proof of life
Jul. 21st, 2025 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_seclusionThere isn't much going on these days; it's still a lot of the same. But these days I spend my time sleeping, resting, doomscrolling, thinking, creating. I plan for a future that I'm not sure I want -- there are elements of it that I want, for sure, but I sometimes wonder if it's the mere act of planning for the future that is enough to send me into a spiral and a shut down.
I think it's strange for me to live where I do, where I am now. I live in my dad's house but there are no pictures of me except in his office and in my room; I am a guest and a stranger, a resident and a daughter. It's all of him and his wife, which is fair, because this is their home. In my mother's house there are photos of my brother and I on the walls -- photos from holiday, photos from childhood. But I don't live there, and it will cost me my sanity to move back to the mountains. I am a ghost and a daughter.
Some days, that's what I feel: I am a ghost, a daughter, and a person all at once. I suppose that's why I crave companionship so often, whether it's in the form of texts or calls or meeting up with friends -- I need to feel tethered to something, somewhere, before I float away. When I was living alone I wondered if I would be forgotten by family if I stopped texting and calling. It was only when I disappeared for their lives that they thought to look for me. I have often felt that it is only when I disappear from peoples' lives that they will begin to look for me.
They say tether to yourself. I am trying, but I often feel unmoored. There is nowhere to call home. I am trying to build a future, but I also don't have the capital to do so, reliant on support from family to keep myself alive. It's been a tough pill to swallow, my selfish pride so hollow. At the end of the day I come home to myself, and I have spent the last six months trying to make that home less of a haunted house filled with screams of a hostile mind and more of a quiet home where comfort resides. It's not quite there yet, but it's slowly becoming somewhere I know comfort and ease can one day bloom. But tearing down the walls -- so there's this load-bearing wall... -- is difficult, and I never know which one will lead to collapse. But sometimes that's what you need right? Tear the house down to its foundations, rebuild it from there, and build a whole new one.
I am in the part of ripping out the foundations to put into place a better one. Flood-proof, earthquake-proof, fire-proof. Complete with five coins and a chicken to appease the earth spirits who hunger for life and to bless the home with prosperity. At least I can joke about these things now. I'm so tired but we continue. But building houses takes time and money and effort and delays and it's somehow the perfect analogy for building a new person, building a new life.
There was something about how people assume trauma therapy brings you back to who you were before the trauma. i am learning that there is almost no time in my life that I could call "before the trauma." Such language is for PTSD, for war veterans and journalists and ER workers. CPTSD has no such mercy. Instead, I'm trying to find who I am without the trauma responses, who I am without the craving for acceptance. Who I am when it gets quiet and what makes me smile when I have no one else to answer to but myself. The quiet things that no one ever knows. What are the things I love doing? What are the things that make me smile? What are the things that bring me home to myself? What makes me feel loved, seen, understood? What feels like a cup of tea on a quiet morning, who feels like a quiet afternoon at the garden with a cup of tea and a book by the river? What makes me anticipate waking in the morning, who makes me feel like 7am isn't a chore? What makes me feel like a journey back home, who makes me feel like all I am is enough? What makes me feel safe, who makes me feel safe? What could love feel like?
The days are heavy, and they are simultaneously too long and too short.
But it's not all been bad. I've celebrated one year of smithing - i've been making jewellery out of silver and take classes once a week at a local studio. It's owned and run by fifth generation women silversmiths and is also really queer-friendly. I'm also one of the more extroverted people there, which is hilarious, all things considered. I've made rings and pendants for myself, started designing more complex work for when I finish more lessons. I've started intermediate wirework but my issue is that I have no time to do the rest and it's killing me a little! But it's for good reason, because i'm out of the country so often for Q3 and Q4 and hopefully that gives me some relief from being here. But smithing has been good for me: I've been learning a lot about making things with my hands that doesn't require body contortion or triggers my penchant for pushing myself to the limits of my body, and I've been able to put the words on pause. Sometimes I find myself working through energy or emotions as I engrave or file or sand, but it's okay. I'm making space for more things.
I've made rings and pendants and bracelets, and I often joke about finding a femme that will make the rings you wear on your fingers or the necklace around your neck. There's been a lot of discourse about mascs and butches and dom femmes and whatever but all I know right now is my preference for mascs and butches has never been clearer but I need one that's strong enough for me. Men could barely measure up so I hope I find a woman that does.
But anyway. I've been working out my feelings on identity presentation. I'd make a hot masc for sure; unfortunately put me in masculine clothes for too long and I start wanting to claw my skin off. I live in a place where femme means feminine, and where I don't quite measure up to the feminine standard, and have been struggling to communicate that a little bit. SWF3's challenge for Woman, Queen and OJO GANG's presentation has helped calm the near-dysphoria of it. Everyone wore suits -- in the first iteration Kyoka was in a hat, jeans, a hoodie, and a jacket while the other girls were in jerseys and loose trousers -- but were still feminine, Kyoka, Ibuki, Minami, Junna, Hana, Uwa, and Ruu still powerful, still in suits, still women, still queens. It was a stark contrast to everyone else who went the more traditionally feminine route, with BUMSUP even having Aiki wear a wig for long hair and MOTIV broke away from their traditional hiphop to do more femme though they were in polos and a necktie. AG squad went full femme, as expected. One commenter said they appreciated OJO GANG's presentation because it shows that you don't have to be anyone else, you can be yourself and still be a queen.
I spend too long in a place that operates on binaries and nearly lose my damn mind. The Philippines is still very much in that binary: butch/tomboy or femme/lipstick lesbian. I know internally where I stand but to be misinterpreted or misunderstood so often does get tiring, and I just don't have the strength at the moment to really keep that psychological shield against it. It surprised everyone at the studio to learn I like tomboys and butches and I got called a tomboy there once -- it's the short, dyed hair, I think, and the days when I wear training clothes that look like I'm going to a hiphop dance class. I dress like the Motiv girls on my off days. In another country it wouldn't be a stereotype; in mine, it very much is. There is no word for androgynous here. I'm not even androgynous! I just like the contrast of masculine and feminine, and find myself somewhere in the middle But that's far too complex for discussions here, so whatever.
I also have simply stopped trying to find lesbian friends here and have just Given Up for the most part. I've made some friends and that's enough, i think. I've just found it exhausting trying to fit into a social scene whose unspoken norms are things I wasn't raised with or openly disagree with (I am Not a Fan of being friends with your ex, sorry), and who I have felt openly rejected from anyway. It's okay. I will find my people somehow, and if it isn't here then so be it. (So Be It by Clipse... dude)
Maybe that's why I like smithing so much: it's a balance of masculine and feminine, where I am not expected to be present in one way or another, to be one person or another. I was very insecure about my designs at first until I attended my studio's first exhibit and realized that it's not a competitive space, not like the spaces I've been in before. Corporate is a lion's den, and aerial has its rigidity and rules and competitions. But to be in a space like smithing where what is important is the solidity of your technique to make sure your shit doesn't fall apart and the stories you tell through your pieces -- it has been freeing and healing in ways I didn't expect it to be. I have made a flower out of wire, a twisted ring, a pair of dancer earrings, and am making a snake. These are beginner pieces, but I already have ideas for complex ones. It's a place I can transform what has always been deemed masculine about me into something that is ultimately very feminine. I am often insecure about how lean my frame is, how the sports and the activities I like doing tend to be more masculine, and the contrast between that and the things I love looking at and studying, the things I dream of creating. It's very much a middle ground for me, and a space where I can express things in my mind that have nothing to do with words or reading. And in the end I simply love being in the studio and making things, learning the give of the metal and how to shape it, to burn things and create something from metal and flame. I saw photos from the studio exhibit I went to. I was smiling in all of it. It's been a while since something made me so happy just by being there.
i'm still so burnt out and burned by the life I left behind that I am ultimately looking for spaces that let me expand past all of it. I'm still not where I want to be, but I am a lot further from where I was.
There are a lot more things that I want to write but I had acid reflux and need to eat so hopefully I'll check back in and brain dump again soon.
I haven't written anything about relationships or friendships even if that has been what I've been building most, mostly because it's still so personal and mostly because I can't put them into words yet. All I can say now is that I think my relationships are at the minimum more honest and at its best, stronger. I'm learning a lot more about myself these days, and how I can undo a lot of relationship wounding. But at the same time, I've learned to be more secure in my friendships, learning to be less awful to myself, learning how to feel present and safe with my friends. Learning how to let people in in the ways that really matter. My relationship with myself is what has changed most.
Even if the days are still hard, I have smiled more these days, and I'm seeing that there might come a time when I can be really happy. I am working to get there. I am trying my best. Please cheer me on.
今僕がいる未来に向けて
I think it's strange for me to live where I do, where I am now. I live in my dad's house but there are no pictures of me except in his office and in my room; I am a guest and a stranger, a resident and a daughter. It's all of him and his wife, which is fair, because this is their home. In my mother's house there are photos of my brother and I on the walls -- photos from holiday, photos from childhood. But I don't live there, and it will cost me my sanity to move back to the mountains. I am a ghost and a daughter.
Some days, that's what I feel: I am a ghost, a daughter, and a person all at once. I suppose that's why I crave companionship so often, whether it's in the form of texts or calls or meeting up with friends -- I need to feel tethered to something, somewhere, before I float away. When I was living alone I wondered if I would be forgotten by family if I stopped texting and calling. It was only when I disappeared for their lives that they thought to look for me. I have often felt that it is only when I disappear from peoples' lives that they will begin to look for me.
They say tether to yourself. I am trying, but I often feel unmoored. There is nowhere to call home. I am trying to build a future, but I also don't have the capital to do so, reliant on support from family to keep myself alive. It's been a tough pill to swallow, my selfish pride so hollow. At the end of the day I come home to myself, and I have spent the last six months trying to make that home less of a haunted house filled with screams of a hostile mind and more of a quiet home where comfort resides. It's not quite there yet, but it's slowly becoming somewhere I know comfort and ease can one day bloom. But tearing down the walls -- so there's this load-bearing wall... -- is difficult, and I never know which one will lead to collapse. But sometimes that's what you need right? Tear the house down to its foundations, rebuild it from there, and build a whole new one.
I am in the part of ripping out the foundations to put into place a better one. Flood-proof, earthquake-proof, fire-proof. Complete with five coins and a chicken to appease the earth spirits who hunger for life and to bless the home with prosperity. At least I can joke about these things now. I'm so tired but we continue. But building houses takes time and money and effort and delays and it's somehow the perfect analogy for building a new person, building a new life.
There was something about how people assume trauma therapy brings you back to who you were before the trauma. i am learning that there is almost no time in my life that I could call "before the trauma." Such language is for PTSD, for war veterans and journalists and ER workers. CPTSD has no such mercy. Instead, I'm trying to find who I am without the trauma responses, who I am without the craving for acceptance. Who I am when it gets quiet and what makes me smile when I have no one else to answer to but myself. The quiet things that no one ever knows. What are the things I love doing? What are the things that make me smile? What are the things that bring me home to myself? What makes me feel loved, seen, understood? What feels like a cup of tea on a quiet morning, who feels like a quiet afternoon at the garden with a cup of tea and a book by the river? What makes me anticipate waking in the morning, who makes me feel like 7am isn't a chore? What makes me feel like a journey back home, who makes me feel like all I am is enough? What makes me feel safe, who makes me feel safe? What could love feel like?
The days are heavy, and they are simultaneously too long and too short.
But it's not all been bad. I've celebrated one year of smithing - i've been making jewellery out of silver and take classes once a week at a local studio. It's owned and run by fifth generation women silversmiths and is also really queer-friendly. I'm also one of the more extroverted people there, which is hilarious, all things considered. I've made rings and pendants for myself, started designing more complex work for when I finish more lessons. I've started intermediate wirework but my issue is that I have no time to do the rest and it's killing me a little! But it's for good reason, because i'm out of the country so often for Q3 and Q4 and hopefully that gives me some relief from being here. But smithing has been good for me: I've been learning a lot about making things with my hands that doesn't require body contortion or triggers my penchant for pushing myself to the limits of my body, and I've been able to put the words on pause. Sometimes I find myself working through energy or emotions as I engrave or file or sand, but it's okay. I'm making space for more things.
I've made rings and pendants and bracelets, and I often joke about finding a femme that will make the rings you wear on your fingers or the necklace around your neck. There's been a lot of discourse about mascs and butches and dom femmes and whatever but all I know right now is my preference for mascs and butches has never been clearer but I need one that's strong enough for me. Men could barely measure up so I hope I find a woman that does.
But anyway. I've been working out my feelings on identity presentation. I'd make a hot masc for sure; unfortunately put me in masculine clothes for too long and I start wanting to claw my skin off. I live in a place where femme means feminine, and where I don't quite measure up to the feminine standard, and have been struggling to communicate that a little bit. SWF3's challenge for Woman, Queen and OJO GANG's presentation has helped calm the near-dysphoria of it. Everyone wore suits -- in the first iteration Kyoka was in a hat, jeans, a hoodie, and a jacket while the other girls were in jerseys and loose trousers -- but were still feminine, Kyoka, Ibuki, Minami, Junna, Hana, Uwa, and Ruu still powerful, still in suits, still women, still queens. It was a stark contrast to everyone else who went the more traditionally feminine route, with BUMSUP even having Aiki wear a wig for long hair and MOTIV broke away from their traditional hiphop to do more femme though they were in polos and a necktie. AG squad went full femme, as expected. One commenter said they appreciated OJO GANG's presentation because it shows that you don't have to be anyone else, you can be yourself and still be a queen.
I spend too long in a place that operates on binaries and nearly lose my damn mind. The Philippines is still very much in that binary: butch/tomboy or femme/lipstick lesbian. I know internally where I stand but to be misinterpreted or misunderstood so often does get tiring, and I just don't have the strength at the moment to really keep that psychological shield against it. It surprised everyone at the studio to learn I like tomboys and butches and I got called a tomboy there once -- it's the short, dyed hair, I think, and the days when I wear training clothes that look like I'm going to a hiphop dance class. I dress like the Motiv girls on my off days. In another country it wouldn't be a stereotype; in mine, it very much is. There is no word for androgynous here. I'm not even androgynous! I just like the contrast of masculine and feminine, and find myself somewhere in the middle But that's far too complex for discussions here, so whatever.
I also have simply stopped trying to find lesbian friends here and have just Given Up for the most part. I've made some friends and that's enough, i think. I've just found it exhausting trying to fit into a social scene whose unspoken norms are things I wasn't raised with or openly disagree with (I am Not a Fan of being friends with your ex, sorry), and who I have felt openly rejected from anyway. It's okay. I will find my people somehow, and if it isn't here then so be it. (So Be It by Clipse... dude)
Maybe that's why I like smithing so much: it's a balance of masculine and feminine, where I am not expected to be present in one way or another, to be one person or another. I was very insecure about my designs at first until I attended my studio's first exhibit and realized that it's not a competitive space, not like the spaces I've been in before. Corporate is a lion's den, and aerial has its rigidity and rules and competitions. But to be in a space like smithing where what is important is the solidity of your technique to make sure your shit doesn't fall apart and the stories you tell through your pieces -- it has been freeing and healing in ways I didn't expect it to be. I have made a flower out of wire, a twisted ring, a pair of dancer earrings, and am making a snake. These are beginner pieces, but I already have ideas for complex ones. It's a place I can transform what has always been deemed masculine about me into something that is ultimately very feminine. I am often insecure about how lean my frame is, how the sports and the activities I like doing tend to be more masculine, and the contrast between that and the things I love looking at and studying, the things I dream of creating. It's very much a middle ground for me, and a space where I can express things in my mind that have nothing to do with words or reading. And in the end I simply love being in the studio and making things, learning the give of the metal and how to shape it, to burn things and create something from metal and flame. I saw photos from the studio exhibit I went to. I was smiling in all of it. It's been a while since something made me so happy just by being there.
i'm still so burnt out and burned by the life I left behind that I am ultimately looking for spaces that let me expand past all of it. I'm still not where I want to be, but I am a lot further from where I was.
There are a lot more things that I want to write but I had acid reflux and need to eat so hopefully I'll check back in and brain dump again soon.
I haven't written anything about relationships or friendships even if that has been what I've been building most, mostly because it's still so personal and mostly because I can't put them into words yet. All I can say now is that I think my relationships are at the minimum more honest and at its best, stronger. I'm learning a lot more about myself these days, and how I can undo a lot of relationship wounding. But at the same time, I've learned to be more secure in my friendships, learning to be less awful to myself, learning how to feel present and safe with my friends. Learning how to let people in in the ways that really matter. My relationship with myself is what has changed most.
Even if the days are still hard, I have smiled more these days, and I'm seeing that there might come a time when I can be really happy. I am working to get there. I am trying my best. Please cheer me on.
今僕がいる未来に向けて
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Date: 2025-07-21 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-28 12:28 am (UTC)