rambling

standing beneath an umbrella

july 23, 2026

i think one of the strangest things about existing somewhere under the trans umbrella is that sometimes the hardest person to convince i'm "trans enough" is myself. not because i don't know what the definition is, because i do. i know that being trans isn't limited to one specific experience or one specific transition or one specific narrative. i know the umbrella exists because gender is more complicated than the binary people are taught growing up. i know all of that intellectually. but somehow that certainty disappears the second i try to apply it to myself. it's like i understand the definition perfectly until my own identity enters the equation, and then suddenly i start acting like there are a hundred invisible requirements i have to meet before i'm allowed to use the word.

the strange thing is that i don't actually question my own experiences all that much. i know i don't relate to the gender i was assigned at birth in the way i'm apparently "supposed" to. i've spent so much time trying to understand my relationship with gender that i'm honestly exhausted by it. i know it isn't simple and that it fluctuates (i'm probably some type of genderfluid but i don't really want to open that can of worms). i don't really doubt those experiences. what i doubt is whether those experiences somehow "count enough," if that makes sense.

and that's such a weird thing to realize because it isn't really a question of identity anymore. i don't find myself asking, "am i trans?" nearly as often as i find myself asking, "am i allowed to call myself trans?" those are two completely different questions. the first one is about understanding yourself. the second one is about wondering whether other people will decide you've earned the right to describe yourself that way. it feels less like i'm trying to figure out who i am and more like i'm waiting for some invisible authority to tell me whether i'm allowed to use some random label.

i think that's why seeing other people confidently identify with labels under the umbrella is always a little bittersweet. for others, i don't find myself mentally checking whether they're "trans enough." if someone tells me they're nonbinary, or genderfluid, or agender, or anything else, my first instinct is just to say "okay cool." i don't start calculating how much dysphoria they have or whether they plan to medically transition or whether they discovered their identity "early enough." none of those things feel relevant to me when i'm thinking about someone else. but for some reason, when it's me, it's very different.

i think that's because there's this lingering feeling that i'm taking up space that belongs to somebody else. and by that i mean like maybe there are people whose experiences are more difficult than mine, and because of that they're somehow more deserving of the label than i am. rationally i know identity doesn't work like that and that labels aren't rewards you earn after suffering enough; but emotionally it's hard to shake the feeling that i'm borrowing something i'm not supposed to be having.

essentially my entire mindset for this is like if i can't explain every part of my identity in a way that's "simple" and immediately understandable to others, then maybe i don't deserve to claim the label of being trans at all. though, perhaps that's not true. i'm not sure.

maybe there was never anyone there

july 17, 2026

i really don't understand how i'm supposed to have an identity when i barely feel like a person most of the time.

people talk about discovering themselves or expressing themselves or "being authentic," and i don't even know what they're referring to. authentic to what? i don't feel like there's enough of me there to be authentic in the first place. i don't feel like i contain anything. i don't feel like there's some hidden personality buried underneath everything else waiting to be uncovered if i just introspect hard enough. i just feel empty.

sometimes i think my eyes are just cameras recording onto an old vhs tape that gets completely wiped every night so there's enough room to record the next day. i wake up, experience things, have conversations, eat food, go places, and then somehow none of it feels like it accumulates into anything resembling a person. things are seen. things are touched. things are tasted. words come out of my mouth. i respond when people talk to me. i can imitate the rhythm of being alive well enough that nobody really asks me any questions. but i'm not actually there in the way [i think] everyone else is.

it feels like i'm just a point of awareness receiving sensory input and then generating whatever response seems most appropriate. someone says something funny, so i laugh. someone asks me a question, so i answer it. someone expects a certain version of me, so i unconsciously become it for a while. but underneath all of that, i don't know what's left. it doesn't feel like there's some internal landscape holding everything together. it feels like i'm just processing information and producing an approximation of what a person would probably do next. at this point people should just call me lace gpt or something.

sometimes i wonder if i've gotten so good at approximating a person that i've accidentally convinced myself i'm one, when in reality i'm not.

i don't really feel like i have opinions until someone asks me for them. i don't feel like i have a personality unless i'm interacting with somebody else. i don't even know if i have interests in the way other people do, or if i just become intensely fascinated by things for a while until they disappear again without leaving anything behind. everything feels temporary and replaceable. like nothing sticks to me long enough to become part of an actual identity.

and then i think about people saying i have this disorder, or encouraging me to interpret my experiences through that lens, and sometimes i can't stop wondering if i'm somehow just playing along without realizing it. not because i consciously want to per se, but because i just don't trust my own perception of myself anymore. sometimes i worry that everyone else sees one completely ordinary, mostly consistent person, while i'm the only one convinced there's something fundamentally wrong with me. i wonder if people are just humoring me. if they're just entertaining whatever explanation i come up with because it's easier than asking me questions. sometimes i think, "what if i'm not actually that different at all?" what if i'm just taking normal fluctuations and giving them too much meaning because i'm so desperate to understand why i feel so disconnected from myself?

and i hate that thought because i don't want to be anything. i don't want to have a specific explanation just for the sake of having one. i don't want my experiences to be more severe than they actually are. i just want to understand why existing feels so hollow sometimes. why i feel like i'm constantly observing myself from a distance instead of inhabiting my own life. maybe that's what bothers me the most. not the possibility that i've misunderstood myself, but the possibility that there was never very much to misunderstand in the first place.

sometimes i really do feel like i'm less of a person and more of a construct. something assembled out of habits and borrowed mannerisms until it resembles somebody with an actual life. kind of like the backrooms... anyway. i just feel like there's not really anything "stable" sitting underneath it all. it doesn't really feel like i've lost myself when i talk about feeling hollow, rather, it kind of feels like there was nothing to lose in the first place.

love

july 9, 2026

cant🤤🤤🤤🤤stop thinkin🤤g🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤about🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤about my girlfriend uhhhh🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤hhhhhmy girl is so cute🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤

not sure what to title this

may 28, 2026

i think one of the hardest things for me to admit to myself is that i cannot keep relying on one person for all of my happiness and emotional... like... wellbeing, because no matter how comforting it feels in the moment, it always eventually becomes unhealthy in ways that mess everything up over time. and logically i know that; i know it’s unfair to both people involved when one person slowly becomes your main source of validation, excitement, motivation, whatever. i know human beings are not supposed to carry the full weight of another person by themselves forever. even just reading about emotionally overdependent friendships makes it obvious that eventually the imbalance starts exhausting both people, even if neither person intends for that to happen. but knowing that does not magically make it easier to stop doing it

every time i try to branch out and make new friends, something inside me just completely shuts down emotionally and i hate that i can’t explain why. i can talk to people perfectly fine sometimes. i can be friendly. i can hold conversations. but internally it feels empty, like my brain refuses to attach itself to anyone new no matter how badly i want connection. and then that just makes the entire process feel exhausting and artificial because friendship is supposed to be built on like genuine interest, but instead i end up feeling weirdly detached from the people i’m trying to connect with. i just can’t seem to care in a natural way most of the time, and then i start feeling guilty because i know relationships can’t grow if i’m disconnected from them from the beginning

i hate that because i do want connection. i want multiple friendships. i want healthy relationships with other people. i want to stop feeling like my entire mood rises and falls based on one person’s attention. i know that putting all my happiness into one person eventually creates pressure and imbalance and fear and emotional dependency that hurts both people in the long run, i know it’s not sustainable...,, but knowing that doesn’t fix the underlying issue (which is that connecting to people in the first place feels strangely difficult and unnatural to me most of the time).

what is real

may 24, 2026

sometimes i genuinely cannot process the fact that everyone around me is a real person with an internal life as detailed and complicated as mine. like i'll just be sitting somewhere normal and suddenly it hits me that every random person i can see has memories attached to specific songs and private fears and people they miss and opinions they've never said out loud and tiny routines they repeat every day without thinking about it. every person has probably had at least one moment in their life where they felt completely destroyed emotionally and thought they would never recover from it. every person has looked at the ceiling at 3am thinking about something nobody else knows bothers them. and i know that's an incredibly basic realization technically but sometimes it hits me so hard that i feel physically disconnected from reality for a second.

i think about perception a lot too. like the horrifying fact that i'll never actually know how i'm perceived from the outside. every version of me that exists in someone else's head is slightly different and i have literally zero control over most of it. to one person i'm probably quiet and awkward. to another i'm funny. to someone else i'm forgettable. there are probably people who remember me for things i've completely forgotten saying. there are probably people who misunderstand me entirely and built a version of me in their head that barely resembles who i actually am.

sometimes i wonder if identity is even "real" in the stable permanent sense people talk about it. because the more i think about myself the more i feel like i'm made out of reactions and context and memory and performance layered together until it creates the illusion of consistency. but then again maybe that's what a person is. maybe people aren't supposed to be fixed things. maybe consciousness is just a constant process of reconstructing yourself over and over based on new experiences and relationships and environments... or something.

also existence itself feels fake sometimes in a way i can't explain properly. not fake in a depressing way necessarily. more like surreal. like how are we all just casually alive right now. how did consciousness happen at all. human beings are so strange. everything about existence is strange.

i think about time constantly too and it actually makes me feel sick if i think too hard about it. every moment disappears immediately after it happens forever. entire years of people's lives eventually get compressed into memories. there are days that felt unbearably important while they were happening that i now barely remember. there are conversations i forgot completely that probably permanently altered the direction of my life without me realizing it. sometimes i try to remember what being younger felt like and i genuinely can't fully reconstruct it. i can remember [some] events but not the actual feeling of being that person. it's kind of scary, actually.

sometimes i wonder if i'm too self-aware for my own good. like maybe humans aren't supposed to think about themselves this much. maybe consciousness accidentally evolved too far and now we all just spend our lives analyzing ourselves and each other endlessly trying to construct meaning out of randomness. but then again maybe that's the point. maybe meaning isn't something hidden somewhere waiting to be discovered. maybe meaning is just the act of caring about things despite the absurdity of existence itself.

which sounds incredibly dramatic when i type it out but unfortunately i do think like this sometimes so here we are.

hi guys

may 17, 2026

My oomfs are so fricking #cute awwe ☺️🥹🥹uwwe yu so 🥹🥹awwwee i 🥹☺️😭☺️love🥹🥹 u uee😅🥹awww 🥹😭🥹uuwww ☺️🥹🥹ueee uwaa 🥹🥹🥺😭🥺 awueewee🥹🥹🥺😭😭🥹