A Grand Quiet

I try not to be driven by my shame. Or at least I try not to put it in a place where other people will see. This Friday just gone I dashed straight from work to a running workout session, then got dressed and made up for a night hanging with friends.  Food probably should have been a priority somewhere in there, but coming out of a 5k in that summer heat getting myself femme and presentable seemed like the more pressing matter.

I don’t know why. I present masculine just about all my life anyway. They all know it, my hair is long but unkempt, that beard shadow is not going away. I try to find the time to shave my arms and legs and chest but that fucking hair keeps on coming back. I just want them to know that I’m making an effort. That I don’t have to come out again every time that I see them, because they can be reminded by this steady progress that i am making towards my own version of femininity that I take the whole thing seriously.

That probably makes me sound bad doesn’t it. Like, I’m judging those who are unwilling or for a multitude of reasons unable to play with their presentation. That’s not the case. I am speaking from my own inadequacy here, from my own cowardice and fear. These two driving spires: a fear of not presenting femme and feeling uncomfortable with my body; and a fear of presenting femme badly and feeling uncomfortable with how people perceive me.

I know that I should be respected either way but I am far too cowardly to hold the weight of society on my shoulders. I’m on trans people twitter, every day I see the headlines published by the respectable organs about how we don’t deserve to live. Every day I see those more popular than I retweet the abuse that they be subject to. I know that the path I’m on is driving me inexorably further towards the target, the selfish part of me is the part that strives to juke rather than stare it down.

I remember when I was in denial there were a lot of things that I didn’t like about my body. The thought of changing any of them though was far too much. Thankfully doing gymnastics a couple of times a week, plus movement workshops, plus the hills of the town I was living in meant that I never quite lost control of myself. But I knew that taking ownership of my body would be something that I shouldn’t try.

I knew that I could never make my body how I wanted it, and so why try? Every step I could take would just be highlighting the disparity between where I was and where I wanted to be. It’s pointless really. All I’m doing is taking those same steps now. a couple years later, hoping that I’m more mature, more capable and adult in the execution.

Yeah, that ain’t right though. Cos on Friday the impulse led me to drinking whisky and coke on a stomach that ain’t had nothing in it for about 24 hours. Crying and vomiting on the bathroom floor within an hour and a half of making it to their house. I found out earlier in the day that I had not got the promotion that I was hoping for. It feels like my professional life has reached a conclusion now.

There is no growth for me where I am. No chance to improve.

It’s my fault really. There’s only one thing in this world that I’m actually good at. There’s a reason why i studied it for three years. But I have been cowed by life. I will never achieve happiness because I am a craven wreck. And my unerring constancy in this is what drives everyone away.

That’s what I was crying about on the floor. Well, that and the like specific dysphoria stuff that is like far too strange to burden my very generous friends with.

My shame kept me in bed for the following two days. Watching the highlights from RPG Limit Break 2018. Getting up only to get food. Crying, hugging pillows to my chest to feel less empty. I have nobody to be vulnerable around and so right now I cannot let myself be so. I am not ashamed of what I’ve got going on inside, I just don’t know how to explain it in a way that makes me closer to people.

I am queer. And it means just that. I am strange and uncategorizeable. That’s okay, but at times i’ll start to see myself from the outside. Dissociate, and struggle to understand the disparate parts of my form. Then the shame. Then the self loathing.

It’s a shitty cycle. It drives me further from my body. It drives me away from my friends. It drives me into the same safe places where I stop making the ambitious decisions that I need to make in order to drive my life forwards.

I don’t know. Fuck that shit. I don’t know if the answer is to be less of a bitch and more of a bitch, but I’ve gotta make it work however I decide to.

I’ve just gotta start something for once.

—

I had something to put here about the new season of Queer Eye but I think I’m gonna spin that off to its own post later this week.

Stay good y’all, you deserve all the love that’s coming your way.

Esther
xx