I bought this one! This one! Mine!
Just ordered an electric bike. I’ve been talking about this for a while (over a year, in fact) but I’ve always resisted.
I have the money saved up, but I always have trouble spending money on myself. It’s so easy to justify not spending, to save for that next thing (or, say, the hospital bills I’m still getting). At the same time, this account was specifically set up to save for fun things, and this is fun!
I finally had a chance to test drive the one I ended up buying, the Currie EZip Trailz, and it was a lot of fun. It’s the low end of the Currie line (an already lower-end electric bike company) and I really seriously considered getting a more expensive model. But this version was a lot of fun to ride, even though it was a heavy (steel) beast.
And, dammit, I’m having a tough time right now. And I wanted a toy. Yay!
Obviously, it’s not a contest. But damn if it doesn’t seem that way when she’s right and I’m wrong…
So the first one is about clothing, the most mundane (and yet oh-so-important) of things. L was saying I needed to just go to Target, where no one would care what I was looking at or trying on, and get something. I was whining and backpedaling and letting fear of embarasment keep me from doing it. See, among other things, I really don’t like to feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. And buying women’s clothing? I don’t know what I’m doing.
But I finally got up my courage and went to Target. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…) After putting off the women’s clothing section by looking at all the cool Lego Star Wars toys and the GPS systems and the make-your-own-ice-cream things, I finally meandered slowly past the clothing section. I felt like a bad spy in a satire, where if no one notices the spy before they try to ‘sneak,’ everyone damn sure will after.
Then I lost my nerve and went next door to Office Max, hating myself all the way. Continue reading 'Therapist: 2 – Me: 0'»
I’ve been trying really hard to bike to work when I’m able to. I biked today, but didn’t head home until after the show was done, at about 9:30PM. I have a route that I take to work and another one I take home if it’s late (different streets that are slightly less direct but I feel safer on). I was in a less-nice neighborhood (in this case, that’s code for ‘poor’ or ‘black,’ depending on your perspective) and a group of black kids was walking on the other side of the street from me. I had a moment of nervousness, then got mad at myself for having an initially racist reaction, then tried to tell myself it was a class issue and that I would have had the same worry reaction to a group of white kids who were similarly dressed. Then one of them jumped out at me, saying “Gimme that!”Don’t worry – I’m fine. He went back to the group and they all laughed and laughed at the way I swerved and sped up in my panic. So I (apparently) was never in ‘real’ danger. But, while I’m obviously upset that it happened at all, I’m also A) pissed at myself for having that initially somewhat racist (or even ‘just’ classist reaction), and B) pissed at them for somewhat living up to my poor expectations.
But now I’m all upset and trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I like knowing where my emotions come from, and estrogen isn’t horribly helpful for that… I’m also trying to figure out how or if what happened tonight is linked transitioning issues. I’m watching Six Feet Under (which is a really good show) and an episode where one fo the characters gets carjacked and then taken forced at gunpoint to take the carjacker around town, and feel like it wasn’t horribly helpful to my emotional stability, particularly because the character who was carjacked was gay and there were lots of calls of ‘faggot’ being tossed around by the carjacker. Likewise, at Julia Serano’s talk, she mentioned the potential dangers of having gender expression not matching legal papers, with asshole cops and the like.
I was just talking with SS, and used the word ‘vulnerable’ about the situation. It really sort of threw me – I wouldn’t in a million years have used it to describe how I felt or am feeling. I’ve admitted to feeling emotionally vulnerable before, but don’t know that I’ve ever said “I felt vulnerable” about a physical fear. I don’t like that that’s potentially a part of transitioning, or of living in the world as a woman (hell, it’s not potentially a part, it’s definitely a part). Again from Serano’s talk, she said some cissexual women (see this post) will brush off transsexual women’s complaints of feeling objectified or fearful of interactions, as it’s ‘just’ part of ‘shedding male privilege.’ (These are not Serano’s words, and not even her words of other people’s words, just my impression of how some cissexual women see the situation.)
I don’t know. I’m kind of rambling. I’m just unhappy to find an intersection of two of my least favorite things: feeling vulnerable and feeling unsure of where emotions are coming from…
-R
PS – Gods, I like asking questions as the title of posts.
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