justmelookingbackatme

[justmelookingbackatme]

I have spent as long as I can remember feeling like it's only a matter of time before something breaks. Not necessarily until I can't keep living, though sometimes that is the feeling; sometimes my imminent destruction is more along the lines of an explosion. A confession I can't take back, a fight that can't be fixed, a pain so all-consuming I can no longer hide it. A fire that doesn't end my life, but burns it all down so that nothing will ever be the same.

I am on the last stretch of a run with my legs burning and my lungs caving in, unsure how much farther I can push. I am standing near a cliff, and the edge is drawing steadily closer. I am a rubber band, being pulled tighter and tighter and tighter, seconds from snapping. I am holding my breath, waiting for the inevitable. I know I am running out of time. It can't be long now before I collapse, before I fall, before I break.

But I have lived like this a long, long time, thinking any moment now, and that moment has yet to come. Maybe that means it will never come. Maybe I will keep going like this forever; this screaming exhaustion, this unsteady footing over a long drop, this pressure building and building and building with no release.

Or maybe I'm right, and I'm moments away from my explosion.

I don't know which I would prefer.

#s's writing #mental health #also a little bit gender shit. only a little though

[justmelookingbackatme]

you are her daughter & she wants you to be her daughter & you want to be her son

but you know that as a son you will only hurt her so you try even harder to be her daughter but you're not very good at being a daughter

you're too much of a daughter to be a good son & you're too much of a son to be a good daughter & you've failed her in every possible way

#the mother/transmasc relationship is something that can be so ough #all the trans guilt #s's writing #gender shit

[justmelookingbackatme]

Some days, I think about the future. Some days, I can’t see past next week, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I’m trying– please believe me, I’m trying– but I don’t know how many more times I can make it through the day. I don’t know how many days I have left in me.

Some days, I close my eyes and I try to picture myself growing old. My hair is greying and the lines on my face are deepening and I’m not whole, exactly– I will never be whole– but I have grown into myself and built a life, and I’ve survived. Some days, I can see it clearly. Some days, I have hope that I will make it.

Those days don’t come often enough.

How can I believe I’ll live decades longer, when there’s a version of me that died three years ago? Some days, I think I was supposed to die that day, as though the moments I missed death by were a fluke. Some days, I think I should have been gone a long time ago, and I’m just running from the inevitable. I don’t know how much longer I can run.

Some days, I can see the future, the destination I might reach if I just keep running. But my lungs are collapsing and my legs might give out, and some days I can’t think about the finish line, just the next mile, and I don’t know if I can even manage that.

Some days I just try to make it to the next day, and the next, and the next, and some days I can see myself doing this for decades, but some days I think I’m running out of time.

#s's writing #suicide tw

[justmelookingbackatme]

I want to write about grief, but I don't know what to say. It always comes out sounding flat. What can I say about grief that hasn't been said a million times over? Every person who has ever lived has lost someone. Nothing I'm feeling is unique. I'm not alone in this feeling.

I think that's supposed to be comforting.

It's not.

#OH HEY THE OTHER GRIEF THING I WANTED TO POST #i found it in my drafts #swag

[justmelookingbackatme]

It's been a year, somehow, and it's time to light a yartzeit candle.

It's been a year since the month I spent my life in a haze of obsessively reading about cancer, and visiting hospitals, and trying to figure out how to say goodbye. I don't remember most of that month, except for the worrying and the anticipation, and then the awful moment when I didn't have to anticipate any longer. A lot has changed, and I know I've changed, but it also feels like I haven't changed at all. Like I'm still where I was this time last year, dreading the inevitable, except the inevitable already happened, so long ago.

The year has been long. Heavy with grief that, even after it lessened, never quite stopped hanging over me like a cloud. Some of the days flew by, and most of the days dragged on, but it's finally been a year. This year has felt like a lifetime, but her death feels like it was seconds ago.

Does it matter how long ago it felt? Whether it seemed like a lifetime or a second, it's been a year, and we're lighting a candle.

#grief #s's writing #i've been meaning to write about grief for a while and i guess her yartzeit finally inspired me

[justmelookingbackatme]

Why are you so afraid to let people know you? They will still love you; you know they will. So why are you afraid?

Even at the best of times, even when you know you are safe, you are afraid to shed your armor. And this isn't armor; this is your own skin. You're normally so happy to peel off your skin, but you always want to patch yourself up instantly. You can't stand to let people see what's underneath.

They won't hate you, if they see. They will love you, and you can stop hiding. Everyone will be happier if you just let yourself be seen.

But you can't. You can't speak, you can't show them, you can barely let yourself exist. Sometimes you want to erase yourself from the world. You don't want to be known. You don't want to be a part of anyone's life. You don't want to be a part of your own life, not really.

Why are you so afraid to let people know you?

Why are you so afraid to live?

#s's writing #coming out #suicide tw #ish. tagging to be safe #hi i'm doing great

[justmelookingbackatme]

Listening

I wrote some horror because it's Halloween and I'm mentally ill. Content warning for body horror and paranoia.

They can hear you. Everything you do. They are always listening. There are no secrets, not from Them. There is nothing you can do to not be heard.

Well. There is one thing.

They hear every word on your tongue. If your tongue was gone, They would leave.

It works, for those brave enough to try.

It's far from ideal, you think. But any pain you could possibly endure is better than the knowledge that They are listening.

You open your mouth wide and put your hand in. Your tongue is wet and fleshy and your fingers recoil at the sensation, but you think about Them and pull until your tongue comes loose with a snap.

It disintegrates in your hand, and you are safe.

Until you realize: Words aren't all that They can hear. Removing your tongue won't save you. They can hear every sound you make, every cry and every scream. And how could you not scream, when They are always there, listening?

You place your fingers against your throat and let them sink inside. Your skin isn't as difficult to pass through as you'd expected; more liquid than solid. Your fingers wander until they find your larynx, and they pull.

You hold your voice box in front of you. Vocal cords are dangling down like streamers. The sight makes you nauseous for just a moment before it turns to ash, and you are safe.

Until you realize: You are still breathing. They can still hear your breath rattling in your chest, the shallow inhales and rapid exhales. They are listening. They have not stopped listening.

They will never stop listening.

You put your hand to your chest, and your skin opens to let it through. You hear (and They hear it too, because They hear everything) the snap of your ribs as you make your way past them. Finally, you can take a lung in each hand, and your chest opens again as you rip them out. For good measure, you remove your heart too, so They can't hear it beating. The bloody mess falls to the floor beside your lungs. Your heart spasms, and then it and the lungs are both dust. The blood is gone. You have no pulse, no breath. You are safe.

But are you? Are you really? Your body is destroyed; that much is clear. They will never hear your body make a sound again.

But you still have a head. A brain. You still have thoughts, and They can hear your thoughts. Every last one.

You will never be free of Them.

You hold your head in your hands, nails digging through skin and scalp and skull until they reach your brain. You tear it to shreds, littering the floor with its matter, until finally, it is ash. You are ash.

You are gone.

But so are They, and that makes it worth it.

#body horror #paranoia #s's writing #fun times fun times

[justmelookingbackatme]

I have a strange relationship with my deadname. It's not even dead, really, not when I'm furiously trying to keep this name alive. I don't know why I won't just let it die. I hate that name, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

I hate getting rid of things.

My deadname has never felt like me. As far back as I can remember, it felt like a name for a stranger. I never quite knew how to feel about this stranger. I've never been sure whether this disguise felt more like a prison or a shelter.

It's always been uncomfortable that the people around me saw her, and no one saw me, but maybe that's for the best. Maybe the me hiding underneath my deadname, the me that's actually me, is something that should stay hidden. Something dark, something ugly, some kind of monster.

I know that's a horrible way to think about myself.

That doesn't mean I stop thinking about myself this way.

My deadname is dying, and I'm the one killing her, but I need to keep her alive so the monster doesn't get free.

#is this an unhealthy way to think about transness? yes but consider: it's also badass #also it's incredibly important that everyone knows when i say monster #i'm referring to the nimona comic where she splits herself in two. this is 100% how i'm envisioning transness #s's writing

[justmelookingbackatme]

When I was a kid, I kept a journal, and I was terrified someone would read it. I found the best hiding spaces in my room. Then I rotated the journal through these spots, just in case someone figured out one of them, to throw that person off. I'm not sure who "that person" even was. There was no one in particular I thought might sneak into my room and read my journal. I was just afraid of a Someone.

And that Someone has followed me around ever since. That Someone eavesdrops on my phone calls and conversations and therapy sessions. That Someone peers over my shoulder when I'm on my phone in public and monitors every text I send, everything I scribble down in my notes app, everything I read. That Someone sees every emotion on my face and hears every thought in my head.

I don't know if Someone is supposed to be a family member, or a friend, or a classmate, or a stranger. I'm not sure if They're supposed to be everyone at once.

I don't know anything about Them, but I can't shake the feeling that They know everything about me.

#paranoia #i did not realize this was mentally ill behavior until recently #i was like yeah it's normal to constantly worry someone is listening in on you 24/7. i'm totally normal #mental illness

[justmelookingbackatme]

Yeah, a little bit. Like any queer identity, it kind of involves a lot of loneliness and hardship at first. But I think I'm on my way towards self acceptance :)

After so many years wishing I could be straight, one would think it might come as a relief to identify that way now. But it’s not. Heterosexuality is more isolating than I ever imagined it could be.

Being trans, I’m not straight enough for the general population. Most of them still think of me as a lesbian. But I’m too straight for most queers. It would be funny if it wasn’t so lonely; I’m an outsider among outsiders.

Sometimes they try to exclude me, or sometimes they make comments that aren’t intended to hurt but hurt nonetheless. And sometimes they do make an active effort to include me, which is wonderful, but… I still feel alone.

I don’t fit in with my cisgender sapphic friends anymore. I was one of them, but then I left. I know what I’ve lost with them; the community, the sense of belonging. And I’ve gained a lot too, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like an alien.

I don’t fit in with my nonbinary friends. They’re the ones who are Queer, with a capital Q. They have short, dyed hair, and interesting names, and pronoun pins on their backpacks, lesbian earrings or bisexual phone cases. They’re unapologetically queer, and although heterosexuality is queer when I do it, it’s not quite queer enough to seem like one of them.

I don’t fit in with my transmasculine friends. Most of them are gay, and the few who aren’t gay are bi. It’s become almost an inside joke between them, their path from a cis lesbian to a gay trans man. It’s not their intention, but sometimes the way they talk about that pipeline makes it seem like it’s a universal transmasculine experience. Sometimes I wonder when I’ll finish moving through my pipeline, when I would start liking men. This wasn’t where my path ended, was it? With me as a straight man? That was an outlier.

It was always like this growing up. Me, surrounded by a group of people who shared my gender, but they all talked about being attracted to boys, and I was the only one who didn’t feel that way. The odd one out. It’s a different gender now, but the same old story. My friends of the same gender liked men, and I didn’t, and I would start to wonder what was wrong with me. Wish and wish and wish I could find something, the hint of feelings for men, and never find anything.

I’ve followed this “lesbian to gay trans man” pipeline far enough that I’m no longer a lesbian, but I haven’t reached the “gay” part of “gay trans man.” I never will.

I’m not a woman who loves women, I’m not a man who loves men, and my gender doesn’t fit with the other queers who said “none of the above.” I’m just me. Not straight enough to be truly straight, too straight to be truly queer. An outsider among outsiders.

[justmelookingbackatme]

It's kind of incredible, to look at photos of me throughout the years. I'm not necessarily unhappy in all the photos of me from two, three years ago, but I'm missing the spark of joy I have now. I look the same in all of them. Tired, slightly uncomfortable. Smiling with dead eyes.

In the pictures where I start to look happy, I don't exactly look camera ready. There's one taken after I fasted for twenty four hours, so I'm not at my best. I'm exhausted, my hair a mess and my tie crooked, but I'm beaming. Another where I'm sunburnt and covered in acne, but I can still tell I was having fun in that moment, long after I've forgotten what exactly I was doing.

I look the happiest in photos I took this past year. I look relaxed, an easy smile on my face. In some of them, my chest is flat, and I'm glowing. In others, I'm with my friends, and there's clear delight written all over my face. I take more selfies, now, because I like the way I look. I look at home in myself and my appearance.

Some of the joy I've gained recently comes from being trans. Coming out, changing my name, expressing myself as masculine. And some of it comes from finding the right people to surround myself with. Some of it has no clear explanation, but it doesn't matter. I can scroll through photos and see myself becoming happier, and I'm so glad I could go on this journey.

#also i look way hotter now #old photos? who is that weirdo. recent photos? i'm the sexiest motherfucker alive #trans #gender shit #s's writing

[justmelookingbackatme]

I can't help feeling like you've stolen something from me. You haven't, of course. Your identity is your own, but my identity is so fragile that it feels like one wrong step will make it shatter. I'm careful, to the point of never quite living, but you're alive. You dance around with identity, and I hold my breath, because what if you crash into me and everything falls apart?

It won't. You're not doing anything wrong. I light myself on fire, over and over, because I don't know how not to burn. But you don't deserve to get burned by my problems.

I don't know how to explain it, the way your joy makes it feel like my sadness is strangling me. I want to be free like you are, but I'm so tangled up in doubt and shame and self hatred that I don't think I can.

I want to protect you. I've always wanted that, especially since our parents split up, when I became half mother and half father to you. And this is the way I protect myself. Hiding. Suffocating. It's how I learned to keep myself safe, how I learned to survive.

But you're not hiding, and you're still surviving. It's safer now. I can't escape my programming, but you were never programmed this way in the first place. You don't have to hide.

My protective instincts haven't learned that yet. I want to grab you, hide you away, bury you deep alongside me so you don't get hurt.

Doing that would hurt you.

It's hurting me too, but I can't make myself stop.

I'm jealous. How could I not be? I'm drowning, and you're doing a backflip off the diving board. It's not that I want you to drown. I just feel so achingly alone, and I don't know how to swim, and I don't know how to ask you to teach me.

You're like what I could be, if I hated myself a little less. If I was braver, prouder. If I hadn't grown up internalizing the idea that I had to shove these feelings far away, where no one could see them. If it had been safe for me to wear the feelings on my sleeve, like you do.

I'm glad you're proud. I'm proud of you too, even if I can't be proud of myself.

#idk. feelings about my younger sibling and i both being trans #i've been struggling with this for a while but. yeah. i finally managed to put it into words

[justmelookingbackatme]

A while ago, my therapist talked to me about dialectical statements. They're two seemingly contradictory statements that are both true. I'm happy and I'm sad. I hate you and I love you.

We weren't talking about gender, of course, but it's what my mind jumped to. I'm a man and I'm a woman.

Dialectical statements aren't about having these statements fight until one is proven to be true and the other is proven to be false. Neither statement has to be more true than the other. You can let them exist in opposition to one another. Not even opposition, necessarily. They can just coexist.

You're meant to accept the contradiction, and that's what I'm doing. Trying to do, at least. I'm a man and a woman. I'm a contradiction. I'm trying to accept myself.

#whoo therapy words + gender shit #talking about therapy and it's not even for mental health reasons. just gender #my therapist would be so confused by this

[justmelookingbackatme]

They say your name is a gift

That your parents gave you

And you should be grateful

But my name has never felt like a gift

It's a burden they forced me to carry,

A stone weighing on my chest

My friends call me my chosen name

And when I'm with them,

I can place the stone down

If only for a little while.

But then I hear my given name,

My burden,

And the weight crashes down on me again.

#poetry #playing around with poetry again idk #s's writing #got deadnamed by my parents in front of my friends and. yeah #had some feelings about it #trans

[justmelookingbackatme]

What does it mean, to be proud? We have this whole month for it, thirty days of pride, and I have no idea what the word means. Am I proud? I celebrate pride, I wear pins with my flags and I go to the parades and I say all the right things. I say happy pride month and I say I’m proud all year round and I say I love being queer, but despite saying the right things, I don’t think I’m feeling the right things.

Am I proud of who I am? I try to be. I try to smile, try to believe it when I say that being queer is a good thing. I try to be proud, but shame burns in my chest and the fire won’t go out, so I think I’m lying to everyone. Lying to myself.

Does that make me a bad queer person? We’re supposed to celebrate who we are. We’re supposed to love ourselves. We’re not supposed to close our eyes and wish our queerness away. 

I’ve heard people say that being queer is not a choice, but if it was, they would choose to be queer. 

Would I choose this, if I had the option? I don’t know. I really don’t know. There’s a part of me that would absolutely choose to be queer, over and over. Being queer has given me so much joy– art, friendships, a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me. I wouldn’t trade that for the world, would I?

Would I? There’s another part of me that feels differently. If I could snap my fingers and set my queerness down, as though it was a weight on my shoulders, I would. Being queer has made me who I am– I wouldn’t be me if I snapped my fingers and made this choice. But this part of me believes it would be worth it, anything would be worth it to have been born in the right body.

Where does that leave me? Am I proud, or not? I would choose to be queer a thousand times over, and I would rid myself of my identity in an instant. I think this leaves me split down the middle. Half pride. Half self hatred.

Does being proud mean being out? In that case, I’m not sure where I fall, whether I count as proud. I’m stuck in a strange sort of in between-– one foot in a rainbow slide from target, the other foot rooted to the floor of the closet. I’ll wave a progress flag, but I won’t tell my parents my name. I feel so much guilt, like by being trans, I’m doing something wrong. I can’t be proud if I feel that way, can I?

The queer community is all about breaking down binaries. Gay or straight, male or female– we don’t limit ourselves to two options. So maybe I need to do this here, too. Am I proud, or am I ashamed? I’m neither. I’m both. I’m me, and my feelings on queerness are complicated. They can’t possibly be summed into a single word. But at the end of the day, my queerness is mine, and maybe one day I’ll learn to be truly proud of it. 

#s's writing #queer #happy pride month have a thing

[justmelookingbackatme]

So much of my gender is wrapped up in what I can do for others. What I can be for others. My gender is anything before it is my own; the helpful young man holding doors open for strangers, the caring grandson visiting his grandmother in the hospital, the protective older brother, the son trying and trying and trying to be perfect for his mother.

I am the son trying to be perfect, and the best thing I can do for my mother is be a daughter. What else am I supposed to do, other than try my best to be a daughter? My gender is a man whose only purpose is what he can do for others, and that means I must be a woman.

I heard someone say, once, that men are taught that our value comes from providing for those around us. We're taught that being a man means taking care of a family, but we never learn that being a man means taking care of ourselves too.

Do I matter too? The best thing I can do for my mother is be her daughter, and the best thing I can do for me is be her son. What am I supposed to do? What's more important? My gender is about taking care of my family, providing for them, and my gender has never been about doing anything for myself.

#so many thoughts. gender roles & masculinity & trans guilt about parents. ough #the nature of trans people is that every so often someone reinvents the trans lyric from mama (mcr) #you should have raised a baby girl i should have been a better son etc etc #gender shit #trans

[justmelookingbackatme]

I know recovery is something I should want, but most days, I can't make myself want it. It doesn't make any sense to not want to recover. I hate feeling this way. I would be much happier if I recovered, even a little bit. Don't I want that? Don't I want to be happy?

I'm not really sure I want to be happy. I don't think I do. It's hard to want good things for myself. Some days, I want to get worse. I want to fall back down to my lowest of lows, and maybe fall even lower.

Someone called this an all or nothing mindset, once. I can never get all the way better. I'll never be a fully healthy, happy person, no matter how hard I try. So a big part of me thinks, fuck it, I'll never be fixed, so why don't I just break myself again and again and again for the sake of destroying something?

I don't mind destroying myself. It's not like I ever cared about myself, anyway.

I know I should care about myself. I know I should at least try. I want to try, but I guess I don't want it enough, because I try as hard as I can to care and I still have to drag myself kicking and screaming towards even the smallest steps in the right direction.

It's hard to make myself to do something I'm not motivated about, and recovery falls into that category, I guess. I should probably treat myself better than I treat tasks like homework or taking out the trash, but I don't. I still have to sit there and grit my teeth and convince my brain to do something it doesn't want to do.

It takes so much effort to just say no, you don't when I think I want to die. And I have to force myself to say that every time, because the alternative is to shrug and agree that yeah, sure, I want to die, whatever.

I guess I could do that. It's a good sign that some stubborn part of me won't let myself stand there and get hit by suicidal thought after suicidal thought. It's good that something in me pokes and prods at my brain until I huff and go fine, fuck it, I guess I don't want to die after all. It takes a lot of poking and prodding just to maybe not want to die. Not even wanting to live, just maybe not wanting to die.

I always knew getting better wouldn't be easy, that recovery would be a difficult process. I had no misconceptions about that.

I didn't know that simply wanting to get better would be just as hard.

#i wanna get better (bleachers) will fix me if i keep listening to it i think #suicide tw