Playback

If I had a "PlayCount" in my mind I'd go completely insane.
If i had to layer on top of thinking about conversations I've had that day,
the number of times I've been through that conversation...
I'd go completely nuts.

Tonight I endlessly rehearse the events of last night.
I go over them and over them and over them
I think about everything I said and how it was received
I remember my intentions with every word and how they were received.
I hear my own words miss the mark and I hear myself coming up with better responses
to engage, excite, involve, and enthrall
the people I'm speaking to.

The most baffling part?

Last night was amazing,
It was overwhelming, wonderful, mesmerizing, breath taking, and everything
But I still think about how I could've have been better.
I go through the mistakes.
The moments when sarcasm was taken literally.
The moments when I gave a wrong answer and
the moments when I led them to wrong answers.
Mistakes.
So many to remember it is hard to write without falling into relaxing contemplation.
Relaxing because I am a sadist not only when it comes to interactions with other people
but also myself.

Going over every moment and thinking about all of my errors is elating.
I have tried to take social interaction and turn it into an art form.
I'm hardly alone on this.  After all,
Elevating social interaction to an artform is the legacy of The American Modernist Writers.
It is a part of Americana now.

And since we've broadened the subject matter to far beyond last night,
I obsess over every email exchange I've had with people who I consider to be great artists,
 I page over these things in my mind referencing the failures against the successes until they all blend into the realm of
I NOW KNOW HOW TO DO IT BETTER.
I would do it better this time.

Of course I know this is unhealthy,
More than that,
I know I will never get it right.

I have a blog post I've been working on.  It talks about how every individuals experience of
depression/discrimination/prejudice/suffering-
/solitude is unique
but we must try to relate them as a feeble but noble attempt at feeling whole.

This sentiment is fleeting in its most concrete
and ephemeral in all things.
I know that later I will be able to do it better.  With more rewrites the message will be clearer
but it feels so wonderful every time I put more art into the world
I can't help but throw all these halfcocked and unfinished ideas out there.
Excited to see the flaws of my writing in all the beautiful unintended responses.

ASPERGERS=SCARRYYYY!!!!

As I was discussing my blog with my partner earlier today,
she raised a rather good point.
Primarily that,
I had started this blog as a way of expressing my experience as someone with aspergers.
I wanted to write about how I find that to be the decidedly more alienating part of my life.
How that  being a highly functioning autistic person is far more disruptive than being trans.
up to this point I have not posted a single post about my experience with aspergers...
So to break the ice I'm making this post.
Nothing eloquent
Nothing beautiful
Overly analytical.
This post won't be read as something that is enticing.
I do not want neurotypical people to be able to read this and think "I know exactly what you mean"
Furthermore, I do not want neurotypical people to read this and relate.
I do not want neurotypical people to understand.
(And if you do not know what neurotypical means, Google it for fucks sake.)
But as I digress I lie.

The thing I wanted to talk about was the horrifying lack of intuition/empathy/something/etre or esse/thingy
that I spend almost every waking moment trying to understand
As if by consuming information I could somehow regrow an organ that was never there.
I live every day in fear of offending anyone.
To be sure, I take painstaking measures to preempt these terrible moments.
I absorb peoples lives, any scrap of memory they'll offer up,
as if it could regrow a heart to feel beating in synch
maybe arms to hold them closely
Or eyes and ears that could finally see and hear them
to make a mind that would truly know you.

I want to escape an analytical and egalitarian mind
in exchange for one rooted in the subjective values that actually matter.
I ask for quantitative values
when I desire the understanding of qualities.

No matter what I do,
No matter how genuine my fabrication of the neurotypical mind becomes
I will always live and breathe in my autistic one.

I will find beauty in words and numbers
before I find them in people.

I still find them in people though
and they often turn out to be
something more beautiful
than understanding.

To all the "Nice Guys"

When a woman says "I just want to meet a nice guy."
She's saying something incredibly vague
and, it seems, she's saying something you don't want to listen to.
When I say "I want to meet a nice guy."
I'm not saying I want to meet someone who will buy me things.
I'm not saying I want someone to silently listen to me talk.
The last thing in the world I want is chivalry.
I can hold my own damn door.
I can carry my own shit
and I can pay my own tab.
I don't need to be treated like a child.

Chivalry's only use is to hide the fact that you have no idea how to treat someone you want to fuck.
Someone you don't know how to see as anything but a hole.
And maybe that's why you're so offended to be these people's friends.
Maybe that's why every time you get put in the "Friend-zone"
you see it as an insult instead of a compliment.
A person who you want to be in a relationship with so badly
but a relationship you have no interest in without fucking?

And god forbid I do anything to get my physical needs met.
If I go out, take home some guy with an average mind but a great body.
If I fuck him, practice safe sex, and then don't call him back,
You say "why not me, fuck me?" you whine like a baby whose first word was "want."
Why not?
Maybe I didn't want to involve anyone I knew.
Maybe I'm too busy with my career, my art, my education, and my life to have a relationship.
Maybe you're ugly,
Maybe I've heard from other people you suck in bed,
But maybe I actually value our friendship and I don't view it as some obstacle blocking you from getting into my bed.  Maybe our friendship is meaningful to me.
More likely, you're just not the "Nice Guy" you're so sure you are.

One last thing,
you know after I broke up, we hung out and I told you how much of an asshole my ex was?
That's just a thing people do!
He could have been the nicest fucking person in the world, it doesn't matter.
Amicable break-ups are rare.  Nobody is perfect.
It's easy and almost necessary to bitch after ending a relationship.
Bloody Fucking Hell, girls do this, guys do this, everyone does this.
I can talk for hours about the flaws of Shakespeare but he's still my favorite playwright.
It's pretty simple and I fear for the poor women who have male friends that think about nothing but fucking them if only they could just get rid of that pesky friendship.
Considering yourself a victim of a great injustice just because a friend of yours won't fuck you?
Pathetic,
the last thing you are is a nice guy.

Maturation

I can always tell when I'm moving forward in my life
because the way I experience things changes.
Often, I become more grounded and confident.
Sometimes, more uncertain and understanding.
Always, a complexity is added
a depth and a current previously unfelt.

I have been taking hormones for a bit over two years.
When I first began I was so terrified of needles that it might take me an hour to complete the shot.
I would sit terrified of disease, accidents, and pain.
Did I disinfect everything properly?
Would I get it in far enough or would it all just seep out?
Would I remember to check and make sure I hadn't hit a blood vessel?
As many fears would rush in and fill my mind
I would start a little chant,
"Boobs, Hips,
and Pretty Lips."

I also noticed at the beginning, that after every injection
a cautious calm crept over my body.
A certain familiar pain left my muscles.
When I first began the treatment
this would last for a week.

As time passed I became less afraid of needles,
I am still afraid but I now know
I can do it without mistakes.
I am still cautious
but I have shed much of the anxiety and I can do the injection in minutes.

The calming in my body has grown.
It has reached outwards in time and now lasts the entire interval between shots.
It has reached out into my mind and calmed my thoughts.
It has quelled a manic energy that used to live in my mind and body.
A manic force that used to pull me away from my studies
and push me away from my friends.

Injecting myself with hormones is no longer the a wall of fear followed by a rush of elation.
It has become a ritual, a moment of remembrance.
I acknowledge the old manic energy,
the terrifying instability that kept me from so many things
and I embrace the new calm.
I remember how hard it was to sleep
and I feel how much easier it is to get up.
I look back at the past,
I look at the present,
and, for a moment, I wonder what the future will bring.

Faith

I know what it's like to have your faith tested.
I know how it feels.
I am told by my family that I could regain their affections
if only I would just
go back in the closet.
If only I would just go back to pretending to be a man.
They would help me economically, when I needed it.
They tell me a job is only a white male away.
If only I would go back in the closet,
they would love to see me then.
Talking to me would not make my mother cry.
I could come home for Christmas in celebration instead of rejection.
If I only went back into the closet, they would wish me a happy birthday
instead of not.
I know what it's like to have my faith tested.

I know how it feels
and I am reminded of The Temptation of St. Anthony by Salvador Dali.

I look at all the promise of going back on who I am
and I remember.
I remember driving my car through a telephone pole, thinking "this time, it's all over."
I remember being thrown off a porch with my pants down by people my father considers my friends.
and I know how empty and fragile the promise of returning to the closet is.
I still feel very small.
I feel ragged.
I feel strung out
and I my right hand extended forward protecting me from everything that comes.
If this was all I had though, I'd be destroyed.

But I feel my left hand
steadfast upon the rock.
I remember how much my partner loves me.
how firm and unwavering her acceptance of me has been.
I remember my friends, not the ones who hurt me or made me embrace hate
but my current friends, the ones who go out of their way to help me.
When I remember these things
I know what it's like to have faith tested
and I know what it is to believe.

Hairy Birthday to Me!

Sometimes I find being gender queer terrifying but even when it's scary it always awesome so it's always worth it.  I personally feel that I lean slightly to the side of female, I don't know say 65/35?  Maybe a little closer to 75/25.  And because I was born in a male body I hate being referred to as a man, where as I don't mind so much being referred to as a woman.  In my pursuit to effectively and honestly manifest my gender I felt I needed to be able to "pass" as a woman before I could move back towards the center in a way that is comfortable.  The epitome of this conflict has been my haircut.  I grew my hair out to pass more effectively but I never really felt comfortable with long hair, I don't like how it feels, it gets in my face, and when I'm pinning someone to the ground (oooh, Sexy) it's always in the way.  The other day I finally worked up the courage and cut it short! Yay!  I know I said I was going to do it but I wasn't really certain I would.  I'm not perfectly happy with the haircut, even so I feel a million times better.
So here's three cheers to self actualization as opposed to pandering to the lowest common denominator!

(No offense to people who have long hair.  Long hair is plenty sexy.)

Birthday

My birthday is almost here...
ah, birthdays...
the past-
birthdays-
unpleasant...

remembering my youth makes me feel
like I'm right back there.
I feel so surprised every year
at how visceral and physical the experience is.
I just crumple inwards and
choke drown
trip fall.

Invariably I try to stay positive.
Inevitably I want to tell the people I looked up to them
I want to call them up and tell them how much happier a person I am now because of them
I want to sit down, have a beer, and ask them how they've been.
I can't.
I'm certain many of them have no idea that I looked up to them.
I wasn't friends with these people then.
I've even tried to reach out to some and they've all seemed displeased that I looked up to them.
and I'm back to
choke drown
trip fall.

I think of teachers I'd like to tell,
"Without you or someone like you, I'd have killed myself in the trial that is High School/Middle School."
but I'm nowhere near close enough to say that without seeming like a lunatic.
I wasn't ever close enough to anyone back then.
Of course, that's not entirely true I did have one decent friend from 10th Grade on
and that friendship did mean the world to me.
But of course, what I really want to do is rewrite my childhood into a positive one.
I want to reach out to the people who I liked and by connecting to them now
rewrite my childhood and clear the suffocating experiences from my throat.
By removing the pain, I'd be able to take back all those times I was too emotional to do anything
and rewrite all the mistakes I made.
I want to reach through the people who I looked up to
and hold and hug the younger me.
All to erase the experiences of my youth from my memory.

Most of the year I am OK with my past.
I understand what happened and why.
I see that I've grown to become much more than the person I want to be.
I can look at my current life and smile while acknowledging the sadness I experienced.
But every year my birthday comes around and
I feel so flooded and overwhelmed by memories that I go crazy.
Every year I do different things to cope
and every year the success of this coping varies.

This year I am going to take a step forward in my life that makes me quite nervous.
I am going to cut my hair short.
I have always dreamt, since elementary school, of being a woman with short hair.
As I went through my transition I grew my hair out as a way of strengthening the fortifications of my gender appearance.  I believe that one of the saddest aspects of transitioning is using gender norms to achieve the appearance your gender.  As much as I have desired to self actualize rather than just pass, I have not been able to bring myself to cut my hair short.  So this year I will expel emotions along with unwanted hair.
I will take one more step towards myself and instead of rewriting my past, I will write a better future.

Also, I'm writing this blog post,
so yeah.
My condolences to whomever is having a birthday.

Appearances

Time can be deceiving.
Even tricky.
Sometimes trickery.
Sometimes, honesty.
Tomorrow, which is, of course, actually,,, today.
I will see people I need to impress.
I will impress upon my face
Powdered dye, to make myself beautiful and competent.
They will see my impression.
If I'm lucky they will be impressed

Tonight, which
is inevitably tomorrow
already,
has exhausted me.
Has pulled from me
liquid energy
and replaced it with sand, or is it ice?

I want to feel cold silent ice.
but I just feel grainy scratch sand.
to tired to win
to scared to sleep

I'd have  a panic attack
but sand only slips slowly through its hole
until it's tossed over

I asked a beach what it thought of winter.
The ice forms
The ice grows and expands
The beach is pushed up
the sands shift.
A three or four foot drop forms between the ice and the beach,
as if the sand needed to hold itself away from the lake,
leaping down from the edge of the earth
to the frozen danger.
Climbing up, winter boots filling with sand.
Heading into a warm home
and here is why I asked it
what the beach thought of winter
because every summer the beach stretches into the lake
and holds it carefully
in a perfect unique basin
and every winter
Cliffs, estrangement, and cracked ice.

Canada, Airplanes, and Assholes

I was just sitting with my wonderful partner, drinking some wine, having nice conversation, and having a generally pleasant time when suddenly she stumbled across an article.
This article was about a recent law passed in Canada where someone who does not appear to be the gender on their I.D. can be refused admittance onto a flight.
In the article they claimed that the legislation will not be used in a prejudiced manner but
the law is still a prejudiced law.  It gives the legal right to any asshole who wants to prevent a trans-person from getting on a flight to do as they please.  While I believe in the power of a good majority of people to do the right thing when called upon to, it does not make it OK for prejudiced legislation to sit  uncontested.
It is my opinion that Canada's past interaction with trans-people has been a spotty but overall positive interaction.  I know that while many cosmetic surgeries are not covered by their health care system, top surgery for FtMs and bottom surgery for both is covered.  (If I've stated anything false please correct me.)
If Canada lets this legislation sit it will be a black stain on their history.
C'mon Canada!
I've always felt that you were an option as a place to move if things ever got dire in the USA,
don't throw it all away for-
for what anyway?
What terrorists?
What murderers?
Who?
Who is it, that's going to Canadian Airports with I.D. that doesn't match their gender marker but in all other respects is obviously them and threatening-
What?

Canada, what devious sinister trans-people are attempting to destroy you?

Repeal this prejudiced legislation.  I know you're not perfect on LGBT rights but you've always been pretty good.
I understand it was the act of the Minister of Transportation.  I know that it was so sly nobody noticed til now and I get that it has never been used BUT
but you need to change it.
you need to change it today.

Nonsense

I watch too much anime
I always watch it in japanese with english subs
I just witnessed an anime where a character said, in english, "Lucky"
and they translated it as "awesome"
...
...
...
???
Profit

Do The Right Thing

There is currently a very interesting thing I must do but nobody will tell me what it is.
I do not believe
they are not telling me
out of spite...
but sometimes
I suspect foul play.
Maybe if I just had better words to say.
Maybe if I knew them better.
Maybe if I saw the world clearer.

I used to think
if only I loved them more.
then it would come to me.
Then i would fit together.

now i just think
if only I did the right thing
they would tell me
the right thing to do.

Anxiety

Puff,
Steam is released from my kettle.  Soon, soon, so soon... Steam come on make a whistle...
Steam go...
Steam explode!
Steam FIRE!
nope... I take a sip from my coffee cup,
still hot,
yum.
This'll be pot number... 3?  Yes, three.  Right, well... I've just reduced the number of days this bag of beans will last by at least 1... possibly 2?  I hope not, let's assume that I would've had coffee twice that day then it only reduces it by 1 and if this is the third then I'll have only lost half a day of coffee today.
Good Job Danika, you're amazing...
wait a minute...
this'll be pot of coffee 4 and I've already had three...
Shit.
My chest is pounding.  It kind of hurts, almost.

Oh coffee, wherefore art thou coffee?
why, Why dost thou taste so wonderful?
You warm my heart.  You invigorate my soul.
Why are you coffee, coffee?
I could drink cup after cup of you and never stop loving you.
I could love a thousand loves and cry a thousand tears
but coffee you will always get me up in the morning.
Coffee

What?  What is that sound?
Oooohh!  The water is boiling!  Time to make another pot of coffee!
I grab the French Press, already filled with ground coffee beans.
Ground to perfection, the right amount to leave no residue in my cup.  I am so proud of my work when I do it right I do it so right as to not leave anything that could be considered less than a perfect level of groundessingdllslaksdfj...
Yes, coffee...
Right I've got my coffee pot and I grab the kettle.
For a moment, it feels warm.
then it feels hot.
now it burns.
I know it will not leave blisters so I continue to hold it in my farmers hands.
Ahhhhhh, pain can be good.
Pain can be pleasing.
I pour the coffee into the french press and as I do I notice the knuckle of my middle finger is touching the glass of the container.  The water swirls and begins to darken.  My knuckle begins to burn.  I wonder if this whole steeping process is even necessary?  You know what, my knuckle actually hurts quite a bit.  The whole steeping thing might just be a conspiracy.  I hope the burning will leave a mark...
Marks and cuts are gorgeous.
Pain is so beautiful

At least when it leaves a clear record behind.

A kind pause is passing me by, I have to remember it.



I set the kettle down and place my hand on my face.  It feels so warm.  Warm and Calm.  I like you...
I set the French Press on the table in the kitchen and set a timer for four minutes.
The timer is ticking down and I want to hug someone.  How is this so lonely?   Coffee, I reach for my coffee cup but it contains only a minuscule amount of coffee.  I drink it anyway and the coffee is ice cold.
A moment ago I swear it was warm...
I can't really remember though.  It was probably cold then.
In fact, I'm certain it was cold.
I'm certain this next pot will bring me nothing but,
But...
BUT!
Anxiety.
I really need to cut down on the coffee intake.  You know it is addictive.  You know it's bad for your...
it's bad for you!
and...
your heart.
I should have made this last cup of coffee
but it's worse to waste.
So, I'll drink it anyway.
How many minutes left?
3?
ugh, well they never said it would be easy.
Yeah, you know it isn't.
Life is hard,
and I need coffee if I'm going to get up everyday
Face the bleak sky
Swim against the undertow
Fight and live to fight another day!
er...
2 minutes still?
Well, I guess it didn't feel like another minute passed and...
and that has to be a good thing,
ugh my chest hurts.
Slow down that heartbeat
Slow.
stop
breathing.
slow.
I can't.  I can slow my thoughts but not my body.  This is horrible.  Normally I can do both with disturbing ability.
1!
Yes, one minute left!
This, my friends, is why I make french press the right way.  Only four minutes of steeping.  I used to waste all this time making sure the coffee was deadly caffeinated and more bitter then cemetery dirt! HA!  almost time...
yes...
almost time
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
TRIUMPH, VICTORY!
I press the plunger,  pour a cup, and
, honestly,
it wasn't as good as the last batch,
hm, wonder what I did wrong this time?