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i can't find a right thing to start with. there's so much going on in my head right now. i'm feeling absurdly bittersweet these last few weeks-- more bittersweet than i've ever felt. there's a lot of reasons i don't want to get into, but i guess it boils down to a whole lot of change that i'm truly terrified of. i haven't been terrified of change in a long time-- i've loved it, actually-- and now i'm here & scared & tired & trying to enjoy myself all the same

my life has generally been chaotic & exciting & exhausting lately. there's so much on my mind, and i just can't get rid of it. i've been listening to space to space & multi-bottle rocket by iris bilinsky and no below by speedy ortiz way too much, and it might be a little bit bad for me. that's okay. it's comforting, and that's what matters

i tried to write this blog in a way where i just talked about all the shit i've been up to recently in a thoughtful & fun way, but that really just wasn't working out in a way i wanted. so here's a list of some things i've done lately & minor thoughts about them before i dive into more of my classic ruminative behavior

• my girlfriend and i went to halloween horror nights last friday. it was so incredibly memorable (as it is each year) to go through every maze & run from place to place & have to sit down and put my legs up on her lap & get butterbeer together & buy our silly matching shirts. the ride home with her was odd in a good way as driving at night usually is
• she & i made our halloween costumes. we were kiki & bouba, respectively
• i went to a puja for my dad's cousin's wedding in december which was pretty chill & had great food
• girlfriend & i watched a few scary movies to celebrate halloween and it was lovely & fairly trippy
• we watched blair witch project-- my first time seeing it. yes, it is absurd i hadn't seen it before as a self-proclaimed horror buff, but now i can claim it And be right. it subverted my expectations a little, and generally very good though not too scary
• texas chainsaw massacre was better than i ever could've imagined it'd be. i was honestly surprised at how minimally franklin was infantilized (though he stiill was), and really just loved it more than any other slasher movie i've seen. it's especially fun to think of it through the lens of the southern gothic genre
• last movie of the night was late night with the devil which was just incredibly weird & wild & fun and caused lots of second-hand anxiety (?) but wasn't really scary
• i went on a little trip with my photography class today, through our downtown area & to a local bookstore, etc ! really fun & i will talk about that more later also
• not the past, but i have three shows i'm going to in the next couple weeks (all fundraisers for palestine) which is both exciting and overwhelming

tomorrow, my girlfriend is coming over again for a continuation of our horror movie marathon, and i feel oddly excited-- as if i haven't seen her in forever. after our halloween movie night, she drove me home so we could spend a little longer together, and the two of us sang along to lots of bittersweet songs and talked about how odd it is to grow up. she kept holding my hand and raising it to her mouth to kiss it, and it made me smile a sort of silly amount. sometimes i feel like i'm getting to know her as a girlfriend all over again, with all of the nerves & fawning over her

transitioning from last night to this morning was odd. i am admittedly not much of a night owl anymore, so going to bed at 12:30 sort of wrecked me, and yet i was able to wake up much earlier than i usually am. we like to sit on call at night so we can wake up to each other, and it was odd getting to actually talk before we both had to go

the trip downtown was really lovely. i don't have good friends in that class, so it was a little lonely, but i'm friendly enough with a group of people that i was able to have a good time and balance recharging alone with hanging out with lots of people

we went to an old bookstore in our area and i got the sequel to there, there called wandering stars, and i really can't wait to read it. i got lots of wonderful pictures there, too, of course, but the book was especially exciting. i feel like there's honestly no way not to doxx myself at this point so i'm just going to be frank and say that the dodger's parade was a genuine nightmare to deal with when it came to getting food. we went to little tokyo and it was so overwhelmingly packed that we could only grab sushi (& white peach calpico & a red bean cake) from the grocery store and sit on some steps to eat them. it was delicious, of course, but a little sad

i skipped over what's probably affected me most about the day, which was seeing the incredible & tragic ofrendas. they were all so young, and so love-- their altars so beautifully decorated. i took photos, and i can't wait to download them, but i also felt a little silly walking around taking photos instead of just being with them, so i stopped at some point. just looked & acknowledged & walked with them. so much family, gone

the weight of that kind of sat with me through the rest of the day. i couldn't be excited in the same way everyone else was. it wasn't that i couldn't be happy, but i guess there was just a sort of heaviness that i walked hand in hand with at the same time

i've spent the day since then listening to a lot of the bittersweet songs and laying silently and doing work and writing when i feel able. i spent a lot of time thinking about gender for some reason. actually, i know the reason-- i saw an endocrinologist on halloween (how funny) and talked to her about starting testosterone, and possibly freezing eggs beforehand. i guess i'm thinking a lot about what that means to me

it feels odd, but i guess i wish i connected with being a woman more strongly than i do. i don't mean that in an "i want to be cis" way-- i actually really don't. i guess that's part of my anxiety, and i don't know what that means for me. i think i fear being a woman as part of my gender, and being open about that, because the idea of being viewed by others as a cis woman (a label i think would be automatically attached) is so awful to me. if i was on testosterone, i might feel more comfortable with it, ironically because people probably wouldn't see me as a woman even if i told them i was (in part), and maybe that's better

it's so awfully confusing. i wish it could be easier, and at the same time, i love the complicatedness of it all

this blog post is chaotic & not my favorite one i've ever made, but i don't know why i feel the need to rate my blog posts like works of literature. i don't know why i feel the need to rank works of literature, or why i seem to care less about my literature rankings than my blog post rankings. i think i need to go listen to space to space & multi-bottle rocket & no below again