maybe i’ll actually write something now.

i haven’t been writing much lately. i keep wanting to. i have a series of reminders i’ve set for myself to work on a children’s story, a speculative story about liberation, a space opera i started and abandoned, a time travel romance.

mostly i just need to write.

i’ve been so busy. or i’ve made myself so busy. it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

at times i feel like i’ve told the story/ies so many times that i’m bored with it — kinda like the set i played a grand total of three times on “tour” this past summer. then i snap out of my solipsism and realize no one knows a damn thing because even if i did write every day, and just journaled what happened that day, i would still not be able to communicate the fullness of my experience.

but at least there would be something.

so i tell the same stories, over and over again. that’s become a huge chunk of my life. my children, who overhear many of the conversations i have, will recite some of my words back to be, almost verbatim, about how this new organization, seeing rainbows (which i have avoided mentioning up to this point, even though its operation consumes my daily life, because i want to avoid even the appearance of being solely invested in promoting that work, and yet in avoiding talking about it i feed into the systems that make its work difficult — because it’s so hard to break out of these self-defeating and self-oppressive patterns — and not talking about it doesn’t help elevate the work it’s actually doing, against a backdrop of throngs who are significantly less shy about self-promotion) is “rooted in emergence,” and “had programming even before it was an organization,” and how we have seen and heard the impact, however small, of “salon is a time-machine.”

pardon my wandering brain. it’s mid-september. I just realized today is the third anniversary of the day … i paused here. i never know how to refer to it.

the day my ex assaulted me for the last time?

the day i pressed charges for the first time?

the day they were arrested?

the day we separated?

the day they moved out?

the day they left?

the day my life changed (for the better) forever?

the day i came out of the darkness?

the day of (the beginning of) my liberation?

the day of (the beginning of) my healing?

i look back on time before that, and it feels like trying to reach into, with my whole body and self, a place of darkness. it’s not that it’s not there. it’s not that i can’t remember. but it takes a great deal of conscious effort to go to that place. it’s cold. i shiver. i feel unsafe in every way. things can be seen, but they lack color, except for the bright, bright rageful reds of a bloody grin, a dripping wound, a hand grasped around my throat. violence of a hundred different kinds lie in there. dark, seeping wounds. i don’t like being here.

a breath. exhale.

i lost so much time to that place. over twenty years of my life.

i’m struggling this morning, i won’t lie. september, the fall, has become somewhat of an unlucky time for me. as the bounty of summer wanes, so does the energy of the universe, it seems. i’m also struggling because i haven’t been able to get my proper medication in weeks.

there’s apparently a shortage of estradiol cypionate, which is what i normally use, so my endocrinologist switched me over to estradiol valerate in the meantime. after my initial year-plus on patches (because i was a tobacco user who then quit — i ran out of money and then went through withdrawal for three weeks and figured i didn’t have the money to pick it back up again anyway) my doctor switched me to injections: estradiol valerate, 2 mL once every two weeks, intramuscular. my shot day was on a thursday, and by the sunday before i was ready to burn down the universe — with myself as the torch to set it off. i described my symptoms to my doctor who recognized it as premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and she switched me to weekly injections of estradiol cypionate.

i’ve tried to describe the difference in how it feels to me, but the overall experience (not that actual fluid in the vial itself, to be clear) feels thinner somehow on the valerate as compared with the cypionate. i don’t ever quite feel my full self, and it feels as though it wanes more quickly. i gave myself a shot two days ago. the last of my supply.

i went to the pharmacy last week to see if i could pick up my prescription, but my insurance from my last employer expired at the beginning of the month, and i don’t have any government assistance at present. they told me it would be five hundred dollars to fill it. and it would still be the valerate (not mention i don’t even have $500), because there is still a shortage of cypionate.

all this to say, i only had a half-dose left, which i took took days ago, and i had hoped it would carry me through half the week, but already i can feel it’s failing me.

even without all of that, there’s been a lot to process lately, and a lot of other work to get done.

within my local trans community, i saw an aggressive display of white fragility when i attempted to name a repeated behavior as being rooted in white supremacy culture. this was viewed as an attack and a man attempted to silence me, essentially saying that i spoke of white supremacy culture too often and needed to give it a rest.

i called this out for the silencing behavior it was, and refused to be silent.

in response to this i was attacked. i was attacked based off of the same hormonal cycling i revealed previously. i was attacked as a parent. my children were named by those attacking and silencing me and brought into an argument in a public, adult-only space. as a jew, i was accused of lashon hara, the evil tongue, for speaking out against white supremacy culture, and then it was open season for antisemitic attacks on the evil jewess witch, because a jewish man had opened the door for these attacks.

jews are often accused, especially when standing up for those things in which we believe, when standing up for our rights and our dignity, and the rights and dignity of others, of being self-righteous, pretentious, of having ulterior motives, of being plotting, scheming, of abusing children, of making people feel inferior by being overeducated or overskilled (as a generationally learned tactic of survival when other means of income and or sustenance such as owning land and farming on it were denied to us), and when i try to use these skills literally on the behalf of others who are literally like me, and often (in this country and region at least) may even have more privilege than i do, and i am accused of being a “white savior” because i tried to do something good and fun for other people, instead of looking out for myself first.

because i have tried actively to avoid looking out for myself first, i have allowed others to abuse me, to take advantage of me, and i am viewed with suspicion because i dared to give too much.

i never learn though.

i was in that dark place for a very long time. it took so much of my energy from me. every day it sucked the life out of me, and transformed me into something farther and farther from my true self. since the day of my liberation, i have only begun the healing process. i have only begun to become fully me.

i think the full me frightens some people.

i was once contained. my energy siphoned off.

let’s be real — i’m still a full-time mom of two, so my energies have a definite focus.

but i think what few who meet me realize is that i have met and come through the darkness, and i know i can come through.

it doesn’t mean i never get anxious. it doesn’t mean my mental health is always solid. it doesn’t mean i don’t second-guess myself. but i can remember not to let fear drive me, because i have seen what fear does.

“ruinous” is a word that comes to mind.

sometimes leaning into the antidisciplinarianness of my practice means i don’t know where i should be focusing these energies. i’d like to write more, but i always feel a great deal of impostor syndrome from my writing, which i know is something else to just power through.

this morning i was having a lot of feelings about music. i’ve been having a lot of feelings about music this weekend. i find i often do when i go see a live show, even if it’s an artist i love and cherish.

i no longer have the kind of relationship i did with musical artists when i was younger. i think there’s a way, at least in my generation, where we were acculturated to idolize pop icons. to unironically engage in the Cult of Personality like Living Color warned us about. to find a way to describe your identity through the music you listened to. or, even more deeply, that the music you listened to defined your identity.

i used to very much want to be identified as *a musician* — i would have been thrilled (though probably wouldn’t have admitted it) at the prospect of being a pop star. i’m glad, in retrospect, that i never had to learn the hard way about the really truly shitty things that come with it, like a lack of privacy, always being under a microscope, open to the judgment of other— oh shit wait.

well, i don’t want to be famous. but i also won’t commit to being quiet, and our culture is very uncomfortable with people who aren’t quiet so — i guess that’ll keep being a thing.

and i probably will keep making music (i feel like i have to keep saying this every once in a while — just because our society really expects us to focus on one thing and punishes us when we don’t), and i may even book some shows to play next year. we’ll see. it’s a lot of work. but i’m also going to do the other random things.

i’ve been playing with visual art a bit more lately, through the workshops i’ve been facilitating with seeing rainbows, and i can’t decide if i should keep them, hang them, toss them, give them away, or what. like, are they any good? i kinda like em, and there’s probably going to be more random visual art coming from me just as a byproduct of participating in these programs.

maybe i’ll actually write something now.