I laugh only to keep from crying.
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Happy Free Comic Book Day and May the fourth be with you.
Today was the last day of the local film festival and this is what I wore. I had to miss a lot of the first three days because of work but today I was off so I got hang out down there longer.
Also I wasn’t stuck in the guy drag I wear to work. I wore a skirt. I took the bus and walked several blocks alone in a skirt. I’m normally too afraid to leave the house alone in a skirt. If I’m going somewhere with my roommate it’s almost not a thing at all but doing it alone has been a big block for me. And today I made it past it.
Walking from the bus stop to the film festival, I passed some big windows and caught my reflection. I saw that I looked like myself. I felt for awhile like l belonged in the world.
I briefly met Rutger Hauer who was starring in a movie that I didn’t get to see so I didn’t have anything to add to the discussion. My friends and I were standing around in the VIP lounge when he walked by. My friend L stopped him said how much of a fan she was and got her picture taken with him. He walked off to get some food and then he came back to talk to us.
Yeah the VIP lounge. Remember when I talked about winning the Downtown Murder Mystery a couple of weeks ago? Well part of the prizes were two VIP passes to the film festival. Admittance to all shows and the VIP lounge. The lounge had a small buffet, pita chips and dips, fruit, and a main dish that changed each night. There was shrimp one night and bbq pork on tortilla chips topped with coleslaw.
There was also a bar but I avoided the alcohol, except for one rum and coke tonight, and stuck to Sprite or Coke. The first night I went in, the second of the festival, there was this homemade root beer that was heaven sent but it ran out so I only got one cup of it.
Since I’m doing the 365 Film Challenge, I’m going to writing up the films I saw in separate posts in the following days.
Yesterday I went shopping. I wanted to find a something to wear next weekend while volunteering at the college’s V-Day performance.
I found three tops, a skirt, and a pair of pants that I liked but wasn’t really sure about. So I went to the dressing rooms. The dressing rooms in the store are just six cubicles in a U-shape, one side for women, one side for men, but no real separation, with the attendant desk at the open end of the U. I told the attendant that I wanted to try the clothes on. The attendant looked over to the women’s side saw all the cubicles full and directed me to an empty men’s cubicle.
I didn’t mind using one of the men’s cubicles. I expected to be directed that way cause I don’t think I pass that well or at all and it’s not like it really matters in this case but the fact she checked the women’s side was nice. I guess the minimum effort I put toward looking femme(no make up just a figure hugging pink shirt and lightly padded bra) helped.
These are two of the tops I got. The third need to exchange because I put back the wrong size. The third is the one I’m going to wear this weekend so I’ll have pics then of it.
This is the new top I bought to today from the store I work at. Michael Kors originally priced at $39.99 I payed $7 because it was on clearance. This is the first piece of clothing I’ve bought from my store since before Halloween. There have been other tops that I’ve wanted but didn’t get because I’ve been a little afraid to buy too much woman’s clothes at my work since I’m not out there. This however was too good a deal to pass up.
I may be a little too paranoid about not being out at work. Before deciding to buy it I worked out a script of what to say if the cashier questioned me about the top. In the end, she didn’t ask me who it was for or anything else. She commented on how soft the top was, the name brand, and the low price. Any where else I wouldn’t worry as much about what the cashier thinks of me but these are the people I work with. I wish I could know that everything would work out okay (I don’t need great or good just okay will do) if I came out at work.
Going to church.
It’s a Unitarian Universalist church with a fairly loose dress code but he good Catholic girl in me insists church = nice dressy clothes.
Day off + need to feel not shitty about my face = these pics and others I’m not gonna show you.
Sometimes(a lot of times) I look in the mirror and I see someone I don’t recognize. But in these pics I see myself. It feels good. I wish I could always see myself.
I don’t talk about this often but I am fat. I have a belly that muffin tops when I wear anything with a waist. I’m not on a diet. I don’t have an exercise plan. I’m not planning on losing weight. This is my body. This is the weight my body maintains naturally. I’m a fat woman and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that.
It’s hard sometimes because I so rarely see women my size in print or on tv or even on tumblr(maybe I’m not following the right blogs, shoot me suggestions). It’s harder when I look for trans women my size. We get the message that to be an acceptable woman you have to be thin just like other women. Then it gets all tangled up with thoughts of passing. Until a lot of think we have to be thin to be seen as women.
In my early twenties, I went through several realization and denial cycles about being transgender. Every time I used my weight against myself as a(the) reason that I couldn’t transition and should just bury those feelings.
I eventually mostly made peace with my body size and started transitioning. I still have some issues with my body size but most of them are perpetuated by society and I’m getting better at ignoring them.
Here’s the tunic I bought earlier in the week. It’s not really orange and it not dark enough to be red but it’s not pink either. I guess it’s salmon colored. I like the design.
It’s my day off and I need to go grocery shopping. I want to wear this out but I feel self-conscious. Part of me says, “change into a neutral t-shirt so you don’t feel like everyone is staring at you.” Another part of me says, “just go out. no one really cares and if the do you shouldn’t care if they do.”
I wish deciding what to wear outside was less stressful.
So, I wore this pleasant blouse with red skinny jeans to Thanksgiving. I was kind of worried about it because around my family I haven’t been pushing my presentation into femme territory much. I had briefly thought of wearing a skirt because I thought my parents and I were going over to my mom’s side of the family’s Thanksgiving get-together(I’m closer to them and have come out to most of them over facebook and they’ve been fairly supportive).
I chickened out though because I was kind of worried about my parents’ reaction(they’re mostly in a kind of denial phase but not unsupportive) so I went with the skinny jeans. This turned out to be a slightly better choice because we went to my parents’ house and had Thanksgiving with my Dad’s side of the family(whom I am not as close with and only out as trans to a few of them).
Overall I had a good time hanging out with family. No one said anything to me about what I was wearing so I consider that a win. I had a couple of moments where I wanted to stand up and announce that I’m trans and my name and pronouns but ah, nope that is not something I can do(I nearly had a panic attack when I came out over facebook).
Oh and my mom showed me a bunch of boxes that have a bunch of my childhood toys. Legos, an Atari 2600(working status unknown) and games, a NES (missing power cord), five or six board games, assorted plastic figures, a couple of damaged dinobots, all five plastic Voltron lions that can link together to form Voltron(no sword), a box of TV Guides each individually packaged in a ziplock bag(most are Star Trek themed). I’m hoping to make room in my closet to bring most of it home and donate the rest.
Here you go. Pics of my completed costume plus one of me from before I started to get ready. You’ll notice my eyepatch isn’t over my eye, that’s because one I didn’t want to muss my makeup on accident and two when I tried it on after making it it wasn’t very comfortable to wear over my eye, so it’s pulling duty as a head band.
