It is no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.

It's 4am blogs with Lorcan, yaaaay.

This explains the lack of beautiful metaphors and so on. And punctuation. I'm on my phone. 

Since it's totally Saturday now, I can safely say it is my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to be 18 years old. I'm going to legally be an adult.

I know it's typically a thing in older people, when they hit a new benchmarker and realise how little they've achieved, but I'm getting that right now.

I can't believe that I'm almost 18 and today I made plans to borrow my friend's boiler suit so I can cosplay as my favourite character in the Lego Movie. 

I'm nearly 18 and my aunt got me elastic/rubber brightly colored dinosaurs. The aforementioned Lego character is dancing with a T-Rex on my desk right now.

I'm nearly 18 and I regularly ask myself (and am asked by Moony) how I'm still alive when I fall over my feet and burn myself making tea, a task I conduct multiple times a day. 

I'm nearly 18 and sometimes I feel so much older. You know, they say you can see in the Doctor's eyes that he is far older than his face, that he has seen so much more. I wonder if that's like with me, to a less impressive extent. I don't want that to sound like me saying I have the same cred as the Doctor, that's wishful thinking. 

But let's go meta here for a second.

The Lorcan has to deal with a lot in life. They have a fiancée on the wrong side of the ocean, a family that doesn't really accept them to the point that a slip-up of pronouns is a massive breakthrough. There's mental health, dissociation, exams, legit over abundance of stress hormones, not the correct set of hormones in general...

Don't get me wrong, there are awesome things in Lorcan's life, too. There is that same fiancée, for starts, and a support group that is full of completely lovely people. The Godzilla movie was hecking awesome, too. 

And they're getting presents tomorrow. Which would be great except it's two days before an exam, too.

And while we're here, let's take a moment for neutral pronouns. Wow, they feel strange, but they're hella. No assumptions made, perfect for raging Dysphoria, which is a thing today. 

Every time I revise, I either actually cry orI end  up close enough to it that I crawl under my comfort duvet - it has a space theme - and listen to music until I calm down. But that takes hours out of my time, and lead to things like this, where I'm laying in bed at 4am unable to sleep because I'm trying to work out techniques to pass - both the exam and in life generally. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll work something out. Maybe I'll find a kickass track list online and there'll be a study montage. 

Maybe Uni will let me in regardless. It does happen.

Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows.

Today, I was waiting in my brother's girlfriend's car until a closer time to board the coach that would take me the hell away from the seaside town where people go to end the portion of their lives that could be called interesting, and it was raining pretty bad.

I don't even just mean it was unpleasant. Anyone reading this may be unaware of the storms that have gripped the bottom half of the united kingdom for the last week or so, but there have been floods and road closures around where my family lives, and I've been worried about my flight back home, to Moony. It's that bad.

But I digress. Next to the car, on one of those low flower installments you get on promenades to make the place look nicer, was a crow. I think it was trying to get into a shell or something. Now, I know the phrase 'water off a duck's back', as in 'don't let it get under your skin, but let it go without touching you'. And it's always been kind of a good idea. It's a good job I adore cliches, because I think of that line a lot.

The water droplets on this crow were first apparent when it shook, sending the water everywhere and leaving its' feathers blessedly free of water for a few seconds until it began gathering again. What struck me, in that moment, while my brother's band played music through the speaker system and cigarette smoke curled over the top of a window, was that while the water fell onto that crows' feathers, it seemed utterly unphased.

Now, this is a hell of an extended metaphor, because what if each droplet of water were an issue of some kind. The faint ones were the little things, like doing the washing, e-mail that freely gendered individual. The more noticable droplets were things like, say, essays, university money costs. The really big ones? Well they'd be parent issues, gender identity dysphoria. You know, to take examples at random.

Sometimes, the droplets fell together, small things combining into bigger things. Deadlines, mock exams, pressure to do something to make someone blood related proud.

And then, just as if they were simply droplets of hydrogen and double oxygen, the crow would shake free its' problems, and continue on whatever undecided course the small creature had picked out over the dirt.

If I could do that, just shrug it all off and be content with myself, I would love to do so. But then, that's what these trips to Sweden are for. However, then the water started falling onto the same ink black feathers, and I realised that no matter how frequently you free yourself from problems and issues, you're never really going to be content, because the water will keep gathering. All you can do is try to make it a little easier on yourself by only attracting the small droplets, and not letting the bigger ones weigh you down.

Unwritten

I recently read a piece of fiction based on Jim Kirk and Leonard "Bones" McCoy, wherein Jim works for a publishing company named Enterprise and ran by Christopher Pike. Jim also publishes the ten book Captain Fine series aimed at young adults. He finds an unfinished manuscript by one Leonard H McCoy, MD, and tracks him down despite hippy-background Mr Spock's requests that he not do that.

Leonard is, to say the least, uncooperative to finish the work he stopped six years previously, and while I knew this fic had promise, I didn't anticipate how inspiring it would be.

The way the characters discuss writing, why they pursue it and how they feel about it, it made me consider for the first time in a very long time why I actually want to be a writer.

There's no doubt about it, for me. Writing has been my dream career since I was a kid, and I love how words can make you love or hate a character your previously never met. How it can light a feeling in you or make you long for something you never considered.

I lost track of it, amongst my education and transition, but I want to pick up my old ideas, shake them off and add a little more of an LGBT* spin, and write for young adults. I want believable and interesting characters of my own, and maybe I'll get there, one day. 

I can't stop thinking about the possibility of ever actually publishing a book, seriously.

In Michael Jackson's final moment, he thought about? Passive aggressive post-it notes.

If there's one thing that frustrates me more than my parents not trusting who I say I am, it's when my own mother is passive-aggressive towards me over matters that I am not in the wrong for.

In my travel to Moony last month, my suitcase - mum's suitcase - got broken. Or rather, the handles snapped except for the main one. It was not my fault, and I was pissed but it was done, and I could still move it easy enough.

I didn't see it as a problem, and I was just happy to be there. I didn't think about it again until I got back here any my mum told me to either get a new one from the airline or buy it myself. It's not my fault, and nobody travels anywhere in this house except me. And I got back from Heathrow just fine, even though I was welcomed by nobody upon returning to my town. They couldn't be bothered to journey 20 minutes to meet me after a long and emotionally draining day, and I'm never going to ask because I don't want to owe them anything. 

I tried to complain, even though it's very against my nature, but since it was more than seven days since it happened, I couldn't. 

Today, mum asked if I complained. I explained the situation calmly, and was told I should have said it happened when I got home. It honestly never occurred to me to lie about what happened.

I was told 'thanks a fucking lot' and general other things that clearly state no thanks are in order, and I rarely raise my voice but this was not my fault, and I won't let my mum blame me for it.

But I'm not even upset. I'm just frustrated. I can't stand up for what I believe in, I can never tell them I don't answer to that name any more, or that I'm not female (today). 

I probably seem really confident at school, but the secret is that I'm not. I can tell a class who I am because I trust them not to hurt abuse with a teacher in the room, or to my face. But I don't trust my parents. I hide in my room, don't leave unless I have to get to the kitchen or something, and some evenings I don't voice a single word because all my friends are online. Even though one or two aren't talking to me much, and I miss them. 

And I wish I were strong enough to stand up for myself but I know the resulting argument will achieve absolutely nothing but tears and a stressful night of hatred on my part while my parents cry downstairs and my mum strongly hints that her headache of several days is caused by me. 

I can't be let down after throwing my heart at them any more.

I'm fading in this place, and I need to get out before I disappear. 

You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

As you may be able to tell, I have discovered and fallen in live with Dirty Harry, yet another in my line of Clint Eastwood marathons.

But this quote seems oddly fitting, because I had some fairly good things happen yesterday.

I'm going to resit my media exam because the examiners were dicks and it seems like if I do it again, my D grade might be pushed to a C or B. 

I finally know were my media coursework is heading, too. We mapped it out yesterday so I feel more sure of myself. And I have a book to get that will actually tell me what to revise.

I got an offer for Bournemouth university, so long as I get the grades. This is really great news because it seems I'll definitely get at least the grades for there. It's close to home, and if I go there I get the feeling my parents want me to stay here, but me and Moony have dreamed of our own place for years and if I don't move out In August I might crack.

I also got offered Judge Dredd comics by a teacher I'd never met because she had some in her garage to get rid of and noticed my Dredd badge on my coat.

I know it's not a great belief, but I very much feel that sometimes the universe/life does little things to remind you that the world can be a kind place.

I picked up that badge in the morning on a whim because I was looking for a pen, and decided to pin it on at the bus stop because it's seriously awesome.

I was walking in a different part of school than usual, because I was meeting a somewhat friend so we could pick up food someone got us. The teacherwas walking   past at that exact moment, and now I own some things that I love utterly, and can actually call my own. A series of small adjustments have led to something great. This is amazing to me.

I also watched a cool film called Gigola, which I recommend to future me reading this and anyone else that likes french films about a classy dressed lesbian and her group of pretty ladies, and incredibly classy sex scenes.

So it was a good day, and I do feel lucky. Me and Moony have nearly survived or first week until we next see each other and I finally know what to do for school. Things are looking up.

I want you to tell me what the word 'home' means to you.

The title is a question from Andrea Gibson's poem Asking Too Much. I'd like to answe most of the questions in that poem some time.

Home.

To me, home means safety. It means hot cups of tea and warm jumpers, it means not being scared or furstrated by anything or anyone around you.

Home is the chance to rest after a day of whatever you've been doing, or a place to hide from the world and recover from the difficult things it pushes onto you.

Home is feeling accepted and happy, feeling comfortable enough to cry or be incredibly intimate with someone, feeling secure in what you're doing.

Home means trust.

Right now, I do not feel at home. I feel out of place and like I'm just visiting, still. I've felt disconnected recently. But yesterday, my Uni application gt cleared, and I started pushing to finish coursework, and I'm starting to feel a little better. 

I also tidied my room and opened the curtain for once, which has really made a diffference.

But I should finish my coursework, now. Writing blog posts sprawled on a beanbag lounger is not how I should spend my evening.

Look, I'm growing up.

Just.... Sometimes.

I've always thought that gender is fluid, and I've long understood that some days, I feel like nothing fits me. Yes, I predominantly use and prefer male pronouns, but sometimes I don't.

I use the term genderqueer, because it seems to fit me best, but I think that's wrong now. Not by much, but slightly wrong.

Lately, I've lapsed into thinking about nail polish, I've had days where I feel perfectly content in tighter cut shirts that on other days make me feel utterly wrong.

I think that sometimes, just sometimes, I might like being a girl? It's weird, and it feels like I'm born male and considering being female sometimes, but that's just how I feel recently.

I haven't had much time to consider it with coming to Sweden and Moony dealing with a lot of stuff, but I really do wake up sometimes unsure who I feel like that day.

Hell if I'm going to mention this, to anyone but Moony, because it's difficult enough to convince people to accept my transition, and I do still want to transition. There is no doubt in my mind about that.

I just... I might sometimes wear more androgynous things, or things that boys would never dream of unless they were curious.

Lately, me and Moony have noticed my voice change. I've been told before that I sound more male, deeper. But lately, it seems to have reversed. Moony said something last night, and I suddenly realised how much lower her voice is than mine, and I don't know when this happened.

I guess we'll see how it goes. I'll try to work out what's happening and report back.