I've been away for a while now. I'm not someone who adjusts well to change, and life lately has thrown me so many that I've been nearly incapable of coping. At the end of May / beginning of June, the family I was staying with moved. Much of my time around then was spent preparing my belongings, and helping them as needed. They moved two towns away, and I stayed in a guest bedroom of their's for about three days. After that, I moved in with my brother, about 30 minutes from there. In about a month, I'll be moving to Saint Mary's City to attend Saint Mary's College of Maryland.It feels like the space available to me has been gradually shrinking, and the feeling I've often had of walls closing around me has become more real.Living with my brother has been somewhat refreshing. When I lived with Nick's family, I always felt like I was somewhat tolerated. They empathized with my situation and didn't understand how two parents could turn their back on their child, but I wasn't their child nor their responsibility. I began to feel like a drain on them, and guilt/uselessness was eating at me while I was living there. My brotherfamily, and there's a sense of unity here that helps me feel more whole. Doing housework here actually makes me feel happier.My brother has fully come around. I can be me here. The first time I was presenting as a woman in this home, I felt uneasy--it'swith family. He didn't say anything, and just went about what he was doing. He didn't seem to care.I hear from him how my mom and dad are doing. There are still nights, especially lately, where I sit up and cry because I miss them. Like now. I dream about them, especially my mom. In those, we walk together, we talk, she says she loves me, and everything is fine. And then I wake up and nothing is. In the real world, my mom is broken. She breaks down into tears at the slightest trigger. She's cut everyone she could out of her life. She's gutted out most of the house. When my brother visited them, he said that my dad's basement is now a chair, a table, a tv, and a lot of empty space.All of the family pictures are off the walls.Many of the things I couldn't take with me, and wanted to come back for, are being thrown away. Books I've spent years collecting are gone. The desk I've had since middle school, gone. My dresser, gone. It's been hard to collect my things, relying on others' cars, and only being permitted to get things when my parents aren't home--especially lately, with my mom on an 8-week vacation. I am just sitting here, wondering how many memories are being junked.It's hard not to blame myself for all of this. But, as many people keep telling me, I can't hold myself responsible for someone else's thoughts. As much as it kills me to know that someone I love is in anguish, I can't... be the one to help her. My presence would only trigger more pain.It helps for me to get this grief out. I've been unable to relax for days.A few weeks ago, I found myself receiving attention from two different men, and I wrote my thoughts out. Waiting was the right thing to do, and I was able to see that Simon and I are not right for each other. I still I talk with him, and I still love him dearly. Just knowing that I can be there to see him succeed is encouraging. He is one of the most ambitious people I know. I've always been jealous of his ability to focus his efforts, so unlike myself.So, I'm with Mark. Or Cornshaq, whichever we are going to call him. I feel like he's at a tough part of his life--his dog (which he loves dearly) is going through repeated serious health problems, requiring surgery. He's been slipping in and out of depression. Mark works himself constantly, between his job, volunteering, his videos... he doesn't really make time for me right now. He makes it clear that he cares about me a lot, but he doesn't seem capable of simply calling me on Skype and talking with me for a bit. For a while, it bothered me. Now I take a different stance--I'm just stepping back and letting him live his life. If he wants me, he'll have to put some effort and some heart into it. If he drifts away, I'll have to be okay with that.At the moment, I don't have the emotional fortitude nor the financial resources to have more than this in a relationship. So why push for more?I've been putting a lot of effort into doing a "Let's Play!," in which I play a video game in detail for an audience. Right now it's on the Something Awful forums --when I finish I'll ask them to submit it to LPArchives.org for me. Lords of Magic, Special Edition is the game. I've loved that game since middle school--I'm happy to share it with others. It's also a large undertaking, so far lasting 20+ updates. Having feedback and encouragement from an audience really,helps me get things done, so I'm getting as much fulfillment out of it as they are getting entertainment. It makes me smile, and gives me something to focus on. Reading. I did promise to talk about that, and I am doing it. Right now I am working on learning graph theory. I've done a good amount of independent learning, familiarizing myself with graph mining and graph grammar as concepts. I'm also using Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms , the textbook from my data structures class, to teach myself how to program graphs on a basic level. As practice, I wrote a program that throws points on a cartesian plane, and then connects them with their k nearest neighbors. Here is an example to the left.I think that it's beautiful. Once I learn more, and practice more, there's so much that can be done by creating graph representations, traversing them, analyzing them... My friend Jennifer gets so happy when I talk about anything related to mathematics, so after each program is done, I immediately screenshot the output and show her. I think one day I may overwhelm her.The other books I am reading include Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering , and Operating Systems, Design and Implementation . Operating systems, because I've had zero experience with operating systems programming, and I want to broaden my programming experience. Reversing, for two reasons:-The idea of learning how to reverse engineer files and programs is just so damn exciting, that it will push my programming knowledge forward-I really want to do something special with my Let's Play, and it requires I understand the save game format and hack it.Mark helped me afford estrogen. Thanks to him, I've been able to push my transition forward. It's made me happier overall, but I find that I have a predictable "down" at 2:00am. I will cry, or come close to crying, at about 2:00am every day. If I am asleep, Ihave nightmares and wake up. Coping strategies are forming. Each day, I smile in the mirror and hunt for changes. I'm slowly becoming happy with myself.Thank him for me. Every day.