One of these days, I'll actually start consistently getting entries in on the actual day. Those Roman Numerals sure are exploding in number.
Butyeah, I wrote a fair bit for today, but it was actually not done the normal way; my entries for today (yes, plural) are written, albeit slightly broken and disjointed.
So without further ado, the entry for the 22nd (as close to the original as possible, like the majority of my written blogs):
It occurs to me that one of the things making a blog be effective is to write your thoughts down, even non-story, trivial ones--no, ESPECIALLY non-story, trivial ones--rather than at the end of the day, so here I am, writing this at work. Wednesdays are the worst on my body; I'm still sore from the Tae Kwon Do I did yesterday. Right now, I could be dancing to the Water Fitness music, like normal (hey, it's good stuff: rock and roll!), but sitting to write is more appealing. It'd also be smart to eat, but while I'm a bit hungry and thus I'll regret not doing so, I don't feel like that, either. Just writing.
I'm going to diverge from the original notes and say that when I began writing the notes, I had a thought in my mind which the notes diverged from, in part because it was nullified, but it's worth mentioning all the same: when I began writing, I felt that doing this was not something trivial, that it was a necessity, because the "magic" of my blog has begun to fade. It's become routine. It no longer has the same passion it did when it was new. It feels stale. Repetitive. I talk about the same things over and over again.
And, sure. In life, there's repeats. But I'm still talking about the same basic stuff, rather than the variety of things I envisioned when my blog was new, which I delivered with a variety of posts, covering from my feelings on things to how I was doing to my rambles to my routine...I feel like my blog has degraded to be less diverse, and the hope of writing this note was to break from it, to use nothing but my mind at the time to convey interesting material.
...Not sure I succeeded, but it's at least longer. You be the judge. Because I'm now going off of the tangent back into the written notes, by starting where they do, about how I forgot to mention last night how my father confirmed my suspicions about how his bigotry does in fact extend into transphobia. Basically, there's advertisements on TV for an interview with someone I've never heard of, in a very familiar tone (same as his racist remarks and whatever homophobic moments he gets to show off), said he had no interest in watching it. (This is, mind you, the same guy who stopped watching Forever, our current favorite show and the show we were watching, for the three episodes Detective Martinez was dating the black guy. No joke, over that, he stopped watching. I told you he was bad; I was NOT exaggerating.)
This might not seem like much, but said person is apparently a transwoman from what my mom explaining my dad's hated sounded like. (In other words, she didn't use trans-friendly language herself when explaining the hatred, and did so in a way that it was more explaining away our confusion as if us knowing should be enough reason, rather than in a tone that'd convey annoyance that my dad is like that. Or to put it another way, my dad is actively transphobic, and my mom has it passively.)
This, now that I think about it, is not at all a unique incident. Any time there's been a famous trans person, now that I think about it, my family has always been in deep disapproval of them. And you wonder why I fear them. I wish this was just my own fears. But at the very best, they're ignorant and as a result, not understanding. At worst, they feel active hatred and despise for so much, including things that I am.
My dad is undoubtedly the worst. (He's also, incidentally, the likely cause of this damage in all of us, and I can only hope it's not too late to reverse it. Reversing HIS hatred, even if he learns that I'm his daughter, I've given up on being possible, long-since accepting that he's far more likely to disown me and pretend I never existed or actively misgender me than try to overcome his prejudice.) But while so, his love of us with that hatred of others has poisoned them. (Heck, I like to pretend I'm immune, but truthfully I'm not. I've had to fight tooth and nail to overcome years of brainwashing.) They really aren't much better.
So every day, I continue to live in fear of them. Every day, I am afraid of who I am, of being rejected, of them not accepting the truth about me. The faintest of hopes to the contrary I dare not keep in mind for long, as I don't wish to see them crushed by reality. Every day, that fear exists, that fear of what will happen when the secret comes out. There's a reason that I want to live independently of my family. And in order to have the strength to tell them the truth, I want to not be alone since I know if I tell them I will be severing my ties with them in all probability. (A friend, a roommate, whatever. I want someone there, because I am not a loner. I seek companionship, I like having someone to support me in times when I'm feeling down, and frankly I survive off of others.)
It's because I can't live like this, and I know I won't exactly be living if I told them. The Lie is eating away at me, slowly but surely. It's painful, the more and more I have to tell it. The more I desire to be free, the worse the burden on me becomes, and let me tell you, that's a burden that's building, fast. Yesterday, I had to sign up for the new session of Tae Kwon Do. I hate that they gender everything there. That our society is built in such a way as to make things be segregated. Male lockers and Female lockers. (There are Family lockers, but they are vastly inferior to the full-sized locker rooms for the gendered.) And in this case...again, I was forced to check the 'M' mark on the form.
I want to tell everyone. But I am so afraid. I know my fears aren't empty. Horrible, horrible things happen to trans people on a daily basis. There's a reason we have a Transgender Day of Remembrance. Those horror stories are in no way, shape, or form unique, rare, or even exaggerated. They're daily occurrences that strike down innocent people who just wanted and were trying as hard as possible to be true to themselves. And knowing my family...
...I know what would happen if I told them. Obviously, them being my family and this being America, I wouldn't get a beating or be killed by them. My family is, on the surface, an intensely loving, caring, close-nit unit that supports each other unconditionally. They're in ALMOST no way abusive. It's just that when it comes to the things they are bigoted against--which, as discussed, transfolk are included in--they revoke that 'unconditional' bit, and the love dies. I lose the support, which as I've covered in blogs before, given my current state, would be VERY bad for me.
It's not just them that I'm afraid to tell. How will people at work react? Would I even be able to keep my job? How would my close associates react? Would I be treated well by my TKD instructor, as a miss rather than a mister? How would the round dancing/square dancing community react? I fear losing them because of how much I care.
...And even then. Even if I can overcome that fear. If I can break free of my family, become independent of them, and face the music with the others above (who are likely to be more receptive)...how do I tell them? It's one thing to visualize the consequences of coming out. It's quite another to visualize how actually TO come out. I'm not sure how I could. I've never been a gifted conversationalist, at least not with the spoken word. (Written, well...you're reading my blog, aren't you? I'd say that makes me at least somewhat successful, no?)
Just this Monday, a little incident I forgot to share was when one of my co-workers talked to me and asked if I'd ever shave. To that, I weakly said "When I can" under my breath, because that was me discretely saying...I'm too afraid to get rid of it. He didn't hear me, and because my answer was such that he'd ask a follow-through, I changed my wording from the truth into some sort of half-truth, mostly-lie that I don't recall the specifics of.
And this is happening all the time. I...don't like it being commented on. Yet I have that paralyzing fear of getting rid of it, because of the protection it offers. I've felt more feminine as of recently, a LOT more feminine in fact, and feel like that's bled into my actions. I'm living in constant concern that if I got rid of the mask, that people would see the truth when it's too soon for that to be safe.
Butyeah, I wrote a fair bit for today, but it was actually not done the normal way; my entries for today (yes, plural) are written, albeit slightly broken and disjointed.
So without further ado, the entry for the 22nd (as close to the original as possible, like the majority of my written blogs):
It occurs to me that one of the things making a blog be effective is to write your thoughts down, even non-story, trivial ones--no, ESPECIALLY non-story, trivial ones--rather than at the end of the day, so here I am, writing this at work. Wednesdays are the worst on my body; I'm still sore from the Tae Kwon Do I did yesterday. Right now, I could be dancing to the Water Fitness music, like normal (hey, it's good stuff: rock and roll!), but sitting to write is more appealing. It'd also be smart to eat, but while I'm a bit hungry and thus I'll regret not doing so, I don't feel like that, either. Just writing.
I'm going to diverge from the original notes and say that when I began writing the notes, I had a thought in my mind which the notes diverged from, in part because it was nullified, but it's worth mentioning all the same: when I began writing, I felt that doing this was not something trivial, that it was a necessity, because the "magic" of my blog has begun to fade. It's become routine. It no longer has the same passion it did when it was new. It feels stale. Repetitive. I talk about the same things over and over again.
And, sure. In life, there's repeats. But I'm still talking about the same basic stuff, rather than the variety of things I envisioned when my blog was new, which I delivered with a variety of posts, covering from my feelings on things to how I was doing to my rambles to my routine...I feel like my blog has degraded to be less diverse, and the hope of writing this note was to break from it, to use nothing but my mind at the time to convey interesting material.
...Not sure I succeeded, but it's at least longer. You be the judge. Because I'm now going off of the tangent back into the written notes, by starting where they do, about how I forgot to mention last night how my father confirmed my suspicions about how his bigotry does in fact extend into transphobia. Basically, there's advertisements on TV for an interview with someone I've never heard of, in a very familiar tone (same as his racist remarks and whatever homophobic moments he gets to show off), said he had no interest in watching it. (This is, mind you, the same guy who stopped watching Forever, our current favorite show and the show we were watching, for the three episodes Detective Martinez was dating the black guy. No joke, over that, he stopped watching. I told you he was bad; I was NOT exaggerating.)
This might not seem like much, but said person is apparently a transwoman from what my mom explaining my dad's hated sounded like. (In other words, she didn't use trans-friendly language herself when explaining the hatred, and did so in a way that it was more explaining away our confusion as if us knowing should be enough reason, rather than in a tone that'd convey annoyance that my dad is like that. Or to put it another way, my dad is actively transphobic, and my mom has it passively.)
This, now that I think about it, is not at all a unique incident. Any time there's been a famous trans person, now that I think about it, my family has always been in deep disapproval of them. And you wonder why I fear them. I wish this was just my own fears. But at the very best, they're ignorant and as a result, not understanding. At worst, they feel active hatred and despise for so much, including things that I am.
My dad is undoubtedly the worst. (He's also, incidentally, the likely cause of this damage in all of us, and I can only hope it's not too late to reverse it. Reversing HIS hatred, even if he learns that I'm his daughter, I've given up on being possible, long-since accepting that he's far more likely to disown me and pretend I never existed or actively misgender me than try to overcome his prejudice.) But while so, his love of us with that hatred of others has poisoned them. (Heck, I like to pretend I'm immune, but truthfully I'm not. I've had to fight tooth and nail to overcome years of brainwashing.) They really aren't much better.
So every day, I continue to live in fear of them. Every day, I am afraid of who I am, of being rejected, of them not accepting the truth about me. The faintest of hopes to the contrary I dare not keep in mind for long, as I don't wish to see them crushed by reality. Every day, that fear exists, that fear of what will happen when the secret comes out. There's a reason that I want to live independently of my family. And in order to have the strength to tell them the truth, I want to not be alone since I know if I tell them I will be severing my ties with them in all probability. (A friend, a roommate, whatever. I want someone there, because I am not a loner. I seek companionship, I like having someone to support me in times when I'm feeling down, and frankly I survive off of others.)
It's because I can't live like this, and I know I won't exactly be living if I told them. The Lie is eating away at me, slowly but surely. It's painful, the more and more I have to tell it. The more I desire to be free, the worse the burden on me becomes, and let me tell you, that's a burden that's building, fast. Yesterday, I had to sign up for the new session of Tae Kwon Do. I hate that they gender everything there. That our society is built in such a way as to make things be segregated. Male lockers and Female lockers. (There are Family lockers, but they are vastly inferior to the full-sized locker rooms for the gendered.) And in this case...again, I was forced to check the 'M' mark on the form.
I want to tell everyone. But I am so afraid. I know my fears aren't empty. Horrible, horrible things happen to trans people on a daily basis. There's a reason we have a Transgender Day of Remembrance. Those horror stories are in no way, shape, or form unique, rare, or even exaggerated. They're daily occurrences that strike down innocent people who just wanted and were trying as hard as possible to be true to themselves. And knowing my family...
...I know what would happen if I told them. Obviously, them being my family and this being America, I wouldn't get a beating or be killed by them. My family is, on the surface, an intensely loving, caring, close-nit unit that supports each other unconditionally. They're in ALMOST no way abusive. It's just that when it comes to the things they are bigoted against--which, as discussed, transfolk are included in--they revoke that 'unconditional' bit, and the love dies. I lose the support, which as I've covered in blogs before, given my current state, would be VERY bad for me.
It's not just them that I'm afraid to tell. How will people at work react? Would I even be able to keep my job? How would my close associates react? Would I be treated well by my TKD instructor, as a miss rather than a mister? How would the round dancing/square dancing community react? I fear losing them because of how much I care.
...And even then. Even if I can overcome that fear. If I can break free of my family, become independent of them, and face the music with the others above (who are likely to be more receptive)...how do I tell them? It's one thing to visualize the consequences of coming out. It's quite another to visualize how actually TO come out. I'm not sure how I could. I've never been a gifted conversationalist, at least not with the spoken word. (Written, well...you're reading my blog, aren't you? I'd say that makes me at least somewhat successful, no?)
Just this Monday, a little incident I forgot to share was when one of my co-workers talked to me and asked if I'd ever shave. To that, I weakly said "When I can" under my breath, because that was me discretely saying...I'm too afraid to get rid of it. He didn't hear me, and because my answer was such that he'd ask a follow-through, I changed my wording from the truth into some sort of half-truth, mostly-lie that I don't recall the specifics of.
And this is happening all the time. I...don't like it being commented on. Yet I have that paralyzing fear of getting rid of it, because of the protection it offers. I've felt more feminine as of recently, a LOT more feminine in fact, and feel like that's bled into my actions. I'm living in constant concern that if I got rid of the mask, that people would see the truth when it's too soon for that to be safe.
So after being on the stand (twice), I've now both ate and danced. (Though I'm passing up on further dancing for further writing.) However, I'm taking a break from both to do...yep. What else? Red Hood Rider content. (So much for me writing an interesting blog post without relying on a story. Ah, well.)
In this case, I was inspired by my fear above to work up an episode centering around the concept of fear. Ruby's fear is one the villain can't replicate (the villain has incapacitated all the other heroes of the Ruby Squad): the fear of everyone you call friend and family turning against you if they learned the truth. (MY fear. Hey, she is me, after all.)
The main difference between her and me is that, she being an idealized version of me, she's conquered it whereas I--as I just said (relevant to you, anyway; I wrote it an hour earlier)--live in it constantly. It's also, incidentally, why she's a magical girl, answering a question Sally had wanted her to answer for ages. The force driving her above all else? "I don't want anyone to have to live through that pain...that all-consuming fear. Nobody should need to fear being themselves."
In short, the very thing above all others that makes her not me is also the very thing that makes her The Hero. She IS a superhero (whereas I am not), because she's overcome her weakness, whereas I have not. She helps others do so, too, whereas I...well, in theory I try, but I'm not good at it. She's an idealized version of me for many reasons, but that reason, above all else, serves as the catalyst for them all. She doesn't need to live in fear anymore...whereas I am living in it even as I type.
...Incidentally, this revelation helped me figure out the chronology of season two much better. (I need at least 3 seasons to tell the whole story, though; I'm still cooking up plot ideas, even though I have a definitive end in mind and know a few of the major arcs.) After the traitor arc, there's Whitney's introduction. Following that, we get the full picture of vampire politics for the first time, showing Lina and Victor for the first time. (Ruby tolerates being a vampire lord, incidentally, for the same reason she is a magical girl; vampires have very good parallels to my own situation, and therefore by extent to hers.) Then come's the introduction of Amy (I know, it's a bit soon for two years to have passed, but it makes sense given that a fair number of episodes take place a long time apart and the whole traitor arc is notably long timeline-wise), but not as a magical girl, yet--just as her now-mature daughter.
Next would be the episode I just concocted, about fear. Then, Ruby's civilian identity as Ryan would be revealed to the rest of the cast, and then be explored with them basically, unanimously, seeing Ruby rather than Ryan. Next is her recovering, but her idea of recovering is to undergo vampiric training, and that'd consume a whole episode, too. That alone is six, plus the two definitive episodes at the beginning I already previously established as being in the season. That's a total of 8/13, not including the traitor arc. I'm not sure how many it'll take, but it's probably 2-4 episodes, leaving me with 1-3 episodes to spare.
...And I think I've got ideas for them, too, so like season 1, season 2 is basically solidified at this point.
Soyeah, that's my day. Sorry I couldn't get more original.
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