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2:03am

I’m still here at the hospital. When I tell people about medical school rotations, explaining how I report at 5:30am, how there’s twelve-hour shifts, etc etc, this kind of implies that the medical student has a vitally important role on the team—one that’s so important that it demands so many hours of the day, and conveys a certain image of me running around from patient to patient for twelve hours straight. Sometimes you get home on-time and sometimes you stay for longer presumably because there’s important aspects of patient care for you to attend to.

That’s not really the case. Honestly most of third-year is sitting around in resident workrooms waiting for a resident to tell you what to do. And the irregularity in when you get home is because you’re waiting for a resident to let you go home. And I am in that uncertain time right now at 2am alone in the resident’s room (having been here since 6pm) waiting for someone to say “okay you’re dismissed see you tomorrow.”

I finished trans girl suicide museum. I actually have never read a piece of text that has made me feel so… deeply understood in my life. It felt like hannah was plugged directly into my consciousness, extracted all the thoughts that I’ve tried so hard to suppress, and splattered them onto the pages of this book. I wish I had my print copy and a highlighter and colorful pens. I want to write my little notes and replies and my own memories into it too. It’s the only book I’ve ever wanted to annotate. I really don’t know what to say other than it’s the best description I’ve read so far about the profoundly destabilizing, confusing, and frightening transition I’m forcing myself through. I think it’s a good read for me, a poorly-adjusted self-destructive trans woman, as I try to pretend to be the #1 most normal cisgender woman in the OB/GYN resident’s room of South Shore University Hospital.

I feel “pretend” is the operative word in the last sentence. I see transition as elaborate cosplay, masquerade, disguise.

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