the static self (2021) (Patreon)

This is an image I took at the very end of my road trip, the last night before I came back to Texas and then presumably continued living my life. 

This photo represents a coming huge adaptation; I realized, recently, this is the first time since that trip two years ago that I've not felt like a freak constantly. Like, I feel societally recognized as wholly human in Seattle; I don't feel like I'm constantly looked at as lesser because I'm trans. This is not something I've really felt since that trip, and I've spent the past two years in a bad mental space where I tried to ignore that I was an outcast of society.

Fixing this and feeling human again hgas obviously has paid huge dividends for my overall day-to-day happiness. However, it has also shown me that I still struggle with things that I thought I'd put to bed years ago, largely because suddenly, I have space to have emotions that I haven't seen in years. (Example: generally I cannot stand when I lose things; this had kind of taken a backseat for a bit, but now is activating my puritanical "I am a bad person" feelings.) 

So this has me recataloging a lot of past experiences to try and figure out if these traits have always been here or if they're newly emerging, or how I can fix them. It's strange. I want to improve and I'm glad I have the space to, but I'm slightly frustrated to not be... more or less done with all of this yet. I feel like I'm just constantly relitigating my teens, rather than moving into whatever imagined adulthood I had in front of me.