*muffled cursing from the next room*

Body is being awful today, so I dyed my hair magenta, or tried to. It's more like mauve, but I'm hoping the blue tones fade out and I get to a more copper penny color. This is what happens when the dye you're using is at least six years old. Some day I will buy new dye but ... enh. Can't be arsed today. Cramps are only about medium bad bc I took the prescription anti-inflammatory first thing when I woke up. But yeah, today feels gross and I am pretending that my physical existence is a thing of artifice under my direct control.

Of course then I proceeded to bit my lip, twice, in exactly the same place, because bodies are also blundering animals and their instincts are not to be trusted.


Thoughts/feelings awareness log:
I felt happy because I thought:
• I dyed my hair thus proving I have influence over my own life, even if in a small way, which felt powerful.
• This week was Ghost's and my anniversary and we have put a lot of effort into staying together, so I felt pride.
• I updated my potion ingredients list, so I felt accomplished.

I felt sad because I thought:
• I feel failsome and disappointed that my body has to hurt so much from doing normal human things like chewing or menstruating.
• My hair is not magenta; I wanted it to be much brighter than this. I am disappointed and sad that I can't have nice hair.
• I am getting closer to being able to be sad about the childhood stuff, starting to ask more questions that sound vulnerable instead of accusatory. It's a good thing, but it's just taking a while looming on the horizon, for reasons of its own.

I felt angry because I thought:
• Why didn't Dad ever protect any of his kids from his own failsomeness at social interaction? Learning social skills is plenty hard, yes. But it's not impossible. He'll buy my half-brother a freaking truck, but he won't hold a conversation with him? (I don't even rate a truck, which feels great, Dad. Just ... great. /s.)
• I want to make smellgoods, but the living room coffee table had cat pee next to it. I cleaned it up, but I can still smell it, which means there's spray nearby that I won't be able to find until after sunset when I can use the UV flashlight. By which time I may not have spoons to clean anymore, and definitely won't have spoons for the perfume-making afterward. :\

I felt fear because I thought:
• I fear for my more highly visible trans friends, for obvious reasons.
• I feel fear for my foolish countrymen who want to vote the Leopards in. Even the people who think they are safe from the depredations of the insipid and incipient right wing dictatorship that is trying to spring up will not recognize the craven creatures it will make of them in the ten years between now and then. Because once the Leopards Eating People's Faces party are done genociding us "yucky" trans people, they'll go after the next minority up the chain. Probably anyone who is a Dreamer or an immigrant, then those left wingers and college students who are "destroying America!!1!", then Native Americans, then the unionizers, then Black folks. ... Leopards do not STOP eating faces. That's. That's not a thing, y'all. Fascism is a hungry machine, powered by the blood and money of those too powerless to stop it from crushing us underfoot. It will never stop until it's gears are thrown too many wrenches in. I just hope my Dad and his ilk start using their stockpile of wrenches before the literal end of the world.
• I fear the end of the world.

I felt disgust because I thought:
• I was going through some of the smellgoods that got left in the storage unit (by accident we think). Some of those were pretty gross. I was also kind of disgusted with myself for not having repeated the offer to help Bat clean out the storage unit since we dumped their stuff there in the post-Shannon mess. That was six years ago, I think? And I just kind of forgot.
• Our state is run by a sociopath who has no concern for human lives and is a true believer in the utter nonsense of Herr Diktator Drumpf's MAGA pseudo-Americanism. It is disgusting how motivated reasoning can warp a human mind.


List at least 5 things that you want, and the hidden emotional need behind the obvious desire.
1. I want my countrymen to rediscover empathy and the unwillingness to let people suffer. Because that will keep the greatest number of people alive and away from suffering.
2. I want to have an outfit that I can sweat into fearlessly for the Bat memorial next Saturday. I'll be bringing a gallon of water and some spray bottles for folks to use to help cool off, but who freaking knows whether we're all going to have heatstroke. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I want us to survive Bat's memorial bc he would be pissed if someone upstaged him, petty theater kid that he was.
3. I want a cute outfit to go have tea in for my birthyday next month. I'll have to see what I can do. I like pretending to be things I'm not sometimes, and if I look hyperfeminine, people will not be looking at me for other forms of social deviance. People like to think folks dressed in weird styles are "normal people" who are "doing it for the attention". Lol, no.
4. I kind of want to cry right now? Dunno why though, or if it has a single origin point.
5. I want to be able to eat the pizza that is in the kitchen without biting myself again, but I don't trust this meatsack right now.

---

If you are crabby or out-of-sorts, it may help you to list as many forks as you can, to see which ones are the easiest to un-stick.
I am upset about _____, _____, and _____.
I am irritated about _____, _____, and _____.
I am sad about _____, _____, and _____.
I feel guilty about _____, _____, and _____.
I feel bored or stressed about _____, _____, and _____.
Think for a few minutes about which of these things would be the easiest or most energy efficient to fix. If it is a good day and you feel up to the challenge, you can pick something harder!

Holy COW that got long.