it’s actually closer to two, but who’s counting? the days are all melting together, heating like my desert home, like my body running as a furnace now, red-hot and tempered.

there is no longer a war within me. sure, i still rage at my external stressors and oppressors- the unbearable, maddening hell of living under capitalism’s cruelty; the traffic in this hellhole city; my autistic sensory particularities- but the rage directed towards myself just isn’t there now. i feel right. something clicked into place, and i don’t ever want to look back. i feel a sort of freedom, a sort of self-assuredness, that i never knew i could feel; it is liberating and intoxicating.

every day, i run to the mirror, excited to see the changes in myself now, rather than scorning myself and being the furthest thing possible from what i want. every day, i get drunk on all the possibilities of what i can be, and what i will look like. these are the first days that i have embraced change and submitted myself to it willingly.

my fury feels more powerful and righteous. i am far more anchored in my hatred for wrongdoers and bigots. i am more sure of myself, more confident, more calm for having done this and yet so goddamn irate that i had to wait this long. god curse and damn anyone and everyone who kept this from me, but i feel sorry that they won’t get to see me in my full glory. i am making myself at home in my own body, finally moving in after 24 years, understanding more why and how my rage came to be, and understanding that i’ve always been a fucking force to be reckoned with; i just had too much conflict in my mind that i couldn’t see through until now.

oh, and to the sorry ass bitch who, for some reason, wanted to remind me on multiple occasions- almost every single time i expressed wanting to do it, before i stopped being friends with them- that my most desired effect takes a really, really long time to happen and you just need to be patient, jesse, because it didn’t happen to my other friend for a while: i’m already getting it. slowly, sure, but it’s there. so, i know god still looks out for me, at least a little bit. i’m not so sure if he does at all for you.

i remake myself in another image of god; i have repaired this temple with nothing but my own hands and one dose a day that smells of alcohol and peace. i hold my newfound strength next to all the candles burned and scars earned of my past. i nurture myself, and in doing so i nurture my rage, so that it might be used in service of all those like i was who have not yet seen past the fog of their pain. if you feel the call, don’t look away- you can’t, trust me- there is always time and space for you here, and a world of satisfaction and relief that can only be described in so many flowery and beautiful words, but is not understood until it is felt.