I'm A, a 32 year old living in LOS ANGELES who's starting a BRAND NEW CHAPTER in life. The PROBLEM is that I'M REALLY A GUY... and SOME GIRLS AND GUYS have a PROBLEM with my MASCULINITY. Oh, and I'm STRAIGHT (i.e. I LOVE WOMEN).
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
100 Things I Need To Work On #7: Loneliness
(Pictured: Loneliness always makes us feel naked)
I have to admit that this is something that I’ve been avoiding for a long time. But where to begin?
In order to “combat” my loneliness, I constantly surround myself with friends who love me and cherish me for who I am, or even not. The attention I get is like a drug that intoxicates me… so does that mean I have an addiction to attention?
Perhaps this is why my girl side existed… she was very addicted to the attention and yearned for it.
But this is also why I feel lonely. My girl side isn’t me. It is a manifestation of a side of me that people don’t seem to get.
I’m lonely because no one takes the time to know who I am deep inside and love me for who I am and what I should be. I’m lonely because I have friends, but I always feel alone even when I’m surrounded by people who revel and enjoy my company. I’m lonely because I am not content with who I am as a person and I could be so much more than what I show people, but I feel trapped and confined by money, my work, my surrounds, and my narrow understanding of life.
I blame the latter on my grand aunt and my family who told me that I was doing everything in my entire life wrong and that somehow they know how to deal with it. Their snarky comments and how they tell me that I’m going to regret it become a self-proclaimed prophecy and set me up for failure for years on end.
I need to not feel alone when I am alone, but I don’t know how to do it.
Remember That Girl?
A few days ago I wrote about this girl who I liked, who I told not to count me out. Well, I apparently misunderstood one important thing about her relationship with her ex. Her ex, as it turns out, is the only ex she’s ever had her entire life… and that she’s going to be trying to get back into a relationship with him again. Mind you that they’ve been divorced, been on and off the past five years, and he totally screwed her over last year when he had her newly and fully paid car, which she paid with her money, impounded, leaving her to worry about how she’d get all her child’s insurance paperwork and life from her car.
I’m not really sure what leads people to act in this manner. I feel that I’m fully capable of picking up the slack that she’s in, but I suppose if he’s the only love she’s ever known it’s inevitable that he knows how to pull her strings to make her feel for him again.
I’ll try to be as supportive as I can while she’s going through this process, but I’m afraid that I won’t be spending too much time with her after all. Like I’ve been saying time and time again, you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.
There’s This Girl…
When I became single again, I tried to find people I could meet to widen my social circle. I looked for people on different social networks, went to dance clubs, bars, and even participated in some private parties. I’m not going to talk about whether I was successful in any of them though. Instead, I want to talk about this one girl I met on Myspace.
She was this beautiful girl with straight, jet black hair, tattoos around her shoulder and chest, and a smile that can make men fall under her spell. I decided to message this girl repeatedly back and forth last year and ultimately we hung out a couple or so times and then fell off.
Since then we’ve been trying to hang out more consistently, contacting each other once every couple of months or so, until I finally got in touch with her again this year, plan something to do, then have it falter. Because of this, my bestie thinks that she’s rotten because of that flakiness, and thinks that I’m crazy for giving her so many chances.
Last Saturday, I took her out and showed her an incredible time. During the drive home, I confessed that I harbored feelings towards her since we met last year and that I’ve had it since. She told me she liked me but felt that she needed to be independent, move out of her parent’s place, and establish a life on her own.
She was definitely trying to distance herself from me because she didn’t want to hurt me or even get hurt, but I told her that she needed someone like me in her life… not necessarily to help her financially, but to be there when times are rough.
I asked her one thing and one thing only.
“Don’t count me out.”
…meaning don’t think I’m just another one of the guys in your life who’s left you and treated you wrong.
My bestie thinks that me writing her off was it and that it felt weird of me to even give her a second chance. It’s true that she is messed up… and yes, she has a daughter, but this is a girl who I’m compatible with and always come back to.
I can talk about her quite a bit, and it may come as a surprise to some people, but I intend to write about her more in the upcoming weeks.
I’ll follow my bestie’s suggestion to keep it casual and not think about it. I’ve been doing good with that that I should probably continue the course lol
Excuse the Youtube-taken screencaps but I really just want to ramble a bit about Rise’s social link since I just finished it this morning, taking the friends route.
I just really, really liked this part. How she says that it doesn’t matter if she can’t pinpoint a single “real” her because every “different” part of her is, well, still Rise. They may seem different but they all accumulate to this one individual. It’s so easy to regard her Shadow simply as LOL RAINBOW STRIPPER but the symbolisms of it are actually really brilliant. How she feels like she’s put on so much facade already that she just wants to strip those off to see if underneath, she still has a “real” self.
But in the end, there isn’t a “real” her because whatever she chooses to be is whoever she is, plain and simple. Her Shadow reveal may seem kind of confusing because she was never able to face a sole “real” self unlike the others but instead just said something about there isn’t a “real” her after all. And that’s… just her, the whole of it. She may have many different personalities but since those all come from her, could those really be considered as something outside who she is?
No matter how paradoxical Rise’s predicament seems to be, she eventually learns that hey! she’ll just continue being who she is – she can be chipper and peppy, serious and thoughtful, anything she wants – and yet still be the Rise Kujikawa. Multiple traits and personalities, yes, but a single person.
100 People I Identify With #1: Rise Kujikawa
(Pictured: Rise Kujikawa in her many, umm, personas)
Rise Kujikawa, also known by her stage name Risette, is a character from Persona 4. A famous teen idol, Rise is well-known amongst teenagers and adults, but quits her job suddenly, citing health reasons.
Rise is portrayed as cheerful, outspoken, naughty, having a cute personality, and is quite boastful about herself. She is referred to as a “dangerous girl” by Chie, due to her boldness in flirting with the Protagonist.
Rise is quickly annoyed by even small things…
She’s rather childish and possessive.
Rise reveals that during her childhood, she was a shy, lonely child, and that nobody had high expectations of her. Due to her shyness, she was constantly bullied by her classmates, until a relative submitted her application to an idol competition, which she won. Ironically, her original motivation of accepting the prize was so once she becomes popular, she would have more friends.
However, she eventually realizes that her ‘friends’ are only interested in the fabricated personality of teen-idol ‘Risette’, but not Rise Kujikawa, the young girl from Yasoinaba.
Rise later found out that after she abandons showbiz, her old manager found another rising star, which greatly irritates her. By the end of the Social Link, Rise eventually realize that ‘Risette’ isn’t a fabricated personality, but one of her many traits. Upon her realization, Rise exclaims that she would return to her job as an idol in spring, hoping to show the world her other traits other than ‘Risette’.
Taken from: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Rise_Kujikawa
100 Things I’m Thankful For #7: Anime/Manga
(Pictured: Ranma-chan, my inspiration for my webcomic and why the hell I was curious to turn into a girl from time to time to begin with)
Ranma 1/2 was the first mainstream anime that I truly and genuinely loved from beginning to the end. I loved the colorful characters, the dynamic between Ranma and Akane, and how everyone else seems to revolve around them.
But Ranma 1/2 wasn’t the first anime I’ve seen. Prior to that, I’ve watched Astroboy (in color), Daimos, and Voltes V. I’ve also watched some other Super Sentai stuff, but I don’t think they apply here.
The ridiculous and drastic change in dynamic with everyone around Ranma when he’d transform into Ranma-chan was incredibly funny. For instance, Tatewaki Kuno absolutely despises Ranma as a guy, but is hopelessly and obsessively in love with Ranma as a girl. Likewise Kodachi Kuno, Tatewaki’s sister, absolutely despises Ranma as a girl but is, like her brother (to some degree), hopelessly and obsessively in love with Ranma as a guy.
There’s a million other examples of character dynamics being all messed up and flipped on its head in Ranma 1/2 that I truly like, and it’s one of the driving forces for my web comic and why I decided to turn into a girl from time to time for the past year or so. No, I didn’t have a drive to wear women’s clothes nor did I want to transition… I just wanted to see what the other side was all about.
Maybe I should just tell people that when they ask me about her. “It’s all Ranma’s fault!”
100 Things I’m Thankful For #6: Video Games
(Pictured: Ironically, it’s video game advancement that actually aid scientific and medical innovation.)
In one of the few times I saw my biological dad, he contributed the single most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life… when I was 7 or 8.
I don’t really remember, but I was in 2nd grade back then and my dad bought me my first Nintendo. It was the Japanese one, called a Family Computer, and my first game was Exerion. Exerion wasn’t the first game I ever played actually… it was Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. It just so happened that my dad could only afford to buy Exerion.
I sometimes tell people about this story and how video games make me feel closer to my dad. That was all a pile of crap.
But video games did give me something truly amazing though. I realized, thanks to games, that art and science can co-exist. Sure, movies do the same thing, but I was amazed at how much representation could be made with only a few colors and a few pixels. Imagine what we had to deal with back then: 80x80 pixel resolution, 2 colors to start with, and a whole keyboard to use. Heck, a mouse wasn’t even invented and we had 5.25” floppy drives to start with.
Of course, I came in when the NES was getting popular, with its 320x240 screen blown up to the maximum TV resolution of 640x480 interlaced. At that time, I think the NES only had like 10 colors (not wikipediaing this… I’m not gonna be a stickler for details) and maybe 6 sound channels at most.
Throughout the life of the NES, games went from this:
To this:
Over the years, video games increased in complexity and technology finally was able to render things in 3D in real time, without pre-rendering or calculating and admittedly, some of that magic is gone.
Now I’m not going to be a retro guy and say, “games were better back then,” because games weren’t. About 80% of the games that existed back in the day had endings that consisted of credits and “thank you for praying” for the ending.
Why is miss the old days is that people were forced to deal with limitations of the systems and had to use their imaginations and ingenuity to push the system to its limits.
I’m one of those people who believe that innovation goes hand in hand with limitation. What this means is that sometimes in order to innovate or build something no one’s ever thought of, people need to be put in situations that aren’t comfortable in order to force their hand to make wonderful things.
Perhaps this is why I feel that not being my girl side is a good thing… I get to know myself a lot more and really focus on what’s important to me and maybe even be able to focus on what I truly want in my life.
It’s Transgender Awareness Month
One of my Facebook friends posted that it’s transgender awareness month this November and I find it funny that I decide not to be my female self a mere day before November hits.
Right now, I feel pretty sad that society won’t accept my decision to be able to be a girl in some cases, and that my masculinity is immediately in question because I decide to do this sort of thing.
For the record, I’m a straight male who loves sex with women as much as any other man would, has a sense of responsibility, compassion, and can be competitive. I feel that there’s nothing less manly about me than another man.
With that said, I fall within the umbrella term “transgender,” meaning transcending gender or transitioning of genders. I’m making this definition up, but I feel that I transcend gender because of my qualities and my ability to mix both.
I can’t help but admit that it feels lonely that no one truly attempts to understand who I am inside, but I suppose I was foolish when I thought that people would see my inner qualities as opposed to my outside appearance. This is, after all, most likely one of the reasons why I did this. I wanted to find a woman who could see through all the bullshit I threw at her on the outside and saw the inner good in me.
It’s a very selfish thing to ask for… for a girl to prove and work really hard to get to know me. Only a select few can see me who I truly am, and even a smaller group truly ever see my inner emotions and thoughts.
I was considering taking back my word that I’m no longer going to be my girl self for a party I originally envisioned her to host, but I can’t give up on myself now.
I gave up this side of me because I need to fix myself and work on qualities that I feel are important to my growth. This is a time when I can grow as an individual, and being her again is going to undo everything I’ve worked on the past few weeks.
It’s sad to think of her that way, but it truly is. I’ve used her presence as a means to ignore all the inner angst and feeling that I’ve had welling deep inside. Now that she’s gone, I have to face it myself. And it’s ridiculously difficult.
100 Things I Need To Work On #6: Caring Too Much About Other People’s Opinions Of Me
(Pictured: They surely aren’t talking about me!)
Throughout my elementary school and high school life, I was bullied by a bunch of guys (and by a bunch I meant 20 or 30) because I wouldn’t put up a fight. I hate confrontation, so I just decided to cough up whatever money I had to them. It was terrible, and I can imagine that it’s affected me greatly throughout my life.
Fast forward to today, I am hyper aware and hyper conscious of what people around me tell me. Do I care so much because I want so much to be accepted by society? Is this a self-defense mechanism or a means to control people’s opinions? It could very well be both, but I wish that I didn’t care too much about people’s opinions of me.
This is a tough one since it’s been ingrained in me practically my whole life. I broke social boundaries because I would rather do that and know what people are talking about rather than not knowing what people are thinking of me behind my back. My girl side, I would imagine, was part of this rebellion, and I lost the opportunity to be with a really nice girl because of my experimentations.
But don’t get me wrong: I don’t regret what I’ve done. Being a girl part of the time was a great learning experience for me and makes me appreciate women even more. It’s just too bad that I’m still dealing with caring too much about public opinion of me than anything.
100 Things I’m Thankful For #5: The Idea of Being In Love
(Pictured: Chi and Hideki. Aren’t they cute?)
I’ve always wondered if I was ever in love at some point in my life. This goes hand in hand with the possessive thing, as I’m not sure if I treated my past girlfriends as possessions rather than people I adore.
Still, this hasn’t stopped me from thinking about being in love. To me, being in love is a fleeting moment where your heart yearns for another person’s warmth and caress. The idea of it is so appealing to me since I’m such a hopeless romantic that I tend to seek it as much as possible when I’m not in one.
Funny thing is that before that, I never sought for it at all.
Maybe someday I’ll write about falling in love with someone in this blog. Maybe.
(Updated) Halloween Costume #2: Alice
Just wanted to post my rendition of Alice. Our office’s theme is Disney, but I decided that I didn’t just want to be the regular Alice in the Disney films.
Updated: I changed the photo so you can get a clearer picture of what I looked like.
My Girl Side Is Dead. Also, Being Tired and George Foreman
Just wanted to officially state that my “girl side” is dead. I’ll be packing all her things and shoving them into a box soon and focusing on my healing over the next few days/weeks/months. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ll write more about my experience as her at some point in the future, but I just don’t feel like talking about her while at work.
I’m thinking I can still blog at work, provided that I do short bursts… the “list” things that I created are perfect for that. I’ll probably add a couple or so posts with the “lists” in mind.
Right now, I’m so exhausted from not having a straight eight hours of rest. I’m guessing it’s because my mind is cluttered right now and have a lot to think about, but it’s alright. Every lunch time I take a nap in my car and get some good shut eye for an hour. Maybe I need to evaluate the time I spend at home and make sure that it’s being used in the best possible way.
For dinner tonight I was thinking of popping some steaks on the ol’ George Foreman grill. I was also contemplating on maybe having a flat steel top for my stove so that I don’t have to deal with the unevenness of the stove top. One of the many things that are on my mind. Maybe I should make a random things list?
Halloween Costume #1: Sweet Pea
So I decided to post a pic taken at last night’s party just for the hell of it. I’m supposed to be Sweet Pea from Sucker Punch and I tried to work with what I got. I think for the most part it looked cool and I got a lot of compliments… from my bestie’s family. I was using my alternate voice the whole time and some people thought I was a girl even when I left. It was a funny moment. I’ll post a pic of my other costume tomorrow once all that stuff’s said and done.
