Life is a beautiful struggle
Oct. 20th, 2004 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearTwo public service announcements:
1. text courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wearemany:
Hey everyone who registered to vote for this election, if you haven't yet received a registered card or registered out in the community during the waning days allowed in your state, especially if you are a new or first-time voter, MAKE SURE YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED. You can call your county registrar and ask them to look it up, and if not, to let you re-register (usually if you have proof you registered, you can do this even if the deadline has passed).
2. website link courtesy ofswampgirl
This is specific to Chicago people, but others elsewhere should make the effort to find local info as well. I know presidential and senatorial races get most of the attention, but just as important to our day to day lives is JUDGES. They make decisions about divorces, custody, juvenile sentencing, landlord-tenant disputes, etc. and its important to vote for our microcosm as well as the macrocosm of federal government. You know how you go into the booth and there's pages and pages of judges and you don't know what the hell you're supposed to check? Well, guess what -- bar associations put together cheat sheets of information to help vote out judges who are fcked up. Check out http://voteforjudges.org and print out a chart -- you can bring it with you into the poll to make it even easier. I usually go with the Chicago Council of Lawyers list, but there are several bar associations to choose from.
I'm currently in day two of my FedEx Hostage Crisis. Except it's not really a crisis, it's just a "gimme my money!" situation. Yesterday I was fairly frozen and unable to accomplish anything. Today was threatening to go down the same path, but I made a to-do list. It included everything, including simple things like "call ____ and leave vmail saying your alive and thinking of them". It's noon and I've completed the most significant items. Now I should actually do some schoolwork.
It's start to really hit me, that in three weeks I'll be in San Fran. Specifically, in three weeks from right this second, I'll be under the knife. I'm currently freaking out a bit about the whole general anesthesia aspect, even though, yes, I know, statistically it's extremely low. I just get preoccupied, especially when characters in television shows are in comas or when I see articles about researchers trying to detect when patients wake up and can feel the work being done but can't communicate that they are awake. Hi, nightmare.
But the panic is really a fairly small percentage. I'm nervous about the recovery, nervous about the change, nervous about my body's ability to heal, but I'm also excited about the change, and working positive towards being healthy so I can recover hopefully as easily as possible. I've been slacking on jogging, but I'm hoping to go today after FedEx shows. But I'm mostly preoccupied with fashion and how all my clothes will fit me now.
I know my body self-consciousness will not magically disappear -- I'll have noticeable scars as well as my still occasional disfavoring of the shape of my belly and hips. But I'll feel like I'm less in a mixed-up zone of body image, if that makes sense. It's weird to be in a state of frustration with your body, and saying to yourself "well, this will go away, but this won't; this you don't have to accept, this you do." I think, ideally, I should just love and accept every part of my body, the perfection of imperfections, etc. etc. But obviously I can't exactly do that if I'm doing a radical procedure to change it. I still get haunted by the words of someone close to me when I first came out, challenging me to explain why my chest surgery was any different from breast implant cosmetic surgery. Maybe I still don't always know.
Then I get tired of the existential and philosophical thoughts and think about how good I'll look in an a-shirt and leather chest harness and it's all better.
1. text courtesy of
wearemany:Hey everyone who registered to vote for this election, if you haven't yet received a registered card or registered out in the community during the waning days allowed in your state, especially if you are a new or first-time voter, MAKE SURE YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED. You can call your county registrar and ask them to look it up, and if not, to let you re-register (usually if you have proof you registered, you can do this even if the deadline has passed).
2. website link courtesy of
swampgirlThis is specific to Chicago people, but others elsewhere should make the effort to find local info as well. I know presidential and senatorial races get most of the attention, but just as important to our day to day lives is JUDGES. They make decisions about divorces, custody, juvenile sentencing, landlord-tenant disputes, etc. and its important to vote for our microcosm as well as the macrocosm of federal government. You know how you go into the booth and there's pages and pages of judges and you don't know what the hell you're supposed to check? Well, guess what -- bar associations put together cheat sheets of information to help vote out judges who are fcked up. Check out http://voteforjudges.org and print out a chart -- you can bring it with you into the poll to make it even easier. I usually go with the Chicago Council of Lawyers list, but there are several bar associations to choose from.
I'm currently in day two of my FedEx Hostage Crisis. Except it's not really a crisis, it's just a "gimme my money!" situation. Yesterday I was fairly frozen and unable to accomplish anything. Today was threatening to go down the same path, but I made a to-do list. It included everything, including simple things like "call ____ and leave vmail saying your alive and thinking of them". It's noon and I've completed the most significant items. Now I should actually do some schoolwork.
It's start to really hit me, that in three weeks I'll be in San Fran. Specifically, in three weeks from right this second, I'll be under the knife. I'm currently freaking out a bit about the whole general anesthesia aspect, even though, yes, I know, statistically it's extremely low. I just get preoccupied, especially when characters in television shows are in comas or when I see articles about researchers trying to detect when patients wake up and can feel the work being done but can't communicate that they are awake. Hi, nightmare.
But the panic is really a fairly small percentage. I'm nervous about the recovery, nervous about the change, nervous about my body's ability to heal, but I'm also excited about the change, and working positive towards being healthy so I can recover hopefully as easily as possible. I've been slacking on jogging, but I'm hoping to go today after FedEx shows. But I'm mostly preoccupied with fashion and how all my clothes will fit me now.
I know my body self-consciousness will not magically disappear -- I'll have noticeable scars as well as my still occasional disfavoring of the shape of my belly and hips. But I'll feel like I'm less in a mixed-up zone of body image, if that makes sense. It's weird to be in a state of frustration with your body, and saying to yourself "well, this will go away, but this won't; this you don't have to accept, this you do." I think, ideally, I should just love and accept every part of my body, the perfection of imperfections, etc. etc. But obviously I can't exactly do that if I'm doing a radical procedure to change it. I still get haunted by the words of someone close to me when I first came out, challenging me to explain why my chest surgery was any different from breast implant cosmetic surgery. Maybe I still don't always know.
Then I get tired of the existential and philosophical thoughts and think about how good I'll look in an a-shirt and leather chest harness and it's all better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 11:03 am (UTC)that makes perfect sense. only to someone that's trans probably but hey, we still count, right?
i cannot begin to tell you how much i felt freed up by my chest surgery. and yeah, maybe that's fcked up and blah blah in an indeal world whatever but seriously on a very important level it helped me tremedously and ultimately i did it for ME despite what others might think. of course then i was sort of like "okay, well that's pretty well all i'm going to be doing so now i have to really learn to accept my body for what it is" but it was easier to do that, at least for me, after surgery. i had that initial let down of like "great, and my body is still fcked" but after i got over that i was able to better accept the parts of me that i didn't like so much. who knows. everyones different. those scars will fade though i'm tellin ya!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 12:09 pm (UTC)i'm starting to stock up on tubes of cocoa butter, to help minimize scarring more cheaply than those other medicines in the store.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 04:31 pm (UTC)b) i'm alive and thinking of you. and also in new york. these things are not all mutually exclusive.
c) mm, cocoa butter.