I'm not mad

Just disappointed.

Aug 28, 2025

Is anyone else in the shit right now? I normally don’t like to be so negative, but over the last couple days, overwhelm has started to find its way in and really do a number on me.

Dramatique thoughts like Why god, why. Where is this going? What am I doing here? How I will make a dent? When will I get the chance to do all the things I want to do, to help the people I want to help?

These mental flailings, in addition to feelings of restlessness and not enough-ness, have been plaguing me more than usual as I sit quietly at the museum waiting to tell people about Art.

One thing about going through a gender transition is, it unblocks decades of shoulda-coulda-wouldas. I am haunted (and also delighted) by Chapell Roan’s “Good luck, Babe!” My brain tells me: my life is passing me by. Opportunities missed will never come again.

But aside from my own personal sense of FOMO, I wonder how it will be possible to make a dent in any one of the institutional and socially-constructed problems we see facing people on the edges, and that continue to pummel me in my own life.

When I start to worry about gaza, the housing market, health insurance for trans folks, or the fact that my friends in Minnesota have to teach and take their kids to school post-shooter, I can feel myself sinking. I am still fighting to keep myself afloat so to hear about disturbances in the world can be like an lead anchor in a leaky boat.

Sometimes, when the astrology is right - or very wrong - it all hits me like an electric storm of anxiety making me feel like I might float away. As I try to get myself to manage stress in new ways, deprogram my addictions, and respond with more heartfelt intentions, it often becomes worse. Because instead of futurizing and chasing my next ego hit, I am forced to stay present and deal with it - not something I have always done.

As a result of this cranking up of pressure in the past few weeks, I have recomitted to one of my 12-step programs in the hopes of finding comfort in the community, as well as some of their slightly obnoxious truisms. Things like,

Dear higher power, universe, etc, help me stay sober just for today.

Take it one day at a time.

Nice and easy.

With these little gentle encouragements in mind, I try to stay present for the people I meet wandering around the museum, or the barista at Sky Coffee where I get my chai, the folks at the cheese counter at Whole Foods (best job?), or the people on the phone at Covered CA (that was a fail).

Then yesterday I got rejected by a Lyft driver who showed up to where I was, talked with me about coming in through a gate where I had some bags that needed to be put in the trunk, then drove away. It was a cis woman with perfect hair and a perfect white SUV that looked like it had been newly washed. I was in my black jumpsuit that had old paint on it, despite being washed, so maybe it was that I didn’t look clean. Or maybe she didn’t want to ride the 20 minutes with a they/them. I have no idea, but this has never happened before I started dressing more butch.

I’m debating how messy/confessional to get here. Without divulging too much, let me just say this was just the icing on yesterday’s poop cake. What it did was remind me is something we all know: humans are quite imperfect. And not just Netanyahu or Trump humans, but also the normal people you meet and collaborate with to move your and their lives forward. Boy, are they flawed.

Boy, am I flawed too. Which is why I don’t even feel mad- ok, maybe somewhere in me I’m pissed off- but mostly I’m just disappointed and tired. I feel the weight of responsibility, valid or not, like a parent who feels they have failed their child by not doing things better. If only I had…, maybe the outcome would have been different.

But I’m also disappointed in the great creator in the sky, in people’s inability to move beyond fear, in the violence of capitalism. Why does injustice exist? Why were we created to trigger the hell out of one another? To hurt and steal and shame? It’s not fair. Why do we have feelings if all they do is get hurt?

Art Date

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