Ramblings of a Transgirl

Content warning: Though funny, this story can cause extreme travel anxiety in someone predisposed towards that. I think in the end the laughter wins over the anxiety, as you can always go "Wow, at least I've never had it /that/ bad!" in the end, but you be the judge. On to the story! :)

Oh, and a disclaimer: I'm extremely chill while traveling or interacting with customer service in any way. My dad is one of those "I demand to see the manager!" type of assholes and I have absolutely no time or patience for those folks. If you do that in front of me I may well punch you in the face. Just... don't be a dick.

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This story begins in Tucson, a few days before memorial day in 2011. The plan is to fly to Harrisburg, PA, for my nephew's graduation, especially since as the computer girl of the family, I've gotten him a nice laptop to take to off to college with him and want to see the big dumb grin on his face when he opens it. (Note: Luckily I had this laptop shipped directly to their house, as as we'll see, if I had attempted to bring it with me, goodness knows where it would have ended up.)

My original itinerary is Tucson to Chicago to Harrisburg, PA on American Airlines. I get to the airport early, as I always do, since as you'll see, I have /wonderful/ luck with air travel. When I arrive, I notice there's a lot of people in line, and kind of wonder to myself, "Is this an entire plane's worth of people? It sure looks like it! I wonder if this is /my/ plane's entire worth of people?" Turns out, it was!

I stand in line, waiting with my checked bag, and the line ends up moving super slowly, quite a bit more slowly than you would expect. Eventually, the folks in front of me give up and drive up to Phoenix (approximately 90 minutes away) to catch their international connection, and then even more eventually, a little lady comes running down the line, handing out little slips of paper with a phone number on them. She apologizes and says our flight has been cancelled, and to call the redress number to be re-booked as soon as possible.

Okay... I do this. I call the phone number, answering a million questions along the way, including the following:
* "What is your name?"
* "What is your birthdate?"
* "What is your social security number?"
* "What is the last digit of Pi?"
* "What is the solution to the Riemann hypothesis?"

Okay, I might be creatively mis-remembering those last few, but you get the point. :P

Eventually, it gets you to the point where it's going to put you on hold to talk to a person, and promptly gives me a busy signal, hanging up on me! There are so many people on hold that the system can't even put anyone else on hold anymore! Welp, guess I'll stand in line then.

I try this a few more times, and after about two hours, end up at the counter. The lady trying to help is more than a bit frazzled and just trying to do her best, but re-booking multiple aircrafts worth of people is clearly taking a tole. As usual, I'm kind and understanding, and wait patiently as she looks up my records and tries to figure out what she can do for me.

It takes a few minutes (the system is badly overloaded), but she eventually pulls up my records and informs me that:
1. My flight has been cancelled as an emergency measure. There have been significant hailstorms in both Chicago and Dallas, and American Airlines has 150+ planes down for safety inspections before they can fly again. Absolutely all non-essential routes have been cancelled and Tucson is sadly one of them.
2. She can't do anything to help me on American, but she can help me if I'm willing to take US Air and am willing to accept a /slight change in itinerary/.

I kind of side-eye her when she says this last bit, as the way she says it has me going, "Okay... hit me."

She then goes, "Okay, I can still get you (mostly) there /today/, but you'll have to take US Air and the following itinerary. Your new itinerary will be Tucson to Phoenix, Phoenix to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and finally Las Vegas to Philadelphia, to drive two hours to Harrisburg." (US Air doesn't fly into Harrisburg, so it's the best she can do.)

I somewhat reluctantly accept this, with half an hour connections all over the place, and race over to check my bag with US Air. I make it /all the way to Las Vegas/ and am /sitting on the plane that is going to take me to Philadelphia/, when, during final boarding, a passenger steps out of the way of an airline stewardess and trips, slamming into an emergency slide arming handle and snapping it off at the door. (These are the little grey plastic levels you'll see sticking out from the door when the plane is at the gate. The sticking-out position disarms the slide so the door can be opened without triggering them.)

Now, this is an emergency safety feature, the plane can't take off without it. The part is in Phoenix, and I could have brought it with me had I known, and I now have my second cancelled flight (probably third, as I imagine the Chicago to Harrisburg flight was also cancelled) in less than eight hours.

The crew apologized profusely and proceeds to de-board us, promising us overnight hotel coverage, as it's 5:30 PM in Las Vegas, and there are no further flights heading to the east coast tonight with seats available. They further say they're going to pull our bags off so we at least have our luggage tonight. (Cue drum roll?)

It is at this point, having just gotten off the plane, that I pull out my luggage tag so I can go get my bag, and read it for the first time. My name is /apparently/ Raul Castro, and I am traveling from Tucson to Kansas City to Cincinnati New York City, where we'll be in a minute???

With all the chaos, I skip the redress number and go straight to the counter for help, waiting in line for a while again because obviously there are a lot of people who need help. The nice lady who helps me pulls up my reservation, and as I see the screen flash up the record (reflected in her eyes), she chokes. It's a half laugh / half 'oh my god this person is going to kill me', and I quickly laugh and tell her it's okay, she can laugh at me, as I certainly am at this point. She is /so/ relieved, and winces as she tells me she can't get me there for another six days, as they have taken on so many people from American that they are completely booked for almost a week. She /can/, however, transfer me to yet another airline, and United (and United's small regional carrier) can get me there tomorrow by 10PM if I'm willing to travel from Las Vegas to Washington, DC to Philadelphia. (I should, at this point, point out that United flies directly into Harrisburg, but US Airways now has a contract from American Airlines to get me to Philadelphia now and can't change my final destination even though it would save me hours of car travel. ;_;)

I consider just getting a one-way rental car back to Tucson and abandoning this whole mess, as I'm actually further west than I started after more than 10 hours of travel, but I end up taking it. I overnight outside Las Vegas (not sleeping a wink because I'm so wired from the anxiety) and through a series of nasty flight delays, end up at Philadelphia at /3 o'clock in the morning/. I'm wiped, but my parents come out (they drove from Chicago to Harrisburg a few days prior) and pick me up, and we end up back at my sister's place in Hershey (near Harrisburg) around 5 AM. I immediately crash out and fall asleep, only to be woken up two hours later, because we are headed to New York City to go see Wicked and celebrate! I am so excited! (I think you might be able to actually /taste/ that sarcasm?)

I do my best to sleep in the van, and as we are about two miles from the exit, receive a call from LaGuardia that they have my luggage and we swing in. I walk in and walk out with my luggage five minutes later. Mission accomplished, right? I can sleep, right?

LOL, what kind of story did you think you were reading?

That night, the hotel room is much smaller than it's supposed to be (they screwed up the reservation) and I end up on an air mattress on the floor, which promptly goes flat on me and leaves me sleeping on the barely carpeted concrete floor. I sleep anyways (more or less), because I'm so fucking tired it doesn't matter anymore, and eventually (mostly) recover over the next couple of days.

Okay, so, we're almost done, right? Not quite. My dad, as previously mentioned, is a raging asshole, and drove out with my mom to PA, but then flew back immediately after the graduation, because he wanted nothing to do with the rest of the family and couldn't be arsed to drive back with her. (She had/has poor eyesight and can't drive herself safely.) I had agreed previously to do this, and so I ended up driving all the way back to Chicago with her. I then flew home from there and had no further issues. End of main story (though there's an appendix you should also read).

Ridiculously insane summary:

1. Not counting my return flight from Chicago to Tucson, I was scheduled on eight flights, sat down on six, took off on five, and my luggage took a separate three.
2. My final itinerary was Tucson to Phoenix, Phoenix to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Las Vegas, overnight in Las Vegas, Las Vegas to Dulles (Washington, DC), Dulles to Philadelphia, to drive two hours to Harrisburg, to drive to New York City, to drive back to Chicago, to fly back to Tucson.
3. I circled over the Pacific while landing in LA and ended up standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier (museum) in New York on the Atlantic less than 48 hours later.
4. I was in /21/ states in /six days/, and was in or flew over /29/ of them.
5. I did all of this on frequent flier miles.
6. RE: 5, holy shit did I get my money's worth out of those things!

Final note:

As I'm writing this, I'm on yet another of my /many/ #AirTravelAdventures, this time with Southwest, and am currently at my /second/ unexpected city for the day. The lesson here is that you shouldn't travel on the same plane as me, or the same airport, or even from the same city if you have a choice. /Absolutely/ drive 100+ miles away and fly out of /there/ so you're not affected by my absolutely insane travel chaos aura. D:

Appendix:

At the time this happened, I happened to work for a defense contractor and carry a security clearance. One of the requirements with those is that you must report all contact with the media and foreign nationals, whether unintentional or not. I ended up, in order:
1. Talking to the head of AP News's technology division on on of the earlier flights. (I had to apologize and stop talking to him immediately when I found this out.)
2. Talking to a Russian national (who had no accent actually) in Dulles. (I obviously apologized and stopped talking to him when I discovered this.)
3. Stuck directly in front of the Chinese consulate in Manhattan for over and hour due to a car crash (not involving us).

When I reported this, my security rep looked at me like I was insane, and his eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head by the time I was done telling this entire story. XD

Also, I am much happier out of defense for a variety of reasons, among those being able to talk to whoever the hell I want without worrying about how it will be seen. <3

EDIT: Fixed a few typos, as well as the year this happened. (Went back and checked my email archive and it was 2011 rather than 2013.)

I've had a rough couple of days. Rough week, really... but I'm doing better, maybe even a lot better, than I ever have before. I don't often go into the details of my sessions with my therapist, but I wanted to share a little something from my last one, something that's kind of stunned me the last few days. But to do that, I need to mention a little bit about DNMS first.

DNMS (Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_Needs_Meeting_Strategy]) is one of the types of therapy that my therapist practices. It's not widely known, yet, and still being studied, but whatever our final conclusions on the matter, I know it's helped me. DNMS focuses on actually resolving the traumas of the past, not just managing them like many other types of therapy, and that's a hell of a difference. It also means that it can get pretty heavy to deal with, since you have to actually work through those old memories and feel the things you've been putting off for so long. >.<

One of the key features of DNMS is the use of three internal resources: a nurturing adult self, a protective adult self, and a spiritual core self. I'm... still working on connecting with mine, but I made a major breakthrough with my protective adult self on Thursday and haven't quite been the same since.

Zoe (my therapist) always talks about how "X is a trait you already have", reinforcing that these are things you possess, even if you can't see them right away... and she's right, though it can be a bitch to see that some days. The last few days, I have been able to see it, and even if storm clouds descend again, I don't feel quite as alone anymore. I... I don't think this'll be the end of this, but this is a major reason for hope.

I guess I should get to the point of this journal, which was to share a letter she had me write. I don't remember exactly what triggered the idea, but I do remember her gentle words encouraging me to write a letter *to* my protective adult self, right after finally making a connection. And so I wanted to share the words of that letter today.

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Dear PAS,

It’s been a rough few days. Anxiety, thoughts of self-harm, and deep-seated pains have pretty much hammered me into the ground. It’s the worst it’s been in a long time.  >.<

If I didn’t have you, I don’t know where I’d be. Pretty sure I’d be in a lot of trouble. >.< Thank you. *hugs* >.<

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It took me almost 15 minutes to write those few words... and I know they're not a lot, but they're really important. >.< I think I need to write a lot more letters now.

I'm sitting here in Wicked Grounds, holding my collar. Been carrying it a lot lately, and even though I bought it almost two years ago I've never managed to put a finger on what it actually means to me. One thing I know for sure is that it's not really something sexual, which makes it rather strange. Somehow, it's felt like a safety token.

Even buying it was a spur of the moment thing, something I hadn't really considered seriously before Dakota convinced me to go over and check out the display with her. Somehow, though, when I saw it, I knew it was mine, even though I had never seen it before in my life. After a little nervous convincing, I bought it, and even ran back a few minutes later to get a few tighter notches added to the band.

Since then, I've carried it on and off, mostly to cons, but more recently it's been my daily companion, hiding in my pocket no matter where I am. It even traveled onto the factory floor in Hungary with me, though I had to take it out briefly every time I passed through the metal detectors there. I say these things to underscore its importance, even though I have not fully understood why it has held that until now. And honestly, the reason is not something I ever expected.

At first, I thought it was about control, about controlling the demons within me that I was afraid of, and that I've written about in the many journals leading up to this one. When that didn't make sense any longer, I thought it was about trust, about giving someone control... but that never quite fit, even as I said the words to myself. What it really is... is a memory, a long lost, and long forgotten memory. It is my deepest dark.

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A lot of folks know I was raised Catholic. If you don't, you know now. I went to a Lutheran K-8, a Catholic high school, and attended CCD growing up. Generally speaking, this meant that I had something around 8-12 hours of religious instruction per week, in addition to Mass on Sundays and (while I was at the K-8), a Lutheran service every Wednesday. My household wasn't very religious; you'll find no crosses in our kitchen, but you would have in the houses of my friends. First and foremost when I grew up was God, with a capital G, and I bought the /whole way in/.

Though the schooling was excellent, at the K-8 in particular, the culture was very aggressively conformist, and I never quite fit in. I didn't process it that way at the time, but I was "the Catholic kid" in a Lutheran school, which created pressure (usually around me), but occasionally on me as well. (I still remember and joke about the time I was sent to a half-hour detention for arguing with the pastor about transubstantiation!)

The real message here... the thing I'm trying to convey, is that I believed. I honestly, truly, did, and I was willing to fight for that belief. I took that detention in stride and was proud of it, because I knew they were wrong. If only I'd known how cripplingly wrong I was...

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But I didn't believe I was. At least not then.

At that time, I saw only the good that faith had done. I'd never encountered the true history of the Catholic church, nor had any major life event that really brought into question my faith in a more than theoretical way. And so I aspired, then as now, to do my part. I wanted to become a priest.

In theology I saw the same things I now see in science, the quest for understanding, the debates on the nature of the universe, all of it. I thought I could add to that debate, and even more so, that I could be a leader and a force for good within that community, something I still aspire to today, although my path is now vastly different.

That all shattered when I became sick. When the doctors couldn't find the cause, when all their tests were as useless as the medications they tried, I turned to God and asked "Why?". And I received silence. I eventually recovered, but it was science that saved me, that did what little it could and kept trying, no matter how many times the tests failed. It took years for those events to fully settle, but by the time I was confirmed as a Catholic in high school, even going so far as to chose a saint's name, I had lost what I once treasured. I had lost my faith. And in so doing, I had lost trust. Not trust in God, not trust in myself... the fundamental ability to truly trust anything or ever be safe again.

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I've been through a lot since those dark days, since the days I sealed those memories as deeply as I could. But now I am confronted with them, because I have found some small semblance of safety, and in so doing, have shattered again. This time, I'm not alone; I have friends I can lean on and ask for guidance, but it's still been rather rough. I've had to remember a lot of hard things, and my faith is one of them. It's not what it was... will never be what it was again, but some part of it remains. Today, I don't believe in a god anymore than I do the flying spaghetti monster, but some part of me wants to. Some part of my child self, hidden and weeping, has returned, and I desperately want to believe again. ...hopefully, this time in something real.

*very slow, very deep breath*

But I'm afraid. I know what it means to be a true believer, and know first hand what kind of damage that can cause yourself *and* others. It is a madness you can lose yourself in, and that I have the potential to lose myself in, again. And so I'm scared. I have a tremendous power in me to inspire, a tremendous power to communicate and level boundaries, and this is the source of that power that I have never acknowledged. I'm scared shitless of what I might do if I lose myself, and so I don't know what to do at all. This is why I freeze up when I feel safe, because I relapse to those memories, deep inside.

Friends and loved ones tell me that I'm not a monster, but that just makes it feel like they don't really know me at all. I'm more afraid than I have ever been in my entire life, even though I've made *so* *much* progress, but I don't know how to even dent this one. I need help, desperately, and I don't know what to do.

Please. Someone help. >.<

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At the start of this, I began with talking about my collar... but never answered the question of what it is... what it means. It is my deepest dark, a memory more terrifying than anything I have ever imagined. It's the collar of a priesthood I was never able to wear.

Another update... I'm still not handling this very well, though I'm learning.

I ended up getting home at about 8:45 yesterday. I kind of saw time passing at work, but was working on something that I felt was important enough to justify staying a bit late. We had had another outage due to a major infrastructure failure on Thursday, with a secondary infrastructure failure ongoing, and I tried to stay and get the replacement / backup system into test over the weekend. Why?  Well, I don't enjoy having to answer questions from the CIO of the company that owns our company, my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss, etc... It's not my fault the bloody thing isn't here and running yet, but I do seem to be one of only four people at the entire company that are capable of handling this for some reason... </rant>

Anyways...

This week has been really really stressful. It's not been a lot of hours, but a hell of a lot of noise, emergencies, and meetings, all of which don't really go well with an introverted personality. I came back home yesterday so overloaded that I had to just sit in my room in the dark for two hours before I could handle any kind of stimulus at all. Moving, talking to Dakota was too much. Hell, snuggling with my kitty was actually too much input to handle. I was shaken and emotionally wiped.

There is, however, good news on the horizon.

1. I've not gotten any evening calls this week. Actual work hours have trended back towards a normal 40/week for the most part.
2. I made a very important realization yesterday. Occasionally, I just kinda have these realizations pop into my head, and this one was about my motivations and why I seem to care more than a lot of other people.

So let's talk about #2. I think it's because of love. I don't know if I have an excess of it, or if others just can't always touch it in the same way, but it's part of everything I do. I'm a healer, whether it be people, animals, or even electronics. I see things that are broken and I can't help but try to make things better. I've gotten burned by it a few times, because I refuse to stop caring in spite of, well, anything. Despite that though, I think I'm working on burning myself out right now, so I'm going to start managing what energy I have a lot more pro-actively. I know we have emergencies at work, but dealing with them is killing me at home, and that is going to stop. It's going to stop *now*. There are too many other things that matter way more. Work is just so I can have a roof. I need to start treating it that way.

I ranted a bit about this on twitter today, but I think I'll feel better if I just get this crap out of my brain and onto a page(?).

Basically, work is trying to eat me, and my subconscious isn't helping.  There's a lot of good reasons, plenty of explanation, teamwork, and all the rest, but the gist is that I've gotten calls on my work phone while at home four days out of the previous week.  Email chains are also including me and directed to me, though I was rather blunt about the likelihood of my response to any of those when not at work.  I'm effectively being treated as though I'm on-call 24/7, having had one call as late as 11:30 PM the other night, and some other coworkers are (in my view, insanely) actually responding at that hour.

What's the situation at work that's spawning this?  Glad you asked, because there is a good explanation, kind of.

The team I'm on are a group of software engineers who provide support on an internal set of tools used by a manufacturing floor.  At the moment, some vendor fuck-ups mean that the floor is actually running three shifts, requiring 24/7 uptime on the tool infrastructure to support them.  "What's the problem with that?", I hear you say.  "Surely they must be built to handle that since the company has been in business for more than 75 years!"  HA!  Well, they're going to be soon, when the 2.0 codebase rolls out, but 1.0 is a steaming pile of shit!  And there's been a perfect storm on top of that that's conspired to completely fuck us over!

Basically, this means that the two of us who are on 1.0 are kinda hosed.  Manufacturing needs constant handholding and the customer is breathing down our neck and actually showing up at our facility demanding answers.  I had several engineers from them hovering behind me for more than six hours last week while I live debugged issues with their stuff.  In total, I've lost at least three work days to similar activity in the last two weeks.

So here's the thing.  How the hell do I deal with this?  I can feel the burnout already coming, and I didn't sign up to be on-call with this position.  (As far as I knew, I was to work 8:30-5:30 with breaks and was rather confused when I was issued a work phone in the first place.)  I'm salaried, and in theory they can kind of require me to come in, but that's not the basis I want to be on with my brand new employer.  I want to be a valued part of this team.  I know they need the help.  I know I'm the only one who really *can* help.  But I have to have my own personal time where I have a guarantee that I will not be contacted.  I need that to be healthy myself, and to have a healthy relationship with my mate Dakota.  If I'm in 'professional mode' 24/7, I'm not emotionally receptive or calm enough to connect with her, and that is unacceptable.

How do I find a balance in this middle of this crisis?  I had been answering my phone this last week, but when my boss texted me this morning I just turned the damned thing off.  For all I know, 200+ people are sitting around doing nothing and we may lose one of our biggest customers as a result of it.  What the hell do I even do?  This continuous-crisis situation could last until the end of March, and I definitely can't handle it that long.

Sometimes, it rains... Sometimes.  But that's not the point of life, now is it?  It may rain a while, but there's no sense in it, no thing, no thought to find within.  Sometimes, it just rains, and that's it.

Today, it's raining, and I find, maybe so inside myself as well.  For the last few days beauty has been difficult to touch for me.  There have been moments, but they've been fleeting, leaving me feeling... not so much myself as I should be.  I'm not sure what it is, but I'm writing this in the hopes that that can change.  A friend of mine did something similar, and if he still can, with all he's been through, I damned well should be able to.

Thing is, this week has been stressful.  Hell, this whole month...  Moving is hard; leaving friends is hard; and surely, trying to find a new balance for yourself is hard.  This week particularly, I've not really been balanced, working more than 50 hours (one 30 hour shift, among other things) during a crisis at work.  I didn't have to do that, but I was needed, and so I stayed.  The problem is that that crisis isn't even over today, wasn't over yesterday, and probably won't be for another two weeks at least.

I've made it a policy to not respond to email during my personal time, regardless of the fact that I now have a company cell phone.  If I'm needed that badly, they'll call, which, so far today, they have not.  But the crisis weighs on me today, since I did reach for that phone and saw the problems that are occurring, even though I said I wouldn't.  I haven't done anything to fix it, haven't called or got on my work laptop or gone in, but it weighs all the same.  I know I can't though.  I need today for myself, needed yesterday, really, though I didn't have it.

I've been feeling depressed this week, and I'm not sure why; but I need time to recover.  I need today and tomorrow with no demands, and to find a way to create and be able to enjoy things again.  I know it's bad when I try to read and it's just words on a page.  Hell, I watched Rent last night with Dakota, and it was just images and noise.  Not good.

I slept in this morning, felt a bit better, and even posted about writing a bit while making some boba tea.  But by the time I was done making it, I felt wiped out again, and haven't put a single word to page besides these few, not exactly what I was going for.  I'm hoping the rain will pass.

I have two topics tonight, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to spin them together.  I want to talk about compassion, but also about the year that is now past, and all the things that came with it.  My "2013 Overload" post focused a bit on the "Oh hell, this was crazy" bits, but there was a lot of good there too.  Due to that, and the fact that 2013 seemed to be overly hard on a lot of folks, I wanted to add at least some positive perspective on it.

Let's start with compassion.  A lot of people will tell you that compassion is easy.  I'm here to tell you that, sometimes, it is the hardest thing you can do.  The reason is that you have to open yourself to the potential of being hurt, and in some cases, being hurt terribly, in order to help someone else.  Often times, that window of vulnerability is small, hence the imagining that compassion is something easy, but more often than not, that difficulty level is a bit higher than we care to admit.  And so we avoid conversations; we look sideways at people we'd rather not lay eyes on; and sometimes, we pretend, trying to fool ourselves that within our walls we are strong.

We are not.  When we hide within those walls, we do it out of fear.  We fear that our heart, our most secret and treasured self, could not contain or comprehend the chaos that is the world we live in.  This is understandable, but it isn't enough.  It isn't enough for the heart we hide inside, and it sure as hell isn't enough for everyone else, many of whom are holed up in their own castles, looking out at the no-man's land between as though it was the breadth of the Pacific ocean.

Compassion is *powerful*.  In fact, I dare say that there is nothing more powerful than it, especially in its ultimate expression, love.  Unlike anger or hate or intolerance, compassion isn't a "force", persay.  It's more like water, ever flowing and eroding at the rough edges it encounters, and much like its physical analog, it's not something that you can really fight.  It just is, and everything else has to find a way to live with it; because it isn't going away any time soon.  This gives rise to its second quality...  It doesn't just change the person on the receiving end.  It changes the person who is giving too, because compassion always reflects back, even if only a little at first.  You can't open yourself on any serious level and not change a little yourself in the process.

What am I thankful for in the year 2013?  I'm thankful for compassion.  I'm thankful for my friends who were there when I needed them, even if I wasn't always smart enough to ask.  I'm thankful that I could be there for a few of them when they needed me, though I do wish I had been able to do more.  2013 may have been the worst year to date for a whole host of reasons, but it was also the best year for reasons as uncountable as the stars themselves.  I found something really special, someone special to share that with, and though I don't know what the future holds, I sure as hell know that it's brighter than it used to be.  I say that in spite of the fact that I'm still very much not entirely stable (a surprise to me too) as echoes of the past year are still haunting me at times.  I say that in spite of the fact that the chaos and pain I see in the world around me causes me to twitch and lose focus and want to cry when I least expect it.  I say it in spite of these things, because I've learned that I can make a difference, even if it's only a small one for now, and because I have hope that it may not always be as small as it is now.

2014...  This is going to be different...  I have never opened up to the level I now am, and honestly, I've no idea how I'm going to deal with the flood of emotional input and internal turmoil that's caused.  While still working on being comfortable expressing my gender and sexual side, I'm dealing with continued financial and other stresses that make it a bit hard to relax and just (find and) be myself.  On top of this, I'm also trying to write (something that means a great deal to me) and helping plan out the next year for AFC.  I'm trying not to be too spread out again this year, but that's starting to look unfortunately familiar.  :/

The good news is that I have support this year, and I'm going to try and lean on it a little more than I have in the past.  To all of you who've been there: Thank you.   And to all of those who will be there, thank you too.  Let's see if we can't make this year better than the last one, better than all that have come before.  Compassion is the key; you just have to be willing to open up yourself to see it.

Though this journal won't go into all the details of how and why (that comes later), for now, I'll say this.

I am happy.  I am a dragon.  I love.  I don't always know what I'm doing, and sometimes I'm still afraid..  But in spite of that, I seem to have found someone to share and explore everything beautiful about this world with.  This one's for you, Dakotawolf!

On a sidenote, a while ago, she jokingly asked for a poem.  She got half of one, as one day I went to write a journal about pain and compassion and love for another, but couldn't help see her in those unexpected words as well. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12329060/

As is usual, I don't know exactly where this post is going to go, but I'm going to write it down anyways.  I *think* this is going to be a shorter post, but that's what I told myself about the last one...  O.o  [Edit: Haha, fat chance!  :P]

Since my last, and likely very confusing journal, I've been thinking quite a lot.  Bringing up deep questions about your identity inevitably leads to questions about what you want to do, who you want to be, and why.  (How figures in later, only after you can start to answer those initial questions.)  Let's start there.

I am happy to be me.  More than a year ago, I wrote up my first ever bio on FA, which included the words "I now revel in my strangeness and that of those around me."  If you've followed my story in the last few posts, you'll know that despite the fact that I may have written that a while back, it's been very much a work in progress.  It's tough to know others without letting your barriers drop, and its even harder to know yourself.  That said, I think I have finally made peace with mine.  Last night, as that final barrier broke, I genuinely cried for the first time in years.  It's... tough to explain what exactly caused it, between the mental place I was in at the time, the story I was reading, and the connections to my own life, but I am very grateful for it, and for you, my friends.

Anyone who's encountered me has likely been aware that I've been somewhat out-of-sorts for the past few months, almost wandering around dazed at times.  I'm not quite through that yet, but some of the haze is clearing; I'm waking up.  I've admitted things to myself that have terrified me, and the repercussions on my mental state have not always been the most immediately positive.  Between that, and some of my recent discoveries on side projects (AI-related things), I've probably come across as reasonably bi-polar.  Thankfully, I'm not; I've just been hit with rushes of positive and negative from a bunch of different angles all at once, and I've been trying to get a handle on that.  I'm still not quite 100%, but I am improving, thanks to you guys.

Who do I want to be?  That one is oddly easy.  I'm happy to be me, and I wouldn't want to be anyone else.  I perhaps wouldn't mind entertaining the idea of actually being a dragon, but that's not really what this question is about.  :)

What do I want to do?  ...  ...  This one's the hard one.

I want to help.

I have what I believe to be a rare gift.  I see people and things not as they are, but as they could one day be.  I see them as their secret selves that, sometimes, even they don't know they are.  What I want is to help them see that too.  This isn't a spiritual thing, or a mission of any kind, just a statement of possibilities.  When people learn what they are capable of, it changes them and their outlook on life completely, and in my own humble opinion (I'm still in the process of understanding this myself.) it is the single most amazing gift that can ever be given.

There are those who understand this, those who understand the power of empathy, kindness, and compassion.  And though there are many more who do not, we are a growing number.  We are also stronger than even we know.  Trapped in a world that seems to endure endless cycles of violence, with leaders who posture and engage in diplomacy with force of arms, we are often lost as to what to do.  (I am no fool to think that force is never necessary, but its careless application easily costs more lives than it ever saves.)  The news as of late seems to be worse and worse, in every corner of the globe.  In a lot of places, things are falling apart, and hard times are upon us.  I cannot claim any special knowledge of how to fix this, how to save what must be preserved, or how to live peaceably with neighbors who have hated and killed for generations, but I know one thing.  We have to try.  And we have to start, somehow.

In the very near future, I will be launching a new project.  It's going to start as a basic wiki, just a few threadbare pages with thoughts, connections, and a bit of hope.  The name of this project is Keyspace, after the solution space described by cryptographic problems.  Its task will be to start mapping the world, but not in any traditional sense.  Keyspace's goal is to find problems, link them, and dig down until their roots can be extricated.  In so doing, it will provide a platform for ideas, thoughts about what makes us who we are.  A lot of the problems in our world today stem from questions of identity, of 'otherness', and I think we might just have a chance to start putting things together.  Anyone will be welcome to join, to create, and to help if they so chose.  Even simple feedback will be appreciated, from "Hah, this'll never work!" to "Hey, what about X?"  I'll be the first one to admit that we may not succeed, that nothing may change at all, but taking a chance to think just a little bit sideways is a wonderfully dangerous thing.  ;)

"Our thoughts form the universe.  They always matter."

This is going to be a somewhat-sequel to my previous 'Touchy-feely' journal from way back in November, which can be read here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4068006/. ; I'm not sure exactly where it's going to go, but it's important for me to write it out, as I need some help.  It may not make a lot of sense at first, but bear with me if you can, as I could use some wisdom just now.

This story, such as it is, will mention a few individuals anonymously.  The point of mentioning them is not to single them out, or blame them for anything, but rather, to thank them for things that I doubt they understood the importance of at the time.  Their small, caring actions fundamentally changed both myself and the way I look at the world in a way that's going to take quite some effort to describe.  Unfortunately, there are a few complications whenever something like that happens, and this story is no exception.  Let's begin, shall we?

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I am a furry.  Silly statement, I know, on a website such as this, but it means a bit more to me than people realize.  (It perhaps matters more than it should, but that's not the ground we're going to tread tonight.)  To clarify, that doesn't make me an otherkin, therian, were, or anything else of the sort.  I'm just a human with a stranger side than most, and a healthy respect for legends and the power they command.

Unlike most furs I've met, I didn't self-identify as a furry for a very long time, though in hindsight I can say that I've been a furry since I was old enough to get on the internet, starting at about 13 years old.  That age is known for a few things, and I was no exception.  I found a few sites and ended up hooked quite deeply into the adult side of the fandom, choosing a female persona in my online interactions from day one.  I didn't know why, but somehow it just felt right.  Years passed, and as I mentally fought with my religious upbringing, I turned away and back several times.  As time passed, my 'sona also changed, from mostly human, to naga, and then finally, to the bi-gender dragoness I've now settled on.  It's taken years for me to come to terms with this, and most of my progress on that front has resulted very directly from discovering other people like myself, in terms of not just furry, but also not-quite-standard gender identity and sexuality.  I still might be the strangest person in the room, but I'm among others who are okay with that, and that means the entire world to me.  Specifically, you guys reading this mean the world to me.  You are kinder, more thoughtful, and all have your own little twist that makes life a bit more interesting!

Back to the subject at hand...

Since my last post, I've had a bit of a hard time dealing with some things on the emotional front.  My barriers have been crashing down right, left, and center, and leaving me quite exposed to a lot of feelings that I'd sealed off without ever meaning to.  Can you imagine what finally recognizing affection means to someone?  How about how confused they are when they find themselves physically attracted as well?  It sounds crazy, but I somehow lost this a long time ago, and have only rediscovered it in the last two years or so.  It's come crashing in, shaking apart many assumptions I'd made about myself...  (Can you believe I thought I was straight as an arrow until two years ago, even while having a herm 'sona?  WTF, past self, wtf?)

You guys helped with that, and I'm very grateful, as I really did need that part of myself to be a healthy whole.  All the little playing, teasing, etc, helped break through walls that all the gunpowder on the planet could never have hoped to breach.  It's also left me in a very serious bind.

Imagine, for a moment, that you wake up for the first time in your 26 years and discover that you've been missing something all your life.  Imagine having drifted away from family for various reasons, and somehow never having had much beyond fairly good friends in the meantime.  Add to that never trusting anyone enough to tell them your secret, that you are a fur, and of the type that the stereotypes warn about.  Imagine that somehow converging into a mental place where *it never even occurred* to you to date, or seek out a serious relationship with someone else.  Imagine thinking that you were strong enough to handle everything on your own, and then imagine those illusions shattering like a fortress constructed entirely of glass.  This is my problem.

In all 'normal' respects, I appear perfectly fine, my life in general being considerably less complicated than for most.  However, this recent internal turmoil has damned near brought me to my knees a few times in the last year.  A few months back, a friend of mine simply held me for a few minutes, snugging up and giving me a hug.  She didn't know it, and I was so surprised that I didn't realize it at first, but it was the first time ever in my life that a friend had done that.  It shattered me.  I had no benchmark, no yardstick for that level of geniune affection, and I broke down crying.  It was the second of three 'happiest moments of my life' that seem to be coming at an alarming rate as of late.  In answer to the obvious questions, nothing 'untoward' happened.  It was a simple hug, letting me know that she cared, and even that nearly broke me.  Weeks later, as my mind caught up with that simple act, I realized for the first time in my life that I was deeply lonely.  Not only lonely, but that I had been for a long time, and had never known.  That realization hit me like a cannonball to the gut, and I was still trying to handle that when...

...a few friends, and even a few strangers have recently complimented my appearance or made advances towards me.  Holy crap, batman.  What does do?  Brain what now... *faceplant*.  I'm blushing even as I write this damned text.  I was, and am utterly flattered by those remarks, and in most cases was far too embarrassed to return them, even though I felt the same.  This sounds crazy, but I've never had that happen before either, and I sure as hell don't know how to deal with it.  Physically, I am a 26 year old virgin, but mentally, I've been involved in the adult side of the fandom for the better part of 13 years, RP scene included.  One side of my brain turns into a gibbering idiot, and the other... well, let's just say my fursona is a hermaphrodite for a reason.  That side would like nothing more than to... *clears throat*  Back to the subject...  (To note, I am genuinely gender-confused, and that seems to be the happy medium as far as I'm concerned.  I don't consider myself fully trans-gendered, but I certainly fall into that spectrum somewhere...  That's a big part of the reason this has taken so long and been so difficult.  >.<)

I'm just very confused...  I don't know what to do, and I've been afraid to even write this for fear of scaring friends off.  There are way too many furs out there who write journals similar to this, tending towards the emotional vampirism state in the process.  I'm not that, and will never be.  I just need some help...  I need someone, someones, or even everyone, to talk to about some of this stuff, and I need some feedback (preferably not of the "you're fucking nuts" variety, though that may also be fair :P).  I know I don't always come off as touchy-feely, either, but I could really use a hug as of late.  :s

This is probably the single hardest thing I've ever written, and every word of it is true.  I'm writing this, not to just vent and be all 'woe is me', but in the hopes that at least one of you will have some idea of how to help.  I sure as hell don't know what the hell to do...