[         2026.02.21 ]
[ this is a bad idea ]

i am in {CITYNAME} for work business junk.
i don't like it here. it's not the fault of the city, but i still don't like 
it here.
i was going to write something. i am supposed to write more often, according 
to my therapist. and according to my partner. but when i find time to sit down 
and write, this is the kind of big-nothing bullshit you get. just talking 
without saying anything.

you guys wanna talk about my genitals? not really your common topic for 
discourse. but since i am struggling with my... what? gender? yeah, that. 
but it's weird. lately it's incidental that gender concerns me. it was my 
foremost thought for a while. but i have been focused on a broader scope of 
self-improvement. been meditating, been doing some morning yoga. 
there is this one guided meditation in the mindfulness app i use. it's centered
around body awareness, something i desperately lack. it opens by suggesting i 
focus on my body. explicitly, it asks me not to consider my body's appearance, 
but to feel my body from the inside. and when i hear that, everything is 
immediately uncomfortable. my head starts to hurt, my muscles ache, i feel 
pinched nerves. just, everything becomes uncomfortable. the app goes on to ask 
me not to glorify positivity, but to just find a part of me that is just OK, 
neutral. that feels fine. and... i cannot, at least not immediately. as noted, 
i am massively uncomfortable just focusing on body awareness. but i start 
examining things the voice suggests. maybe the feeling of air in the nostrils 
as i breathe, maybe the feel of fabric on my skin. nope, i can feel my 
breathing is slightly labored, and these sheets in {CITYNAME} {HOTELNAME} are 
not neutral. they're not terrible, but anyway, they're not neutral. ok. my 
feet? sore. legs? ache. stomach? gurgling (always). and so on. 
the only part of me i have found neutral or just fine is somewhere below the 
penis and behind the testicles. where, i suppose, my vagina would be if i had 
one. and what do i do with that information? i feel poorly in general, moreso 
when i become aware of my body and actually pay attention to how i feel. and 
what do i get? phantom vagina. fucking insane.

phantom vagina
phantom vagina
phantom vagina
phantasmic vagina
phantasmal vagina
phantasmagoric vagina

ok so what? i'm trans. i've known that.
i dunno. this is good, i guess? people seem to want me to be more in touch 
with my body. they tell me to "live my truth", and that happiness and joy come 
from living authentically. 
great. never mind complicated uncertainty about "body modification" and beauty 
standards and self-acceptance and jesus. fucking. christ. never you mind all 
that, and instead focus on living so authentically you only feel ok in a body 
part you don't even have. that the rest of you doesn't feel like you, but it's 
so you that you've grown to detest you.

boy, can't wait to have THIS conversation with my partner. 
she's gonna fucking LOVE it. :-(

maybe write about something else instead. 
how The Female (as portrayed by one Scarlett Johansson) in 'Under the 
Skin' (2013) has this wonderful character arc that could be a metaphor for 
some existential truth of the human existence. a child indoctrinated into a 
culture that we see as evil, malificent. but the child can't know right from 
wrong without a different perspective. once that perspective is attained, the 
child develops empathy and beings to see the wrongness of her past actions. 
she makes a moral choice to opt out of her culture, and it spells her doom. 
it spells her doom at the hand of a creature both like and unlike her, a 
killer who seeks his victims using the same tactics she herself used as a 
"child." she has grown up, but doing so means that everything is against her. 
he is ostracized, and now hunted, by her original people (aliens, 
i'm fairly certain). despite a newfound empathy for humanity, she is raped 
and killed by a man. 
the framing of the film is quite clever, i think. it presents the human 
experience from a literal alien perspective, and therein we can see the 
horror of what it means to exist as human.