Welp. Welp, welp, welp. This sucks, yeah? I'm not making that up, this sucks? The American election that this. American Fascism on the rise, queer and trans people are now in front of the cannons once again, and I, feeling every emotion between fear and the raging fire to resist, am sick and tired of living through "unprecedented" history. Even evoking that word--unprecedented--its been said or heard so much it's lost its meaning. By now, it's just something news articles add to a headline to make you care more.
So here I am, planning, fast tracking changing the gender marker on my IDs and my passports before I can't, writing down my HRT regimen and getting together resources to source it myself (I'll homebrew it if I have to), thinking of all the art I could make to get these feelings out, comforting myself that this is somehow resisting--making art--and that I will somehow be some part of a whole that will make a difference somehow. Here I am, among so many, plotting to fight to survive, not against any larger figure or system, but against barriers. Literally words on papers with a single signature on it that turns it somehow into law; this is my goliath, my dragon hoarding my gold, my life, my happiness, all of it held on some thin string while a country trusts a literal convict, a rapist, a racist to hold onto the scissors instead of a woman. The only thing America hates more than racists, rapists, convicts, is women. Isn't that fucking insane?
Anyway, this is all to say that I'm tired. Really fucking tired. So unbelievably tired. I have all this optimism for what the world could be, and the ability of the people to organize and construct something truly beautiful and based entirely on compassion. But alas, I live on Earth. But alas, I live in America. But alas, I live where the rich are powerful.
All we can do is hope, yeah? Hope and fight and make art and do what we can to live tomorrow? Hope. I hope soon, someday, there'll be more we can do than hope. But now, currently, all I can do as an individual is hope. Doesn't that suck?
May God Bless America. May God Bless the United States. What bullshit.
What they pray for--May God may blind the masses to the poor.
Welcome to the journal! This (the website) is a lot for me, one of the bigger personal projects I've worked on. Most of the art I make is collaborative, teams of a couple dozen people. This, being something I am making by myself, is unusual for me. I'm such a collaborative/communal person. I don't even watch movies by myself. So to have a piece of art take me many many total weeks of time (I'm doing this from absolute scrap), is such a thing for me. This is considered art, right?
I just love doing these things. Projects purely for joy. Projects that don't translate to real-world resposibility. Projects that don't pertain to long-standing mystery.
The world is so full of mystery and it is used to punish girls like me. I do a lot. I do a lot a lot. Until I'm not doing much and then I'm doing nothing, but that's not what this is about. I'm twenty one. I'm in college, junior, theatre arts, scenic design. Even I know it's a longshot. It's so much of a longshot that it seems like I'm branching out to every artform in my ability set in some effort to claw at ANY chance that I can make a career out of one of them. I find photography to be the most likely. Theatre is a stretch but fabrication? Maybe! The many scene shops I've worked in make me believe that I have the build to where I could work in logistics if everything falls through. That makes decent money, right? Now lets hope logistics companies are nice to trans women. Or safe for trans women. God knows I've lied on a few applications.
The point is that I steeled myself up for a longshot career while also still being the smallest and most frightened baby on the fact that I want to enjoy my life in the long run and I don't want to, like, disappoint everyone who believed I could, or prove right the people who believed I couldn't. Where I come from, a smaller, rural, intensely American town, being an artist just isn't viable to anybody--a sentiment I'm sure many are familiar with. It's such a tired trope--the artistic underdog wants to prove herself in the world--so tired it makes me gag. Even writing myself here, saying "ooo, look how cool I am, I'm so brave" feels way too self serving.
Yet, here we are. I'm also like every kind of emotion right now, which is why I may be waxing pseudopoetically. Someone I love is next to me, drawing pictures of dogs, and I've cried at one cat and three dogs. Insane to think I used to never cry. Thanks estrogen!
God this isn't organized. I've never really journalled before. I'll get better at it.