Hi there, it’s me. I’m still alive.

My boss told me something that haunts me: he advised me to allow myself to sink so low that I would “put a gun in [my] mouth” and then, because committing suicide is such an unthinkable act, I would naturally feel better because there’d be nowhere to go but up.

I didn’t want to tell him that, if I let myself get to that point, I would commit suicide. I suspect I would get fired on grounds of mental instability. On the other hand, his comment was entirely inappropriate. I wish he wouldn’t make those kinds of comments. It’s bad enough that he thinks my disorder is comparable to “feeling a little bit bad” and fixable by eating chocolate (which I know has anti-depressive effects, but it doesn’t fix my depression at least).

There’s a perverse thought in my head: that, to prove him and his horrible, awful comments wrong, I should commit suicide. Ridiculous, but I hate living under a constant barrage of comments at work that belittle my disorder and the difficulty I have living with it. My previous bosses, if they didn’t believe in my disorder, at least had the decency to keep such comments to themselves.

I gotta admit, I’m angry at having to play life on a difficulty setting that I just can’t deal with some of the time. That there is such insensitivity in the world (and being subjected to it at work overtly now) to that kind of plight.

Oh well. Can’t be helped unless I quit or exit this life.

Anyways. I’m having fun with Marvel Legendary, which is Yet Another Deck-Building Game, but with enough of a different flair from Dominion that it’s quite refreshing for a change.

But the most important thing in my life, that has made me smile, snort, and laugh in spite of myself, is Ouran High School Host Club. I guess that kind of fiction just has that effect on me: humorous with depth to the characters. The series (of which I’ve watched both the anime and now have read the manga) reminds me, in a sense, of Terry Pratchett. It’s a wonderful and unique romantic comedy that destroys society’s standard gender roles. The main character’s father, for instance, is a bisexual cross-dresser and loving father, instead of being made into some kind of camp villain as other stories would have it.

And how do I explain this about the main character… the main character, Haruhi, has to cross-dress for plot reasons, but it’s not played for laughs. She isn’t disrespected for the act, succeeds pretty well at it, and humor comes from other areas of the plot and the hilarious nature of other characters—she really is the straight man, so to speak.

Ouran is a unique romantic comedy and I quite love it. It’s not perfect, though—consider how the Lobelia (anime) and Roberia (manga) school is treated, with strawman feminists. Although I quite like that the cross-dresser of that trio is treated as not only respected, but with her own fan base and being the head of her club. And there are feminists who would consider that sort of thing as a betrayal of gender identity; I’m glad that this story has characters that don’t do that sort of thing.

Ah yes. Betrayal of gender identity. You know, for the longest time I was mad at people screwing up my gender, despite presenting an ambiguous face of gender online. I just realized how much of that was, well, being convinced that I should be mad only because I was born a woman. I wonder how much of a betrayal to my gender (if it is my gender) that I think of myself in my head as being mostly male. That maybe it’s some sort of Stockholm Syndrome in our patriarchal society, or some psychological complex that my father left in me by wanting me to be a boy and more or less constantly punishing me for not having been born one.

But lately I have become more convinced that, were I truly identifying as female, I would have identified as that no matter what my circumstances. Instead I identify as male (but still bisexual). Strangely, I still wear skirts, but only because it makes the bathroom a trivial, quick affair. Definitely hate my breasts though, and am thinking of binding. I don’t want surgery personally though. I guess even though I identify as male I still don’t fit very neatly into gender roles… but why should I?

Anyways, anyways, anyways… well, I can’t really come up with three good things because I’ve already covered two of them, one in some detail. I guess the third is that I really want to write, and I have more research, and I guess I’ll go through that first draft now (or maybe 0.5 draft).

If I do post something over the next few days, the password is “go fish”.