So, I'm doin' pretty good all things considered, but I can feel myself getting real antsy at not being able to do as much as I used to while I'm still in the early stages of recovery.
Got another two months off work still - I've been spending my more available hours going through Overdue and finally actually rewriting it up to my current standard (hee hee hoo hoo, I have developed as a writer over the last two years and it's showing in the redrafts of the first few chapters so far), and otherwise just sort of laying out plans for other longer form projects I have - but I haven't been able to do much art wise without putting myself out of action the following day.
Hopefully by next week I'll be able to start allocating drawing time back into my daily routine, even if its just a few hours a day (I used to put like 4-6 hours of drawing in a day before surgery). And as well as that, god, I would love to be able to get out and go for a walk for an hour or so during the day. Enjoy summer a lil bit instead of being laid up at home.
The gender feels are real as well, holy shit. I posted that thing yesterday, day before? I forget, but I posted a thing about how gender is a buffet, not a menu, and you can have whatever bits you want - and that's kinda how I feel. It's kinda how I already felt, but nothing reaffirmed that more than getting bottom surgery and looking in the mirror a week or so later and my brain just going "Boy".
I am sure I have a lot of unlearning to do still - the NHS did a fucking number on my understanding of myself and my identity, but yeah. I used he/she/they/it interchangeably anyway but now 'she' doesn't feel... quite right. it doesn't feel wrong but it feels like the smallest of the four. I'm a boy-girl-thing, it's cool, and honestly, I love that the journey of self discovery keeps going for me.
I also, really, really love that I have a community in which I can express these things because my experience in the recovery home right after surgery was... not great, socially speaking. There were some real awful entitled people in there who had a very narrow view of what it means to be trans and queer - the kinds of people who think there is a 'correct' way to be trans, so to speak - and I am so grateful that I can call myself a thing or a monster or a creature and have it refer to my gender identity and for most folks I know to not recoil in horror and instead just go "Oh, yeah that's neat, whatever works for you," (though I do understand why some would get squicked by me calling myself a thing, etc.)
Forever onwards, gender is a fuck
