The A* word

 Hello blog,

Lately I have been thinking a lot of what I consider the A* word, authentic.   I am guessing to anyone residing outside of my brain, my aversion to this word probably at best seems foolish.

To me though, this particular word especially spoken in phrases like "live your life authentic" or "be the authentic you" just seems to upset me.  I've noticed that and tried to analyze the reason to death here.

The only conclusion I get towards why this word sets me off is because I have no idea what authentic truly means to me.  I have thought and thought so much on this that frankly I have no clue what direction is up. down or anywhere in-between.

Authentic to me may be embracing my identity as a trans person but yet when I do that I feel like a fraud and pretending to be something for reasons I'm not sure of.  When I try to model my life in my assigned gender, I feel self-hatred and disgust and never quite feel like I live up to that either.  When I go back and forth, I feel like I am ashamed and immature, and hate hiding away or thinking that things will just go away.

I am so so tired of this shit and not knowing anything anymore.   I wish I didn't spend so much time questioning myself over this, but I keep wondering about how do I know what's right for me?  Is this a sign or a perpetual dark hole that I will always keep spinning about.

I dunno.  I am just getting too old and too tired of this and life anymore.

Sorry for spinning an old topic here, but it seems like some of the same thoughts continue to cycle throughout my wee brain.

Hugs,

Jaclyn

Old pictures

 Hello blog,

With the return of warm weather, this weekend turned into being a productive one here for spring cleaning and tidying up my home for the summer.  One project I finally got around to doing was to go through some old boxes of collected knick-knacks and things that had been sitting around in a box collecting dust.  As I was in the middle of this project, I came across an old envelop stuffed with photos that I had saved over the past 20+ years and totally forgot about.

To my surprise, in the middle of these photos I stumbled across a set of the first pictures I ever took posed as Jaclyn.  These were close to 15 years ago and were about the time I first honestly tried to pull things together and before I ever got enough confidence to go outside in public.  

Those images have been stuck in my head most of the start of this week and I have been feeling a lot of emotions positive and negative since finding them.  Looking at these I really feel the transphobia of the first attempting at passing and looking natural.  I feel like a clown with way too much blush and eye shadow and hair/body brings me to many feelings of inadequacy and personal ugliness.

Then there is also some of the feelings deeper than the 2D images that come to me when looking at the photos.  I remember the time that I first tried to coordinate outfits and the lady that was so supportive in helping me explore/discover this in the first place.  I wonder if I came across that person today what I would be telling her.

As I keep processing the images and memories, there is also shame, guilt and confusion that is roiling through me.  Right now I feel like I am wading through a period of absolute confusion, about which way is up or down, about which way I want to go.  Somedays I feel ok and somedays I feel bottoming out and on the verge of just giving up on life and whatever.  I feel that my path is not a linear one, and that I continue to suffer from any internal sense of me.

I would like to accept me except I don't know what the me is that I would be accepting.  I am so sad and frustrated right now that I am so lost, and wish I had someone to tell me what to do.

For now, the only thing I feel capable of doing is to stuff these pictures and memories and feelings away into a box and shove it deep away from thought.    I'm still not better and I know that only I can change things.  I just can't do that even though I want so bad to remove the can't.  

~Stuck in time,

Jaclyn