No cake

No scripted cake art this year. You can have that and more when you get back. Instead, please give a little gift to me: just smile. Thanks.

I hope that you enjoyed your birthday. Take care of yourself.

Papita passed on

My great-grandpa passed away this morning.

This is the first time I've experienced the death of someone blood-related to me. I don't exactly understanding how I'm reacting. I'm crying when I explain or when I'm singing to songs that don't even relate to what's going on. But not each time someone reminds me that he's gone, not when I see my mom or grandma teary-eyed because he's no longer here, not when I'd have thought I'd be set off.

Then again, maybe I don't need to understand. I'm just letting my emotions do whatever they want. I'm not trying to be strong or weak or anything. It's like my emotions are manifesting just as they need to, on their own, regardless of whether it makes sense to me.

What I do understand is that my great-grandfather is at peace now. I'm grateful for that. I'm also thankful that I was able to leave him last with a kiss on his forehead. I don't have anything to regret with him.

You didn't talk to him much because you were never so confident in your Spanish fluency. He was always happy to hear you greet him, anyway. For as little as you spoke to him, he liked you. I'm glad that you can remember him just like that. That's one of the points in his life that I like to think about. Thank you for helping to give that to him.

Playlist update

I still occasionally add to They Sing the Words I Couldn't Find. Tonight I made a bit of a different change.

Since the launch of the YouTube Music app, there have been new entries to the YouTube system. These entries aren't exactly videos, but music audio each with an automatically-generated descriptive visual with a square of art and the song details. Many popular songs have music audio entries, and since they're generated by YouTube itself I figure they're more likely to stay up. Another upside is that they use less data since they're just audio and a picture.

So the change that I did was replacing most of the videos in that playlist with audio. I let be the ones I couldn't find audio versions for, plus Rather Be and I Miss You because I relate to the music videos as well as the songs. Adding Who Knew happened last week... and I don't know how to describe the feeling I have about its accuracy to our situation. Agh. P!nk. I underappreciated her.

I'm up to a lot more than this, but I'm really too discouraged to talk about it here. Maybe another day. Feel free to ask me yourself.

Break the silence

Tell Her Before I Die officially supports the Suffering in Silence campaign for awareness of mental health and of suicide prevention.

After women's day

Last year, International Women's Day caused quite an upset in me. It didn't come out so much in my message about that observance as it did in the other message from that day. Even then, I failed to express my inner struggle regarding my identity. I remember how I felt then, and it was much different from how I feel now.

At the time, I chose to identify as nongender. I choose nowadays to identify as agender, simply because it's a more popular term that means just the same thing. I prefer to be called by either set of binary pronouns, and usually people choose "he" since I present as male. I have to admit, though, that I feel uncomfortable when people add maleness to me outside of pronouns. When they refer to me as a man instead of a person, for example, it bothers me. Even when the maleness is attached to a compliment, it pushes me off. I don't get angry. I just feel distanced. It's strange. I don't think I understand enough about this.

I felt alienated on International Women's Day last year. But then I'd been feeling alienated in general, because I was indeed alienated by you and others I cared for. No, it was more than alienation; it was rejection. I felt like a reject because I wasn't good enough to be celebrated that day. This year, though, I had a different perspective of International Women's Day. It isn't a day to celebrate femininity. I tweeted out who I myself dedicate Women's Day to: All the women who will not give in to sexism /from/ & \toward\ men, other women, & other genders. Yes, Women's Day should celebrate the victories of the female gender over sexism, even the everyday victories. From this view, I don't feel isolated. I feel proud. I am so proud of the women who achieve this.

And, as I mentioned last month, I found out that she isn't actually a lesbian. A year ago, that had been one of the things that had me loathing my own body. Now that I know the truth, my sex is a non-factor when remembering that incident. I have been able to instead reflect on my attitude and actions. I've realized that, somewhere along the line, I began to treat her only as if she owed me something, not as the dear friend I felt she was to me. After you and I are close again, if she wants to allow me to treat her differently then I will. Well, after all, it wouldn't do if I went through all this and didn't learn how I should change.

An online acquaintance of mine was very bitter on Women's Day. He was raped by a women, you see, and has not dealt well with his trauma; he doesn't act misogynistically, but he talks ferociously and angrily about women's movements as if they are inherently trying to oppress and reject men. I am glad that nothing so horrible happened to me, and that I am not so badly traumatized. However, it can be said that I shared the same view a year ago. Instead of lashing out, though, I turned on myself and reinforced those ideas of lowliness and worthlessness. I'm glad that those times are behind me. I wish they could be put behind for my acquaintance, too. I'm glad nothing as horrible as what happened to him has happened to me, and I'm glad that my trauma is not so terrible.

I am happy that I have been occasionally presenting femininely. For last Halloween, I crossdressed as my costume. (I walk well in heels!) At an event in January, I wore a dress for an evening, night, and morning. I felt very good expressing that part of myself. I look forward to doing more in the future. Thanks to the encouragement of others, I do not feel guilty about presenting femininely. I feel fantastic! I hope I can express this part of me around you, too.

In summary, my gender-related issues have been, to a large extent, resolved. Yes, I do still think my trauma has caused my change in sexuality, but I don't know where I'd start to reverse that and, really, it isn't bad in itself. I will try to understand my issues with being addressed as male, though. Writing here helped me to figure my depression out, so I think I should start writing frequently again to figure out that issue. Not daily, but whenever the issue appears in my life.

When you read this, I hope that you're at least happy that I'm trying to understand myself. And, like I said last year, the person you called your baby girl is still waiting here.

Hanging out in my head

Honestly, I dream about you much less lately. Or maybe I forget the dreams that you're in more easily. I guess I don't need them as much to keep me happy; I'm pretty proud of my recovery. I did have a dream about you last night, though.

We were just hanging out, you and I. We were sat at a wooden table at some well-lit restaurant or something. We sat across from each other, each a glass of alcoholic drink in hand. Yours was a crisp golden color. Mine was a bubbly and clear liquid. You went on ahead drinking and smiling, while I just admired you; it was the first time we'd seen each other since 2015. This wasn't your first swig of alcohol, clearly shown by the way you took it. You had been living on, like I am living on, and having your own experiences as I've been having my own.

I hadn't taken so much of a sip of alcohol yet. I've been waiting to have my first drink with you. I have faith in your ability to handle me being under that sort of influence. I hear alcohol removes inhibitions, and unearths how one actually feels. I don't want to show that to anyone but you. So, after remarking that this would be my first drink, I went ahead and put my glass to my lips. I drank a bit. I guess it was a show of my faith in you, but you wouldn't know it because I wouldn't mention. I was just so happy to be talking with you, drinks or not.

I had a dream the night before that, too, with you in it. I rode a brown horse with you, and you were holding me from behind so you wouldn't fall off. We galloped and trotted around some seaside area of town. That one seemed less realistic, really. But I guess I'm living on fantasies at this point, anyway. Little wishes to just spend precious time with my dearest friend.

Change

Hey. It's me again. I haven't posted since last year. At this time last year, I was hopeless. Now the very opposite is true, and this isn't the only thing that has changed. I would like to tell you about absolutely everything, but you don't read this anymore, do you? Since you expected me to hardly write, and I have fulfilled those expectations, you've put this place out of your mind haven't you? So I'll save the majority for when you talk to me again.

Last year, I finally decided to join tumblr. I created the blog #Keep Going for Love. It's a faceless tumblr that I hope provides a safe space for anyone, with posts that are funny, beautiful, understanding, inspiring, or caring. Sometimes political, which I consider "caring". What I mean by faceless is that I don't emphasize my identity, though I do link back here as well as to several of my social network profiles outside of my posts. So it's basically anonymous unless you actually care to look into who's behind it. I've had a lot of fun there. It's quite a different environment, and I've learned a bit and met very different people.

I follow just a few tumblrs, including a fair share of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy ones. I got surprisingly close with the person behind one of those KH/FF tumblrs, sharing interests, passions, and kind words for weeks without either of us even knowing the other's name. We even discovered that we both live in the same place, and we considered having a coffee date. Fate is pretty cruel though. This person turned out, of all possibilities, to be her, your best friend. When she revealed her name to me, I chose to reciprocate, despite knowing that she would probably stop talking to me. She didn't stop talking to me, to my surprise. She did talk to me long enough to help me sort out my thoughts, even though she slowly grew colder and colder until she began to ignore me completely. I'm very glad that she didn't instantly abandon me. I'm so grateful.

One thing I learned from her was that she is pansexual, not lesbian. I'm suspicious then that, when you told me she was lesbian in November 2014, it was your lie. I forgive you, if this is the case. And if it was her lie, or even just her confusion, then I forgive her. This chance meeting she and I had sparked a realization in me though. I myself am no longer interested in being intimate with a female. Looking back at the women I've dated since you and I broke up, I haven't truly felt so much desire for any of them. On the other hand, I've felt more intimate in the relationships I've had with men that certainly didn't have as much objective appeal as those women. If they had so much less to offer, then why did I find myself more interested? As much as I hate considering this an answer, maybe I've become too traumatized by the way I've been treated by certain females. I don't like the idea that I've been turned gay by something so negative, but I must be honest with myself for the good of my mental health. This at least requires more exploration. I'm looking for a local boyfriend right now.

I went to her last dance recital. It was dubbed Change. When I arrived before the show, I began to recognize this as a good time for closure. So I wrote a message, attached to a little plush cat, to her. I told her, as I recall, "Thank you for everything. You reinvigorate my will to keep going. I hope that same energy carries you through all your successes and trials." I wish that she's happy to have brought to and received from me these positive thoughts, and I'll leave her there. I don't need to talk to her anymore.

I'm still waiting on your conversation, though. I hope you've come to understand that "keep going for love" means more than to strive in the name of romance. There are many different kinds of love; even if my orientation has changed, I am still going for the other ways that I love you. Not everything changes, after all?