It's Anxiety Attack Monday
So to celebrate finishing the first week of OBloPoMo, I will have an anxiety attack and crawl under my shell.
I'm not sure why I'm a wreck, actually. The apartment was freezing when I got up, and that physical discomfort, that feeling of exposure, somehow seeped through me and became my emotional, psychological state as well. In other words, a day when I wanted to stay in bed under my blanket.
Today I planned to start writing about sex, so that may be it. Or just a growing conviction that I'm doing the whole Livejournal thing wrong. A growing conviction that I'm doing everything wrong.
Thursday night I got home from two days in the city, and I've been in male mode since. The two days were only supposed to be one day. I took the train down the Hudson early Wednesday evening to go to my support group. Afterwards I hung out in the diner and then in the bar, dancing to the jukebox with a bunch of other transwomen. The next day, Thursday, I had an appointment at Callen-Lorde and had promised Alison Grillo I would come to her show at a comedy club. I meant to take the train back that night, and come down again the next day, but when Alison offered to let me crash at her place that made a lot more sense.
Thursday I wrote my post, "A Place at the Cool Table," in a spiral notebook at a Starbuck's on First Avenue and typed it into LJ through Alison's computer. Wandering around Manhattan in female mode for two days got weird. On the way to the club, Alison and I stopped for a slice of pizza, and a ciswoman waiting for an order couldn't stop staring at me. Strangely, that didn't bother me. Then, the club was nearly empty, fewer than twenty people, so there was no hiding from comedians working the room. Inevitably one schmuck with a mike got around to me. He pointed at me and said, "What's up with all that hair?"
"I'm supposed to be a girl," I said. "I'm changing my sex."
He mumbled something about how that was okay and stumbled back into his act.
That didn't bother me either.
The weirdest thing is, I was becoming more female in my own mind. It came out in my voice and my body language, or so it seemed to me. Riding the subway, my reflection in the window, pale and blurry, looked like a woman. I began to like what I saw.
So maybe the present bummer is compensation -- punishment, really -- inflicted on me by my psychic economy, the bust following a boom. Whatever it is, I ended up writing a post in spite of it, so, anyway, I'm hopeful.
I'm not sure why I'm a wreck, actually. The apartment was freezing when I got up, and that physical discomfort, that feeling of exposure, somehow seeped through me and became my emotional, psychological state as well. In other words, a day when I wanted to stay in bed under my blanket.
Today I planned to start writing about sex, so that may be it. Or just a growing conviction that I'm doing the whole Livejournal thing wrong. A growing conviction that I'm doing everything wrong.
Thursday night I got home from two days in the city, and I've been in male mode since. The two days were only supposed to be one day. I took the train down the Hudson early Wednesday evening to go to my support group. Afterwards I hung out in the diner and then in the bar, dancing to the jukebox with a bunch of other transwomen. The next day, Thursday, I had an appointment at Callen-Lorde and had promised Alison Grillo I would come to her show at a comedy club. I meant to take the train back that night, and come down again the next day, but when Alison offered to let me crash at her place that made a lot more sense.
Thursday I wrote my post, "A Place at the Cool Table," in a spiral notebook at a Starbuck's on First Avenue and typed it into LJ through Alison's computer. Wandering around Manhattan in female mode for two days got weird. On the way to the club, Alison and I stopped for a slice of pizza, and a ciswoman waiting for an order couldn't stop staring at me. Strangely, that didn't bother me. Then, the club was nearly empty, fewer than twenty people, so there was no hiding from comedians working the room. Inevitably one schmuck with a mike got around to me. He pointed at me and said, "What's up with all that hair?"
"I'm supposed to be a girl," I said. "I'm changing my sex."
He mumbled something about how that was okay and stumbled back into his act.
That didn't bother me either.
The weirdest thing is, I was becoming more female in my own mind. It came out in my voice and my body language, or so it seemed to me. Riding the subway, my reflection in the window, pale and blurry, looked like a woman. I began to like what I saw.
So maybe the present bummer is compensation -- punishment, really -- inflicted on me by my psychic economy, the bust following a boom. Whatever it is, I ended up writing a post in spite of it, so, anyway, I'm hopeful.