It's even more frustrating because like, my body sucks at regulating temperature -- it has ever since the one time I got heat exhaustion (?) when I was fifteen and it's only gotten worse over the years, especially since I started my psych meds (both of which cause heat intolerance lmao)... so I can't really get dressed unless I want to boil to death in the process and that ends up making me get really depressed. Everyone else in the world with seasonal depression seems to become depressed in the winter -- I get depressed in the summer...

But aha, I got off topic there, didn't I?

I was going to talk about feeling invisible.

What's there really to say though? I'm a gay trans man, I basically do not exist to anyone except the people who want to make laws to control my body. I don't even know how to begin to say how frustrating it is when the people passing the legislation against medical transition in the US say explicitly that it's to "protect" the bodies of "young girls" only for, it feels like, every ally to scream "WE SUPPORT TRANS RIGHTS, TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!"... Like, yes those laws will affect trans women too. But they're explicitly targeting trans masculine people. But no one cares. Or worse -- they accuse you of hating trans women and speaking over them if you point this out...

Not that transmisogyny isn't a huge issue.
Not that being hypervisible is good (I've been in a hypervisible category myself and it fucking sucks.).

But idk, between what I feel now and what I felt when I was the ~acceptable~ and ~sexy~ hourglass fat girl with huge tits... I think I'd go back to that if the idea of being a girl didn't make me want to fucking die. I'd trade being ignored, being unseen, having like literally no erotica drawn or written about bodies like mine for the constant discomfort of being fetishized again.

I should really just get over myself. I should really just...stop expecting people to remember I (and people like me) exist. I should just learn to accept it. But I can't.

It hurts when people talk about ~The Gayest Magic the Gathering Set ever~ only for there to be no explicitly gay men or trans men whatsoever... But multiple enbies, a trans lesbian and a cis lesbian. I'm happy for the ace/aro representation in the set but like...

I'm tired of people saying "there's so much queer rep!" when what they mean is sapphic rep. Queer includes all of us. And I want to be happy. I want to cheer and be like "hell yes, more representation in (kind of) mainstream art and media!" but when I combine seeing people say "queer representation" with the fact that trans men are entirely invisible, that I've seen multiple femme enbies (a category to which I did belong for a long time), that there are so many bi and lesbian girls in media lately...

It just makes me bitter and angry. I hate feeling this way all the time. I hate being so angry all of the time. I hate feeling this bitterness and pain in the pit of my stomach. I hate feeling empty and left out. I want to take joy in the rest of my community getting notice, getting love, getting to see themselves represented in children's shows and in card games. I want to be happy for them... It hurts though. It hurts to be invisible. It hurts to be passed over time and time again. It hurtst to see everyone in history who may have been a trans man get Girl Bossified.

I'm just... being a giant baby about so fucking much. I need to get over it. Get over myself and learn to be happy for what the trans community can get. And just... get used to it, I guess.

Anyway, uh, I'll add something positive to finish this off:

I've been working on an obnoxious rainbow fluid art shirt the last two weeks (hand stitching the entire thing) and now it's almost totally finished (it needs buttons and buttonholes added but I'm dragging my feet) and I'm really proud of it, so I'm gonna share the two finished pics:

All of the seams are finished, too. some with a zig-zag stitch (which I learned juts for this project) or with some left-over halloween ribbon (hence the ghosties on the inside of the collar). I also made the pattern myself, tracing an old shirt of mine that didn't quite fit. I think I could still adjust it a little bit better but that'll be for the next set of shirts I make, I guess...