Journal 11/5/15

When I was seven I stopped participating in class, stopped doing homework. Stopped talking to people at home. This was the height of my years of selective mutism.

I finally believed what my parents were telling me. That I could never, ever be a girl. And so, in my childlike mind, I instead wanted to not exist. I didn’t understand death or dying. I didn’t know what it meant. But I wanted, from the depth of my soul, to no longer continue to be.

Most of my attempts to correct that feeling, to find meaning, just made things worse and worse.

Now I know what I need, I know that I can be, have always been, a girl.

But in my moments of dysphoria, when I am called ‘he’ and ‘sir’ – I don’t get offended. I simply fall back into the decades old habit of trying to disappear. To pretending, to wishing for, my own non-existence.

___

My parents saw all of this, but even as I pushed them away, as I pushed literally everyone away, all they could think to do was punish me for it. And so the more distant I became with them the more distant they became with me. To the point where I would ask over and over if I was adopted. What my real parents were like. Because I felt like I was living with strangers. Before I was even out of elementary school.

Once in a while I would work up the courage to tell them that I am a girl. They told me not to ‘lie’ to them. They gave me an unending list of chores to break me, ‘if you’re a girl you have to do my laundry, and do all the dishes, and clean the bathroom, and mop and sweep,’ until my head was spinning and all I wanted was to collapse into my bed and sleep.

They did worry, after years passed and I became more an more isolated from everyone. My mother tried to force me to ‘socialise’… rather than taking five minutes to talk to me, perhaps too scared about what I would say… she forced me into ‘activities’. But they were boys-only activities. And it made things worse, it made me hate basketball and then baseball, and then pretty much everything else. Sad events where I tried to keep to myself but that always ended up surrounded by boys, yelling at me for not trying. For not caring. For just wanting to go home and hide under my blankets.

Because I didn’t want to get to know boys. Boys were weird and mean and smelly and were frowning all the time. Like most girls my age I had no interest in getting to know them, and likewise other girls had no interest in getting to know me.

So I did everything I could to hide from everyone when I could. During breaks from school, I tried corners, I tried under the playground equipment, I tried the swings. I soon discovered that if I stayed in one place it made me a target. A sitting duck. So I took to walking around the playground alone, trying to never be still. To never let them predict where I would be.

A lot of days I came home with bruises from being thrown to the ground. Swollen bite marks from the boys anger. More days I came home hurting from the things that were said to the lonely kid too good to talk to anyone. From the teachers sometimes as much as from the children.

My place became the Quiet one. The kid who follows the smallest of rules but who never talks to anyone. Sometimes daycares were hell, with forced activities that put me with the kids who tormented me. Not always even by being mean – all it took was for them to treat me like a boy and I was soon convinced that everyone hated me. With boys harassing me, with girls avoiding me. I was the pariah and I couldn’t understand any of it. Couldn’t process why I was treated that way. Even when no one was even trying to hurt me.

____

For years I thought I was developing an interest in girls. Until my transition I was convinced that I was madly attracted to them. But I was underestimating my need for friends, for community. All the repressed years of being avoided, of being feared and shunned by other women, came to a head and I thought the mad joy I felt when I was dating was love and lust and need.

But it was simply the ecstasy I felt in finally having another girl to spend time with. In having a friend.

My relationships with women always started off strong, spending time together, getting to know one another. But they always dissolved when they started trying to push me into a Boyfriend role. Excluding me as ‘the boy’. Pushing me away. Only one of the girls I ever dated never did that, continuing to be my friend until the very end – but otherwise my failed attempts at dating always ended after a few months. After I realized that I wasn’t really their friend. And the ‘attraction’ then wore off and I started seeking new partners. For a few more of those few getting-to-know you weeks where I could finally feel what it was to be liked, to be a part of a community of more than one.

_____________

In order to date, in order to experience those few precious weeks or months, I learned what it was to act like a guy. At first I was known as a ‘poser’, obviously pretending to be something that I was not. But then what else was I to do, when acting like myself resulted in nothing more than countless hours sitting alone in my room, in the basement. Avoiding the gaze of the parents who had nothing to say to me. Who only ever spoke a word to me to punish, to tell me how I was failing.

And, after a decade, I became good at it. I became better at it than the actual boys. Known at various points to be hot and charming and sexy. It was still an act, but it wasn’t one that people could see through any longer. I had mastered it, though on a very real level I had no idea what was behind the behaviors that I was imitating. Why boys did the things that I was doing. I only knew that this was what boys were supposed to do, and  I practiced until I was very, very good at the imitation. With a few slip ups here and there, bound to happen just for the shear lack of understanding of the subtleties, the meaning, behind why these things were done.

But after some years of it, by my late twenties, it had become abundantly clear that I was never going to find someone I could be happy with. What I was looking for in a ‘relationship’ always, almost without fail, wore off after the first few weeks. Never to be seen again. And, like in my childhood, I started walling myself off once again. Collapsing further and further into my own, separate world. This time with video games instead of just books and tv. This time with real people online to speak with in my own chosen isolation.

And I rediscovered something about myself that I thought was amazing. As long as the people online thought I was a girl, I could talk to them and it would make me happy. The way they spoke to me, the way they interacted with me, it was the most profound ecstasy I ever experienced. Not in being attractive, for I admitted that I was not, but simply in being known as female. At being related to as a woman.

It was that feeling online, the profound joy of Catfishing, that I soon became addicted to. I felt fear at the thought of being deployed, not desire. As the pain of being away from my friends soon began to outweigh the desire for a glorious end in combat – In a guiltless, winsome end that would finally free me from the pain of existence.

For the first time in my entire life since the second grade, I found that I truly, honestly wanted to live. Even if for no reason greater than to pretend to be female on-line. To have friends that could see me and interact with me this way, a  way that I had never really experienced. I had never before known.

But there was a pain that was getting in my way. The pain that came with the fact that, the closer I became to people in that digital world, the more I loved and cared for them, the more guilt I felt for lying to them. And so I would stop. For months at a time. Simply to spare them from my lies. My deceit.

I wonder if, when I started this transition, it was less to be known as a girl than it was to simply to stop lying to my friends online. If all I really wanted was to be able to say ‘I’m a girl’ and know in my heart of hearts, that I was telling them the truth.

Ether

Ether.

Auras look like ether. Like oil in water, but in air.

And magic feels like a fluid. Not a static impulse, not jumping lightening; but like rain on a hot summer night. Like the smooth chill of bourbon as it pours down your throat.

Spirits feel like bubbles in water. Or maybe… cells… self contained and yet distinguishable by the way they ripple the current. By their subtle effect on the… pressure…

Sometimes the current comforts me. And sometimes it scares me. But always it hangs just in the edges of my thought, of my memory, pressing against me. Around me. Through me.

Spells feel like laser focused ink, lurking their way through the oceans, through the ripples. Sometimes they make it to where they are supposed to go, but sometimes the current carries them away.

Is this fluid consciousness? Playing across artificially separate brains? Changing from moment to moment to fuel individualized thoughts and fears of soul, of death, of love? The consciousness, the awareness of myself that I’m experiencing now, was that the same consciousness, the same awareness that belonged to the boy who I am now kissing, just moments ago? And I just can’t remember because memory is a function of sedentary matter and not consciousness itself?

Or is there something deeper? A shard of primordial creation, an Avatar of chaos, a crystallized breath of divinity – is there something else inside of me that allows this perception of self? That is separate from this fluid? It moves at my command, so it seems logical that I am not it. That I am not flowing inside and outside of myself with the current – but am something more. Something separate from it. Yet whatever that thing is… I have not seen it. I have not experienced it outside of myself.

Am I blind to it? Or is this simply a delusion of grandeur? A vein attempt at a flawed bit of brain to justify the way that it perceives the world? As an individual instead of an ocean…

But if there is something different from the fluid itself inside of me, if it is not just brain and muscle pushing the current along like the beating of a stationary heart, then is this something that we all possess? Or is it just a select few? With the potential to touch this unseen, etheric abyss.

Can we ‘wake people up’ to magic… or are people simply machines? Waiting for the spark of creativity, for a shard of chaos, to descend down upon them?

Ascension

Something has been missing in recent years. And I’ve struggled to figure out what that is. Magic is more a part of the collective psyche than ever before, Chaos Magic has ceased even to be the magic of Chaos… becoming just… the standard for how Magic is done. And yet… something is missing.

Chaos magic groups are a collection of random spells and trolling. The best the occult world has to offer and it all feels so… pointless. I guess? Uninspired?

So I think back to the sense of mystery that I had when it all begun. When there was a mysterious, dark world and I was driven to search. To learn. To grow.

And I have decided what it is that feels missing. Why the mystery has faded from the mysticism that I see in the world today. And that thing is… Ascension.

The Philosopher’s Stone. The Elixir of Life. The goal and reason and purpose. Unobtainable, a thing that most likely does not even exist. Cannot yet exist. And yet sought. Fought for.

Magic has been treated as an aside to religion. As the tricks of the spiritual trade without offering a spirituality. A goal. A purpose. And yet… and yet at one time, not so very long ago at all, there was a purpose. There was A Thing.

And I, once upon a time, had called it Ascension.

The continuation of consciousness is dealt with in most religions. Reincarnation, heaven, hell, spirits, ancestors. It is seen as a fundamental tenant that the thing that gives us life, that makes more than just walking machines, can transcend death itself. And perhaps this is a truth, or maybe just a facet of our magnificent, deluded egos. But the belief is there. It is needed. Or religion would have no sway.

And Ascension, in a way like the elixir of life; like the Philosopher’s Stone; it is the supposed reason for life, for consciousness itself. And it is… nothing. It is not the rise of a new godhead. It is not power or knowledge or wisdom. It is not even the union with the Holy Guardian Angel or travel to Kether and beyond.

But it is a Thing. And without the ineffable goal, without the quest for something impossible… well, without that we are all bored housewifes looking up spells online and pretending to be important.

Eschaton Disco

Rebellion was a bandage. Faux pacifism. Faux veganism. Faux anti-establishmentism. And rebellion has died away with an eternal, never ending scream.

In the dark net, outrage cries out over every child shot dead by police. Tears are wept over massacres of entire towns that will never make the news. Love is offered to our children as they die of abuse and of isolation.

But even as we rise up. Even as Occupy takes the street. Even as Fergison shakes the country. Even as we cry out in outrage, it is too late. Because senators with a two percent approval rating gain fifty one percent of the vote. Because the right to buy politicians is ruled to be Freedom of Speech. Because even as gay men and women gain the right to marry, they still lack the right not to be fired from their jobs for it.

No, faux rebellion of the hippies and the punks, it has died away. Outrage and indignity claiming the place where ideology and politics once stood. And the huddled masses have nothing left but to cry out and shake their impotent fists at a world that is even now heating up. That is even now dying. Knowing that no matter how loudly they scream, it will not prevent their children from dying in their arms, killed by the poisons that we are even now too late to stop from killing us.

Stories of the dystopian future are no longer warnings, but simply stories that allow us to understand the world in which we have come to live. The Hunger Games parallel the corporate control of our media, 1984 parallels the war on Drugs and Terror, Brave New World parallels our current consumption of ADHD Drugs and Anti-Depressants. The Dystopian warnings of yesterday have become a grim allegory of our present.

Token members of society fight the current. Protest. Refuse to take part. And their motions are no longer even considered newsworthy. Are written out of history with the stroke of a pen and a few dollars changing hands. This, while the world finds new ways to embrace the ID, to avoid thinking about what must be to come, in new cannibalistic fantasies of The Purge, in Serial Rampages of Taken, in Fetishistic Sado-Masochism of 50 Shades and of The Saw #6.

And while at any other time I would be dancing at society finally embracing its shadow impulses, this too is a distraction. A corporate tactic to numb and redirect the masses. Turning righteous outrage inward, to darker, more primeval places.

And though we can warn the world, though we have been warning it for decades, it is already too late to stop. Too late to halt this end. And if dystopian fantasies are now the alagories of our time, then let us turn to Terminator. For our destiny was never to stop judgement day. It is simply to survive it.

And maybe, in dying, we may begin again.

Death, death to the image. And with it, ourselves.

Mercy

I once went to a church. With stained windows and littered books. Where they nailed a man to a wall. And called it mercy and love.

I once lived in a country. With skinny idols and dazzling concerts. Where what was said mattered not at all. Only who was saying it.

I once lived in a city. With steel clad buildings and narrow streets. Where lies were truths. And the honest were branded terrorists and traitors.

I once went to a park. With ancient oaks and laughing children. Where the just hid behind grinning masks. And the criminals shattered their bones and gassed their husbands. As the public cheered their heroism.

I once lived in a house. With crooked walls and a rotting ceiling. Where best friends played house, as husband and wife. And through trials and tribulations, pains and joys. They vowed each other’s destruction.

I once slept in a bed. With silken sheets and feather pillows. Where there were two, each longing only for warmth and comfort. But neither knew the other was there.

I once fell down a rabbet hole. Where down was up and up was down. Where red was blue and blue was green. And never have things looked so right. Not in churches, nor cities, nor parks nor houses. Where up was down and down was up. And the only constant was wonder and magic.

Welcome to my little hole. Where down is up and up is down. Where red is blue and blue is green. And the only kind of sense, is the sense that nothing makes sense.

We’re all mad here.

So sit down. Pour yourself some tea. Nail yourself to a wall. Celebrate your honest terrorism. Put on a mask, break your own bones. And vow your own destruction.

DTTI : HTNF

Beyond Surreal

No one believes any more.

Chaos Magic forums are a joke. Literally. One joke after another. Occasionally there is a prayer request. A testimonial. But nothing new is born.

DKMU talks about going back to list-serves, retreating back to the Zee List days of 2001. No new gods are born, and no new pathworkings are done. There is nothing left to see here. Nothing left to flesh out.

Where is the new life? Where are the new ideas? Where is the spirit of this generation?

Constantine is a TV series now. A made-for-TV docudrama. And, as it turns out, it’s even better than its failed excuse for a movie. Supernatural is a show where hunters walk arm in arm with angels and the King of Hell, running 11 seasons long. Lord of the Rings is no longer a epic Trilogy of Novels, but something you can see and sit down in front of and marathon. Celebrities are declaring themselves members of the OTO, adherents of Chaos Magic itself.

But where did the wonder go, when magic seeped into culture? Where is the belief?

As Media Incorporates (TM) our dreams, where exactly have our dreams gone? When did they stop being born?

Plush Romance

My quilt is soft on one side, and rough on the other. Hard, coarse stitching that catches and drags against the skin as I move. It’s a thick quilt, large, and when it’s bunched up it has very real weight. Substance.

The soft side is warm, it takes away the awareness of my body and wraps me softly in cotton and heat. But the rough side makes me aware of every inch of my skin as it moves. It holds me and cradles me while supporting me and grinding against my touch.

The soft side of the quilt makes me feel held. But the rough side makes me feel safe. Makes me feel touched. Makes me feel complete.

We lie back, my quilt and I, and we watch Mulan, and Aladdin, and Frozen. It’s harsh touch cradles me, wraps me tight. I wake up clutching it and I go to sleep held tight in it’s embrace.

We are curled up together, it and I, when some random bit of porn comes across my Tumblr feed. Bodies pressed against each other, clutching one another, and I see the things that I can not have. The things I want so badly but can not give.

Wrapped in the only thing that brings me comfort, makes me feel safe, I find myself asking… Is it wrong to want so much but offer so little? Is it wrong to have this need when there is nothing in the world that I can give?

If I can not give someone a home, or children, or someone to show off to their parents, or go to funerals with, or meet their boss and smile sweetly… or eventhat… If I can not give any of the things that any other woman could, that what right do I have to want anything? To need anything from someone?

Do I have a right to even fantasize about it? Things that I can not give and can not be?

The harsh threads press against my naked skin. Making me aware of my own softness, even as its heavy folds press against me. Tighten around my waste, against my legs, with every breath I take.

And I realize that I have no right to dream of any comfort beyond this. To be given anything when I offer nothing in return. And the cloth sucks in my tears away as though they were never even there, even as I dream about arms that squeeze around me, hands that tare against my skin, hungry lips, heavy and warm.

And I realize that I don’t want the right. I don’t want to deserve what I dream about. Despite all I do to please, diet and exercise and smiles and voice practice and… well, pretty much everything… I don’t actually want to deserve anything. But I want to dream about it anyway. I want to hope to find it anyway.

And maybe that is why, in spite of everything that has happened, in spite of everything that I know will happen, I am not angry. Not at the looks I get or the things people say or the things that I have had to endure. Because the world says that I can not be who I am, that I can not want what other girls want, I can not expect what other girls take for granted. But in spite of myself, in spite of my parents and my old friends and absolutely everything, I want it anyway.

And if I can not have it, than I want at least to pretend.

So, at night, I curl up with my blanket. The same way that I did as a child. And I pretend. I pretend that the course threads are the hairs of someone’s chest, pressing against my breast. I pretend that the fabric wrapped around my thigh is the bristly hair of someone’s leg, forcing my own apart. Someone’s thick hands, gripping me about the waist.

And I realize that I’m dreaming about the same feeling that I used to dream about as a child, curled up in the softer sheets. A little girl who used to stare at the pitch-black wall and dream for hours about parents who could love her, could protect her, could be proud of her. The feeling of security, of love, of being supported and appreciated.

I don’t know how it’s possible to fantasize about something that I’ve never experienced. How it’s possible to try to re-create it in my thoughts or dreams or play. But, I think, all of the things I love are things that make me feel… that way. Books and movies and… disturbingly enough… even the occasional romance novel or pornography.

And the rough grip of my blanket. As it brushes across my body. As it orders me to sleep…

A Breath of Anger

He was in my house. I had kicked him out, the week before. Because it was my house. And even if he was dating my roomate, I couldn’t stand having the asshole under my roof. Near me.

But here he was. Standing in the doorway of my kitchen. Taking up the entire space like he was here to take over the house again. Like he owned me.

He smiled at me, a cruel grin that didn’t quite make it to his eyes, as he stood over me. Long hair tossed back and chest thrust out.

I darted back to the fridge, putting back the yogurt that I had come in to get. Not wanting to eat while he smiled at me like that. While he looked at me.

I closed the door and stood back up to find him looking at me. Still carrying that cocky smile across his lips. I institutionally started smiling back, to break the silence. To acknowledge him. But I caught myself half way there, the smile turning into a grimace. Into a frown.

“Hey Casey,” he said. Knowing that I was caught. Cornered. His smile deepening into something wicked as the knowledge that he had a captive audience played across his face.

I shot him back the aborted smile, nodding slightly as I moved. Fitting my body through the almost imperceptible space between his arm and the doorframe. Moving toward him smoothly, but before he could move or react.

And suddenly I was very aware of my thin top. The air against me that reminded me I wasn’t wearing a bra. That I was no longer binding them away, out of sight. Not here, in my house. I was suddenly aware of the capris, low on my hips, the way the lace underneath was clearly visible as my hips moved to dart around his wide frame.

I could smell him, as I edged around his form. I could feel the heat of his body against my nipples and I just prayed to move past. To move away. Before he could become aware of their sudden tightening.

Would it have been gross to him, to know the way the heat of his body, a hairs breath from my own, still echoed across my skin? Would he have been nauseated if he had known of the tightening in my belly, of the way his scent still lingered with me as I shuffled down the hall? As I ran to my room?

Anger and despair warred through me as I lay in bed and simply breathed. As my skin tingled in pleasure at the way the night’s air whispered through my nightshirt, up my legs.

Lying there, panting, I felt disgusted with myself. And helpless. And alone. But I couldn’t help but cling to the memory, to the scent still lingering on my mind, and imagine what if his arm had reached out? What if he had tried to stop me?

Ace of Hearts

I wanted to be a girl from when I was a child. But here we are, tens of thousands of dollars later, and even if I pass I am not pretty. Not feminine or ladylike or any of the things people seem to demand from women.

I’ve have guys tell me they were falling in love with me and then tell me that they didn’t want me and I wasn’t enough for them less than an hour later.

And it was to the point that I was freaked. I was too insecure to go outside, I panicked before even meeting good and long held friends. I thought I was trying to be myself, but what good is that if that self is self loathing and insecure and frightened?

So I pulled back my hormones, pushing them down to a minimum. And thank god for surgery that let me do that, easily and safely.

I’d like to be a girl, but I don’t want to be me as a girl. Not the way I am now. I want to be a woman, but I don’t want to be a trans woman. It scares me too much. It makes me hate myself.

Funny thing is, with all the progress I’ve made, I don’t have to be. I can stop. I can rest here and, if I won’t be a girl, ill never have to worry about becoming a guy either. Never have to be male in the way that anyone else is. Because my body will never again betray me.

And I find I like it here. Inbetween. And if dreams will not come true, there is a peacefulness in the world between. Neither male nor female. Free from desire or lust or self hate.

And I think ill stay here. And that’s ok.

Together

God beyond heaven, by the sacred name of IAO I address. I thank you for all that I have and all that I’ve lost. And I ask only that you walk with me in whatever land I find myself, be it terestial, celestial or infernal. If I should awake to find myself in hell, I ask only that you remain by my side. Always and forever. Amen