A Life Update I guess (3/7/20)

I guess this is supposed to be some sort of continuation of my February pastebin. Honestly, at first I was just gonna make a small thread of tweets but then I realized the amount of things I wanted to say so I decided to make this pastebin. This pastebin is less some sort of organized narrative in my mind, and more just pouring all the disconnected concepts in my head over the past few months into text. Maybe after I finish writing this I'll understand how exactly my thoughts are connecting a bit better.

As I went over in my last pastebin, I'd been struggling with my gender identity for a while now. It was finally in February that I accepted in my mind that I was more "feminine" than "masculine" and that I wanted to try transitioning. I wrote the pinned pastebin shortly after. Honestly, I thought that me writing that pastebin would push me to actually enact some sort of drastic change in my life, and allow me to suddenly have the courage to be a girl. But life doesn't work like that; nothing happens quite that drastically.

A big part of me wants to blame COVID and the lockdown for my lack of change. The big thing I wanted to do next was go out and start wearing dresses and nail polish, and the lockdown made it very hard to do that. But I knew internally that that would just be an excuse. I know that if I really set myself to it, I *could* still to that under these conditions. But I'm scared. While the lockdown definitely prevented COVID cases, for me personally it just enabled my shitty lifestyle of only leaving the house when it is necessary. And I believe that mentally, it's an extremely shitty way to live your life.

I guess in a sense, I've become "more of a girl" in these past few months, but not really in the way that I imagined. Comfortable with anime, I've turned to that as a source for exploring femininity. While my struggle before was deciding whether I wanted to be a girl or not, now my struggle is what kind of girl I want to become. My other weeb friends should know this by now, but I've become very fascinated with the Precure franchise recently. I think that a big reason for my love is because it is something that allows me to look at different kinds of femininity, and to explore the possibilities of the girl that I could become. In particular, while Go! Princess Precure isn't my favourite Precure series, I believe that it's the one which touches onto this concept the best. In the very first scene, our main character Haruno Haruka is being made fun of by other boys in her class because her dream is to "become a princess". This scene resonated very strongly with me, and over the course of the anime it felt like it was telling me that "anyone can become a princess". As it's sung in the insert song from episode 39, "A shining soul is the condition of being a princess".

Over the past week I've played a KEY (KEY as in the company) visual novel called Summer Pockets, and I feel like the experience of playing the game has given me so much more that I could have ever dreamed of. I won't go into absolutely everything that I loved, but I think that there are two important things that relate to my gender. First of all, at one part in the story motherhood starts to become important and it reminded me that that is the kind of woman I want to be. Ever since I was around 9 or 10 years old, I knew I wanted to be a parent. While at the time, I had thought that I wanted to be a father because of my beliefs about the link between sex and gender, all the reasons that I wanted to become a "dad" were tied to motherhood, and specifically taking care and raising a child. The game reminded me that no matter what type of woman I end up, I want to be someone who can be a mother.

Secondly, this visual novel reminded me of the importance of emotional expression, and the reason that I fell in love with anime and anime-styled media in the first place. I've always said that Clannad was the anime that made me fall in love with anime but I don't think I quite understood why I loved it so much until now. When I first watched it, I probably would have said that I loved Clannad because it made me sad. Years later, I would probably say (and truly believe) that I loved Clannad because it reminded me that I had emotions. But this was definitely not true, because I always knew that I had strong emotions. No, the reason that I loved Clannad was because it was something I could interact with and openly express my tears. Throughout my childhood, I was a very emotional person, and I would tear up and cry very often. And usually, I was shamed for other because of it. Honestly, I had forgotten how ashamed I was for crying the first place. Because of my shame, I suppressed my sadness. If I never got sad, I would never cry. And if I never cried, I would never be made fun of, right? Playing Summer Pockets, I cried a lot. Over the 35 hours I played, I probably cried for a solid 1-2 hours of gameplay. And when I cried, do you know what I thought? I thought about how much I enjoyed being emotionally open, and how much I enjoyed letting it all out. It made me realize that I want to be someone who lets it all out, and someone who cries a lot. I think that a big reason for my desire for femininity.

Over the past few months, I've come to a couple conclusions that I want to share. First of all, a lot of my weeb friends know that I love yuri, and yuri fanart. But I've come to the conclusion that the part I like isn't the romantic component of it. My love for "yuri" stems from viewing the closeness of girls, and wanting that kind of experience for myself. I guess the reason I classified that under loving yuri/lesbian media was because it fit my masculine schema better.

Secondly, I'm gonna do some voice training in the shower/in discord calls. I've already tried to pitch my voice up slightly in some discord calls I've done recently, but I really wanna push my feminine voice more. If anyone has any advice for voice training, please let me know! <3

Thirdly, I think I might attempt to get people to use she/her pronouns with me temporarily. In the past, I thought that I didn't care about what pronouns people used with me, because I am technically AMAB and people are just used to it online. Furthermore, I also guess I thought it was "cringe" (whatever that word means) to control how other people referred to you. But I'm really starting to realize if I'm not being referred to as female, I'll never start seeing myself as such. Plus, I've heard people say to try this enough times over the past couple months, so now I'd like to try. Idk how long I'll do it for, we'll see.

Fourth and finally, I've come to a realization that might seem insignificant and small to many, but it's that I really need to start implementing in my life; it's never "cringe" to be open about how you feel. In many of the circles that I participate and have participated in, it's common place to post "stupid" shit that people have said or done basically to just make fun of them. Over past little while, I've started to realize just how toxic this is not only to other people but also to myself. A lot of the time I feel like I'm walking on eggshells, just trying to not be the next one to be made fun of. But I want to be done with that. From now onwards, I'm gonna try to use my Twitter as a place where I can be completely open about everything I feel. Even if it's spammy. Even if I'll lose friends for it. And even if it's considered "retarded". I don't want to live to try to please others to that extent anymore.