Published December 5, 2024

Yesterday was hard. We trans people got a glimpse of our future, and it was bleak.

I had a medical thing, and I finished my application for paid leave from work. I am two weeks into a 12-week (for now), FMLA leave (without pay), so money coming in would be nice. Now I await the decision. Today is my last regular payday until at least early March.

Perhaps I will soon share with you what others are saying about Wednesday’s arguments before the Supreme Court, but I haven’t the emotional bandwidth right now. Last night I escaped into a series of fireplace videos I watched on my 37-inch television.

The still image at the top of this post is from my TV, snapped with my iPhone, and as much as I could, I thought about how remarkable it is that I can see such clear, crisp video on a television set, and take a photo of it with a phone. Ten-year-old me would not believe it.

And if you saw how much my arms and hands are shaking these days, you’d find it pretty remarkable too.

November was almost entirely for sleeping, filling out forms and slowly making a coffee and tea nook in my apartment as I gave my kitchen a purple/lilac/lavender makeover. When I have a chance, I’ll show you. If I figure out how to remember how to make coffee, I’ll open the drapes and sit in that corner and look out the window and either think or not think.

I’m not sure what my brain can think that will make me think that anything could ever get better, especially when it’s about to get way worse, so I will probably stare blankly and maybe disappear into a fugue state.

Or a fugue.

Wagner described that Beethoven work this way: “Tis the dance of the whole world itself: wild joy, the wail of pain, love’s transport, utmost bliss, grief, frenzy, riot, suffering, the lightning flickers, thunders growl: and above it the stupendous fiddler who bears and bounds it all, who leads it haughtily from whirlwind into whirlwind, to the brink of the abyss – he smiles at himself, for to him this sorcery was the merest play—and night beckons him. His day is done.”

Things to do today

This is a short list.

At midday I will give myself my weekly estradiol injection, maybe one of the last ones I am legally allowed. Then I’ll put myself in the corner.

If I manage a thousand-yard stare, I don’t know if I want to see what’s a thousand and one yards away. I still can’t handle much right now, and something tells me I am going to need every ounce of energy I can muster in 2025 and everything after.

Sending love.

♥

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