MeghanIsMe

I just looked at Train Girl's Facebook page. I haven't tried to see what she's been up to in a long time because I have strong, conflicted feelings about her. She has unfriended me, so I suppose I don't need to worry about whether or not and how to connect with her. I don't really understand what happened, and I still have that 1907 book on automobile repair that I brought up from Kenosha to give to her.

Meanwhile, an old friend of my dad's who I knew as a little kid, and who I connected with on Facebook after his death, posted a stupid anti-Biden meme on his wall. I left a polite note saying that it was nice to reconnect with him after my dad's death, but that as the target of orchestrated campaigns of violence and attempts to strip me of civil rights on the part of the Republican party, I didn't want to see this in my feed. Then I unfriended him.

I miss my dad so much. I wish I could talk to him about some of the stuff going on my life. And now it looks like Miriam's dad's health is in question. He's in his 80s, and is scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy because of the possibility of cancer. How could we deal with the loss of her father on top of everything else that's been happening?

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

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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 have a bunch to say about watching Our Flag Means Death with friends in a meta sense and in the context of my social and mental-health life at the moment. But here I'm going to talk about just one piece of the show itself and my feelings and how it got to me with some unexpected and profound transgender validation.

( A spoiler follows, I think? )

Today is the first news I've had of someone I have a personal connection to dying of Covid-19 complications. A close friend of close friends who I'd met several times. I don't know what to say. I hope it is the last as well, but I doubt that it will be.

My doctor friend who I frequently chat with at work had a copy of The Illustrated Man yesterday, and we ended up talking about Ray Bradbury for a while. I gushed about his writing style and how much I loved his work. The doctor, who is Ukrainian, was not very familiar with Bradbury, but is an inveterate book lover who is always buying classic texts for his own large collection, mostly on the topics of cognition and childhood development, though I've also pointed him at some books on electronics, infrastructure, and similar.

I told him that Fahrenheit 451 is basically written for people like him and he needs to read it ASAP. He told me about having a signed Bradbury book at home, and I told him how floored I was by having had the chance to handle some of Bradbury's typed correspondence while working at the archives at UWP; how amazing it was to hold these letters that Bradbury had personally typed on his typewriter and embellished with little doodles. The doctor said he'd bring his signed book for me to look at.

He handed it to me this morning and said "For you!" I froze and tried to make sure I understood correctly. Then I tried to say something and failed. I'm pretty sure that's the first time in my life I've been left literally speechless by a gift. I kept starting sentences that I couldn't find second words for. "Me? What? How....? Why? Really? Wow!"

So I have a signed copy of Quicker than the Eye now. The front dust jacket flap begins with this quotation:

"I have been accused of that capital crime which deserves capital punishment: I have committed optimism."

The world seems a little brighter today.

I'm feeling unusually positive and energetic this morning!

Nathan went clothes shopping with me at the Goodwill yesterday and I'm pretty sure it's the most I've spent on clothes at a thrift in one trip. He was invaluable for both help in picking things out and in holding my metaphorical hand as I tried articles and combinations out.

I have a big closet sort to do soon. Not only have I been just piling up my clean clothes on the floor (don't judge?), but a lot of the fem stuff I have in there doesn't work for me right now. It's time to put that all away and hang the new stuff where I can see it and figure out what I can wear.

Oh! I also found two more pairs of jeans, one of which I actively like. It's so nice to go to work in clothes I feel affection rather than meh-ness (that's a word, right?) for.

We picked up Danae and went for ramen afterward. Nathan had never had *good* ramen and I love sharing new experiences with people!

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Danae and I spent Saturday at Capricon, mostly playing board games with Anthony and a few other folks. I played a few new-to-me things I really liked, and saw other new things in the dealers' room I thought about buying. But we went out for dinner with Lisa and didn't get back until the room was closed. That might be just as well.

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Last but not least, my dad's potentially serious health problem I'd been worried about turned out to be not so serious after all. That's a relief!

My Ukrainian doctor friend gave me his translations of the spec sheets for my nixie tubes today and I just wanted to jump up and hug him; these are so great! I haven't found translations online for them, so I'm going to share his somewhere.

I figured that even without electronics knowledge, he'd have things in the ballpark and I could figure it out from there, and that's how it worked! He said that the phrase "half-wave rectification" in particular was tricky for him, so I drew a diagram and explained half-wave vs. full-wave rectification.

When I was a kid, I always thought it would be great to learn about this stuff, but somehow never thought I could.

Looking at maps today, I see that, while I don't have any parts from Ukraine, I do have some from two neighbors. My replacement VTVM tube came from Slovakia and my nixie tubes are coming from Moldova.

Random bits:

I got everything ready to take to the car last night and then packed it this morning. I can't find the bag or strap for one of my cameras; I have a feeling it's in one of the sealed garbage bags from the bedbug nastiness. I'll make do.

I meant to pump the tires on the car up to maximum since I haven't checked them in a while, but I forgot to. My bike pump usually lives in the car, but I took it out to make room. Should have left it in for a couple reasons, in retrospect. I'll probably buy a cheap little foot pump with a gauge at an auto store and that can live in the car.

I've had this feeling for a long time that my co-pay on my therapy visits ought to be lower and that they might be miscategorizing something. I looked thoroughly through the plan docs (could they make them any harder to find?) and the $40 per visit is correct. $160 per month is a lot of money for us, especially with Danae not getting a stipend this Summer, but it has been valuable for me.

I'm going to try to pick up some overtime after I'm back from my trip. I have two days of open-to-close coming (7:00 to 10:00), and I'm going to see about taking some people's weekends too. But that's for later.

For now, I'm just waiting 'till 3 o' clock so I can get on the road. I finished printing out instructions and maps and directions. Mostly I'll use the GPS, but for a few things that don't really have an address, dropping pins on Google Maps to get directions is a help. Even with that, it might be a challenge to find the nuclear blast site I want to visit near Parachute, Colorado. But that's part of the fun!

Mik, a friend who Danae originally met in California (if I recall correctly) has been staying at our place for the week as he travels. I haven't seen a whole lot of him since I leave before he gets up and I go to bed early, but we've played a couple of board/card games and had a nice time. And it's nice that Danae will have company for a couple of days at least after I leave.

The library at work is being torn up for renovations, and most of it is happening over the next week. The timing of my time off is coincidental, but I will not be at all sad about missing dust and loud noise.

In one unfortunate evening, I was reminded (inadvertently and without ill will) of my failure to complete my master's program, of my failure at pursing a career in academia, of my failure to look at Trump supporters from an anthropological perspective to try to understand them, of the ways that the political and social situation in my country has turned to utter shit, of the fact that I will likely never in my life be in a position to freely travel the country for extended lengths of time while other people take doing so for granted, and of the fact that I have never had the kind of social and romantic/sexual life that seemingly all my friends and partners have had and that I still have no real expectation that I ever will.

I got home. I felt anger and frustration and self-medicated with food and lied down on the couch and cried against Danae for a while and went to bed.

But today is a new day, right? Ad astra per aspera.

Having just taken my morning medicine, the remaining pills suggest that I did not take any of my medicine yesterday. I didn't feel any withdrawal from the Escitalopram (Lexapro), nor was I feeling unusually depressed or anxious, but perhaps that's why I was feeling kind of introverty. Maybe the good stuff the rest of the weekend, and my better mood in general, kept things from being worse.

I went to Custer Street Fair with N, our former housemate, on Saturday. It's a street fair that covers a couple of blocks with the typical food and goods. One branch was a sort of Ren Fair Row of vendors whose work I've seen at Bristol Faire. I bought a metal hair spiral from one of them. I'd somehow never realized how uncomplicated those are to put in or that they stay in on their own. I was hesitant to spend $25, but it matches the colors in my hair nicely and I think I will end up wearing it quite a lot. In fact, I wore it, with my hair in a half-tail, to brunch with Danae on Sunday. (That was the first time we'd been out for brunch in a long time and the experience made me happy; her schedule usually has her sleeping in later than that.)

I also ate a (small) bucket of poutine from a stand that sells fries, poutine, or nachos by the bucket. Dessert (if ice cream at one in the afternoon counts as dessert) was an "ultimate" cone consisting of vanilla and chocolate twist soft-serve dipped in chocolate shell and tons of sprinkles and deposited in a waffle cone. It was *so* good.

Today, there's a launch of some kind of rebranding campaign at work. There was free breakfast, and there will be free lunch as well as a visit from miniature horses. Swag at breakfast included some buttons, and a deck of playing cards with facts about the company. I impressed a coworker by showing her the skills I picked up through time wasted at Magic: the Gathering, shuffling the deck in the air both upside down and with card bottoms facing out and away from me. One of many thoroughly useless skills I possess.

I got a flat tire about a mile from work this morning and had to walk my bike the rest of the way. I made it on time, albeit ten or fifteen minutes behind my usual time. I'll take it home by train and patch the tube, and replace the handlebar grips while I'm at it. The ones it has have long-since been worn smooth and are coming apart so I bought new ones when I was last at the shop.