I did that!

I stood up in front of a full crowd of strangers on Monday and delivered some stand up comedy I had written. It was only three minutes long, but the objective was to make them laugh and they did, which was nice. I don't know if I'll ever do it again, but I had always wanted to try it once and now I can always say that I did it.

I felt nervous, obviously, but in a strangely distanced way. I had to drink a large glass of wine beforehand to feel more relaxed, but the entire time it never really felt like it was about to happen, until it did.

I always wonder why I get nervous about anything. I get so nervous and anxious about things, but things that are so hypothetical and unlikely that they rarely ever happen. I was excited about performing stand up, nervous and excited, even if it could have gone badly. Because I was fulfilling a desire, and I was going to get the buzz of being brave. I have an element of doom and gloom in my anxiety about anything else.

Maybe it is because I adore performing and the nervousness beforehand is vaguely pleasant. Maybe a completely irrational fear of my future in 5, 10, 15, 20 years is less pleasurable. I can see two outcomes of performing; one is bad but bearable, the other makes me feel like I can do anything. But the unknown future has multiple outcomes, and I am always certain the worst ones will come true. I am almost always wrong.

So perhaps I should forgive myself for my little anxieties, and revel instead in the pride of having ticked something off the bucket list. I did that! Can you believe it? I was so brave, and mad. And I am, for once, going to enjoy something I achieved.

Truths.

I spend a lot of my life gripping tightly on to what I think might be my truth. And when I am not, I am searching, frantically, for what I haven't discovered yet as if my truth might be lurking out of sight.

What the hell is my truth?

I reject anything that I do not want to be my truth, to be absolutely and irrevocably me.

But what is my truth?

My truth cannot be that guy I kept thinking about 6 months too long. My truth cannot be those bad thoughts I have about myself. My truth cannot be all the times I embarrassed myself. Or all the times I let myself down. I let myself down with the thoughts I shouldn't think, lingering on people who have left now, who I should let go. I let myself down when I hold back, when I don't try nearly as hard as I could have done.

These are not my truths.

Some people say that you can write your truths. That you write from the place that is absolutely and irrevocably you. Or at least, the writing anchors you to something like that. I think maybe that is how I grip so tightly, and also search for the things that are lurking.

And the other things, the letting down, the bad thoughts, the overthinking, the not trying hard enough. Of course they are truths. But they are fleeting, not anchored. And I am better than that.

Undecided.

I have stood for what feels like hours - that is, minutes turning into hours - deciding where to be, what to eat, what to buy. I have walked back and forth between cafes trying to gauge which has the best working atmosphere. I have picked up ready-made sandwiches, made it all the way to the checkout, and in a panic turned back around to make a different decision. What if this is the wrong one?

Such trivial things, too. I have done things a little bit wild, outside my comfort zone, without a moment's hesitation. Or if there was hesitation, it was only natural, and I overcame it quickly. Why, then, this impossible indecisiveness over the tiniest matters?

I get so flustered. I want each bit of my life to be as I imagined but what if I choose the wrong one? What if it is nothing like how I imagined? What if I spend the whole time wishing I was in the other cafe?

Mostly this happens when I am alone. If I am with other people their own indecisiveness drives me to make the decisions. You cannot get it as wrong when you're with another person, because company is the main pleasure.

But when alone, I get so preoccupied with what might be wrong. It must be right. It would be sad to be sad, and regretful, when you are alone.

You can get better, though, at overriding the indecisiveness. It adds what feels like years - that is, hours turning into years - to your life.

Standing in those flustered moments of indecisiveness, making the 'wrong' decision, it feels like it is much more about something else. And overcoming the wrongness, the inability to know which way to turn, and just letting it be, feels a lot more soothing. A lot more like a balm to the soul, which cannot decide, cannot know what is right. But what would that be, anyway?

The rules are not real.

I can understand, on some level, this global resistance to the way our perception of gender is headed. That is non-binary, fluid, beautiful, exceptional. I can understand because in some ways it is scary. It is a rejection of our carefully cultivated norm. It is a destruction of binaries drilled into us, which we were forced to confine ourselves to, and now as we leave them behind perhaps we leave some people behind too.

Identity will change when gender crosses enforced boundaries. It is already changing. If my identity constructs itself around femininity does that femininity become obsolete? No. But the lines between the feminine and the masculine will no longer be so rigid, so entrapping as if sex has anything to do with the way we feel.

Trans people have died and still die because cis people are so scared of gender. Imagine being so scared as to create that much violence, as to deny another human's existence.

I have no authority on this topic. I have never had to question my gender and as we watch lines blur I feel comfortable enough in my own identity to let it all happen. I am privileged enough to feel excited about it. I still think of it as a revolution brewing.

Does this rejection of such constraining binaries not lead to a deeper human experience? Will we not be more free in our own minds, in our own existence?

The denial of a person's existence does not actually destroy their existence. You cannot go backwards once rules are broken, because the rules will forever be undermined. The rules are not real. You can keep trying to enforce the rules, but they lose their power once someone points out that they are just rules. You can follow the rules, if you want, it it helps, but not everyone wants to. The rules are not real. And doesn't it feel so much better once you realise this? Don't you feel more relaxed? More full of love? More human?

Possessing the cool thing.

I have this funny habit of wanting to own things. Not material things, I don't feel especially strongly about objects. I enjoy having objects, I enjoy materialistic pleasure but I don't feel it so urgently as this other type of possession.

Mostly it is in moments of insecurity that I get this sensation, as if it is linked to proving myself, to marking myself out as worthy. It will happen in conversation or imagined conversation or even conversations I am not a part of and it will rush up inside of me hot and aggressive. The need to possess a concept, or an abstract thing, something which is not tangible but something I want to be inarguably connected to.

How do I explain this?

Say, for example, my dad had invented something really cool (he hasn't, sorry) and everyone knew about the cool thing but they didn't necessarily know that my dad had invented it. And it came up in conversation, without anyone else knowing how intrinsically linked I was to this cool thing, well, that is when the sensation comes along. I would feel an overwhelming desire to own that thing. To make it known that somehow, in some tenuous connection, I was a part of the thing.

I suppose it is linked to uniqueness. The desire to stand out from the pack, in the impossible task of becoming more immortal than everyone else. If they remember you for something, if they can see how different you are, that you possess this cool thing, you won't become ordinary and therefore invisible. I dread invisibility, especially when a moment of insecurity can convince me that I might be.

It is a way of being heard and noticed, to own something. Maybe that is how people feel about material things, and I feel it about tenuous links to concepts or events or facts that might make me seem cooler. Might give me more value.

Weird, isn't it.

Moments with my sister.

I want to write down every silly, funny moment between us because they are so beautiful and I feel so happy when they happen. I want to remember each moment you said or did something so obscure, so ridiculous that only we could laugh and our laughter created a separate universe where only we existed together, for as long as the moment lasted. I want to catch all these moments and keep them in jars to go back to, but they are so fleeting and I must watch them dissolve, clinging on to the feeling they created.

I want to keep having these moments, these private bursts of laughter in a language only we can understand, forever. I want these episodes of unadulterated joy to keep coming back to me. I want to preserve you, in each of these moments, I want you to last forever, for me, in our world. Is that so much to ask?

I've grown up.

It is so strange to notice yourself change. It is subtle, and can only be seen once it has happened, but it is odd when you suddenly realise. I have changed recently, or maybe I changed before and I didn't know. The change has been growing up. I have grown up, a bit, over the last few years.

I have noticed because I have come back for my last year of university and something feels different. I feel calm, and ready, and the pangs of missing home are not so great anymore. For the first time I didn't cry when my parents left. Which perhaps they will be sad to know, but also happy that they finally produced a functioning adult. Almost.

It feels funny because I am watching the first years wander around in that very lost, very frightened way with brave faces and I don't feel like that anymore. I feel different, in a good way. I don't need to put on a brave face because I feel brave, I have done brave things and given myself the reassurance that I can do almost anything I put my mind to. That's a fantastic change. It doesn't mean no more fear, but it does mean the fear is always conquerable.

Perhaps I am lucky because I have always been ready to move on at the exact right moment. Ready to move schools, ready to leave school, ready to finish university. Ready for the next bit, whatever that may be.

So I have changed, and grown up a bit. And it is such a lovely, reassuring feeling that I almost can't wait for it to happen again. And again. And again.