MeghanIsMe

After getting home from a bike ride yesterday, I blocked three people who left a laugh react on Facebook to a picture of me I posted publicly some time ago: one of me shortly after getting my hair done at the salon. I changed it to friends only, but I suppose my picture is probably out there getting passed around somewhere anyway. It's the second time something like this has happened, and I don't really have strong feelings about it that I'm conscious of. But I suspect they may be there anyway.

On one of my rides to the lake, I was passed by two women in jerseys riding together and it made me think of watching Long Riders! and what it would be like to have friends and/or partners to ride with. It made me feel lonely, though the ride was really nice.

Speaking of Long Riders!, Miriam jokes that watching the show was a bad influence on me, and she may have a point. I have discovered a group that organizes brevet rides in Saskatchewan and I want to do one next year. Brevets are a sort of combination race/touring bicycling event. There's a set route and checkpoints, and you have a set amount of time to finish in, but it's explicitly non-competitive.

The shortest ones are 200k with a route from Regina to Fort Qu'appelle, to Southey, to Regina and they have a 13.5 hour time limit. I'm going to aim for one or more of them after the winter. I used to be in physical shape good enough that that distance felt approachable, and I'd like to get there again.

(In case you're curious, the longest ones are 1000km and you have 75 hours to finish.)

And I found a stepstool in the dumpster a couple days ago, so my days of standing on stacked up paint cans or rolling chairs are over! For now anyway...

After weeks of anticipation, excitement, and daydreaming about outfits and jewelry and hair, I decided going to the movie night yesterday was not an acceptable risk and I stayed home. This has been at the center of my current depressive episode because it feels like a snapshot of my upcoming life, and that life is pretty lonely.

As I've transitioned and found so much joy in becoming who I am, one of the limits to that joy has been the inability to go out into the world and occupy social spaces as myself. Three (four?) years ago, I had a boyfriend I could drive to see and, through him, a slowly expanding social group who contributed to my happiness and confidence. I was going dancing in a skirt and heels and having an amazing time. I still hadn't realized I was trans (how big a clue did I need?!), but I was feeling good about who I was and was slowly doing more public things looking fem.

I lost that while I was in Europe during Covid for two years. I'd fantasized about moving to the Netherlands and just going all out fem from day one, but I didn't. I couldn't. I never dressed fem there, and I ended up dealing with growing social anxiety until just walking to a local store to go shopping was often too much.

After moving to SK, I connected with local community in the form of a trans support group. I was too scared to reach out to them on my own, but Miriam helped, as did a long conversation she arranged with the group organizer (They may be reading this: that meant so much to me!). I had a taste of being social, attending the weekly online group, meeting up with some of them to march in the pride parade, and going to a few outdoor meetups in parks. It was filling an enormous void in my life.

I was feeling together enough, and connected to what I wanted enough, that I even decided a couple months ago to create a dating profile on OKCupid. My dating experience is quite limited, and the prospect of actively seeking datemates has always been confusing and scary. Of the relationships I've been in, just one began because I recognized and acted on an attraction, and that was with someone I'd already known for most of ten years. But dating as a woman feels to me like it could be different for a lot of reasons, and I got my courage together and took the first step.

Then the fire happened, and two months kind of fragmented into chaos. Life finally feels sort of stable again and I want so badly to keep growing as myself, to keep having new experiences in a social role I fit better in, and to keep meeting people and having friends.

But now the warm weather is gone, and all of that promise with it. I don't know when I'm going to have health coverage, and Covid could put me in the hospital at my expense. And that's not even addressing the potential long-term disability of long Covid. We've been living through one of the biggest mass disabling events in history and largely ignoring that aspect of it. It could be well into next year by the time I have coverage, and until then I'm already engaging in risk by going to grocery stores or getting laser on my face once a month. It's hard to justify adding more on top of that. It's hard to even justify the laser to myself because I tend to undervalue my own needs and mental health.

The fact that nearly no one is masking around here makes it so much worse. If vaccinations and masking were mandatory, or if the majority of people would just do those things out of care for more vulnerable people in society, the rate of spread would be *so* much lower. But they don't, and it's not. It adds so much risk to everything, because I have to assume that everyone is frequently in high risk situations and act accordingly. Even our doctor (our former doctor that is: I'm never seeing him again if I can help it) is refusing to mask *in his office*. An office that has signs on the doors saying that masks are required.

One of the big sources of depression this has brought up is that my boyfriend is going to be in Toronto in March and has suggested I come to share a room at the convention he'll be at. I haven't seen him in 3 years, and I miss him *so* much. But if a movie night with a handful of people wearing masks is too dangerous, I can't possibly justify being in a hotel full of people who aren't even masking. I'm so tired of being away from the people I care about, and so tired of being lonely.

I hurt, and Miriam helps a lot, but I just have to live with it and hope things get better.

My dad called me on Skype from his phone with a bunch of people around for my brother's birthday. But the connection wasn't very good; video was freezing and audio was breaking up sometimes. I got to be part of singing happy birthday, but it wasn't really possible to be telepresent and participate in the conversation around the table. I feel far away and lonely in a way that I haven't experienced here yet.

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I had a good day out. I took a twenty mile ride along Genessee Street and then along the trail through Old Erie Canal Park. It's six miles to the trailhead, and then the trail goes for thirty six miles, ending near the town of Rome. One of these days I might ride the whole thing. If school allows me to get away for a full day of riding.