Why Are You Still Here?

According to Wordpress.com, I registered this subdomain NINE years ago. This kind of blows my mind. Nine years ago, I was a Sophomore college student majoring in Interactive Multimedia (Professional Writing / Digital Media) at the very beginning of my questioning days and just discovering the world of blogging. Before that, I was a LiveJournal user regurgitating garbage like everyone else. This blog has evolved many times over and people have come and gone. I wanted to take a moment to revisit MMem’s history and say thank you to those who, for some reason, keep coming back.

Meganekko Memoirs first began on Blogspot.com and I remember those early days well of clawing through shitty CSS code. WordPress was up-and-coming & due to the potential of wider visibility and cleaner presentation, I exported all of my entries to this subdomain “meganelove” that, at the time, fed directly into my anime obsession and fetish for kawaii girls with glasses. It wasn’t all weeaboo-driven though; I figured cute anime girls would be a good way to hook people into reading it. I was mostly wrong about that. Funny enough, it didn’t matter anyway.

As my entries became increasingly more explicit – believe me, it’s really dirty in the pre-2010 archives – I fell into a cycle of making specific entries private for my two friends to read, to making the whole blog private, to opening it up again. After many years, graduating, and being a working adult, I had no way of knowing who was or wasn’t reading and, after many years, still hadn’t established any solid goals for the blog itself. So rather than stressing myself out between trying to care and not caring at all about readership or content focus, I stopped caring completely and, after a while, stopped updating indefinitely.

My life started to drastically change in 2013 and little by little I returned, writing here again about gender dysphoria, sexuality, transgender questioning and the like – what all of my past entries had vaguely eluded to. After beginning my transition and gaining ground in my gender identity, I finally found a purpose for MMem to dedicate myself to sharing my story publicly through this blog. My pre-2010 archives are extremely private and revealing, but just as necessary in giving a referential backdrop to the internal machinations of a low-middle class, black, transgender female in America. My fully realized goal would be for researchers to find valuable, telling proof within this blog to further the validation and societal acceptance of transgender people. Maybe even write about me, if I don’t formally publish my own memoir first.

“If you don’t know now you know.” – Notorious BIG

So, to YOU, the Reader, who has been reading for years, decided to start reading recently, or left and then decided to read again once I started writing again…I humbly ask you: Why are you still here? 

Whatever the reason is, I want to sincerely thank you for being a part of what I’m now trying to build. Honestly, I still feel like I’m writing to no one in cyberspace, but I do know there are some of you out there stalking me under the radar. Occasionally validating me with a Like or, bless your heart, a COMMENT!…In all seriousness though, thank you. I need you. And I want to know you’re out there. I’d love to try ideas, make suggestions, and just be a lot more inclusive in what I offer up here. So, let’s give it a try…

I’m considering investing in an official domain name for this blog & moving forward with attempting to reach and educate as many people as I can about what it means to be black and transgender. However, there’s no point in taking any action if I don’t already have a reader base I can count on to join me on the adventure.

This is where you come in; minimal effort needed on your part.

If you’re still here and like what I do, please let me know you’re out there with a LIKE or COMMENT. By doing so, you’re letting me know you exist and that what I’m aiming to do isn’t falling on deaf ears. I don’t expect much, but I’m thankful either way to anyone who has read even one of my entries.

A Price For Peace

The life I’ve been living since I’ve turned thirty has been unlike anything I ever imagined. I have no real complaints about where I’ve ended up in the whirlwind of events that led to me having to survive on my own. I feel more at peace with both the challenges I face, the choices I have made & the path I am now on.

I’ve had my share of support from those who didn’t really have to do a damn thing for me, and now I’m doing everything in my power to make up for their kindness. I work hard at a job I love & the fruits of my labor are already reaping due acknowledgement and reward. My momentum in voice-over is gradually being revived. Everyone who has ever lifted a finger for me has not been forgotten. I have held onto each significant act of kindness given to me & vowed to repay them in kind.

Honestly, I thought that my world had expanded and blossomed to its full extent. I was wrong. Living as the female I quietly always knew I was has not only been emotionally eye-opening for me, but deeply revealing of how much I still don’t know about myself. All the things I mentioned in the first paragraph that I feel at peace about have played a part in what has seemed like a rapid evolution of my truest nature.

In this moment, I’m so happy I could cry. Though I’m still striving to reclaim all that I’ve lost, I feel zero stress. Things are not perfect, but I accept all that has been offered to me in all of its imperfection.

Every opportunity. Every desire. Every chance to connect.

So much is clear to me now. What I want out of this life. How I want to spend my time. The list of goals that motivate me to keep pressing on. The kind of people who I want to surround myself with. The type of person I would share a bed with…Truly comforting to now be privy to such classified information previously locked away.

So much about my twenties were twisted, fractured, and better forgotten. Thank goodness I’m incredibly optimistic about my thirties being the best years of my life. Cautiously optimistic, but optimistic enough that I’ve dived headfirst into all that being a respectable, responsible,  independent woman can offer.

However, if I’m truly being honest with myself, this cultivated peace does come at a price. Sacrifices of both physical and emotional comfort. The certainty that no matter what, there will always be someone or something serving as my anchor. For the past four years, my “anchor” has been my self. Though I have done well to fortify my psyche to weather many harsh storms, even I experience moments when my anchor reveals its weakness due to a choice I made. Or worse, offering a piece of myself only to be tossed to the side because I foolishly forgot my self & expected more.

And in those moments of weakness, I remember that I only have myself to blame. Terribly lonely, yet frustratingly motivating.

This is the first time of my life I only have myself to answer to. The first time I am in a place where allowing myself to experience the harshness of reality rather than running away makes sense. Logic continues to prevail were emotions would break me…as is most preferable.

Saving myself for no one

The concept of sexual intimacy is not lost on you or me. However, somewhere along the line – growing up in a Christian household, trying to be a good, heterosexual boyfriend to the few girls who gave me a chance, my admittance of being of an agnostic, free-thinking perspective, and embracing my identity as a pansexual transwoman – I lost sight of what I should and should not deserve. Rather, I never had much of a chance to really explore the idea of engaging in sexual intimacy. For specific reasons, I just accepted that my time had not come.

My long-standing belief has been that one should reserve sexual intimacy for the person they have committed themselves to in a monogamous, romantic relationship. I have since realized that this line of thinking has been the last bastion of traditional, Christian-centric thought that had somehow survived through everything that had drastically shifted in my lifestyle. The idea had been deeply engrained into me, despite being “born male”, and the shame of contradicting this thinking loomed near whenever temptation arose. My parents being religious & fairly traditional led me to put my own romanticized take on it, believing that if I remained patient & virtuous, one day I would be able to entrust my body to the person I believed was “the one.”

I recently read a novel that turned me on (pun intended) to the very common practice of two characters meeting one another. After their initial meeting, both of them recognized their instinctual attraction to one another over time with each chance interaction feeding the heat between them. Eventually, one makes a move and the other is equally overcome with ferocious passion. For some reason, the timing in which I was exposed to that story – right around when I turned thirty – caused me to have an alternative perspective. Prior to turning thirty, I would have asked “who could possibly jump into bed with someone who clearly had no romantic intentions to remain faithful to them”? However, in the face of physical aging, sparse intimacy over my lifetime, and the high level of self-love I had cultivated as the woman I was born to be, what I read now appeared almost natural and sensible as my former mindset seemed almost something an insane, brainwashed prude would do.

#1: I can be shallow as fuck about looks.

#2: I am light-years from being a “prude”.

“Turning 30” has been a recurring theme in this blog as of late and sexual expression is not excluded from it. As I often do, I wondered why only I had to be the one sexually frustrated, swearing off intimacy just because “the one” hadn’t come along. I could count on one hand how many times I had believed I would marry someone. This romanticized notion of keeping myself “pure” for “my first time” when I was already perverted, unabashedly playful in my sexuality, and near legitimately considered a succubus among my close friends rapidly became outdated through rigorous self-assessment.

Being met with my cold logic quickly turned to frustration. I was three weeks into being 30 and had yet to experience unrestrained intimacy followed by sharing a bed with my partner. Like an ignorant, virgin teenager, I was still wondering how people [read: my friends] have sex and if there were any steps to follow for a successful romp. And then I was smacked in the face with the truth: This was all my own doing. I repeatedly declined the idea simply because no romantic commitment would follow when there were multiple instances where sex likely would have been welcomed.

Another hard truth washed over me: The combination of my past upbringing and now my present life as a transwoman had somehow made me believe by default I should never feel safe experiencing sexual intimacy other than with someone who had confessed their love for me. An amalgamation of anger and sadness careened through my body. There had to be a way to rewrite this automated preset equation that I had left unchecked in the midst of my gender transition.

I want to be a good woman.

Only sluts sleep around.

How do you take love out of sex? I’m so clingy. I’d fall in love with them and get hurt.

Will I ever be loved?

But…

…why I should starve myself.

I’m desirable. Beautiful. Lovable.

If sex with someone I trust could make sense…

Experiencing intimacy with someone I feel comfortable with isn’t shameful.

Yes, I want to be loved. Sex doesn’t equal love. It never has.

I won’t be young forever. Live your life. 

Fuck who you want.

…

So I did.