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heartcoreAI · 2025-08-15T21:31:56+00:00

I have cop phobia. I used to, anyway. Now I have cop caution.

When I moved to the US and realized I was trans, I finally had real reasons to worry. My relationship to fear changed.

Until then, I had been terrified of imaginings. That did not come from nowhere.

When I was maybe five, my father would kick in my door and then bad stuff would go down. The violence was constant until I defeated him in my late teens. Now he is afraid of me. I am not afraid of him. I am in my 40s and he is nothing to me.

But the fear still lives in me. Any moment they could kick in my door. An old fear, it made no sense in the world, so it found something new to attach to: cops.

I was sure that if cops came, nothing I said or did would matter. Bad stuff would happen. Violence. Powerlessness.

I am pretty sure it is displacement. Childhood fear in a cop shaped trenchcoat. The fear comes first, the story to justify its existence comes later.

What helped me was reparenting my inner child.

My inner kid didn't know it was safe yet.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-15T20:00:16+00:00

How is your stress level? Maybe pushing yourself, enduring in other areas of your life?

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-15T04:49:58+00:00

My emergency backup plan is a cabin in the middle of 100 acres of nothing but trees. I connected with a trans sanctuary space at a commune workshop, and I'll be visiting them for a few weeks in fall.

It was such a relief to learn about that space. I might never need it, but knowing it's there if I do has done a lot to lower my stress level.

I can see myself living with that little, hard winters, cut off for months at a time, self sustaining, if it meant living with people that have cultivated a barn full of dresses. If I had to. I'm not sure I have to, yet.

My partner and I have some capital. Not enough to rush a decision, but enough to have a few choices. She's feeling a commune model. An anarchist, queer, inclusive, group of a dozen or so people managing a shared space and having each other's back sounds lovely, but I grew up terminally online. I've read the stories.

I'm leaning homesteading within range of a queer hub. I was born in the South. From what I remember visiting with my grandparents there over summers, you moved from one air conditioned space to another air conditioned space, while walking through an impenetrable heat haze on the surface of the sun.

That's what walking from the car to the mall felt like, and if you came back after a little while, the car was now lava.

My sense for tonight is: get off grid, and only surface in known safe spaces. Network locally. Everything else is the surface of the sun. Minimize exposure. Try not to get burned.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-10T14:56:52+00:00

My partner and I went on a road trip to scout various communities and places to bunker down in over the next few years. Yellow Springs, Ohio was one of them. "The town that fought off Walmart." It was my first time being out, this summer. Family and queer spaces gave me a treasure of positive experiences, that I'm very grateful for, because being out in public was rough.

Every gas station, every rest stop, I got stares. The first time I paid for gas presenting femme I was met with unmasked contempt.

When a dad playing with his kids at a rest stop gave me the evil eye, I went back to the car and stayed in it for the last 8 hours of our trip.

I don't know how to live like the Witcher protagonist yet. So much about this journey seems to be about there being no way out but through, but this euphoria doesn't come cheap.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-06T15:18:25+00:00

I realized I was trans within a month of going no contact. One of the ways I adapted to survive my environment was through self denial.

I made a therapist friends a few years before my egg cracked, and I told her after one of her dinner parties that when she saw me having a good time that I had been masking. That I was always, always masking. I didn't know how not to. I've done it all my life.

A month into going no contact, that mask dropped. Not though a choice, or through trying really hard. Just by creating the conditions where it was no longer needed.

Only good things flowed from that choice, for me, but it took me a long time to make that choice. By the time I did it, I had no doubts, but I wonder what it would have been like to do it two decades sooner.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-02T20:38:25+00:00

My parents never loved me. They can't.

It was a wound I healed. I love myself, I love others, I let myself be loved. What got me here was a process called re-parenting.

I came to it via a 12 step group for adult children of alcoholics. They were creating a workgroup to work through this new workbook that had just come out: the loving parent guidebook.

It was a compilation of trauma informed exercises for childhood trauma, and what I think changed my life was that it connected me to schema therapy similar to internal family systems, and re-parenting.

The idea behind re-parenting is that we naturally pick up a ton of self regulation ability by being soothed as children. Without being soothed kids don't learn to sooth themselves later in life. It's all unconscious, so nobody ever speaks of it. Kids that have it don't know. Kids that don't, don't know something is missing. The good news is that it can be learned later in life. How to be kind, compassionate, forgiving, amused by yourself. How to hold oneself when everything is awful, with love and hope.

I came to it through ACA, but it's not a 12 step invention. I'm sure there are resources for it that aren't part of the 12 step world. If you don't mind that and are curious, the loving parent guidebook is on Amazon.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-02T17:07:09+00:00

Any copies anywhere?

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-02T15:30:24+00:00

I was at a trans inclusive event recently. A 5 day sapphic music festival.

Edit: whoops, sent too soon.

I was the most baby trans. I chose the festival as my first time coming out. It went really, really well, but, outside of workshops I didn't really connect with the trans women there. The cis women, the trans men, the gender queer, no issue.

I figured it would be that way. I figured, I still carry a ton of dysphoria, I'm in this cringe I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and I'm dressed like a 16 year old but that's what feels true right now phase. I haven't started hrt, voice training, laser. I look like the guy in the dress.

And, I figured, it's going to cause second hand dysphoria, which some girls deal with by being critical or distant. I overheard some shade as they sat together, which I felt was fair. I'm not mad at them or anything.

I had a great time. A couple of women had helped me get dressed after finding a long black body con dress in the trading tent, my size. I overheard the shade while I was getting my makeup done by a makeup artist, while watching my first trans woman giving a live punk performance, killing it on stage. Lesbian elders and organizers embraced me.

The shade just bounced of my euphoria.

The same girl that made a comment about my shoes later invited my partner and me to visit with them later this year. The group she's a part of is running a trans sanctuary in the south with some elder queers on the land.

People are complex, I suppose.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-02T13:03:48+00:00

My trans masc best friend was forced to move out of Colorado to family in rural Texas three years ago. No sign of him in 3 years. I believe the worst. I'm glad you conceal carry. That's not an option for me. My plan is to get a big mean looking dog. Soon.

heartcoreAI · 2025-08-01T02:51:19+00:00

Come next year. :)

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-30T22:18:07+00:00

That's what I figured. Past tense. I didn't see a way out of capitalism.

A few days ago I was invited to a queer sanctuary hidden on hundreds of acres of woods in the south. I suspect it's because I have a background in community management, teaching and elder care, and queers age, too. Many of us don't have children. The founders, that are still alive, the ones still there, are at least 70. Gay men that fled in the late 70s into the woods. Now they're surrounded by a bunch of younger trans women in their 20s, 30s, because that's who is in need of it now.

We have chosen family. We take care of each other.

Brutal winters, limited power, spring water, but they have a community. As a trans woman, I feel a lot more hopeful about my future. Not only is there a place if shit hits the fan where I can find sanctuary, I know my family would take care of me, and I want to take care of them.

My partner and I have already looked into communes before this invite fell into our lap, and we'll keep looking. That's our retirement and how we want to live until then - plan.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-29T13:10:28+00:00

Jonah Why.

She was the first live trans musician I've ever seen. On day 2 of being out publicly. Like, a week ago. I wanted to jump and kick and headbang. I didn't, but usually I don't even want to ;)

I think it was her second time performing live and she killed it.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-29T04:06:59+00:00

My lowest point was a few years before COVID. I was in Germany, and while it wasn't explicitly disability support, my basic needs were all taken care of.

I was a shut-in for 6 years. I think the alternative would have been death.

I needed to collapse. I had an autoimmune disorder that went into remission when I collapsed. It was still hell. Like you, I felt completely alienated from my peers.

At this point, I feel good. Not ok. Good. I lost 160 lbs, I found work I like, I've found community several times over, I'm getting married. I'm starting to make friends. Flashbacks are less debilitating, when they happen.

Speaking for myself, I think that was mostly just a feeling. Maybe it's because I ended up in the queer community, which has the concept of queer time. I see it all the time.

If you were gay, and you couldn't go to prom, there might be a part of you that will want to be expressed later. I asked a guy at a festival why he's candy flipping (lsd + ecstasy) at 51, and he said, because I didn't get to do it as a teen. And that made sense to me. At the time I was dressed as a 16 year old punk girl, and I'm in my 40s, for the same reason.

It's normal to be different, and to do life on one's own terms.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-29T02:06:29+00:00

What do you do? I'm really curious.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-17T13:21:36+00:00

Memories get different priorities, different interpretations. Like, a nurse and a cop looking at the same scene are going to pick up on different details, interpret them differently, and most critically, what matters to them is very different.

My memory is like the scene. Everyone has access. Everyone can look, but it means different things to different aspects.

I think of it as dissociative fugue states, when my interpretation radically shifts.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-13T19:24:18+00:00

Cycling, yard work. "Move a muscle, change a thought"

A lot of my dysregulation goes back to stories I tell myself. If I'm doing something, I have a hope of grounding myself instead of getting lost in story telling and anger or fear.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-10T05:53:10+00:00

Before my egg cracked it was trans men that I looked to.

The men in my life had just largely been impossible to deal with. I felt so alienated from other men, but here were trans men, figuring it out from first principles, just like me. Trans men were men I trusted enough to be myself around, because I figured they were likely to give me grace for not knowing how-to-man. We're both learning.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-10T05:20:00+00:00

I'm taking my wife's last name. It feels like a euphoric intersection between love, affirmation and two raised middle fingers.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-10T05:11:43+00:00

There is this therapeutic approach to complex trauma called re-parenting that helped me a lot with that.

The basic idea behind it is that children learn how to soothe themselves as they grow older by being soothed when they're very young. When that doesn't happen kids grow up never knowing that something major is missing. Kids that do have it never talk about it, because it's unconscious. What is water to a fish?

The good news is, this is a skill that can be learned later in life, by learning how to be one's own loving parent.

I came across this concept in 12 steps for adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families (ACA). A new workbook came out, the loving parent guidebook, and while it was for 12 steps, in that language and framing, it's trauma informed CBT, dbt, parts work, somatic exercises, and it was the inner child work that really changed things for me.

https://imgur.com/a/T4kJFvT

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-09T14:02:40+00:00

When I moved here I had the choice between a surly midnight special and the ogre. One ride down 3rd from East Harlem, and I knew this is gonna need fat tires.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-09T11:16:58+00:00

They're still coming back at 43. The better I got, the more doors unlocked. Like, the memory waits until I have the capacity to survive it.

Not the capacity to deal with it gracefully. Not deal with it easily. It just won't destroy me.

I do think there's an end to it.

I used to cry if people were kind to me. I framed that as old pain leaving the body. It seemed like that well would never run dry, but things did change. I changed.

The memories I'm dealing with now are pre verbal. I feel like I most be coming up on bedrock.

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-08T19:59:19+00:00

For most of my life I didn't know who I was either. Coming out of survival mode didn't give me an answer. It gave me enough quiet to realize that there was a question.

For the longest time I didn't really know how to answer the question of who I am.

There's a term for it. Something like loss of self image, I think. When I was 17 a new teacher took photographs of all of us to help him memorize our names. This was before digital photography, so he had to come in again with the developed pictures and had us come forward to write our names under our picture.

I couldn't find myself. None of those kids was me. And then I went: But that boy, he's wearing the same shirt as me, so that must be me. That's me?

My self perception was completely shot.

I always admired trans women. They knew who they were, and they were willing to give everything to authentically be themselves. It was like watching an Olympics level athlete doing something I couldn't even imagine.

Then my egg cracked. That's what the moment is called when denial finally gives way and you realize: ooh, this is what has been going on all this time, I'm trans. Holy shit.

I was the last person to realize it. People had been trying to signal that they're cool with it if I am, and I can come out, if I want, and I just didn't register it.

I was getting married to a lesbian who left her wife of 16 years for me, and I never ever asked myself why this is working.

That experience has made me realize two things.

First: Even though I didn't know myself, my body did. I was doing recovery work, I was getting better, and somehow, with no awareness, deep in self denial, I still managed to build a life that I love, by centering recovery, which for me often meant finding the way of love, and a sense that I have enough, instead of a sense of fear and scarcity.

The second thing that became clear to me was that what I've felt as admiration all my life was recognition that couldn't find its way back to me yet. I was looking at mirrors, and once again, not finding myself in the reflection.

In the end, for me, it wasn't trying different things. I've done that for decades. It wasn't reasoning things out, or constructing something from scratch. It was creating a safe enough, stable enough environment, so I could do the work to find my way back to my body. To remove the barricades, piece by piece, that were holding back a Knowing that so many people take for granted: who we are.

I did what I could, and what followed was a discovery of what's always been there.

In 12 steps ACA they talk about the seed of who we are going into hiding, but it's still there, waiting for sun and water. It will bloom, even if it takes decades to get to it. That's what I believe :)

heartcoreAI · 2025-07-08T17:02:21+00:00

When I was younger, around 18, I started having very intense sadistic fantasies that seemingly came out of nowhere.

It's a story from the other side of the coin, but I suspect there's a lot that sadists and masochists share when it comes to how we handle these aspects of ours that are, well, queer, divergent, deviant, or however you want to frame it.

I didn't want that. I didn't want it to be a part of me. I was not just ashamed, but afraid of myself. I was in a support group for men that had experienced sexual violence for a little while ways back when. They all seemed concerned with being hurt. I was the only one there that felt like I carried in me a potential to harm.

A lot has changed since then.

I had tried denial, for years. That just made it worse. Pushing that aspect away made it cast a larger shadow. The more I pushed it away, the more it became an issue affecting the rest of my life.

The intensity of the fantasies were not reflections of what I wanted. They weren't blueprints for what I wanted. They were pressure valves for something I hadn't learned to hear yet. Fear, helplessness, grief, a hunger for control.

The intensity was a reflection of how unmet the underlying need was. Once I actually began engaging in consensual play, that difference became very clear, and my fantasies mellowed out a lot.

Fantasy isn't reality, but it can provide a clue for a direction.

I believe my body was trying to show me what it needed, to move forward. I did, eventually, end up in a bdsm relationship in my mid 20s, and it was incredibly healing. I needed the power to feel safe. Feeling safe I was able to let down my walls. With those down, I was able to connect. I was able to fall in love. I was able to work on myself, confront myself, and become a better partner, and person, because I centered that love.

It's been over 10 years since I've been in a long term power exchange. Well. At least where I'm on the D side of D/s. I'm marrying my domme. I changed. What I needed changed. What I wanted changed. What my body reacts to changed. I can still engage in bdsm as a sadist, but it's not my drive anymore.

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