The Truth Is…

I’m moving back in with my parents, but I really don’t want to. My family’s more chaotic than I am and I am quieter than they are and more prone to rational discourse over irrational yelling than they are and I’m more sensitive to disruption than they are and all of these differences really get on my nerves after awhile. But this is the best route to getting a car, I guess, which is the only way I’m going to stop feeling like a burden on anyone anymore…

My mother wanted to see Easy A at the theater tonight, but I really didn’t want to. I really have absolutely no desire to see any movie before I see the Deathly Hallows movie. I know that’s irrational and lame, but the prospect of seeing anything else right now simply does not appeal to me, even if I wouldn’t have to pay for my ticket. I simply would not enjoy it and it would therefore be a complete waste of my time and money. My mother’s bashing of Harry Potter doesn’t exactly make me want to please her by NOT seeing Harry Potter, either.

So I somehow managed to make the premise of my friends’ party as the excuse for not going to the movies tonight. But I’m likely not going to that party anyway. I don’t really feel like soliciting anyone for a ride anymore… I just feel like a burden, extra baggage. And my friends I think are not in the place to go out of their way to even ask me, not even Liz, which I understand, considering: my moods the last few times we’ve all been together likely hasn’t made anyone feel like going out of their way to make sure I’m there, either. I am also in a situation where I really have little to nothing to contribute to the party. So yeah, I’d just be a mooch, a burden, and I think this is finally wearing on everyone’s patience. In short, I currently have NO redeeming qualities. And that makes me feel cheap. And I don’t want to grovel and beg for attention or company. I’m kind of tired of trying and doing that sort of thing right now. If they don’t want me, they don’t want me. I can hardly blame them anyway. I should just shrug it off and except my losses and move on, like the cold and rational adult I should be.

It’s a shame, too. I think I would’ve been in a better mood tonight if I could have gone, too, because I actually got a job offer today, and the job’s actually a pretty sweet deal. I was also just generally feeling pretty damn swell most of this day, independent and owning my own life and totally nonchalant (easy breezy, divorced from all of the negative emotions that have been plaguing me on and off for the last couple of years, and whatnot), rational and unable to be brought down, even if I was also far from euphoric as well (admittedly). I kind of reached this happy functional whatever numb place, somewhere in the middle. Like, it felt like nothing could touch me, and I could just float on that delicate emotion long enough so that no other emotions could touch me, hurt me.

But then I got home and the room project didn’t go as planned and my mother woke up and everyone started yelling at each other and meanwhile the the hour for my friends’ party loomed near and I realized that I wasn’t actually going and I realized I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep up the happy momentum from my job offer for the rest of the night anyway. I now (and still, in spite of the job offer) feel pretty damn cheap, worthless, and abandoned… and dammit, it’s just a really shitty, crappy, fucked up kind of feeling for ANYONE to have, sensitive or not.

So my plans for the evening, I guess, are going to be house chores, homework, a few eps of Legend of the Seeker, and maybe some Maple Story. Meanwhile in my mind I’m sometimes wildly contemplating just leaving everything behind once I get my car and my independence. You know, start out fresh, and make it so I don’t bother anyone again. The problem with that is… I just fucking care too damn much for my own good. I don’t know how to bring myself to just… let people go. That’s such an incredibly hard thing to do. For some reason I can’t bear the thought of never talking to them again, especially… especially some people…

Yeah, I could REALLY use a pick-me-up right about now… instead I’m stuck with this feeling that’s halfway between wanting to cry out for help and wanting to just silently fade away and disappear.

I’m just going to try not to think about it.

(Hopefully things will be better next year.)

EDIT: So I’m reaching that cold, numb place again. Maybe I could stay here long enough to get through all this and turn my life around and all that jazz. Who knows? We’ll see.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I kind of want to go clubbing sometime in the next few months. I don’t crave it often but it’s been awhile. Hmm. Dunno.

I Was in the Darkness, Too

Going back home tonight, feeling disappointed because I can’t hang with my friends. Not that it’s anyone’s fault but mine, but it still bums me out. I guess I just need to stop worrying about friends and just worry about fixing up my own sorry life. They’ll probably still be there in a few months when everything’s better anyway.

Went to the mall today, and got to daydream about my new place again. There’s moments where that’s the only thing that matters.

On [Gender]

My housemate is throwing a party tonight.  A princess party.

I don’t mind, really I don’t.  It’s just… not my thing.

The other day, I ran into some of my housemate’s friends.  They were (and are) over-the-top girly in some ways that I’m not used to encountering on a daily and personal basis. We talked briefly and awkwardly about the party. And then one of them said, in a really high-pitched voice, “every girl is a princess!”

On the outside, I was respectful.  I smiled.

On the inside, I winced.

I felt a grinding friction, a resistance within me.  It’s the same kind of resistance I felt when my mother used to dress me as a child, or when I walked by my little stepsister’s room a year ago and saw that the color pink basically threw up all over the walls, bed, and decorations.

It was then that I realized how much I was dreading the princess party. I am NOT a princess.  Never have been.

And, when faced with the promising atmosphere of the princess party, I actually feel not like a girl at all.  I feel like a boy, EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT.

One of the telling characteristics of my childhood is that I was an oddball, even gender-wise.  I didn’t fit in anywhere.  I was quiet and shy (as my mother will tell you), yet wild and fearless (as my father will tell you).  I was expressive but I wasn’t talkative.  I was, in some ways, both the girl my mother had always seemed to want and the boy my Dad wished I had been instead. I defied gender stereotypes simply by existing.

I would tell you I was a solitary creature, but that would be lying. I had books, toys, pets, and the occasional fellow oddball to keep me company.  A pack of dogs doesn’t care about Barbie Dolls or G.I. Joes, playing house of playing fort.  A pack of dogs just cares about the pack.  And so I ran with packs of dogs, with Cheshire cats and Lancelot hares and Legos and talking lions.

I just didn’t understand, way back then, how my gender issues helped exacerbate my awkwardness with my peers. And yet I packed some of those feelings, feelings that are still vague and murky and childlike in nature, into a beat-up little suitcase of memories.  These became part of the memories of all the feelings I neatly folded and tucked away, forgotten for today and remembered for tomorrow.

I quietly carried this suitcase through childhood, puberty, high school graduation, and beyond. Now, I can open that suitcase, explore the surviving contents and better articulate what it is.  And how I am…

Part of this is because I question pretty much everything, and one of the things I most often enjoy questioning is rhetoric, cultural relativism, and social constructs. Of course, part of this is also because I am just here. Simply,  I exist.  Also?  I don’t like being hemmed in or chained down.  PERIOD.

Unfortunately (of fortunately), my gender-queer-ness has left its mark on my personal biases.  As in, I tend to harbor a general dislike of hyper-mono-gendered heteronormative individuals (and a few non-heteronormative ones). This is not really a feeling of universal hatred (so please don’t take it that way), but rather a trending lack of fondness or affinity.

It’s a feeling similar in nature to the way I feel about non-geeky people, especially the ones who don’t like to read for fun:  I  don’t HATE them, I DO still respect them (the non-geeks and hyper-mono-gendered alike) as human beings, and I respect their choices (as long as those choices aren’t forced on others, or harmful or threatening to others who have not given consent, that is).  And yet I will probably never be intimate with them, lovers with them, or even close friends.  Androgynous geekery is a HUGE turn-on, while the hyper-mono-gendered or the ignorant totally turn me off.

That’s not to say that someone has to be right smack in the middle of the socially-constructed gender binary.  Who’s ever right smack in the middle of ANYTHING?  No, a person can still be feminine or masculine without going over-the-top or pushing it (what is gender, anyway?), becoming just an object and losing a chunk of their individuality and humanity in the process…

A girl doesn’t HAVE to be ridiculously and stereotypically petty, weak, meek, and squeaky-voiced (because all that stuff’s pretty damn annoying and makes for bad company, to be honest).  She can be confident and sensitive, dynamic and compassionate, powerful and thoughtful, all at once.  She doesn’t necessarily need a man (prince) or a strong butchy lesbian (king) to take care of her (a princess ZOMG), or to give up her identity and individuality to (“ZOMG I’m MRS. Steve Johnson now! EEEeee!”).  She CAN take the initiative in a romance, buy roses and get down on one knee to propose to the love of her life. She can have a healthy sexual appetite, and even practice the art of self-love… frequently.  She can open doors for others, and strive to protect the weak or help the less fortunate.  She can be stoic and strong and be a hands-on hard worker, if she wants to. And she doesn’t have to wear heels and make-up all of the time, either, especially when wearing heels and make-up is downright impractical.

OR OR OR she can have short hair and never wear skirts and hate the color pink.  And play sports and fix cars and build things.  AND be horribly cuddly (with the right person, that is).  AND want to be wooed and romanced (by the right person, that is)!   She can even be all of this AND date men, if she wanted to (o___O).  That’s perfectly acceptable, too (if that’s what she wants).

Better yet: a person could take a little bit of this from the masculine social tool box, and a little bit of that from the feminine social tool box, and create for themselves a sort of synthesized and harmonized gender identity that suits them perfectly.  Unique and individual, fitting them like a glove.

Idealistically, THAT is both what I aim for (and what comes to me naturally).  After all, while sex is physically inherent, gender is just a form of expression, and I really do love expressing myself, don’t you?  :)

Hyper-mono-gendered individuals come across, to me, as a results of overcompensation and/or brainwashing. Again, I still respect them as human beings, but I have trouble further respecting them as my fellows, comrades, or peers.

It’s a BIAS, I know, but who ISN’T biased?  I’m human, and I’m allowed these things called biases WITHIN REASON.

As to the reason behind that friction or resistance I mentioned at the very beginning of this post?  Strangely, I think it does have to do with the traditional, institutionalized and socially-conditioned division of the sexes (ahem, genders), and the affects such divisional social constructs happen to have on me.

There are certain aspects of the traditional female gender that the traditional male gender will respect but not want to remotely partake in, much less be in the same room with.  A girl’s night out.  Hanging with the girls. Likewise, there are certain aspects of the traditional male gender the traditional female gender does not want to be a part of.  Hanging with the boys and so on…

A lot of this divisional social conditioning has crumbled, yes, but bits and pieces still remain, hemming us in or locking us out.  I have to admit I am subject to this conditioning, from BOTH sides.  I feel at odds with BOTH genders at times; as a result, I am isolated and/or I voluntarily isolate myself, because I.  JUST.  DON’T. FEEL.  COMFORTABLE.

One of the prevailing characteristics of my closest friends (as well as my biggest crushes and best lovers, some of which were/are also some of my closest friends) is this: they all exhibit at least a small degree of androgyny, whether they realize it or not.  And it is, frankly, one of the things I respect so much about them, as well as why I feel so much more relaxed and comfortable around them.  Because not only do I exist, but I also belong.

This is what it means to be androgynous, intergendered, bi-gendered, gender-fluid, third gendered, agendered, two-spirited… or, simply, just gender queer.

As for the princess party?  Hmm, maybe I WILL go home and, uh,  GO.  I can try.  I will grin and bear it.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll dress up as an edgy punk rock princess, or perhaps as:

a Xena that's not Xena

Or just respectfully disincline to show up as any princess but still join the princesses (*wince*) in an air of good cheer.  (And with a shit-ton of hard cider and wine.)

We’ll see.  =P

Hmm:  genderfork.com