010423

[prismaticbleed]

hell of a day.

woke up at 930 to a phone call from mom basically telling me that our sister jade was missing.

don't remember getting ready for the day. do remember doing laundry, only because i was so dizzy from not eating that xenophon was worried and ghosting with me as i worked. but i was so disheveled.

went to mass at 1130. sadly barely remember that too. brain too fuzzy. panicking too much over "social perception" and gender dysphoria. ashamed and upset. want to just worship God without all that "public image" garbage coming in.
infi fronting briefly for the eucharist which helped so so much. honestly the system is more religious and devoted than the fronters, anyone in the body quickly gets cynical and hollow and numb and corrupted by being "human." carrying trauma. wearing this body. i hate it

mom kept calling over and over in hysterics
we were trying to call police departments and track phones for her
i was too upset to do anything else but fold clothes and basically pace around dissociated
laurie shouting at me to "eat something already" as our blood sugar was falling fast

finally sat down to breakfast around 3pm
mom called again around 330 and in a notably bizarre tone of voice said "well everything is fine, your [sister] apparently got a boyfriend and moved in with them and that's why no one has seen or heard from them in several days"
genuinely hoping they aren't being duped like we were. "too good to be real" and it was because they didn't know us. loved an expectation, an ideal, a goal. not who we really were when we weren't acting. not the whole bloody picture. don't want that happening to our sis ever ever ever. they've had such horrific bad luck with women, hope this dude is a legit dream come true in contrast

still trying to process slc & cnc. can't reconcile our genuine feelings, good and bad, with what actually happened, and what the other party did without realizing. so much harder to process honest-to-god trauma when the perpetrators weren't trying to be abusive. difficult as hell to face up to the reality when you were dissociated and play-acting the whole time. except we only did so because we cared. how messed up is that

sorry not in a good brainspace today at all

anyway about that. finally ate and finished up for 4pm.
unfortunately all the family stress + restriction + body hell resulted in us failing to do the dishes, feeling completely derealized, instead staggering to the bathroom and just throwing up. no binge. just purging. couldn't deal. wanted to be empty. hated the heavy body, hated the feeling filthy and wrong.
afterwards body shaking. lightheaded and sick. blood sugar at 72 and falling. resignedly re-did breakfast for 5pm.

we're really low on food. cash is short. we have to request it every time we need it and we're "too afraid of being penalized" to do so. screw it dude we send her the receipts she knows we're not spending this on garbage.
anyway that "music in liturgy" class cancelled because only us and one other dude signed up haha. so in a weird way it's like God is saying "hey I appreciate you courageously signing up for this. but it's not the right time. you're not stable enough right now to do this. and you do need that money to buy essentials, so... here it is back to you." legit should get the refund tomorrow or something we hope. immediately buying benadryl and broccoli haha. and cereal and milk and paper products and water and protein, honestly dude we are LOW on what we need. but God will provide, and in mysterious ways son. sorry slipping into jewel-esque language that's how the brain copes with stress we just dissociate even further internally that's a trip

anyway
ate dinner, felt sick and bloated and unreal again. honestly just gave up.
sat down on the couch and planned to say a rosary but we were feeling so much bitterness over gender and religious "trauma" to do so in any sincerity? so went online and spent like two solid hours desperately researching gender in christian history. actually helped a lot, once you get past the 1950s-obsessed "radtrad" hideousness which makes us want to scream and/or vomit. terrifying stuff. big part of why we quit tumblr actually.
but. instead found resources on julian of norwich, and Madre Juana de la Cruz, and Caroline Walker Bynum, and Saint Mariam Baouardy, and the book of Isaiah, etc. lots of stuff. helped so much. actually feel like "God made me this way and it's okay" for the first time in a VERY LONG TIME.
now we just have to get over the hurdle of body image, geez.
still. thank You God. i'm/we're slowly giving ourselves permission to embrace this trans-gender experience as something honestly blessed, a glimpse into a greater reality. being both and neither all at once. humbled at this privilege. want to use this for Your glory too.

wanted to go to bed at 930. so bloody tired. wrecked. said nope, gotta update. gotta be loyal to the system. even if i feel like a literal piece of trash this flesh and bone will turn to dust. this soul will not. and i need to act on THAT and live according to THAT.

listening to alfonso peduto's looped pianos on repeat again and i just love this music so much, oh my gosh, i'm tempted to legit send a letter or something to this dude because so much of his music sounds like me. that is so rare. frost* is the only other band who has done that. this captures a different facet, something older, closer to the jewels, but... still. my heart in auditory form. this is the only emotion i can feel lately.

oh about that. in the car thinking about gender and how weird that is in the system and how THAT might actually be making things difficult on the outside? because we've been pushed into living "in the body" lately BUT inside, gender is ALWAYS ANDROGYNOUS remember??
boys MUST be feminine. girls MUST be masculine. and all of those terms are used super loosely. but yeah, the more "girlish" you look the more "manly" you MUST be, to "balance it out" and make you safe. same thing with guys. if there's a burly manly man up here he is absolutely going to be the sweetest meekest thing. whereas the long-haired dame in a dress next to him is going to be sheer machismo. it's hilarious but it appears to be a constant. when it's not, it's shorthand for corruption. which is shocking. the only "girly girls" I can think of in the system are/were hackers. literal rapists. that says a lot about our thought processes and traumas i suppose.
but. in this body, afab but presenting as male, we feel obligated to act in a binary fashion. and it's honestly hell. especially with the body changing so jarringly much that we CAN'T present as male anymore. which is TERRIFYING.
i keep telling myself, it will take time, we've only been out of the hospital a month and a half, we need to keep trying and not give up, it might take months but we CAN get strong and lose weight and burn off those demonic curves. it CAN happen. it did before. remember when we left the hospital in 2017 we were even fatter than this, and yeah our way of coping was purging worse than ever but still. we also binged worse than ever. we're not doing either now, not willingly. and we're not in that household anymore. we CAN fix this. there is hope.

anyway. as far as presentation goes. we're thinking that yeah, gonna go back on hormones, because as long as the BODY is coded as female then we HAVE to balance that out. we can't "become male" and honestly, we don't want to. just like we don't want to "become female" either. in all sincerity we feel a need to be androgynous in BOTH respects simultaneously-- being BOTH a masculine girl and a feminine guy AT ONCE. that's the ONLY way we can exist, after days and weeks of struggling to put words to this. the jewels & the jays are interdependent. they need to exist together. the league and the system need each other. neither can exist alone. THAT'S our "binary," our "two halves of a whole." oh dude it is a taijitu, haha. it's not all-black and all-white. there's that heart of the other color. remember that.

despite all this struggling lately, the system feels healthy. which is... astounding.
yeah people are still unsteady and unstable, but they're not corroding. no one is failing. they're just having some rough spots. no one is decaying or shattering or splintering. and that's huge. it means that somehow we still have a solid foundation, beneath all this trouble.
i think it's love. yes it's cheesy and i know mimic always rolls his eyes at that (too bad broski welcome to the fondue, get too close and you'll melt too) but it's the honest-to-goodness truth. love isn't the touchy-feely fuzzy bilge you see on tv. i don't like that either. love isn't romance. and i don't want to get all bitter again but i am so tired of having our heart mangled by what we see outside.
look at the gospels. the more we read them, the more we realize how radical actual love is. it is gentle and kind and sweet BUT it is also just and strong and honest and it fights for what it loves. love is a warrior. love IS a war. but it's never hard or cold or cruel. it picks up that sword and rushes to the front lines because it has something to protect and God knows it will DIE for it with a genuine smile on its face. because you cannot kill love. it's invincible. it's the most powerful thing in the universe. it is truth itself.
love is laurie telling me to stop being such a callous jerk. love is xenophon calling me out on unhealthy habits. love is chaos 0 refusing to leave even when i try to pretend i don't care about him. love is genesis always being there with a golden smile when i hop in the car. love is fidelity, love is courage, love is patience, love is hope, love is mercy, love is sacrifice, love is perseverance, love is unconditional. love is all that matters.

definitely ending this day on a much better note than how it began

oh. silly little thought because i see one on my hand right now.
there are a few little fruit flies zipping about the apartment. at first our grandmother's "murder" instinct kicked in but xenophon said "no dad they're alive too!" and she made me flat-out promise to not let anyone kill the tiny things, because they are harmless and deserve to live, and God created them just like He created us. so I am consciously greeting them when I see them. learning to share this living space with another living thing. it's been shockingly beneficial to my heart. softening things. not resorting to violence or annoyance when "inconvenienced" by something else. sad and ashamed that i internalized such behavior. remembering our grandmother literally murdering snakes with garden hoes. pouring salt on slugs and laughing. kicking the cats. hitting us with sticks. no remorse or empathy at all. how that all traumatized us as a child. now recognizing it in our brain and refusing to act on it. helping a lot. god bless the little creatures

lord of love, love itself, please. help me, help us, to live according to Your truth, to glorify Your Name, in everything we do.
help me to be more loving, in all things. even to this body. maybe especially so. and to women, and people, and all those who frighten me. even if the world is frightening i know it's not how things are supposed to be. beneath all that noise and tar there is something You made, that has been buried, but that cannot die. help me to see with Jesus's eyes, always focused on that innate spark that You fashioned within every heart, and devoted to turning it to flame. basically i want to love everyone genuinely. and i want to fearlessly live like that. i don't want to waste our life. i don't want to spend our days depressed and angry and scared and confused and lost and hollowed-out. i want to live like this music feels. i want to live like you made me to live. i want to be a good kid. i want to make you proud that i'm your child, if that's possible in any sense at all. i just want people to see my life and think "he must've had a great father, to be the kind of person he is." you get the picture. i don't want to let You down, too.
i know You love me. help me to love You better, too.

tomorrow is a new day
thursday which means bible study and singing for pope benedict's honorary funeral mass at my church
then possibly visiting mom. we'll see.
gotta call my birth-dad too, haven't seen him in too long, feel awful about it, i miss him a lot

lots of work to do
good work though
yeah it's exhausting but love doesn't get tired son, it faces that challenge with a smile and turns it to sheer joy
you know it you've done it
and by grace we'll keep doing it

God has never let us down and He never will

take heart!! it's not the end!!

we're all in this together
and together we will get through anything