I’m so tired! Today my friend Aylan and her son and I went to pick up Posey from her dog sitters, who is a ways away so it took a while. Also on the way we stopped at Six Nations to see our friend Terri. It was a good day, but a long day and me and my pup are sleepy. It was great seeing Posey again, she was excited, I was excited. She was wagging her tail and if I had a tail it would have been wagging too. We just love each other! I missed her so much! She was away since the beginning of October, so we had a month away from each other. A long time! I’m glad her sitter loves her so much and they have fun together.

I didn’t get my travel grant to go to London. Which sucks. But my Mom offered to pay for it since she just got an award and also we’d been wanting to go to London for a while anyway. So I guess we had a vacation. It still sucks not being supported for a travel grant because you really don’t know if you can afford it until you’re back and find out if you got the grant or not. BUT ALSO it concerns me because I have consistently gotten all the travel grants I’ve applied for for the last decade or so, and the only difference between then and now is that I’m trans and the grant was to travel with a film about being trans. And it was to a relatively prominent film festival too, so it sucks that I didn’t get it. Suspish.

My income has generally gone down a bit since I came out as trans, which is something I was worried would happen. I know so much of film industry stuff is being appealing to the masses, and marginalized people just aren’t as appealing according to a capitalist reading of audiences. So that’s frustrating. I’ve also posted on some social media in support of Free Palestine and ending the genocide and I know people are getting blacklisted around that. So that’s another concern. I’m honestly so relieved I chose not to go into academia, because of the silencing of scholars on these issues. And I feel like if I didn’t say anything I would feel like I wasn’t living up to my principles. BUT does it mean I will never get to make a feature film, and be confined to only doing a life of low budget short videos? I think it would rob the world of some great art, but also honestly probably some part of me feels like if I am punished for saying what I think is unjust, then that’s what happens. And if the world doesn’t want to fund my projects, then I’ll probably just keep making them and do sex work or something. Like, I know what it’s like to spend years doing DIY projects. And I know how to be poor. And I am not losing some job with benefits, I am just getting a slow trickle of money instead of what it was before I came out.

I was trying to encourage a friend to keep asking people out because she got rejected recently, but so did I this morning so it was kind of funny timing. I was telling her to try try again with someone new. And then I said something like “I’ve been rejected by so many amazing people!” Which is true the people I have asked out on more romantic dates this past year were all really amazing but not interested. So I guess at least I am picking amazing people. Not aligned yet I guess.

The strangest thing happened to me, I was talking about my last broken heart in the car with my friend today and after I was done telling them all about it, Snapchat sent me a friend suggestion and the friend was my ex. It was kind of eerie! I know it’s probably just listening or something creepy. But it always feels like “Is the Universe sending me a sign?” when really it probably just went through contacts and found someone with the same name as who I was telling the story about.

OR I DON’T KNOW maybe it is the Universe. They’ve been heavily on my mind and I’m just so tired and frustrated of myself and not being able to just move on. I feel like a failure in the art of letting go. And it seems like they’ve completely let go of me, they probably don’t even really remember me by now. And I’m just stuck with these reminders and haunted by these memories. And the sad thing is I really still wish it could work out some how, but I am so stuck and I can’t message them because they told me not to. Like I wish they had left it open so we could have talked a few months later, but NO they wanted no contact. Ever ever ever. So what am I supposed to do about that? Nothing, there’s nothing I can do and it’s the worst feeling. They could talk to me but not the other way around.

I also had an awkward session with my therapist recently around current events and I feel anxious about that now too. This world is getting so ugly and things are getting torn apart everywhere because of it. It really sucks.

I don’t know if things will get better. I wish they would but it looks pretty dire out there. I also think the refusal of the Canadian and American governments to listen to their citizens about issues like not sending arms to Israel has demonstrated pretty clearly that we don’t live in the democracies we are pretending we live in. Like the United States government listens to big money lobbyists more than their constituents, I think that’s a government run by capitalism more than democracy. And I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with Canada even tho I live here. We’re stuck with the Liberals and if we go Conservative it’s gonna get so shitty and fascist and I’ll probably lose my access to legal HRT. ARGH! And the NDP DID finally turn around and start asking for a ceasefire, but there was a long period where they went along with all the other parties in terms of the bombing of Gaza, which was really disheartening to me as a progressive. I really don’t know where a safe place is anymore. Fascism is rising all over the place, and based on my reading about what happened with the Nazis after the war, it makes sense. Most of them weren’t punished, most of them were welcomed to other countries all over the world. It just went more places. It is very disturbing.

And I was reading about the rise in hate crimes in Canada, and there’s some against Muslims, but a LOT against Jewish people. Like it definitely spiked. And that’s really scary and something I am trying to remember in all of this. I don’t want people to be unsafe because of what is happening. And also just the fact that I can never have a view of the world from all these different perspectives because I don’t have lived experiences in those communities. I can try to empathize. But I’m limited, and the fact that Meta decided Canadians can’t share news stories has meant I don’t see these events as easily unless I deliberately seek out news sources. Which I was just lazy about before and would read what friends shared on Facebook. But now I have like, a responsibility to actually keep on top of this stuff.

I read about the Hellfire Missiles today and saw a blurred video of a man with his legs chopped off in Gaza. Like it’s basically a missile with giant blades around it to chop people up. It’s disgusting, what kind of fucking monster would imagine something like that into existence? This genocide is bringing new horrors to the world every day. And yet we’re getting blacklisted for saying it’s wrong? Ugh fuck.