(no subject)

Going out with Miriam this morning to see how things are looking at the condo and pick up mail.

After five sessions (I think?) now of laser, my upper lip is still shadowy, but I'm really happy with most of my face. The upper lip is better than when I started, but it's still noticeable and bothers me a lot.

(no subject)

I admire trans girls, and trans folks in general, who don't pass and don't care what people think about how they look and just go live their lives as they are. They're so brave.

I got to the condo and saw that there were workers inside, busy drywalling. I zipped my bunny hug up over my shirt, took my dangle earrings out, and got my hair into a low tail before going in. I was too scared.

My whole life, I've been scared of social situations, and hated taking up metaphorical space. Now that I unavoidably take up some metaphorical space every time I go somewhere dressed fem, it's a significant barrier I have to overcome just to go somewhere people will see me as me. Sometimes it's too much.

Once, I think even as recently as four years ago, before Europe, I might have felt so good about being myself and about normalizing public gender nonconformity that I might have just gone in and not given a damn. These days, I want to be me, but I also just want to be left alone.

---

A couple days ago, after laser, I was trying to park the car in our space and the front wheels got stuck in a rut caused by runoff over melting ice. I tried for a while, but I wasn't going anywhere. I was starting to feel scared that I might have to get some help from other people somehow, and I was dressed fem and wearing makeup and the idea of interacting with other people, especially men, was really scary.

Someone driving by in a pickup stopped to help without me asking. A middle-aged guy with a big beard. I hid my purse on the passenger floorboards and tried to hurriedly defem myself as he walked over, probably without much success. But he didn't seem to care what I looked like, and just got behind the car and helped push until it slid out of the rut.

So that's how all that is going. I think there's progress, but not wanting to be noticed except in certain contexts has been such a core part of my being since dealing with how awful other people in school were to me as a kid that it's really hard to get past.

And some people think trans people are doing it for the attention. If they only knew...