There is a sticker on the lefthand corner of my laptop, below the keyboard I am typing this on, that says, “You got this.” It is slowly peeling away, curling up, to leave only the white background the words had been pasted onto. I feel like that sticker.
More specifically, I feel like the white, background layer of the sticker that is clinging tightly to the computer while its pretty facade, the outside layer pretending to be positive and put together, peels away.
I’ve been away from this blog for a few months after proclaiming my desire to post more often and punctually. Unfortunately, I could not predict how these first couple months 2020 would go for me. It’s been shit. The worst part about this is that it looks like I’m doing okay from the outside, which is a lie I am constantly reinforcing. I’ve come out as a trans guy to my entire family and been more or less accepted for who I am. I am in the process of getting a tattoo that means a lot to me. I am about to graduate college. I started testosterone. And I have a job (albeit a part-time one) that I enjoy.
But I am still unhappy.
I’ve let my depression get so bad that I have relapsed on a bad habit I haven’t given into for years. I’ve thought often about how I want to die and how life will always be hard for me as a neurodivergent, queer trans guy who will probably never pass as cis. I have neglected myself and hidden my thoughts away because I don’t think I am worthy of sharing them.
In January, I was so happy because I got my name legally changed to my real name. The happiness was crushed quickly on a trip to Baltimore for work. The TSA made it very difficult for me to get through security because of my name change, even though I had several forms of ID that should have let me through. I had to have everything thoroughly searched and taken out my bags for everyone to see. I had a woman spell out my deadname loudly in front of me to someone else. Several TSA agents snapped at me and treated me like a child, refusing to let me speak and advocate for myself. And I had to pretend to be okay with all of this because my manager was behind me, watching all of this happen.
My first instinct is to tell myself that this was not as traumatic as things that other trans people, especially trans people of color, go through. This wasn’t a hate crime; it was merely a failure of society. But it was my first taste of how shitty the world will be to me for years to come. Sure, I’ve had people purposefully misgender me or call me slurs on the street, but I can ignore that as ignorance. These TSA agents knew exactly what they were doing and took no time to think about the way it felt to be on the other side of that interaction. Twice. In a city I used to call home and a big city that I would expect to be more progressive. If I can’t feel safe in either of these types of city, where will I ever feel safe?
Right as I was starting to recover from the trauma—and it was trauma, even if it wasn’t as bad as it could have been—another tragedy struck in the form of the death of a loved one. A loved one who had not only embraced my trans identity but celebrated it. “I didn’t lose a granddaughter,” she said in a message to me, “I gained a rockstar grandson.” And then, a few weeks later, she was gone. Just as I was trying to reverse the process of distancing myself from my family, I lost one of the people I most wanted to get back. And I’m still recovering from that.
Because of these two events and the mental illnesses that have exacerbated them, my brain has shut down for much of 2020. I’ve been in a fog, feeling separated from my body and therefore not taking good care of it. I have closed off any emotional vulnerability with others and have let my friends ask for emotional support without reciprocation because I don’t feel comfortable taking it.
This past week, I have been gravitating toward listening to angry rap and rock music, not the usual angsty pop punk on most of my playlists. Because, even though I didn’t want to admit it, I am angry. I am so fucking angry. I have never been this angry before. I am angry at society. I am angry that I do not have the guts to try to change society. I am angry my friends have failed to be there for me. I am angry I can never catch a break, especially from myself. I am angry I have chemical imbalances in my brain that make me do/think weird things that I can’t control.
I am angry that this world was not built for me. Yet I let this world control so much of my life anyway.
I was not ready to face this anger until today. I’ve even avoided having any silent time to journal or just think because this anger and sadness are so big I felt like my mind would just crumble. But I’ve found a way to avoid this while allowing myself room to be angry and sad: writing.
I am done censoring myself in my writing. I censor my speech and my appearance and my social media. But my writing is where I can be honest. It is a place to express what I need and want to say. Even if I am afraid of it.
So this is me promising to you, and to myself, that my writing will be honest from now on, even if that means exploring parts of my brain I’d rather leave alone or editing my words less or falling behind in my schoolwork. And if I find myself censoring my writing for anyone, no matter who may be looking at it, I will no longer tell myself that it’s okay.
This honesty is not an immediate fix to my problems. I still can’t get out of bed before 10 in the morning. I still can’t bring myself to exercise. I am behind on homework and my job search. I am still participating passively in life. But I can write honestly. So that’s what I’ll do.
I was watching Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette” today and she said something that I think will stick with me for a long, long time: “Stories are the cure.” Not to mental illness or sadness or anger, but the cure to whatever disease has grabbed hold of humanity and made society into the hate-filled cesspool it is.
Stories are the cure. And it’s time I started contributing.
-Ryn Peter Baginski
The Devil’s Highway
Before you freak out about the amount of books I read while having a concussion, just take a closer look at the list. It is almost entirely graphic novels and audiobooks. Like last month, I’m going to focus on the books I have the most thoughts on since the list is so long and neither you nor I want to be sitting in front of the computer forever.
cute graphic novel is Bloom, which is a romantic love story instead of a friendship story. There is baking, flirting, two boys in love, family love, and deciding what to do in the future.
playwright and actor extraordinaire. His narration added a whole new dimension to the story. I read this book a few years ago and just felt meh about it. But this go-around, I actually cried a few times and fell in love with Dante through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s portrayal of him. I even found Ari, the narrator, less annoying. The only issue with listening to an audiobook narrated by someone with such a soothing voice is that I found myself just relaxing into the lull of his voice. Boy, am I glad I already knew the plot!
It was advertised to me as a found family story, but that was not the main focus of the story. Sure, the main character was an orphan and, sure, she had to find her own family. But it felt more like a coming of age story, her realizing that the world is not how she thought it was. And while this does sound like a fantastic idea for a story and people have been raving about this book, there were a few too many clichés for me to be able to ignore them. Full of striking imagery and lovable characters, I would still recommend this novel, but I can’t say for sure whether I want to continue with the story.
project. This story is also about the San Francisco housing crisis and how homelessness affects kids, making friendships with people outside your socioeconomic class, and how to give/accept help from others. I can’t wait for kids to read this and internalize the important message that you need to listen and act on what you hear and see in order to be really helpful.
John Green and the movies based on his books haven’t disappointed me yet, so let’s keep the streak going!
I used to strongly dislike baths. Since I started showering in, like, middle school, I’ve always found showers more relaxing than baths. But then I fell in the shower. And showers make me ever so slightly anxious at the moment, even with a bath mat that is supposed to keep me from slipping again. So I bought bath bombs, face masks, and bath tea made of essential oils. I put on a swimsuit (because I dislike being in the bath for so long naked; it’s a weird thing that bothers me) and played music or an audiobook. Then I just sat and soaked in warm water, which after a couple of temperature tries, has become quite relaxing. When everything was sore, the warmth helped soothe my muscles. It’s just nice to sit and do nothing but still feel like you are taking care of yourself.
significant others. But I love snuggling with my dog.)
letting my brain heal. It’s okay to be those things when letting your emotions heal. It’s okay to be those things when you just need time. I’m working on this one!
the time in high school. Her books in the Wayfarers trilogy (all of which are listed above because I read them all this month) offer so many characters that are easy to care about. She makes me question what my definition of a sentient person is, shows me how xenophobia can be worse in isolated communities, and offers many different answers to the big question of “What’s the point?” The first book, surprisingly, is my least favorite in the series, but it is still super amazing. This is the one that made me challenge my ideas of “normal” and how different societies can only be judged through the lens of that society’s norms. It made me care about aliens and humans and an AI. They found a family in each other, and getting a peek into that family was absolutely worth my time.
about the future of AI, I realized I was the only one who wasn’t scared that AI could become sentient. Because if they are, they’re going to be people. And people are both good and bad. If the AIs take over, it is because a small group of them were bad or were taken advantage of by humans. Basically, I am all for introducing new types of people (even artificial ones) into the groups I spend time with.
Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz, and The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling.
person also can pump the caver’s body full of drugs and hormones whenever they want. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t say why it gets thrilling, but believe me when I say I will not being looking at caves the same way anytime soon. They creep me out now, and I almost stayed up super late one night to get through it. (Thirty more pages! I finished it right when I woke up.) I was looking for a change from the heartwarming stories I was reading and I definitely got it (even if the ending was still a little bit cheesy).
sometimes felt thin, I’m so glad this book exists because it will show teens (and even adults) that having depression or other mental illnesses doesn’t have to be your entire life. It’s okay to need medication to stay alive and functional. Because many books focus on the struggles of mental illness rather than what we can do to combat it, this is an important message. The ending of this book almost made me cry, but in the best way. It was a realistic but hopeful ending. My favorite kind.
see the humanity of drunk drivers as well as the humanity of their victims beyond just numbers. 50 Queers Who Changed the World was good but not great; there was lots of deadnaming, but I also loved learning about some amazing queer people I had never heard of (and some I already knew). The Miserable Mill was miserable for the Baudelaires but entertaining for me. I learned that old Spider-Man comics are super heckin’ cheesy. (One was sponsored by a toothpaste company and had several scenes set at the dentist’s office… I guess even Doc Ock and Spider-Man need to take care of their teeth?)
presentation on the written word would be boring since we were all there for a writing class. So I did my presentation on David Blaine, who I had recently become obsessed with at the time.
way I look. It has been making me doubt my abilities at every little moment. Then, at a staff meeting this past week, someone made a comment about how trying your hardest to solve a problem is all you can do. This made me think of David Blaine, and how, to learn all of those fancy card movements and sleights of hand, he had to start small and mess up a lot. But he’s still confident in his abilities. He still approaches every trick, whether it’s a three-card monte trick or jumping off a hundred-foot pillar after standing on it for 35 hours, with the mindset that he can do it, no matter what. He has prepared.
David Blaine’s crazy and amazing magic/endurance also reminds me how much we as humans can endure. We are strong. Our bodies and minds are strong. We just have to have the fortitude and confidence and practice to make them do what we want. Of course, we don’t have control over everything in our bodies and minds, but the things that we do have control over are more plentiful than we think. As someone living with mental illness, it feels powerful to say that my mind is strong. Even if I don’t always think it is. Even if it sometimes works against me.
magician was impossible or a bad career. She just cheered him on and gave him the confidence to continue learning. And even though a lot of his endurance stunts are probably borne out of the grief he has over losing his mother early, he has taken this confidence in other people to heart. Whether a celebrity, a person full of piercings, a person of color, a person experiencing homelessness, or any other random person on the street, he performs at his top game for them. He has confidence that everyone still has that childlike wonder lurking inside.
Of all of the mind-boggling and insane things he has done, there is one particular stunt that has stuck with me. David Blaine has spent days underground, held his breath for 20 minutes, stood in an ice block until he had delusions, jumped off a 100-foot tall pillar after standing on it for a day and a half, and stood in place while tons of volts of electricity went through a metal suit he was wearing. All of these stunts have been visually stunning and difficult and beautiful and morbidly entertaining. But the one that stuck with me is the stunt he called “Above the Below.” He spent 44 days in a glass box suspended over the River Thames in London. People below him could watch and wave, but he was up there with nothing to eat and not a lot to drink. He had a journal. He had clothes. That’s it. If this stunt had gone on any longer than it had, David’s organs would have begun failing past the point of repair. He was sick. But afterward, he had so much enlightenment about people and connection and necessities. He parts ways with the crowd by saying, “I love you all,” and is then promptly sent to the hospital.
As Cool As Mint Ice Cream 