I couldn’t sleep. Too much alcohol and heavy food yesterday. Woke up scared I said something dumb in an email to my T. Revealed too much… went too far. Which is hilarious considering I don’t think there is anything he doesn’t know at this point lol.
Maybe not this. That sometimes I see my adult female body and freak out just a little. Mostly it’s my boobs haha. I both hate and love this part of my body.
It’s something uniquely feminine.. and so parts of me love that they are shapely and ample and some parts of me hate it. Some parts… Younger parts are confused by them. That was this morning.. I felt like I shouldn’t be looking at my own boobs because it’s inappropriate… because clearly they’re not mine… can’t be? How fucking weird is that? I really think that’s a unique phenomenon to people like me.
My friend told me that this can happen when you’re feeling partly dissociated… outside your body… feeling younger than you are and not realizing it until suddenly you realize your arms and hands and legs are way longer than they should be… or they look unrecognizable to you. When this happens to me, it’s mostly around secondary sex characteristics that confuse me…alarm me, really.
So today it was like that for a moment… and then I realized who I am.. what I am… where I am… And that the last hour I spent surfing the internet I wasn’t aware of any of those things. I was not here, grounded, I was somewhere else.. somewhere adult woman Jess does not exist.. where maybe this body and it’s power meant.. nothing.
I struggle all the time with how to dress this body. Since I can remember I’ve been confused by it. Should I dress down and minimize any of my feminine traits?
Do you remember when you first wore a top that showed off your chest? The way your dad started to look at you? It made you uncomfortable… So you decided maybe not that shirt that day... maybe never…
As a pre-teen I used to wear clothes that was loose or baggy. Long shorts, long t-shirts.. my mom dressed me like a doll when I was a child, but the minute I was able to make my own decisions I pretty much hid as much of my body as I could. I chose comfort and dark colors. In contrast to bright cheery colors and dresses my mom loved to parade me around in. I hated anything “girly”. I think part of this was because I inherently knew… being a girl was not safe for me in this world.
So I struggled as my body developed. Sometimes I liked the attention… Sometimes I dressed for the attention… Sometimes I tried my best to hide any of feminine physical traits. At some point in college when I was thinner and didn’t care about myself, I realized it was easy to attract men because of my body and bright flashy smile and thats exactly what she wanted. But it isn’t what I want today.
I remember once in high school I wore a simple dark blue shirt that had a little hood and a yellow/green butterfly across the chest. Apparently it drew a lot of attention to my boobs and my good friend (who had a significantly smaller chest) accused me of wearing that shirt on purpose. In all honest, I didn’t even think about that. I just thought the shirt was cute. It hurt that she thought that of me, but it reminded me that my body .. exists… has power… isn’t just mine to enjoy but is out there for others to judge.. or use. I shrunk inside myself… and deicded to wear even more subdued clothes in the future. I almost always wore black or grey. Almost always pants (rarely showed my legs) even in the summer and always a sweater or camisole over my outfits.
Some days I don’t want my body at all.
Not like, how some girls find dissatisfaction with how they look… there is some of that… but tbh with the amount of partners I had in college I started to realize, whatever imperfections i hated about myself, my physical attractiveness was “good enough” because I had partners that were quite attractive in my opinion.. like way more attractive than myself.
But it was all a lie wasn’t it? I hated my body just as much then as I do now.. I think that’s why I hurt it.. blame it almost… for the attention it attracted… for being female at all.
I have a lot of guy friends. Lately when we’ve gone out together, like when we are playing disc golf, sometimes I’ll wear a lighter or low-cut top and sports bra to stay cool. And I catch them looking at my chest just small glances. I don’t perceive it as malicious at all. I think it’s very human. I mean, I look at boobs too lol. But I remember recently feeling… kind of ashamed.
I felt ashamed that I had called any attention to my body at all. There I go again, just like my friend has said.. vying for attention – how dare i? what a shallow piece of shit i am.
I wanted to hide when I noticed. I wanted to not be female for one fucking second… just wanted to be another guy/person having a fun day out. I just wanted not to be seen in this world as female because being female.. sucks. It means being constantly judged and ogled and looked down upon and having to hide your pain at least for a few weeks out of the month… “i’m not having a good game today guys…. just feeling tired…” must be nice not to have to contend w/ that ever, huh?
But even in so many other contexts. Women are asked to do it all (career and mother and care and clean and cook) and never complain. To be subdued and submissive, to be the prey to so many predators.
Sometimes, I really hate my body.
So I struggle everyday to know how to dress myself. Some days, I actually kind of like my body.. but I don’t like my body out in the world. What it represents to others – it makes me not want to exist at all. Really.
So some days I’ll wear a baggy top with a high neck and a tight sports bra flattening my chest as much as possible. I’ll wear nerdy glasses that I barely need just to create a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I’ll wear layers so I can cover myself even more if I need to shrink away, or to hide scars, or to wrap it around me like a security blanket so I can feel just a little safer.
And some days… I want the attention. So I’ll wear clothes that ask for it and I’ll smile at people who notice. It’s not me… It’s other parts that for whatever reason are looking for something… an out perhaps… to feel less constrained… To have an excuse to flirt… or maybe that day i don’t care and I actually feel safe… it’s hard to know really, when you’re not always aware of who you are… ugh.
But every morning I have to contend w myself, every morning there is anxiety. Who am I today? What do I want to be to the world? What do I want the world to see? Because I have no idea who “me” is or what authentic me dresses like. It’s too complicated and it makes me sad because there’s too many opinions and it makes it hard to develop any consistent sense of style. Just like with my art.
This confusion makes me hate myself because I just want one thing to be simple and it never is. Not even existing… being “in body” sucks.
Today I looked down and didn’t realize it was my body and it made me want to hurt myself when I realized it was mine… Today I don’t want to be female. I don’t want to exist at all.
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Afternoon update:
Man, maybe something is wrong w/ me… haven’t taken my meds very well (missed doses) lately… lots of drinking. I feel … casually suicidal today.
Is that a thing? lol.. wtf is wrong w/ me? i just don’t ….. really care about doing more… i care about…. nothing. *shrug* I simultaneously care about people and making plans to do stuff.. and also don’t care about anything and am staring at this bottle of sleeping pills wondering what would happen if I just took like 20 of them and drank a bunch of liquor. You think anything? Probably not. Wait who am I even talking to? No one is actually listening. lololol
c’est la vie.