Tina's not-so-secret diary 📓🔓

[15:08] The guy across the carpark is a Trump supporter. He's the worst kind, too—not the loud, blatant, obnoxious kind with a huge pickup truck emblazoned with "molon labe" and confederate flags and shit, but the quiet kind who blends into the carpeting. When he left the carpark just now, his car stereo was playing talk radio. I almost would have preferred it if this painfully white guy who stands outside and drinks a beer and smokes a cigarette like Mr. Anderson from Beavis & Butt-Head was blaring, like, Eminem or something. The sheer number of guns this man owns is enough to stagger the imagination. I know the type because I almost became one—he's going to watch and wait. "Stand back and stand by" Trump said. Well, this guy is doing that. Whatever the outcome of the election, he's going to play Secret Agent Man and take one of his guns and go hunting. If Trump gets elected, he's going to hunt for queers and Jews. If Harris gets elected, he's going after liberals and Brown people. The worst part is, we've all got at least 1 person like this within a 1-block radius of us; some self-righteous white dude with a large scoped firearm and a messianic complex.

I'm afraid, Spuds. He's seen me wearing my crop-top and my side ponytail. Assuming he doesn't decide the people in #5 are illegal immigrants, I'm most likely going to be his first target. All I can do is sit here and hope he decides to brandish a pistol instead of his license and registration when his car gets pulled over for having a taillamp out.

I've never been afraid for my life before. 0/10, wouldn't recommend.

[06:49] I ACCIDENTALLY FOUND OUT WHAT CUTE-GIRL-FROM-JURY-SELECTION'S NAME IS. I WENT TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WITH HER. I CANT GET TO THE STORE WHERE SHE WORKS BECAUSE MY CARS A PIECE OF SHIT. SHES A TRANSFEM JEW JUST LIKE ME OH GOD SEND HELP 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷

[15:56] I can hear people exercising their 2nd Amendment rights at the firing range down the road. I can't help but think that more than one of those people is treating this session as insurrection training. Even so, I don't believe anyone will actually attempt to overthrow the government again, because if January 6 proved nothing else, it demonstrated that Trump's hardline supporters are too few in number, too squeamish to travel with their assault weapons, and too poorly organised to actually mount an effective insurrection. Besides that, Trump has zero military support. You kinda need to be backed by at least 1 garrison in order to launch a coup d'êtat. All he has are some backwater right-leaning anarchists with toolshed arsenals who either can't afford to travel or are too scared to take their weapons across state lines.

[02:05] Something that never fails to give me gender- and body-euphoria is looking through transgirls' NSFW sideblogs on Tumblr. Believe it or not, there are still quite a few there (which I am NOT going to point a rangefinder at). They're all either big girls like me or they're thin girls who blog about how warm and cuddly fat girls are. Yeah, there's some fetish stuff going on, but, like, who cares if fat girls turn them on? What am I, the Heritage Foundation? Plus, being trans, they all tend to recognise that fat trans girls are important representation beyond just being sex objects. For instance, "trans tummy tuesday"; this user's original motives for starting that trend were probably sex-related, but when girls like me happen across it, we don't feel objectified, we feel affirmed. It makes us feel valid, it makes us feel wanted, and yes it even makes us feel sexy. Feeling attractive is incredibly important for self-esteem, no matter who you are. Obviously, skinny blonde girls with perky boobs need to feel attractive, too, but it's easier for them because there's so much "skinny blonde girl with perky boobs" representation in really all walks of life. You turn on the cable news, skinny blonde girl. You turn on the streaming service, skinny blonde girl. You watch the weather report, skinny blonde girl. I'm not conventionally attractive, so I really love seeing girls with my body-type show up on blogs from my top-secret Notepad file; even with my particular kinks, it's pretty rare.

[23:35] I overheard "Rachel" crying to her friend about her baby being taken away by a caseworker. This was about 10 minutes ago I heard their conversation. They were trying to be quiet, but like, they were standing under my window. Anyway, it turns out that she's my exact age and it made me realise something about the perception of time and of one's environment. The old philosophers call this "relativism", insofar as the impact of everything is relative to the one experiencing it. Taking it for granted for the moment that I and everyone else on the planet not only ontologically exist but that we all exist as separate entities, my experiences differ from "Rachel's" substantially. She said something about being in juvenile hall, where the worst thing I did from my ages of 13-18 was not go to school for about 2 weeks straight in senior year of high school. Yes, I have regrets; yes, I can think of things I wish I'd done different. Everyone does. But, my experiences do not require the intervention of the corporate feudal state. When I hear the sound of kids playing in the backyard over there across the alley, I do not experience the same kind of regret as "Rachel" does. When I'm depressed and I look back on all the places I failed, I see different failures than she does. Failure is relative. If she and I were to switch lives for a day, we would probably think that each other's lives are pretty good actually. She would inhabit the existence of someone who never had kids and is, therefore, not tethered to anything. I would exist as someone who has actually lived, instead of just existing. It always seems to come back to that, doesn't it? I just "exist", while other people "live".

[17:40] Oh my sports bra actually makes my boobs look bigger doesnt it? That's kinda the OPPOSITE of what i originally needed it for. Fortunately that obligation is WAY OVER and it doesnt matter now. Bring on the bazongas, thats what i say 🧙‍🏻‍‍♂‍️

[17:51] Incidentally my boobs itch like no one's business and my nipples havent been flat for hours now.

[17:23] I had a depressing dream this morning. I dreamt that I was walking around downtown and I met a girl I identified variously as a co-worker from the engraving shop, the girl I had a crush on in college, my cousin, and my neighbour. Whatever she was, we ended up walking to the same coffeeshop, which was crowded beyond belief and she ended up talking to some people about how similar this place was to somewhere her husband liked to go. That was the depressing bit, in that I wanted her to like me, but by the time we got to the coffeeshop it turned out she was married. The shop closed before I could even join the queue.

When I woke up I had to remind myself that absolutely nothing I just experienced had happened and the people involved did not exist. Nonetheless, I felt trapped, not in the way a caged animal might feel, but more in the way that I can't go where I want to go because my car is broken and I haven't been able to ride my bike since 2019. This is exactly how my depression likes to undermine my good moods, sneaking in whilst I'm asleep and showing me things I can never have. But, I'm different now. Since my oestradiol started giving me mood swings, I had to learn how to identify things that were genuine problems and what were just hormonal illusions. This is how I was able to prevent an otherwise demoralising dream ruining my day. I'm proud of myself for being able to do this so easily! I hope I can keep it up.

[02:15] I had the best bagel of my life for breakfast. I usually have bagels and smoked salmon for special events, like rosh hashana, birthdays, hanukkah, that sort of thing. this time, the only thing i was celebrating was the fact this huge portion of smoked salmon from the fish counter at the store was marked down about 400% because they needed to shift it before it went off. The only thing that could have made the bagel any better was if they'd used an actual wood fire to smoke the salmon, but i'm sure not complaining! I also got myself some razors and shave lotion to replace my old electric shaver. Now that i'm a girl, I would very much like not to have any visible hair on my face, thank you! Anyway, this way is SO MUCH BETTER—it's SUCH a closer shave than my Norelco. Plus, now i have the excuse I need to actually clean my sink for a change. I'm sure i'll get over the fear of accidentally cutting myself after a week or two. Now with my clean-shaven face I can wear my comfy femme outfit and not get impostor syndrome, so that's nice too.

[17:20] I'm feeling really good right now. Like, better than I've felt in years. I've got energy, I'm happy, I'm absolutely flying down and up the stairs every hour, I'm wearing my favourite headband, my favourite lipstick, and I've got a bologna sandwich even. I hope I'm finally over that "give-and-take" happiness apportionment I'd been forcing myself into and this is the new era of inner peace I've been trying to create since 2019. I feel so satisfied with life and I'm at peace with myself and my surroundings for the first time in... well... ever.

[12:37] In case I was ever going to doubt that my boobs are still growing, all I have to do is look at the cute little stretchmarks radiating out from my areolae and down from my armpits. Nothin' to worry about.

[13:13] No, Tina! Stop looking out the window and prying into other people's lives! Who cares whether the girl across the carpark is pregnant or not? That's HER business, not YOURS. I'm sorry to bring this up, girl, but just because YOU didn't have a baby when you were 20 doesn't mean that other people won't either. Like, why is there always this give-and-take with you these days, huh? Your boobs are bigger, you were happy; 12 minutes later, you see someone younger and more conventionally attractive than you potentially being happy, you get depressed.

You are you, you aren't anyone else, and you're never going to be anyone else, Tina, so just concentrate! Okay? I love you.

[13:44] Feeling ruebenesque as all fuck right now. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror after my shower earlier and 😍 all those morning strolls and stair runs I've been doing gave me some serious jogger thighs! I had to draw Fenna this way, I just HAD to.

The quality's a bit shite because I used my 3DS instead of my scanner. I'll finish this in MS Paint sometime when I'm using Windows 7 again, I'll also give her clothes before then. That's the reason she doesn't have any areolae or pubes here; they're a pain to erase and I want to put clothes on her. And... fuck, I forgot to draw her tail. OF COURSE I forgot her tail. I always forget it.

[14:23] Incidentally, Fenna up there has the most proportionally-accurate representation of my own body shape since "I Need All The Help I Can Get", which is a bit more cartoony than this (though I was a bit generous with her hips here. Sadly, mine are not that wide 😭)

[11:13] First, a quote from my great-granddad:

"Jealousy isn't a sin by itself; it's what jealousy does to your sense of gratitude."

For someone who insisted he wasn't Jewish, he sure had a Jewish worldview. I don't remember him much, but mum insists upon remembering this thing he said. I'm grateful for it today. It's Rosh Hashana 5785, and we moved into my current flat on Shavuot 5767. That means I've been living here for 18 years. It's incredibly easy for me to look at my current situation and say, "everything changes; well, I don't change, but everything else does", which I've done on a few occasions. But, a person's home is not their entire life. I have changed. I've grown, I've changed my teenage worldview, I've even changed from a man to a woman. It's also incredibly easy to look at my entire graduating class and think how they're all scattered around the country and even the world, succeeding and thriving as functional members of society while I continue to sit at my computer in this flat and type as I have for the past 18 years, unending, without change. ANd, sure, some of them are productive members of society. At least one of them is a published author with a Wikipedia article. Another one is a personal-injury attorney in [PLACENAME]. Two are realtors in [REDACTED]. But, I keep thinking about "Rachel" from a few days ago, and how the state keeps taking her kids away from her. She probably looks at her graduating class and thinks the same thing; that they're all functional human beings with children and families, making loads of money as podiatrists or whatever.

Putting myself into "Rachel's" shoes makes it easier to put myself into the shoes of the so-called "successful" members of my generation. Around here, success is a subscription service with an astronomical monthly payment. Success requires veritable mountains of debt from student loans, home loans, credit cards, and failed tech investments. I know this from firsthand knowledge, working for the welfare office. I saw applications from people who went from bougie, to prole, to one late rent cheque away from being homeless. Some of those names I even recognised from elementary school.

Yes, I've lived in my current flat for a long time, but that just means I have security. My landlord knows if I go over the rent by a day, I'm good for it. My flat has never been broken into, only one car has ever been stolen around here, and it was parked on the street. I have a reliable roof over my head, heat to warm me up in the winter, and air conditioning to cool me off in the summer. I'm secure here. Even though I might prefer being able to look back on living in 12 different flats in 8 different cities, I can only imagine that alternative-timeline me is worrying herself grey about where she's going to live in a week and how she's going to feed herself. Even though I might look outside at #2's big family and wish I had a family like that, I can only imagine that alternative-timeline me is not realising she is transgender, continuing to go through life with an inexplicable depression and constant sense of fear of something bad happening to her kids, and is dealing with so much debt and rising costs of everything from rent to baby formula that she has to work 3 jobs just to come up short at the end of the month.

Thanks, great-granddad. I've been jealous a lot lately, and I needed reminding that what I have is pretty good, actually.

[13:20] Notwithstanding, I wish I were more gregarious. There's this girl (well, more woman at this stage) in #3 who is just so friendly! To everyone. I have such a hard time talking to people, but she's always been friendly. I called her a "girl" because, A, I call myself a girl and I'm 33. And B, like I said before, I've lived here for 18 years. When she moved in with her mum and elder brother and sister, she was aged 10. She can just strike up a small-talky conversation like it's nothing, while I have to prepare for days ahead of time to attempt the same thing and fail anyway. I guess that's just AuDHD or whatever.

[09:03] Whilst I was watching Joy of Painting this morning, I fell asleep on the couch and had one of the most disturbing multi-level dreams I've ever had. Understand, dreams within dreams don't happen to me very often, and they're usually about dangerous or depressing shit that I'm trying to avoid thinking about. I'm not sure exactly what it was my brain was convinced I was ignoring, but it got translated into a dream about my old job and various other things. I dreamt I was late for my job at the after-school programme, but when i got there I realised i didn't know the door code and then I realised I hadn't worked there for years, but my car was working again so I decided to take the scenic route home through the grocery store's liquor section. When it looked like I was going to break an entire display of glassware, I "woke up" on the couch where my mum and her friend from the '90s were arranging bookcases out in the common corridor of my flat to make it feel more "formerly". I objected to several of my old Star Trek toys still being on the shelves because I was afraid someone would come along and steal them. As I was trying to take things off the shelves that I wanted to protect (which seemed incredibly important, like I was trying to hide the keys to the bomb), I heard a noise in the corridor on the other side of the fire door and declared, "Too late, no more time!" I dropped what I was doing and dashed back inside. 3 kids I used to know from high school, who seemed completely unfamiliar to me, came to make trouble, I can't recall what. I had to hold the door in place to prevent them breaking in. They paraded various temptations past the spyhole trying to get me to open the door, and at a few points I felt like they wanted to kill me. Outside on the street I could see the shadows of a party they were using to lure me out of my flat. I tried to tell my mum to call the police, but I kept flubbing the wording, as though I was 3 again and still learning how to string together words into sentences. I'm not sure what caused me to realise I was dreaming, but I "woke up" on the couch again and felt intense relief that it was over. Except, when I looked outside I found that they had installed an electrical grid on the ground that was zapping squirrels and rabbits and turning them into campfires. I asked my mum why she didn't call the police and realised this was still a dream. I "woke up" again and wondered how I could figure out if I was still dreaming or not, and realised the only way was to go out into the corridor and sacrifice myself. I put on my knit cap and my lanyard like I was preparing to leave, but I was having trouble getting my anti-camera plague mask to stick around my ears because my hair kept getting in the way. I finally woke up in real life, trying to keep my Super Mario throw on my face like a mask. I experienced the full spectrum of slasher film protag emotions over the course of about 2 hours. Anyway, this dream caused me to miss my morning stroll.

[13:36] In a first, I wasn't stressed out at the store. The store usually stresses me out. It's so loud, there's so many people, so many cameras, so many other things going on that i get overstimulated just getting into the car to drive there. The fact that there were only like 5 people there helped. Of course, one guy was wigging out about the siren test, shouting about "they're nuking us, they launched the nukes at us". I understand that this guy was probably equal parts doomsday-prepper and drunk, so I'm not going to judge him too harshly for his outburst. Everyone in that part of town is a doomsday-prepper; I imagine at least 10 men in that neighbourhood have paramilitary arsenals in their toolsheds and are just waiting for the opportunity to deploy some of that.