[preface/context]

Later in the year 2020.

I am 22 years old. I took these photos in my bathroom on a pandemic Friday night. Earlier that evening, I had gone outside to the back steps of my apartment and took one hit from my bowl of weed, some leftovers from Wednesday. I hardly smoke anymore. It feels better to dabble with weed now. I’ve come a long way from being dependent on it. It’s fun because it doesn’t feel like a necessity. I’m really proud of that. It was my day off and I got a ton of shit done. I even had a therapy session that day, marking almost one year since I started.

[entry] 

I truly can’t imagine 2020 Reilly without my therapist. (Thank you). 

That Friday’s session was about me recognizing my fear of being alone. I recognize that I enjoy spending time alone but the thought of relying on myself solely to provide security and affection towards myself is odd.. and completely terrifying.  

My therapist challenged me to ask myself questions. Questions like, “How and what do I do to find out more about myself?” and “How and what can I do to show affection towards myself?” Completely, seriously, deeply large questions for me. 

Since, my brain has been churning around answers. There seems to be many. I’ve attempted to document some of them here.

[answer ##001]

Sometimes I avoid my reflection.

I only have two mirrors in my home, both are high enough on the wall to only show half of my body. Sometimes I don't think twice before looking in the mirror. I pay the most attention to my hair and my lips and my eyebrows. I love them. I’m starting to like my nose too. It reminds me of my father’s. I love when I see physical reflections of my parents through my body. They live on within me. Through me.

I have my father’s hands. I have my mother’s lips. I have my father’s feet, his jawline. Both of their freckles. 

Sometimes I wonder if we have the same thoughts, but we don’t talk about those as much as I’d like to.

I digress. 

I do think I’m pretty in a queer, tall, androgynous way.

Often, I realize I’ve been caring too deeply about how others perceive me. I lose touch with myself when that happens and I forget to check in with my environment. I forget that I’m even here. Psyche-detached-from-body type thing.

[answer ##002]

To love myself. To love herself. To love themself. 

I know I am genderqueer. I know I am genderqueer because I feel it. Down to my marrow.

The first time I heard the word androgynous was in highschool when my friend showed me that Replacements song while we smoked weed and drove winding backroads in her van. That was the first crumb of queer representation in popular culture that had reached me in the conservative, mostly evangelic town I grew up in. 

I had not a clue that I was queer then but I did know that long hair, tight shirts and makeup sometimes felt like parts of a costume I wore. This feeling stuck with me into my twenties. And to this day.

Femininity is complex for me. I stopped regularly wearing makeup when I turned 20. I don’t really like nail polish that much, it always looked funny to me on my large hands. I still wear dresses and skirts because they feel good. Some days I love how pretty my chest and collarbone look. Occasionally, I ponder what my chest would look like without breasts on it. I float from embracing femininity to being indifferent to it. Or else I adore it, envy it, cherish it, misunderstand it, learn from it, scrutinize it, criticize it.

[reflection ##]

I am infatuated with the term “gender non-conforming”.

In the past, getting rid of my breasts felt out of the question. Voluntary surgery? That scares the shit out of me. I’ll just keep the boobs and ignore them on the days that I don’t relate with them. 

My dysmorphia sends me sometimes. Right out of my body. 

[fact]

I stood in the mirror that Friday night and for the first time I tried to see myself without breasts, so I covered them, giving myself the illusion of a flat chest. I took about 20 self-timer photographs. I uploaded them to my computer.

[answer ##003]

The truth is, I love these photographs. They allow me to really study myself. My body transforms somewhere between the mirror and myself. Illusions appear that send gender euphoria to all the neurons in my body. I think I look beautiful in the photographs on the left and the photographs on the right.

Am I content with my body image? I can’t answer that right now.

I accept myself in my current form.