At night I decided not to sleep for a while. That night, the allure of sleep was lost on me. It did not seem to be the comfort I needed. It had been a while since my mind had exited my body that way, abandoning me to wander in the wilderness. I sat at my desk, mainly. Listening to the same song on loop, I began to type, and “the future starts so slow” infiltrated my mind, echoing in the spot my soul should have rested that night. 

Uncertainty loomed over me like an authority figure. Pulling me in all sorts of directions like a ragdoll with no control over my own actions. “Get me out of here” but time had yet to respond. It would take years to respond, killing me ever so slowly along the way. I wondered what life had in store for me next. Only to find myself knocked out cold as if I were playing dead. It wasn’t exactly intentional, but my brain had decided to fall asleep after all. So several (and I really emphasize that part) hours had passed until I began to finish this pointless entry.

At the time, when I first began, I had wondered:

How long had it been since I had truly written like this? Over a year at least, I knew why. It affected me more than it would, if he had not spoken as if I was incapable of taking care of myself. Not get me wrong, my father means well, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Part of me still believes I could have helped it somehow, taken control over my psyche. I never saw it coming, but looking back on the absurd that occurred, it did not come “out of nowhere”. Perhaps the nonsensical outbursts and moods were bound to occur with how I was living for a few years during what I jokingly called my “prime youth” to friends despite not treating it that way. When I had meant it in a joking way, I believe I was referring to it as that’s how adults viewed their teenage years. Or maybe I was referring to it in terms of development? It doesn’t matter. The context was silly, I was most likely getting told I was too old for my age (nickname at the time: grandpa). Again, that has almost nothing to do with anything I’m speaking of now. Just a part of good memories I can recall. 

From when I felt pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, I still do now, the label has just had an update with the additional reasons from what happened to me. Or how I happened. And I thought I was doing so well at the time too. Just get over the embarrassment, be thankful you can’t remember the finer details or details in general. Still I wish I knew what I said, and what I could have done to prevent it or take control of myself. You don’t like to think that there’s something wrong with you, especially in the head. In my family, there has never been a history of commonly known mental illnesses, and I don’t believe that I have one. So why? 

I’ve been doing a lot of embarrassing things recently, you’d almost think I got off on it. Kidding. I can’t joke, honestly, and that isn’t even a kind I’d say aloud. Mainly due to how it does not fit my personality. But in fact, I’m not quite sure of the person I am or should be anymore. I want to change. But I don’t. Call it out of laziness, that for sure has always been there in me. I’ve started the process of drifting back into my old pseudo-poetic world of being that I lived before the previously mentioned incident. Only, I can’t seem to settle on whether that’s a good thing or not. Perhaps that “personality” had already made me prone to losing my grip on reality in the first place. It was just the physical exertion I was putting on myself and subconscious thoughts that lay buried in the back of my mind, waiting to emerge, that bit me that summer. Oh that summer heat, it did me no good. Sweating against my ribs because I insisted to myself I did not want to be seen by people “looking female”, only to ironically have to be once I was admitted to those hospitals. I must have been one of the few truly “insane” people there. Well, I do remember the second one, they had a few. The first, the one I had spent months in, I cannot. Only strange hallucinations and misgenderings haunt me now, and the thought that my mental state (or lack thereof) was not working in my favor.

I think I have tried since then to not care how people perceive me. What irks me is during the time I started gaining my consciousness again, seeing the changes that had occurred in my body (which I was certain were not there before) and wearing the clothes my mother had sent, I was reading a book my father had sent and there was a bookmark of my old picture. I already strongly dislike my own appearance, but even more so before when I could not decide how I could look. To add to my annoyance, a guy there had to see it and comment on it:

“Dang girl, you were [...]” and some sort of speech I cannot bother to remember. I do recall him being a bit large, the acne, nearly buzzed blonde hair, but that’s about it.

Probably for the best. 

Let’s just say I was never one for educating people on what it meant for me to feel the way I do early on in high school, and I certainly didn’t feel up to it in that environment. So when he asked,

“Why did you decide to become trans?” 

I didn’t particularly care at that moment to change someone’s viewpoint or understand where they were coming from. I knew how I looked, I was a fragment of what little I had before I had changed physically and mentally that summer. Ironic again, how despite feeling so unsatisfied with how I looked a few years before, now I could only wish for it again. 

Then there was one of the cooks, a young (adult) lightskin man. He seemed nice, at first, a little bit of facial hair above his lip when he smiled.

Only once he saw my name, written on my paper with what I wanted for lunch, reading: Anderson.

“Anderson. I liked [redacted] better.” He said with a smile.

Funny how there were so many of these types of interactions in a place like this compared to what I experienced in real life. In this particular moment, it was strange how someone could seem to say something the opposite of kind in a voice that was. These people’s opinions of me I never asked for, I may as well be in high school after all. Well, that was my take away from mental hospitals for children and teens. 

I gained weight when I was released. Before I had entered where I had been drugged up calling the place “Arkham Asylum”, I had been trying to go from 125 to… some healthier weight for a person my size. I understand why I had gained twenty pounds there in the span of two, going on three months, but twenty more in the months leading afterwards? That was not excusable. So now here I am, not looking forward to actually trying to lose it for the fear of becoming obsessed with it again, only to get no results. I know I can’t avoid it forever. Especially since it doesn’t help with my view of myself or what I have to hear from my mother. 

Back when I weighed a somewhat healthy weight, she wanted me to lose it. Now, she wants me to go back to how I was before, yet doesn’t seem to bother me with it as much. Maybe I’ve just misremembered, or maybe I just don’t see her as often. Maybe she’s grown tired of forcing me what to do, maybe she’s just happy that I’ve started growing my hair out (not knowing I’m planning to go on testosterone in about a month, or whenever I can pick it up). Whatever the reason is, I still want to be a better version of myself. I want to change. There it is again!

Not just in appearance, but personality (habits) and strength in skills. But I sleep on it, I sleep more than I used to. I used to stay up long nights writing, or woke up early to work on homework, or even the other way around. Besides that slight relapse at the start of this, I have not been the same. I sleep so much, yet I still feel tired, though not to the extent I did when I first left the hospitals. I think I was taking such high doses of who knows what that I was drooling and sleeping at least eleven hours a day. “Where Is My Mind?” an old one. 

I don’t have as good a vocabulary for my age as I used to. Not because I’ve forgotten so much, but I just haven’t kept up with reading as much to pick up on enough. I’m even worse when it comes to references from films and people I do not care about. However, I’ve been really into music again lately, hence the song titles referenced. I want to make music someday, though I guess you could say that I already am. I’ve written “songs” despite not knowing how to play any instruments anymore. But my voice sounds broken, it's as if it is and I could never read music notes or understand them well as a child. You would think, growing up playing violin for a bit, a lot of piano, being in a choir for a second along with clarinet, I would have taken to one of them, but I don’t think I have. Singing, maybe, but there’s a chance there’s actually something physically wrong with my vocal cords (or at least my techniques, I say shuddering). Perhaps I just like writing and continuing to compare what I write to other people. Maybe someday, I could make something of my lyrics or tweak them. 

But I’ve rambled for too long. 

See, I’ve always been a bit stuck in the past. I’m not sure why I love to torture myself that way, as if I were a masochist. Many people spend time thinking about how they could have done things in life differently, I’m sure. I know these current “problems” in my life will come to pass and be replaced with ones that may be considered worse someday. Or at least, they’ll appear that way to another version of me. This whole incident I went through in junior year and everything that followed after wasn’t really as bad as it could have been, despite hurting my ego. I’ll get over it, however long it takes, eventually. My life’s not so bad. I know that now, I always did, I was just prone to theatrics. But kids can be that way, right? They’re allowed to, up until a certain age. Maybe I have changed. 

There’s still more ways that I could, and I don’t know if I’ve changed enough, but I try. I can change.