“I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you. I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you. If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred.” - Daniel Radcliffe
- - - - -
There once was a little girl who grew up desperately wanting to be a little boy.
It was “just a phase” when she took scissors to all the pink, feminine, clothing her mother used to buy.
It was “just a phase” when she decided she had to learn how to do boy things. Like pee standing up.
It was “just a phase” when she asked her father to call her Tom. (He thought it was short for tomboy. Yeah. no.)
It was “just a phase” when she got her period and felt suicidal.
It was “just a phase” when she realised that she preferred being a tomboy because it was as close as she could get to the real thing.
It was “just a phase” when she stopped buying women’s clothing.
It’s funny… out of all the things in the DSM-V that’ve I’ve been diagnosed with, gender dysphoria hasn’t been one of them.
My pronouns remain she/her.
My body remains as is.
My brain remains as is.
I’ve come to a kind of internal compromise in the war between my body and brain.
Had I known that being transgender was a real thing and not “in my head”, I might have pursued treatment and had my gender changed.
Now that I know that it’s OK to have my brain and body not match, I actually feel better. The dysphoria has actually lessened, just from knowing that I could actually get the penis I’ve always wanted. (Yeah, the one I was left in the Band Senior Wills, I think ‘96 or ‘97, doesn’t count.)
When I started fencing, I’d already studied gender reassignment and tossed around the “what ifs”...
And then I met Phil.
He had kids my age and we became fast friends. It was hard not to notice that he had longer nails, was growing out his hair, and spelled his name “Phyl”. He wore a female chest protector and had pronounced (but tiny) breasts. I kept my questions to myself. It was none of my business.
Until she made it mine.
She came out to me one night before we took the piste for a match.
I nodded, said “Cool”, shook her hand, and proceeded to win the match. When we were off to the side waiting for our next match, she told me she was surprised I was so calm about it. All I could say was that I knew. It was obvious to me. I was surprised she hadn’t said anything sooner.
Her wife had always known something was off, and it was’t until she died that he started to take how he felt into consideration. He realised that it was more than cross dressing, more than… well, just more.
She made me reconsider my options even more. Here was a biological male, 60 years old, and beginning to transition.
What a fucking inspiration.
Maybe, one day, I can be as brave as she is and finally live in the right body.
station of the cross :: lviv, ukraine :: november 2016
So… in Ukraine, for Easter, you say “Христос Воскрес!” - literally, Christ is risen.
Ukraine is full of religious icons, absolutely gorgeous ones, all over the place. In public! Oh, I was so scandalised by that.
Ukrainians - at least the ones I know - often have altars. My grandparents house had a Virgin Mary tucked in the corner. The relatives I met in Ukraine had one, too.
All that to say, I am not the least bit religious.
So, I find an inordinate amount of joy in the fact that wishing someone a Happy Easter in Ukrainian is basically a reference to a man I don’t believe ever existed, let alone rose from the dead.
I’ve been focused on what it means to be a Ukrainian more than usual lately… and it’s been weird.
Mostly because I wasn’t brought up as Ukrainian. My mother wasn’t having any of it, so I was only exposed when I was at my grandparents’ house. I have a lot of fuzzy memories… stuff that comes to the surface when it’s triggered by something: a news article, a blog post, a random word on a website. Sometimes, I remember things that surprise me and sometimes I wonder how I never put two and two together before.
Wow. I’m in a rambly mood tonight. Possibly, a wee bit manic. (Wanna know a secret? The tone of my writing changes. (I get very parenthetical.) I ramble.)
Back in 2013? 2014? I decided I needed to find myself. (The last time I think I said that in all seriousness was the time I’d told my father that I didn’t want a summer job… that I wanted to take the summer off to go find myself. We’d just thrown my mother into a hole in the ground and gotten served with a restraining order. I was trying to wrap my brain around all of it and being stuck working retail didn’t sound like a place I needed to be right then. Well, he grabbed a napkin and a pen. Drew a map of the house. Put a BIG FUCKING X in the kitchen and told me I was found. God, how I miss that man.)
Pyromania aside - the title, and the little bit I read before my mother’s ugliness was put out there for all the world to see, really resonated with me. If they hadn’t used my mother’s FUCKING WILL to prove a point, I might have read the rest of it. I might have found solace in it.
But… fire. Fire is good. Fire is cleansing.
Like a phoenix, I rose from the flames.
(Oh, shit, maybe I should take an Ativan and calm down a little bit. Nah, fuck it. If you can’t handle me now, you don’t deserve me later. Better living through science, amiright?)
Anyhoo… My father’s side of family appears to have sprung out of the ground in Nowhere, Maine. A town so small that it doesn’t even qualify for the Census. So that left the other side. HER side.
I’d shied away from everything and anything that reminded me of either my mother or my aunt, and then decided FUCK IT (and, oh, if you didn’t see that coming, I’m utterly disappointed in you.)
I decided to learn the language, re-learn the culture, discover myself.
I’d been a casual learner, Even when I went to Ukraine, I wasn’t anywhere near fluent despite all the lessons.
I’d kept up the lessons when we got back from Lviv, but then we moved to Florida and everything went arse over tits.
Now, at my temp job, I’m surrounded by Spanish speaking people. Instead of making me want to learn Spanish (God, I hate that language. I took Latin and French so I didn’t have to take Spanish.), I’ve been inspired to re-focus on Ukrainian.
And now, it’s fucking Easter.
The last time I spent Easter with a family member (Ukrainian or not), was the year we went to LL Bean to buy kayaks. A certain family member called me, yelled at me for not going to church like a good Ukie, and then asked me to come to Easter dinner. Blocking that phone number was one of the best things I ever did.
But, I digress.
Again.
A few months ago, I got a weird Facebook “call” from my youngest cousin. Shocked that she’d reach out to me, I assumed the worst. Nah. Nothing that exciting. But before I knew it I was FB friends with her, her sister, and my godfather’s daughter.
All of whom are the children of Ukrainians.
My cousins have been slaughtering the Ukrainian language lately in their excitement to celebrate the coming of the Easter Bunny. I fucking hate when Ukrainian is transliterated. I hate it more when it’s transliterated and spelt incorrectly. If you’re going to use the language, use it.
Fuck, half the time, they don’t even know they’re actually speaking fucking Polish.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Polish, mind. My grandparents spoke both interchangeably, but at least I can tell the difference between the two.
OK. Rant over. I’m going to go watch a stupid horror movie and continue reading this amazing Scorbus fan fic. It actually makes the events of Cursed Child almost acceptable. Like if this chick had written CC? Oh, it would have been a beautiful addition to the canon instead of the trainwreck the actual CC was…
It’s time for Battle of the Fandoms IV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(The battlecasts are the best part, tbh. Where else can you get quality commentary and awesome Facebook translations?)
This time I’m on Run Magic Run. (Reads completely different with the commas, doesn’t it? English is amazing.) It’s a Labyrinth themed team. My other choice was Hamilton (Talk Less, Run More), but at the last minute decided to give up my place on the team to someone else.
I think I’ve talked about my love-hate relationship with Bowie before, but here, around the the 28th anniversary of my mother’s death and the accompanying reminder of the restraining order from my aunt, it might be time for a retelling…
If any of her family is reading this, well, I can promise you that you don’t know the whole truth about your sainted godmother or mother. I could bitch about my aunt all day, but I only want to talk about Bowie. (And maybe his enormous goblin.)
Where do I start?
My aunt was always there for me when I was growing up. Her house was an oasis, a place of safety in the maelstrom that was life with my mother. It was, honestly, my favourite place to be.
She had three kids, a boy and two girls. The boy, forever in my heart as Inky, is also forever four years old. In a weird quirk of life, I am 7 years older than the middle child and 14 years older than the youngest. Middle child and I, I thought, always got along pretty well. In some ways, she was more like a younger sister than a cousin.
But I digress.
Home. Safety. There for me. All things that were important when I was growing up. All things I was desperately in need of, despite my father’s best efforts to provide them at our house.
There was always music at her house. ALWAYS.
I grew up with Bowie, the Stones, Mott the Hoople, Led Zeppelin, all the great classic rock. Then, hair metal joined the never ending rotation and I developed a love for Poison, Def Leppard, and strangely, Adam Ant. (I might be one of the few people in the world who knew all the lyrics to his albums.)
But Bowie and Mick Jagger… those were her men. They were almost always on repeat when the radio wasn’t on.
As much as I loved the Stones, it was Bowie that I really connected with.
Maybe it was his shifting personas. Maybe it was the two coloured eyes (which aren’t actually two different colours, by the way). Whatever it was, when I was at home, I devoured everything I could get my hands on. Let me remind you, back in the 80s and 90s it wasn’t nearly as easy as it is now. I had to save my allowance, get a ride to a record store, find something I didn’t already own. Now, if I’m craving a particular song, I drop two bucks, get points on my credit card, and move on with my life.
My parents were officially divorced, I think on March 13th, and then my mother died on March 18th. My aunt got something like 90 percent of the estate… none of which my mother rightfully had any claim to since she never worked. (That comment the other day about leaving nothing in death is an actual line in her will and I read it in a fucking book someone gave me. Fuck public records.That book was supposed to bring me peace after my father died and I ended up ripping it in pieces and setting it on fire. I also hired a lawyer to send a strongly worded letter, but that’s another story.)
My father had to take my aunt to court for a share of the estate - CT state law said that as a minor I was due a portion - and I got $2K. Nothing compared to the thousands she walked away with. I found out later that she also managed to get the other 10% from the other person named in the will…
And then there was the restraining order.
Have you ever been served?
It is a fucking amazing experience.
I highly recommend it.
As her story goes, she was being overwhelmed with the amount of mail my father was sending to her and she asked her attorney to ask my dad if he would send that stuff directly to the lawyer handling the estate. The lawyer “misunderstood” and well… the rest is history.
She also forgot my birthday that year.
I always made the excuse that it was because my mother’s wake was on the 20th and her funeral the 21st, but FUCK, WOMAN. It would have taken two seconds to wish me a happy birthday. (Then again, five years after my uncle’s death, the grave stone still wasn’t engraved with his information. FIVE YEARS.)
Then there was the time when she blamed Youngest Cousin for playing with the answering machine and deleting all the messages I would leave.
In the end, I don’t know who walked away from who first, but the relationship between us was over.
I mourned it for a long time and I broke up with Bowie. It was too painful to listen to him.
Even today, twenty-ish years later, it’s rare that I listen to his music. I generally do when I’m sad and need to cry. All the pain and confusion of 1992 - today, really, comes pouring out. There are few things that can create a spontaneous crying fit, but I always reach for Bowie at those times.
I rarely play Bowie when I’m happy.
I never forgive and I never forget. Not sure if that’s learned behaviour (thanks, mom!) or just hardwired in my DNA, but I don’t.
Especially when someone fucks me over.
So… what does this have to do with Racery? Why would I pick a movie that heavily features Bowie (and his enormous goblin)?
Because, simply, running when I hate the fucking world is the quickest way to calm me down and make sure that I don’t go manic. Anger is my default mode during mania - and being pissed is normally the way to trigger a visit to that other side of the equation. Mania makes me do and say things I should regret, but since I have no filter even when I’m stable, I normally just shrug it off. Whatever I wouldn’t say to your face (because manners), I’ll happily do when I’m manic.
Rage running. It’s a thing.
With all my IRL races cancelled or postponed, I’ve been slacking. This might be the thing I need to get motivated again.
Thank you, aunt.
I know you come for the scathing commentary on my life and openness about the bipolar, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t include the long awaited commentary on Bowie’s massive goblin.
Considering that birthday #1 was the year my mother died and birthday #2 was the year after my father died, to crack the top three you know shit had to be bad.
A 10K, a half marathon, another 10K, and Rival Run were all cancelled within a few days of each other.
Universal was shut down.
People who should have wished me a happy birthday disappeared.
No special birthday meals.
No birthday cake.
A whole lot of nothing.
And yes, I am perfectly aware that this is a minor issue compared to some people’s lives during our new reality, but… I’m bipolar. This sort of situation will create a very dangerous low. When it swings the other way, it will be a very dangerous high. I purposely make a big deal out of my birthday for a reason. In order to survive, my birthday has to be surrounded by fun and I need to be distracted. Those are the rules. I don’t make them.
So.
Let’s talk about that low.
I had (rather foolishly) thought that all the shit I went through after getting fired was as bad as it could be. As depressed as I could possibly get.
Ooooooooh, how I wish I had remembered Birthday Depression.
Holy fuck, I didn’t think I’d ever see the sunshine again.
As it is, it’s still dark and cloudy as fuck, but there’s light on the horizon.
- - - - - - - - - -
My mother and I had a (thankfully) short yet ridiculously complicated relationship.
She died two days before I turned 17. She was 45.
I, myself, just turned 45.
That alone is a huge mind fuck. I know I’m not an alcoholic and that I won’t die from the same thing she did, but… when your time is up, it’s up. My only question is whether or not there’s another ticking time bomb in my DNA. I mean, she already gave me bipolar, and a family with a history or heart disease. (Thank you for the SVT, mom… and possibly, the heart murmur, too.)
It’s been twenty eight years.
Twenty eight years of freedom.
Twenty eight years of wondering if I’m going to die at 45, too.
Twenty eight years of living with the fact that “I gave everything in life, I leave nothing in death…” was published IN A FUCKING BOOK.
Twenty eight years of knowing a double life was lived… and that I got the worst of her.
Twenty eight years of conflicting emotions.
Twenty eight years of not forgiving because I earned the right to hate her.
Twenty eight years of not forgetting what she did to me.
Twenty eight years of starting my day singing “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”
Twenty eight years is a lot of life to miss out on, but she didn’t deserve to be in my life and I’m glad she’s gone.
(Did I say we had a complicated relationship? It was… Complicated.)
A job that was OK, but I could have had some real longevity at.
Friends.
Music Therapy.
My entire fucking life.
And what happened?
The stress of the move and not really fitting into the Cats’ mold got me fired. It’s a long story and does not end happily.
Then, I went to a company where being a complete asshole was rewarded and wearing a skirt an inch too short got you written up.
Then, I went to a company that is no longer financially viable.
I’ve spent the last two months wondering if there would be enough in the bank to cover payroll. I was even told to start looking by the CFO. She was pretty great and allowed me to interview.
Until Thursday.
I have this little problem: I live near Boca, but work in Fort Lauderdale. 95 is a shit show at any point of the day. For me to interview up north - where I live - meant leaving wicked early. She was cool with that until I needed to take time today in order to interview. I was taking too much time off and not getting my (totally non-existent) work done.
I was given an ultimatum that was basically stop interviewing or resign.
I resigned. I didn’t know what else to do.
It’s easily an hour to get from FTL to Boca / West Palm. That’s if traffic on 95 behaves. (It doesn’t. Doesn’t matter what time.) If I left work at 5, I wouldn’t get there until after 6. Who the fuck wants to hold a job interview at 6? They were all at 3 or 4 PM. I couldn’t get a “decent” time to save my life.
So… yeah.
My inability to assimilate down here is causing me some serious issues with employment.
Can you please help a girl out and let me find a fucking job with a company that doesn’t punish me for being me?
