Tears

My college friends are back in school, and I suppose my own reality is finally starting to catch up to me. It really makes me want to cry, along with a few other things at the moment, but that's the main focus of my frustration these days. I am becoming further and further removed from the only thing I've ever known how to do well. I hate my job, and I suck at it, and I'm constantly worried about getting fired. This isn't where I thought I would be. And I know this isn't where I want to be. But the scariest part of it is now I'm not sure how to get back to a place where I DO want to be, especially since I have no idea where that place is. I'm worried that I will be lost forever. I'm worried that this is what my whole life will be. I'm worried about never making it. I don't know if I have long term goals anymore, and I feel like I have very little motivation because of it. I don't know what I'm doing. And I wish someone could help me. But now there's no one. It's all up to me and has been since the day I graduated, and we can all see what a wonderful mess I've made of my life. I seriously feel like a failure, and I'm not entirely sure why. I don't think it's because of any outside pressure to be or do anything, not anymore. Maybe it's because I'm just not happy. I want something more. I want stability that I may never have. I'm struggling to see the point in anything I'm doing, and it shows in everything that I'm doing.

I want to feel caught up. I want to feel like I'm in control of everything, even for just a little. I think I know why today might have been particularly terrible for me. I was washing the outside of the windows today, soap dripping in my eyes, when I realized how fucking pathetic I turned out to be. Later on, I found out that I actually fucked up washing the windows and left grotesque streak marks on almost every one, and my manager had to wash all of the windows again. The most menial, mindless task you can do...and I still manage to get it wrong.

I have a job interview on Thursday, and I already feel like I am going to fail. And that means I probably will. And I'll be stuck at GNC until they have no choice but to fire me because I'm a terrible salesperson. If you want me to explain something to you, I'm pretty good at that. But I'm not good at selling things because I'm not good at lying. I'm not good at all of the pointless formalities that go along with being a salesperson, and I really do have a lot of respect for people that understand all of that. I knew this job was going to be difficult because of that. I'm never sure how or when to approach a person, how long I have to wait before saying something else, where I should stand in relation to them, what tone of voice or posture I should use. I face similar problems when meeting and talking to new people outside of work, but I feel like that's alright. Maybe it's more acceptable for me to be awkward than it is for me to suck at what I do for a living. I suppose I worry that I'll suck at whatever I try to do next. And I am so drained from constantly thinking about interacting with people while at work that there really isn't time for me anymore. I can't do the things I want to do or have committed myself to doing, and that's really stressing me out too.

I don't know how to make things change anymore. I wasn't prepared for this. I keep thinking that college really was a waste of my time because I can't even get a job doing what I spent five years preparing to do. And in two months, I'll have to start paying off my loans. Add that to my credit card bill, and that's already going to be more than I make in one month. I thought I would be able to start paying rent again. Not being able to pay that or get my own place is one of the worst things for me. It makes me feel so helpless. It makes me feel like I'm just mooching off of people. I wonder what I would do if I weren't here. Where would I be? I'm starting to think that all of those people who told me I couldn't take care of myself are right. I suppose when it rains, it pours.

I haven't talked to my parents in so long, and I feel so disconnected. I feel terrible about it. I need help. I wish I could just take out a loan and get a place to live already. But no one would give me one, and I wouldn't be able to make the payments anyway. What the hell can I do? I really need money. I really need my life to not suck so much.

I started thinking about my number for Mr. Cattivo last night and got really depressed afterwards. I'm freaking out about not having what I need. I need to sit down one of these days and write everything out again. I seemed to do much better when I did that. But I can't stay focused. I'm having the same problems I did last fall. Is this shit ever going to stop? What can I do to make it stop?

I'm going to be stuck for a long time, and I don't know if I can survive it. I need to mail and write letters that I should have mailed and written a long time ago. I feel like I'm losing touch with a lot of people, even people I see all the time. And I know it's me. I'm retreating again. I'm running away without going anywhere. And sometimes I don't even realize it. I'm not freaking out as much. But it's not like anything good has been put in its place. Sometimes I feel like there's nothing. And I don't want to strain what seems like it is the one good thing I have going for me.

I don't know what else to write about but I'm having another one of those days where I feel like I should just keep going. I need to clean my room. That's a simple task with a clearly defined goal, and it's going to make me feel better after I do it. Maybe that's a start.

I don't know if I need to be by myself right now. I wish I were better at figuring that out and communicating it to others. And I wish it wouldn't happen so inconveniently.

I don't want to be a loser for the rest of my life. But I feel like I am just going to be another one of those statistics about trans people.

I need direction. I need to be in purposeful motion. I've been in this rut for almost a year now. I felt so close to getting out, but now I might be worse off than I was before. If nothing else, I'm realizing that it's just going to get more and more difficult to get out of it the longer I wait. And that just makes me feel like I'm being forced into making a decision about what I want to do for the rest of my life because I just don't have the luxury of taking the time I need to figure it out. That whole last part makes me want to cry. I know how people get into this shit now. I'm beginning to understand what it means to never be able to have what you always dreamed of having--never be able to do what you dreamed of doing. I'm beginning to understand why people give in and give up. I've never been one to just give up. But it's like any other bad habit: The more you do it, the easier it gets. I gave up on myself last October. I just couldn't take it anymore. And I've never just given up like that before. But it was easier than letting myself get hurt every single day. And maybe it was the right thing to do. I've met people I never would have otherwise. But maybe it hurt me as well. And maybe there's no point in saying if it was the right thing or not because good and bad things would have happened either way. And that's the way everything goes, I guess.

I don't feel like I'm ever going to be able to wrap my head around my own existence. That sounds fun in some ways, but I'd at least like to know I've got a handle on myself. For some reason, my brain started singing "I'm a Little Teapot."

It's so hard to work in a place where I really don't know if I can talk about my life without feeling like a freak show. It's not that I'm certain that I'm being perceived that way, but I fear that's all that people in the straight world are going to see. That's a pretty common fear, yes. I almost said that I wish it didn't bother me, but fuck that. It does bother me. It should bother me. It bothers me as much as the principal who told me it was my fault that other kids treated me the way they did because of the way I looked and acted. It's not my fault that other people are closed-minded. It's not my fault that they can't see what I have seen. And that's not a bad thing. Nobody else has the experience that I have. Sometimes, people just don't know. But it just gets so tiring after a while. I understand what you meant about feeling burnt out with activism. But I can still feel that in me. I get fired up when I hear about certain injustices. And I don't know what that means for what I'll be doing for the rest of my life, but I suspect that it will play a very large role whether I plan on it or not.

If I'm an asshole, it's not because I'm trans. It's because I'm an asshole. Don't make it about anything that it's not. My failures are not related to my trans identity. And many of my successes aren't. I guess that depends on what successes we're talking about, but I think you get the point. This fact of my life is not relevant when talking about sucking at my job or being late, etc, etc.

Maybe I'll start feeling connected now that all of my younger friends are back in town. Maybe that will help. I'm going to start repeating myself soon. Or maybe I can at least find something else to talk about. I just started thinking about how my contacts are in the case with the solution that requires you to wait six hours before putting your lenses back in your eyes. It hasn't been six hours. This really frustrates me right now.

I just remembered that I'm going to have to start paying for a bus pass. That's another 90 dollars a month. I'm going to be working at this fucking job that I can't even stand, and I won't have a fucking penny to show for it. I really can't take this. Not at all.

Tooth

A few minutes ago, I was leaning over my bed (which is actually just a few inches above the floor anyway) and spitting blood into the lid of an empty Chinese food container. Remembering a conversation I had with a friend a week or so ago, I started to concentrate on the pattern created by the flow of blood around and through the stack of tissues in the middle of the container. This seemed to ease the pain a little...or at least make me forget about it for a little while.

The searing pain itself brought back vivid memories of living at Bates--of the last time a problem with one of my wisdom teeth sent me to the emergency room. I remember clutching the edge of the chair in the room they stuck me in because they couldn't leave me screaming in the waiting room for two hours. I leaned over the left edge of the chair, and as I screamed, a mixture of blood and saliva shot towards the floor.

Tooth pain is probably the worst physical pain I have experienced, though the menstrual cramps I experienced in my early teens are a very close second to that. Earlier this morning, I took eight Excedrin, and it made me absolutely ill. I don't think I've fully recovered from it either. I was sick to my stomach, dizzy, feverish, and a little out of it. But it was still better than having to deal with the feeling of having a hammer smashed straight down into your tooth, that feeling radiating out to your ears and right through your skull. When you're in that kind of pain, it's the only thing you can think about.

Jon is coming up the stairs. Done for now.

Now it's August

I seemed to be doing well with writing all the time until real life started to take its toll on me. I'm once again finding that this is just something that I need to do, and even if I don't have time for it, I need to make time. I've been moving a lot lately. I haven't really had time to process everything that's been happening, and I need to do that in order to make sure I am ready for some big things that are on the way. I'm trying to piece together how I feel about things, but that's really tough when thoughts of all the things that I have to do start to invade the space that is meant just for me.

A customer came in today to buy a bag of ostrich meat chews (yes, they are gross...and mostly made of beef anyway), but I ended up talking with her for a little while about Pittsburgh in general, and then it turned into a conversation about school and what I studied. At the end of the conversation, she gave me a suggestion about going to PA school. And now I'm seriously considering it. To be fair, I've seriously considered quite a few career options over the past six months. I'm at least going to look into it and talk to some people who've been down that road already.

I work at GNC. I've been there for about a month now. It's not an absolutely terrible job, but I don't like being afraid of losing my job because I'm not a pushy salesperson. I don't like how I sometimes don't know my schedule until two days beforehand, and I don't like being faulted for not being able to make a last-minute change to a schedule I had already been given. Mostly, I don't like putting up with all of that in addition to extremely rude downtown customers for a mere $7.25 an hour. I honestly feel that I am too old for this kind of work environment, which doesn't make much sense since we are all in our twenties there. I did this sort of job in high school, and I vowed that I would never do it again because of how drained I felt from dealing with people all day. But I am much more capable of handling that stress and frustration these days. I've noticed an improvement in myself in the past month. Dealing with customers all day is really, really hard for me, but it makes me better at dealing with people in general. I keep finding out that I can handle much more than I think I can.

I can feel so much negativity just leaving my life. Following through with that decision was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It was harder than coming out to my family, both times. It was harder than opening myself up to be vulnerable all over again. It's still hard sometimes. But I know I am doing the right thing. How do I know this? I can feel the difference in my life. Things aren't perfect, but I stopped expecting them to be a long time ago.

I think I'm okay with not writing anymore today.