Tag: emotion

alex

Once more I feel something and it’s big and it persists and I don’t know what it is. I feel it in my body and my tears. I feel small and lost and alone and vulnerable and worn. What is this and why am I feeling it?

Some sort of pain and loneliness and disconnect. Still curious if it somehow was the deadnaming. It’s similar to that time in summer when misgendering got to me and stuck with me throughout the day. I can’t be sure but that at least is there. I want to cry. I’ll be OK.

multipains

TW: Body image.

So, day not going great. Cold and fever and coughing are hard – but always worth it from staying out for crazy unrequited love, so whatever. Babylon’s combined rail and postal service screwed up and the tickets that could not be sent online and had to be sent by post didn’t show up, the customer service gave me wrong info, and they could not print new ones, I had to buy new ones, missing the train that would get me to Unpronouncable, Poland in comfortable time. It feels like the whole of the system works mostly, but the individual cogs are made of fragile, poorly-designed components.

It’s cold, I sit in the railway station waiting for the new train – where my feverish self will have to run between connections, too – but at least I have coffee and a place to sit and warm scarves. I still have not done the work I have to do. I will but first dump more about crushing and emotions.

I felt this many times before, though perhaps it is the first this year like this. I don’t necessarily feel what A calls higher fidelity of emotions (I am probably somewhat alexithymic) but I do feel gravitas and inertia of emotions and the reeling now does not stop, nor does it harm or hinder, it is just there. I feel it.

First, of course if is only sad and nothing else if truly I am rejected because I cannot bear a child, but I don’t even feel that sad over that, not dysphoric-sad, because it is not my trans alignment that makes me choose to be childfree. And the needs and wishes of others are valid and legit.

I feel a crawling, odd fear that I really was too much, that the outcome had been better if I had waited longer before letting my intentions become known. Circumstances were such that it made sense to come out, it did not make sense not to. But perhaps that was still not tactical? Should I have played it cool, downplayed interest to make me an uncertain price somehow?

FUCK THAT. I am not here to play games. I am not here to waste time. If I need to lure someone in through some silly exercise, then whatever. Still afraid I did wrong. Oh well. I will remain crushing and friendly. I did many times already in the past and got great friendships out of it. And the thought of not being spontaneous, authentic, that tells me that is not an option any more. Whatever.

Leaving still the feel of lack of self-worth. I believe myself to be ugly, boring, flat, fake, easy to see through and predict, banal, average. Uninteresting. I know by external metrics this is not quite the truth but with experiences proceeding – on some level, I have not received the validation I need to heal yet, have not earned it – I must have more happinesses coming my way before I can avoid feeling like that.

So what is there to do? Embrace all my loves and friendships, old and new, nurture and listen and be happy and seek you, listen, care, create. Exactly what I want. Build and nurture myself. And at this point? School myself more.

I know it is not what would be healthiest from some standpoint of what I recommend to most. But there is a path for me to deal with my body hatred, and social self-hatred, by actually powering through and eliciting response from the world. I know this because I have done it already. I can become more beautiful. If I keep up efforts, intensify them even, I can change my shape further, and ultimately perhaps I will look such that people will consider be attractive even without my personality playing a part? I want that. (It also will let me be read more clearly as my sex.)

For some reason my will to voice practice ties in here too and is another thing I will do. Becoming more eloquent without feeling distanced? Yes. These things will happen.

And I will keep on questing for external validation. I will make all those plans I have reality, I will push until it works, until everyone who looks at my achievements marvel because they expected less.

I will seek overkill. I’ll stack on force multipliers. I will warp and change into the best me that I can be, until there is no way I can be discarded, until there is no way for anyone to be disillusioned with me.

Tearing up again. Keeping it in check, don’t want the hosts in Unpronouncable to think I am weird except in all the ways I want them to. Should start preparing my slides now.

sargat

I’m on the second day of the high-progesterone cycle. And sure, I cannot tell if this is biology or placebo. But I feel like I did in that previous 14 day cycle and it contrasts a lot to the 14 day cycle with estrogen only. I should work and shower and go to my meeting, I will do that, but need to describe this.

It’s both scary and interesting and useful. I am not detached but I am relaxed, laid back. There is less urgency, more acceptance in the face of anything. I feel a little tired, a little slow, not apathetic, but slow. I am not sure if I am, and I suspect it simply is me feeling how tired I really am and have been for a long time. It’s like it shuts off my fear/anxiety driven overdrive mechanism.

That’s scary because I have use for that overdrive as an overachiever. Possibly I can stay equally productive if I ensure enough rest, self-care, work-life balance. But I do feel that since I am less afraid, I am also less energetic. I’ll work that out.

I don’t feel detached, per se, emotions are not less, I am not dissociated. But there is also an… otherness to my emotions. It’s like when I woke up after long sleep and wondered who I was. I feel like myself but I don’t know if it is the same myself as off progesterone? Of course I am the same, I love you all the same and want the same. But on some odd level I don’t have words to describe I also know I am somehow emotionally different than otherwise. It may be I am closer to my body somehow. Like I have greater emotional inertia?

I mostly like this. I’ll learn to modulate it and to understand it better.

queendom come

Very speculative with no basis anywhere, but feelings need describing whether they have statistical significance or not.

If being completely speculative and anecdatal – which we totally do when we feel like, I’d describe this state of effectively mid-late faux-luteal phase as involving:

– Bloating (probably coincidence), feeling pressing need to urinate more often

– Feeling of tingly sleepy heat of peripheral blood vessels, like after being cold (this is a vasoconstriction thing somehow? makes me somehow think of cortisol)

– Emotional salience. Feeling close to affect, easily moved, easily anxious.

– But not active or vigilant, rather tired and non-urgent, staying at rest.

I feel very small and connnected to the world. My colour is more burgundy than purple, perhaps.

I wonder about this. If it really is there, it should persist until I go into faux-follicular phase on Monday. At which point I should experience clarity, wakefulness, vigilance, reactivity, urgency.

Wondering about the cortisol. Does that cycle in cis women, all else equal?

raw-war

Not quite sure how it happens, but today I have sensed myself being especially vulnerable, it has been easy to worry but more to the point, some sort of sense of dread in the background. This fascinates me, I am happy to observe, and curious that I cannot find the anchor. Though I believe it has to be, except I don’t feel it, that I was worried about my talk before the faculty.

Said talk went well. The same thing happened again that when I got to the penultimate slide outlining how I want to look at trans cohorts to understand sex-differential disease better, my body but not my mind reacted, I felt at peace internally but my voice got thick and I would have shook had I not prevented it. It slowly dissipated but slowly, and made me less eloquent. Obviously I fear talking about that in front of an audience because it’s a coming out and I feel exposed, it brings all the fears of not seeming serious, of seeming ridiculous, of being too much, probably multiple impostor syndromes simultaneously. It does nexus many of my fears so that does make sense.

But still odd I don’t emotionally sense it, whereas my body reacts whether I want to or not. Is this a sign of emotional repression? I’ve gotten so controlled over the years I can ignore affect and just move past fear without even sensing it, but the body still is deathly afraid and it shows in my body language?

Now a little worried that everyone could sense my voice tone shifting, worrying they look down or me or pity me, that they won’t work with me or give me tenure. But that’s also probably just the irrational fear, the same fears underlying it. I’ll act to ignore them, not feel them, just proceed with my work. But perhaps the ease with which I do that is precisely why it only can come out through my body tensing up?

emo

I kept feeling things very strongly, not quite frustration but Catastrophic Relevance, until finally I slept. Today feeling far more balanced. Being home sick may help too of course.

*

On another note, silver lining of something dark, I saw the medical records of a trans person getting into emergency psychiatric care under psychosis and intensive drug use, in the jurisdiction where I live. They ran away to find more drugs, they were restrained due to damage risk and generally must have provided a complicated situation. All the same, the report did not misgender, mentioned they were trans in passing as part of anamnesis (but not under diagnoses or treated pathologies), and generally was respectful. This implies to me that many systems at least here in Babylon actually might function as intended. I am glad of that, in these days of regressive politics.

tens

I don’t care if it is the same phenomenon or not, or if I am appropriating anything or not, but today I have no skin and I parse this as being something like a PMS experience. It’s the same as

– Sep 11 ( https://lost-in-transition.tumblr.com/post/177970939869/skinless-moon )

– Aug 30 ( https://lost-in-transition.tumblr.com/post/177558704049/tension )

So not periodic or predictable, and there are surrounding stressors. But everything feels heavy and sad and hard and I just want to crawl under blankets and blargh. Lying in bed trying to program, wanting to scream.

It will be OK. I hope it is something similar because I’d feel better knowing it is something I share with my cisters.

movement matter molting

Day is multistressed, and I sense I am in a state where I jump at anything remotely scary, even social things. Interesting. Don’t think it is any microhormone fluctuation per se (though it extends worries last night which faded a little when I replaced spent patches) but rather compound effects of how stressful things are right now.

Still have a cold, irritating. Worried about things. But feeling good also, feeling seen, and I can navigate all of this.

Oh, and discovered I can receive stimulation with a Hitachi through tucking and that this feels great when another person does it to me, so at least some things still work now in terms of sexual reception. Watched surgery videos and felt scared, but then again, the point is that I should be sedated while they do it to me, and then for things to be bandaged while initial healing happens. Meh.

And I am beginning to recognize I may have several emotional wounds from previous situations that actually behave similarly to very very weak subclinical PTSD, in most cases I don’t even acknowledge I have been hurt because I don’t feel I deserve compassion about those things, I blame myself. Nothing severe. But all sorts of complex things left marks, and I may be getting to a point where I can acknowledge that and maybe work on it. Is this finally me getting a little closer to graduated emotions?