Today I was chatting with people. I mentioned that I really miss Seattle.
This blind woman from another table asks me why I miss it. I said that I prefer Seattle because it's more liberal and that I feel safer there because I'm transgender. For context, I use my preferred name here and don't pass at all, so me being trans is an obvious assumption, and I've seen many people with "love us love" type stickers on their water bottles, so I assumed it was safe to say I'm trans.
This blind woman then shouts "that's gross! The transgender part!" Someone immediately told her to be nice, and the blind woman responds with "I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just an honest person." Then later I was told by staff that she tends to be very honest about her opinions, and that she tends to pick up her opinions from others and what she hears.
I don't know if this woman has any mental stuff going on (like autism) or not, but I understand that some people are just naturally brutally honest and don't know how to watch what they say. I've been trying to hide how upset this makes me.
I'm not gross! I don't want to be seen (bad word choice, I know) as gross! Why do people find me gross! So what, I'm gross for feeling trapped in a body that feels incongruent with my soul?
Then I started thinking about it.
Yeah, I don't want to be seen as gross. But you know what else I don't like? Being seen as some weird anomaly who should be respected and affirmed. Sometimes being trans feels like I'm some alien on earth. I've crash landed here and some people are like "hey, look at this alien thing! Definitely not human! You're special and not normal! But we won't force you to be a human. We'll affirm you and accept you being a weird anomaly alien. We don't mind that you have to do [insert alien thing here that humans don't need to do]. You're an alien and that's okay!
I just want everyone to see me as a human who is not cishet or neurotypical, but is still called normal. I don't want to be weird or special!
I'm tired of being some minority. Feeling so estranged from a large group of humanity.
But then what's interesting is that while I know I'm a human, I feel mostly like a human, and I want to be treated like a human,
I also feel a bit different. I kinda feel like a humanoid creature as well as a human. I use it/its and he/him pronouns because those feel right for me. When I drew/created my voidsona (voidpunk persona) I traced out a human standing in a neutral position, colored it in with a black marker, flipped the paper over, and then cut little pieces of my iridescent tape. Of piece of the tape was cut to cover the entire head, and the other pieces were cut in different angular shapes and layered on one another to create a heart (body part) shape. I then put the tape in their respective places. That's kinda how I see myself.
When I look in the mirror, I always say that I am confused by the face in the mirror and that I never expect that to be my face, but I've just kinda reluctantly accepted the fact that that's my face. I also say that I never know what I'd expect my face to look like. Yes, I don't have in mind a realistic human body that I expect to see. But you know what? My voidsona feels a lot like the real me. Like my soul in a way. And when I think about what I'd love to do medically transition wise, I think of how I want to be sexless, like my voidsona. Obviously I can't look exactly like my voidsona IRL. I always imagine my voidsona to be exactly human aside from the way it looks. It can walk, talk, and do everything a normal human can. Sure, my voidsona would also have autism and ADHD like I do, but it would still be mostly human.
so all I said was 'if it makes you all more comfortable I don't mind coming with no makeup and you can use my birthname. The pastor read a verse. I couldn't remember it so I asked chatgpt, but it reads:
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