24.3.26
hell month
hello! late submission here mostly due to me waiting for my roll of film to be developed so i can use the images in this post- however also because i have had a rough little feb. to start, about mid-way i had my chronic condition flare up pretty badly due to some real life stress accentuated by just ambient moving stress. also! the week i got the photos, i got a cold so it's all kind of been a maelstrom knocking me down over and over again. so needless to say i've definitely been in a weird disassociative survival-mode of sorts that, to make matters worse, kind of got nailed in the head by finding out that a close and dear friend had blocked me and my alts on everything imaginable with no heads up. it has been a physically and emotionally tumultuous time for sure, but let's talk about the few things i managed to get done this month despite it all!
edit: so this was true about two weeks as of uploading this (24/3/26) but the further delay was caused by a really severe depressive episode (more in the upcoming march blog i'm sure!) regardless, read on my lovely reader.
it's lonely at the center of the world
a graphic novel about an artist struggling with it all. i do need to preface i've read very few graphic novels and my experience goes about as far as the scott pilgrim novels, but i have always preferred them to manga and comics because of how much more they generally play with the medium and have less a focus on the explicit plot (atleast the ones i've read). this novel was absolutely stunning, there are some jawdropping spreads that i think capture some extremely raw emotions (such as the spread of zoe being held above a couch with two wooden dolls cuddling) and depict the disconnect between one's 'selves' in a really novel and interesting way.
without the copy itself to refresh myself it's hard to give more specific praise but i do appreciate how little it shys away from suicide and darker topics and ultimately does make the moments hit harder that zoe can so casually talk about killing herself and then have an extremely gorgeous panel about the experience of disassociating in an intimate relationship or something which just places you in her mind a lot better. i really appreciate artists who can really just put out autobiographical pieces, even if like zoe, it is met with an internal feeling of 'this is nothing' i do find so much inspiration in the intimate looks into peoples lives like this. highly recommend picking it up if you do see it, it's an incredibly short read too, and might give comfort to you in a weird way.
the great chop
i cut my hair! for the longest time my hair has been one of the biggest sources of insecurity and euphoria simultaneously for me, but it was reaching a point where my style is kind of unsustainable for the active lifestyle i was beginning to reach into. i had always played with the idea of cutting it short, but a lot of people online HEAVILY advised against the concept of trans women with short hair, and i was truthfully very deterred by it for the longest time since there was a high chance with my dysmorphia i would just be seen as a Man again.
pleasantly surprised to find out that getting the pixie was absolutely the play, and ironically enough actually had the effect of making me look more feminine than i was expecting and just making me a spitting image of my mother in her 20s. i kind of got it to both just to have tried it once, but also to have a more even cut to grow into should i dislike it- atm i'm really liking it and would like to keep it maintained but i am fickle and cannot stick to things so we will see where this sentiment lands in a few months time.
losing friends
there's a slim but non-zero chance that the person/people i'm talking about read this (and if you are them, i hope you're doing well sincerely), but basically one day i was wondering why i hadn't seen anything from a close friend for a while and checked their socials in case things just had slipped through. i couldn't find their accounts, despite how many socials i checked (even spotify) and realised that they've gone scorched earth and blocked me on everything. i'm not getting into specifics, but we did talk about things and thought we reached an understanding which lasted for a little bit after the chat which is why this kind of felt like a curveball. a lot of our mutual friends that have been odd around me have too been avoiding me since this happened and frankly i do sincerely worry about their perception of the events and how that might've trickled to other people since in my mind it didn't warrant this response at all.
but in trying to come to terms with a lot of interpersonal turmoil i think i've worn myself a little too thin and currently am in the process of trying to let myself back into just existing without this eating paranoia that i am a horrible person. replaying interactions between all these people, and especially between someone who i still think of one of my closest friends who hasn't replied to my messages since mid december, and wondering what i did/didn't do. if you've noticed me being a little erratic in feb, it's probably because of this and just a sense of unworthiness to exist in the same places as people i put up on a pedestal much higher than where i felt at this point. i've kind of been keeping koe no katachi in my mind as a kind of sacred text for navigating this and if anything commending myself for avoiding any sense of drama centering around myself for a good decade, but it's a hard thing when i'm at a point where i do feel attached to the external perception of my character. this, like many things, is definitely a senseless ramble but i do hope these people are doing well is the bottom line, and if that means not associating with me perhaps staying out of it all is doing a favour.
volleyball
with preseason in full swing, i truly was terrified of my first season playing women's volleyball. i would spend thirty mins to an hour doing my hair to look as 'feminine' as possible in an effortless way, finding training clothes that don't accentuate my masculine features, etc. and my loud personality on court would be reduced to a passive whisper out of fear of my voice betraying everything i've worked for. i've been so blessed that a lot of my teammates actually have known me for years and my coach- who funnily enough i've trained with for many years- have been so supportive and most importantly, so non-chalant about it all. it's been an absolute blast, really excited to see how far we go and i cannot state enough how much these girls are one of the biggest pillars holding up my mental health at the moment.