MeghanIsMe

I wanted to go for a ride but my ears get cold at this temperature. Just now, I looked in my bike stuff I brought up from Kenosha and I found one, but not the other, of the ear-cover flaps I'd forgotten about that came with my bike helmet. I looked through everything and couldn't find it the other one, and it felt symbolic of the many things, physical and otherwise, I've lost since moving to Europe and it made me tear up.

I'm having some trouble with this sort of thing in the last few days. Yesterday, I played some of the Final Fantasy VII remake for the first time and loved how faithful the recreation was in certain parts. But it also reminded me strongly of playing that game for the first time at home with my family in Kenosha, and that made me cry too.

Things are reminding me of times when I was fundamentally happy and satisfied with my life. I haven't been, since Europe and Covid, and it's hard to be reminded.

I'm so grateful for Miriam's understanding, reassuring presence.

Miriam and I exchanged a couple messages last night and today on a site for still-Coviding folks looking for social connections in the local area. Things like "Hey cutie, want to get together for some cuddles?" Which was a fun silly thing in the middle of a stressful morning.

But when she said she'd gotten a message from a cute girl, I momentarily forgot that I'd sent her something there and that she was probably talking about me, and for a moment, I was really excited for her. I would love so much for her to be in a position where she was able to and wanted to date!

There are a lot of things that make it hard right now, some the same between us, and others unique to our personal situation. Hopefully someday, though, for both of us.

I have exchanged a couple of messages with someone who's still coviding whom I met through the Reddit T4T group in the last week: there's a start! She's far away (all I know is that she's on the US west coast), but even having someone to be flirty online with would be pretty great.

I've continued to be a mess. No surprise there I suppose.

My neck and shoulder continue to be in pain. This morning, though, it was improved enough that when I woke up I was able to roll over and lie on my stomach for a while. That's been mostly out of the question for about two weeks, so that's a relief.

I tried to go to a walk-in clinic on Tuesday, but the two that I went to did not have walk-in hours that day, and I gave up. It was nice to be called "ma'am" at the second one at least.
On Wednesday, there was a trans and allies night at a local brewery, Malty National, that Miriam and I talked about going to. We ended up not staying long because of Covid exposure, and I've been having a really hard time since then. I wrote:

Miriam and I got to the trans and allies event yesterday and only stayed for 10 minutes or so because even though the building wasn't very crowded yet, C0₂ levels were already pretty high. High C0₂ levels indicate poor ventilation, and are a proxy for one risk factor for Covid transmission. I bumped into someone I know from the online group who invited me to join them for pizza (which I couldn't eat because of the respirator), but I declined and went home with Miriam. And then I intended to be in the online meeting for the trans group on Wednesday, but I was too distracted and/or distressed and missed it.

I'm having a really hard time with this. I don't know how many more years of this I can deal with. I don't know what else to do. I'm sad and lonely.

I'm still having a really hard time with this, three days later. That, on top of being sick and being in pain have really destroyed what regularity I'd managed to find in my schedule with exercising and managing my food better. It's really hard for me to feel like anything is really worth doing in the abstract long term.

That said, I'm working on trying to get a CV done to either submit for academic library/archives jobs or to construct resumes from as necessary. If I get it done, I'm going to order some pizza for myself, because at least immediate tangible rewards feel somewhat motivating.

I do rather like the picture of myself I took when I got a little dressed up to go out, ane before I had to put a big ugly respirator on my face. This is the ear I'm going to get a helix piercing on, as soon as my mental health is good enough to manage taking care of it.



Yesterday, I was having something like a panic attack in the morning. I wrote:

My brain is a mess lately.

This morning, a combination of two things are in there. 1: I have to get out of bed to take care of animals even if taking care of myself doesn't matter. 2: What if something happens to Miriam (who is going to a job-related thing) and she's just gone without me even getting a chance to see her again, like my dad. I was in tears at the door as she was leaving, asking her to please be safe as though she's going to visit a war zone instead of driving across town to the university.

Today, though, with the pain reduced and the chaos in my brain a bit more under control, I'm going to write about my ideas for my upcoming name change.

A few other updates from yesterday:

I was driving in some of the worst conditions I can remember this morning. Everyone was driving like 20-30 kph and the anti-lock breaks were still activating at stops. That was awful. I can tell other people were uncomfortable too because I was leaving a ton of following distance, and no one else tried to change lanes into it!

I'm amazed I only saw one car off the road. People up here are probably used to this and have snow tires.

-

I just got the latest Covid and flu shots. I expect, as usual, I will have no negative effects, but should that change I'll probably tell you all about it! Miriam got just the Covid booster because either one by itself causes flares of her chronic pain. Together, they can disable her for days.

-

Scored at Value Village today:
*13 x 9 Pyrex glass dish for $10
*A nice set of 4 matching glasses for $3
*A giant glass mug for me because I drink so much water and want to have to refill my cup less often
*More forks
*Some gauzy curtains for the daybed
*A (mismatched) set of sheets for the daybed
*An Andreas Vollenweider album I haven't heard (Caverna Magica)
*A Calvin and Hobbes collection

The forks and glasses are part of getting prepped for a visit from Miriam's parents.
We are worried about their visit as a Covid exposure vector, both for them and for us. But they are isolating and masking consistently in the weeks before coming, and Miriam's dad, though he's one of the folks who would not be masking if not for his family asking him too, actually shaved his beard so he can get a better mask fit for the flight here. I think that was a lot for him and I appreciate it very much.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to compromise in these ways, but this world has never been perfect. Her parents are significantly older than mine, and after my dad's death, it's become deeply important to us to make sure we see them.

-

Treadmill yuri yesterday and today has been Sakura Trick. It's ridiculous fluff, and I am loving it.

-

I washed the curtains but did not put them in the delicates bag, and now they have big tears all through them. They were inexpensive, but I'm still sad.

I just really want a super girly canopy bed with pretty curtains! I'll have to look for more, and be more careful about washing them this time. You can't really see in this image, but the purple curtain on the end is badly torn now, so I didn't even put up the other one.

-

Ella is taking a leash reactivity class whose first session was tonight. I'm hoping that as well as making it easier to walk her or take her places on the bike, it might be a step toward her barking less at people outside the condo too. If she can *get to* other dogs or people, she's great. When she can see or hear them but can't get to them, she loses her little mind.

But it just got cancelled due to bad weather, so I'm unexpectedly free this evening. More cleaning maybe?

Train Girl, who I have still not met in person, was broken up with by her long distance girlfriend a few weeks ago, and has not been dealing with it well. In fact, it seems like the whole situation is a giant mess. From the single perspective I have access to, Train Girl's ex has believed and passed along lies about Train Girl and this has resulted in a lot of drama and loss of friends. I talked to her briefly tonight via FB messenger for the first time since this happened. I feel for her, and hurt for her, but - without airing other people's dirty laundry - there are things about the way she's dealing with this that make me hesitate about pursuing that crush I've had on her. I mean, not that I would anyway right now because this is not the time, but still.

I actually just contacted her today because Miriam and I have worked out some parameters regarding Covid Risk and I want SO BADLY to start making in-person friends. I invited her over to watch anime. However, she says she's been talking to her therapist about Covid precautions and that "extreme masking" has been scaring her. I get the impression that she might not be willing to mask as a visitor, though she was a little intoxicated and difficult to understand. So that might not be an option either.

I hate how fucking complicated Covid has made everything.

You know what I really, really want in my life? Queer female and nbi friends who I can get in a cuddle pile with and watch yuri anime, and maybe kiss and snuggle. Not necessarily casual sex, though that would be nice too. I just want more queer, snuggly non-masc folks in my life. I wish I had figured this out before the world went so much to hell. This is actually a thing that people have, right? I hope there's some way I can still have that.

But for now, I'm going to try to figure out how to start reaching out to local people to arrange in-person social time, either one on one or in small groups. I still hurt that I can't go to big parties or restaurants and such, but I'm going to do my best to find the community I can within the risk tolerance I need.

Turns out there is a fannish media-con happening in Regina today with an attendance of around 10,000. Shows how much I know about what's going on around here! But I haven't had a lot of motivation to keep track since I couldn't go to anything indoors.

Since I haven't gotten quantitative fit testing on an elastomeric mask done yet, I still can't go to this one. But it's really nice to think that, in the foreseeable future, this is something I will be able to do. I haven't been to a convention since before I moved to the Netherlands, which makes it at least four years. Maybe five. I do miss looking at board games for sale and playing them with people, among other things.

Today, Miriam and I are going to our first in-person thing since getting elastomeric masks. We haven't had them professionally fit-tested yet, but her supervisor has strongly suggested she come to the post-doc appreciation reception they're holding. I'll have to make sure to get a big lunch since we won't be eating until we're back and I'd hate to be really hungry and staring at food I'm unable to eat.

This sort of thing would have been a lot of fun once.

---

As I sat on a bench at the lake at my turnaround point on yesterday's ride, I felt a lot like I did at times when I was stopped somewhere along the Chicago lakefront on a long ride north to south and back. I sat and ate an energy bar and drank some water and looked at the lake and I felt, in a difficult to describe way, good about being out on my bike in a particular way that I haven't in a long time.

I almost didn't have the motivation to go out, but Miriam helped me. I appreciate her so much.

https://www.strava.com/activities/9883365117?fbclid=IwAR3WBCEcezvP55vCZkghFtexJL54t-BsG_4PFLEOHMX6mOVevR9ONGjlEf8

This is quite long and probably would benefit from editing, but I'm probably not going to manage that. Sorry in advance!

---

Miriam and I had a great conversation that resolved a failure of communications that had been going on for quite some time.

Miriam and I (really, 90% Miriam) have been trying to find technical solutions that will allow us to be social. Most recently, she's looked at elastomeric respirators and PAPRs such as the ones by CleanSpace. We looked at the options together last night and my mood crashed. For her, it was another in a long line of upsetting instances of her trying to find compromises that will let us be social in some way and none of them being good enough for me.

Meanwhile, I'd been thinking about how various kinds of interaction would work while wearing one of these. I'd had a lot of hope. But looking at the options available, I despaired. They look so weird; especially the elastomerics we were looking at. There are PAPRs that are much less obtrusive, but they're so very expensive.

So I crashed, and she was frustrated and sad. We talked on the couch and it came out that she has been feeling like this is about vanity for me. That I don't want to go anywhere unless I have a mask that will still let people see my face because I finally feel pretty sometimes lately. But I don't feel pretty; at least, not about my face. It's really about how people would react to me wearing one of these. I didn't use the analogy, but I feel like I'll look like one of those people who wear tinfoil hats to protect against mind control and people will treat me accordingly. Miriam suggested that the answer to this is therapy to help me with my life-long fear of taking up social space. That it's really hard for me to be trans in public, and masking on top of it makes that so much worse, and that therapy might be able to help.

She's not wrong about that at all. But, in fact, that's not actually what I'm most distressed by.

I took a nap for about an hour so my brain would start working again, and Miriam came in to join me. We snuggled and were both feeling better emotionally, and I asked if I could talk about the masking and my concerns again. She was up to that.

I expressed that therapy wasn't going to change the fact that I can't kiss people. That I'd been trying to imagine how dating or hooking up would go while wearing something like this and it feels incredibly awkward. And even if people were interested, it's hard to imagine having sex with someone and having no contact with them with my mouth or face. A big part of my distress is having this experience of fundamental sexual awakening that's come with my transition while being unable to do anything about it. The idea of not being able to do this for the rest of my life is deeply distressing, and it's not something that these compromise solutions have addressed. I'd expressed that this was something that was important to me, but I did not do so clearly enough.

I'm embarassed that sex is so important to me, and I think that's a big part of why I have failed to be clearer about it. The trans FB groups I'm in have so many people talking about dating and sex feeling right for the first time or posting salacious memes about things that I couldn't do because of Covid, and it hurt deeply. Someone in the local support group was talking about poly and trans relationships and it literally feel like an icy dagger in my chest, thinking that I could never have that.

I'd wanted these experiences my entire life, but eventually concluded that I just couldn't have them because they wouldn't work for me, and had gone terribly and traumatically wrong when I tried. Eventually, I found the term demisexual and decided that that must be me.

But I'm *really* not demi; I just didn't know how to relate to people that way as a boy. I'm nearly certain it would be different now. The thought of this entire array of experiences finally being accessible to me in one way but being closed in another, possibly for the rest of my life, really made me despair for my future. If the kind of life I'd wanted for decades would forever be teased in front of my face, just out of reach because of Covid, I really felt like the only thing in my life that made my future feel worth having was Miriam, whose presence in my life was simultaneously the thing keeping me from what I wanted.

As I've expressed to her months before, Covid and isolation is the first thing in our ten-plus years together that's made me think about whether I want to continue to be with her. I really, really do, but for the first time, I thought seriously and consciously about it. (For her part, Miriam was pleased to hear that I was thinking of and prioritizing myself in that way. We both think it's healthy for a relationship to be a continuing choice.)

I do want to stay, but having to make the choice of Miriam vs. trying to have the kind of social and sexual life I've always wanted sucks so much.

And my father's death and other losses lately have made me keenly aware of two relevant things. I have a limited amount of time left to me, and if I don't find more connections in my life, I'm eventually going to end up pretty alone, as as my mother seems and some of my parents' friends and connections seem to be. The thing I want to pursue most in my life right now is connections with other human beings. Friends, lovers, and whatever else is in between and beyond those things. And honestly, I worry that the state of the world is going to degrade in such a way that the kinds of community and relationships I want may become much more difficult. Shit's scary out there.

So Miriam understands now that it's not that I won't want to be social while wearing a big ugly elastomeric mask. In fact, I really *do* want to be social in any way I can be, and I look forward to those masks getting here so I can do *something, anything* with other people again. She also understands why those masks weren't resolving one of my fundamental sources of despair.

We're going to figure out how this can happen for me. Probably something like a schedule where I can do something risky and follow that up with days of wearing an elastomeric mask in the house and staying in the spare room. I'm building a Corsi-Rosenthal box that should provide something like 7 changes of air per hour in our condo. I have ethernet in that bedroom now so I can move my computer there if necessary. We're putting a small daybed in that room too so I can sleep there if necessary. Once all these things come together, we can think and talk more about how I want to proceed. This is really hard and scary for her because of long Covid, but she empathizes and really wants this for me too and I appreciate her so much.

I have hope for the future in ways that I haven't for a long time now, and have been feeling a lot more functional these past couple days because of it. The sense I've sometimes had that I'd have been better off I hadn't figured out I'm a girl because at least then I didn't know what I wanted, could have, and was missing, is reduced tremendously.

I think that maybe, soon, I'll be able to start being a part of those FB groups and the local support group again. They've given me so much pain, seeing other people doing things I can't, that I've self-isolated from the first places that have ever made me feel like I'd truly found my people.

I'm panicky about the cost of car work.

I used to do my own brakes, but I don't think I'm up to it physically and I don't have the right tools and stuff. I used to replace just the pads unless the rotors looked damaged too, but the shop says the rotors need to be replaced along with the pads. Reading online suggests there are arguments for and against automatically replacing rotors with pads, but it seems like newer rotors are thinner and/or less machinable, and they are cheaper, and replacing both is recommended sometimes by some people.

I am not an expert and am doing what the shop says I should do, but it's a lot of money. I miss not having to own a car.

I'm feeling like I need to find work since my student loan payments are also going to resume soon, and I'm going to start doing therapy too, but I'm scared about finding something that doesn't introduce more risk of Covid exposure for Miriam and myself. And I have to be honest, I know I'll really resent having to be around other people for something I don't necessarily really want to do, and then *not* being able be around people when I *want* to be. This is hard to deal with and I'm really tired of it.

Not on Facebook because she reads my posts there!

I'm feeling sad that train girl (the local trans girl I have a big crush on) and I have not gotten together in person since I've gotten back. She asked me to get some cheese curds for her and I made a stop at Mars Cheese Castle just to get them. And we've talked about getting together in person several times; at a dog park, or in her back yard with a fire. I have now invited her to come to the new/old place to watch some of the anime I just bought with me, when we have appropriate COVID mitigation measure in place. (A Corsi-Rosenthal box, open windows, plus good masks is enough for Miriam to feel like the risk is acceptably low.) I have some books that she was really interested in too, including an automobile mechanics manual that's now a bit over 100 years old. She asked what I'd sell it for when I said I was getting rid of it, but it's not worth much, and I told her that even if I didn't have a crush on her, I think she appreciates things like that in the same way I do so I'd be happy to just give it to her.

Yes, I did in fact tell her I have a crush on her and that, if she wasn't in a closed relationship and it wasn't for COVID, I would quite likely ask her out. She's only the second person in my life I've ever expressed interest in before the other person expressed interest in me. In the past, it was terrifying, and as I may have written, I think I didn't really know how to relate to people in that way as a boy. I thought I was demi-sexual, and that I needed a long time with someone to feel safe and comfortable with them.

Now? *sighs* In all honesty, I *really* want to go out and be slutty with other trans girls (I mean, I'm gender-flexible here, but that's where my brain is mostly at right now) and I'm fairly sure I would have no problem expressing that to them. It's so incredibly frustrating that I finally know who I am and what I want and be unable to do much about it. I have a lot of fear that by the time we know things are safe enough for Miriam, nobody will be interested in me anymore and I won't be able to fit into that kind of scene. It's causing more distress than most anything else in my life, with some obvious exceptions.