My teeth have been deteriorating nearly my entire adut life. Except for the possibility of inheriting my mom’s poor enamel, I not entirely sure why. I did not build the best dental hygiene as a child, but I corrected most of it by college. Apparently, that was too late. Imagine such a torturous life due …
Author Archives: Cattywampus Fellow
my quantum existence
There is a type of experience in my life that I refer to as my quantum selves. It doesn’t happen terribly often, but it is consistently connected to physically traumatizing events. Especially medical events. As I sit in my trauma, but of me splits off into other past moments, reliving various related events simultaneously with …
my gender indentity, part 4
Jump ahead nearly a decade, my gender expression is essentially naught. While I am well-paid for manuafcturing labor, I am exhausted working through the pandemic on a manufacturing floor thoroughly disinterested in wearing any clothing I care about to work and too tired to changed and socialize afterward. I have code-switched and camoflaged myself so …
my gender identity, part 3
During the first half of my post-college adulthood, the personal gender concept I established in college held firm, if not back-seated in my brain. I didn’t struggle with or dispute it in any way. I simply embraced it and tucked it in and never really engaged in conversations related to it. In these years, I …
my gender identity, part 2
As I approached college, my journey turned toward my sexuality far more than my gender. I didn’t encounter anyone discussing gender separately from sexuality, or I didn’t realize it if they did. So I continued to treat it as a personal internal experience. As for my sexual being, at nineteen, I experienced my first external …
a closer inspection
I came across a familiar quote today, by Alexander Leon: “Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created …
an unbearable pause
It is profound what can be found in the tiniest of silly things. I have joined TikTok and it is peeling away my armor and exposing the heap of trauma responses masquerading as an out and proud queer. Yesterday, I received a notification that I have access to the new three minute feature, not that …
the breaking off a fragment
I have spent most of my adult life mourning bits of me as they were broken off and left behind on the trail of my life. Eventually, I learned from She-who-is-never-not-broken that I can find my power here, in these broken moments. Today is a different sort of shattering apart: my heart is cracking to …
my gender identity, part 1
There are specific markers in my life, flashing buoys at critical points of my developing identity. Even though the day-to-day experience of my life was experienced as though I was a constant unwavering being, I can delve into memories and pinpoint “ah-ha!” slices of time where the tiny little sidestep has significance. Thirteen was an …
my lost extrovert
I’m not even sure when it happened. It is more than the effects of social distancing through a global pandemic: I have lost my social butterfly. Small talk is nearly impossible, and borders on painful. I am consoled by the current state of not going out in public, of not socializing. I miss my friends, …
quantum man 