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I have been sick all year.

I’ve been pretending I’m not because it’s the only coping mechanism I know and if I don’t stop doing things then I don’t feel pain and everything is fine.

Until it isn’t.

At some point I crash and my immune system disintegrates and I get sick with one thing after another. Not helping is that insurance is requiring me to lower my testosterone level in order to even try patches instead of injection, which meant that right after school started my Doctor had me lower my hormones.

First the nurse told me over the phone to decrease my dose from .5ml to .25ml which doesn’t seem like much but that takes me from 100mg to 50mg in one fell swoop and need I remind you, testosterone is an anabolic steroid? That sent my body into withdrawal for 3 weeks. They called me the next week to correct it after I complained about dying, and I was to lower my dose by 20mg every 2-3 weeks, so .4ml for 3 weeks, and .3ml for 3 weeks. I got to week 2 of the .3ml right over midterms and it was h e l l.

That was a mistake. I went in to see her two weeks ago after being so out of it I couldn’t go to school half of of the time and at that point she said she was going to consult with someone who had more experience with HRT. Turns out that I’ve felt so shitty because my hormones were dropping too fast, so now we’re back up to what I was taking for another 6 weeks and then dropping by 20mg for 6 weeks and then I don’t know.

More than that, I’ve been seeing my doctor about the same Auto-Immune-ish symptoms for over a year. I’ve been fatigued for as long as I can remember but that is intensifying dramatically. As is my Raynaud’s, dizziness, brain fog, muscle spasms, and insomnia. My bloodwork isn’t really telling us anything, but it’s triggered by stress and my cortisol release mechanism is on a hair trigger.

All of this has been making me super anxious which just compounds all of those problems (I can only laugh at the hilarity of stressing out about my stress disorder, IF ONLY I COULD STOP I WOULD BE FUCKING FINE. OMFG). So much so that for the last week and a half I’ve been beside myself, unable to sleep, unable to cope, just feeling like my body was made of adrenaline, until I managed to take half a xanax and have since started to slowly crawl back to okay.

Now I desperately need a psychiatrist and a doctor who can refer me to a rheumatologist.

I’ve been so devastated because two weeks ago I started really, understanding what it means for me to be disabled and sick. I dropped out of performing at the spring ballet recital because I haven’t been able to make it to practice due to pain. I have to manage my physical energy spoons judiciously and I fucking hate it.

I’m so frustrated because I’ve FINALLY gotten to the point where I feel alive and like I’m doing the things that bring me fulfillment and joy, and I am NOT casually okay with being dead anymore, and NOW my body is trying to murder me? NOW?!

R U D E

who gave it fucking permission?

I don’t have a resolution to this other than: I’m currently switching Doctors because like 8 people have told me I need to, including my therapist, and I’m working on finding a psychiatrist who can help with the anxiety spike, and I’m not dropping out but I am worried I’ll have to if I don’t get better.

I’m just so angry and hurt and feel betrayed and I feel like I need to grieve for myself but that’s a really confusing feeling. I have therapy on Wednesday at least.

I’ve been trying to take good care of myself over break, which has also meant trying to get my health situation in order. I’ve been dealing with chronic pain directly related to chronic stress since…for ever. We don’t know what it is, just that something is there.

Additionally, I haven’t stopped losing weight since starting testosterone. So I went to talk to my PCP about why my cholesterol is so high when I keep losing weight and don’t eat meat and the working theory is that my body is in starvation mode since HRT has made my metabolism skyrocket but my diet and eating habits haven’t changed to match. Pair that with being unable to eat when I’m stressed and forgetting to eat because of untreated ADHD and we have….where I am today.

The soonest time I could see a nutritionist is March so my therapist helped me come up with some plans, and then today my family took me to CostCo and now I have a drawer of snacks for the semester, and extra staples that I can freeze so there’s always a backup.

I realized while talking to my therapist how many layers of complicated my relationship to food is.

The Problems

First, there’s resentment. A lot of resentment. As the surrogate mom I was eventually the cooker of all meals and I hated the feeling of how my entire existence revolved around preparing meals, serving meals, and cleaning up after meals, for.ev.er. When I feel like I always have to cook or think about meals I start feeling trapped again, like I’m in a wheel I will never escape and I can never escape because for some reason bodies need food even when I get bored.

(I’m realizing now that I read this back that a lot of this is also similar to the ADHD thing of not being able to do things that aren’t interesting. This also explains why my desire to bake bread has come back with a vengeance but the thought of cooking 3 meals a day 7 days a week makes me hate life.)

Second, is fear of scarcity. My family gave so much to the church that we were often in short supply of food, especially as the family grew. As the eldest and the one with responsibility to make sure all the other children had their needs met, I always ate last, often after I’d dished out seconds to the other kids. When food was tight I ate less than I wanted or should have because it was more important that the younger kids ate (they were growing but somehow I was not). It got to the point where when the fridge was empty I would stop going into the kitchen because I couldn’t deal with the anxiety. I still do this.

To this day I have to always have ingredients for peanut butter and jelly available, and when I don’t I turn into a huge anxious ball until that’s fixed.

I also do this thing where, when I start getting low on something I’ll stop eating it so I don’t run out. I do this because I never felt secure in knowing there would be more later. The part where this gets me is that it’s often still my reality. I’ve spent a lot of time this semester trying to grapple with the fact that since getting bumped off CalFresh (which I’m re-applying for now) I have been food insecure and that’s contributed heavily to my lack of actually eating. Feeling like if I run out of something I can’t replace it means I will try not to run out of it, even if it means rationing or saving it until I’m at a place where I can replace it.

When you’re poor as fuck and your bills take 80% of your income, not eating seems like a smart, money saving choice. It’s just a really really bad one.

I think the food scarcity fear is the hardest obstacle because it’s escalated significantly by the reality of being poor. I know people have my back and will not let me starve (this is literally why my kitchen is stocked to the brim right now) but that anxiety, paired with the capitalist pressure to not spend money, and the lack of funds to even buy food anyway, just converges into a mess that fuels and justifies this eating disorder, and reinforces that I deserve this (I don’t).

Third, it’s self harm. It’s a way to take out anger or disappointment that doesn’t negatively impact anyone except myself (or that’s what I tell myself anyway). This is also often paired with the Scarcity Implosion, but sometimes I’m just angry, and when I’m angry or disappointed at myself (because I don’t know how to be angry at other people) I take that out on myself by not eating, because it’s somehow what I deserve for fucking up or not being good enough already. I also know this is bullshit but tell that to my brain when it’s livid.

Lastly, I just get distracted or don’t have the executive function to stay on top of it. Making food is boring when I’m working on literally anything else. Sometimes I’m just exhausted and I need food but I don’t have the actual capacity to choose a food to make or put into my face. When I get back from a day of having new information dumped into my brain, I’m not…in a state to prepare or even think about cooking a meal. I’m just exhausted.

What happens most often of course, is that all of these intermix and collide in a bunch of really exciting ways at any given point throughout the day, so all I really know is that I need help, but I can’t actually give much direction on how that isn’t “please move inside my brain, thanks, the galley is downstairs.”

The Plan

My therapist suggested I get “more food than I’ll think I’ll need”, and one of my friends shared the idea of having a backup stash, so I always have that backup and don’t have to worry about getting low. Something I also have a hard time with when I’m low spoons and tired is just coming up with something to eat, so the other day I sat down and made two lists: one for meals, and one for snacks. All things that are really low spoons or easy to make in bulk for heating and taking to school later.

I’ve also set reminders on my phone to eat every day at 9am and noon, I downloaded the Streaks app just so I can check off eating meals (because my brain loves getting points for shit, so if I can gamify something it will help). I also downloaded a food-diary app that also has a health/meds/activities log called mySymptoms. Because my Raynaud’s has been in a flare since May I added a Cold level to the symptom options and that’s been helpful. This doesn’t work super great because I suck at remembering to log things in the apps, but knowing that there is a log helps me remember to do things?

I’m also gonna try to make a sensical description of my income/expenses and apply for CalFresh again this week. If I can afford groceries without worrying a lot of the other things will be less intense.

(If you wanna be part of the Kieryn Doesn’t Starve Or Freeze Club, you can join me on patreon or just donate towards snacks on paypal or square)

Something my therapist has been encouraging me to remind myself of is that I deserve to take good care of myself.

So I’ve decided that in 2019 I’m going to take everything I’ve learned from this year and try to take good care of myself. I’m emphasizing good because if I just take care of myself I get what I’ve been doing all year which is giving myself enough love and sustenance to survive but nothing more than that. I’m here to tell you that was a terrible decision and it sucks and I deserve better from myself, so I’m going to try to do better next year.

For the first time in a while I actually have Specific Things I Want To Accomplish next year, that fall under my larger goal of taking good care of myself.

I want need to be able to pay rent.
Financial instability sucks and since I lost my contracting gig last January this year has been incredibly hard with being in school full time. I’ve been getting by between my patreon, side-gigs, and school scholarships, but none of those combined have been enough to cover more than my bills, groceries if I’m lucky. I’m stressed to the point of sickness and I haven’t been eating to save on going shopping, so that has to change this year.

Some of it already is, I have a part-time minimum-wage ($13.23/hr) job on campus doing organizing work, and I have another long-term side gig lined up, but neither of those are going to be enough to contribute to rent so I have to come up with something to do in between to make ends meet (while also in school).

My goal is to get my patreon to at least $1k/mo this year (in addition to working multiple jobs while in school and organizing). I don’t currently offer many perks besides warm fuzzies of knowing that I won’t die while working for social justice through art/writing/podcasts/on the ground activism, but my patreon is the reason I’ve been able to manage at all this year so the help really goes a long way (and I super appreciate it).

I want to stop being consumed entirely by school.
I feel like I lose myself and stop existing and being a person when school starts and all I can do is think about homework and worry. It’s exhausting and I don’t like it. I’ve worked so hard to get here and I have to climb so many mountains and I’d really like not to sacrifice my humanity for education, you know?

I’m laying a lot of groundwork for that with on-campus organizing, to make being there less stressful (bathrooms should be ready as soon as Peralta finds money for a locksmith), but I think what’s more important is what I’m doing around school, so my vague plans are these:

• Have a bedtime routine – skin care, teeth, read something fun (not homework), unwind
• Have a morning routine – Actually Make Breakfast while the coffee brews, have a lunch plan
• Block out a time for homework on my calendar – then it will happen and I won’t stress about having time to do it? maybe? we’ll find out.

Along that vein my goal is to eat and rest better.
My sleep has been fucked all year and so has my eating (for various and somewhat entirely self-inflicted reasons) so I talked to my doctor about getting a nutritionist and doing a sleep study this year. I don’t know if I’m just stressed and that’s all or if there’s something bigger at play. I’m also not eating enough to keep up with my apparently skyrocketing metabolism and I’ve been losing more weight without even trying (I weigh the same as I did 12 years ago now and I’m not here for it). I’m hoping a nutritionist can help me figure out what I need to eat so I don’t inadvertently starve because my body thinks it’s a pubescent boy.

I feel like if I can get my sleeping and eating sorted that a lot of the other things will be able to get better from there?

I want to have more sex with more people.
I’ve been in a weird headspace all year with it and also with dating and I had an epiphany a bit back that none of that actually really mattered. I want to unpack more of that in a post of its own but the synopsis is: it’s a mindfuck going from being perceived straight, to lesbian, to straight again but this time it’s you who’s getting the checks, and also like, NONE OF THOSE PERCEPTIONS ARE TRUE (bi erasure ftw). But that’s not even the point really, the point is that it’s a weird mental place to be, between being socialized one way and perceived another – neither being correct -, and I talk over people because I’ve been shouted over for so long and it’s so weird being suddenly assigned a male space when that isn’t…. anyway.

I miss having fulfilling romantic relationships with more than one person and the people who I would want to date are the kind of people who already understand me. I don’t have to date someone I need to handhold through my transness. it’s fine.

Additionally, I can sex people and not have to date them???? This is something I want to also…try..more.

I haven’t started anything this year because I was eaten too much by school to have the time and spoons to invest in another relationship the way I would want to. This year my goal is to intentionally make room for that to happen.

I told my therapist about some of this earlier today, especially about how what I really need is rest. My homework this week is to spend the next 3-4 days doing nothing but resting and learning how to ask for help.

In 2019 my goal is to learn to be compassionate to myself in the same way that I am for other people.

And also maybe look into a metoidioplasty.

I have survived an entire year of college. This semester has been especially challenging, in more ways than the previous two were. I learned a lot about my limits and that just because it only takes 6 weeks to heal your stitches does not mean that you are better 6 weeks later.

I am currently exhausted, sick with some kind of respiratory virus that my doctor hypothesizes is likely from the push-crash of finals (apparently pushing = immuno-compromised and it happens a lot with people in school :P). But I’m also really fucking proud. I’ll write later about all the things I learned this year and what’s next and all that, but right now I want to talk about some of the things I’m really proud of.

• The Lavender Project – this is the group on campus that consists of student(s – me, mostly), faculty, and staff that is dedicated to institutionalizing queer support structures at Laney. We planned Coming Out Week this year, where we had a ton of events and basically launched the Queer Brunch. We’re working on changing the bathrooms (just need to pay the locksmiths?), and I help by offering suggestions of things that are easy but super helpful (maps, for example).
• The Laney Queers – I started the queer club this semester! Right now we basically just do brunches and trips to the museum. But we have a code of conduct, the constitution for our doocratic consensus based club is on the website for other clubs to borrow from, and I am compiling a list of counselors that are LGBT affirming.
• The Social Justice Cohort – Laney announced a Labor Studies track (to learn organizing) and a Student Organizer job with the Student Justice Center. I’m one of the people in the cohort now! We are going to be focusing on ways to lower the barriers to education for undocumented students and will be going to workshops on DACA and AB540. We’ll hold educational workshops too and probably partner with the Laney Queers and The Lavender Project on events! The other cool thing is, this is a paid student worker position so I will get (more) job experience doing that thing I always do! I’m also working with an amazing group of people who appreciate my pup accessories so we’re obviously going to be great friends.
• I’m building a coalition on campus. In some ways it feels like I’m starting something big. I’ve made friends with culinary, facilities, and the nurses. Everyone on campus is tired of how communication within peralta sucks and we all want to work together. I’m part of making that happen. It feels really good.
• I’ve figured out how to navigate the bureaucracy and where some of the levers of power are. Mostly by running into walls like a roomba. I learned how to use DSPS this semester, so now I know I need to get a NEW accommodation letter before next semester. 😛
• I’m proud of myself for leaning in to that thing that I am driven to do instead of trying to force something else to happen (Labor Studies AA instead of Machine Tech AS). I feel a little insecure about it still, but it also feels right.

Since the last post I’ve been able to sit with myself for a few minutes and think about where I go from here. 

I’ve decided that I am definitely going to focus on Labor Studies since Coming Out Week went so well and I got an email about the Student Organizing Cohort that the Ethnic Studies Department is doing at school (I have an interview for that this week). 

I have a meeting this week with Disability services to see about getting a medical withdrawal from shop so my incomplete does not give me an F for just not being physically capable to machine safely. As it turns out, losing an entire reproductive system takes a lot out of you even after your stitches are healed. Mixed with stress disorders and trauma it’s just…not happening.

I met with a counselor about changing majors, and ever since I decided to act on it, I’ve felt more at peace and in alignment with myself. I feel like this is the thing I should be doing, and I feel centered when I think about it. 

I also feel a bit nervous because I think it will be really challenging in good and frustrating ways, but hopefully in ways that I’m a little more equipped for.

Honestly after the news this week, going to school for an organizing AA, organizing on campus and in the East Bay, and doing the work to at least make this portion of the world less hostile is how I’m keeping myself from melting into despair.

I’ve been coming to grips with some stuff about what I’m studying lately, which is largely that 1: I really enjoy machining, but 2: I do not believe that I am capable of being a manual machinist in a traditional shop and I don’t see that as my future. 

It’s a weird sentence to write, sitting at a table in the student center waiting for my next class, but I haven’t been able to convince myself otherwise. I don’t have the physical stamina to operate heavy machinery, or the emotional stamina to be the only trans person in a shop. It’s hard enough being the only trans person in my english class. 

I’ve stopped and asked myself a lot over the last three semesters What am I even doing here? Why am I doing this to myself? What’s the point?  

I asked these questions before therapy today and then talked about it a bit at the end. Why do I keep going if all it seems to be doing is dredging up pain and trauma I haven’t dealt with and didn’t know about?  

And the answer is because the only way I can heal from the lies I was told about my worth, my abilities, about college and school, about learning, and teachers is to expose myself to it.

The only way I can recover is to face the terror every day and learn through experience that everything I was told for so long is bullshit.

I’m at school to learn what school is like, to learn how to learn, to learn how to navigate organized education, to learn that not every teacher is my mom reincarnated. I’m here to force myself to face a field of unknown mines and survive it. 

If I’m lucky I’ll finish my certificate, I’ll get an associates in something eventually, a nice perk would be placating capitalism. 

But I’m here to heal myself through exposure. Apparently. 

Maybe that’s valid too.