Call the Zoo

At some point, I told myself that I would start writing here more frequently again.
But I might have been drunk.
I don't think I've ever actually written anything while intoxicated, though I managed to pump out a good chunk of a nine-page letter before succumbing to the effects of a massive dose of some serious cough syrup. EPIC cough syrup.
I didn't intend to get drunk last night. It just sort of happened, and I know I did some really stupid shit on facebook and private messaged several people. Then I ate some toast, and the next thing I remember is waking up in my bed with all of my clothes on, drenched in sweat and smelling like a gay bar. What a lovely start to my day, don't you think?
I don't know why I felt off today. Little things just bother me more when I get this way. For example, people getting sidetracked often upsets me when there is clearly something that needs to be done. I tend to get anxious and easily frustrated.

Mr. Pittsburgh is next weekend, and I'm extremely worried about it. I don't really enjoy competing against my friends, for one thing, and that has more to do with the fact that I'm actually ridiculously competitive, and I can be a monumental douchebag. More than anything, I am discovering how limited my resources are and what that means for me. No matter how talented I am, I'm definitely not going to look the best. Things aren't going to be extravagant and over-the-top. I'm just going to do what I know how to do. And I'm starting to doubt myself and worry that that just won't be enough. I keep trying to answer the question of why I deserve this just as much or more than anyone else, and it's getting really difficult. I'm generally a pompous asshole, but I get in these annoying little ruts where I lack any self-confidence. I remember having this same sort of crisis right before helping out a friend with her own pageant. When I was facing the prospect of competing against one of my best friends earlier this year, I started feeling the same way. I know that I do. I know that I don't need expensive shit or fancy props to win. I know that I can carry myself to a victory even if I'm butt-ass naked, which I'm sure would make some people happy, at least. But there's that weird space of difference between knowing something and feeling it in which I'm finding myself. I feel stuck. I've felt stuck--in so many aspects of my life--for several months now, and I want to believe that the nice weather will turn things around for me.
I'm going on an unintentional diet for the next few weeks. It's reminiscent of the poor-kid diet I went through in October. I'm still a little freaked out by those pictures. Anyway, I had to spend at least a little bit trying to get things for this contest, and that tanked my already meager bank account. I have $1.16 to my name right now, and I don't have much food left in the house, and I feel like a jerk eating other people's stuff, so I eat my packets of tuna and have some cheerios. And I drink water. It's not like I'm terribly unhappy with it. I'm eating healthy things, but I never feel like I'm satisfied. I am always wanting more, but I know there is none. And that's depressing. I'm getting paranoid about not finding a job. I think that will be my biggest project tomorrow, other than heading to the bank to see how they will deal with a check that's made out to Dylan and not to Elise.

I got a letter from my brother today. I didn't really know how to respond to it. It's not an angry letter. He took his time with this one and really thought about what he wanted to say. I can understand exactly why he feels the way he does and the processes he used to rationalize his beliefs. But it just made me...sad. How can he expect to ever be close to me again? As much as I do cherish my past and everything in it, clinging to it in the way that he envisions would annihilate the possibility of ever becoming close to the person that I am now and will be in the future. I do not exist apart from my past. I have in no way attempted to erase the person I had been for 21 years. I still can look at those pictures and say, "This is me."
I want to be able to explain that those memories are not invalid, though my experience of them was much different. Being a little girl wasn't fun for me. It wasn't cute. It wasn't something I cherished or wanted. It was something that I wanted to ignore at the time. It was something that was there just as a word and nothing more. The word was nothing to me until it became a prison, until I couldn't ignore it any longer. Until I had to fight to be seen for who I am. When I look at those pictures, I don't see a little girl. I see me. Looking back, it's easy for me to recognize that I really have always been a boy, not because of what I was wearing or what sports I was playing, but because of how I felt inside and how I related to other people growing up. I always wanted to be in that role and be treated like the others, and I would kick and scream about how I wasn't, and I had NO IDEA why. I just don't think I'll be able to convince him that he's always had a little brother, really.
He's having a problem because these words aren't just words to him. They represent enormous constructs around which his entire life was based growing up. Changing them, in his mind, would mean having to alter the past--alter what he sees as the absolute truth of the universe. The past cannot be changed, and attempting to change it is living a lie. I can understand this logic perfectly, and perhaps this is why it is not a problem at all when people say she/Elise when referring to the version of me that existed prior to my transition. But there is more than the past. The present is NOT the same, and the future won't be either. But that's not going to negate what has already existed. He has attached our relationship directly to the words used to describe the relationship. Can I blame him? How many people today can really even begin to separate language from thought? In order for him to understand and accept the person that I am now, he's going to have to detach all of these aspects of our relationship from those words and transfer them to new ones, and I wonder what that will take for him.
I can't separate the pain from those words. So I guess I can understand a little bit of what he's feeling. I am not okay with being disrespected by people whom I've told why it's so important to me, and I don't think that I should have to be as a compromise. This isn't a compromise about terms used. It's a compromise of myself, if I choose to make it.

So I was feeling kind of shitty and off today, and maybe that's a little bit about why. I thought I would have stopped feeling overwhelmed after graduation. The fact that I have not has contributed to my overall state of unhappiness because it makes me believe that I will never stop feeling this way. I'll never be a calm person. I'll never just be content and easy-going. And that sucks. Again and again, I say it. We can't be anything more than what we are.

Transition made it possible for me to start dealing with all of the other shit that's been buried inside of me for the past 22 years. Everything else was being masked by the fact that I absolutely needed to do this in order to move forward in my life. It was do or die for me, really. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think. But now I'm starting to actually face some of the shit that I should have confronted a long time ago. I'm not in a good place with it right now. I feel like that mountain of shit is just too much for me. I can't see to the other side. I feel like I may never be able to get past some of these things now that they are in the open. And I wish I could talk to my family about it. I wish I could talk to them about so many of the things that I am going through right now, but I am so afraid that they will think that the transition has caused these problems. I know it hasn't. I know it hasn't because these problems have always been there. I can't hide from them anymore because of my transition. And while that does suck for me in some ways, it's probably a good thing. I wish I could FEEL like it is.

It's hard to even remember what it felt like to be in "another body". This is my body, and it feels like it's always been this way. I don't feel like my face has changed. I think I've always seen myself this way, regardless of what other people saw. That's why it is so easy to accept the physical changes as they come. That is why it is exciting. You'll have moments of seeing yourself as being different now and you realize that you really are physically becoming what you have always known yourself to be internally. I'm trying to think about what I used to look like. I'm thinking about my legs and how I looked at them with disgust. I thought they looked fat and gross, and I never wanted anyone to see them. I would look at my chest in the mirror and look at my hips, seeing this fat that didn't belong there, and no matter what I did, it was never going to go away. I would smile, and it would just seem awkward. I couldn't look at myself and be confident. I'd have my good days, of course. But I wouldn't be able to take my shirt off in bed. Sometimes I wouldn't take any of my clothes off, and when I did, I always had to put them right back on. I couldn't stand being in that body. I couldn't stand someone else touching that body. I wanted to hide it, even from myself. And my voice...I couldn't even stand listening to it when people played it back for me. When I spoke, I would hear a much deeper and smoother voice, but whenever I found myself listening to a recording, I wanted to cry. I couldn't believe that that squeaky-ass nasal sound came out of me.

My train of thought just crashed. I think it hit another train. And now there are dying thought children. And they are on fire...Sometimes, I worry about myself...

I don't know if I would like it to stay this quiet or for it to get really loud right about now. I'm getting uncomfortable. My stomach is starting to bother me. I wonder if someone is here.

"The further you go, the less you know."