Well, here goes.

I managed to go nine whole days at school without blowing up. That's pretty damn good given my track record! I've been called [given name] more times than I can remember as well as generally disrespected, but I deal with it. I am a pretty awesome creature, if I do say so myself. And I know that doesn't sound very modest at all, but please know that it wasn't always that way. I am proud to love myself, because I used to hate me. I'll leave it at that as I'll probably make an entire post on the subject at some point in the future, but just know that I'm not being obnoxious.

But anyway, back on topic, I lost it yesterday. We had to create "identity webs" in English with four intrinsic parts of us. Mine were as follows: liberal, queer, pessimist, and scholar. The idea was that someone else in the class would have to interview you based on your web. Well...I got paired with the only other kid in the class with my given name, which everyone immediately pointed out. She even read the slip of paper (which I put my *chosen* name on!) as given name, to the whole fucking class. So I said "fuck it," literally, and didn't say anything but that for two minutes on end. (Mind you, I said it once everyone had paired up - the teacher, to my knowledge, did not hear this.) That was just *so* fucking irritating. I also had to explain queerness to this kid, who just didn't get it the first several times through. The teacher did ask me after class if I went by [given name], which was polite enough of her, and I responded as nicely as I possibly could that I really preferred to be called Matt. The teachers are being very good about this overall - one's slipped up a few times and called me "ma'am," but immediately apologized and used "sir" instead. Another just studiously avoids using pronouns - other kids are "yes, ma'am?" and "yes, sir?", well, I'm "yes, Matt?" Works for me, though I think he'll come around.

and...the counselor called my dad last Friday to inform him that I was going by Matt at school. Sitting in his office as he made the call, well, it was the most nerve wracking situation of my life thus far. He (my dad) made it seem over the phone like everything was alright, that he just wanted me to be happy, blah blah blah. That lying bastard – as soon as I got home, I got subjected to the "well I didn't figure myself out until my twenties, there's really no need for labels" speech yet again. This happens whenever I try to have a meaningful discussion with him. He acted all resentful and whatnot, so I promptly fell asleep and stayed asleep till Saturday. Hey, it's a real easy way to get out of talking to someone after a long week.

Yesterday, I walked a mile and a half to CVS when I got home, bought a Visa gift card, and promptly spent it on a new binder from Underworks. I even paid the extra $20 to have it overnighted – my dad's out of town in San Francisco and my mom's been working late this week, so I knew this was one of the only chances I'd get. And boy, did it pay off! I feel like a fucking *god* wearing it.

I'm sure that I've managed to forget something, so I'll just include it in the next post when I get around to it.

I'm going to try to adhere to a weekly posting schedule from here on out - before school started, I really needed something to kill time and negative energy, and so this blog was born. However, I do have homework and the like in addition to a general...tiredness now, so I'm fairly well-occupied. I'm not going to abandon y'all, as there are still so many words that have to be written here. But I also don't have the time nor energy to post every two days or however often it was before.