Hello, blog, it's been a while.

I've been busy doing Tumblr things and forum things and kinda forgot this was here. Huh.

So first of all, let's talk names. I am no longer an Anthony or a Connor. Hell, after spending a semester getting bitched at by the name Connor, I kinda don't wanna hear that name ever again. The name I've picked out now is Sawyer. It's sticking. I've decided that I want to keep my initials, because they've always been initials I am fond of (SEC, and I'm a Hogs football fan, you do the math), so now all I have to do is come up with a middle name. That's...harder than it sounds.

I asked my mom tonight whether she knew if I was going to be a boy or a girl when I was born. She said no, that she didn't wanna know for me or my brother. I then asked her if I would have had my brother's name had I been a boy; he's named after our grandfathers. She said no, that if I'd been a boy, she would have named me David Michael. I always did like the name David. I considered both of these names, actually. I don't think I'm going to use either of them, but...it's something I've always wondered, and the subject came up tonight.

My gender is getting weird. I've joined Bigender.net finally, after months and months of debating. I'm getting to the point where my gender isn't something I flip out about. It's just...there. I think about it a lot more than any cisgender person would, but at this point, it's not all-consuming for me. I know I want a more boyish body. I'm rethinking whether I wanna try and get on T, because the things I don't want are pretty fairly balanced with the things I do, so that makes the decision tough. I know I eventually do want top surgery still, though. That's a for-sure; I want a flat chest. I know my sex is more masculine-androgynous than feminine-androgynous. My gender...it's all over the place. And I'm okay with that.

I've told at least a couple of my friends that I'm okay with them using whichever names and pronouns they want to with me. I go by so many names, it doesn't much matter. It's kind of a selective list, though--the ones who have tried the hardest to keep up with my name and gender and pronouns, the ones who have been there and who have supported me, they're the ones who I don't care what they call me. Those who have never tried, who still call me by my female name and by female pronouns, well. They can learn to call me what I've ASKED they call me, or they can GTFO. (My friends call me male pronouns around these people just to keep the confusion to a minimum, in case you were wondering.) I know it's a complicated situation, but I don't feel my gender is exactly male or female or androgyne or neutral or anything else, and I'm still learning, so it's more comfortable to me for people to call me what they want instead of worrying, but only those who understand all I've tried to explain and learn about my own gender.

Maybe I'm being picky or bitchy. That's okay.

In unrelated news, I finished my damn thesis and presented it on Friday. I hope it went well. I really honestly have no idea. I'm just glad I can stop stressing and go back to writing whatever I want instead of worrying about having to write this ONE THING every moment of my life.

Forums are taking over my life (er, again?) and Tumblr is keeping me busy. I'm even getting bad at updating Twitter, so no promises on when the next post here at my 'real' blog will be.

This doesn't have a title.

The girl and I had a fight last night.

Now, I don't know what you consider a fight, but what I consider a fight is any discussion in which two people disagree to the point that voices are raised or tones become cold or one or both parties end up crying. This was all three, so I consider it a pretty significant fight, even if it wasn't over anything significant at all, or even over anything either of us wanted to happen. Which I realise is all very vague, but then you have to understand that what I mean is that we were fighting because she needed to leave and go stay someplace that wasn't at my house and she didn't want to leave and I didn't really want her to leave and my being torn about this ended in me yelling at her and her getting upset with me.

You'll be happy to know that things are okay now, because we have this funny way of crying all over each other (on my end, it apparently usually only happens when she's wearing my shirts) and then we cuddle and we're fine. Last night was made all the better by watching videos of adorable puppies and kittens and Green Brothers (we are Nerdfighters, for the curious) on YouTube. And then cuddling. And kissing. And doing all that sort of sickly 'relationship' stuff.

In bigger news, I've been talking with the girl and with Pookie and with Pookie's boy, and we're planning--cross our fingers, knock on wood--on moving into a place of our own by mid-summer. It looks entirely possible. Which is insanely exciting and terrifying.

I've come to learn that you only have to see a therapist for three months according to current standards of healthcare for them to be able to recommend you to start HRT. Now I'm at the dilemma of how to time it out. Which isn't even a very big concern right now because I can't see a therapist until I have my own insurance or the money for regular visits. All in good time.

The name issue and the plural/median issue and the gender-fluid issue and all this other stuff keeps cropping up, but in general, I'm trying to learn to not think about it too much.

Now if you'll excuse me, this is all the update you get since--what, September?--because it's officially Christmas Day, even if it's nearly 3 AM, and I have writing to do before I can even think about sleeping. Reading so late at night (and finishing a book, especially) will tend to do that to my brain.

On semi-fresh starts.

Not quite a clean slate, but I'll take what I can get.

I've emailed all of my professors officially coming out as trans so that they'll get my name and pronouns right. Of the five I've emailed, I've heard back from three, and they are all totally cool with this and seem nothing but helpful.  Problems may arise if I find I'm in class with lots of people I know, which given I'm a senior and am pretty much locked into my major/minor field classes, I probably will be.

My Bunnie was here for two weeks and headed back to N.C. about a week ago; she was supposed to only stay ten days, but ended up having to reschedule her flight because of a snafu with her boarding pass.  I wasn't complaining.  Neither was she.  We spent our surprise time after the airport trip fell through sharing lunch at Red Lobster and going to Barnes and Noble.  It was excellent.  As much as I love the idea of her being my girlfriend, I like her being my girlfriend in real life even more--I love the fact that we can hold hands, that we can kiss, that I can have her in my arms and everything feels so right with the world.  I've wanted this for way too long.  Of course I'm taking advantage of it.  I miss her, but I'm okay with her being gone this time, because she has her cell phone, which means I can call her without it being long-distance, we can text each other, and she has internet access, so it's like she's not really that far away.  Besides.  I'll see her again in a month when the Vampire group goes to New Orleans.

Speaking of vampires, I'm getting my fangs.  The binder is working out excellently, and now another piece of my identity should be falling into place soon.  I love the fact that my mom understands roleplay and what it means to me; she actually told me tonight that she doesn't get moms who don't get roleplay and that it's harmless and fun and we're just enjoying ourselves.  I love my mother.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm all kinds of nervous about it.  This is the first time I'll have gone out in public actually presenting male with people knowing I'm presenting and people who know to call me Connor, and who know that I'm a guy, more or less.  I'm terrified.  It's kind of been triggering my dysphoria tonight, because I'm in a panic about looking perfect tomorrow, even though looking the part is only half the battle.  I did cut my hair again, though.  Hopefully it'll dry straight and fall right tomorrow and I'll just get lucky.  I've been PMSing for nearly a week now, so you just watch me hit my Lunar Cycle tomorrow and fuck everything up.  It'll be great.  And typical.

And on the subject of people calling me Connor.  I love my friends.  The girl's learning to call me Connor, my best friend Pookie was the first to make the switch and has been doing so consistently. (She also, after a fact, came up with the term 'chickadude'.  This is the same person who says that since I'm still fairly genderqueer, I'm a Transformer, as in the robots, and that if I'm dressed like a girl, I'm a drag racer instead of a queen.  She is the best at ridiculous gender-neutral terms.)  And my Foxy Lady has also been pretty consistent and awesome.  My Lil Sis has started calling me her Big Bro.  And I'll get my Badger to play along eventually.  No worries.  All in all?  Pretty damn good bunch of people, these guys are.

It's two in the morning and I am really damn sleep deprived.  I think I'm going to attempt to write for a bit and probably end up crashing the hell out.  Here's to tomorrow morning.

You Are Here

1. I started a Facebook page under a new name.  A male name.  One that I think I might want to start going by. This lead to a Talk from a friend that kind of left me a little shaky.  She means well.  She always does.  But my experiences are my own, the rest be damned; I hate to be so black and white about it, but if people have a problem with me creating a damn Facebook page under a male name, I really don't need to be friends with them in the first place.  Advice seconded by another friend of mine.  Perhaps these aren't things I should talk about openly, but I'm tired of being afraid and unsure, and all I want is some fucking support, and it hurts when all I get in return is people doing what feels like trying to talk me out of doing all this exploring.

2. Really missing the girl right now.  She's sick in another state and homesick on top of that, and that's making me miss her all the more, because I'm tired of sleeping alone and I want to make her better.  I always want to make her better, though, so that's nothing new.  I just really want someone to cuddle and watch movies or Iron Chef America with right now.  Stupid things like that.

3. Ordered my first binder today.  We'll see how that goes when it comes in.  In addition, I bought a pair of swim trunks today (with Captain America on them, tyvm) and some shirts at Goodwill.  The boy-wardrobe is growing.

4. Had a, ah, lovely class this morning.  I'm taking health right now so I don't have to do it this fall on top of everything else, and it's just...it's one of those classes.  This morning's assignment was a worksheet on gender roles where we had to list ten male traits and ten female traits, and whether we have any of the traits we listed for the opposite sex.  I word it this way because the damn sheet was worded this way.  Sex does not equal gender, stereotypes are fucking stupid, and there's a lot of middle ground we're ignoring completely in regards to both sex and gender.  I know, like I should be pitching a fit over a stupid worksheet in a stupid gen ed, but it just triggered my dysphoria and made me all shaky and a little freaked out and I really fucking hate this class.  Even the textbook, in the tiny paragraph on transgenderism in the chapter on sexual orientation, uses the example of a transgirl while referring to said fictional transgirl with male pronouns.  This makes me angry.

5. Writing is just not happening lately.  Shittons of RP, but I'm not just...writing.  And that sucks.

6. Hopefully, barring any more postponing, there will be a shopping trip with my buddy very soon, and I'm planning on going boy for that trip.  We'll see how that goes too.

I think that's all the updates we need.  I feel like I should have something more substantial to talk about, but I really don't.

Things Are Getting Better

Things have happened in the last few months.

One: I've started to be really comfortable with calling myself 'trans' more than 'queer', which I think is a real step forward, because it's more...me.  I'm still queer.  And I'll still be genderqueer even if I do transition--it's possible, I've decided (discovered?) to be FtM and still be genderqueer.  So I'm thinking of myself now as transmasculine, if not quite a transman.  It fits.  And I'm okay with this.

Two: Because of this, I've started going out in public in boy-mode lately.  Not all the time, because it's Arkansas, and it's summer, and it's damn hot to bind all the time, but enough.  I'm okay with it.  I'm not freaked about binding and even packing in public.  I'm starting to buy more boy clothes for occasions like this.  I bought a nice short-sleeve plaid button down the other day that'll be much more comfortable in the summer than a long-sleeve with the sleeves rolled up.  I think I'm gonna go get a pair of khaki cargo shorts soon, too, to go with it.  Which is kind of a big deal for me; I haven't worn shorts in years.  Mostly because I don't shave my legs, and I'm self-conscious about it because I'm still publicly female and therefore still expected to shave.  That said...I think it'll help me pass if I do decide to wear shorts.  I'm getting some swim trunks, too.  And, obviously, a women's swim tank, but that's mostly because it's necessary.  The swim shorts have me stupidly excited, though.  The clothing and the binding and the presenting as a boy has been really freeing.

Three: My Bunnie, my bestest bestie, is now officially my girlfriend.  This happened a couple of weeks ago, but hell.  I've been busy.  Anyway.  She told me on the phone one night--and yes, she's still away, still not home, but it's okay--that she's figured out in all this time away from me that she really is in love with me.  And we're already planning our wedding, which really, we might as well have been doing all along.

So that's my update on life right now.  I'm settling into my identity and excited about being officially in a relationship.  Next step is probably realising that this apparently makes me a straight man, which I find hilarious in so many ways.  Of all the things I never thought I would grow up to be.

Life is good.

Short post, probably, but an important one.

I came out as genderqueer on Facebook a couple of days ago to a select group of people.  I was in a bad mood when I did it, feeling the overwhelming effects of gender dysphoria, and thought for sure I was going to regret it.  I've had nothing but support from my friends since.  It makes me want to cry, I'm so happy that my friends are such a fantastically accepting group of people.

I've had two different people who called me by my given name, then quickly corrected to my chosen name--Taylor's name--and asked which I preferred.  I've had several people asking in advance which name I wanted to go by and what pronouns they should use with me.  My Sis asked me tonight if I wanted her to start having her nearly-three-year-old daughter call me Taylor instead of my given name.  It feels kind of weird, but so good.  For the most part, I tell them that I don't care which name they call me and which pronouns they use,not day-to-day.  At least, for the time being.  For now, the fact that they're checking with me and that they're rolling with this and accepting me for who I am is enough to make me indescribably happy.

Better yet?  Since coming out, the dysphoria's been easier to deal with, and I'm feeling less of a psychological divide between myself and who I want to be inside.  It's like just saying the words to everyone--saying out loud that I'm genderqueer--gave my own identity permission to integrate.

I really do have the best friends in the world.

Time to introduce my friends.

I have, over the past week or two, had a couple of different things I wanted to write about--the counter to my last entry, for instance, on why writing workshops are not entertaining, on gender issues and why it's hard to come out when you don't know what you are, and on writing in general--but I don't think any of those are quite as important as this one.  I think that five entries is far too many to go by without properly introducing my friends and why I love them.  I'm going to stick to the ones that are really, deeply important to me; understand, if you get left out, it's not because I love you less.  It's because I don't have space or time to write a novel about why I have the most amazing friends in the world.

My friends, I'm afraid, will be going by nicknames, because I feel I need to protect the not-so-innocent.  They are probably the only ones who will understand these nicknames.

The first person I have to talk about is my Bunnie.  (I am her Doggie.  This is all you need to know.)  She's been my best friend since 8th grade, though one might argue that we didn't hit best-friend-status until at least 9th grade.  Truth is, this is one of those friendships that I feel like was fated to happen, because she and I fit like puzzle pieces.  We're different, but we work.  And I love her dearly.  I would not be a writer if it weren't for my Bunnie.  She's the one who got me started writing original stuff--I'd been writing fanfic before, and I'd been writing all my life (well, 'writing', I use the term loosely), but if it hadn't been for her and the fantasy novel she's been working on since 6th grade (she'll correct me if I'm wrong), I never would have found my calling.  And I wouldn't be where I am now.  Bunnie is responsible for a lot of things I am now.  And I love her for that.  She's not in Arkansas right now, and that makes me kind of sad, because I haven't seen her in since October, but we've talked on the phone, and that's okay.  No amount of space can really separate us.  We manage to be joined at the hip even when we're in different time zones.  I actually foresee myself growing old with Bunnie, just because I really doubt any significant others will ever come between us.  (We've discussed it.  Even if either of us get married, we're going to live together anyway.)  Bunnie is the reason I believe in soul mates, and also why I believe that 'soul mate' doesn't have to mean 'lover' or anything of the sort.  She's just my Bunnie.  And I'm happy with that.  This is the Trapper to my Hawkeye, the Aziraphale to my Crowley, and, more importantly, the Dylan to my Taylor, the Cedric to my Dameon, but those last two don't make sense unless you know us.

Next is my Pookie.  Pookie and I met in a high school math class when I was in the 11th grade.  We bonded over anime, she got me into Quiz Bowl, and she probably turned me into a furry.  She has been the one who was there for me when Bunnie was driving me crazy, when I was down and really needed someone to lean on, and when I needed a break from reality for most of the Spring '09 semester.  She has been the Dollar Bill to my Mothman, which no matter how many fandoms I go through, she always will be.  She is my Radar.  She is my favourite penguin, and the Wilson to my House that I need when I'm busy being everyone else's Wilson.  Most importantly, she's my taco buddy, and I probably never would have discovered Taco John's without her.  Nor would I have discovered what it means to be a Nerdfighter.  Pookie and I have had a rather strange friendship, in that I kind of realise that I should have considered her one of my best friends all along, but it took Watchmen to really hit me over the head with that, and that's why Watchmen will always have a special place in my heart.

The next one, if she'll forgive me, I had a really hard time coming up with a nickname for, but I think I'm going to call her my Foxy Lady.  She'll know why.  I met her around the same time I met Pookie, and if I recall--though she's had to remind me--it was in an 11th grade French class.  I spent a lot of time not really getting to know her, because to be frank, her girlfriend at the time terrified me.  Foxy and I really became better friends somewhere during 12th grade or after I graduated, though I can't for the life of me tell you how or why.  I think what really did it was the fact that we started RPing together back when we were playing that epically insane VtM game.  She's the Adele to my Gabe, which in more generic terms means the Toreador to my Gangrel, which you'll have to forgive if it makes no sense.  She's the Hot Lips to my Hawkeye.  She's Sally to a lot of people, the feminine allure to my masculine tendencies.  She's been my go-to when I start having crazy gender issues lately, and I think it's a lot because she was in the right place at the right time and she was exactly the right person to talk to.  I owe her a lot right now.

I have to give a token mention to my Little Sis, who is not actually blood related to me, but who is probably at fault for half the people I was friends with in high school.  I've known her since...sometime in middle school.  She gave my story the push it needed to go in the right direction, and Dr. Adon would literally not exist without her.  She's kind of the Goten to my Gohan, if you'll pardon my using a ridiculously old reference.  She and I kind of drift in and out of being really tight, but I can't ever abandon her, because I love her too much for that, even during the times she was driving me batty.  She's also the entire reason I became friends with Bunnie, so I have to thank her for that, and she's the reason I got into roleplaying, which changed my life considerably.

Lastly, I have my Badger, who if Bunnie is the Trapper to my Hawkeye, Badger is my BJ.  I've only known her for a couple of years, and this is another one of those friendships that I kind of feel like was fated, because it spiralled into something incredibly close incredibly fast.  What you have to understand about me is that I do not make friends easily.  All of the people above I only began to really consider myself close friends with after I'd known them for two years or so, which is mostly because I have problems trusting people and truly committing to people.  Badger is special.  Badger and I met through writing classes and realised that we were quite a lot alike and somehow ended up being really good friends, and over the past couple of semesters, she has become one of my sisters.  She's someone I feel I can really talk to, and someone I really enjoy talking crazy character things with until all hours.  She introduced me to the awesome that is the Magical Doughnut Adventure.  More importantly, she introduced me to Pickman Studios, which has more or less been a weekly salvation for me since Bunnie left back in October.  She's been my inspiration to be more outgoing and to take more risks with getting close to people, because if I'd gone with my usual instinct--which is to shut people out until I know they're safe--I wouldn't be where I am now, and I'd probably be in pretty sorry shape.  But because of Badger, I have someone I can go to when I just need someone to have lunch with at random, or when I need to write, or when I just need a hug, especially with all of my other friends far away.  If I were the type to believe in miracles, I'd be convinced Badger was mine, because she showed up in my life just when I needed her and welcomed me into her fold of friends.

These people are all my sisters, and I love them all more than I can put into words.  I'm going to sign out before I start waxing too incredibly sappy here, but I'm afraid I already have.