- cook and feed and nourish myself
- go to therapy more than once every 18 months for more than 45 minutes
- write and finish a blog post
- sustain a regular exercise routine
- get out of bed before 8:56 a.m.
- leave the house
There is a sentence I have written about the video game Celeste that I have rewritten several times: in chat with a dear friend, in blue ink with a fine nib, in grey ink with a medium nib, and in a text editor expecting to see XML. On a page at the end of last year’s notebook and on a page at the beginning of this year’s notebook I have drafted two skeletons of a short reflection that I know is unlikely to ever be written. I finish the game, hands sore and stuck in claws that can’t grip a steering wheel, and in the two weeks between semesters I will have relaxed sufficiently to write a small piece of cultural critique. As the protagonist ascends the game’s eponymous mountain, and as the player’s comfort with the mechanics of gravity and time-space increases, the feeling of launching yourself into the void over and over gets less daunting. As you become more acclimatized to your body’s strange movements you admit that some of your footfalls may not be secure and potentially catastrophic. This is a game about moving and being while trans, and this is the aforementioned sentence I gnaw on, wrestling with it with ink, with fingers, but never with a voice. I do not say these things out loud like a poet might experiment with sound, with delivery; speaking commits me to thoughts, to conversations, to face fear with nerve and determination. Someday I will see you again and ask you things out loud and follow through.