This bitch didn't find time to journal for three days in a row, everyone give a round of applause. Syrupy thoughts today so mostly documenting for consistency. At my parents, got driven down in the afternoon by my dad. Having a decent time here so far, always happy to see the hospitality and be reminded that any fears of entering a den of snakes are the product of misapprehensions slithering around in my skull. Reassured that my parents are so thoughtful about wanting to understand what it means to have a trans child, trying to quash fears I carry that I've made of myself a narcissistic spectacle by choosing to transition. Those thoughts trace a direct lineage from the haunting paranoias that held me back from transitioning in my teens. I am worthy of the attention of others to my specificities; if I fear the lack of reciprocity that characterizes a need to better my own behavior rather than an impetus to denigrate my value until I render myself some hollow thing beneath their regards. I love them. I fear them sometimes, but I fear all that I love in some measure. My paranoiac state has multifarious sources and multifarious outgrowths in turn. I find myself fearing again that I commodify all I love and in doing so objectify relationships as mercenary, transactional objects of value. But that fear is a demonstration of awareness, and awareness is at least a cursory shield against the extremities of human cruelty.
Christmas tomorrow. Feels nice, if insincere. One might hope dancing so close to the political abyss inspired enthusiasm in the little joys. I think it does, but everything occupies that faintly sugary state of recognizing a halcyon period fast drawing to a close. It is the last Christmas before that to be, but it is also another day down that road. Another day on E, another day since I woke up and saw the slippery slope for what it is. The Doom That Came To Sarnath. All my teenage fears come home to roost as adult realities. I need to stop brooding like this, it's pathetic and unhelpful no matter how just the distress characterizing it is.
The trap of self loathing is one I need to stop falling into. I think I see it in my brother too, I can't say for certain but the notion alone in an external individual prompts me to be better. It's easy to wallow if you believe you deserve to wallow. I need to be better next year. I'll work through my goals in the next week. Fitness, more consistent eating, journalling (like this!), in general sorting my brain into a nice little pile and making of it an effigy to performative adulthood. Wish me luck. Merry Christmas if it means anything to you. I'm just happy to be with family and eat some nice food.
Christmas yesterday. Good times. The most organic my family in aggregate has felt in a few years at least. The mention by my mother in the morning of pivoting to a gift swap format in the future rather than archetypal "gifts under a tree" made me realize this is probably the dying gasp of some childishness to the holiday. Not a bad thing, although it is one of those specific things I do feel oddly sentimental about. I wonder if the collective social effort to reify Santa gives all the proximal rituals to him more weight than they'd otherwise hold. I was never good at giving gifts, maybe the erasure of the obligation will disincline me to shirk efforts where they appear, show meaning better. I wish I didn't compulsively avoid, it can lead to humiliating outcomes that needlessly mar others without even the hollw condolence of a misplaced a desire to get there on my part. Feeling like there is a certain theater to writing like this, but in my head I can call it art and that makes it seem more intriguing a prospect to my novelty-seeking disposition than mere journalling.
Saw Cuckoo last night, quite enjoyed it. Need to watch more Hunter Schafer stuff, I've liked her in all of the three roles I've seen her in. Movie itself was nicely shot and had some novel editing during the more surreal sequences. The tone was intentionally kitsch, and at times there was dissonance from rather intense moments of depressing pathos, but effective pathos is one of the better reasons to be tonally dissonant, if such has to occur. For a movie with an emotional arc about feelings of alienation from one's own legal family (she has moved in to live with her father's family after the death of her mother with whom she was solely living), I was pleasantly surprised that Hunter Schaffer's trans identity was not even alluded to as an aspect of her character. It would have been thematically relevant low-hanging fruit and her emotional state could easily parallel estrangement of the sort, but to have left it as a comparison to be merely abstract means it isn't constrained to a queer trauma narrative.
My partner has Covid. I am negative as of last night, but I'm cohabitating with them and we're now in the realm of 'so be it' regarding my own infection status. I've never gotten the disease before (that I'm aware of), and while I'm not experiencing any symptoms yet there's no reason to assume I won't be in for a delightful time this upcoming week. Weirdly unfazed by it, kind of derealized for the last few days. Skimming the surface of life, dipping my hand under the water from time to time. A recapturing of pre-E emotionality, for this slice of moments. Strange to think in terms of emotions before estrogen with how recent the change is, but the past recedes ever further into fog if I leave it unexamined. No more difficult to exhume the longer I let it trail off, but evermore abstracted without reexamination. Another little thing where I can't tell if it's a peculiarity of myself or my inability to really understand the subjective experience of others cropping up again.