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.

and they let me be their friend

Okay well apparently I can’t focus until I write this

I keep getting the feeling that people are just tolerating me, that one day I will say something wrong or do something wrong and then pam I’m out of their life

This is frustrating

Things that I do wrong:

I get angry at things and people a lot even though I’m getting better at pretending I’m not. Sometimes I have a bad day and I can feel everything tipping and anger balances it out again.  I think I heard that people react to anxiety in different ways and one of those ways is anger, and that’s how I react. 

(sometimes I feel very similar to a lot of the portrayals of bucky in fanfiction, because everything is loud and unpredictable and everyone expects you to know what the rules are, and you know some of them but if you get them wrong then everyone thinks you’re an idiot, and anger can reset that.)

I tell jokes that are rude and offensive, but sometimes the rude and offensive jokes that make me feel bad make the people who don’t like my rude and offensive jokes laugh.

I think I worry too much and too vocally about getting left behind or left out of things, and that makes people not want to include me in things

I went in to get tested for adhd and apparently I don’t have it, I just have a “creative personality” that means that I find it difficult to justify doing things that I don’t want to do. My big thing is novelty. If I have novelty and control, then I have motivation. If I do not, then I am fucked.

So I know I am broken but not in a way that I can fix.

I am bored almost all the time and I know some of this is depression and some of it is anger and some of it is both but the only times I can break through that is with violence – either in paper or skin

Sometimes the things other people do make me angry and then I feel bad for being angry, but I am still angry.  I don’t like it when other people breathe too loud, or break my schedule, or aren’t interested in something that I think they will be interested in.

I can tell when people think I am being an idiot about something, and that makes me angry, which makes them nervous, which makes me angry again.

I don’t like it when other people remember something that I can’t remember because I have a bad memory and if I don’t remember something how can I apologize for it? I used to have friends who would remember things I said that I didn’t remember saying, and I still don’t know if I actually said them or if they just said I did to gain advantage over me

I don’t trust people, I think, is the biggest issue, but I don’t see any way for me to trust people when people are generally untrustworthy.  I can usually trust people to do what I expect them to do, but if someone tells me they will or will not do something, I have to make plans in case they don’t.  What does “trust” mean? How do you do it?

I had a very good day today until I was suddenly having a slightly less good day. I want to leave. I want to move away from here. I feel like I make people uncomfortable here because I am wrong. It makes sense in the story in my head for me to be the anti-hero, and so I don’t know how I portray myself to everyone else.  I am an awkward adult growing out of a broken child and I wish I had the manual.

Things I do right:

Lying

Being manipulative

These are the two things, I think, that you need to be good at in order to hold a conversation and have friends.  “No, I don’t mind.” “It’s ok if you say no.” are pretty good examples of this.  I don’t see much difference between “bad” manipulation and “good” manipulation, because manipulation is getting other people to do what you want. I also don’t see much difference between “bad” lying and “good” lying, because lying means you aren’t telling the truth, and I don’t think anyone wants to hear the whole truth and nothing but the truth except maybe our most idealized version of the justice system.

I am good enough at lying that I do it to myself all the time and sometimes I don’t notice. When I was twelve, I said to myself I know you lie to other people and that’s ok I guess but stop lying to yourself so I did that for a while, and then I started telling the truth on the outside and realized how much I still lied on the inside.

Facial expressions unless I am sad and angry, and I guess I do those right because I am communicating very well that I am sad and/or angry.

Finding connections between people or things. Sometimes if someone is looking for help with something, I am able to find them help with that thing. It makes me feel good.  I like buying people things. It makes me feel good not to be selfish.

Being selfish is like white bread, I think. When you eat it, it reminds you of your childhood, and it is so tasty that you could eat a lot, but when you do, it sits in your stomach and you regret it. Sometimes it is better to pretend you are eating white bread while instead you have wheat bread or a salad, because you feel better about yourself.

I do sometimes think the people around me would be better off without me, but I think that is a white bread thought. It’s okay to think white bread thoughts but still eat salad.  The truth is that there are a few people who were worse off before I was here, and there are a few people who were better off before I was here, and there are a lot of people for who it wouldn’t have mattered either way.

The way I am writing is the way I think when I am sad or off balance or angry sometimes. I didn’t intend to write this way, but it helps me to tell the truth better than if I wrote long flowing sentences.

Once I sat down at a table and the other people at the table said so what’s wrong with you

And I was confused

And they said oh basically all of her friends are screwed up somehow, so what’s wrong with you

And I said I get depressed and then I get depressed for being depressed and then it turns into a big spiral of badness

And even though I sounded like an overdramatic 18 year old (which I was), they said oh, ok and they let me be their friend