Fail

The Trump name being removed from the Kennedy center wall is a sign of the times. The wheels are coming off the bus for a regime that is trying desperately to avoid a dreaded bout of stagflation. 

Imagine an economy where people can't already afford anything and yet inflation just keeps on rising. 

This is the direct result of letting incompetent fools at the helm. 

History books will not be kind to Trumpism but then people have the memory and learning capacity of gnats. It will tried again and again in the future with the same predictable failure.

This morning

This morning I left the house early wearing a colorful 3/4 length summer skirt (whereas I'm usually in earth tones), a simple black Tee, my most comfy ballet flats, gold hoops and my trusty brown leather backpack purse. 

I added very basic minimalist makeup, a costume bracelet and pinky ring and I'm out the door in less than 20 minutes. 

It's what I call comfortable feminine. 

Here is where years of daily routine becomes your friend and it takes much less time to get this part in order than the psychology which governs it all. 

That can take longer and require much more effort; especially if, unlike trans youth of today, we get a very late start in life on full authenticity.

Population bust

 

10 years on

A friend of mine tells me he has an upcoming date with someone he connected with online. He's 65, divorced and open but not remotely desperate. We have known each other for 40 years; well before either of us had married. 

This past April marked 10 years since I've been on my own with the desire to be in a couple only waning steadily over that time. 

I know myself much more, I understand very well the complexities of relationships and technically speaking I am a transsexual which only adds complexity to an already complicated area of human affairs. 

Other people don't make you happy. Only we can do that but in the best case scenarios we can meet someone who we have a deep affinity with; someone who makes us want to be a better person for them. 

As we age we increasingly recognize the people who don't fit that criteria. It's not about finding perfection but about a connection that cannot entirely be explained which transcends the fleeting attraction I haven't felt for anyone in years. 

It's not about someone we desire but about someone we didn't know could elevate us so in a myriad of ways.

Battery limits

A video from a channel called "Soul Kink" ended up on my YouTube feed. Presumably it was because the subject matter was an interview with a gender variant person. 

The first thing I noticed is that host is a quirky free spirit with a lighting rod streak of white running through her hair. The second was that the interviewee was very relaxed in their feminine presentation and being under 40 no doubt helped his cause. 

Today's breed of gender variant person tends to be out to friends and family and in this case they were also out to an accepting partner. There was no conflict of core gender identity but instead a desire to openly expand their gender expression. 

Over the last few decades we have seen sex and gender be liberated to the point where secrecy and stigma have been largely eradicated. On the flip side, we seem to have increased confusion among some regarding what their motivations mean and what they should do about them. 

In this case the person understood their battery limit and was able to exist happily within its confines. 

What helps is to understand that its not about your label but rather about what measures need to happen to bring your psyche to where it needs to be.

In a nutshell...

 

Make it make sense

The flesh-eating screwworm is a parasitic fly, not a worm. Females lay eggs in open wounds or body openings of warm-blooded animals and the hatching maggots burrow into and feed on live tissue. This can cause severe wounds that attract more flies. 

This parasite is endemic to parts of South America, the Caribbean, and Central America. It had been eradicated from the United States however illegal cattle smuggling has driven a resurgence. 

Confirmed livestock cases have been found in Texas and New Mexico. Canada has, in response, temporarily banned cattle imports from the US to protect domestic livestock. 

In its infinite wisdom, the anti-science GOP decided that funding the departments that used to control such outbreaks, was unnecessary. Hence along with cuts to USAID, EPA, National parks service, etc. it decided that cutting taxes for the wealthy was a bigger priority. 

DOGE went after programs that cost little as a percent of GDP but delivered great returns for society. 

In this case it will be republican voting ranchers who will bear the brunt of the stupidity; their own plus the Trump regime's.

Don't ask me to make it make sense.

Don't be surprised

When we start to treat our dysphoria in earnest it will worsen for quite a while. Up until now you had developed coping mechanisms which included being busy plus your usual bag of denial tricks. 

Now you are facing it head on with no barriers and the full freight train smacks you. You hadn't predicted this but then realize that it makes perfect sense that it's happening to you. 

Here is when self-doubt can make some headway which doesn't mean you have made an error. It means that the full scope of your attention is now focused on something you had learned to ignore until it hit periods of crescendo; after which you found yet another distraction. 

If you have had this happen to you, don't worry as you are far from alone.

Chances

Growing up I learned to be extremely judgemental of people. After all, I was harsh and demanding on myself so why give someone else the courtesy of dropping the standards I held myself to. 

The problem with this approach is that we become intolerant and don't give people a chance. We determine they fall short of our measuring stick and dismiss getting to know them better. 

However with age and experience comes discernment and we learn what signs to look for. This doesn't mean everyone is best friend and confidante material, but we also don't quite so readily put people into boxes based on a rash assessment. 

As we hopefully become more forgiving and less critical of the self, we offer others the same chances.

The natural distribution

Throughout human history we have come up with diagnoses and developed categories for types of people. We have even invented diseases and conditions some of which turned out not to be real. 

Sub-categories of categories were created to explain anomalies that didn't quite fit under a model we were almost certain was correct. 

We tried to help people but then also stigmatized them by using coarse language to describe them. We called some "retarded" without much concern for how it affected them. 

At points in our history blood letting and lobotomies were considered desired treatments for some people, proving the trial and error approaches we trusted to our experts of the day were sometimes ill-advised. 

The reality is that our complexity as human beings both at the psychological and physical level has required millennia of experimentation bolstered by the development of technologies that helped us find solutions. 

People that we used to marginalize as being beyond help have been identified and treated after having found the source of their suffering. 

What remained then was cultural tolerance for people who behaviorally fell outside societal margins. They didn't suffer from any conditions but simply needed the amplitude to live as their natural inclinations demanded. 

They suffered from discrimination rather than from some pre-existing limitation. This didn't stop society from branding them with mental illness; all because they had dared to not fit within the designated margins. 

We have discovered that the natural distribution of humanity isn't governed by the cultural norms of the day but rather, to the chagrin of many, by reality.

Devil's advocate

I never tell myself what I want to hear so why would I do that to anyone who anyone else? 

Our job is to ask ourselves the tough questions so we can grow as individuals and for that we need to be blunt and honest. 

Therefore I play devil's advocate with everything until I can wrap my head around it. 

Everything we perceive goes through a personal filter. Our biases and opinions act on everything almost imperceptibly because they always run in the background. 

We must account for them when we ponder ideas about ourselves some of which may be erroneous.