Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Happy Nystagmus Awareness Day. I wrote a kind of FAQ about nystagmus a while ago.

I had to explain the basics of what nystagmus is to the assessor who did my PIP assessment the other day. (They used to at least tell you they were a physio or a nurse or whatever, now they don't even bother letting on how unqualified they are to be assessing your particular condition.)

Oh speaking of, I got a phone call today, from an 800 number I'd been ignoring for a few days because it never left a message or anything. I mostly answered it by accident today. And it turned out to be from Maximus or whichever shitty entity the DWP have outsourced their assessments to in my region, saying they need more information from me so now I have to talk to them on the phone on Monday! Ugh. I've never had this happen before.

Got a text this morning saying that I need to book a blood test before I get more meds too. Ugh! More needles and more lectures about being fat. Not a fun day for admin relating to having a body!

Ever since D's girlfriend broke her leg while roller skating last weekend, my ankle has been sore, something it hardly ever does any more and I've done nothing physical (like walk a lot) to cause it.

So I have tried yelling "Shut up, this is clearly psychosomatic! You're fine!" at it. Repeatedly.

Disappointingly, this doesn't seem to be working. (I didn't really expect it to. I'm just saying it woulda been nice if it did, is all!)

Today I had to ask the other two for help about something that's been making me shut down.

It went well and needed to happen so I'm glad I did it!

But even talking around it gave me a little panic attack.

Soon after, a combination of a crumb at the back of my throat and putting my mask on to go into Aldi, left me coughing and hyperventilating. The panic came right back. I had to stand in the aisle and wheeze for a bit

It has left my throat feeling sore and raw...and my brain is of course too.

Just found a draft of a post I was working on a while ago, a response to my friend Marcia's review of a movie I hadn't seen (still haven't!), but that's okay because it's not about The Substance as much as it is about bodies and what we embody: race, gender, age.

This film is really about white women’s insecurities and never did I have illusions that I would feel seen and heard. I think it affirmed that I am an object, and that I owe my gender or allegiance to no one; I create myself.

Feeling not female and trying to bend, cut, open and fold this body into female and instead of it being gender affirming, I felt more alienated from female, from woman.

Oof. Yes. So much of femininity is doing little violences to our bodies. I learned the word tribulation because of my grandmother, complaining about the awkwardness of buying clothes or the discomforts of jewelry, I can't now remember which, telling tween or teen me "these are the trials and tribulations we face as women" with a chuckle, but I wasn't chuckling. I didn't know what a tribulation was but it sounded scary. I was not looking forward to a lifetime of those!

I kept waiting for the little violences I did to my body in the name of femininity to pay off, and they never did. Surely this discomfort and pain, actual blood, sweat and tears, had to mean the payoff would be really good right?? And I mostly rejected even high heels and makeup, never mind plastic surgery. Never had to harm my hair and skin with relaxers or skin-lightening creams. So if even I feel such pain, when mine is a small fraction of the pain there is in the demands that femininity puts on Black and Brown people...

Once on Twitter, whilst I was defending Trans folks, a person wanted to misgender me by calling me a little boy. It was a weird sensation to process, someone wants to misgender me by calling me a boy, which is what I thought would make me most comfortable in the end, being boy, that would make life easier, but instead I work to be comfortable in girl.

I was fighting TERFs on twitter way back when they assumed absolutely anybody with pronouns in their profile was trans, so my "she/her" once got someone to tell me I looked like an ugly man and I'd never be a woman. I had never thought I was anything other than cis at the time, but I have held that in my heart for years and now am delighted to be an ugly man who no one would ever believe is a woman.

When I saw the monster, I saw my future without being honest with myself about what beauty really is, what it truly means to de-center the male gaze, to de-center white womanhood whilst being queer, of color and other identity markers; for me, the monster is the culmination of a wasted life...

I do feel like middle age has found me in the last year or so. I'm leaning in to it for the dadcore vibes and grateful that I get to age because to age is to live (I am twice the age my brother ever got to be, so I will never fear growing older). But my age feels so bound up with my gender because when I was in my 20s and first tried to imagine myself as an older person, I imagined a man. I couldn't imagine a woman at all. I never have been able to think of myself growing old as a woman, and I really want to grow old, so that's the thing that finally tipped the scales for me into I must be trans, I better take action accordingly.

I'd rather have had a trans childhood and a trans young adulthood like a lot of people, but what matters much more to me is having a trans middle age and hopefully old age. Maybe my beard will come in gray already, maybe my hair will disappear any moment, I don't care at all (or I don't think I do; maybe I will feel differently when these things happen but neither has so far). A friend of mine once said that second puberty in your 40s disrupts the usual narrative that the changes in your body after you leave your 20s are unwelcome ones. I think there are lots of ways that body changes can be more welcome, but definitely addressing gender dysphoria in middle age is one way to mitigate the "oh my knee hurts all the time now" etc. type of changes to the body.

I'm also struck by someone misgendering Marcia by calling them a little boy specifically; there's some age-related incorrectness in there too (as well as echoing the racism of Black men always being called "boys" by the kind of white people who still want them as slaves); it's setting up a power dynamic often levelled at women (and definitely at people who are incorrectly perceived as women).

I still want for us to want more than to appeal to the gaze. I want all women to want more for themselves beyond ‘beauty’, not because I think anything feminine is bad, but because I want them to consistently examine what they mean when they are reaching for beauty. Who is really defining what you deem beautiful? Who is paving that definition for you? Is it you? Is it white supremacy? Do these things matter? Yes, to a point I think they do. I want us to want more, and to imagine more.

Anyway, their writing and thinking are great; I'm so glad I can now afford to subscribe to their essays and also their DJ sets!

I really debated going to circuits tonight, vacillating even when I got upstairs to change in to my gym clothes. I needed D's help to hobble from the car into the building.

But it went fine! I skipped the quarter of the things that were impossible for me to do but everything else was really good for me.

With no more of my usual classes for a week and a half, I was so glad to be able to get to this one. Nfs Not only was it the first time I've gotten any endorphins in a while (for me, the exercise classes haven't gotten back to their usual rhythm after various breaks over Christmas and since) but it also helped me diagnose one of the things wrong with my body: I'd been perturbed that my right (never-broken) ankle wasn't behaving properly, it didn't bend when I tried to walk so I'm dragging it and that contributes to the stumbling, poor balance etc. But it's not an ankle problem, it's a nerve thing from my hip. Which isn't any less mysterious or inconvenient but somehow makes me less worried. Some of the exercises made my hop sore in a reassuringly normal way -- one of the things that has been freaking me out the past few days is that nothing has hurt, nothing had given any signs of being damaged or responsible for all this weirdness -- and some of the stretches that we always do at the end of circuits helped my hip so I'm going to try doing more of those.

I'm ending the day (still wet hair after my shower) feeling pretty good, especially considering I woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep this morning, and work was kind of intense though much more normal than last week.

My shoulder hurt so much last night I couldn't sleep and ibuprofen is doing nothing for it.

Which means.

I have to wake up early tomorrow and run the gauntlet of trying to get a GP appointment.

(well at least I'll probably be awake early anyway!!!)

This is a real Old Person injury: I have no idea what I've done to hurt it, how can it be this bad???

My fellow co-chair of the staff LGBT+ network and I recorded a thing for Trans Awareness Month.

At last year's event, they came out and told us their new name! (I wasn't a co-chair yet so I wasn't involved.) There's nothing that dramatic this time.

But this time, as well as them updating us on what the last year has been like for them as a genderfluid person (apparently it's harder than being the only blindie in the village but easier than being the only goth), I talked about why gender is relevant at work.

And in the course of our conversation, a couple of points involved me explicitly saying I trans -- something I've so far been...not secretive about, but quiet about at work.

But I have good experiences to share. I feel like it's really important to do that for the sake of other trans people who are otherwise only hearing about "rainy TERF island." And if me saying "You might not think gender matters at work but you treat people differently in meetings and emails based on it, ask me how I know" and that gets anyone thinking about this who didn't before, I'd say that's worth it. (This message is not my favorite, because it should be possible for people who've never been perceived as women to believe anyone who ever has, but I feel like this is still the level we're at so, in the hope of meeting people where they're at...)

I hope it's well-received.

The funniest thing about it, though, was that when I told the others after work that my sinuses were bothering me, D, who'd been in the next room and overheard me, said "oh I thought you were just doing a particularly masc voice for your podcast!"

No artifice here! That voice is all the natural effect of my terrible sinuses.

Handily, in a call I had with my manager at the end of the work day, he suddenly said "are you sick? You sound weird" so I was like "yeah I'm super sick" even though I'm not, thus laying the groundwork for calling in sick tomorrow if I wake up to a world I don't want to make small talk about as the only USian in meetings....

In the big organization I work for there is one other USian that I know of; we don't work together but I know her slightly (as the co-chair of another network actually) and she's absolutely lovely. Right before I turned off my work phone for the day, I messaged her to check in and ended up giving her my personal number so we can cling to each other on WhatsApp if I can't face work tomorrow.

Just having to do pastoral care for my countrymen, normal things for a normal election.

2016 cured me of wanting to stay up to watch election results come in. The Trump one (as opposed to the Brexit one, sigh) was the occasion of my worst period of mental health outside of my brother dying, and the only exception to the fact that I can usually say my depression doesn't tend toward self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Considering this, I feel like I should have realized before the last fee days that making a bit more of a plan to look after myself in advance would have been a good idea, but I didn't. I'm just gonna have to grit my teeth, distract myself, and let my little wonderhouse family prop me up.

Did it have to be Bonfire Night too, goddammit, I feel like my head is exploding every time I hear fireworks going off. Which is every few seconds now that it's been dark for an hour.

But the night won't last forever.

I had an easier day at work and D is feeling better (clearly still sick, but better!) and the sun has been out and those two got covid jabs (phew! especially with D's close call this week, I'm very glad this has been possible), and D even spotted a ticket for the Public Service Broadcasting gig and got it for me with him as a carer so we can go to that next Friday...

And still after I finished work I was feeling really miserable for no reason, really upset and overwhelmed.

When I started to feel resentful of every ordinary sound in the room and preferred eating leftovers by myself with the lights off to having takeaway with the others, I started to wonder if I'm having a weird migraine ("weird" because usually for me they announce themselves with auras). Which might explain the otherwise-inexplicable mood crash.

It's only 8pm but I'm taking myself to bed in case that'll help.

Gary had a slightly weird day -- not as interested in things that are usually high-value treats, with no obvious explanation; had friendly but unexpected humans in his house; probably still has a full stress-bucket from the last day or two. With one thing and another, he wanted lots of pets and even though his humans stayed home all day he was really clingy even when I was, like, in the next room talking to my parents this evening.

We call him a "feelings dog" or "feelings boy" when he's like this (always affectionately, often when he's either doing the sad little squeaks or getting cuddles that he's unusually interested in).

At times like this I really admire his emotional literacy: he knows what to do, you ask your humans for help, you demand more affection that you'd usually accept, you try to get extra treats out of it, you do what I've learned as a trick from V who describes it as "what would a person who felt okay do now?" -- they'd eat meals, take meds, go about their little self-care routines. Gary does this by trying to settle down when he's tired and it's bedtime; he's a great flailer, a thrasher of blankets, you can almost see his excess feelings departing his body as he beats his bedding in to exactly the right shape for a cozy nest.

I really admire his ability to determine what his emotional needs are and to ask for the help he needs.

I guess I've also been a feelings boy myself today. Lots of things went into it for me, too. "Here are my sad squeaks:

• a dream I had last night which meant that the first thing I thought about when I woke up is that I don't know what my plans for Christmas are going to be. My parents haven't mentioned anything one way. They didn't even nag me about not visiting this summer. I don't miss Christmas with them at all, but I feel like shit if I skip it.
• the headache I went to bed with last night, which persisted all night, woke me up several times but not so much that I could do anything about it like get more ibuprofen, oh no, just enough that I felt sorry for myself and despaired of getting any good sleep
• thinking of things that would help for my work trip which I can't source by Thursday: a better backpack, a work ID, business cards...
• ...new shoes, to replace the ones I gave away yesterday after they hurt my feet again. I planned to go shoe-shopping and try some on today, but other stuff got in the way.
• going back to work tomorrow after a weekend I was worried that I expected too much from, since I won't really get a weekend next week at all (work trip is from Friday to Tuesday), but which even by normal standards didn't have much to recommend it: chores and a bad headache and poor weather today and not much else
• how very busy my work week is (and not just busy but with lots of different things all of which are pretty important so it's not easy to prioritize or focus) right up until I get on that train, and I go right back in to bring frantically busy. Nothing happened in August; so much was pushed back to September.

Today started bad -- I slept through my alarm, work was demanding and depressing immediately, I couldn't even get breakfast until after 10am -- and in some ways it could be argued that it's ending bad because I have a migraine.

But before that, I made burgers and salad for tea, a favorite of mine. And I went to circuits class. And when I got back Gary wanted a walk (which is not unusual, part of how he shows his appreciation for the newly-arrived humans) but it wasn't the usual "stand on the driveway" or at most "bimble around our end of our road," oh no! This was the first time in many many months, maybe a year? where Gary walked around "the block" -- a previous routine walk, one of the many things that we just think isn't a thing any more because we have an old dog, etc. He keeps surprising us.

And when I did have a migraine I could still take the much-needed post-gym shower, thankful for the grab rail and shower chair in our shower, and go to bed at 9, and when D asked me if he could do anything I asked if he'd bring me an ice cream because I didn't want to face the stairs again. He brought me a Magnum and also massaged some clicks and knots out of my neck and shoulders which has helped so much.

It's nice to feel so well looked after.