untilimakeit

[untilimakeit]

In The Event That My Entire Worldview Collapses to Shit

, this will inevitably be what's left of it.

Have I internalized that societal mantra that writing is not worthwhile? Well, probably. Alternatively, probably, it would be best to let go of that worldview at any given time.

Things I do: surround myself with girls I kind of love but then wait for any potential romance to fade into friendship and then just sit there and kind of exist in that.

Things I don't do: ask for what I want. Know what I want, in anything more than the merest shadow of a way. Prioritize figuring out what the fuck I want in the event that that might happen to be important.

I wake up, go to work, smoke weed, write bits and pieces of novels, DJ parties, go to school. I'm on a hamsters' wheel; I'm running in circles. I need the country or else I need something to break in some way.

I feel on the edge of something, I don't know if it's spring or self-fulfilling prophecies or what. But I feel a premonition that something is coming and I hope it is, BOY do I hope it is. Because I'm ready for whatever is next.

[untilimakeit]

only a minute

on the melatonin before all will be lost.

jess + wine + (overly salty) pizza + eileen myles, not necessarily in the order. LOUD LOUD talk about sex and queer theory to undoubtedly annoyed restaurant employees who began to close the restaurant around (drunk) us (me.) my retort? I work in a restaurant. i understand when it sucks to suck, ya'll.

um what else. several hours later no longer drunk off wine and still not asleep. nothing i do seems to be good for myself these days, including sleeping with rando's. well there, i said it. i am not equipped to handle all this. as friends have said, "take people less seriously." i've never been able to. not when i know what i expect and require of myself. not when i don't speak lies, drunk or sober, to anyone ever.

this sounds like an overly noble and self-satisfied crock of bull but it is simply the truth. give me the non-liars. the me-for-me lovers. i wanna stand up for myself. i want to not let people in who ultimately suck, and to stop ignoring all signals ever. i want to not make the same mistakes i seem to make again and again, but why does it have to be so damn complicated?

[untilimakeit]

the sads

"better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" and sometimes i just want to yell, "this isn't ABOUT you!" because it's not. all these things i'm feeling. that i have not been able to let go of, that i want to now scatter, like lettuce seeds over hot earth. to let you be a bed of earth and me, the plow that works the land. to do over with who we think the other is and simply integrate. to let off with the misconceptions of what makes one "human," and what makes one more human than the next. i want the politic of equality, and i want to enact it in my daily life. just like a real feminist anti-racist person who cares about things. and i want to turn, turn, turn over and be so full and sweet with visions, like in post-sleep. i want the dull sad things that people have promised me to be true of life to be wrong, and for all to instead in color explode. I want to enact my reality, in strands of repetition, over and over again, and have that be the thing.

the casual repetition in a life of domestic routine.

[untilimakeit]

things i wish everyone knew and respected about my life

i am me. i am not your other trans friend, so there's no need to even bring them up to compare.

i have the right to be offended about whatever i want, and if you care, you should listen, apologize, and learn.

to the straight girls, i fuck like any other guy, you just have to wait a second while i adjust my equipment.

to the gay girls, i wouldn't feel emasculated if you decided you were attracted to me. i understand sexuality can be fluid and lesbians go for cis guys, sometimes, too.

to the bi/queer/pansexual/non-identifying girls, well you're the least of my problems :)

i will not fuck you just BECAUSE I am trans.

alternatively, i do not have the same proclivities, interests, etc. as the other trans men you've fucked. or at the very least, begin on the assumption that i don't.

i am not queer-identfied, but i identify with the queer community.

i am not female-identified, but i identify with women because of my past.

i was treated like a girl when i was raised, and that will always rub off on me. mostly, it means i was taught to listen, to wait to speak, and to not act like an entitled dickhead to everyone around me.

if you're into entitled dickheads, i guess you'll have to look elsewhere

i don't like sports

there is nothing about me that is "trans" except for what's happened to my body. there is no "trans narrative." everything hasn't "changed" for me in some magical panacea of betterment, except that i feel better about my body, and people respect me more now because society is fucked up.

i don't bask in male / white privilege, and will spend a lot of time speaking out against it, actually. not okay with sexism OR racism.

if you disrespect me, there is no rule that i "have to" forgive you. i have enough friends already.

great, i feel better already. a lot of people try to mess with you, label you, or otherwise disrespect you when you're trans, and the worst of all are the people who do it under the guise of being "super trans-accepting and friendly." i've been really hurt by people who've acted like that. but the only person who is accountable for standing up for myself is myself, and i realize that now. so i choose empowerment. and i choose to empower myself with this list that i will continue to refer back to whenever I'm having a hard time remembering that.

[untilimakeit]

revelation

i've realized the reason i've been blinded by these fears (rejection, being trans, etc.) is that I am merely using them as an excuse. an excuse not to get creative (yet,) an excuse not to WRITE.

well i'm running out of excuses as to why I'm not writing short stories if this is, in fact, my current dream. it doesn't matter whether I keep publishing with <<big-name online mag I freelance for,>> since those are not short stories. it doesn't matter if i send query letters to other authors I know, because they have already explained that they can't really help me. especially with no work-samples as attachments. it doesn't matter whether or not I apply for an MFA in the fall because if it was Fall right now, let me tell you, the shit I have would not get me in.

and the reason it would not is not because I suck; I know I don't; but because I haven't written enough yet. Haven't written enough of these things I want to write to even constitute a considerable body. I have an idea. And I am writing, I swear I am trying, but I am mostly a really fucking busy employed person who works a kind of crappy though decent-paying hourly job in order to make ends meet in New York City, and half the time when I'm not I'm suckered into socialization, and the other half of the time I blank out on the internet, attempting to recover from all the life I've been living. but these two weeks off so far have been like air; crack-cocaine. i finished the FIRST short story that I thought I would never see done, a story I started in November. and it feels so good to have done it, to know it's on the page now. to know that it ultimately needs a shit-ton of editing and re-tooling but knowing that I can do that, because it's out there.

i've never written a short story before. murdered baby; focused photograph of corpse. these are my goals setting into a writing project like this. not exactly a great feeling but like it has to be done.

i felt "tied" to poetry but then I realized my poems were breaking into something more complex than a poem itself could contain. Not willing / able to re-write Song of Myself, here.

so this is all very tangential and dramatic but what I need to remind myself is that, it doesn't matter if I am meant to attend the Iowa Writer's Workshop, whether I am meant for some other MFA, or whether my path is (X). what really matters is that I do what I need to do which, as Hemingway has already saved me the trouble of formuating, is merely to sit at the typewriter and bleed.

[untilimakeit]

...

the funny thing is, this new flat chest feels like it rightfully belongs to me. no adjustment period whatsoever.

i had it from birth til age 12, and now I can rightfully reclaim it at age 23.

[untilimakeit]

don't even know

having one of those need-to-journal-so-badly-i-don't-even-know-where-to-start moments.

wow. BREATHE -- thing

i'm back in that place of vague articulation where I don't know the difference between feelings and thoughts. i don't know if this is a good idea -- a lifes' work study of each emotion as it passes me by. what are all these things? why do i feel the way i feel? i must evade my classic problem of feeling instead reasoning, and reasoning during all the times i ought to listen to my heart.

i don't know how to trust people. anyone. or i feel like i constantly trust only the wrong people. am i not a person to be trusted? is that why i've ended up where i've ended up in the past? should i revoke trust from people i currently trust if i feel it's doing me no good? or should i scale back.

i feel failed. is this common?

i don't know how to find middle grounds. it's either black or white. i hate gray, i hate it so much. i don't want to accept it. will i have to?

how do i forgive? only love can help me. this doesn't only mean romantic love it means all love. it means Bell Hooks. it means that Frank and I should live in a little hut together where we can exchange books and ideas before each setting out respectively on our little dalliances with the outside world. it means letting go. it means moving on.

end rant?

[untilimakeit]

Re-blogging self.

Fucking RIP Adrienne Rich, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

I.

Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon sloshed in the glass. Poems crucified on the wall, dissected, their bird-wings severed like trophies. No one lives in this room without living through some kind of crisis.

No one lives in this room without confronting the whiteness of the wall ...

[untilimakeit]

do you *HAVE* to forgive people?

it always comes down to this for me.

like i am mad, hopping frickin' mad at someone and while it's not completely their fault i still retain my right to be angry. i OWN it.

but friends say, popular culture says, "forgive and forget." well i'm not a fucking Christian so I don't turn the other cheek. Forgiving and forgetting seems like a recipe for self-destruction: forgive, forget, trust again, and find yourself as fucked or even more so as when you started. What else is new?

But I recently had to remember that I'm a Jew. I'm no waspy Connecticut bitch who can't talk about feelings (...or sex). It is my God-given right to bitch about things until the end of time, and I have to be honest that I legitimately feel healthier for it. Let's be real, my people carry a grudge that's over 4,000 years old, so if you dicked me over in 2011, expect to still be on the shit list. I'm not over it and according to you, that's okay, which is just dandy, not that I needed your permission.

so what do my followers think. must I forgive? or can I rage on happily into the setting sun.

[untilimakeit]

WOOPS ACCIDENTALLY ALMOST REBLOGGED SECRET BLOG TO "PUBLIC" BLOG. FAILURE!!

ANYWAY, T.O.o.C, PERHAPS WE COULD COLLAB!!!

read my exgf’s blog every day

sleep til 2 PM on the regular

go to bed at 4 AM on the regular

worry that i will be *this* broke for the rest of my life due to my “career choices”; entertain nightmarish fantasies of such

set aside 4 hours for writing; proceed to write...

[untilimakeit]

things that I "don't" do: a bulleted list

read my exgf's blog every day

sleep til 2 PM on the regular

go to bed at 4 AM on the regular

worry that i will be *this* broke for the rest of my life due to my "career choices"; entertain nightmarish fantasies of such

set aside 4 hours for writing; proceed to write nothing

stalk my idols via emotionally unhinged e-mails

double- and triple- book myself

eat my roommate's junk food instead of going grocery shopping

consider "bagels" the cornerstone of my balanced diet

This is a brief list of things that I am looking to correct at some point in the future.

[untilimakeit]

it's silly

it's silly to call it "Until I Make It" when I don't even know what this so-called "making it" means. because it seems to me to be less about career success than ever. and i said this a post or two ago, tried to vocalize what I'm trying to say. my obsession with "making it real". with "becoming a real person," and trying to know what that means. it's 3:49 and i just took a benadryl to try to help my mind with racing and so now i write as my biochemistry testily fights the self-made clock.

and i don't think i can handle being the type of person who medicates to go to sleep. none of us want to be that. i just want to believe that in your head there is a real heart in lieu of a soulless void. i don't want to think of the toes you've stepped on in order to get to where you are. and i don't want to lose you completely but my heart says "scale back," and I need to manifest a reality full of only people that i respect. and to get my respect i need to feel like you respect me, which i don't right now.

i am not upset by any given turn of events, because i see what is realistic. or hey maybe i'm used to being let down. but i am cracked and molten on the inside. and when i wrote that entry about being cracked and molten last year abbey wrote me to say "what are you talking about?" and i just found that unfathomable. i think people can choose to ignore, and i felt she was doing that. so i would speak of the disgusting to her because i knew it would bother her. tried to make live for her the chunky, wet cement that was all of me. not pretty nor packaged; not merely words, things, lettered. she liked my writing and she liked me, but the former doesn't ultimately matter and the latter, without stronger commitment, was not enough. i write and write and i bid for control. wild reins; an ordering of emotions, the most horrifying thing i've yet to know.

there are so many things that have happened that account for why i am standing here today. i want to let go but i can't seem to forget. nikki says "i've had 13 years to see the kind of things that you just can't know about yet," and well while that scares me he is right. my roommate. someone who invited me into his home and then lent me his truck just so that i could move in more cheaply. how could i not believe in the goodness of this person? there is no motive. i am just kind of an idiot. paranoid tendencies of the Taurus coming out to play.

because as much as i wanted to be "just" venus in gemini i am still Taurus. and i must own it. i'm sturdy and i'm standing here. as annoying as it was for mori to say that. but i believe some of the things she says now, she's been right about a few. and i am a reserve well. i am standing more still than many people. and all i can do is watch the world rotate around me; i feel like an axis. and i do not mean to say i am the center of any particular world excepting my own, but simply that i feel an axis. and also that i need to manifest agency asap, or else i'll become a drowning pool.

read: attempting to conquer a narrower worldview

read: the things you've said to me, that you know i've thought about

and i'm so afraid that someone will one day know that i have emotions

and i've been so afraid to have them

but i've done so much to be standing where i am right now that i don't think it's wise to turn back.

somewhere between turning 12. between depressing puberty #1, going to prom, reading a whole bunch of bullshit and getting drunk (some call this kollege) and meeting people who take themselves too seriously (or not seriously enough.) but also meeting best friends. between getting a job at a maine-themed lobster shack in new york city and still drinking too much. drinking and smoking my fucking days in, just to avoid feeling anything. somewhere between convincing myself that it didn't bother me at all that my parents wouldn't acknowledge my transition and somewhere between pretending it didn't hurt to hear my sister say that "maybe i want(ed) to be a man but i wasn't one now," while i stood there defenseless. unbound. and i'm supposed to forgive. but somewhere between the pronoun errors of people i was supposed to call friends, because it's all just the same to them. and trying to gauge who was trying and who was not. and who respects me vs. who would rather just ignore who i'm becoming. somewhere between feeling like my life was always a lie vs. the more triumphant version in which i reclaim what is mine and has every right to be, because i have every right to do this. and no one says i don't, yet little things still gird up insecurity. and yet i've done this. i've made decisions and i "haven't given up," which people act like is a possibility. but i won't deny that this did all happen because i made it happen. it happened because i finally realized i would never wake up different. it happened because i didn't say "no," the Rules of Improvisation 101. it happened because that therapist said "where do you see yourself in 10 years" and I said i don't know, but my body will not be this way anymore

and at the end of all my words, it seems to be a road

one that i'm apparently traveling down

because for so many years i stuffed those emotions. i wrote suicide-themed letters that still languish in marble notebooks with coffee stains on the cover. and that diagram of a brain is still in there. and so is the line "i have never felt this much sadness and pain," july 20th, 2009. so i guess it was all real, all of it. and i don't have to pretend it didn't hurt. i can still have the hurt and be a person who moves on

i don't have to pretend it was easy

i don't always have to feel forced to make art out of it

i can just be sometimes.

and so i just want to have this now, i want to be. i want to have my life.

and so i sit on a couch, earliest hours, and i write my life. there is a suitcase standing in the corner and, say it with me now, "this is real." everything that is happening. the tiredness, the censoring, the non-censored endingness of it all. and i'd write more, but late. the cement will continue. but i must believe there will be time. without this belief, i will be powerless to let things unfold in the way that they must.

[untilimakeit]

untying the knots

so hard.

watching people hurt around me, and trying to help my friends make it through. trying to have them help me make it through. my best friends. my mom. my dad. the people that i know i can call and if they for some reason can't answer the phone at that second, they will still make the effort to get back.

i'm watching someone go through something difficult, and she is pushing my boundaries. too much. it took a long conversation and a lot to reveal, but when it comes down to it, this person is cutting into the time i am trying to use to do other things. we are not dating. and i don't want to be.

i really just need to step back and be in a healthier headspace

i need to feel like i can walk into a room and be myself

i need to finish up and get surgery

i need my friends to not waste away too much w/ drugs and alcohol

and to not hurt too badly

i hope no one hurts as much as i ever have, but i know everyone has, in their own ways

although maybe not

and has my pain been something i've tried to gloss over?

"how will i know" how to move forward? or will i just take it one day at a time.

[untilimakeit]

make it real

this is something i've been saying to myself forever, for years now. "make it real." "make it real." as though in repeating I may appease those lazy gods of actualization. "make it real." i was talking to myself, and "make it real" for every morning I thought i'd wake up and find it all reversed, find out "the parts were a mistake," & C. and C.

it's taken an enormous struggle just for me to make it this far. just for me to make it up to THIS point. being who I am. and of the experience I am of. there is no softer feeling than ice pellets pounding the car outside, i finished two beers, this is not a parallel structure, oh

no. i am here because of LIFE. i am here because I read my notebook with my old name on the front, the first name i had. the name that is not MINE, as I finally admit, but rather an alias that was more conveniently able to guide me through. because I found my journals, and I found what I spoke about the summer before I came out.

the truth was, I wasn't happy. the whole thing sang with pain. it was white-hot. no one ate watermelon. the truth was buried somewhere half-way through the pages and the melodrama and i had no idea how to even begin to explore what my body meant to me. i had just never thought about it. and am i that much of an idiot who had never thought about it? i guess i was. it was just obvious to me. my body was a non-issue. even though i decided at age 19 that i wasn't female, i decided that that "wasn't a big deal." as though people make those kind of decisions on a regular basis. "it wasn't a big deal," just turn your life upside down over this. please. who was i kidding. i lived like that for two years and I was happy, until I wasn't anymore. i lived until pain sang and wrung through dishrags like dirty water. it only hurt as worse as the worst hurt you've ever known: no more or less. this is just what i've done. it's not different from what you've done. every moment we've each lived was real, and owned.

i don't want to be alone in my struggle.

it was always real. i didn't have to make it real, this is just the way that it's meant to be.

[untilimakeit]

we're all secretly cracked under these sturdy exteriors

can that be a basis for jumping off? a thing between which to compare?

i suck at words lately. a lot.

i just have sounds and feelings inside of me

i feel sluggish and less able to access my words. it's like they're deeper in. DDEEEEPER IN!!!! I'm tempted to blame my emergent persona. Men are not forced to access their words constantly in the same way that women are. It is culturally acceptable for me to go silent at any given time and not be called out as "aloof and bitchy." How terrible that that is an accusation that can be leveled! Yet this is an observation I've steadily made.

"That's what she said" jokes make me feel not feminist, but hey, by "she" i also mean he/ we/ they/ insert pronoun of choice.

INSERT. HA.

I am mentally 5. everything in my life needs just a little bit of work.

[untilimakeit]

womp womp. "the imagined gaze" makes it difficult for me to write free of judgments and biases but i shall try. it's hard for me to write purely for myself though, which turns me to blogs, which makes me feel something of a ridiculous exhibitionist. but exhortation, exhortation. the ignition of my motivations have to cough and sputter like an aging motor vehicle just to even get close to circling around whatever it is I am "driving" at. Because really, this is what I do. Circle without ever quite nailing down what it is I am trying to say. Throw darts at the board of hypothetical possibilities. I am circling, always circling, and my horoscope says that I would do better to think when I feel and feel when I think. So what kind of bullshit is all of that?!

Maybe this is why I, as a Taurus, do not take such stock of my emotions since apparently I'd do better to wise up instead of emotin' so damn hard. When I start to "feel" I get lost in this romantical world that feels biased and rose-tinted. When I think I become inflexible and harsh. BUT to be fair I tried thinking when I felt today and actually a lot of things made sense. Maybe next time I am thinking (HA) I will take better stock of how I feel. Considering every time I lay out my options realistically the other party usually suggests I check in with my emotions. UGH FML. I wish there were a way to marry these worlds like so many slow doves dipping.

I feel talentless in the realm of choosing a form (that's a new one!) and susceptible to unsolicited influences. A lot of people have approached me for projects in the past few months and I've realized that for the future I must simply be very selective about my options. I will finish this play. That elephant. But "I am not a playwright" and this I agree with. I am a journal-er, apparently. Not even a poet? A poetic journaler. "I have no gifts." I am bereft of action.

Back in a place where I am over the bodily. Funny how abstaining for a month or two clears your mind of "that nonesense," those physical urges that would literally mutilate you from the inside were you not to indulge them at least occasionally. Or, let's be real, self-operational on the daily. But I don't know, I don't feel like random sex anymore. I don't want *one* partner per she but I want an honest relationship with someone who knows I will never lie to them. Because I wouldn't. I do have crushes ATM. But I am shy and I like to be pursued so I wait for a text message, or a call. Nothing good has ever come of rushing anything in my experience. Especially now that our immovable planets are entering into a retrograde! And when exactly did I fall hook-line-sinker for all this astrology BS again?

I am motivated to return to Proust again this evening. Feeling unusually robust after cooking a REAL dinner with salad on the side. Perhaps the cusp of being 24 at last represents a semblance of a realistic life.

[untilimakeit]

wow. i'm pretty fucking over everything right now -- just thought people should know. your jobs are dumb and so are you. i don't give an Ef. Enjoy each other, you're more well suited. I'm out, I'm out, and I don't know how to not be wildly insensitive. I need to get this surgery to feel like a person. It's crazy that it's a little whilez away but it will happen, and I don't care really. I mean I do, but I don't care what happens beyond just being able to do this surgery and letting Em know in advance.

I mean Jesus, I feel so fucked up. I've never really trusted anyone before. Like actually. I never saw why I should. I don't know how to be over everything. I never thought I was the type to hold a grudge but apparently I am, and I'm over nothing. And i'm amazing. So goodbye.