right now in Texas

powerful people 
Think that it is abuse
To let me feel free

They want our existence to be reported 
Our support systems ripped out from under us

They want us gone
Because we make them question every lie they ever told themselves about how they were allowed to exist through the world

We make them confront the terrifying expanse that the universe becomes when you realize it is your right to define yourself boundlessly,
to be fully human, 
fully unique and yet the same, 
fully perfect 
and yet never not fully a work in progress 





There are people 
Who Think that it is abuse
To help me feel free

But who refuse to see the enormously obvious, heart shatteringly painful reality that is
That their words rip open barely healed wounds 
There will be unthinkable, unforgivable pain because of this
There will be lives broken and lost.


I want to hold a message of hope. 
Of ‘we will prevail’. 

But it’s hard to stay positive and be a trans person in a world where your right to exist continues to be questioned in new old ways.
I’m tired.
I’m in pain. 



——-
Required afterthought:
But we will care for eachother 
And we will care for ourselves 
And we will be free

Defining our purpose: the trajectory of my math department

There is a lot of discussion around what the math department at my school will look like over the coming years. I rarely contribute to the discussions, sometimes out of anxiety but mostly because I am listening to what others have to say. I want to fully understand where we stand right now and how we got there before I can begin imagining where I want us to go. Here are some things that have come up when I have been thinking about this.

I want us to be a place:

Where you problem solve and model and visualize and predict

Where you learn to communicate precisely

Where you practice seeing patterns and connections

Where you use logical and organized thinking

Where you analyze and critique the world you live in, and brainstorm solutions

Where you come out in the end fundamentally believing in your ability to struggle productively

Where you lean into the unknown and the confusing with curiosity and creativity

Where you learn to ask questions far more than you find answers

assorted thoughts from my notes app (pt. 4)

quote from C: “I like having options even though I hate making decisions”
reading recommendations from a friend: Heartstopper, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
pretty sure this is a journaling note when I was panicking and trying to calm myself by writing down all the thoughts: “We are all just human. We are all big and little. We are universes contained within universes. Of course this is hard.”
shopping list for yarn
“How much corn” (thats the whole note)
ideas for a review day: “Crocheting Olympics”
quotes from C playing video games:
1. “That was not very nice”
2. “aaaauh”
“I won’t let other people use gender against me”

parenthood

to acknowledge that I want a child 
is to acknowledge that my parents wanted me 

that someone wants me
that someone thought the world would be better off with me in it
that without me, something was missing. 

and for some reason my soul has trouble accepting that.

Reflecting (~7 months after originally writing this poem): i really want to be a parent someday. i want to be a soft place for a child to land when things get hard (i heard this phrase recently and its stuck in my head. it just feels nice). I want to be a safe space to be imperfect. i want the experience of parenthood. i think i would be good at it.

guiding thoughts for 2022

Alternatively titled: things learned in 2021

trust my note to self from a while back (see thoughts i found in my notes app while cleaning it out pt 2): “I have to consider the possibility that I have not done something wrong up to this point”
- perhaps i need to approach this year differently than past years: I am not trying to fix all my mistakes from the year before and break all my “bad habits”. I am not trying to reset and have this finally be the year where I get everything together.
- I don’t want to reset. I am happy where I am.
processing things takes time. its messy and chaotic but when the dust clears, things will feel better.
sharing thoughts with people i care about helps me feel closer to them. who would have guessed.
allow myself to rest. I need more rest than I think I do, and that’s okay.

things i learned in costuming my first show

This was my first show as the lead costume person. It was the fall production at the school I teach at. I had worked in the costume shop at my college but costuming a 30 person show was quite the learning curve from being responsible for a handful of pieces.

shopping is the last step. the first step is to assess what you already have to work with. That means going through the closet at the school as soon as possible. and that means overcoming the anxiety of having to ask someone to unlock the closet as soon as possible. And that preferably means more than 2 weeks before the show goes up.
1. when you do go shopping, go with a List.
2. Stick to the List.
  1. unless something really sticks out and would be so perfect for some specific thing.
3. but otherwise stick to the List.
ask for clarification when you have questions, and ask for guidance when you feel lost.
start big projects early. and finish them early. There’s more to do the closer you get to the show. it grows exponentially.
you can not make custom clothes for everyone. particularly if you insist on avoiding using patterns. Or just get more comfortable using patterns.
Students care how their clothes fit them. they might not always say it but they care. I said this when I started but “clothing is both an important part of creating the world of the play, but also is something deeply personal. It is something that will affect how people see and perceive your body.” i agree with past me on that.
not everything has to be (and shouldn’t be) original or handmade. you need clothing that fits into the universe of the play, and with many plays taking place in a human/earth universe, good costumes are often just real clothing. wild.
shared shoes need work. there needs to be a better system. the shoe buckets were my nemesis
have a rack of things to be put away, a rack of general pulls, and then a rack of specific pulls with sections for people to try on. and have a done rack. so 4 racks ideally.
have more organized costume closest. (and yes what could be done is i could stay after school in this off period between shows and organize it but i am trying to set boundaries and that is not my job. i need to figure out how to organize as we go or something)
talk to the middle school play costumier so you don’t accidentally mess up each others stuff
learned from the director: have a big vision. You will inevitably have to make cuts, but it is easier to edit.
student assistants/costumiers/actors helping out are EVERYTHING.
get to know as many students as possible. they have amazing ideas. and wardrobes of clothes that already fit them.
you will always stay later than you think you will during tech week
take pictures of finished outfits. people will forget what pieces went with who. (You are people).
must have: hot glue, needle and thread, backup neutral base costume pieces, pencil, sharpie, scissors, dark socks, sticky notes, extra hangers, Safety Pins!!!!, running to-do list
make a list of costume elements that are mentioned at all in the script. go to rehearsal/find out if costumes have stage directions (ex. someone’s jacket is stolen, so they need a jacket)
set up regular meetings with the creative team, or make sure you have regular check-ins in some way
you can make most things out of scrap/repurposed fabric. as long as you don’t need many, many of that thing that match (for example, 20 mermaid tails)
i need to share my ideas. they are good ideas. even if they are too large sometimes. that does not mean they are not worth sharing (see 9)
if the director doesn’t like your pick, its not a personal insult. it means that it didn’t match the universe he was envisioning. and thats okay.
student assistants/costumier/actors helping out are EVERYTHING (repeated for emphasis)
just because an idea wasn’t right for this show doesn’t mean its a bad idea (see 17).
dilemmas about how to work with problematic source material are really hard. no real solution here other than talk it out with people until you land on a solution that everyone feels comfortable with. don’t ignore it. put it out in the open.
1. this was made in reference to a group of people who were ~ implied ~ to be native to an island
the students are so good and kind and talented and work so hard, and it is incredible to see the magic they create and their growth over the course of the show. the students will make this experience for you.

hot pick mermaid tail made from an old curtain, with glittery scales cascading from the top. The bottom is lines with dangling sparkles. The skirt is only visible from the waist down and the person wearing it sits atop a latter. — big ol’ mermaid tail that I am very proud of.

taking care

Originally written December 25, 2021: My current style of self love, or self care, because they really are one in the same, is very sporadic. I have impressive streaks of hygiene, meeting sleep goals, and staying on top of chores. But more often I have ruts of exhaustion, of “I’ll get to that tomorrow”, of “I’ll be fine without that”. These continue until there is some impetus, something within my body that can no longer be ignored or pushed off. Often its acne, or a muscle, or a joint, or a migraine.

I am going to work on, instead, taking care of myself gently and consistently.

small poems (1)

I push myself constantly for growth.
But what if I just maintain for a while?
Enjoy the view from here?

on being the only trans person in the room

This is a series thoughts in my attempt to process a meeting at work where we discussed trans people and students in such an abstract way that I felt invisible.

To be trans is to be traumatized.

To come out is to choose authenticity but also to choose more trauma — not because you want it but because it is inevitable. When I am in public I am afraid of “looking too trans”. I am afraid of what people will say to me. I am afraid of what people will do to me. I am afraid that I only have myself to rely on or protect me. I feel alone.

This violence has never happened to me. But it happens to people like me, for being people like me, every day. I have accepted that I will face people who hate me before we have even met. I have accepted that because I need to in order to survive.

Part of coming out for many people is sharing your new name. Names hold power. To be trans is to take that power back. To fully attempt the human super power of self definition.

There is so much in changing a name or pronouns.

It is not a small or a quick decision.

It is a decision filled with anxiety and pain and stress. Asking for this change is an incredibly difficult step for a student to take. It is one that is not taken without a tremendous amount of thought and consideration. To choose to come out as trans is to choose to have to prove that you know yourself better than anyone else does, to a judge to a doctor to a school. And to have to prove that over and over and over.

And to, after all this pain and anguish and celebration of making it to the moment of living in truth, be told that the “official record” is more important than your lived experience is detrimental to someone’s sense of self and belonging.

A document with name your parents chose before they even met you is somehow more official than one that you labored over and tested and changed and finally found something that made you feel whole. I don’t understand.

To choose to dead name someone is to tell someone that you don’t care about the pain and trauma and bravery and hatred and joy that got them to this point. It is to say that your comfort is more important than this person’s personhood. We cannot do that to students.

assorted thoughts from my notes app (pt. 3)

Statistics for how many calls I get per day to sub for various schools, despite working full time (I stopped keeping track after 3 days)
“I am better adapted to a world with technology” (most of the time)
“When teaching I give away the answer too fast”
A selfie from when I was feeling cute
Outline for my murder mystery review activity
Things to do with my mom during break
“I need more structure for self care”
“My body is a plane of a non Euclidean geometry”
“I love looking for patterns in data”
“Proofs are about seeing connections”
A list of ideas of things I would love to create from writing a book to
How do you be introspective without being overly self critical (edited from original longer jumbled thought)
“Adapting to a genre vs conforming to it”
“Bad healthcare’s effect on my relationship with my body: Its too expensive to check in, So I tune it out. I tune out the creeks and throbs, the stiffness and pressure”