i can't stop crying. the tears stay right there behind my eyes, waiting for the moment that my breath will catch and i won't be able to hold them in. they don't have long to wait, these days.

today was fine. it went fine, i was impressed with my acting skills, and impressed at the progress we've all made towards true poker faces in fucked-up situations. i'm alive, still.

right now i feel like i just want to curl up in a ball and cry til i'm asleep. instead, i'm making a dance party mix for EJs. all i ate for dinner was a half quesadilla and three pints of beer.

and now i feel lost.

i think that my body has taken the knowledge that it gets a break, and understood it as a chance to break down. i woke up this morning with an aching throat, and i'm still yawning. i'm shaky, and bleeding, and mentally exhausted.

last night i rode the fight/flight adrenaline to a giddy sensitivity to the ridiculousness of several hundred people waving little red flags in the air. i'm happier than i can say that we had a vote of confidence from the membership, and i think that what came out of the meeting last night was pretty much the best thing we could hope for, but at the same time i want out. i don't want to think about this anymore, and i'm worried about my bird.

i haven't been writing things down lately, and i think it's because a large part of me wants to forget it all.

actually, that's a lie. i write a lot of things down right now: legal responsibilities, notes on what we can do next, strategies to address the huge amounts of bullshit flying at me, emails to confirm facilitators, ask for contracts, assent to some changes and suggest others, and schedule 6 hour long meetings.

but i haven't written things here, because truly i don't think i want to remember all of this business too clearly. i mean obviously i want the nice parts: the dates with Our Favourite Meal, the little bits of flirtation, angela davis being a true star, a laser show with a throbbing beat. but the rest, i'd rather leave behind.

i started out with a headache but it went away eventually. maybe thanks to the advil o had in their bag, or the food we ate (probably not due to the intense situations the labour committee was mulling over as i ate) or the nice company. it didn't even come back during the information session on university b.o.g. politicking, so i knew it was safe to drink a bit of red wine and hang out with my colocs from the board.

it was cute: j & l in particular are adorable in familiar ways, which i tried to get across but probably failed at communicating. and it was a beautiful little setting, behind the hole-y white wall with a little box of wine.

afterwards o & i ventured across the street to eat burritos (& chips & green salsa) and talk for a moment - i gave them a summary of some of the conversations i had this weekend, and to my surprise and happiness it turned into a more in-depth conversation about it. 'it' here being the complicated role that gender, both one's own and one's partner's, can play in the dynamics of a relationship. particularly in cases in which you're both strangers to everyone around you.

i think the best part is that o & i don't usually have these kinds of discussion. generally i'll talk a lot and then get a little back - well-chosen words, to be sure, but few of them. today they fell out of their mouth like a little waterfall of understanding and similar experience and theories and anecdotes and analysis, and i loved it. i wished i could remember some of the exact words, but i knew at the same time that i wouldn't be able to, that i couldn't translate them accurately beyond that one moment. but still, i guess i'll try.

with a caveat that this generally applies to straight world/stranger world circumstances:

+ the frustration at having one's gender erased a bit because yr partner is read as a boy & therefore you must be the girlfriend, nevermind the truth.
+ the way this reading of a dynamic can interact with p.d.a. - our relationship is by no means a heterosexual one, but knowing that when we hold hands in public people see a boy and a girl holding hands makes me feel fucked up. fuck straight privilege.
+ ultimately, in my case, both of us are having our genders erased in some ways
+ more, and more eloquent things.

i just finished my ninth vampire novel in the last 10 or so days, and i'm left wondering at my own obsessiveness. not that there was much else i could do here, as i wait for almost all of my mothers 5 siblings to descend upon my sister's house, but i'm not sure that i could have done anything else until i was done that book. it was hard enough trying to go to sleep last night only 8 chapters in.

last night keegan accused me of not living in the real world, of dismissing people based on their sexuality and gender (meaning that she thought i would never make friends with straight men). i bristled, for sure, but managed to take it down a notch from a yelling match with to a discussion/explanation of why i put my energy where i do - my explanation being that it is important for me to be a part of a community of people who have an understanding of where i'm coming from, at least in terms of gender stuff and queer stuff and anti-racist stuff and anti-oppression stuff in general, and the fact that i couldn't truly escape the what she terms the 'real world' even if i tried. i have to navigate it every day.

also, i tried to tease out what she meant by the 'real world,' tried to show her that it was 'real' and easy to navigate only for those who fit a perfect norm: that people of colour, queers, gender non-conformers, people with disabilities, even women, come out of navigating the 'real world' with stories that show the way they have to shimmy through that world. stories about racism, stories about fucked-up assumptions, stories about parts of that 'real world' being inaccessible to them.

what i didn't say last night but would add now is this: i've spent my whole life in that world, and i don't like how it works, so i've worked hard on building my community, building friendships and chosen family and closeness. it's not escapism to try to create a better one by living in it, it's revolution.

last night i climbed up some metal stairs to the top of a building on mackay with a big bottle of blanche and some lovely people.

summer is here and i love it.

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i've chosen an odd time to hibernate. the mercury is climbing steadily and despite all the rain it feels like summer: yet now is when i find myself lacking in motivation. nothing comes out when i pick up a pen to draw or write, and all i ever really want to do is watch tv on the internet. the mess in my room is making me anxious but whenever i start picking up the bits and pieces to place them in their designated order (by colour, by author, by usefulness in crafting, by subject) i give up within a minute, overwhelmed by the size of the task at hand.

have you ever wanted to punch a wall just to feel something change inside of you? a crunch and then pain and endorphins and then you have a physical proof of the frustration raging through you, and you can let it go.

i'm listening for the truth in the movements inside your jaw, the swallows and small grindings of bones on bone when you talk.

last night we biked: and somewhere along the way i lost your goodwill without noticing.

i guess i'm not as transparent as i hope to be.

**

sometimes i think you see me clearly and other times i realize you don't see me at all.

**

looking in the mirror lately i see something changing, maybe.

i think i write better on a typewriter.

maybe because pressing the buttons is so much work on mine (leading me to hunt & peck with a ferocity otherwise reserved for...biking uphill? fucking (on some days)? catching up to the car that just nearly killed me? i'm not ferocious that much in my daily life) that my words are chosen more carefully. maybe the knowledge that they'll sit in the open, scrolling out of my typewriter & not hidden away in ones & zeroes on the internet.

i've forgotten how to edit, i think. too much journaling of tiny details, dreamed-up landscapes & imagined eye contact, letters not received & postcards not sent.

***

i figured out what was so familiar about that person i'd never met before. their voice & the way they use words echo almost exactly those of that ex-friend-date-questionmark of mine & it's frightening how soothing it is. i keep having to remember that they're not the same person & that i don't know them at all.

***

& yes, i am going to do the 25 things, but not on that social networking site, because i am a true rebel.

1. i have had a headache for 24 hours now despite

2. the fact that i slept 12 hours last night.

3. sometimes i find myself fetishizing my own catholic upbringing

4. last night i dreamt (through my headache) of being on t, & had a vivid mental image of what i would look like

5. i always want to be invited over. feeling uncertain about one's welcome is, in my books, one of the worst things.

6. i'm thinking about stopping drinking, for a long but not forever period.

7. i always want there to be a purring cat in my room when i go into it.

8. i used to never dream, and now i have very intense & detailed dreams most nights. starting about 6-8 months ago.

9. all of my father's children are queer

10. i could probably wear a collared shirt & tie most days & be extraodinarily happy about it.

11. as long as i don't have to wear dress pants. because i hate most pairs of dress pants i've met.

12. but i don't mind suits, & in fact love some suits.

13. i've spent a lot of time in hospitals

14. i used to only have two siblings & now i have four

15. also: i used to have no grandmother, & now i have one.

16. i love living on the street that i do & all of the lovely queers who also live there. i love walking around & running into people i know.

17. i built a harry potter fan-site when i was in grade 7. i can't find it anymore, i think that the internet ate it.

18. i'm apparently unduly affected by what people on the craigslist w4w section think of me.

19. i'm not sure what i'll do about my extreme love of dance parties if i stop drinking. learn how to dance without alcohol, i guess? i think that sounds a bit pathetic & it is one of the reasons that i think i should maybe stop drinking for a second.

20. i still miss my ex-bestfriend & wonder how she's turned out.

21. i've played rugby for quebec, for ontario, for my university & for my high school. rugby is/was one of my routes, & i think i might start playing it again soon. maybe.

22. on a related note, i have a bone out of place in my foot that just kind of sticks straight up, thanks to rugby-induced injuries. sometimes it hurts.

23. i am (almost) always surprised when i find out that someone is younger than i am. apparently in my head i'm about 18.

24. i've broken my nose three times

25. i'm bad at finishing things, sometimes.

last night i dreamt this elaborate dream. it started out with me fleeing to brazil with my family, for reasons i can't remember, & traveling in unlikely ways - in bare feet through the tropical foliage between houses, climbing under concrete bridges & through sewer pipes, trying to avoid poisonous plants & animals despite my complete ignorance of which ones were dangerous. this part of the dream ended when my family (not my actual family, but my family in the dream) and i started hiding in the corners of a huge house that belonged to a rich family, narrowly avoiding being seen over and over until finally one day they spotted us. they took up our cause (we had left our home country for political reasons), hosting us & holding fundraisers for us...


and then in the next part of the dream i was going to visit an apartment that i used to live in (in this city in brazil, and yes i know that doesn't make sense), and in which i had left an important book. the apartment was in two parts, an upstairs and a downstairs, separated by an outdoor staircase, so i could have just gone upstairs to get the book, but i stopped at the downstairs doorway for a moment to check in with the current occupant as to whether it was ok. they (i don't remember the person's gender, or whether it was relevant) ignored me for a good ten minutes, so i figured i would just go get my book...and ended up reading their journal, which was in a book marked 'instructions' right next to the book i'd come to get. then i went on their computer and saw that they'd found a letter of intent that i'd written and posted it on the internet.

after a long while in the dream i went back downstairs, and told the occupant that i'd gone up to get a book: they followed me outside their doorway and asked me if i was one of the political refugees (not their exact words) staying with that rich family. i asked them how they knew, and they wondered how 'could someone as obviously foreign as [i am], and someone so obviously fully transitioned, think [i] was incognito.' this threw me for a bit of a loop, since in the dream my body & gender presentation were the same as they are now, and i wondered for a while at the extreme presumption, and then wondered which way they were reading me as having transitioned. my dream logic went something like: huh. if they think i'm a 'fully transitioned' (whatever that means) ftm, then that's a bit odd because i definitely don't usually pass for a guy. and i guess they could be reading me as an mtf dyke, but would an mtf dyke wear a binder? and then i figured that people do indeed figure out their bodies & their genders in a multiplicity of ways and an mtf dyke might indeed bind, and that ultimately it didn't matter, but what an interesting assumption this person was making about my body.

and then they told me they would see me later that night at the film screening at my hosts' home.

and then i woke up, with back pain & a sore throat, & bright green leaves in my head.


***************************

last night j shot t & i for that photo project, and it was fun and amazing. putting on my suit is obviously always fun, because it makes me feel extremely fancy for a change (in my usual life i'm habitually out-fancied by a lot of the people around me, & often i wish my clothes were fancier not in a money way, just in a better-put-together way). i don't know what it is with girl drag, but it's also fun in a weird way: putting back on for pleasure or art this gender that i felt so weird in.

i'm feeling a bit out of it. (i wonder how many posts i've started like that?)

i've been working so much overtime lately, staying til 6.30 or 7 and not feeling like it makes that much of a difference since it's dark starting at 5 anyway. it does make a difference though - by seven the small grocery stores that i went to in my hunt for kale are closed, i've accidentally skipped that q team meeting i had at 5.30 and forgot about, i haven't read the article on healthcare reform that i'm basing that essay on...

but i just wandered around in the falling snow, looking at peoples' faces & down at my boots, noting the twinge in my ankle & the extra work it takes to navigate the sidewalks this time of year, wondering how my schedule will fluctuate in the next few years. i hear nurses get up early.

this morning a technician looked at my internal organs with a sound machine, dictating my breathing, asking politely that i turn this way and then that, taking pictures of those most private parts: spleen, liver, kidneys, bladder. they found that old scarring on my right kidney (which reassured me somewhat, like proof that i didn't dream up that childhood partially spent in hospitals) and then they kept talking about cysts. i'm not sure what they meant.

the technician did a quick check of my uterus & ovaries, checking for endometriums, & everything looked good. bonus! really. a bonus, since usually repro stuff isn't part of a basic abdominal ultrasound.

in the time between tests, as my body was processing all that water they asked me to drink, i finished bastard out of carolina. dorothy fucking allison. what the...

i feel like maybe i wasn't looking down for a second - had my eyes focused up on streetlights & building tops & stars & the moon - and i guess i didn't see the hole right in front of me: not a wide one, just a few feet square, but deep enough for my whole body to fall into it. & now all i can do is look at the darkness around me & the stars above & the mineral reflections of the lights around me, sparkling earth.

i think the forward trajectory will push me out of it: painfully, and i'll probably get all scraped up, but i have a schedule to adhere to, and no time for beautiful refuges or traps, either.

maybe the next depression will be a wider one, and full of cold shining water to swim through & stay under & be borne up by - maybe it will last several months & bring me to the northwest, & through the exhaustion of swimming & the rest of floating (with tiny movements directing me, hands treading water) i'll be reminded of how good i had it on solid ground with the warmth & comfort of loved ones around me.

but right now i'm spoiled and all i want is a good long swim.