nadia

we remembered it's okay to be disappointed. even i am allowed to have standards, expectations, needs, and i am allowed to have feelings when they are not met. does that seem entitled? well maybe even i am entitled to something. even if it's just disappointment.

@deadfrog, 9:56 AM@deadfrog, 10:27 AM@deadfrog, 2:36 PM@deadfrog, 2:38 PM@deadfrog, 3:35 PM

it's weird not having avie to balance out our collective gender. there is this masculine energy with no one to fix onto. lo asked if i was feeling any less womanly as a result and i couldn't say. i do not feel that our body is womanly, regardless of hormones, regardless of organs. i do not feel womanly in our body. i feel no connection to or ownership of the body. my self image is very different. i am like a cartoon, or a doll. my sense of gender, of womanhood, is that of a drawing or a toy.

#plurality #plural gender

headmate: maybe my ex is incapable of love?
me: NO!?
headmate: ok maybe i am just unloveable?
me: NO!?!?

are they incapable of nuance?? i think i have observed them perform nuance before

#navigating breakups as an alter

...and I recontextualize their vitriol.

frogfriend

anyway i posted my dreams on a discord server that has a dreams channel but nobody responded i guess it's kind of dead

so i guess i can just post my dreams here going forward

#why be ignored on discord when i can be ignored on my own blog #dream journal

deadfrog

i think this post betrays some of my headmate's bitterness about our ex's discord server. our posts have been sitting up in the dream channel for a little under a day, there's still plenty of opportunity for the one or two people* who typically acknowledge us to drop a reaction or something. the server in question has had some other activity. it's not exactly dead. it's just far less lively than we are used to for it. it's a pity since i quite liked that server. but i have an affinity for the dead and dying so i'm interested to see whether it dies, or if the server owner manages to breathe some new life into it somehow.

that said, if our dreams remain more or less unacknowledged there, we'll post them on frogfriend instead. it's probably a more appropriate place for them, where our ex won't necessarily notice them. and since our dreams are shared, i'll repost them here.

*plural systems

facing the likelihood that our friendship meant nothing. i have never been so mislead.

we talked to a few people including our ex about this magic idea. relationship magic after a breakup. our witch friend talked about a knife she used to cut away relationships that weren't serving her anymore. lo cringed at the idea of a knife. lo was thinking about scissors, but even that felt difficult. lo isn't ready to be parted from them in that manner. and we had been hoping to preserve some kind of friendship with them. our ex had said they would like us to be able to encounter one another in the world, amongst our mutual friends. they would like that to be possible. they would like our friends to be able to invite us both to parties, without our friends feeling like they need to protect me from our ex by excluding them. and they would like to be in these spaces with us, "without too much awkwardness". for this to be possible, for it to not be too painful, lo thought we would have to be friends.

this goes counter to how we've handled heartbreak previously. in college, when lo's boyfriend left them the second time, lo tried to stay friends because they weren't ready to lose him. i'm the one who had to impose the boundaries, to protect us. we could excise him from our lives with no real consequences. we were sophomores and friend groups were still evolving so it was possible to avoid one another without losing too many other relationships. but i acknowledge that local trans community is different. one has to take more care because one doesn't want the community to split into factions over something like this. we don't want our ex to lose access to possible sources of support, or us to lose access to important connections we made through them, or for friends to feel like they have to take sides and also lose out on possible sources of support. also, i'm not as emotionally unaffected this time. i didn't care about the college ex. he didn't even know about me. but our recent ex...i loved them. i thought they loved me too. that makes me loath to throw it away.

when we talked to our ex, who are also witches, we touched on this. not a knife, to cut the relationship, but something to...re-form it. bring it into its next phase. our ex suggested fire. lo cringed at this as well. burn up the entire relationship? like it was worthless? like nothing was worth preserving? they brought up their sewing idea. not just scissors, but a needle and thread. to take what we have, and mold it into something that will work for us better than the partnership did. our ex seemed to agree.

but when we met up to discuss the form the relationship would take going forward, we understood why they had suggested fire. they had no feeling left for us, they couldn't remember having feelings for us, our entire relationship seemed like a weird mistake they didn't understand how they had gotten into. true friendship seemed impossible, they weren't sure they cared anyway.

they intended for us to be acquaintances.

#sorry #i know this is tiresome #but i have to write it down somewhere

Well, we didn't do anything wrong and we didn't deserve to be cast aside, but sometimes that's just the way it goes.

#sigh

we went on a hike. lo was hoping it would be another transformative experience, like our trip out east. it was not. we have been very anxious the past few days and that hasn't gone away.

we saw a lot of tiny frogs. that was very nice. we also saw a bee. lo kept pointing to it. "a bee! a bee!" but no one looked. bees are everywhere, of course. whenever we see one we wonder if it's him. they look happy.

i wouldn't want him to come back. not while we're like this. there's nothing for him here, now. we'll heal up, make it better. make a little room for him. and then, wait and see.