“Just chillin’”

First, it was the new year, then, it was the LUNAR new year. Then, it’s the last day of January. Time flies, and I feel like I, who do not have wings, have accidentally missed the plane that it carries.

It’s only the first month but many things have happened. The coronavirus epidemic has kept me home for more than a week, and I have done very little than sleeping, dreaming, and messing around with all sorts of things other than doing actual work. What counts as productive work, anyway? Recently even that seems to have become quite vague.

My life seemed to have changed quickly and drastically in the middle of January. For a little background, I’ve been working on a handful of different projects in parallel — the continuation of my thesis, a music EP, some research work for some music tech entrepreneurship, volunteering at some local queer communities. Thinking back on it, I think if I only did one, or even two, of all these different things, I would have been able to see the future much more clearly than I did. The problem was that I did know this, but still, I wasn’t able to let go of any of them, because to give up on each would be to give up on a part of me that is important, and I couldn’t do it without some kind of external push. It wasn’t a decision I could make for myself. That’s what changed, though.

In the middle of January, I got offered a job. The job involved helping out with organizing music tours, and it’ll be a great opportunity to help me get familiar with the indie music scene and the biz. At that time, I was in Hong Kong, sleep-deprived and not expecting anything of the like. But I knew right away I was going to take it. I knew then that taking on a full-time job would mean that I have to give up on working on my thesis project, and I knew then, however ashamed I felt about this, I was ready to give up. I had been splicing myself into pieces, and I was getting tired. The offer was finalized in about a week, then I emailed my collaborators/former mentors about the news. We spent our next meeting pretty much saying goodbye as collaborators, and catching up as friends. It felt like the end of an era. Not quite the beginning of something new, but I hope soon it will.

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently. Perhaps a little too much. Or maybe I’m just at a point where I ought to write more and think less.

The virus has kept me home for a while. I’m not mad about it, though, not at all. I think I’m actually glad to have all this spare time. For a long time in my life now, it’s been deadlines after deadlines — deadlines from work, deadlines for school, self-imposed deadlines for weekly meetings or getting in touch with someone for the next steps. Deadlines for traveling, deadlines for submitting your piece, deadlines for completion, deadlines for … And I just can’t remember the last time I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my time. Like I didn’t have to be somewhere. Like I can just sit around all day and tell myself I don’t have to feel back about it, not today. (I suppose it’s called a “vacation”??? )

To be fair, there are a ton of things that I probably should be doing, or at least could do. Like I still got a lot of work on the five songs for my EP, the website, the videos, all the online courses I want to take or am in the middle of taking, all the books I said I’d read… But I don’t have to do them right now. No one is after me for anything.

As a result, I finally have plenty of time to just sit with myself, and think. About me.

Comparing to a few of my friends, I think I’m quite willing to confront myself. It’s not easy to admit my flaws and face the parts that I struggle with, but it’s not hard. I think I like figuring out myself, piecing things together. I like studying people, and I guess I’m a person. So even though I’ve had many days when I poured myself two shots of scotch to make hanging out with myself more tolerable, on those days I’d still try to write a little in my journal, about how I’m feeling, like leaving clues for my future self to decipher.

I used to be much harder on myself in the past, a method that has worked out in its own way, but now I’ve been trying to be kinder, more compassionate.

I hate this word, but I guess I’m “healing,” I’m “taking the time to heal.” From what? It’s hard to parse out all the causes for trauma, or even point out a specific time span. There are external sources, and there are internal sources. Maybe it isn’t important anymore. Whatever it is, I think I’m getting better.

These few days I’ve decided to not push myself too hard, forget about the deadlines, and just live life. I try to sit close to my emotions and see where I am, how I feel, if I could be honest and sincere.

What I realize is that I actually feel okay.

I don’t feel stuck like I used to. I don’t feel so hopeless, so weak. When I think about how I felt a year ago, I remember myself being so weak and fragile, constantly being sucked in by some negativity swamp. I felt like I was lost in the woods at night, a forest full of spiders where I’ve stupidly built my base (a metaphor that would make a lot of sense if you’ve played Don’t Starve). I didn’t know how to talk about these feelings, because I was so ashamed about how weak I was. I’m supposed to be strong and capable, and the thought of me being so weak and vulnerable disgusts me. Now it did feel a bit silly to look back, but I did what I would do. I think I understand.

Now, though, I actually don’t feel so stuck and powerless. Sometimes I actually feel a bit hopeful.

But then, I also don’t feel “great,” whatever that means. Most of the time I just feel kind of flat; calm, and more or less collected, but static. People should be moving around, and I feel like I should be moving too, but I just seem to sit here, not quite wanting to move.

So I guess the question now is, where do we go from here? I don’t have the answer yet, at least not one that I’m happy with. Though I have a few leads.

This is where I am: over the past few months, I’ve set my base in Guangzhou, and it’s actually quite comfortable. I live in an apartment that’s quite spacious for the price range, and I’ve arranged it in a way that makes me quite happy and proud. The living room is good for having guests but is also my home studio; I have a keyboard, a MIDI controller, a guitar, a condenser mic, all hooked up and ready to use. I’ve also got a gigantic whiteboard for brainstorming. There’s a loft above my bedroom that serves as a guest room, and I have some plans to add to its functionality.

The personal studio makes me both proud and quite scared. It’s one of the few things I’ve always wanted but never felt quite qualified to do. Sure, I’ve been writing songs ever since, but it was always just me and a guitar. Transcriptions of my songs exist only in text files of the lyrics, with chords. Sometimes I don’t even write the chords down, and I have to go back and listen to the recording. I’ve never had doubts in my musicianship but I also never had faith in my identity as a musician; I never felt like I was good enough, for some reason. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to improvise on the guitar (or even play, these days, lol), maybe it’s because I don’t know how to play the piano, maybe it’s because I only know music theory as math, maybe it’s because I’ve never taken singing lessons, maybe it’s because I’ve only had one paid-gig in my life and rarely performed outside of school. I’ve always felt lesser-than in front of “professional” musicians, no matter if they’ve had more or less formal training. This year, though, I’m going to try to actually allow myself to be a musician. Or artist, perhaps — I haven’t found quite the right word yet. Make a lot of shit music, and then grow that way. I might have a gig in June or so, but I’ll probably also try out some open-mics. Even though I’m pretty scared of performing, especially with my voice.

The other thing that makes me feel both proud and scared is that I’ve been active in the local queer and trans communities. I’ve been volunteering a bit, but mostly I just engage in a large number of online group chats and then shitpost sometimes. I’ve kind of known who I am since I was 13 or so, in the sense that the particular piece of factual information has existed in my consciousness. But only since a little more than a year ago, towards the end of senior year, did I start to really confront this fact. That, I guess, I’m transgender, and I wasn’t really happy with my life mainly because of it. It was quite a ground-shattering realization that the reason why I felt so uncomfortable and unhappy with myself was that I had been trying to be someone I wasn’t. In trying to be someone else, I eventually trapped myself inside some persona I’ve created. Looking back, the signs were all there; perhaps I should’ve known much earlier, or perhaps I really did always knew.

Choosing to do something about it is something completely different, though. It embarrasses me, but it wasn’t easy for me to come out, to really come out, to myself and to people around me. I’m not a conservative person at all, but sometimes I feel like I’m not radical enough for a true progressive. I’m a pacifist who likes to seek middles grounds, my impulse is to avoid things than to confront them — I am aware of this, and I want to be progressive, so I try whenever I can to do the right thing even when I don’t want to. It’s important to me that I am honest and authentic. That I’m trustworthy.

That is part of why it was so hard to come out as trans because that means admitting I haven’t lived truthfully. I felt like I’ve deceived everyone around me, even people who were supposedly my close friends. That there was a place in me that I’ve always kept everyone out. It made me feel a little lonely, sure, but what scared me the most was that if some people found out, would they feel like I’ve lied to them? Like our relationship hasn’t been authentic? Like they didn’t know me at all? And I’m scared that they would be right in feeling that way because indeed I have lied by omission that I wasn’t what I seemed. It did happen a few times, I think. Some people, with whom I felt like I really had a connection with and who seemed to have wanted a connection with me, just gradually stopped talking to me after I come out to them. I know that it’s a good way to screen out true friends from randos, but when it happened, it just added to the feeling that I kept losing things. On the other hand, there are people who I haven’t talked to for a while when I came out, and I don’t know how to reconnect with them now, because in some sense the version of me they knew has died. If I do want to (or have to) reconnect with them, I’d have to make a choice to either pretend to be some dead shadow or burden them with the truth. At the time it felt like these relationships were all lost too, although I guess for some of them, there remain opportunities for new relationships.

Anyway, so I got depressed and decided to live outside of the closet. And everything feels quite new, and there is still so much to figure out. Dating is different, making friends is different, getting around is not that different, but a little different. I won’t get into the details here, maybe I will some other day. The gist is: being trans is already quite strange, complicated and overwhelming, and being out as trans is also quite strange, complicated, overwhelming, and a little scary, all in different ways.

Sometimes I still feel very insecure about who I am. It’s hard not to be scared when you look at the Instagram of the few role models who have had similar experiences as you, and see inspirational content and feel very validated and good, and then scroll down to the comments section and see all sorts of ignorance and hate spewed all over the place, occassionally getting even more likes than the role model’s civil and seamless responses. It’s hard not to be scared when you hear about the awful things people in your community go through. It’s hard not to be sacred when almost everything you see in the news about your community are bad. I have many reasons to feel relatively safe, though, as according to the statistics, I’m not very susceptible to murder. But there are still all sort of stuff to be worried about — how will I get access to the treatments I need/want? Can I still find a job that pays, and will I be respected at that job? Will I meet people who accept me and love me as who I am? Will my identifications still be accepted? What will the future hold? I don’t know the answers, I don’t even know all of the questions, sometimes I feel scared not just because of the stuff I know I should be scared of, but also because there seems to be a lot of bad stuff out there that I don’t even know yet. It feels like every step could land on a trap, and I will just continue to lose things.

That sounds more negative than I actually am, though. Maybe at one point, I did feel that way, that I had a lot to lose, and that I did lose a lot. But now I don’t feel that nearly as much. It’s not that I have nothing to lose, but right now, I feel like the most important things I do have are not that easy to be taken away. I’ve been privileged enough to receive some elite education, and no one can take away my knowledge and skills. I’ve been lucky enough to have built relationships with friends and mentors, and I know they’d be supportive of me if I need them, if I let them. And I’ve lived, and I’ve loved, I’ve felt things; no one can take away those experiences from me. I know myself, and I know some bits of the world through myself. I’m also physically able, and mentally quite functional. Plus, I also care about stuff, and sometimes when I care enough it becomes a drive to do good things, and that’s also all up to me.

So that’s another thing that I want to think about. I have a voice, and even though I don’t like it yet, it seems wasteful not to use it. More importantly, it doesn’t feel like the decision I would make to not use it. I want to write more, create more, express more. Not just about being trans, but about being, in general. I don’t know if I want to make it political, but I think I want it to be personal, but not only personal. I don’t know exactly how I would do that, but that’s another thing I want to do this year.

In a nutshell, I think I want to be chill this year, but also do more than “just chilling and staying back.” I want to get back in the game, whatever that is. But not in an unhealthy, intense way. Just let myself grow out and see where things leads.

I guess that’s my manifesto for 2020, at least a rough draft of it. It’s getting late though, probs should hit the bed. eddy out!