I'm out. Out, out, out, OUT to my mother! It was through no courage of my own. After a week, in which I completely failed femininity, she cornered me and demanded to know what was going on. So I explained the best I could. She's not on board with pronouns or calling me anything else but her daughter, and the idea of being trans is completely alien to her, but other than that she was more relieved to just know. Which is fair. And the forms of address are a battle I'm not interested in fighting now. I'm also just relieved that she knows. She ended the conversation with, "Well, I wanted to go to the mall with you to get you nicer clothes. I guess let's see what's there in menswear." And that's about 500% better outcome than I had ever hoped for! Read More »

Around 2007 I started learning Polish. At the time there weren't many resources (certainly no Duolingo yet), so I had to MacGyver it from random sources. My sources? M jak miłość without subtitles, the newly-started Soup.io and a second-hand copy of Lubiewo, which I painstakingly went through with an archaic Polish slang dictionary over the course of probably half a year. Oh, and chatting with Poles on eMule while trying to locate all the Polish punk xD Those were the days lol

Reposted from marbear via krolik

Day 3 visiting my mom. So far my plan of going femme for two weeks is going great! 👍 By which I mean I have completely failed at it. I tried wearing makeup twice, both attempts lasting 30 seconds before I wiped it off. Yesterday I needed to clean my grandparents' house and since I didn't have any other cleaning-friendly clothes I wore the only fitting dress I could find in my old room. Welp, even my mom who always hypes up every tiny bit of gender-conformity in me couldn't say anything more than a tentative, "Uh, nice...uh... dress?" And no wonder. I'm 80 kilos of back muscle and glutes and rapidly approaching the shape of a door frame. I cannot pull it off. I'm sure athletic women can; my sister definitely can, but I'm just not convincing anyone. Read More »

Anxious, anxious, anxious. Next week I'm traveling home, where I'm only out to two people who I may or may not meet with at all. The thing is, I haven't been back for a year. Last time was pretty early in my transition and I didn't look different at all. Now I do. My mother is already excited how she's going to "fix that awful hair" and I don't think she'd be thrilled at all about the rest of my style either. While she doesn't get to dictate how I look, I also don't want to be confrontational. So I'm preprating to be in girlmode at least part-time. I've already shaved a year's worth of body hair... Read More »

Reposted from marbear

I survived tournament day without passing out from overheating! Also, with no pain or irritation from binding for 16 hours*, and shockingly enough with 0 dysphoria, despite being automatically read as a woman by most people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's a miracle what a well-fitting shirt and suit can do to one's self esteem xD

Also, gender-neutral toilets! They had a gender-neutal toilet! And yes, I realize that's a non-issue for 99% of participants, but it is INSANE how much of my background anxiety that relieved. My cognitive capacity improved tenfold just by not being constantly busy on the background with figuring out whose changing room I'd have to invade, just to pee. Read More »

I actually like binding. For the longest time I was scared to, because you read all sorts of things about how painful it is, but I found that it relieves back pain for me, rather than cause it. That said...

There's warning for extreme heat for Saturday.

Me, remembering that I have to spend 12+ hours in formal clothes at a tournament :
- Fuck it, I'd rather deal with extreme dysphoria than bind in this heat.

Also me, realising that I'll be spending 12+ hours in a public position, dealing with competitors, coaches, crew and audience:
- Fuck it, I'd rather actually die of heat exhaustion than willingly increase my dysphoria by not binding. Read More »

I managed to get a ticket for New Model Army tomorrow. It was sold out but luckily there was someone selling their ticket. I wanted to share one more song of theirs, that meant a lot to me when I was young. it feels very edgelord-y now listening to the lyrics, but it still gives me a feeling of elation to hear it. Also, the album Thunder and Consolation is one of the finest albums tha the 80s gave us, and that's a hill I'm going to die on.

Today I got sucked into the swamp that is the Twitter discourse on ideological purity, and now I'm feeling very old and tired. I was reminded of a song by one of my favourites, the post punk band New Model Army. The chorus goes as:

All we wanted was a cause that we could fight for
One chance for the heroes to win the day
All we wanted was a chance to see the world
In black and white instead of a hundred shades of grey

I feel that's apt. Incidentally, NMA have a concert tomorrow. I should probably drag myself out and see them. My mind could do with a cleanup.

Stopped by the thrift store to get a white button-down shirt for an upcoming tournament, where I'm on crew duty. Didn't find anything that works for me, but I did manage to assemble the late 90s- early 00's Queer Millennial starter pack, so that's 12 euro well-spent.

Reposted from marbear

I'm not sure if it's middle age catching up with me (what age does that begin? lol), or depression, or if there is even a difference between the two at this point, but I just can't find the fuel to keep myself going.
 - I used to read at every spare minute, finishing 2-3 books a month, but since February I haven't been able to turn a single page;
- normally I love working and would work overtime with drive and passion, but I hate my current job and team so much that I both dread mornings and work all the fucking time, because I'm so unproductive and underperforming;
- I love nature and bird-watching in particular. Always was the "random bird facts" guy. Yet I have completely ignored this year's brooding season. It's almost over and I'm just like "meh, whatever"; Read More »

I was scrolling my feed on the train an hour ago and came across a post that I've seen before, in one iteration or another. The caption is something like, "What would you say to your younger self?" And the image is of "current-day self" bitchslapping "younger self'. 9 out of 10 times I would have reposted that or at least liked it. Tonight... I couldn't. I can't. I don't want to hit or punish my younger self.

Fot the last few months in therapy we've been unearthing old truma for me to process, because I never did, and overwhelmingly I've been feeling profoundly sad about my young self. So much stuff that shouldn't have happened. So much self-blaming and self-loathing, for things that other people - adults - were responsible for and instead I blamed myself for. I don't want to bitchslap young Misha. I want to find him and hug him, and hold him, and let him know that he is allowed to be sad and hurt. To tell him it was not his fault or responsibility. That the grooming and exploitation was not his fault. That when friends died it was not his fault but the entire system that failed them and that he couldn't have filled the entire Maslow pyramid for them - it wasn't possible, he was only a child. Read More »

Shortly after I turned 13 I got a phone call from my uncle. He said, "You're old enough and need to be educated. I'm coming to visit." Two hours later his car pulled over in front of our apartment building and he came out carrying two big shopping bags full of casette tapes (all bootleg, of course). He gave them to me with the words, "You need to listen to this. All of it." There was Nick Cave (almost his full discography at the time), Einstürzende Neubauten, Tuxedomoon, Diamanda Galás, The Residents... Then my uncle's friends started calling in, bringing me cassettes of their favourites - Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, obscure garage punk. Every few weeks one of them would call and say, "Hey, I've got new music for you!" And my uncle wasn't wrong. That was the emotional education that I needed then. Read More »

Today I am so grateful for my partner's perfect act of allyship, by itself, but also in contrast to just six months ago when we were on the verge of divorce.

Today I needed to see a doctor and was really stressing out, because it was not our usual family doctor but a substitute - one with whom I've had negative experience in the past. Already during the triage on the phone I felt condescended to and my pain dismissed, so when it was time to go for my appointment I decided that I didn't have the energy to also possibly have to explain my gender situation. So I decided to dress femme *sigh*

Just as I was about to leave, my partner walked by, took one look at me and asked shocked, "What the hell are you wearing?" I explained. Then he took me by the shoulders, marched me back inside and said, "Listen, you're already in pain and you're anxious because you expect a hostile encounter. How on earth do you think you're going to advocate for yourself if you're also dressed in a way that is distressing to you? Take these off and dress like the confident and assertive man that you've been working on becoming!" I did and he was like, "Well! Isn't that loads better?" Read More »

In therapy the other day we were talking about some BS from my childhood and I mentioned that a weird side effect of that is that my reaction to pain from impact (e.g., being hit during sparring) is to laugh. Made me really unpopular as a sub while I was hanging out with the SM crowd, because the harder Doms hit me, the harder I laughed. And it made it pretty hard to explain to them that I wasn't trying to challenge them but that it's an involuntary reaction.

Without missing a beat, the therapist responded with, "Oh, I know. You do it here, too. Every time we stumble upon something particularly painful you just laugh and laugh." Read More »

I'm fucking depressed and, honestly, barely coping but at least I have tomorrow to look forward to. After two years of postponed dates, my favorite band - Einstürzende Neubauten - is coming to town and I can't put into words how much I need that concert right now. They have been incredibly formative for my taste in music, aesthetics and sensibilities. With my soul so completely depleted, I feel almost physically hungry for the emotions they give me, especially live. At the very least hearing Blixa Bargeld's signature primal scream (at 4:33 and 4:54 in the second video) is going to be extremely cathartic xD Read More »