Olive branches and landmines

This past year, time has ebbed and flowed. 

Like smoke signals in the sky, I don't pretend to understand. One second I'm in the purgatory of a 9-5 job and the next it's November 2015 and I just came out, and then it's 2AM and I'm sitting on the couch next to my cat, squinting at my too bright laptop screen while wondering where I am and which version of myself I currently inhabit. 

Am I that weird boy? No. Am I that filmmaker chick? No. Am I that blogger? Definitely no. Am I that 23 year old trans girl perpetually terrified of both of those descriptors? I'll take 'Internalized Transphobia' for three hundred, Alex.

I've haven't written much since March, and I've been asking myself lately: what keeps me coming back here? To this state of being? To this blog? To writing drafts and reading old posts. At first I thought it was probably just the obligation of the thing, knowing it was here. Waiting for me. But I don't think that's it, no. It's something more fundamental than that.

It's this ever present yearning. It's so intoxicating that my impulse was to romanticize it and accept it as an ever present law of the Universe. As if to say,

'I'll always be here, in this place.'

What I'm starting to now realize and ask of myself - slowly, I think - is what is this yearning trying to tell me? The answer: I'm treading water, and before long I'm going to drown.

For a long time now, fear has been my driving force. I've spent an incomprehensible amount of time tabulating every decision that comes to my feet, attempting to determine if it's an olive branch or a landmine. And? They all look like landmines. Every single one of them. I guess I need to get my eyes checked.

The anxiety coursing through my brain is so primal and intense, yet so constant I've become numb to it entirely. I don't even recognize it as anxiety most of the time. I just stare at all the landmines and grimace.

Can you imagine what it would be like to step on one of those? What if I lost both my legs? I would be wheelchair bound for the rest of my life. My whole future, gone in an instant. I could never make more films. God, does thinking this way make me an ableist asshole? What the fuck is wrong with me? 

Better just stay here. Wait it out. 

If I were a better writer, perhaps I could find an adequate metaphor or clever enough simile to articulate the raw, unadulterated fear that stings my eyes every time I think about moving forward. It's too much. Just thinking about the concept of moving is too much. 

But I hate it here, this place. It's a cancer, replicating one cell at a time. Stay here long enough, and it'll kill you. So what do you do? 

You have no choice but to step forward, logically. But just imagine the click as your foot settles on the trigger. Imagine the feeling in slow motion, as your leg is ripped from your body one tendon at a time. Imagine your femur snapping, disintegrating as you fall onto your back - and tell me, truthfully, if moving is a good idea. If you'd be able to accept putting yourself through that pain on the off chance that it might go well for you.

No. 

 I'll be here. For a while more. I'm sorry.