Conflicted

There's a part of me that feels really conflicted about the celebrations.

I know, on the surface, the obvious things. Many of the things happening are good and unprecedented. Many of the things that are happening could have been so much better, and we've all been under tremendous burdens in the past four years. 

Many people have been under these burdens for much longer than that, and this celebration offers hope and reprieve-and a deep concern that returning to normal will mean the same racism, classism, ablism, sexism and transphobia that this country was founded and built upon, and it's only recently that these issues have been even partially acknowledged publicly by the people in power.

I need to work through my own feelings. There's a part of me that feels it's unfair to jeer like this, that feels it's mean to mock. And if I work through this, I don't see it as helpful to bring up the jeering of four years ago, of people telling me to suck it up, that we lost and they didn't, to fuck my feelings. I think it's unproductive to have this rationalization that is, essentially, "Well, they did it first!!"

I think it's been unproductive to focus on Trump throughout the presidency. For four years this small minded and small hearted man pretended that reality tv show laws held firm outside of the television, and that consequences were just what happened when the director asked for a different take, a free do-over. For four years we watched the circus and pretended along with him.

It's not about him. It's about the system, which is harder to hate in a productive way. He has been a voice of the racist, the sexist, the ablist ideas and thoughts within each one of us, and externalizing that helps us to duck consequences. It's not about him. He doesn't matter.

It's hard to see this sad old man as the same person who allowed so many people to die, to be hurt. It's easy to let my inner voice tell me that it isn't fair to be gleeful, and it's easy to be gleeful anyway. It's still true, though, that atrocities happened. It's true that the system that supports me actively permitted and encouraged these atrocities. It's true that Trump, as both a nationalist and racist figure AND as the elected president of the united states, encouraged and benefited from the harm and death of hundreds of thousands of people, who don't need to be innocent of all wrongdoing to be mourned.

I think in some ways I shy away from the idea that he could be put on trial. I shy away from the idea that these things could be put to the light, and possibly I also shy away from the idea that I will see in his trial, moments that I could and should have done more than what I was doing. It's always difficult to see a person who has done terrible things and know that not only am I also capable of those things, but so are my friends. So are my family. Not only capable, but culpable. By being white, I benefit from the system that gave us Trump. By presenting as ablebodied, I benefit from the system that gave us Trump. 

I imagine that if Hitler hadn't killed himself, if he had actually gone to trial for his crimes, my feelings now would reflect those of many people in germany.

depression in the time of covid

I know I'm not doing great. Like, when I have to download an app so I can force myself to shower every day (before noon gets me more points but I don't know if I'm making that today) and when I start genuinely considering, 4 months before February (the typical real low spot of my year), that maybe I need to take meds for this round, instead of just whiteknuckling it through, then I'm pretty sure intervention is a real and valid thing. 

I'm just tired of everything. I want to cut loose and sail away, and I don't have a boat so instead I'm thinking about the next best thing. Connections are frustrating to me, it feels like there's sharp bladed focus three steps away but I have tough strong spiderwebs on my arms and legs.

Don't get me wrong, I guess I'm glad they're there.

I was trying to think about phrasing, like, "in the overworked I'm glad they're there" vs "in the code I'm glad they're there" and which one was more true to use, but honestly I think both levels of me are just tired and resentful. I want to be done being this. I feel like I've learned all the lessons I want to. Sure, there's brighter things coming but fuck the idea of getting to them is so exhausting. I want a break from all this fucking pushing for nothing. 

Even when I'm happy I'm tired, and I wonder if maybe that's why my moods can be so volatile, because the big empty sea is just that flat curled up on the bed thinking about how crying would feel to my eyes, and I'm floating about above it, seeing it below, tossing small things overboard, and gaining a brief euphoric bump before the wind changes and I start sinking down again.

I don't know. I'm not gonna kill myself, I think I've been brainwashed enough to pretend that that isn't an option for me, but I'm resentful of that and I'm pissed about it. 

I should talk to my doctor I guess.

Mourning

 I've been in mourning a lot lately.

I think any other time, I might just categorize this as a particularly weird spate of depression, but... it tastes different to me.

sometimes grieving can just come out of the blue

I lost my grandpa a little more than 3 years ago - on the near-anniversary, I wrote this:

"it's about my three year anniversary at Trupanion which also means it's the three year anniversary of my paternal grandpa's passing - I started working there about 2 days before my mom called me and told me to find a place to sit down so she could give me the news.

my sister walked me through figuring out bereavement time off. his funeral was the first time I saw my extended family as Moss, without any dresses or skirts.

I wore a tie.

I remember talking with my cousin about how we both wish we could have talked to him about our lives better before. I wonder what my cousin wanted to tell him.

I came out to my extended family really Firmly this year because of how much that's been a regret for me, and I'm glad I did it. I wish I'd done it sooner.

anniversaries here are always really weird because of this. I still have the brochure from the service on my work desk.

I dunno. I feel like this is always a sore spot for me, and I'm not sure how to move forward. I'm not sure I want to yet.

thanks

I don't think I want a solution here. I think the grief just punched a button tonight after remembering it's pretty much my work anniversary in a week. just, solidarity."

Today I've been thinking about how grief can continue to impact you in these weird little ways. like a tide coming in, there are more and more small things creeping up the shoreline, until you're underwater.

at least I know the tide will go out again.

My housemate killed herself 2 years ago. It's hard not to take on responsibility. someone you live with, see every few days...but we all see friends and family, and we all go through hard, difficult, even cataclysmic times inside our own heads. She was assaulted by a guy in a sport she played, in our house, and was going through the process of reporting it. I don't know what internal switch flipped, what came up for her that left this door open, what made that decision become more and more real to her.

we once had a coffee date where we talked for almost an hour about personality tests, because we both love them. when i got a silly possum plushie to give to my partner for our first valentines day together, she was in the room when i opened it, and i excitedly told her about it. she lamented to me about her love of costco and buying in bulk - especially, weirdly enough, whole cases of mint gum. she quoted me on twitter once about my then-obsessive love of dominos pizza.

"So I've become friends with some of the Domino's delivery people, which might be a sign that I need to stop ordering Domino's." Mar 3 2018

I struggle with being too close to people. I know that sometimes my own internal switch can flip, that I push people away so that I don't over-rely on them. I struggle finding a middle ground, and so aloof-ness is usually safer, emotionally. We were new housemates to each other, and I don't think I pushed her away, which is a relief to me. I know I have hurt people by being intentionally unavailable, because I am myself afraid of becoming overwhelmingly invested in them. It helps to know this about myself, and it helps to have such a clear view of this tendency, because I know that I gave her the friendship that I would have wanted in a new friend.

Sometimes all the support in the world isn't enough.

In the same ways that I don't believe in the idea that a person could be a monster - or wholly good - I don't believe that anyone is safe from these sorts of personal tragedies. Whatever we do in life, however we protect ourselves, something can always slip through. No matter how we rebuild, no matter how supported we are, we have no guarantees of permanence or protection. 

It's hard to mourn for people. It's hard to still be struck by these feelings. It's hard to navigate anger and grief, matter-of-factness and frustration and intensity. Knowing Chelsea is now a part of my own history, one of those things that I have to balance how and if to tell people. I want to respect her memory, and I want to respect that we all approach death - especially suicide - in different ways. 

I'm still building how to mourn. In that days after, I tore out all the carpets in the house, pried out staples and nails, swept. I did this with housemates and without. and still, at the end of it, there's no end. There's no final ending nail that tells you that you're done mourning, no final scrap of carpet that wipes away the grief. 

Ghosts are just memories. We build up what we think people are like, and we talk to them, and we reinforce those models. And when those people leave our lives, in whatever way is available to them, we are left with those echoes in our heads.

Grief comes in like the tide, and goes out again in the night.

There's a sort of achey breathless weight in my chest that I'm not totally comfortable naming right now

Hi diary

Well, this has been pretty weird, hasn't it. i'm hiding out from covid in an apartment furnished by my company because my normal apartment's space and wi-fi capabilities are laughable at most. i have to go up there about once a week to check my mail because forwarding addresses for the duration of a national emergency doesn't really have a solid precedent in the USPS.

the apartments are unsettlingly big for one person, and I've also realized that they're kind of unsettlingly big for two people. we've set up in the living room where we do our best to stay productive in a traumatic bewildering environment (the current administration)

when we want to be unsupervised we hide in the other bedroom like i am doing now.



I think anxiety - my anxiety - seems to thrive best in routine. when everything is upside down and on fire, I'm fine. i have a plan, and i'm able to figure out where to next put my feet. when it's a matter of knowing that the plans are changing constantly and that i just have to stay on top of what the next step is going to be, it's fine. it's almost a relief when everything goes to hell.

(the fact that my contingency plan has always included suicide, for when everything is truly fucked beyond what I see my capabilities, probably has to do with that, to be honest. at this point it's more of a well-trodden path in my brain than a real plan. why am i trying to convince my blog, readership 0, of my mental well-being. it doesn't matter. this part of me will always make people vaguely uncomfortable and I can, haha, live with that)

But when we have a plan, when there's a solid day to day routine, my ability to cope with anxiety takes a nose dive.

brains are weird, full of expectations.

all i have to do is make sure I don't let mine shoot me in the foot

Reentry

I'm sitting in an incredibly weirdly branded coffee shop/AT&T store in Cap Hill, listening to the music on my laptop because AT&T's open wifi doesn't quite have the gumption to allow me youtube. I haven't listened to the music on my laptop since at least 2018 because it's ridiculous. There's maybe three decent albums on here. There's at least 100+ albums total.

Because it's Monday, most adult humans here are at a job, going to a job, or WFCS (Working From Coffee Shop). I have carefully curated the worst 4/10 schedule I could have ever designed at my job, which is essentially data entry in pet insurance, and I have Mondays off, which means that I frequently get the benefits of nearly completely quiet coffeeshops, even in Seattle.

there's an ugly block of apartments across the street that also hosts a lone black and white pigeon, who keeps flying back and forth across the street to what I can only assume is its nest in the concrete chunk above the door.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out what constitutes a proper introduction post.

My previous self managed to keep up with blogging for 5 years, and then stopped, and I'm not hugely confident that I'll be able to keep up with blogging for that extent of time, but that's fine.

They were, in many respects, a totally different person. It's important to think about what they did and thought and said with compassion towards myself, and it's important to me to remember that they were me - but they were me in 2010. People change, and not nearly in the ways you expect them to.

So, five years later, diary? or should we go for the full decade?

Ten years ago I was in high school. Not even a real person yet. Less said, the better. high intensity pressure only turns you into a diamond if you start out as coal first.
I graduated, worked at a factory, took a chaotic and confused path through college, graduated with a major in psych, went to americorps nccc, was both intensely depressed and dysphoric for most of that time. realized I was trans, got diagnosed with both anxiety and global hypermobility, moved to Seattle, changed my name. Worked on not being quite as sad. In college I got published in a small peer-reviewed spec fic anthology, in seattle I got an essay published in a book you can even buy on amazon. Somewhere in there, I stopped writing this blog. I think in October 2015 I was halfway through NCCC.

K Moss feels, in many ways, like a younger sibling. Maybe even a younger sister. I can see the ways that they became me, and I can see similar paths, similar phrasing. But I think in many ways we've lost each other. Maybe in twenty years I'll read this and have that same sort of disconnect, a kind of temporal Venn's Diagram.

Today, I'm Moss. I'm 27. I've made art and stories. I live in Seattle. I'm trying to stop apologizing and doing a generally bad job. I'm in love with a fantastically weird man and with pigeons, on slightly different levels of intensity. I'm trying to understand passion, and I'm trying to develop hobbies (bead lizards? redesigning a studio apartment to be functional? tiny tiny books?). I'm trying to pay attention to myself more, and I'm trying very unsuccessfully to grow a moustache. I'm going to post stories and essays here, along with more personal rambles, and I'll include a link to my gofundme (in case you'd like to help me out with top surgery) and to my other projects.

Who were you even
what did you think about the world

Letting it stand

5 years after the last post on here
10 years after the first post on here

It's surreal.

I'd forgotten about this blog. I'd come across my old email account, or the word "pique", and think "Oh yeah, remember your old blog? Wonder if it's still up."

Well, I guess so.

I've been working on the site set up for a wordpress blog, but the learning curve is a bit too intense when all I really want is to be able to type whatever comes into my head in a way that isn't on facebook or tumblr (so, in a way that isn't too reliant on other people's feedback). I don't need a central webpage, I just want a text box.

So I guess I've come back here.

I think my plan is going to be to see if I can share this blog between two users: K Moss and Mossifer (name pending). K Moss will be the legacy poster here. It's weird to see all of their posts and thoughts up, but I don't think I'm going to delete any of it. It's important to me to see this sort of history that I have with myself, regardless of how frequently ignorant or biased I was, as a younger person. This will be the last post that they make, though, barring tech issues.

Mossifer will be me, the same person 5 years later.
Man, that's weird.

I guess it calls for an introductory post? A re-introductory post? I'm unsure of the semantics here.

Let us be friends again, internet.

drag shows and long days

I'm not gonna lie, I kind of hate going to drag shows with people.

like

I know that many people often are able to question their gender in a safe way at drag shows for the first time

and that many performers feel happy or exhilarated or whatever while doing the shows

and that many people are able to at least see or understand another idea of how to live

but to me it feels like a circus, with the audience laughing and shouting and throwing peanuts at the performers, who dance the same tired inoffensive gay anthems over and over while pretending that it's ok to be a joke

and someone in the audience sees someone they know down below and say something like "that's gross" or even just "that'll take a while to get out of my head"

and the rest of us

cowards because we aren't performing, aren't putting ourselves out on stage for the audience to shout at

sit there quiet and bowed under the weight of knowledge that this is how life is, that you will always have to explain, that you will always have to be tolerated, and that you will continue to put on a constant show to demonstrate how harmless you are

I don't like thinking about this this way. I have friends who are straight, friends who are cis
but this doesn't mean that I understand them, and it doesn't mean that I have to accept all of them as allies and friends out of pity

I just kind of hate knowing that I will always feel like this

that nothing will stop me from feeling strange and unsettled when I am gendered, when strangers explain to me that my birthname is beautiful and so they will continue to use it, that I will always have to explain myself and have to weigh the professionalism of using a name that doesn't fill me with self hatred


I'm just tired tonight.