Goodbye

It's not that I'm fighting to stay awake; I'm fighting to stay upright. I will probably lose consciousness if I put my head back down again. I feel uncoordinated and limp. Lethargic is the proper term here, but as always, I'm looking for the reasons behind it. I woke up around two in the afternoon, wandered in the direction of her house to recover my wallet only to find that--because of my inability to rise before most people's workdays were coming to a close--it was already too late to get it that day. I felt a little off at that point, but I decided to try the GLCC after getting a phone call from Lyndsey and taking a few minutes to clear my mind. I suppose I just didn't feel right because I only stayed for about ten minutes. I was lucky to have gotten that transfer from the trolley driver. Otherwise, I would never have been able to get back to Beechview. I turned on the TV and lay down on the couch. No one else was home, and it was really nice to just be there curled up by myself with a cool breeze coming from the other room, even if it was artificial. Something about it seemed nostalgic. It reminded me of a time when I felt like I was in control of many more aspects of my life. Maybe it was peaceful enough to put me back to sleep, and maybe my desire to capture the energy of that moment was enough to make me want to stay asleep. When Lyndsey came home, I literally had to force myself to sit up. My body was trying its best to disobey me. And my whole day has been wasted because of it.
No matter what the reason, my mind always goes back to the same thought: There's something wrong with me. Some people will say that there is, and some will say that there really isn't. I'm not so sure what the right answer is these days. There is merit in believing in both. But I can't live by either one of them alone, which is what I have tried to do for my entire life. I've lived according to the idea that I'm no different than anyone else--that I can do anything and everything and nothing can affect me so much as to prevent me from being a completely functioning and capable human being. And I've lived believing that I'm broken and incompetent and that no amount of help can fix me and that I'll be this way for the rest of my life. And there have been a lot of people who really want me to live in accordance with the latter belief, though they may say the exact opposite. I think that I am learning that there is something wrong with me, and I need to accept this, but I'm also learning that it doesn't matter. The people who really care about me will understand my limits, and they've often been the ones to recognize them before I have. Everyone has limits, and everyone reacts differently when pushed to those limits. I react in a way that is different from most, and it's not normal. And maybe that's what I mean when I say that there is something wrong with me. It's the definition of the external world that gets applied here, and fuck, maybe that's the problem. I've never used the world's words to describe who I am in any other respect, so why should I apply them to this part of myself? Part of myself? I act as if I can separate this little piece from the rest of my soul. I remember doing the same thing before I came out as trans. I believed I could live my life as genderqueer, going back and forth between man and woman, and while this works for some, I couldn't live two separate lives. I couldn't box up the pieces of my identity and put labels on them because I would always end up with some items that didn't belong in either box. And now here I am trying to decide what pieces of me are normal and what pieces are not. Normal for whom? This is the only me that I have ever known. And when I became aware that other people didn't think and act this way or didn't see things this way, it was a pretty overhwelming epiphany of sorts. I'll never know how it feels to not be this way. I think I did once, but I was on some serious drugs. As fucked up as I was, there were moments of clarity when I almost cried because I kept thinking: This is what normal feels like.

This is what normal feels like.

I remember having that same feeling another time, actually. It was very shortly after I started T. I started to feel balanced in a physical sense. But it's not the same. And maybe the drug-induced realization wasn't real. I don't know. I'd like to think what I have is real. Wouldn't we all?

Maybe this is what normal feels like.

I feel like I'm in the eye of the hurricane when it comes to deciding the who and what of my life, and maybe I've been so paralyzed because I recognize the importance of this point in my journey.

Some things are meant to stay in the past. Some people are meant to stay in the past. I do realize my own limits these days, and maybe I overestimate them at times, but I think I have this one right. I am no longer willing to expend unnecessary energy on certain people. My life has no room for this negativity, and I will not engage in this behavior or these conversations any longer. And that should be enough. I will no longer play a part in the destruction of my own self, and I cannot allow anyone else to do the same. End scene.