Trifles, Light As Air

Part Five of an ongoing series. Catch up with part One here. 

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It is necessary to fail gracefully. We fail more often than we succeed. Despite ample opportunities for practice, it never gets easier.

Donald Duck is his own worst enemy. He rarely wins, and when he does it’s usually accompanied by a poison pill, a humiliation or setback. He fails not because he’s incapable but because he can’t overcome his worst impulses: wrath, envy, pride, greed, sloth. He looks for shortcuts and hamstrings himself out of spite.

Someday We Will All Be Free

Part Four of an ongoing series. Catch up with parts One,  Two, and Three. 

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When you are transgender, you carry the knowledge that many people believe you should not exist. That you do not exist. That you are sick. That you need help. That you need to die.

We have no homeland. We have no Mecca. We fit in on the edges of a broader LGBT culture but are sometimes barely tolerated even by many who purport to represent us. (This is not a blanket statement, but the antipathy between the transgender community and parts of the larger LGB coalition is well documented.) The parameters of our own tiny culture are defined by external hostility.

I Am Not A Good Person

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Part Three of an ongoing series. Catch up with parts One and Two.

If you like my writing, please consider a donation to my Patreon.

 

I’m mean. I’m petty. I fly off the handle at the smallest provocation. I antagonize people who have done nothing to earn my antagonism. I nurse grudges and remember every specious imagined slight. I am passive-aggressive and casually cruel to the people around me. I try my best to not do these things but I feel that I am never in control of my emotions.

That’s what I used to believe about myself. This was the person I thought I was and the face I presented to the rest of the world. I believed with all my heart that I was a terrible person. I didn’t want to be but I felt helpless to change. I accepted it as a given that there was something wrong with me.