This isn't the town square, and I'm not the Village Idiot.

A few years ago I had a conversation with my father about how people used Facebook.
We talked a lot about incautious sharing of private information, mostly about people who were posting their drunken escapades, or bigoted political views.
We wondered whether these people realized that they were creating a permanent record that could harm them in their careers, or at least embarrass them.
We likened them to folks who ran out naked into the town square ranting and raving.
At the time it seemed that technology was moving so fast that people hadn't had time to learn how to behave appropriately in these new public spaces we were creating.
My feelings about this have changed.
For a start, Facebook has changed, allowing more curated feeds and ensuring that we miss most of what our friends are doing unless we actively opt in.  That alone significantly changes the town square feeling to perhaps, having a fight with the windows open so that people passing by in the street can overhear.
But here's the big thing for me.
That sense of "overshare" is based on what?
Why are we repulsed when someone displays "poor judgement" publicly?
Why are we still repulsed when someone breaks down publicly?
Why do we object when someone Vaguebooks for help?
I'm not saying there should be no regard for behavioral norms or social nicety, but just what are those norms based upon?
Mostly, they're based on shaming people, on telling people that asking for help is a personal failing, on telling people "you shouldn't feel that way".
By behaving this way we condemn social media platforms to the impersonal and trivial.

This morning I've been going through something of an emotional breakdown.
It's the Seattle pride parade this weekend and For the thirteenth year in a row I have been planing on avoiding it.  There's even a Trans*pride march on friday.  It's one of the few in the country, and the first in Seattle since 1997 (which was the first ever I believe).
I've always avoided pride because, and I'm just figuring this out now, it set off my dysphoria and challenged my denial something awful.
I couldn't stand to go as a "straight ally".
So I stayed away.
I stayed away and resented it.
It's hard to let go of the anger that creates.
It's hard to decide to join in when it's such a stark reminder of how much of my life I've missed by trying to live someone else's.

In the end, I give up keeping quiet.
Sitting around feeling increasingly crappy as Pride approached and not a single person* asked me if I was going, asked if I was marching for trans pride and if I'd like their support.
But we're taught not to ask for help.
We fear that if we do, if we have to ask, then how will we know that any support we get is sincere?
So in the end, I can't stand it anymore and I commence to Vaguebooking.
Because I can't just ask for help.
That's to close to being a failure.

I think the reason I find vaguebooking to be annoying in others is the same thing that forces me to do it.  I'm projecting my own shame at needing help yet being unable to speak up, to just ask for what I need, onto others.

Sometimes what looks like emotional immaturity in others is technology tearing at the edges of a system of oppression.
Those of you who read this blog tell me that you value the rawness and emotional honesty I put into it.
I'm not ashamed of being that person here and I won't be shamed for it in public.
Just leave Brittany alone ok?


* Ok, I received a couple of event invites, but no one asked me personally and I know why, I seem to be doing pretty well, and Pride is huge, so they probably just missed me last year right, and maybe I was busy the year before but surely....
I just seem like the type of person who goes to Pride.

Killing Yourself On The Road

When I started transition I knew there would be change.
I knew that.
I mean, obviously there would be change.
I knew there would be change.

I had no idea.

As I was standing on my (as of last night) ex-boyfriends balcony earlier this week, looking out at the cascades I was filled with a profound sense of how completely my life has been changing.
Two weeks ago my wife and I reached the decision to separate.
Thankfully it's been very amicable, we're still good friends, we just drive each other up the wall as lovers.  It happens.
But as I'm stood there, thinking about all the changes in my personality, thinking about the fact that my own anger no longer terrifies me and how I let fly from time to time now.  Thinking about how my social anxiety is evaporating off bit by bit as I keep tearing myself open to let the light in and deny shame any refuge within my soul.
I realize, I have changed.
When I first came out to my friends some of them were concerned about how much I'd change.
Would they know or like this new person? I thought at the time their fears were a little overblown, I mean, I was still going to be me.  There would still be something essentially me at the core right?
So wrong.
I hardly remember who I was.
My mind has quite conveniently, and without being asked too, re-written most of my early memories.  I have to correct myself in my own head to remember having ever been male bodied when I was living back in Wales.
My more recent memories, those that took place here in the US, seem like I dreamed them, or like they were a movie I watched and don't really remember.
I don't relate to that guy anymore.
I'm having a hard time remembering him at all.
I watched some video of myself the other day.
That's not me.
Intellectually, I know I'm the person in that video.
But i viscerally KNOW that isn't me.
Every day that passes a little bit more Thom disappears.

Death of the self is a scary prospect.
Teleporters always scared me.
Being disassembled and reassembled that way, would you really be you at the other end?  Or would you just be a copy?  The original person completely destroyed in the process.
I think if Thom had know that this would be a slow motion teleportation into Rowan, that he would be truly destroyed in the process, he would have been terrified.
But I'm not.
I'm fearless.
I have killed myself and lived to tell the tale.
To those of you who were worried I would become a different person, you were right.  I am not the person you knew before.
I'm brand new, and you've only just met me.

Visual Intrest

The blog has gotten a little texty of late so here's some visual interest.
A couple of photos from a shoot I did a few months back with D.N.A.
Photos are by Travers Dow.

The Kids are Alright

This is barely a post at all, but this little thing made me so happy and gave me so much hope that I have to share it.

Popping into the hardware store to get a key cut the other day I notice the middle schoolers waiting at the bus stop.
I notice kids more in general these days, what with being a parent and all.
While the media loves to terrify us with tales of juvenile delinquency and fears over whatever chemical imbalance is in vogue for children these days, I tend to think the kids are alright.
As I'm leaving the parking lot on this particularly beautiful sunny day, and enjoying how happy this group of five or so kids are, I realize that one of them is either the most boyish looking girl I have ever seen, or she's trans, and whichever it is, for her and her friends, it is clearly a complete non issue.
It's things like this that make me love seattle and love the generations growing up today for whom tolerance is the default.

Oh, and another "my life is actually awesome moment" from a couple of weeks ago.
At the bevmo, showing the girl on the register my ID (which still shows some dude with a beard)

Me: Ok, so I look a little different from the picture but I swear, this really is my ID
Cashier: Oh wow, that is a difference!  You look really good as a blonde!"

And that people, is how you treat the trans girl like a human being.
Totally made my day.

Breaking down over the scraps.

I'm a wreck right now.
As always I've bitten off way more than I can chew because, well, there wasn't much of a choice.
Medical and student loan debt are killing us.
Lastwear can support itself and our little family but it can't support that debt.
I can't answer my phone to unknown numbers anymore.  I haven't been able to for years.
The only thing I can do is work harder.
Find someway to make more money.
Try to get out far enough ahead before the tidal wave hits and I drown.
The house is a mess.
I can't clean enough to keep it tidy.
Lyssa is at breaking point from spending all of her time looking after the kid.
She's understandably mad at me for not helping out more with our daughter, but I don't have much choice except to spend more time working.
The only thing that I can do to move us forward is also what makes me feel guilty as hell for not helping more with the house work.
For not spending more time with my beautiful little girl.
It makes me hate my job.
I'm self employed, making shit money at a job I should at least love, but instead makes me feel like a failure as a parent.
Hell, I for sure failed at being a father.
I'm always too close in my mind to being a total failure to my daughter.
Because this morning the world is too heavy.
Today, when I should be sewing, I'm crying on my keyboard trying to type this out because I simply can't do anything else.
Because I want to rage quit life, or just cry until the world ends.
Because it is too fucking hard to want to kill myself just to make it all stop, and then have to look into my daughters eyes.
Look into her eyes and somehow carry on.

Some days are better than others.