Despite Knowing Better, I Had Given Myself A Deadline. Today. A Big Project That I've Been Working On

Despite knowing better, I had given myself a deadline. Today. A big project that I've been working on for months and needs to be Finished already, thank you very much. It's all going well, I think I'll get it done and then ... I get lost in some very very specific sauce.

My therapist is in my ear as I slowly dig myself a deeper pit. Perfectionism, the bane of my existence. Well, one of them. It's at the origin of this particular time-lapse. I want to be Accurate and Complete. Before I know it, I'm covered in mathematics, percentages, statistics, graphs. I become very intimate with a graphics editor, discover functions and shortcuts that were a still a mystery to me three hours ago.

It's almost done when I realise it's wrong. Not inherently but vaguely, marginally, circumstantially. So I delete the work. Start again. It's all or nothing. It's a chore, a mountain, a this-and-then-that-and-then-thus-and-then-so, a finish line somewhere but not visible, not yet.

Then it is Done. I copy, I paste. Then I have something to eat. I've already decided, this deadline today, yeah, will be for tomorrow or the day after that. Time to relax and then go to bed. And then. My brain. Just realises. Out of nowhere. There's something not right. I check and my brain is - of course, flawlessly, inevitably - correct, for fuck's sake. It's fine, I fix. Re-copy, re-paste.

And I kid you not, this exact same thing happens as I am writing this post. So I've just, a minute ago, gone back into the graphics editor. A-g-a-i-n. I do the thing. I copy. I paste. Now, now, now it must be right. Please let it be so. But for all I know, my perfectionism-soaked brain will see it tomorrow and go, "Wait a minute ..."

When trans women are mocked and made into jokes in the media, I get very upset, and I am often told “Kay, you can’t go through life getting offended every time someone makes a joke.” And I sputter and object but they don’t hear me. So I want to be clear for once, about why the jokes make me angry.

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

That is, if she doesn’t kill herself first.

fuck it let's try this again

a story with that cyberpunk theme of “are you really human if you modify your body to gain power“, except the body modification is just strength training.

I think the whole “we all end up disabled” thing is particularly frustrating to me because I was born disabled and will die disabled and will become increasingly more disabled between those two points. I understand that ageing happens, accidents happen, etc etc

but when I was talking about having a right to imagine disabled futures, I was talking about the right for disabled babies to be born and to grow into happily disabled adults. and I shouldn’t have to justify that desire by scaring ableds about how soon they’ll become one of us. it should be enough that I exist and people like me exist, and we all deserve the right to live happy lives

hell yes

polyamory!! polyamory!! polyamory!! polyamory!!