so i just finished watching the first episode of the wandering son. i”m not sure if i”ll blog about every episode or not. maybe. we”ll see.

this was like, a punch right in the feels

(gif warning under the cut and tw for dysphoria talk)

anyway.

the part that got me was near the beginning, where Nitori is talking about the collar of her boy uniform.

she talks about how, despite asking for a loose uniform, it still feels tight and like it is suffocating her.

it is funny. because while i do say that i don”t have much in the way of physical dysphoria…

now i do wonder, about the subtle things like this.

because this is how i felt whenever i had to wear super masculine coding clothes, especially formal type wear. it was always uncomfortable. it also felt confining and binding and like it was fucking choking me.

i wonder about the other types of discomfort and shit that i”ve learned to ignore from years of practise. of just pushing the thoughts out of my mind because there wasn”t anything else to do about it.

it is one of the reasons why the usual white trans narrative of dysphoria having to be agonizing for it to matter irritates me.¹

because there ought to be space for discussing the small, subtle ways that dysphoria is instantiated. the way that it is rarely ever just one small thing… but how sometimes it is a bunch of small things that are hard to identify and hard to see

but the net effect is that your body doesn”t seem real. that you don”t seem real.

or that you just feel off all the time. always uncomfortable. unable to settle down and just exist.

it isn”t… pain, exactly, but more like this inability to find peace. a pervasive feeling of wrongness that nothing you do alleviates.

and so you disassociate with your feelings. you do your best to numb/ignore/eradicate the feeling.

you wake up everyday putting on clothes that feel like they are suffocating you.

you wake up everyday pretending to be an imaginary person.

you wake up everyday resonding to a name that isn”t yours.

you wake up everyday with another piece of yourself having been lost.

you wake up everyday wishing you were anywhere but here.

you wake up everyday disappointed.