Tina's not-so-secret diary 📓🔓

[04:11] I feel it's important to mention that, in the case of a nuclear attack on the United States, I have no intention of taking shelter or otherwise attempting to save myself from either a direct nuclear assault or fallout from a nearby explosion. I have no desire to live in a society ruled by paramilitary vigilantes with toolshed arsenals. They can have a grand ole time playing soldier like they've always wanted, but I refuse to co-exist with any of that.

[04:23] I'm more likely to be directly affected by a Chinese nuclear strike, because I live in my state's capital city, about 10 miles away from a major Air National Guard base and 50 miles from an Air Force base. I've gotta say... even though I've been pretty vocal in my hopes for a nuclear reset of society... now that it's actually a likely outcome, I can't say I like the anticipation all that much.

[01:10] Palindrome ass timestamp.
Everyone keeps telling me to "be patient". I'm sick of being patient. Being patient never got me a damn thing except jealousy and a stress headache. "Be patient" said all my elementary school teachers who could see i was on the brink of sunstroke with 15 kids ahead of me at the water fountain. "Be patient" said the university admissions department as they assured me my application was being considered while it had been shredded and burned 3 days ago. "Be patient" said the state welfare programme as it was taking 90 days to complete a 15-day long verification process before I could get food stamps as I started having to eat dry cereal because I hadn't been to the store in 3 months. "Be patient" said my gender specialist when I was concerned about my fat rearrangement going so slowly. "Be patient" said everyone I've ever met, well I 'm done with being patient. Days like this give me intense dysphoria and impostor syndrome. I feel like I'm not good enough for anyone. I'm not a good enough Jew, a good enough woman, a good enough person, a good enough programmer, composer, job-seeker, park-walker, take your pick, I'm not good enough. And now I hear that state governors are mobilising the National Guard to put down protests and silence dissent, and I realise that even I've been spreading the "be patient" rhetoric. "Be patient, wait for the money to run out, wait for Trump to die of old age, wait for the democratic process to replace everyone, wait for this, wait for that." I'm just like the social media user, riding an endorphin high from saying something cutting and having pages worth of people in the engagement numbers praising me for it. I've been told to be patient all my life, so now I'm returning the favour. "Be patient. Delay your agency in this and all other matters. Wait for others to take action." I don't know what I expect to do to control anything, but I know I have to. I need to get to the head of the queue, I need to expedite the paperwork, I need to switch on the macromastia chromosome, I need to have control over everything because I've spent so many years delaying action, the time to act was 5 years ago and I did nothing. Nobody did anything. "Be patient", and for what? For men in suits to finish shuffling papers between piles on their desks? For corruption to suddenly grow a conscience? For someone else to intercede on my behalf? The papers never stop, corruption is rampant, and no one cares whether I live or die. No more "be patient". Act now. How, I don't know, but I need to.

[02:12] Cried a lot yesterday. This was the first time I cried uncontrollably since I started the progesterone. So many things caused it that, when I look back on it, nothing caused it. My mum assumed I was crying about the sedan. Maybe I was. Maybe some part of me was sad about losing this car. I never bothered cleaning it out much, mostly because of my untreated, undiagnosed depression. As I was cleaning the car out, I was finding relics. 26 years' worth of number plates. The plates off my old-ass town car I drove in high school. Instruction booklets for long-lost cassette adapters and things, receipts, to-go cups, even a free ticket offer for the very first Pokemon movie that came in my Nintendo Power magazine. I started out pretty calm, but things got worse as time went on, and then I found my old pink, lavender, and purple striped glove. Only one of them. If only I had recognised my need to change genders back then, in 2013 when I got these gloves. It was the very first thing I ever bought that snubbed masculinity in all its forms. Now the store I bought them from went out of business 8 years ago and the other one is missing, quite possibly forever. It looked so shabby and deteriorated when I held it close and at arm's length with the trash grabber. It looked how I felt. Later I listened to a song one of my Neocities mutuals played on her guitar, I could feel the frustration and despair in her voice. My friend R is coping with being trans in Trump's america by listening to hardcore punk. The angriest, most political music ever made. It chafes against guitar girl's soft strumming and clear voice, and yet they elevate each other because both come from anger and despair. My music on the other hand all comes from a desire to escape, to live in a time other than this one, to be something other than what I am. My car is being towed tomorrow and I'm crying again.

[19:13] R isn't moving to [placename]. I feel responsible somehow. Like, I know she would have ended up moving somewhere anyway, regardless of anything I said. But it feels like I've been doing nothing but push her into situations, like I keep giving unsolicited advice as though I'm trying to turn her into some kind of performing animal.
Another transgender person was arrested for no reason other than he was transgender, I feel responsible for that too. I don't even know who he is and I've never even heard of the place he's from. I felt responsible for Marcy Rheintgen's arrest too, and Nex Benedict's death, and Leelah Alcorn's, I feel responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened to a transgender person because I wasn't there to protect them. Until their names appeared on the internet, I never knew they existed at all, but that's a stupid excuse.
I know i can't do anything about anything, even within my own hometown. What am I supposed to do about the ICE raid on the beef processing facility? How do I expect myself to be able to stop it? What am I supposed to do when a watchful old biddy calls the cops on a trans woman going into the women's restroom? What am I even supposed to do when it happens to me, too?
Forget it, I'm tired.

[14:44] i just went to the store dressed on the fem side of androgynous. The masc androgynous outfit i typically wear is at the bottom of my laundry hamper so i didn't really have a choice. I got a weird look from 1 beardo over by the deli, but otherwise nothing bad happened. Also, it wasn't like beardo was giving me a great long privacy-intruding glare, it was just a doubletake that was forgotten as soon as he could order his chicken fried steak. I'm not prepared to make any sweeping statements, but I feel like wholesale transphobia is more of a kayfabe that certain people keep to in order to have an online community rather than a raging epidemic. I need more evidence before i make any conclusions.

[13:58] On a tumblr page from my top secret Notepad file. I found a piece of anthro art with a dog boy between two wolf boys on the L-train called "safe spot" or something. Accidentally imagined dog boy getting one of the wolf boys pregnant. W+Kink unlocked+I need to wash my comforter now.

[18:05] As far back as high school, I made myself believe that everyone's motivations are the same, everyone can discover everything about everyone else by just looking at them and making biased supposition because, if I would do x thing for y reason, then everyone else would too. Well, here's how accurate that kind of profiling is— if I were to see a woman driving a car with a pink ribbon decal on it somewhere, I would assume that woman had breast cancer, and there was nothing anyone could tell me that would make me believe otherwise. Why? Because who else but a breast cancer survivor would have a pink ribbon decal on their car? In my mind, it's exactly the same as an armed-forces number plate; you neither want nor can get such a plate without proof that you were in the service. Thus, we enter a self-referential post hoc ergo propter hoc argument: you can't get a pink ribbon without having had breast cancer, therefore the ribbon itself proves the initial assumption. Well, as it happens, my new car does have a pink ribbon decal on it, because K had breast cancer. This other woman who is not me who gave me the car put the decal on it because she wanted everyone to know she survived breast cancer. However, if anyone who similarly believes they can profile people in this manner were to see me driving the car, they would unswayingly believe that I had breast cancer. So, yeah. You're not The Mentalist, you can't use your own confirmation biases to accurately predict things about people. Learn from my mistakes.

[04:35] Drive away, escape, it doesn't matter.
No one here to ask if I should go,
No one there to see me when I come
upon a turning point to drive or stop,
or fall into a ditch to clank and clatter.

Someone there? I heard a noise, I thought.
It's just the sound of my own voice again,
Bouncing off a deadly empty room.
The sound of silence takes my breath away,
the sound of sound just makes me want to rot.

The views of artificiality,
the voice of God arrives on woman's sigh.
A time for mourning or a time for joy?
To some, a blessing, but to most, a curse.
'Tis better if it be a malady.

I spend my days and nights and afternoons
absorbing it like water in a sponge,
pretending like it's doing any good,
pretending like it works to satisfy,
when all it does is open ancient wounds.

The news of someone's new reality,
not artificial in the least unless
she made it up to throw them off the trail.
The worst bit is, I'm so accustomed now
it passes by and leaves no quality.

I never told, so no one ever knew.
The acid from the pit of jealousy
had turned to pumice centuries ago.
I never even noticed 'til she said,
and things trudged on as they were wont to do.

Emotions glaze, you lose the will to heal
yourself and see the same happen to me.
You sally bravely forth until you fall,
not knowing what delivered you at last,
not looking down to see your blood congeal.

A night of crying will not change my worth.
I missed my chance upon another time,
I killed myself upon a blunted rhyme.
Your life's about to change while mine will end.
A growing garden left for you to tend,
Eternity for me beneath the earth.

(Please note: references to death here should be taken as metaphorical only.)