognize that, but i'm ready for something different.
from my letterboxd review of the last black man in san francisco: the first time i watched this was with my former roommate/lover in her family's home south of san francisco, endcapping a day spent posing like the sculptures in the rodin garden she took me to and eating her family's home-cooked lebanese food (labneh, fattoush, baba ghanoush, and manakish za'atar) with her grandma who only spoke arabic, taking pauses in the conversation at the dinner table to ensure that she could participate in the discussion. topics discussed included the family cat's favorite brush, the famous families of lebanon, the worldwide treatment of roma, my plans for life, and her plans for where to take me given that it was my first actual time visiting the city. we only watched half the movie and spent the rest of our knowing each other (relationship?) talking about how we had to finish it one day. we fell asleep cuddling each other but set alarms for the early morning so that we could go in our separate beds in case her mom came down to say good morning. the next day i witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life. this isn't my movie to relate to, but it carries a gentleness in it-- within and the personal context surrounding. thank you, i miss you, and i hope things are going well for you. i finally finished the movie.
maybe i'm grieving. maybe i've grieved enough. maybe grief and love are my two favorite emotions. maybe grief is one of my favorites because even when it's in the past tense, it's nice to know that love was present.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh so much has happened this week
i'm watching survivor now because it's my favorite show and watching other people have dramatic ass problems on a desert island makes me feel less alone somehow. earlier this week sab broke up with me, which doesn't exactly feel great. i can't say i didn't know it was coming, though. they seemed a little more distant and detached lately and for the last couple months they kept bringing up how different we were and just generally didn't seem like they liked me anymore. it's the first time someone else has broken up with me since high school (rather than me breaking up with them or it being a mutual sort of thing). it hurts to be broken up with but doesn't quite hurt as much as just spending months not feeling liked by a partner. i think i'm feeling more hurt than i'm letting onto, just because it's so easy for me to get distracted by "happier" things like watching survivor or laughing about my cats being silly. I'm finding it very difficult to feel worthy of love. i'm feeling like i'm someone who, for some reason, is just very difficult to love or maintain feelings for. i know it's not true necessarily but it's still how i'm feeling.
this week at work i had to clean up so many bodily fluids. earlier in the week one of the kids got a tooth knocked out and ran up to me with blood gushing out of his mouth, which was, to say the least, alarming at best. a couple days later one of the less potty-trained kids pissed and shat herself during naptime, and it was not an easy or small mess to clean up. I'm used to seeing blood, and my cat beans has some issues with the litterbox sometimes, so it's not, like. a difficult thing for me to clean, i guess, but still isn't exactly easy. here's to next week.
last sunday i took myself to h's favorite waterfall. it was a snow hike, which i wasn't exactly prepared for, but it wasn't at all disastrous or overly difficult. truly one of the most beautiful waterfalls, and hikes, i've ever seen. i miss hiking in utah. i miss the wilderness there, and i miss being able to just drive and drive and drive. I'm realizing i spend a lot of time on my lil blog here talking about how much i miss things or wish i was somewhere else. i think i'm feeling a little stuck with where i'm at-- in a period of waiting. i want to be in oakland, and i want to have the freedom to leave my current city.
i miss h and i wish i had the ability to move closer to him sooner. i've had a couple people recommend doing a gofundme or something but i don't know if i feel comfortable with that right now. i'd rather try to save for a while. in a similar vein, i'm starting to really consider getting bottom surgery, which is exciting but also scary to think about. i'd love to have my body feel more comfortable, but bottom surgery isn't cheap. more on this later, maybe. i'm getting distracted by survivor.
i'm having to write this at work because my hotspot is no longer functioning via my phone until the fourth. something something "oh we didn't like that you downloaded an entire mario kart dlc onto your switch using your phone hotspot."
i miss h and sometimes i worry that i have a hard time communicating the full extent of how much he means to me. i feel comfortable bringing it up with him, yeah, i just. i ache to tell him. i ache to ensure that he knows.
my most recent ex ky has a new girlfriend. i'm happy for her and i hope they are good for each other but more importantly i worry about kyra's own growth. i hope she knows how much she hurt me and i hope she's grown enough to know how much she needs to have changed in the time since we were together. i hope she's a healthier person to be with. in addition to this, i hope my other exes think of me kindly. i think i have a hard time with myself in general, and that makes it difficult to see past my own shortcomings long enough to analyze past relationships without thinking too much about it. i hope ar remembers me teaching them bass or holding them when they felt insecure. i hope s remembers our travels and laughs together, or the time we went blueberry picking. i hope m remembers how hard i tried to keep her comfortable and bring her happiness. i hope they all think kindly of me as i do with them.
i had so much already written and then the webpage refreshed and i lost it all. i should save more often, or work offline. lesson learned.
basic summary is that i miss my husband, and i miss utah. i hope my exes are doing well and feeel like they've grown. i hope they know that i've grown. i miss the stretch of highway 6 in utah where after you drove through a rocky canyon it would plop you out in the middle of a wide open field. keep driving down the field and you get to a train depot and, further after that, an abandoned grain silo that has its own wikipedia page. i miss the loneliness of a vast open road. keep going down highway 6 and you end up in nevada, on the "loneliest road in america." the last time i ever went down that road it started raining after i got out of the canyon. once i hit the field i pulled over, got out of the car, and just sat and looked at it all. i wonder if it misses me. i wonder if it knows that i miss it.
i'm still sick. h tells me about all the things he'd do for me if he was here. how he'd care for me and tend to me in my sickness. i miss him more than i know what to do with. i want to be next to him, and i need to be next to him. i wonder if he knows how important he is to me. i wonder if he knows how much he means to me and how sincerely i intend to spend my life loving him. all he has to do is tell me what he'd be doing to care for me and i already feel less sick. despite this, though, it would be nice to feel cared for by the partner i have that lives a little closer to me. i think things have been feeling... absent with them.
i wonder if drew is alive. i hope he's learned how to stand up for himself, and i hope he knows how much happier i am now than when we knew each other. i hope s is doing well in school, and that she's surrounded by friends who take care of her. she was always good at taking care of others. i hope she knows that she was right about everything. i hope she knows i think of her. i hope ar has found security and comfort in themself and that they know that i've found the same. i wish each of them well.
when i still spoke with my dad i always found it exhausting that he'd demand my pride. he'd share his accomplishments and his photography or his great fancy personal or business ventures, and expect that i applaud him for it. he never showed me the same approval. sure, dad, i'm proud of you for making it this far with your photography. i wish you would've cared enough to be proud of me for my accomplishments.
some days are lonelier than others. some days the loneliness is tangible and you feel it in the pit of your stomach, or your back, or along the back of your legs. sometimes it burns in your lungs and aches at the bottom of your feet and all you want to do is run. run towards where you know you can find the comfort you don't know how to express the full desperation for.
i miss utah, and i miss my husband. goodnight.
had to call out of work today-- i think one of the kids at work coughed into my mask a little too heartily. that line from the movie phantom thread is echoing in my head-- "kiss me, my girl, before i'm sick."
i had to drive to the city across the lake today for a fingerprint scan for a background checck, which really wasn't a big ordeal. the machine wasn't working and it took an hour to do the scan, but i had a decent enough time listening to the guy working talk about his favorite card games. he seemed excited to be talking about his passions with someone. i wasn't interested in it very much but i tried to show that i was interested. i feel like i get sensitive when i can tell that someone isn't really interested when i'm infodumping with them, and it ends up making me feel shy about infodumping, so i always try to put effort into listening when someone's telling me about something important to them. plus i might even learn something sometimes.
i've been thinking today about my chemical romance. they have a deeply-rooted history with the trans community-- in "destroya" there's a line that says "duct tape scars on my honey" and whenever they perform it live, gerard will motion towards their chest mimicing chest binding. the guitarist, frank iero, has for the last few months been working with transmasc fans on twitter to figure out how to make healthy, effective, and stylish mcr-branded binders. ever since the early 2000s, gerard has been outspokenly supportive of trans communities and has publicly mentioned on multiple occasions that he spent the first few years of college presenting as a girl. all this thinking brought me to a reddit post about mcr and transness, and a user was posting about wanting to hear people's trans experiences so that they could put it on a trans flag and bring it to an mcr show to display to the band. one of the comments mentioned mourning the person you thought you'd end up being before you transitioned. it kind of caught me off guard- i don't think i ever had any plans for who i'd end up being before transition. frankly i think transitioning saved my life, because before i transitioned i never planned on living past 21. every year i spend my birthday reminded of my prolonged lifespan, and sometimes that can get a bit rough, but i'm proud of myself to still be around and i'm happy to have things to look forward to in the future. i think of how many times i'd listen to mcr's "famous last words"and cry myself to sleep listening to the lyrics. i think the lines "i see you lying next to me, with words i thought i'd never speak, awake and unafraid- asleep or dead, i am not afraid to keep on living, i am not afraid to walk this world alone" saved my teenage life more times than i care to admit, regardless of your biases towards music's capability of inspiring someone to stay alive
on the drive home while i was listening to my chemical romance, the person in the car in front of me spent a long stretch of highway with their arm hanging out the window, playing in the air as the car drove. i wonder if they were doing it because they wanted to feel alive. i wonder what music they were listening to. i wonder if they had fun with it. i wonder if they did it and thought of their inner child and the airplanes their hands would become as the car drove. once they drove away i turned my own music up, rolled all the windows down, stuck my hand out of my window, and did the same thing. "vampire money" hits different when you're going 65 down the freeway that cuts the city in half, looking at the skyline and hanging out with your inner teenager a little bit. she needs the care and attention, even if sometimes she doesn't like to admit it. i think she likes feeling heard and understood though, and that's something my chemical romance always did a good job of doing.
in between all the running away, substance abuse and parental arguments, there was always a car, there was always loud volumes, and there was always my chemical romance.
today is a day of trying my best to counteract the bad with the good. i made myself some steak (vampires love steak) and am currently watching "dog day afternoon" while i work on my website. i'm hoping that i can keep updating the website-- it's fun to have a project and it feels fulfilling to have something so tangible that i can organize my thoughts, feelings, and passions on. i'm really hoping i don't lose interest in it later on. i'd really like to stay involved with it. h helped me pay my phone bill today, which i can't thank him enough for. i'm honored and happy to have a husband so sweet and generous and careful with me. if you're reading this, thank you again, and i love you with all my being, forever <3
ed texted today. i always hate when he texts me. no matter how innocent it is, it always ends up ruining my day just a little bit. all he said at first was "hi" which then, after a few hours of me not responding, turned into "not even a simple 'hi' to your dad? ok, whatever, have a good life." fuck you. eat shit, in fact. you're a cunt and you've always been a cunt and i know this because we share the same cunt blood. i don't owe you anything, firstly, and secondly, make up your fucking mind! a month ago you said you never wanted to hear from me again and now you're reaching out for attention because you noticed that i texted mom first the other day? go jerk off to your own fucking reflection. if it's not an apology for all the shit you've put me through i don't want to hear from you.
i'm trying really hard to be kind to myself. it's been a little hard the past week or so, but i'm really trying my best. sometimes my brain gets loud and reminds me of things i don't like thinking about or just generally makes it easy for me to be mean to myself. i wish it wasn't so easy. i want to believe that i'm beautiful and smart and worthy of the nice things i have. i want to feel deserving of love.
i think i've been eating too much nutella.
edit, 11:47pm- stop texting me stop texting me stop texting me stop texting me stop texting me stop texting me i don't wanna hear about how you're "sorry that i don't feel like i want you involved in my life" stop that stop that stop that i am going to taze you i am not joking the next time i see you i will stun gun your neck i swear to fucking god
this is my official coming out post-- i am a coldplay fan, and i am a bunnygirl, but also a vampire. a bunnicula sort of deal. a bunny with bloodlust. a cute sweet bashful little creature with floppy ears and an insatiable need to bite and to devour. let me eat you. let me drain you of all your blood. let me whisk you away to infinity by sucking all your blood and as you fade away i'll let you pet my fuzzy ears. i'll keep you alive and conscious just enough to keep petting me. love me? love me.
oh god, i first typed in 2022 for the year. this doesn't bode well. i'm in my second week at my new job and frankly it's a little difficult for me. i was basically hired to be a one-on-one for a particularly disruptive kid and, while i can handle him, it's a little overwhelming having other kids to also be keeping track of. that, plus the almost two-hour commute and general financial instability, leave me perpetually tired. i spend a lot of time daydreaming about when i'll get to return home to my husband's arms. i miss him.
i have to pay my phone bill in two days and frankly i have no idea where i'll get the money for it, which stresses me out. i think i have the tendency to understate the severity of my emotions, but this week has been difficult for me. i've been trying so hard to be gentle to myself, and while i'm proud of myself for being on top of not doing things i don't want to do, it's still a little rough. it's nice when h is reassuring to me about my physical appearance and his love for me. i think he knows i need it. i'm excited at the potential of this little website project. hopefully i stick with it and don't get bored of it a week into its existence. ideally, it'll be sort of a hub for not only my thoughts, but also my art projects, tattoo flashes, and a place to post my music as i work on it or record dj sets. so on and so forth. i'm trying my best to take care of myself.
for the past couple of days my lawyer ex (though i can't really call her my ex- we never went official) has been a bit in my thoughts. i hope she knows i keep the flowers in front of her house watered in the village i have in my heart. sometimes i see the light on inside. i hope she's well.
