I can't communicate

  It's gotta be me. I mean, doesn't it have to be me, if everyone is mad at me, and distancing themselves, yes, it's me then. Ok, how can I get across what is going on in my head?

  My sister is a narcissist and the effects of her personality (if you can call it that) on my psyche are far-reaching when you consider decades of programming.  I literally get paralyzed around her, and to break the paralysis it takes a LOT of fortitude and I am reaching deep for that shit right now.  I have to go over the top -- way over-- angry to the point of spouting actual nonsense right up in her face. I say the most idiotic and made up crap.  If it was anyone else I'd assume they too were just mad and making up dumb shit to say in anger but this one, this one definitely believes what she's saying.  I DO mean it however when I call her a full blown narcissist and tell her that she is going to die alone surrounded by all her precious knick knacks... just like our mother is going to do and just like her mother before her and her mother before her.  Old crones all that rotted away in obscurity left to die by their families. And now we know why.  That is not going to be me. Many is the time I have imagined it, the slow drop from a tall building or the long walk into the sea. That's quite the risky gamble however,

  ... trying to grow old as long as you can without passing over that line where they park you in a nursing home and you have lost your personal freedom and are now governed by others. How would I end it then? I'd have to end it before that happened. But, no matter how or when it happens, it won't be me in a bed surrounded by junk and a couple of offspring hoping you actually stowed a bit of money away somewhere and are going to leave it to them. Ho! naw, I'll be hopefully found curled up in a ball in the snow in Alaska (If there's any snow left by then) having just walked out into a blizzard naked to die like a free human.  No undertaker or oven for me thank you. Let my bones and bits feed the bears and may my bear-host be nourished mightily. But please, do not let the bear start to eat me before I am dead. That is what I hope for.  One cannot speak for the bear.

  ***********
What I would like to know, and what I suppose my stupid therapist will not be able to figure out this decade, is why I am SO paralyzed by my sister's presence. At my age, with the experiences I have had (rugby, military, cowboi, et cetera), I'd not be afraid of a middle aged sister that is shorter than me and out of shape (more so than me!).  Others see her as the most generous, sweetest stage manager, or the kindest, most caring caregiver.  They do not see the vitriol that spews forth when ever we get into the past. Which is, of course, OK for HER to bring up, but if I do it, not relevant, move on. I cannot win, gave up on winning and now don't even know what game it is. Now, I'm just trying to keep my piece on the board, and she keeps setting it back even if it's not her turn.

  My sister erases all traces of me the moment I have passed through a room. 

At first I thought this was her OCD or anal retentive or whatever it is called; I'd joke about how I'd fuck with her by moving a knick knack slightly-- she'd immediately arise and move it back to it's normal position the moment she spotted the error. But as the years wore on I began to realize that she was erasing all traces of me the moment I'd passed through any given room. IF I had washed dishes and put them in the sink drainer, she re-arranges them. IF I have left a pan on the stove top to soak a bit and cool off while I eat, she moves it. Into the sink, or if it was in the sink, she puts it on the stove top. IF I move the blinds up, she puts them down a bit. If I put the vacuum cleaner away, she goes and puts it away properly. If I set something down in any room but my room, it gets put in my bathroom (which she refuses to call "MY" bathroom and insists on calling the GUEST bathroom. I'm not allowed to pick my own towels or put up a whimsical shower curtain) for me to put away in my room.  No trace of me to be found out in the rest of the apartment, with the exception of one picture of me on the fridge, with grandmother. NOT one picture of me as an adult on the fridge and come to think of it, NOT ONE picture on the fridge of ANY of us OLDER adults. No pictures allowed to be seen hanging around where she is seen as "OLD". Her profile pictures are all of her much younger or they are fantasy paintings. You don't' see her real face in her FB pictures either.

   So when I go out of my room I am in HER apartment. I am forced to use all her dishes and all her pots and pans and she has so many plates and glasses and tupperware containers and gadgets and shit, there is no space left for anything of mine. And she's got this system, everything in its place, which is great, except.. there are too many things. To try to get or find something you have to know where it is OR pull EVERYTHING out... which is fine, BUT...  if you dont put it back properly, you're fucked.  So it gets me all totally anxious trying to figure out which container she'd want me to put something in. IF I put it in any container, it's the wrong one. She'll change it out for me though. But she won't tell me what container she switched it to. So I have to hunt for it in the 'fridge.

  Sis has zero boundaries so when I am cooking and using a very sharp knife she will absolutely just barge right in and weasel her way in to get to the sink, NOT SEEING that I have a big chef's knife in my hand and am chopping. I stop and hold still and stare at the wall. She's nudged me aside. While I was chopping, the idiot. NO SENSE OF HER SURROUNDINGS, or... is she that vindictive?  I'll never know. I only know that I hate cooking when she is around so now I do my cooking at lunch only. Dinner is cold something or other. If I eat dinner. Good lord, I can't taste anything! For so long here I thought I wasn't eating because I had a crush but good grief, I'm still not eating. It's just that I don't taste anything, and it seems like too much trouble to cook, and my sister is always cooking really yummy SMELLING things but I go in to cook, having gotten an appetite from her cooking, and I just can't, because she's in there. So I go sit down in my room to wait and by the time she's done, I'm just not even interested any more.

  When I write this it sounds like some really harsh deep depression type shit. But deep inside I'm still me, happy enough, despite the circumstances.  Here I find myself having pushed away all but a tiny core of people in my life, even Karen is distancing. I know that is happening.  I also know it's all I can do to keep my head above the waterline here, it's why I am writing and not playing video games right now. I want to remember it all. I've....

  I've isolated myself for the past 4 years having given up entirely on life and just succumbed to my sister's will because it was easier to give up than to stand up to her.  In that 4 years I learned how to build computers, mod Fallout 4, manipulate game files, maintain a PC, clean it etc. I learned a lot of Spanish words and phrases, I made some online friends, but mostly, I learned a lot about my self. The deeper I go the messier it gets but the good news is, I'm kind of a blank slate when it comes to new experiences. Wide open to them. And to new people. Forming rooted tribes or tribal experiences may not be for me. At least it doesn't look like it at present. There's a reason Stephen Elliot is my favorite author-- we're vagabonds. Barreling through life sometimes, others simpering. But moving forward, learning, thinking, being. Soon, I'll be doing.

  Old ways love to entrench, and some of these behaviors are dug deep after getting rooted for 4 years. But I'm aware and I'm trying not to beat myself up. Don't I keep starting over? Don't I keep picking it up and making it better than before?  While I do miss the safety and security of the job at the hospital, I do not miss the simpering writhing mess I was inside then. What a coward I was!

  Another situation where, because I had promised not to leave, I could not leave when I wanted to. Bren was cheating on me, I knew it, and I should have fucking bolted before winter hit. Leaving her duplex in the middle of a blizzard to drive to Ted Steven's airport-- then leaving the car in the lot. For good. I remember looking at my dog tags hanging from the rear view and thinking: "I am too sad to even bother". Just got out and left them hanging. It's a miracle they found their way back to me.  And every time I go to Tillamook I look for that stupid car. I wonder if it still has the bumper sticker "Alaska Girls Kick Ass" heh heh. I cant put that on my car now can I? Although I'm not going to own another car I guess.

  Honestly I am at a crossroads. And I may need to reinvent myself because this is a real low loser type of situation here. I mean I CAN SEE how it looks from outside this bedroom. I can see how crazy I sound to just about everyone. I can hear myself screaming inside half the time.  It's sort of like that disease where you can hear and see everything but you cant move or speak ... I feel like I can see what is going on inside me, I know why it's happening, I understand how it got this way, I understand how I let it happen. I understand it's all my fault, I get it. I know that this is not going to be an easy fix and I have to find a compassionate place to land and when I do land I can't fuck it up with my anger. I'm only angry at myself and my sister but mostly myself because it took 3 and 3/4 years to realize what I have become.  I'm pathetic.  I know that. But M has some real empathy for my plight and will take all my boxes and the computer. I'd sell the computer but it took me a year to save up for the parts. I don't think I can do without a PC for that long although a detox will certainly be in order when I get out of here.

  Honestly I didn't really think about it before but my transition is being met with some real typical drama like sis dead naming me and me freaking out in every way possible about this or that to do with transition and getting to Oregon is like ... you know, OREGON OR BUST!  all us poor trans want to go to Portland, it's where we are accepted. It IS a total freakout telling everyone what you are when you are just figuring it out.

 Solidarity with every poor sap who ever realized they were trans and just wanted to be like all the other happy little trans... lucky bastards. Sometimes-- of course! -- I wish I'd never heard or seen any transgender people.  I wish I did not know that some have found happiness by transitioning to the other gender. Because mostly I despair of ever being at home in my body, and I despair of being at home in my brain. At least if I got some help from the medical community in this I could feel a little bit of peace within.  when I look at the picture of me with the photoshopped beard, I smile for real. I sort of smirk even. That 's me. But right now I'm a floppy titted splotchy skinned bow legged crooked teeth bent nose twat that lives in essentially their mom's basement and plays with the computer and the cat all day and all night.

  the other thing I learned while I've been SO ONLINE for SO LONG? I'll talk about that in another post. [EXTREMELY ONLINE] [or: what's up with the youth and their acronyms and shit]