I am having my endocrinology appointment this Friday. (I realize there is a very small risk, technically speaking, of me saying this publicly given that I don't want to tick off my brother on that day, however, literally the only way he'd find out is if he decided to track down a place where I said it, such as this blog, which I get the impression he refuses to do, so I should be safe.)

I got a job offer today. Gonna ponder for a day or two on whether to accept it or not, but it's a big thing.

I'm having a lot good happen.

Like having started the script work on Phyrra and Cyrus.

I'm in a big depression zone tho as right now...I don't want to do anything. I had more on my mind to blog but even that I can't find the words for.

I did good on my job interview, received validation of my gender identity, and got a lot done.
I think that's a good start!

Now granted.

Still got more to do and tomorrow I have another interview.

Butstill.

​Progress! Lots of it!

My father said that he would not offer to make me breakfast anymore and today had a general mood of grumpiness about him--if this is the extent of his reaction to what I said, then it's Poke the Poodle levels of harmless. I mentioned yesterday that if my father continued to be more bark than bite, that I owe him more or less an apology as he would not nearly be as bad as I thought.

However, the waters get a lot muddier when you realize that he also said, "last year, your mother was considering kicking you out of the house because you have no job. I was against the idea. Consider that and what you said." (or something to that effect, at least).

Now, that could still be harmless--it could be just a statement of, "I am better than you think I am.". If this is what he meant, then he would in fact be right! He would in fact be better than I thought he was if all his rhetoric comes down to lots of bark, no real bite. I would be all too happy to admit that I was too harsh to him.

However, I'm still concerned. Because while that's one possible interpretation of what he said, the other possible interpretation is that it is a threat; of 'I did not kick you out but I am reconsidering that now'. If that is what he meant, then my viewpoint is going to be a lot less inaccurate.

For the longest of times, I've thought: my father loves who he thinks I am, but would not love me as I actually am. If my father's all bark and no bite, that'd be proven mostly wrong. He'd never be truly accepting of me, but he'd still treat me as family.

But if my father's bark is backed up with bite and the statement was in fact a threat, then it would turn out I was right. If he was against kicking me out before he knew I am a girl but me being a girl is enough to make him reconsider, then it would seem I was not in fact wrong in my assessment.

​Unfortunately, only time will tell.

So I'll start with a note about my blog; it would appear that my fears of messing up past entries are, sadly, not unjustified and that entries can in fact lose stuff from my updating them with tags. It has, as far as I know, only happened to one entry, and it was only a loss of bold in emphasis that already had italics, so the original entry was still preserved as far as I know, but it still means I need to be very very cautious.

I am not going to stop the effort to update the blog, but I AM going to let you know that it happened.

As for the scary part, this has been the scariest day since coming out, for much the same reason--family.

My brother read my coming out post on linkedin and came over here absolutely furious. I didn't hear everything he said, I was wearing headphones both to protect me from my father's eating and also to protect me from my family:
Silence was what I thought was the best course of action, with silence being safety. I didn't want to be perceived. I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to stir the hornet's nest. I didn't want to make tempers flare up.

So I did my best to make myself as small as possible. Invisible as possible. Scarce as possible. I did my best to draw my aura inward and make it be small. (I don't know if any of my viewers for this blog believe in auras that we exude, but I always feel like I radiate an energy. I usually am overflowing with it, and I can expand it, which makes me more noticeable when I do, and I reversed that process, shrinking it to be as small as possible.)

I turned out my light (so that my brother wouldn't come over to do that himself), I avoided eye contact, I wrapped myself in a blanket, I tried my best to basically be as nonexistent, non-present, as possible. Tuning them out and hoping that my lack of listening intently would register in them not perceiving me, a la "if I can't see them, they can't see me" in a not quite literal but more metaphorical sense.

All in the name of making sure I wouldn't face something even worse.

Some of the things that my brother said I had answers to, but I couldn't say them at the time for the above reason: I was so scared that I was afraid engaging the enraged individual was the worst possible course of action, and giving him answers was precisely that.

He asked me if I forgot that we were connected on LinkedIn. As a matter of fact: no, I did not in fact forget. It was, as far as I was concerned, a win-win. If he never viewed my coming out post on LinkedIn, then nothing would come of it. And if he did​ view the coming out post I made there, he would have me explaining things far, far better than I did on the night I came out, because I am more able to speak online than I am in-person especially when scared, stressed, etc.

I was counting on him having the ability to read it, because I knew that if he read it, he would have a better idea of where I stand, why I did what I did, what I was aiming for, what I intend to do, have better information on my perspectives, etc.

He was furious that I called my father a bigot, but that is objectively true, as is my callout of my fathers homophobia and transphobia. These are not things that are inaccurate. After all, the definition of bigot is: "a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group."

My brother tonight literally showed precisely why that definition applies for the male members of my family. And the definition of homophobia/transphobia also is apt. "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people." and "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people." are precisely what has been displayed.

I could have said much much worse than I did and kept it mostly relative to the situation at hand. I could have said much much worse about my father and explained much much worse aspects of him in regards to others.

I did not, because I kept it mostly to only what was the relevant issue.

My brother wondered if I wanted to share what I said with the whole world--explicitly so, yes. I'm not an idiot. I know my family isn't going to spread the word to others that I have come out as a girl and that my name is Bree. I needed to take initiative in that regard and make sure nobody wouldn't know. I reached out to as many people as is humanly possible in as many ways as is humanly possible to ensure they had ways of knowing, because letting everyone know is the only way that it will get around.

​My brother basically called me a liar when I said that my father had, repeatedly, when I was a child threatened to throw me out if I "chose" (his words) to be gay. My father didn't remember telling me that, either. But I most definitely remember him telling that to me. Repeatedly. It stuck with me, burned into me, in ways that neither of them would know. I didn't misremember that. I didn't lie about that. I didn't misconstrue that. It happened, repeatedly, this threat.

My brother was also furious that what I said in such a public place could potentially jeopardize work potential for my father were that needed, or something to that effect. I admit that this is not something I have a good response to, as my response to it mostly boils down to: it wouldn't be a threat to him if he didn't actually hold those problematic viewpoints. If the entirety of the professional world refuses to hire (or fires) you because of things you have said/done and viewpoints you hold, there is probably a good reason for it.

So the way I see it: either there wouldn't be a consequence if the professional world saw it and didn't deem it unemployable (in which case no harm no foul) or if the professional world saw it and deemed it unemployable it could be fixed by just...reevaluating and reexamining your stances and wondering if holding that belief is truly worth losing a job.

Another thing I didn't get a good chance to say is that my viewpoint of my father has actually softened. He has been more bark than bite, not actually following through on threats. I'm concerned that my brother's outburst tonight might change that, with him taking action now that he is aware of what I said about him, but time will tell there:

If he takes actions, the words I said were justified and need no taking back.
If he doesn't take action, then I will admit the words I said were overly harsh. A verbal statement of a bigoted belief may be unpleasant but if left at nothing but being a verbal statement, it is MOSTLY harmless. (Not entirely harmless, but in the grand scheme of things, still mostly does little to no harm at least in comparison to having acted on those words.)

Until today, my father has entirely been the taking no action approach, just words with nothing beyond the words. If that continues, then my softened stance on him will continue to soften. I can amend what I've said on him before, to note that while there is still a lot of bad, there is a lot less bad than I thought, and a fair amount of good as well.

I can maybe forgive him, even, and more or less manage to overlook the flaws in favor of, maybe, eventually, with a great deal of time to mend emotional scars, find flawed-familial-love for him. If it remains true that his bark is worse than his bite, that he says words but won't act on any of them. 

I can apologize for a fair amount of what I have said. It may or may not still be true, depending on the nature of what I apologize for having said, but I feel like if there is genuinely not as much malice as I assumed, I owe at least that much for words spoken while under the assumption of malice being present.

That might not make much sense, people might think I am being overly forgiving for behavior that shouldn't be overly forgiven, but I promise you it's not, it makes sense in my head, I just don't have the words to quite explain the concept. It's basically:
If he's less bad than I thought, then he deserves acknowledgement for being less bad than I thought. Being less bad doesn't mean there's no bad but it still means the characterization of him being that bad is incorrect and would be worthy of remedy.

But this is only an if he is less bad than I thought.

With my father's vague statement of him changing his approach/mindset, I'm not sure what will happen. If he displays malice towards me which was absent before, I apparently was dead on the money in having been rather justified in my characterization. Him not having shown the malice before doesn't make the characterization wrong if after a little provocation of me expressing myself and being honest is enough to cause malice.

But if he doesn't change for the worse, if he remains the same, then I am fully ready, willing, and actually kinda desperate in wanting to change my characterization of him. If there is no malice to be had, then my assumption there would be malice was wrong, and I want to make that adjustment.

​Unfortunately, I don't know, yet. It's really up to him I suppose. We'll have to see, moving forward. What he does in the near future makes a difference so all I can do is wait on him to see what his attitude is.

Another thing my brother was upset about was that I have said things across multiple social media platforms, the scope and scale of which he doesn't know and callouts of familial matters there are things he feels I should not have shared.

​To be blunt though. It's about my life and I can share any aspect of my life with anyone in any medium I choose--including my interactions with family, my experiences with them, my expectations of them, what I am afraid of from them, what I have seen from them, etc. Anything they do or say in my presence is just as much owned by me as it is owned by them, because it was done or said in my presence.

If they have things they wish to do or say that they do not wish to leave the family, then they should either ask for it not to be shared and/or have less family involved in it. Basically if they don't want me to say I have heard them say bad things, then they should not say those bad things in my presence, is what I mean.

If they do say those bad things in my presence, then I have the right to share them in the manner I see fit. I do not share everything about my family to everyone. I only share what I feel I need to share, what is pertinent to share, what is relevant to share, what is necessary to share. I often leave out details deliberately so as to retain some modicum of privacy and decency and respect to my family.

But ultimately, my life is MY life, and interactions with my family are still part of MY life. They are also part of THEIR lives, sure, so not sharing every aspect of those interactions is fair enough. But when the interaction is important enough, I am not going to keep it secret just because they had a part in it.

I realize I did not hear all of my brother's ranting. I did not hear all of his complaints. I did not hear everything he was mad at. I could have misheard some of what he said, misinterpreted some of what he said. And even IF I addressed everything he was mad at and did so without having misheard or misinterpreted him, there's no guarantee that if he heard my defense of my actions that he'd be satisfied.

In fact he'd probably only get even angrier than he already was. Any point I didn't hear, extra anger. Any point I misheard, extra anger. Any point I misinterpreted, extra anger. And every addressing, extra anger. Heck, he'd probably get angry that I am in my public blog stating that I am anticipating he'd be angry.

But I still felt like I should write it down all the same.

He can call me a traitor all he wants; he can call me an ingrate all he wants. But I am staying true to myself. I am staying true to the path I have chosen for my future, at least to the best of my ability. I was already prepared for him to say I am not family anymore. I have been ready for that for years. I knew it would happen when I came out and I knew I was not going to live my whole life without having come out so I knew it was going to happen.

Ultimately however. I stand by what I am saying. I am staying true to myself. If he cannot accept me as I am, then the burden of that is never on me. He can believe I am making a mistake. He can believe that I have betrayed the family. But ultimately, those are his beliefs, and no matter how much he believes them, they have zero impact on the truth and they have zero impact on me or my path.

After all, if being true to myself, and being honest about being true to myself, and pursuing being true to myself, is enough to make me a traitor to my family...then that's not exactly a family worth calling family, now, is it? I know I am a girl. I know my name is Bree. I am determined to pursue transitioning. I am determined to be known to the entire world as Bree.

​This will happen no matter what. My family cannot stop me. They have a choice in whether to accept my path or to reject me, but that is their choice. Not mine.

Amazing what one day of, so to speak (and I do ask for a pardon on the language, I don't usually cuss especially on here but it's an expression), "getting your shit together", can do to make your life less of a hot mess.

Now, granted.

I had very strong incentive to do so.

I needed to catch up on my emails in order to get into my online health stuff, which I needed to access in order to schedule my endocrinology appointment, which is how I start a physical transition.

And I did so (well, mostly; still have some work-related emails from my mom I should read, whoops, forgot about them), meaning that I will be starting my physical transition a little less than a month from now if all things go well.

I still have a long ways to go before I get everything more or less on top of. There's still a bunch of things that I need to accomplish and it's a long list--but I have started it and I am making very good progress on it. I am actually close to being where I need to be, and that's better than I've been in literally months.

I am slowly retaking control of my life, and that is a goal I have had all year long.

It's slow progress. Two steps forward, one step back. The step back each time being rather costly, not insignificant, not something trivial, but the two steps forward also being the same, being important steps towards the future I want to build for me.

I have to keep moving forward.

Tho I should also note.

In spite of the need to look forward, I am doing work towards looking to the past--via slowly updating the blog's archives with tags. I had to revisit the first month of my blog because I realized I had use for a 'food' tag and this may continue to happen if, when I am doing tagging work in the archives, I realize "okay this is a tag that I actually need" and new tags mean that even after I get to blogs that have tags, I need to add any new tags that weren't there that would've been there had I had the tag earlier.

Examples of this include my The Descended tag (the tag used for the webcomic I have the most work on aside from Red Hood Rider) and the Pets tag (why tf did I not already HAVE that tag and only think of it a few days ago???), but also this is the whole reason I want to embark on this endeavor, as it also covers the birth of Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus were not tagged with that tag, because at the time I didn't know how much of the blog would have them in it--it was only later, after much much work was done, that I added the tag and did not apply it retroactively. I want to have, via the Phyrra and Cyrus tag, an easy to access list of every blog entry I made there.

This, while technically a look at the past, is still a look towards the future.
Because if I have an ease of access for all the Phyrra and Cyrus content, that makes it easier for me to work on that project in the future.

Which I still have an ambition of doing.

I've got other things right now that are higher priority and I don't know how I will actually pull off Phyrra and Cyrus. But I want to make them real.

I don't think anyone really thinks I will make them real. For a start, thinking I will make the colliniverse real requires you to know I have thought up the colliniverse (the name of the universe for Phyrra and Cyrus since INFINIverse and variants thereof are sadly already taken) in the first place, which only a select few do.

And even if you did know, do you believe that someone with no experience, no credentials, and no money, with zero experience or real ability to edit or animate can, with their amateurish scriptwriting (which is a form of writing they have zero real experience with), manage to make an entire Animated Series from scratch?

You'd have to be delusional to think it could be done.

And realistically speaking, most of the time I am not delusional. Meaning most of the time, I don't believe I can actually do it. After all, I've got nothing. No connections in the industry. No education in any aspect of the industry. No manager to help me manage things. No clue how to make it happen. No idea how to get the funds necessary, no idea how to present a project that can be funded and to get the funds without having gotten the project done, leading to a loop of "can't fund the project without showing it to the world, can't show the project without funding".

How could I believe in me to be able to do that? I can't, most of the time. And if I can't, why should someone else? Why should someone else believe in me when I don't believe in myself?

But I still want to try. You fail every shot you don't take, so a shot at success is better than no shot at success from having not tried at all.

And right now I am, perhaps due to the euphoria of the chance to start transitioning: feeling rather delusional. So I think I can do it. I can have it all: transition, and make my work a reality for everyone to see. Are the chances of this high? No, but they're not nonexistent, either.

It can be done, smartly, methodically.

I don't have a plan yet because, again: I have some more important, bigger things on my mind at the moment, understandably so.

But sooner rather than later, when I have a better hold on my life and future, I want to steer that future towards making a difference, in a big way rather than a small way. Being parts of communities and spreading positivity within them is nothing to be laughed at; it's nothing to brush off, it's something significant, but it is in the grand scheme of things still smallscale.

And there's nothing wrong with making a difference on the smallscale, is better than not making a difference at all and is better than making things worse.

But I still have the ambition to make things better in a big way.

It all starts with taking control of my life.

And that starts with me transitioning.

Which I am getting closer to, now that I've booked that endocrinologist appointment.

At times that I can't do things, I have in mind that I need to do the things; at the times that I can do the things, I can't muster up the willpower to actually do them and am constantly actively distracting myself from them.

Like, today was a monumental day. I got a referral for an endocrinologist today. That's a big big step towards transition!

...But a referral is not an appointment and I need to take control with this momentum before it slips away.

​It's very, very, very hard though.

I would say "in my defense, I have been busy" doing a lot of things, which is true!
...But mostly the lack of blogs has been pure sheer nasty depression sticking its ugly face out and taking control of my life.

I am however, trying to fight back. It's not an overnight process where I will suddenly magically have a fix for everything, but I'm working on it, trying to get more and more on top of it. I've actually done a ton of stuff, gathering makeup supplies, shopping, etc. But I've got a lot more work to do.

I started with a list of activities, divided up into one-time things, daily/weekly things, and additional/optional things on top of those, and then added in a need to remember login information for various different important things.

So far, this is what I've got;


ONE-TIME THINGS:
-Catch up on emails
-Do tax stuff
-Regain access to any sites I need to (at least one but see below)
-Restart unemployment (I messed up by not doing it so need to restart it)
-Seek psychologist (so that I can begin transition)
-Pursue namechange
-Finish makeup collection

DAILY/WEEKLY THINGS:
-Shave (daily for face)
-Comb hair (do with shave)
-Makeup (daily once I've got the supplies)
-Shower 3-4x / week + change (Monday, Wednesday, Friday?)
-Dental Hygiene (2x/day)
-Unemployment once restarted (weekly?)
-Shave (chest Wed, legs Fri, arms Mon)
-Pills once gotten (at prescribed time/method/etc.)
-Checking email (daily+)

ADDITIONAL DAILY THINGS:
-Once on pills, exercise:
*Daily: jackknives/crunches alternating
(start 10, increase by 5/week up to 100)
*Knuckle Pushups Monday / Wednesday / Friday
(start 5, increase by 1/week up to 100)
(use corset or similar for back form)
*Squats Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday
(start 10, increase by 2/week up to 100)
*Walk/Jog/Run;
Walk 1 mile/day, increase by 1 mile/week;
After up to 5, add jog for 1 mile on top of walk (6 total);
After 5 jog + 5 walk, add 1 mile run;
Max out at 15 miles / day

BONUS ADDITIONAL/OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES IN A DAY (Possible activities):
-League of Legends
-Teamfight Tactics
-TFT Hyper-roll
-Chrono Trigger
-Stardew Valley
-Epic Battle Fantasy 5
-Minecraft
-Art
*Finish self-portrait
*Finish Elemental Ruby
-Phyrra and Cyrus (scriptwork, songwriting)
-Job Search

-Storywriting (the below are stories I have a recent desire to work on)
*Coat
*The Bandit Seven (supervillain/"hero")
*Vetra (superhero/villain)
*The supervillain trio story
*Threadripper and Kinesis (supervillain) story
*Requiem (supervillain)
*Projection (superhero + supervillain) story
*Heroes 4 Hire (superhero)



ACCOUNTS I NEED ACCESS TO:
(I probably should not list these publicly even on a blog nobody reads so, uh...there's a bunch here just not to be listed)

So that's what I've done.

It's not enough, but it's at least a good start.

...So much as there is, continued, "I didn't do as much as I wanted to do today", today.

However, it notably wasn't nothing.

I may not have streamed.
I may not have played Stardew Valley.
I may not have won a game of League of Legends.
I may not have done my daily things like mafia games.
I may not have done anything on my new to-do list with a deadline of July 23rd (my birthday).
I may not even have blogged about the above in spite of having planned to, due to me being too tired now to do so.

All of that is stuff I didn't do that I wanted to have gotten done.

But critically, today was not a wash.

I did manage to unlock some of the event content in League of Legends.
I did manage to finish the base of Castle 4-0 in minecraft.
I did do a little bit of farming in Chrono Trigger and tie up a couple of things I wanted to do there.

But biggest of all?

I did go to shop for more additional clothes, something I was in desperate need of, as I was putting off taking a shower for the last few days in part due to a lack of clean clothes to change into.

So tomorrow I can take a shower and change, but beyond that, have access to more of my preferred clothing now.

It felt really good to do.

So I've got a lot to do tomorrow.

I've got a lot of progress to work on.
​But I still have done some stuff that was good. Which is better than nothing.

Okay so that title may take a little bit of clarification.
I do not feel like I am invalid.
I know I am valid.

I feel like I am being invalidated by my family--an entirely different thing.

They are not seeing me as Bree. I have the power to accelerate this being forced...but I've not grasped it, so I am frustrated at myself for how slow I am, how stupidly not assertive I've been.

I've not once said "that's not my name" to my deadname.

I've not once said "my name is Bree" to my deadname.

I've done some passive resistance to the deadname by refusing to answer to it in some cases, but after my family bypasses the name I answer anyway without them having validated me...and this is the best of my responses.

The others? Me trying, when they use the deadname, to emphasize, "I have/haven't done X", in a way that to me emphasizes that I am not responding to them using the deadname, I am responding to them...but this is something so subtle that it is something that they do not validate me with. They probably don't even notice.

Or worst of all? Instinctively responding to the deadname. 27 years of responding to a name is not something I can undo over a short amount of time, but the number of times I do is outweighing the number of times I don't. I'm not really progressing in pushing those to the minority.

I've not progressed on changing my name legally.

I've not progressed on job search stuff.

I've not sent emails to my mother and older sister containing resources I was given...by now, close to two weeks ago.

And yet, every day I am feeling less and less validated by them.

And it'll get worse on July 23rd.
What name do you think they're going to use to sing 'Happy Birthday' to me?
What name do you think they actively tell other extended family members is mine?
I'm not even being called by my real name on phone calls to our dance group. Yet alone our extended family on either side of the family.

And I've no real way to reach out to them beyond what I have done in making it public in the places I have.

So I am feeling awfully frustrated, both at myself for my utter lack of having pushed further and at my family for doing literally everything to invalidate me.

I tell myself every night I go to bed, 'tomorrow, I will change this'.
I tell myself every day I wake up, 'today is the day that I change this'.
I've yet to do so in about two weeks.

I am aware that this is more on my family than it is on me--
But if I do absolutely nothing, I won't be able to do anything to influence them, anything to affect them.

So I need to keep moving forward here.

​I cannot afford to not.