Future Nowish

I don’t really know what I’m thinking right now which typically means I’m thinking so much that I can’t pause long enough to sort through the thoughts. Or really I just don’t want to sort through them because maybe I’ll have a breakthrough and realize something I’m not interested in affirming.

I responded to my dad’s email about owing them money every month. I shook the entire time I typed. I wish I could say that I feel relieved after sending it, but really I’m just more anxious about the response to my response.

Jobs are still up in the air, and that scares me. I’m really happy for B and her balling job she gets to start the beginning of February. It’s a total badass big kid’s job and I hope she really loves it.

I’ve been going through a program called Endure as a guinea pig. They’re a brand new empowerment program started by a friend from high school. Well, really she was an acquaintance that I played basketball and softball with growing up who I’m now proud to say is a friend. We meet weekly to talk about goals and go through a program they’ve created. I always feel stoked and ready to kickass at life after our meetings, but a day or so later I’m back with this feeling of lostness. I don’t know where it comes from.

There’s this concept of… I can’t think of what it’s called right now, but it talks about how some people have a tendency to look to the future with longing and think life is always going to be better after moving or starting a new job or being in a relationship or buying a new car or starting a family, but fulfillment never comes so they spend their entire life running toward something new and looking forward to something, anything to change the trajectory of their life.

I think that’s me. I do that. I’m rarely content in the present and the things I see in the future I want to happen immediately. I want everything that I want/dream of to be my present.

If it all happened now, what would there be to live for?

Maybe that’s my problem too, that I don’t want life to be long. I want to reach everything quickly, make a name for myself, and then disappear. It’s some weird combination of anxiety and depression.

The past couple of days I’ve been trying to actively love my wife in much better and less selfish ways than I have in the past month. I’ve been self-focused and honestly a dick to her. I want to be a good husband.

And then the thoughts of how I could never be that good husband because I have a vagina and even after my voice drops and hair grows on my face that I’m just living in some false reality.

I know this isn’t true, but goddamnit my family and upbringing tell me that I’m some fucked up, mentally ill person. Which I can’t argue to some extent…

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$18.75

I didn’t fall asleep until five this morning. My brain won’t shut up.

I’ve been feeling better than I had over the past few days and I think that a lot of it has to do with this exercise. It’s like I can finally breathe after I enter a new post.

When I woke up I had received an email from my dad saying that they want me to take over student loans that they took out in my name. I didn’t even know they were taking out those loans when they did it. If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone to a college that squeezed me and my friends dry of funds for the next twenty year of our life. Southeastern is like a bully who picks up the weird kid by the ankles and shakes them until all their milk money falls onto the floor and then takes it. Oftentimes, the weird kid lets it happen for a couple reasons,

1. The bully is way bigger than them.
2. In some odd way, it makes them feel cool that the bully touched them.

Whatever.

The thing about my dad telling me that he hopes I can take over the loan is because I know sure as hell that if I hadn’t come out as transgender this past summer, I wouldn’t hear anything about it. The first email he sent me after I came out was cruel and demanding that I pay him back for all the things I cost him in his life…

I dunno what to do honestly. I’ve just been crying a lot.

I think the reason it hurts so badly is because I don’t want to lose my family. They were the main reason I thought I’d never come out. I thought I could live my life as a lie forever so that I wouldn’t lose them.

I used to say that if my dad was dead, I would have started transitioning years ago.

Loving people is really hard. Especially when the love you’re given is conditional.

I want to love my family well, so I’m not sure of the best way to handle this situation. Do I stand up for myself and tell him that I didn’t even know about the loan in the first place or do I silently start paying when I have the means?

Honestly I’ve been secretly hoping that one of my transgender friends becomes a millionaire and is willing to pay the rest of my loans so that I…

Eh. I’m not gonna finish that because it’s shit.

I wish I could just pay it all off right now.

Alas, I have $18.75 in my bank account.

Dope.

Four A.M.

I’ve been up since four this morning. I don’t know why, but I’ve had a difficult time sleeping these past couple weeks. It’s like my brain won’t shut up.

I think about Guatemala and the community I had there. The dream job and life I was living. Every morning when I woke up surrounded by volcanoes and walked down cobblestone streets to work every day. The way I was able to adventure and post interesting pictures to social media.

Now, I wake up hoping to receive a phone call about a permanent barista job or even just a one-time paid coffee delivery. I only have $20.00 in my bank account. I haven’t been this broke in a long time.

I haven’t had a job in nearly three months and that’s difficult for someone who has been working their dream career in one place or another for a couple years. It’s like I’ve lost my purpose.

I’ve been trying to brainstorm and plan out finances for my dream business, but I find it hard to look at the costs of starting a business when I have such a lack of means. It’s hard to be inspired when you’re depressed. We can’t even really build a community when we don’t have the resources to go out and meet people.

My wife and I want to write a book. She’s so talented and has such a beautiful imagination and mind, so we want to combine my little poems and her art to create something honest and vulnerable. Maybe that’s what we should be working on. Maybe we can print out a small version and sell them for $5.00 or something.

I’m always coffee buzzed because I either sleep too little or too much and both of those tend keep me exhausted. I want to get a gym membership so that I can do something with my energy and direct it into something good and feel better, but we can’t even afford that.

Maybe someone from Cumberland will read this and have pity on me.

Actually, maybe someone from Cumberland will read this and believe in me.

I think I’m worth believing in.

Jacuzzi

Jersey Shore.

My wife and I got stoned a couple months ago and decided to start watching Jersey Shore because neither of us had seen it and it sounded like something enjoyable to view while high. We’ve gotten to season six in that amount of time and we’ve watched it sober every night since.

Yesterday as we were watching it, I looked over at B and said that I love those people so much. Mike is currently trying to stay sober after being addicted to pain meds, Snookie is pregnant and in love with Gianni (they’re still married), and Sammi has actually been cool for over a season now. Strangely, I’m proud of them and wish I could give them all hugs. They’ve changed drastically since the first season.

To be honest, I’m ashamed that I’m writing about Jersey Shore during my stream of consciousness exercise. Conservative Christian scene-kid Bek would be so ashamed of me because for one, they live destructive lives and for another, scene kids don’t watch stuff like that and admit it.

Maybe I connect with them. Honestly, I do connect with them in my pale, disliking of liquor way. I feel their pains and frustration when they have an inability to connect in the midst of falling over and drunken conversations.

I think too much about my words. Sometimes I feel like I’m just having a drunken conversation because of how much I struggle to find the right words and how often my brain can’t decide on a word before my tongue is releasing gibberish or an inadequate word.

If I was Italian and was in a reality tv show, I’d be the new Vinny. Pale and desiring to always say the right thing (okay maybe not ALWAYS trying to say the right thing, but a decent amount of the time).

I think one of the main things I’ve been learning from Jersey Shore is to give people a chance to prove themselves. Before watching the Shore, I thought they were solely drunken idiots, but I’ve learned a lot about who they are without alcohol (yes, they have cameras on them the whole time, but if you’re gonna judge then you can leave).

Anyway, I don’t really want to write about Jersey Shore anymore because I don’t think many people want to read a stream of thoughts about this show even though I know this is an exercise for myself and I doubt that anyone will read this. I am kinda writing this in hopes that someone is out there reading my word-vomit.

As an ENFP/Enneagram type 4, I really hope that people are reading and engaging and growing with me because I want to make a difference and I want to feel like I’m changing the world and see that I’m not insignificant. I want purpose and want to think that others think I’m important too.

That makes me ashamed that I’m a needy individual who needs constant reassurance, but it’s the truth. I’m learning to be more encouraging of myself and speak more life to myself. I’m typically only feeding myself rotting and negative thoughts. That’s why I want to start saying that I’m smart and brave and talented and gifted and loved.

I’m basically a Jersey Shore member when it comes to wanting to find a jacuzzi.

Toxic Transguy-linity

My wife is rad. She draws different characters and creatures and gives them color through coffee and dirt and other unassumed substances.

Honestly stream of thought is really difficult for me because I’m just typing the first words that come into my head and sometimes they’re not good or used the proper way. At the same time, it’s the best exercise I could do at this moment in my life because I’ve been wanting everything to be perfect. I don’t write because I’m scared of the comment section.

I have paint on my hands. Why? Because my wife and I moved into a friend’s house from the 1850’s and am helping him repair, paint, and get rid of stuff. He’s been in LA so B and I have been tearing off the wallpaper that just falls off and we’ve started priming it so that we can start painting. I chose this light olive green. Hopefully it is bright enough.

I’ve been angry and anxious lately and blowing up on my wife. I hate it and I scare myself when I get to those places. It’s not the first time I’ve been through an angry period of time.

Why am I angry? I think it’s because I can’t find anything good about myself right now. I just spent a year of thinking I was awesome and doing sick adventures, but now that I’m settling into a home and hoping to start a family in one place, I’m scared I’ll never be that hot-shot I dream of being.

Being a barista, I want to change the way people view specialty coffee in that I want it to be something that people don’t have to be afraid of since pretentious asshole baristas started scaring the everyday citizen away. If they want a caramel macchiato, I want to make them the BEST upside down vanilla with a touch of caramel latte that they’ve ever had and give them cheats for how to order a drink at Starbucks that’s the exact same but without paying for the name. I want to educate people and make specialty coffee accessible.

How the hell do I do that right now? I can’t find a job in this new town, I don’t have money to start creating the brand that I want to, I can’t support my wife (though she’s a badass and doesn’t need me [toxic masculinity seeps into transguys too]), and I HAVE A LOT OF EXCUSES FOR WHY I DON’T START ANYTHING.

And that makes me feel like a loser. Which is stupid because I could choose to get out of this funk but honestly the only thing I know to do is write in this stupid blog.

Also calling everything I do “stupid” doesn’t help me actually believe in myself. I’ll start calling everything… What…? Cute.

Welcome to my cute blog.

Begin

Bek is an English boy’s name that means “brook” or “stream”. I’ve been wanting to start Kerouac-ing it up to get all my thoughts out but never sat down to actually do it. This has been causing an influx of overwhelming thoughts that I haven’t felt like I could properly articulate in words; this page exists to help my mind’s thought-vomit get cleaned up a little.

The things I write here are probably going to be disturbing, depressing, and doubtful, but honestly I don’t give a shit. I’m just so tired of not writing because I’ve felt too depressed to put thoughts and ideas somewhere.

Anyway, this is a stream of consciousness blog, hence the title and the little explanation of what my name means.

Speaking of names, Bek isn’t my given name. I was born and given the name Rebekah Grace. Rebekah means “beautiful” and “to bind with a rope”. Kinky. Grace was my great-grandma’s name. My mom was going to name me Elizabeth but knew she wanted my middle name to be Grace and didn’t want my initials to spell “E.G.G.” She was thoughtful in choosing my name which has made it even harder to come out as transgender.

Speaking of being transgender, I am. My chosen name (soon to be legal) is Bek Haris. I used my mom’s care in choosing my name because I know how difficult it is for her to lose the dreams and prayers she had for her oldest daughter. Bek is still keeping my name and Haris means “grace”, but is masculine. I can’t remember the origin of that exact spelling of Haris and can’t look it up because this post is a fifteen minute stream of consciousness but maybe I’ll look it up and write about it during tomorrow’s writing.

There have been many thoughts floating around in my head recently, so much so that when my wife asks me what I’m thinking I say, “I don’t know”. It’s easier to say I don’t know than to try to describe how I can go from thinking about a pen to the demagorgan tattoo I want to get on my neck next to my tattoo of my cat because in the second chapter of Stranger Things the demadog eats a cat. I hope my cat never gets eaten by a demagorgan.

Two seconds does a lot to my brain.