happy trans day of visibility

I still feel lonely, and I still feel upset at losing followers after my outbursts recently.

I'm growing the feeling that I'm using fedi incorrectly.

I suppose I can continue to justify myself and dig in deeper and rest on my situation and lack of friends and family as an excuse for my instability on this site, but I suppose I should reflect a bit.

I don't think I was in the wrong. If I were doing this all again, I would post exactly the same things. I need to be able to vent, and I need an outlet to post that.

What I'm realising is that this isn't the community to share that vulnerability with.

I do still like posting updates and like life stuff, but this is not a safe space I suppose. I come off as crazy and unhinged, people unfollow, justifiably, probably upset with getting a stream of profanities from my account.

At the risk of being manipulative, a part of me wonders if my mother was justified. She put up with some of this kind of venting, and maybe she was right to have enough and cut me off and disown me. A part of me. I grasp that I should take personal responsibility for my actions.

Despite the lack of reactions and the word limit, I feel like investing more time in community building elsewhere I think. Not for any fault of fedi I suppose, I've just cultivated a level of openness in my presentation here that means I treat people I interact with as working with the same level of sensitivity and caution as I have, and that's not a valid assumption. Maybe it is better to just be more closed off and have a well-trimmed online persona.

I've been alone for 25 years. I've survived. Being able to be open for the first time was fun, but I'm realising that I am just genuinely kinda fucked up, and not worth being in contact with. It's time to go back into that shell of isolation. I will survive.

woke up in a bad mood today

I might make a longer post about this maybe just to pin for potential new followers: and note this isn't something I regularly talk about

anyway, I made the mistake of looking at my follower list and count today, and I realised I'd lost a few followers. I don't really care about the number, but it was sad to see people I had interacted with regularly go

It's entirely my fault. My posts when I'm venting are pretty indefensible, and I can totes understand why someone wouldn't want to like follow that, and I can't say anything; I understand.

I hadn't really been keeping track recently because I'd been too busy yearning after the postdoc but now that's over I'm like back to lonely and alone, and it was a bit of a gut punch to look at that and realise I was even further more alone. It's not any of my ex-followers/mutuals fault, it's mine, but it hurt I suppose. (one of the people in my field had even removed my follow of her, presumably through a block, which was even more of a hit).

I've kinda gotten over it after doing my exercises and it doesn't hurt as much, but I thought I'd like mention this. I'm not super petty about followers, and I guess my follow messages even say like feel free to unfollow. I don't really know what the message is really? just sad

did my exercises for today. I was feeling really alone and depressed, but doing them kinda helped, and at the very least I can continue to feel comfortable in my body

@LivInTheLookingGlass aah it's fine it's fine~ I don't know for certain if they're like serious or anything, and at the very least he still texted me back about OSM at 9:30 so I guess she wasn't occupying his entire evening lol

I think just the way I romance, because of like gestures vaguely around everything, means that like the way I flirt is very subtle. It mostly happens through subtle hints. Like I texted him about joining for other events if he knew of them, asked about OSM, ping him about running, or hang around by him a little more than the others when climbing etc. it's not super forward, but it's also plausibly deniable as well which made finding the above feel a little less embarrassing haha

I'm not so torn up about like him specifically I guess - like I never got the feeling like he was uniquely special in that I vibed with him, in fact that was kinda the best part about my infatuation with him, he was like almost your average cis white postdoc, so like it was helpful for me to realise like there aren't weird "special" attributes that I need to look out for to kinda find people attractive (my previous crush was another PhD student in the lab, and a lot of our convos had shared banter about like types and programming languages so I had over-generalised from that that that was an important aspect in a partner)

I guess I'm happy that I got to experience that yearning, and I think just having that as an option allowed me the opportunity to explore aspects of romance that I hadn't been able to before (even if it were merely in my head), like feeling wanting to be held, and being able to even imagine it etc.

plus like through him I've been introduced to the postdoc group which I totes vibe with, which is also a plus. It's not enough social interaction as I need, but at the very least, every Friday and Saturday I have this group of people I do know I enjoy spending time with.

I guess I'll keep interacting with the postdoc, we'll see if something happens, but irrespective I've learned a lot about myself and what may or may not work for me in a partner (and also what it actually means for me to be attracted to someone (and that it is something that I can even experience)).

@LivInTheLookingGlass haha aaah sadly I don't think I could do that, I'm genuinely still like pretty like scared of like setting off a trans-panic/homophobia response. I figure like most guys I'm interested in who aren't queer would be disgusted if like they realised I was into them, so like I don't want to like be the one being forward, because I have no idea how they'd take it. It's easier for me to just drop hints and then if they ever come around, they can be forward I guess. Plus like it would make our interactions awkward, doubly so if like his response were queer phobic I guess

@LivInTheLookingGlass You made it!!! haha

and yep yep I'm going through the possibilities haha; I mean I was kinda surprised he didn't mention a partner ever in any of the conversations I've been in with him, because like most of the other postdocs have at least mentioned something about their partners at some point.

I mean it's fine it's fine 😭 I think I did learn a lot and I enjoyed the feeling of kinda having some kindof concrete image of someone to yearn for while it lasted!

It's still fun spending time with the postdoc social group, but like losing the "potential" of a romantic partner does make me feel like a hole in my life has opened up and like I'm a big back to where I was 3 weeks ago emotionally. Either way, I guess I won't feel that thrill anymore with interacting with him, but it doesn't hurt to keep a good relationship and enjoy vibing with him

I am slowly adding to the list of guys I have crushes on who already have partners (currently that's at 2), it doesn't stop me hoping hehe for maybe their relationships won't work out lol but it's not the same as believing they don't have a partner and so I can directly vie for their affection.

@lindsey@recurse.social that's really scary, this is the first I'm hearing about this. I'm surprised there hasn't been more uproar about this (at least as I've seen), that is really messed up.

Whatever's going on with XiaoFeng Wang is bizarre and worrisome. I was just in Bloomington on Friday when all this was apparently going down.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/03/computer-scientist-goes-silent-after-fbi-raid-and-purging-from-university-website/

I don't know him personally and didn't take classes from him when I was there -- security is not my area -- but I know lots of folks who think highly of him. Nobody seems to have any information.

@LivInTheLookingGlass waittttt the story arc isn't over yet!!! Hehe

@LivInTheLookingGlass haha I wouldn't say I'm okay in the sense that I am now feeling very sad, but I am able to appreciate the humour in the comparison between my messages before and after yesterday haha

@LivInTheLookingGlass I am enjoying the slow stream of your reactions to my posts hehe

you are about to witness a train crash in slow motion lol

Second personality only comes out when I don't need it eugghhhhhhh. Like I would really appreciate not caring about all the connections I've lost because of my actions and being okay with being alone rn but nope dumb personality only comes out when I'm super self confident which is exactly not now

Alone again

In a very bad mood and sad headspace rn

@Transbian_Arsonists@catwithaclari.net @Tattie@eldritch.cafe I'm in the right headspace to kinda respond to this. I figure I should give an explanation given that I did kinda crash out after hearing your initial response. This isn't an obligation of course to respond or a request for you to do anything differently but just a selfish attempt for me to explain why I was upset. We seem to have different expectations the best ways to give advice, and I guess it's fine to disagree on that, but maybe you might want to consider different ways people can interpret your responses if you do give advice to others in the future.

I shared a pretty long and detailed post about my personal experiences, with several points of personal details and descriptions of how they felt to me. A single line response "sounds more like disassociation" (and as you acknowledge, implies a exclusion of using plurality to describe myself) was pretty hurtful to me, because I was being vulnerable, and sharing a lot, and the only response I got was someone telling me, no without any further clarification. Especially given how short and curt your response was, I had no idea why you had said no, was there some specific thing? was it because I had experienced racism? again maybe not, but given that I had given so much context, and the response was so short, there was a lot of space for interpretation.

Plurality was a helpful categorisation for me to understand how I was feeling, and I was cautious and self doubting of whether that should apply to me but was finding it helpful. Responding "<no>, but labels are approximations anyway" felt like saying "you're actually wrong, but you are free to use whatever labels you want" which again felt hurtful and not very supportive of someone tentatively exploring a new label for themselves. You're welcome to disagree about the intention or the likely reading of these sentences, maybe I'm too sensitive, but I thought I'd clarify how I read them.

I guess I never miss - femme columbo

#sketch #pencilSketch #columbo