A Trans Man’s Diary: The Zoom Call Time Machine
Or whatever else was happening that day
I’m just ripping random pages out of time and presenting them to y’all in the wrong order, but that’s okay. This seems like a common Pandemic era theme. Time stopped working properly a couple of years ago. It’s probably Blursday again.
Dear Diary,
The other day, I looked at my image in the top righthand corner of a zoom screen and for a split second saw an image almost identical to that of a picture of my father from when he was on his honeymoon at age 18. We had the exact same facial expression and everything.
I missed him so much, but couldn’t make myself text him. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe this is some kind of guy thing. I can type up over 70 pages worth of posts here presented mostly to strangers and a few loved ones in the know, yet cannot find anything to say to someone who raised me. Isn’t that strange?
Maybe it’s a weird Pandemic thing. We’re painfully aware that we could lose someone we love at any moment, yet all that most of us can think to say to each other is “I hope you are well,” or “I’m okay.”
I had mentioned that he had a son, but couldn’t figure out how to explain that I will look unrecognizably different 5 years from 9 months ago. My voice has already changed beyond anything allergies could explain, but you might only have noticed if you went 5 months without hearing my voice.
There are so many people I want to talk to right now, but I also just want to be alone in a forest somewhere. There are several old, close friends from another life that I’m truly hoping are still alive, but who I can’t check on because I don’t want to know how it will go when I mention that I have a new name now.
There are so many people I want to talk to right now, but I also just want to be alone in a forest somewhere.
About a year into my social transition, I asked an old supervisor who had given me glowing references before if she’d be willing to accept a phone call verifying that I had worked with her years ago. This email was met with silence. I don’t want to be left wondering if your silence means death, semi-voluntary lockdown malaise, memory failures, or transphobia. This probably has something to do with a Pride Month peace offering of rainbow tiramisu and the subsequent abandonment issues I’ve developed from when the peace fell apart unexpectedly.
My therapist mentioned that I’m avoiding dealing with anger and that this is probably exhausting for me. I think I want to try throwing glass kombucha bottles into the glass recycling crusher machine at a snow covered dumpster in the middle of nowhere where no one will be around to hear the satisfying crashing noises. Maybe that will help. It seems like an appropriate way to express a completely useless kind of anger about things that I don’t have the power to change. This would be about as productive as my current efforts to solve systemic problems by passively listening to one terrible story after another with my microphone on mute and an endless chain of incense burning in the background.
My therapist says that anger doesn’t have to be productive. Sometimes, it’s just a way of acknowledging that something isn’t okay. Perhaps throwing bottles into a recycling machine crusher is a way of having a little chain of funerals for the thoughts, memories, and names of experiences that can’t change anything.
On the bright side, I apparently have the superpower to look like an 18-year-old boy for a few seconds at a time out of the corner of your eye if you aren’t thinking about it too hard. That seems pretty remarkable.
Anyway, thank you for listening.
Love,
Logan
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