Tina's not-so-secret diary 📓🔓

[10:27] I don't know why but I have to try really hard not to be sad today. I'm pretty sure it's just the hormones, and usually if I feel like crying, then I let myself do it, because I spent so many years in stoic hell, pretending not to have feelings. But today, it's American Thanksgiving, right. If I let myself get sad today, then it'll ruin the day. I'll spend it all in a dark, cold void when I should be cooking things, lighting candles, listening to my SNESmas playlist, and watching Bob's Burgers and Charlie Brown. This is a time of warmth and joy, not of cold sorrow, and not because someone told me so. I'M telling me so. And, no, I'm not forgetting to say kaddish for the Pawnee tonight. I'm on their land, they have a place at my table.

[11:14] I don't fuck with Frutiger Aero. For a start, Adrian Frutiger had really nothing to do with it. Also, it was representative of a really bad time in my life. Basically 2009-2015. I graduated high school, had my timewarp shattered, flunked out of one community college and had my time wasted by another community college, and started coming face-to-face with my own sexuality. I had my Dad Brain turned on only to discover it was actually Mom Brain, I fell in love with a girl, then a guy, then another guy, then another girl, then I almost killed myself by accident and on purpose on at least 5 discrete occasions. I wrote the WORST poetry humankind has ever seen, made 147 fonts, and joined Tumblr. I decided I wanted to be a teacher, went back to the community college I flunked out of, had to jump through 50 new regulatory hoops because I'd failed and I couldn't be wasting their money anymore, had the highest grades I'd ever had in my entire history of school, and had my Pell grant declined because of what happened in 2010. As soon as I discovered new things that could bring me out of my depression, something new happened to send me right back down to the bottom again. Anyway, while Frutiger Aero is certainly preferable to the laminated stick-on design the corporate feudal state does now, it's still corporate feudal graphic design.

[11:25] I don't think my efforts to prevent being sad today are being very successful at the moment.

[12:56] I'm not your mother, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. But your late teens and early 20s is NOT the right time to get married. Weigh your options carefully, and if you have ANY doubt, do not continue. I'm not saying break up with your boyfriend, you can still be with him. You can still be his girlfriend, you can still have sex at the weekends and whatever, but please think A LOT about what you're about to do. Think hard. Don't let wedding plans, dress shopping, and looking like a Disney princess for 4 hours on some week in April cloud your judgement. Also, maybe you're pregnant right now and you feel it's your duty to marry the baby's father; that's the church and other patriarchal bits of society speaking. Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you have to drop everything you're doing and get married—Especially if you're Catholic. I have 2 cousins who are wine-and-liquor moms now because their orthodox families compelled them into marrying men they didn't love just because some guy in a silly hat said masturbation was a sin. I'm also not saying the old "your brain doesn't fully form until 24" thing. I'm just saying, think about your options. ALL your options. Don't leave something out just because you don't want to disappoint someone. If he really loves you, he'll understand when you say "I've thought about it and, actually, I love what we have right now." Life isn't a romcom—saying "yes" won't lead to "Happily Ever After", and saying "no" won't make the world explode. You're not just someone's token love-interest, you're a person with her own desires and aspirations. Now, if he dumps you and starts calling you his "crazy ex-girlfriend" just because you declined his proposal, that says volumes about him. That says you were absolutely right not to marry him. But, like I said, life isn't a romcom. He most likely will not do that. It may shock him a little bit, and he might leave for a while, but he'll be back with a newfound respect for your decision. When the time is right, you'll know it. Why am I saying all this? Because I love you and I don't want to see you get hurt.

[09:00] I frequently find myself saying "only" in reference to large spaces of time. "It was only 3 years ago" or "it was only 5 years ago" or my personal favourite "it was only 10 years ago". Well, i hate to break it to ya, Tee, but those are long, longer, and longest. It was "only" 3 years ago. 3 years ago was 2021; I was just starting to understand DAW music sequencing, I was making "EA Nasir" memes on Tumblr, and I couldn't remember how to write so much as a "Hello World" in HTML.
It was "only" 5 years ago. 5 years ago was 2019. Trump was still fucking shit up, COVID-19 was still working its way out of Wuhan, and I was working for the after-school programme.
It was "only" 10 years ago. Seriously? "Only" 10 years? That's a fucking decade! That's the longest space of time we have a word for in reference to human lifespans! What, are you gonna start saying "it was only a century ago"? 10 years ago was 2014. I was depressed as all fuck, convinced that the only use I could make of myself was as fertiliser, as I was slowly realising that Devo hadn't actually cured my depression, they only helped me cover it up a bit better by deflecting blame onto society. I was developing short-lived crushes on clerks at stores to the point I wouldn't even go inside and I made my mum do all my grocery shopping.
Whenever I want to think that "it was only" n years ago, I should think about that space of time relative to the kids at the after-school programme in 2019. A single year is an interminable amount of time for a kid looking forward, but a mere blink of the eyes for an adult looking back. From 2019, 3 years ago was enough for half the kids to be either babies or toddlers, 5 was before half of them were born, and 10 was before ANY of them were born. From 2024, 3 is the difference between elementary and middle school, 5 puts them into high school, and 10 puts them to adulthood, where hopefully they won't start saying "Oh, it was only 10 years ago."

[06:55] Neocities makes me feel seen without being perceived; I feel appreciated for the first time in my life. I know it's danger time when you say that about the internet, but I've had 3 websites and 4 blogs on 3 other hosts and none of them ever made me feel good about myself. The only people who ever went to my Tripod sites were my classmates and my computer applications teacher, no one ever went to my Blogger pages, and I'm just Ha-Ha-Funny Meme Girl on Tumblr. It feels like most of the people on Tumblr are just trying to turn it into another Encyclopedia Dramatica with enough radical leftism to be funny in a far-right society, and I felt like I was talking to myself in an empty room on Tripod and Blogger. But here, I can be assured that at least 150 people have been to my website and found it relevant enough to their interests to follow it.

[04:42] I hadn't thought about Alanna in a LONG time, but she came up while I was writing my SMB3 review. The only word we had to describe girls like her back then was "tomboy"; she hated dressing in girls' clothes, refused to play with dolls, had the largest collection of Crash Dummies I'd ever seen from someone who was not me, and I remember once, she was absent from daycare for a couple of days because she went to her aunt's wedding; when she came back, she was grouchy and talk-back-y beyond belief, and she told me it was because she had to wear a dress and lipstick at the wedding. I only wish my own transgender urges manifested so early. I'm convinced he's a man now. Oh, if only I didn't have to move away in 2000... oh well. That was a lifetime ago on another plane of existence.

[23:22] It's too quiet in here. There needs to be more noise. Keys tapping, coffeemaker percolating, dishwasher running, television show, playlist, SOMETHING needs to happen right now. Every time I try to think of something to do that would make noise, I get trapped in my thoughts and it gets quieter in here. There needs to be sound and it needs to happen right now and last for at least 4 hours. Something. ANYTHING. I feel like I'm trying to block out other sounds, but I can't figure out what they are. Yes, I can. That was a lie, I know exactly what I'm trying to block out.

[00:18] 6 days of feeling lonely. Didn't know what to do, made existential crisis scones. I figure I need to savour the last few months of relatively wholesome food ingredients before we all die of shigella, E. coli, and listeria.

[03:48] I've gone up and down the stairs at home every hour since 23:00. There might be some peripheral health benefit, but I don't care about that; I do it mostly to show myself that I'm not alone here. Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one within 100 miles, like if I were to die, it would take 20 years for anyone to notice. Going out into the corridor reminds me that I'm not alone. They all may be sequestered within their own apartments, but there's a veritable crowd of people surrounding me.

What do I seriously expect will happen by archiving that video about Elon Musk? What do I seriously expect will happen by sending email after email to my representatives, to the White House, to the attorney general, begging them to overturn Trump's election like some kind of fanatic? Honestly? Nothing. I have no expectation that anything will happen at all. Oh, in a fit of philanthropic zeal, I might have thought that some action would be taken, but I know nothing will happen. I know that Joe Biden will attempt in futility to set an example of peacefully transitioning power, considering how his own election certification went. But the people he hopes will see how meritorious he is acting don't exist. He will ignore the facts of the matter forever, believing himself to be acting Christly by turning unto them the other cheek. It'll have the same general effect as resigning in protest: just opening up the position to someone more corrupt. I don't like Joe Biden, I don't like Kamala Harris. I don't like the American political system. But, whatever Donald and Elon turn the political system into will be worse. But, I'm preaching to an empty hall. At this point, I'd have better luck begging for divine intervention.

There's nothing to do now but sit back and watch the regulations fall away, safety rules slacken until they disappear. Nothing to do but wait to die of listeria, get electrocuted on an exposed power line that never got put back up, or get crushed by a 35-high stack of packing cases because Prime Minister Elon Musk downsized every safety inspector in America at the same time. Nothing to do but wait for the internet to get smaller and smaller while the identity requirements get stricter and stricter until you need to provide your legal name, address, phone number, driver's license, and birth certificate just to access one of the 5 approved Wikipedia articles. Nothing to do but sit and watch myself detransition back into a man, just before I carve my own heart out with the butcher knife.

"We survived 1 Trump presidency, we can survive another one." No, you can't. Trust me, you won't be surviving this one. None of us will, queer or straight, male or female, Christian or Jew, white or not. This is the end.

[02:42] Whenever I'm alone with my thoughts, my mind tends to return to the Camino de Santiago. I've never been there, obviously, but I made the mistake of watching Rick Steves' show about it recently. The Camino Francés (the bit that starts in St-Jean Pied de Port) is about as long as Nebraska. I keep imagining being there, walking between towns, stopping every so often to take a picture or play my violin, and just being isolated in northern Spain. I don't speak a word of Spanish (cependant, ma française est suffisant), I wouldn't be able to get there anyway, and I'm not Catholic. I know that people other than Catholic penitents travel on the Camino, but I have a really hard time taking things out of context. I would be a Jew on a Catholic trail. I would pass hostelries for pilgrims, have people walk by carrying crucifixes, encounter people crossing themselves for one reason or another, and remember this trail is as much about propaganda as it is about introspection. I guess, it's not the trail itself that I'm interested in, so much as the escape. Escaping from web development, from computer software, from the corporate feudal state, from Donald Trump, from all the little things in my life that cause me so much pain. It's about the chance encounter with my own humanity; where I can drop the pretenses of "pro audio producer" and "web developer" and just be human for a change. It's about beef stew and country bread. A simpler existence to lapse into before I can face my complicated one again. If I fancied a long walk, I could just go south of here and take the MoPac Trail into Walton. I would probably collapse from exhaustion and die of starvation shortly thereafter, but long walks aren't hard. You just pick a direction and go. There's no real need to wait until the open country to have a long walk. It's not the trail, it's the escape. Despite my best efforts, I still want to escape.

[17:54] Sleep as it turns out was no escape from the crises of the day. I dreamt about places I hadn't been in decades, seeing them torn down by capitalists to build carparks and Starbuckses. Connecting bridges from places I once felt safe into giant commercial wastelands, while PA systems from unseen speakers played "Horst-Wessel-Lied" and banners glorifying AI art and hard work unfurled from every wall, the height of the Empire State Building. The much-talked-about Camino de Santiago, interrupted by a huge American military base, patrolled by UAVs and unseen snipers, while American police beat people to death for wearing the wrong colour. I hope this isn't a premonition. Back in high school, I used to believe I was a psychic, capable of receiving messages about the future. If it's true, if I am psychic and this was a premonition, it would suggest the United States is going to transmogrify into a massive, global Empire. I don't want to be alive to live in such a place, but I can't just assume this was a premonition and jump off a building. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, even with conventional observations about people's behaviour. For all I know, some weird Star Trek-type radiation belt will shoot through the solar system and cause the Sun to go nova. If it sounds like I'm justifying this to myself, that's because I am. I have enough to worry about, I have to start worrying about my dreams, too? What I need is a new mattress.

[23:29] I feel alone right now. Out of step, like I've got a foot in the grave. I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't feel old, necessarily, I just feel like I've lost track of something. I'm cold in a warm room, shivering under a blanket, not knowing if the sun will rise or not. I've tried to stay active this past week, despite things turning out the way they did, but it hasn't done anything but make me lonely. I don't know if I understand myself anymore; it's an unwelcome, if familiar, feeling. I wish I was 20 again, listening to Oh, No! It's Devo for the very first time, writing bad techno love songs in NoteWorthy Composer, and being the oldest registered user on Quotev. I wish I was 12 again, making stupid-looking walls and floors for The Sims, playing GameCube, and discovering the 1-7-6-5 chord progression on my Yamaha PSR290. I wish I was back in December of last year, rediscovering my love for Mario games on my newly-jailbroken 3DS. I wish I was back in October 9th, when I felt so good, so happy, so at peace with myself, I could think straight. Too many things happening now, not enough energy left to deal with anything; I have to convince myself to shave every couple of days or I'd have grown my beard back and killed myself by now. I guess I'm afraid. I don't want to be forced to detransition by a government run by people whose cares stop at the ends of their own noses; watching myself slowly but surely regain my square jaw, my thin lips, my facial hair, and the face of pure cynicism and jealousy looking back at me from behind my own eyes. But, at this point, I don't know what can stop it. I want to cry, but I can't.

[14:10] Sure, I'm scared and borderline suicidal right now. But, realistically, this is America: the most racist, sexist nation north of the equator. We were seriously expecting a Black woman would get elected president? No. We were seriously expecting gains in democrat representation, with all the gerrymandering the republicans spent the past 12 years doing? No. What has seriously changed from where we were yesterday? Nothing. America has been a fascist oligarchy at least since Kennedy. What got Nixon kicked out of office has been standard operating procedure since Reagan. Project 2025, while startlingly ambitious, is too broad to fully implement and enforce. And Trump, himself, is too old to see it through to the end, anyway. So, has the country changed dramatically? No. Am I probably going to end up withering away to nothing when Nebraska repeals the entire Medicaid programme? Yes. It comes down to the fact I'm not courageous enough to kill myself, I'm going to have to let the State kill me instead. "But what about all that stuff you just said?" Queers are easy targets. We're insects to these people. All they need to do is threaten the state governments with defunding if they don't dismantle Medicaid and they get rid of all trans people on HRT. Of course, we're all going to need to sit around and watch Trump seal the southern border and deport millions of legal immigrants to Mexico by the busload, whether they came from there or not, which will be demoralising, but that's by design as well, isn't it?

[20:33] For the first time in months, I looked into the mirror and I saw a man looking back at me. This is what's going to kill me when Trump wins. Not all at once, but little by little. Whatever good mood I may be able to conjure up will be instantly destroyed when I look at myself in a reflective surface. It's going to bleed me dry a drop at a time until there's nothing left but an empty shell. I can't live like that. I just can't.