✨Spirit Halloween⚧Femme✨ @ikea_femme@witches.town

Well, I'm realizing I'm completely nervous for my first date after breaking my engagement tomorrow. So many firsts.

Being trans, I feel like everyone warns me how I'll feel broken. Because of my body, my voice, and the cis gaze. But being bad at small talk and mingling at a bar tonight and remembering all the times my mom told me I was speaking poorly? That's what makes me feel really broken. I hate that I have to work through this. I hate it scares me from voicework, because it reminds me of all the times my mom would yell at me for being too loud, or too monotonous, or too fond of filler words. I almost never have a real conversation with her.

It's good. https://witches.town/media/F9fajTyAO8nPEOxwsyc

@nex3 new hope is queer, but suburban East Coast queer.

@nex3 Like, I don't know how to be west coast or midwestern pleasant. I know east coast pleasant, where you show people you care by getting in pointless arguments about which place makes the best food, and focus on saving everyone else's time. It's a very specific and powerful set of skills I would lose without the Northeast Corridor beneath my feet.

@nex3 I'm terrified to leave it.

Also, if you're in New Hope and have a car, the restaurant It's Nutt's, on the NJ side of the river, is great.

@alyx is this about anything specific or just everything?

https://witches.town/media/NZg25GqNQ3YwYUluK6U

Plus, riding the subway, so who knows what the cis gaze will make of it...

My back is a bit irritable today, and I'm not physically comfortable wearing my bra at the moment. Need to run and stretch more. Do I look okay without it, I'm worried I might look like I have man boobs rather than boobs without a bra to remind them where to go...

https://witches.town/media/aUbO-_kM-NRRxVglNvw https://witches.town/media/whMJXOJ8LdsJ9H86QcE https://witches.town/media/MsfaFt7pkPdNZsOKSBI

For the record, I don't think I've ever consciously crossdressed. My mom would have freaked, and I figured it out not through kink or dressing up but through reading Philip K. Dick and Murakami.

Also, if you're running a practice for LGBTQ health with supposedly informed consent HRT as a new priority, maybe Georgia O'Keefe paintings are a weird choice?

Then, you held on to the forms and letter templates, and told me you'd fill them out and mail them to me once you got paperwork from my old clinic "just to make sure " (what).

And then a week later you mail it, and WHOOPS, turns out you forgot to pay attention when I spelled out my address, and those forms are in the void. Thank god I left with my court order, as those things are expensive.

And when I tell you the docs are gone, you have your nurse call me to tell me I should have been more clear and assertive about it, and ask why there's two addresses on my file (one is what I wrote and from my HMO, one is your scribbles)

Hey, new HRT doc. You sure seemed to like wasting my time reasking gatekeeping 101 questions when I came to you at 9 months of HRT, just because my last doctor would take forever with legal transition notes. You went and asked when I first knew I was trans, to describe my dysphoria, and so on. The questions were invasive, but okay. You jotted down my name and address real quick. Then, while I'm sitting on the table waiting for you to get back, you send your nurse back to ask when I first crossdressed.

@jk I find it amazing how LEDs went from DIY NERD CRED to "ugly bodega storefront" overnight.

he's swimp, he's kind of our free range mascot.

Organic brands are basically shitposts now that they're done with smug ("if you care...") https://witches.town/media/ICYePQUIIjC7NC-_nGg

@alyx I come from NJ sprawl. We don't really have mom and pop stuff anymore. Except for a couple boutiquey shops in downtown areas near colleges.

@alyx also less guys with card tables selling fidget spinners and one hitter pipes.

@alyx I'm disappointed that city living means most things close early and take cash. Corporations having a stranglehold on suburban retail did have one upside: late hours and no card restrictions.