Author: Kieryn Darkwater
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27:9
I meant to write a retrospective before my birthday, but 2018 has been one hell of a year already, let me tell you. I got distracted going through my instagram account and watching the story of the last seven or so years unfold in the archives. I look so radically different now than I did…
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Goodbye 2017
I’ve been putting off writing for some reason. I’m not entirely sure why. Some of it is probably just burnout and exhaustion from school, processing a lot of the things that happened and got stepped on over the last semester that I didn’t have time to get to. I survived my first semester though! I…
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What even is gender
I feel like I’m mourning/saying goodbye to a part of me that doesn’t need to exist anymore. My body isn’t familiar on the outside anymore, I don’t have hips, or a waist, or cleavage. I get sir’d and he’d more often than not – the pharmacy actually put me down as male in their system?…
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Before I get buried by finals
I’ve started the process of getting a hysterectomy and let me tell you, has it been a rollercoaster. Apparently complete hysterectomies are somehow not part of trans surgeries. So my Doctor got me a referral to a clinic that does Gender Confirmation Surgeries, but they don’t offer 3D Printer de-embedding. They referred me to someone…
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School and C-PTSD
When I started this semester I knew that C/PTSD was something that counted as a disability that I could get help for on campus. I didn’t (still don’t) know exactly what the Disability Services Dept. could do to help, but I was going into specifically a non-emotional-labor intensive program in hopes to avoid the obvious…
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A's, Laney, and Gentrification
There’s a lot of interesting politics at Laney right now. The Oakland A’s want to build a new stadium on land owned by the Peralta school district. Much of the faculty and staff at Laney are actively against the project. On it’s face, I don’t really care about the A’s stadium or understand why they…
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Imaginary Numbers
School has stepped on a lot more things than I thought it would. Depression has been really strong this week, things build. There’s a really steep social learning curve I wasn’t prepared for. I don’t know how school settings work – I didn’t know how to pass things forwards and backwards until the first week…
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One Year Post Burn
It’s been almost exactly a year since returning from Burning Man. I learned a lot about myself in Black Rock City. I learned that I’m strong, capable, and so very very very trans. I had felt reserved about being more masculine for some time before becoming one with the playa last summer. I had been…
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The Awkward In-Between
I’ve noticed myself try to be quieter as I’ve started becoming more visibly masculine.When people read me as male I feel like suddenly (in the feminist & progressive discourse spaces I inhabit) I no longer have a voice worth listening to. It’s difficult to balance the way feminist discourse at large tries to get masculine…
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First Week
I’ve been coming home from school every day this week kind of struck by how prepared I am for college despite never being in a classroom setting for ~8 hrs/day before. I hadn’t thought about how fighting tooth and nail for my education, and seeing it through myself, and teaching myself through high school would…