So…I’ve been absent from here for awhile now. And that is my own fault. I’ve been suffering; not monumentally, and not compared to most people, and mostly in my head. But every once and awhile depression gets me and it’s all I can do to keep my head above water.

This summer I went swimming, this summer I might’ve drowned, but I held my breath and kicked my feet and moved my arms around.

I start my summer job in approximately eight hours. I’m fairly terrified, but excited too. A nervous excitement, shall we say?

I’ve gotten my fifth tattoo.

It’s healed now, so it’s less red, but it still stands in a beautiful stark cream colored white from my skin, raised. Like a scar. It holds a complex meaning; it is a symbol of myself as a survivor of sexual assault (survivor, not victim) and the lotus flower is…it’s special to me. The deeper the mud, the more beautiful the blossom.

I still think about top surgery a lot. But just top surgery. I don’t want to take testosterone, I don’t want to mess with my body’s chemistry, I one day want to have kids. Sometimes I wonder if having a bicornate uterus (basically, a double uterus) is representative of being born intersexed. This I can only speculate on and I have no other reasons to suspect this, besides my tendency to grow facial hair. Unless there is some surgery that happened when I was born that my parents haven’t told me about. I highly doubt this, since most operations (or should I say, mutilations) are aimed at making “normal” looking genitalia, not functionally genitalia, or to be more explicit, I have not suffered a loss of sensation. I don’t think.

Anyway, I crave a male contoured chest. I can’t help myself. In fact, I wouldn’t need to surgically or societally change my sex in any other way. Can’t I have a male chest but a driver’s license that reads “F”? I find myself looking at men on the beach in envy. And once I’ve made this choice, will I regret it? Will I suddenly want breasts again? Or are they just something that’s there and not really that important to me? I certainly don’t think much of them. I’ve found a female therapist in Holyoke who specializes in trans folk so maybe I can get some professional insight once I head back to the Noho area.

I could talk about what’s been happening in my personal life, friendships and such. But I really don’t want to. So I’m not.

I should probably stay away from ecstasy for awhile. My vision is starting to change, my dopamine drops get worse each time. Especially after this most recent episode, most recent being about a month ago now. Still don’t think I’ve recovered.

I’ll be absent for several months at my summer job, which is me playing pirate for the summer. But I’ll be back with many stories.

I’ll raise a glass to being no one else’s fool.

Raise some question to the rule, who says you’d have to lose a love to find one?