540: In another hour...
--I will be twenty-one years old.
Somehow, I feel like this is more a mark of me coming of age; 18 just sort of happened. I still had a year and a half of high school, and prospects of the future were totally up in the air.
Three years later--everything has changed. Utterly. And not just in my life. Not only do people become estranged--classmates lose contact, fathers leave wives, people travel back and forth, go to school, become different people.
It just gets me thinking about how much I've changed since that 18 year old kid... not that I'm not still very much a kid. But I'm a more well-adapted kid now, I think, actually starting to get all the experiences and relative stability I so desperately craved and needed back then. I have cute clothes, more solid friends, a much more stable school career... and distance from my family. Money issues are much improved. Future prospects look bright, and totally up to whatever I want to make of them.
And I... I'm less socially retarded. I can hold down multiple jobs, at least at school. I'm, technically, a published writer. Things I've written have even stirred up emotions, or been ignored, or positively commented upon, won prizes, been criticized and dismissed. Even if it's only student newspaper, it still means the world to me.
The collection, then little more than a dream and a glimmer in my eye, is mostly real. I am a poet of, in my mind, the highest sense.
I still read Jane Kenyon. But I've added Edna St. Vincent Millay to my arsenal.
I've outgrown Neurotically Yours and Foamy... cmpriest has released many more books since then, most of which I've read or am about to read.
Garth Nix is almost (finally) done with The Keys to the Kingdom, my favorite series.
I've actually had some consumated sexual experiences, and some glimmers of actual relationships. Nothing solid thus far, but enough to tell wild stories about.
I've worked at fulfilling the first musical dream--not really there yet, but am struggling to get there, and the fire still burns.
I've also become things I never imagined before--like tranny fierce. I think it was around 18 that people started complimenting me on being unafraid to be myself. I was confused by this--until I realized that I had consciously actually been trying to act girly. But also loud and funny. I've cut back on the latter (want more calmness), but the former has developed into what was always a latent transexuality.
I still don't know how far I will go down this road... when people give me odd looks (even though it's never more than once, check, then move forward), it still makes me want to slip back into something more masculine. But at the same time, I keep my head high and I clack those heels. There's still that combination of crumbling shame and fiery pride in me. I am still very much both my mother's daughter and my aunt's nephew and my sister's br... sister.
Do I even want that? Do I want to become totally female? Is there some way to combine both genders--or is that even me? I really don't know yet--I guess i"m experimenting.
This past semester I experimented in things I never thought I would (this tranny fierce thing included); and I blame and thank Laura, my Lesbian Husband. She even got me to try cigarettes, something I swore I would never do from near-infancy. I tried it, it tasted bad, but I liked watching the smoke go in and out of my mouth. I like the hookah better for that though...
But tried alcohol and liked it in mixed drinks, so I'll definitely be continuing with that for the foreseeable future. The one thing I want to avoid is becoming addicted to anything, y'know? So I'm trying to tread carefully...
In a sense, I've been finally living these past three years. Before that... most of my adolescene was like walking dead, believe me. I was not a pretty sight--I was a total wreck. And these past three years I've been building myself up from the bottom-up.
Not all the way there yet... but getting there.
Somehow, I feel like this is more a mark of me coming of age; 18 just sort of happened. I still had a year and a half of high school, and prospects of the future were totally up in the air.
Three years later--everything has changed. Utterly. And not just in my life. Not only do people become estranged--classmates lose contact, fathers leave wives, people travel back and forth, go to school, become different people.
It just gets me thinking about how much I've changed since that 18 year old kid... not that I'm not still very much a kid. But I'm a more well-adapted kid now, I think, actually starting to get all the experiences and relative stability I so desperately craved and needed back then. I have cute clothes, more solid friends, a much more stable school career... and distance from my family. Money issues are much improved. Future prospects look bright, and totally up to whatever I want to make of them.
And I... I'm less socially retarded. I can hold down multiple jobs, at least at school. I'm, technically, a published writer. Things I've written have even stirred up emotions, or been ignored, or positively commented upon, won prizes, been criticized and dismissed. Even if it's only student newspaper, it still means the world to me.
The collection, then little more than a dream and a glimmer in my eye, is mostly real. I am a poet of, in my mind, the highest sense.
I still read Jane Kenyon. But I've added Edna St. Vincent Millay to my arsenal.
I've outgrown Neurotically Yours and Foamy... cmpriest has released many more books since then, most of which I've read or am about to read.
Garth Nix is almost (finally) done with The Keys to the Kingdom, my favorite series.
I've actually had some consumated sexual experiences, and some glimmers of actual relationships. Nothing solid thus far, but enough to tell wild stories about.
I've worked at fulfilling the first musical dream--not really there yet, but am struggling to get there, and the fire still burns.
I've also become things I never imagined before--like tranny fierce. I think it was around 18 that people started complimenting me on being unafraid to be myself. I was confused by this--until I realized that I had consciously actually been trying to act girly. But also loud and funny. I've cut back on the latter (want more calmness), but the former has developed into what was always a latent transexuality.
I still don't know how far I will go down this road... when people give me odd looks (even though it's never more than once, check, then move forward), it still makes me want to slip back into something more masculine. But at the same time, I keep my head high and I clack those heels. There's still that combination of crumbling shame and fiery pride in me. I am still very much both my mother's daughter and my aunt's nephew and my sister's br... sister.
Do I even want that? Do I want to become totally female? Is there some way to combine both genders--or is that even me? I really don't know yet--I guess i"m experimenting.
This past semester I experimented in things I never thought I would (this tranny fierce thing included); and I blame and thank Laura, my Lesbian Husband. She even got me to try cigarettes, something I swore I would never do from near-infancy. I tried it, it tasted bad, but I liked watching the smoke go in and out of my mouth. I like the hookah better for that though...
But tried alcohol and liked it in mixed drinks, so I'll definitely be continuing with that for the foreseeable future. The one thing I want to avoid is becoming addicted to anything, y'know? So I'm trying to tread carefully...
In a sense, I've been finally living these past three years. Before that... most of my adolescene was like walking dead, believe me. I was not a pretty sight--I was a total wreck. And these past three years I've been building myself up from the bottom-up.
Not all the way there yet... but getting there.