*** 3.11.25, gender.
i shaved the tails of my eyebrows off the other day which sent me into this state of thinking about gender again and performativity; i'm past the point of needing to really label my gender anymore and so much of my dysphoria is social rather than physical once i started mostly hanging out with trans people everything else got much easier for me to deal with. a 'ma'am' from the barista doesn't bug me. anyway i put off getting into lolita for so long because i thought for sure it would just aggravate my dysphoria even more, but i found it lessened it--lolita is, to me, almost akin to drag. it's a 'me' put on for a personal show that is still very true and real to who i am but performative and rooted in fantasy, someone who can't 'actually' exist and yet does. and i've found it actually makes me feel more confident as being nonbinary in my day-to-day. shaving off the ends of my eyebrows too, combined with some super blunt baby bangs and a huge bonnet and princess sleeves--this is obviously just for me but it feels like someone who simply isn't 'real' or 'can exist in reality.' and yet here i am. in the same way people don't understand that you can be trans and not want to medically transition. i guess feeling so performatively feminine has made me more comfortable in being a nonbinary person who is pretty much always just read as 'a cis girl'; choosing the sort of doll-like princess femininity that fascinated me as a kid but slowly felt more and more off limits the older i got and then became rooted in dysphoria as i understood more about myself--choosing it and playing it up to such a fantastic degree has really been freeing. and however little dot rectangle eyebrows and baby bangs play into this too, i dunno, but i like it. i feel like a digital angel clad in velveteen; a desktop shimeji ad on a community-run forum in 2001.
i wonder if mana-sama felt similarly when he started wearing EGL and made moitie; ignoring that he is of course a cis man. anyway, lolita for all!! alternative fashion for all!!! gender expression for all!!! y'know, funnily (or maybe interestingly is the better word) enough, the only time i've had anywhere near to a weird experience while wearing egl was at a gay bar. maybe i'll write about that another day, but i was surprised that out of everywhere i've worn a coord to, it's the place i expected people to be the least weird about it where people were acting bizarre and like i was being weird lol.
*** 2.27.25, man.
so far 2025 has been rough. not for any real rhyme or reason; i'm just burnt out and tired and feel like a white hot star existing without putting anything out or into anything at all. small white dwarf star. i know it's just seasonal. i know i'm sure to feel better in the summer. but whew. 2 almost 3 months in and it's been unrelenting. i struggle to get out of bed before 11; i struggle to stay up past 10. i am awake and i do nothing it feels. i had two days off work this week and that was nice. very needed. saw a concert. that was nice. i wasn't even excited. but it was nice. sigh. life feels sort of distilled and tracked by the little bottles of 5ml perfume oils; breathe and live and be transported. i'm glad in a world that sometimes feels cloyingly sterile for me to exist in i can have these: crystallized scent memories of places that do not, have not, and will not exist.i struggle so much to maintain anything this year. it will be better, but it is hard, and i am embarrassed by it being hard when nothing happens at all.
*** 2.20.25, on cruising (the movie!! lmao).
on valentine's day the boyfriend and i went to go see a sold-out (!!) screening of cruising starring al pacino at our local independent theater nd i have not been able to stop thinking about the movie once since we saw it. i kind of expected to feel sort of whatever about it but i absolutely loved it and think it's pretty damn brilliant. just absurd enough to keep me on my toes and yet quite grounded. i get why people didn't like it at the time it was coming out but i think it's totally worth going back to. we liked it so much we bought the blu-ray in the lobby, resulting in me having a truly bizarre but admirable tiny collection of blu-rays and dvds (i have 5 at the time of writing this; the thing, akira, american psycho, star wars episode III, and alien).
*** 2.6.25, hello.
one whole month already. can't believe i was updating as often as i was in nov-dec and now it's been a month without me touching this section. this time of year always feels too fast and yet unbelievably stagnant too. i wish i could say i do less entries here because i'm keeping track of time in my hobonichi but i've been pretty bad about keeping up with it (although i've been trying to backfill and just take up the space i haven't been using with stickers). existing is hard in the way that i sleep in far too long and work and am exhausted after work and then i have to go to bed; chores falling to the wayside, my body something i can't really hold up. i've been writing more but nothing personal or large-scale but it's nice to at least feel like i'm still being creative.
*** 1.2.25, happy new year.
i cut my thumb on a chestnut yesterday trying to peel it open. i don't know why this feels like a sign for the year, but it does--not a good or a bad one or a promise of things to come per se, but a summary in a nutshell. or whatever hamlet* said. something about the serendipity of it. i don't know why i want to call it serendipitious, but it feels that way to me. when i was out drinking on new years our bartender excitedly told us that our year was going to be good because our total came out to be something like 56.66 and she thought the 666 was also serendipitious, then tried to explain that she loves numerology and doesn't think 666 is a scary number. to her it's the "human" number. it highlights an intentionality on the physical and seemingly mundane. i thought it was a bit of a funny thing to explain to two queer people to not be afraid of 666--i can promise you despite my obsessive compulsions i have no fear of a number anymore, HIM beat that out of me with the song "your sweet 666" years ago. but more importantly i thought it was very sweet of her, i like her a lot and usually see her working there whenever i go. next time i will have to ask her what her favorite number combo is. i feel closer and closer to people every year and i'm thankful for it. anyway, may this year treat everyone well, i'm sure i'll update if my chestnut sign-from-whereever amounts to anything.
*act 2, scene 2: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams."