Heya all, just wanna plug a friend and wonderful artist in need of some more attention, she's running a Kinktober Commission. which can be found on here https://www.furaffinity.net/user/aleksikashvets/

She's done a lot of wonderful art for me.

Regret

It’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I’ve come to know I have a lot of that.

Regret about taking so damn long to start transitioning.

Regret for not moving out of my parents home sooner and actually living a life.

Regret for not taking chances and maybe, having a better life.

But my number one regret is for a long gone friend, who cared for me so much, that it hurt him when I wasn’t able to return that. I hurt him. He stood by me through a lot, through some pretty major mistakes, but he always had my back. Even when a mutual friend of ours ended up hacking my computer… tho even that was done in an attempt to help me.

I wasn’t supposed to be gay. I was (at the time) a good religious boy… even tho I really wasn’t either of those things. I pushed my friend away, and perhaps something that we could have had, and might have been wonderful for me.

Instead I spent the next 24 years bouncing from one friend group to another, from one bad relationship to another… getting my heart broken and repaired... guess you get what you earn.

To be honest, I'm not even sure he is still in the fandom, or even on Furaffinity but I have been thinking about him alot over the past year.

So… Moe the Fox, I hope you found someone who made you happy, and I am sorry I hurt you.

Well, another Furality has come and gone, and while it was a bit rough on me, I still enjoyed myself a good deal.

Here's looking forward to next years, and perhaps a few RL Cons as well, who knows.

And yes, I am still alive, still working my life away and getting the odd bits of time with friends.

Oh boy... I am trying hard not to cry.

This was the third best weekend of this year, the first two was spent with my bf back in April despite my debit card getting stolen online twice in a week's time.

But Furality, what an experience. The worlds were hauntingly beautiful and the music and background noise still sends shivers down my spine. So many happy furries running around enjoying themselves, while I am far more a wallflower, I still met a couple nice folks and made a few passing friends. Getting to spend time with the BF was also wonderful.

However it's all bittersweet as apparently these worlds I had become so use to seeing for hours over the past four days are going away. I don't believe they are going to return as they was during the con. And that, for some reason makes me sad.

I am looking forward to the next VR con I can go to, hopefully dragging a few more folks along with me this time.

In other news, I finally worked up the courage to speak with my family about myself and call and get help. Next month I will be speaking to a local doctor about my transgender issues, and hopefully getting the help I need. I know, it will be a year before we can do more then just talk, but I have waited this long. Here's to hoping.

As for speaking with my family, to say it didn't go as well as I'd hope is a understatement, but as my BF told me, it didn't go as bad as it could either. Taking his and another couple people's suggestion I didn't open with, "Hey dad, I'm your daughter, not your son... surprise." I began with coming out as Bi and telling them I had a bf. I am thankful I did, as the mood in the room changed quickly. While I wasn't disowned or kicked out I did get the 'The church and god doesn't approve of this.' line. With the 'we still love you' bit added on. The conversation quickly ended and I hurriedly left to go back to my apartment. Despite my long post about my home life with them, I guess I still expected them to understand. And while I originally planned to try and bring this up again later, my dad's been having heart issues so I decided not to add on to that at this time.

Still, I guess it's some progress, getting my ears pierced soon, and been wearing women's tops. omg that has been such a relaxing experience to do, for the first time clothing feels like it fits me perfectly and is so comfortable. On a more personal note shaving more then just my face now, that has been a wonderful feeling too.

Slow and steady I suppose... still, coyotes are more accustom to rockets strapped to our backs. I just hope I don't end up going splat.

I'm going to finally be getting my own space in a couple days. Gonna take a few days or week to get everything moved in and set up. This morning I typed up a thing, I realized as I went I was doing so as if I was talking to someone. So, I'm gonna share. Its three and a half pages about my home life. I want to share it because I don't want others making the same mistake I've made and waiting to live their life. I know that's easier said then done for a lot of you, but at 42 years old I think I might have waited too long.

My home life, oh boy.

While it wasn’t as horrible as some poor folks in the world, it hasn't been the best for me mentally. At all. I have been trying for the past 30+ years of my life to help my father with my mother and sister, and while that sounds like what a good child should do, it wasn’t completely the sole reason I did so.

My mother, as much as I loved her, was not a smart woman. Oh, she tried and did some good, but she also did some bad. I was the baby of the family, and she was scared I'd get hurt or someone would take me so I wasn't allowed out of her sight. I had only one friend growing up, one of my many cousins and he only got to hang out with me around my mom at our home. I never stayed over at his house or went anywhere with his parents.
In the middle of 1st grade I was put into a private Christian school run by my aunt and my mom also started working there as a teacher. I wasn’t allowed to do PE or anything of the sort, she was worried I’d get hurt. So I stayed in the classroom with her. I also wasn’t allowed to bath myself until I was twelve or thirteen. And as it was a Christian school, sex edictaion was none exisitent. When I was fifteen she took me out of the school and homeschooled me for the last few years. The next part, I can’t blame entirely on her. I cheated for most of the lessons I had. She gave me both the work books and answer books so what do you think happened? Looking back I know I screwed myself a lot there, my spelling isn’t what it should be nor are my math skills.
She got us deep into debt. Buying huge carts of groceries twice a month, sometimes more. Two cart loads of things that once bagged sometimes became three. What she bought and why, I honestly can’t remember. Clothes for all of us, and whatever my sister and I asked for we generally got. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? It can be. My father, who had worked for Ford for nearly 30 years was forced to retire as the plant he worked at would be shutting down soon. But due to the three or four credit cards my mother had racked up he had to get another job and work alongside me at Walmart for another 10 years just to pay off the bills.
My mother believed a lot of far fetched things, religion being just one of them. Thanks to the echo chamber she put herself and my sister into she fully believed her phone conversations with her sisters were being recorded by the government. The little stickers on the back of road signs had a small microchip in it that UN troops could use to scan and find out where they were in the country. She took us ghost and bigfoot hunting, which wasn’t all that bad if I’m honest, but ironic given she was so afraid of everything else around us.
My mom died of dementia… or Alzheimer's… or maybe she just died on the living room floor of our trailer in her own shit slowly of starvation because whatever had affected her mind wouldn’t allow her to eat. Or maybe it's because my sister and father never took her to get medical help.

My sister. She was one of the few constant friends I had growing up, she was older than me, smarter and someone I looked up to, tho for reasons I hadn’t yet released at the time. My sister was fanatical about keeping both her room and the house at large clean and well organized. She did the same for herself, spending long times in the bathroom to get ready. We played together a lot when I was little, pretending it was something we did a lot outside, defending the Battlestar Galactica from the evil Cylons is one of my fondest memories of that time. And inside her Barbies and my GI Joes would othen join forces to defend Castle Grayskull from… well I honestly don’t remember what, though I often took the chance to play with her dolls as well. Like me she was pulled out of school and attended the same Christian private school, unlike me she at least had a couple years in public school to help with the basics of interacting with normal people.
Then we moved. And it all changed. My sister's closet was always full. As was any space under her bed. But to this day I can not for the life of me understand how what she had in her closet in a single wide trailer could fill her entire room and the dining room in a double wide trailer.
And that's where it all stayed. For eighteen years. In the boxes it was moved over. Only token suggestions about getting it unpacked, put into storage or sold from my parents. So it sat, over time being covered by sheets to hide it from sight and forgotten about.
It wasn’t long after we moved that my sister’s inability to understand time got worse. She’s always run on her own time, some people do I suppose, but not many to this extent. She often wouldn’t start getting ready for going out until a few hours before, which sounds fine… for others. Often we’d be stuck waiting twenty or thirty minutes for her so we could leave. Then the times got long, despite her starting to get ready sooner. I say starting to get ready, but she never just got ready. She’d have to fold some clothes to make sure they were perfect, straighten something in the house or just sit watching tv. As time went on, we stopped going to movies as we’d comonely miss the first 30 minutes or so. Eventually she just started staying home, and caring less about her appearance.
When I got my first job at 20 for the Taco Bell in town, my sister was leaving the house once or twice a year, on holidays to go look at stuff to buy. I think we own like four or five christmas trees at this point. When I began working for Walmart, my mothers paranoia showed in my sister. I was told never to cut my fingernails around the store or someone might take them for various reasons. Or hair. I shouldn’t leave food out where someone could do something with it.
By the time my mother became ill, my sister wasn’t taking care of herself at all. Where once she’d barely gone a day without a shower and changing into clothes for a day out she now could go a week or more without a shower and a housecoat and nightgown was all she wore. As my mothers illness got worse, so did my sister's mental state. Her trips outside of the house went to one and finally stopped completely. Weeks turned into months with no shower and what had been a mess when we moved in was becoming a fire hazard as time went on.
I’m unsure why, if it was to fill something she was missing in her life, a way to cope with my mom’s slow decline into madness or she was simply doing what my mother had done and buying everything she thought she needed. And so my sister bought… and brought… and bought stuff. Clothing. Jewelry. Makeup, Prefuim. DVDs. All with my dad’s money as she had never gotten a job. Hundreds of dollars spent on basically junk, sometimes over a thousand. And not just a couple times either, we’re talking monthly, sometimes weekly. Since she had no job she had no bank account and thus I was the one buying it for her as I was the only one with a debit card, paypal and knowledge of how to buy stuff online. So my dad deposited money from his account into mine, and thus the piles of junk grew. To the point her room was no longer liveable and she began sleeping on the couch. Her bed was covered in junk. And then the utility room… and the back bedroom and now the living room.
It wasn’t all just for herself, no she bought clothes for myself and my father. Find a pair of soaks that fit well… better buy five more packs. Good pair of pants, we need another ten. Toothpaste we like, buy three three packs.
Groceries were much the same. At one point we had six gallons of milk in the fridge at all times, despite the fact my mother stopped eating and most of it would spoil before we could use it. We had to have lunch meat all the time as well, in case someone wanted a sandwich. Four loaves of bread. What's that, we used a can of chili? Better buy another one to go into the stock pile of ten on the floor so one from there can go into the cabinet with the other ten.
Everything was bought as if we would be unable to ever get out to the grocery store. Everyday was doomsday buying.
And my dad let it happen. He would talk about trying to clean up the house, he would talk about getting her to stop buying things, he would talk. But never follow it up with any actions.
And thus, my sister was in control of the house. She would put out the clothes I would wear for work every night, as well as drop off my underwear and socks. Yes, I was rationed my underwear and socks every night, the rest kept in her room or the utility room. I asked her to just bring them all into my room. It was ignored.
With the house now a massive junk pile company was never allowed inside. No one could see the inside of the house, no family, no friends. I think she had a mental breakdown the day a repairman needed to come inside and check the cables.
Once mom had died and dad started seeing another woman, my sister's mental state twisted even more. My dad’s new woman was never called by name, only referred to as ‘her’. I was told never to talk about anything personal around ‘her’. Did I see him with ‘her’. Did I pass them on the road? And so my sister and my dad became almost strangers overnight.

My dad… like all my family, I love my dad, and I find it hard to honestly blame him for this mess. But he does share some of the responsibility for it. My dad drove back and forth to work for close to thirty years. Eighty miles there, and eighty miles back, normally five days a week but sometimes seven when we were in debit to a couple credit card companies. When he was home he’d often watch TV or if it was his day off go golfing.
I get the feeling that my mom and dad, while they had originally loved one another, had grown apart over the years. But they stayed together because that's what good Christian folk do. I have no evidence this was indeed what had happened, but they slept in two different rooms for as long as I could remember.
I know my mother kept the credit card bills from him for awhile, though given it's the second time she’s run up a massive bill I’m not sure why he was surprised. But he always let my mother make all the decisions about schooling and care. Oh, I was asked of course, but I was six or eleven years old. I’d never been allowed outside of my parents' sight… what did I know of the world outside my home and private school?
As soon as mom was buried my dad began leaving the house for the entire day. I can’t blame him honestly, he spent the last three or four years trying to help care for someone whose mind had been all but erased. Who couldn’t bath herself, sometimes feed herself or know when she had to relieve herself. He stayed largely at home, except for the odd trip to fish with a friend, which I did not hold against him.

And so it was just myself and my sister, as my dad would wake up, shower and leave the house at eight in the morning and wouldn’t be back until sometimes ten at night, or sometimes midnight.

So I tried to be the good kid, I did what I could to help out, at least that's what I told myself. But in all honesty, it was only some of the reason I stayed at home for forty two years. I’d never truly interacted with people outside my family, one of them was always around me for the first 20 years of my life. I didn’t know how to act around other people. I was awkward, shy, and took things at face value. I made mistakes, one quite serious, another couple just plain stuiped.

42 years of life. I try not to think of them as wasted, but if I am honest with myself, they are largely that. I haven’t lived a life, I have just been pretending to. I doubt myself a lot, I’m not very smart, and I am still trying to learn how to behave around people. I’ve been lying to myself since I was old enough to know what that is. I hate my reflection. I hate pictures of myself. I hate my body. It's not me. But I am afraid I’ve waited too late to fix things now. But I am going to try.

I have friends both locally and online who know I’m actually a woman trapped in a man's body. They support me and help however they can in whatever way they can.

I have a wonderful boyfriend who somehow has put up with the mess of a human being I am for the past two years.

They are my new family.

I think I can try and live. For real this time, I just hope this helps someone younger than me to avoid my mistakes. Because it's not just the physical abuse that can screw someone over, and you might not even think your parents, extended family, friends, etc are all that bad. It doesn’t take much tho.

And you shouldn’t wait till the last minute to be yourself or live your life. Otherwise you might find there’s not as much time as you’d like.

Hmm, to be honest I'm not really sure how often I'll be using the Journal system. I mean... I'm just a nobody from the central US!

Still, it's been six months since I did that first one and it looks... odd there so I guess I'll do something with this...

...

So... how's the weather?

...

Anywho... Bronycon 2019 was great, much swag was bought, many events seen, much crying as I left... gonna miss it. Actually had to skip the last closing ceremony due to my flight and them having to scramble to find seating for everyone who showed up. As I made the choice to walk out I heard cheering behind me as they finally got the line moving. Oh well, I'll have to get around to watching it on YouTube at some point.

Also for anyone watching me... thanks. I'm afraid I don't do any tricks tho I might try streaming SoT's at some point in the future so there's that. Also gonna be uploading some new art I had commissioned awhile back soon.

Got a new computer so... Yay me! Battletech is addictive and I loves me some big stompy robots.

Hmm... well, there we go... got something new posted here so huzzah me!!

Well, not afraid to admit I'm a bit nervous, tomorrow I'm heading out to Baltimore, for the last time it seems.

No secret I'm a brony, have been since Season Two and a rather amusing mashup of the Starcraft 2 trailer auto with clips from MLP Season One. I was greatly amused and dug a little deeper into the rather well done animation I was watching. Binged the first season on YouTube in a couple days and haven't looked back.

I've been out to Baltimore, or rather Baltimare as it's know this time of year, five times now, three times driving and two flying. This will be my sixth time, and third time flying. I gotta admit, flying is easier, but also a bit more frightening then driving. After all, you can do something about an accident driving (for the most part). Flying...

Still, it's the final Bronycon, and I promised myself I'd be there till the end... and this seems to be just that. *sigh* I've only missed one since I started going in 2013. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna miss this one. Whatever it takes!

So! Gotta get ready to pack! And here's hoping I come back with some money this time and not so many plushies...

... nah!!!!

Theme song for the weekend!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oBU7d5oenQ