Catch My Breath.

Wow, glad to know my concern means bullshit to you. As if you couldn't have just spared 1 message to let me know. Just so you know, I messed the shit up with my arm, and every damned message I type hurts like shit. You played me like a fool now didn't you?  Got me waiting up for you thinking you just forgot to reply me. Yeah I'm pathetic aren't I.  Sigh. I thought I meant a little more to you that you could've at least let me know you won't be around tonight. How can I believe when you say that you'll text me to let me know you'll be back late, when I can't even trust you to tell me you're at camp. I mean, you forget once or twice, that's fine with me, but if you're gonna forget so many times then its really gonna take its toll on you if you're dealing with more important things. I am understanding. Alright, you've been busy with costumes and you've been really stressed out. I really shouldn't have expected you to remember something less important like letting me, of all people, know that you'll be at camp. I suppose its not your fault that such a minute matter might have slipped your mind, perhaps you thought you've told me before. I'm sorry.

Champion

When you're in the ring, the guy who's not afraid to die, he will be the winner. He is the man who is not afraid of losing, the man who has tasted the bitter pain of falling, the man who had dirt gritted between his teeth from failure. In almost all sports, you can win through skill. This is not one of those sports. This is a fight driven by determination, technique, and raw hunger. You fight today, not tomorrow, not next week, today, because every second, every minute left untamed is a step further away from winning. There is no 'can't' in this sport; in a fight against your own conscience, you conquer the mind, and the body will follow. In the ring, it's not about the bigger man. You throw a punch, you move, move before the opponent hits you, tackle it under and strike, move forward. When you're knocked down, get back up, he, she, they can't tell you to quit, you never let your opponent see your back. Never quit, that's what separates a normal person and a champion.

"I am a champion." -The Bar Brothers

Truths and More Truths

It doesn't get any more real than this. This is why I love everything about Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They have a career together, they hang out together, they perform together, they help each other out with side projects, but they aren't together. She's with some other guy (no idea what his name is), and Joseph is her really good friend. To be honest I think they're sweeter together but oh well. At least they're both okay with it. I guess I relate to this gif-set in a way, at least with regards to my ex and all. Its gotten better these past months, and I'm no longer a walking corpse tainted by heartbreak leaving trails of pain wherever I go. But there are certain places I go, certain songs that I hear, certain moments that pass that will trigger my mind, telling myself "hey, I think she'll like this", or "I can imagine her singing this song", or "hey, this is a nice place I'd would've liked to bring her to, I'm sure we could enjoy this place together". And then I stop for a bit, wondering if she's enjoying the same little things that I would've wanted to share with her, walking down the dusty path with a handful of flowers and memories I could have stolen. 

If you ask me how I'm doing, I would say I'm doing just fine, I would lie and say that you're not on my mind. But I go out and I sit down at a table that's meant for two, and I finally I'm forced to face the truth. No matter what I say, I'm not over you.

Just heard that song a while back. I don't understand why my dad got mad at me for leaving the plate and drink on the table when I'm still going to drink and eat again. Okay, the drink was near the laptop, but it was capped anyway, so anyway accidental spills would've been avoided regardless. And I left the plate on the table because I was going to use it to eat soon anyways, and I don't see the point in double washing, its only gonna waste water and it boils down to the same results anyway. To be honest, I think he just didn't want to admit he was wrong so he took it out on me instead. And back to her, I'll get it, if you need it; I'll search, if you can't see it, You're thirsty, I'll be rain, You get hurt, I'll take your pain. I know, you don't believe it; But I said it, and I still mean it; When you heard, what I told you; When you get worried, I'll be your soldier. I've always said I wanted to be a soldier haven't I? An epitome of courage and strength with Semper Fidelis tattooed across my back underneath a seal of eagle wings. But I suppose before I can open sail into tempest, I have to be able to conquer storms of the mind first. Which is why I will fight for you, protect you, and be your soldier, if you're okay with that.

Carry On

Carry On - Fun

“You think relationships are difficult? Try friendships. Try courting someone in order to convince them to join you in some nameless, shapeless Platonic complication — forever. Convince an adult stranger that you are worth a healthy slice of their limited time and energy without the prize of sex or romance.”
-Laura Jane Martin

This above quote is sadly true most of the time. We are so concerned in the future that a relationship might bring us, that we become slaves to the physical pleasures that we seem to tie to being in a relationship. Like Laura said, there's not many who would stick around in this loose-hung foreplay, and signing their name next to it in commitment. Like it or not, romance, the wholesome emotional and physical package of it, is a thrill. It is human nature, everyone loves a hug or a kiss, everyone loves holding hands, everyone loves the bow-tie effect of others recognising that two people are together. And more than likely, people love that recognition because this creates a whole boundary around their partner that exclaims that they belong to them, and well, that's just the whole enjoyment of it, feeling that someone belongs to you. Friendship, just like a romantic relationship, requires time and energy to sustain. Assume similar amounts of energy spent on friendship and relationship, and take a step back and look at what pleasure is being denied in a friendship, EVERYTHING that's mentioned above, and I could say that a true friend is harder to find than a steady partner. No I'm not talking true friends being people you chill at the bar with, share stories to loosen your mind up, no I'm talking about friends who will give you the same amount of comfort, sacrificing their time and energy for you, the same way a partner would, but without receiving any sort of physical reward in return. I suppose that's pretty hard to chance upon. I mean, look at it this way. Two people who would put their life down in a heartbeat for you, one who's able to redeem a reward, one who isn't. While the intention may be the same, given some time, chances are (but not limited to), either one person starts doing things for the happiness the security and rewards give himself, or the other person gets tired and leaves, which a true friend shouldn't do. From the word stew above, it does seem like the life of a friend would be sad, but I suppose its better to live sad turned meaningful, than true turned selfish. If a woodcutter chopped wood to donate it to orphanages and a a teacher is paid for his dream job to teach, give it some time, and the woodcutter would either love and leave, and the teacher will work for money. Think about it, most of the things we do are for the benefit of ourselves, going the distance to meet someone is because meeting the person will make you happy, kissing someone is because you enjoy it, sending someone home is because you want to spend more time with the person. Selfless is harder to find than you think. Relationships are beautiful, friendships are harder to find.

On a separate note, it hurts me to think that I've missed my boyhood, that I've missed the experience of growing up as a teenage boy, and I will never be able to experience it. Childhood and adolescent is the exciting journey of self discovery for most people, where they see themselves changing into their future selves bit by bit, and explore their bodies and share their experiences with similar growing children. Its where they look at themselves in the mirror and touch their skin, and realise they're slowly morphing into more of the person they want to be. For girls, this is where they learn to dress pretty and neat manners to appear pleasant before the people around them. For boys, it starts off learning from dad how to stand and aim to pee, how to play soccer, how you shouldn't tease girls or they won't like you. I've never had that. For me, this period is a mix of monochrome and colours. Light and colours flooded the fun I had with new friends and new places. Monochrome dulls any aspects of discovering myself. My starkest black blotch of ink places me in my uncle's car, tucked in a skirt my mom had bought, having the people around me throw me compliments, roses applauding the actor on stage when really what they tossed were just handfuls of thorns. I remember being paralyzed in thought, paraplexed in confusion as to how, why I didn't feel as happy as one was supposed to feel when being given a compliment. That skirt is so pretty. See, I told you the skirt will look nice on you. You look so pretty. Bullshit. I was a clown in my eyes, a puppet in the gallows of a symphony of strings that were tied to the hands of everyone else but me. I moved with every tug and pull, my mouth opened and closed as they wished but no words came out, no there were words, words coming bellowing from the puppetrators above, voices far too loud for a puppet so tiny. And like Pinnochio, I longed and wished to be a real boy. Heck, I even wished I was a cat or a wolf on those late nights that I could not sleep because I thought it was more likely to happen. Who wouldn't cut themselves free from this venomous black widow's web? ..Who wouldn't cut? Nobody wants to grow up. Maybe if you people sit down for a second and push those blatantly shallow thoughts in a chokehold around your throat where they belong, you might actually start to guess that the only reason I choose to be childish while I can now is because these are the only shredded remnants of my childhood that I will never be able to fully experience. I was born in this world a sculpture of ambiguity, I step into this world, a man. It kills me to know that I will never experience my boyhood.

Edit: I realise now that you have many responsibilities, many of them heavier than your own mass if they were to measure in kilograms. Responsibility to your cca, cheer, schoolwork, family, relationship, church. I shouldn't take up so much of your time and energy. I should back off and not try to shove my way up the ranks of importance. I'm sorry. You're right, I didn't understand.

This Word.

Went to the gym today again, today was arms day but I threw a little in for my back as well. One thing I've noticed is that I have to work on my triceps much more, I mean, for one, triceps are a bigger muscle compared to the bicep, so by building up on it essentially your entire arm will look much bigger in appearance. Not to mention since I'm upping on my chest workouts like bench presses and inclined presses, I need to strengthen my triceps to support these exercises so my form is better as well. I think I've been neglecting my triceps, not thoroughly because I still do triceps workouts but just that I need to target this muscle group more so it can really build up. I must say my stamina's improved quite a bit though. The last time I trained for sprints, it took me a few weeks to up to 16. and even so I tired out pretty fast on the third to fourth set. After some weight training, intervals of 4km and 10km runs, and just one prior sprint set, I already upped to 16. today, without even feeling much of a burn. I'd say if the gym wasn't getting so packed suddenly, I could have gone for a few more sets on that speed. I guess it must either be a better breathing technique to support my body while running, or the distance runs affected my overall stamina, but either way its good. My 4km run though needs to be improved, current timing is 20 minutes, which equals to a 2.4 timing of 12 minutes with a standard pace throughout. My aim right now would be to lower my timing down to 18 minutes, following which my overall target is 16 minutes for 4km. Gonna be tough I'd say, especially since I'm not much of a running person, but I'll work on it. So anyway what I did today was some stationary cycling (yes I have a stationary bike at home), followed by some ab work for about half an hour, that's in the morning. Afterwards I headed to the gym for arm day, and later on at night I shadow boxed for about 1 and a half hours. Trying to master the basic moves first and all the little combos but hell does it break sweat. Man does it feel good learning how to fight. Anyway just now at the gym I did some wrist work as promised yesterday to try and loosen out my wrists a bit. And now it hurts like a bitch to even move my thumb. My left hand is fine, just the right, but I'm pretty sure it'll sort itself out if I give it some time.

I read a blog run by an FTM this morning titled 'How to pass as a hot guy', and to be honest I think its pretty useful. If you look at all those other blogs out there giving tips on how to pass, they'll always give you stuff like wear looser clothes, or wear a shirt under your shirt or go for the standard haircut by going to a barber etc. I mean alright this is gonna get you to look like a guy, but not only that, its gonna make you look like the loser who has no one to sit next to at lunchtime. You know frat kid wearing a shirt with sleeves up to his elbows and pants that's halfway gonna slip off his ass? Yeah that kid. And so the nice thing I found about this blog is that it addresses issues straightforwardly to try and fix the problems rather than hide them too much, where you'll end up overdoing it. For example, he talks about the silhouette of a person when someone first has an impression of them. Its basically your body structure and shape, be it a feminine triangle, a standard guy box shape, or a masculine V shape. It talks about how the main aim should be to decrease hips and increase shoulder, and you find that this is pretty true to transform the stereotypical triangle to a V. I for one am blessed not to be thrown into the triangular extreme of the spectrum so its more of reducing the width of my hips for me, in order to emphasize shoulder breadth. My shoulders are already broader than my hips to begin with, so its just a matter of reducing the ratio between waist and hips (and reduce the waist too, show some ab definition eh?). But here I'd like to give a shoutout to other transguys out there who don't have it so lucky, I know some are born not only with a petite size, but with a notable pear-shaped figure as well, man, its gonna be tough.  Anyway, the link is here in case I wanna revisit the site when he updates it: http://ftmguide.rassaku.net/
Adios.

Eleven Eleven

So after getting two shirts yesterday, I bought three more today. The first one's a black Ramones tee, the sleeves are a bit too long for my liking but once its folded up it looks fine. I didn't wanna get it at first because I have too many black shirts, but the more I looked at it, the nicer it was so..yup. Second one is a print tee of a red double deck London bus, I really like the shirt, it has a nice fit and I never had a shirt of this type before. I'm quite happy that since I've grown, I can fit much better into shirts, especially around the shoulders, and for those tighter cut shirts, the sleeves hold around my arm pretty well, and makes me feel buffer than I actually am, but oh well makes me happy anyway. Third shirt is a university of Hawaii shirt, in green like my university of michigan one (which my stupid aunt threw away, oh well, it had paint on it anyway) but this time. My first one was in size S so I assumed I should be buying the same size since I bought the rest in S as well. But apparently, this shirt all along had a tighter cut, which explains why it already fit me nicely before, and this time I seriously can't fit into an S without looking like a stuffed hotdog. Shoulders were way too high, overall cut was too small, around the arms as well, so I got an M instead. Pretty stoked on that. Oh the difference a size can make. 

On the downside though, my wrist is getting quite bad, today especially, its been throbbing for a while now, but at least its not some piercing pain. Maybe because I did weights today, and upped them too, only had a day break (leg day!) between two gym sessions so my wrist hasn't recovered yet. Or maybe its time to start doing some wristwork. I'll look into that tomorrow, probably start some light workout to train my wrist. 

I've never thought someone would say talking to me feels like an obligation, but I suppose I can see why. Maybe I feel that these past few days, we've fallen into a routine that tends to push and pull each other around. I pull you close to confide in you, you push away without knowing because you have to be busy somewhere else, when you're done and don't come back, I try to pull you a bit to try to confide again, you pull me in to tell me problems you're facing, I feel bad for wanting to confide in you and don't do it in the end, you want to pull me in for a hug, I want to push away because I don't feel good, next day, you're busy but I don't know, I pull you in to tell you things I'm happy about, you push away time and again because you have stuff to do and I wonder where you've gone, a few repetitions, you finally come back, I push you away because I don't want to tell you things anymore, you pull me in to talk about how you've been, I listen, I pull you in and tell you my problems, you pull me in for a hug, I push away because you weren't there when I needed it, you leave for a while, you pull me in close to sleep, I lose any feeling of it, I get tired of pulling in, I push you away, you come back unknowingly, I sit with you, you get up and leave and say you'll be back soon, you're not back yet. 

If we could both pull each other in at the same time instead of dancing in mirrored steps, I'm hoping you and I could collide into rhythm once more.

This is a freezing bubble. Just thought it was beautiful and I wanted to show this to you today if you came online.

Shot to the Head

There have been several happy things lately. First, I hit my target weight of 60 kilos, no one else seems happy about this (maybe cos everyone else seems to want to lose weight, they can't get my joy of gaining weight) so I'll be happy about it myself. Next target, 62 kilos, then 65 before trimming down to 60 again possibly. Some way or another I've been able to gain muscle without much protein (powder form) so that's good, imagine the power more protein can pack on me..man. Alright just to keep track on my strength training so far, I'm curling 22.5 for speed curls and 17.5 for full, compared to my 12.5 and 7.5 for starts. Started front shoulder lifts at 10 and I'm doing 27.5 now. Benched 10 and I'm doing 32 on dumbbells now (can't remember bar). Dead lifting 65, but I haven't really worked on this much so we'll see improvement there. Full body pull ups starting at 0 and doing max rep 8 as of now, same with chin ups. Started lats pull down with 30, doing 100 as of now, I've been slacking on this one, needa bring this up. I think I started single arm rows at 15, doing 22.5 now. Trap shrugs at 25, time to bring that up soon, when my palms don't hurt as much. Son of a bitch.

Secondly, bought 2 new shirts from Fourskin, my all time favourite shop, gonna get most of my shirts from there from now on. Got a washed grey and washed blue one in a pocket shirt and a v-neck respectively, yes, a v-neck finally I've wanted this for a while and it's in a much better quality than the one I saw at UniQlo. What made me really happy is that I did NOT have to get the smallest size available, can you believe it! Because really, the XS was too small on me, not only because it was shorter than I'd like, but the sleeves and shoulders were pretty tight too, once shrunk-washed there's no way to comfortably get into them. The size S has a good length, the shoulders are just nice and the sleeves fit snugly around my arm. Does this brand make small sleeves or what man, but oh well, I'm stoked with my buy, gonna get more shirts from there soon hopefully, i'm starting to outgrow some shirts.

Third, I had a good shave today and for the first time, I cut myself. On the upper lip, the moustache area. Not some huge bleeding gash, just a little cut, but I CUT myself, SHAVING. Wow. I feel great about this hahah, call me crazy but it makes me damn happy that I ran into the tiny little accident while shaving. Anyway I hope it doesn't swell up or anything though, I didn't even use an aftershave or anything cos I couldn't find it, but whatever, it works, right? Right. I saw a little forum thing online about phalloplasty surgery and some of the things there really scared me. Because they take the extra tissue from the arm or leg area (mostly arm), it really leaves massive scarring there. I had no idea to what extent they removed the tissue until I saw the photo and..it was pretty scary, pretty much around the entire forearm so for the lower part of your forearm you're left with little tissue around your bone. And the way it looks it seems pretty raw open, but must've been newly done. Makes me rethink bottom all over again, but then again, what will people think of a man without a dick in his pants? Well they always say it doesn't matter, but women these days seem to be looking for far more physical relationships than I would've wished for. So I suppose I need it.