(Well, not really. I mean, kind of. Like you think you know someone for a whole year and then they turn out to be a completely different person so you sorta feel like the person you knew is dead. That’s where I’m at right now.)
Alessandro and I finally took Diane Kitten to the vet after almost a year of having her (not out of neglect, we’re poor) but because she randomly started coughing and it was clear she was having trouble breathing. We rushed her to the kitty Emergency Room and found out she has asthma so it’s all good and she has medicine and feels much better now.
We found out some things like she’s about 2 years old and has a little tracker in the back of her neck (which I totally wanna remove, especially considering we looked for her owners for a longggg time and nobody claimed her so they’re clearly just bad people). We also found out she is not a she.
Diane Kitten is a boy.
Then again, how am I supposed to know how he/she identifies? It’s my fault for assuming he was a girl, but apparently he’s neutered so it makes sense why I was confused. Also I hoped he was a girl for solidarity purposes, imposing my own desires concerning his gender upon him which is totally philistine and not at all forward-thinking. I never thought I’d be this type of mother (cat-owner) and my surprise as well as my feelings of loss at the news were quite disconcerting.
I looked it up though, and there exists a phenomenon within the transgender community that people don’t really talk about. There is often a need to mourn the person you (or your friend/family member/etc.) used to be so that the true person can live and flourish in their real identity. It’s actually good to grieve the loss of the prior identity and gives the transgender person a feeling of closure without any guilt in moving on.
I’m likening my feelings to this phenomenon because even though it’s just a cat, I feel like I got to know him as “Diane Kitten” and in my childish brain, I built up this whole personality surrounding that female identity. Now I feel like I have to get to know him as a boy and mold an idea of who he is around this knowledge.
The worst part is changing the name. I was proudof that name. (She even has a twitter account.) The deal was that if we found out Diane was a boy, Alessandro would get to pick the name, so he picked “Mr. Tibbs”, Sidney Poitier’s character from the movie “In the Heat of the Night”, which is a badass role and Sir Sidney Poitier is probably the coolest person you could name someone after, but he already has lots of social media accounts and Virgil Tibbs had to deal with so much racism and bullshit which I would like to shield Diane/Mr. Tibbs from. “They chew you up and spit you out.”
“THEY CALL ME MISTER TIBBS!!!”
So here we are, going through the gender identity process together. Tibbs has certainly taken to his new name like a justice-minded detective to the mean streets of Sparta, Mississippi. I’ll miss Diane, but I can’t wait to spend the next couple decades growing and learning with my perfect little boy. :)
(I had no idea how aptly named my blog was. It’s sad because a little part of me always felt gangster, and I really hoped my internal makeup was more diverse. “White Girls Be Like” was never more real. I can’t even…)
Recently, my friend Jessie of “You’re Fine”took a DNA test and wrote about it on her blog. I was like, “Awesome, I wanna try that!” and bought a test from 23andMe to see my own ancestral breakdown. I figured it wasn’t going to be as interesting as Jessie’s, but maybe I’d find out something cool or find a relative I never knew about.
First of all, I had no idea about the process of sending away your DNA. Basically you have to spit into this little cup thingy until it reaches the line (they say it takes about 5 minutes for most people, but I was spitting in this thing for half an hour). Then you do some sciencey stuff and wrap everything up in the package they give you and put it in the mail. A million years later (or about a month), you get your results online and all this cool stuff telling you about yourself and some stuff you already know (like, “yes, I know I have red hair, thanks for the info”) but also some stuff that you wouldn’t think they’d know which is cool. For instance, they knew I was a sprinter (back in the day, not now) because I have some gene that says something about my muscles and how they’re made to sprint.
On the website, there’s a million reports all about what your DNA means (I highly recommend doing this, it’s super fun), and you can click on said reports to give you more detailed information. I started off seeing my ancestral breakdown.
So… I’m white.
There’s a bunch of smaller percentages under these, but mostly I’m British and Irish. Big surprise. Another thing they can tell you is how much Neanderthal you have in you. Apparently I have quite a lot, and I’m not sure what that says about me, but my mom laughed and said, “That makes so much sense!” which is always nice to hear…
More Neanderthal than 58% of other 23andMe customers. I’m basically a cavewoman.
Some other things they told me I was likely to possess were interesting because I totally broke the mold and said, “Hey, DNA! I don’t care what I’m ‘supposed’ to be like. I’m gonna be ME.” Here’s a list of stuff that was wrong:
Unlikely to have a cleft chin. I totally have one. In fact, my cleft chin is a definitive factor about my face. My uncles used to think it was funny to take a tissue up to my chin and say things like, “Hey, Alanna, I think you forgot to wipe,” or, “You have an ass on your face.” The latter isn’t very clever, but still hurt my feelings.
Unlikely to have a widow’s peak. Uhmm… hello??Sailor’s wives come to my head to see if their husbands have come back to port.
Likely to have detached earlobes. Mine are definitely attached.
Likely to have a little unibrow. Wow. Not nice. I don’t have a unibrow and I actually don’t seem to grow any hair in between my eyebrows so take that DNA people!!
Likely to have straight or wavy hair. Okay, this one is half right I suppose. My hair is pretty curly but sometimes just wavy depending on the humidity or if God wants to punish me that day.
Other weird stuff about me is on the reports like the fact that I have wet earwax (shut up, it’s not that gross) and something about if I can tell if my pee smells like asparagus after I eat it (asparagus, not eating my pee). I can also share my reports, so if you’re interested in how my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers, feel free to shoot me an email.
All in all, I’m just another white girl who likes to hang out in basements (probably because they remind me of being in a cave). Have you ever tested your DNA? If so, what’d you find out? If not, what do you suppose you are? How Neanderthal are you?
(Or maybe it’s “Inception”. Either way, somebody is screwing up my dreams and I don’t know what to do about it.)
So Alessandro and I have officially decided that we’re gonna get engaged once he gets a proper engineering job and saves up enough money for a ring (please hold your excitement and congratulations for the post where we actually get engaged and I have a giant-ass diamond on my finger). What’s bothering me though is that someone I haven’t seen or thought about in YEARS keeps showing up in my dreams like Freddy-stupid-Krueger. Like I don’t know this person anymore, I have no idea what they’re doing with their life, I don’t even know what they look like now.
(In fact, he could actually look like Freddy Krueger. Maybe he was in some type of fire incident that involved him killing little kids and the townspeople taking their revenge? Or he could look perfect and handsome, exactly as I remember him but now grown up so perhaps better. The point is I have no idea and shouldn’t even care because I am happy with the person I’m about to spend my life with SO WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME???????)
The story of this person infecting my life begins with myself at the tender age of 12, attending my first track practice of the year in early March. I actually took a year off from my little private school to see what public school was like and was only on my old school’s track team because the public school didn’t have a track team for 6th graders. I had also finally gotten out of my awkward stage, grown 5 inches, and (if I do say so myself) achieved quite the little body in six-grader standards. Plus, my bangs had finally grown out from the year before which taught me a great life lesson about never ever getting bangs ever again.
The first day of practice was freezing cold and even my heavy sweatshirt and thick sweatpants couldn’t keep out the piercing wind. I met one of my friends on the hill overlooking the track to chatter about nonsense and current 6th grade gossip when I made the unfortunate mistake of looking down onto the football field. 200 yards away (maybe, I have no ability to judge distance) I locked eyes with the single most perfect human being I had ever seen (he even put 2005-era Chad Michael Murray and Ashton Kutcher to shame). While my friend rambled on about whatever it was (I wasn’t listening), me and this demigod continued look deeply (and from far away) into each other’s eyes and I couldn’t feel the bitter cold anymore. I interrupted my friend asking, “Who is THAT?!?!” She looked down at the young man also standing with a friend and said, “That guy? Oh that’s [yeah-right-I’m-not-saying-his-name-I-know-who-reads-this-now-and-you’re-probably-all-laughing-at-me-cause-you-know-exactly-who-it-is]. He’s friends with my brother.” My very first words regarding this person was my reply: “I’m going to have his babies.”
(Sixth-grade-Alanna was quite the little minx and very brazen. She also had recently learned what sex was due to her newly-found public school education and something called “health class”, otherwise unheard of in Catholic school.)
My friend got all excited because this type of news was her oxygen and she continued to support me through the years of ups and downs from my perilous unrequited love.
Flash forward to 9th grade (since then, I’m still crushing hard and have reentered Catholic school), the first day of high school, first period Latin class: I’m wearing my “cool” new uniform and am feeling all grown up, ready to take on the world and let the real learning begin because nothing could distract me from my pursuit of higher education. I was pretty nervous so I wasn’t actually looking at anybody as the rest of the class filed in. When it came time for our teacher to assign seats, she said, “Okay, [I’m-still-not-saying-his-name]? Switch seats with Alanna, that’ll be your desk.” I didn’t think anything of the name since it’s pretty common and got up to let this person take my seat. The kid behind me gets up and our bodies touch as he passes by me in the narrow aisle and I almost faint because the boy I’ve been obsessed with for 2 years was totally within kissing distance not 5 seconds ago. My brain stopped working for what seemed like a short time but was apparently a while, and I wasn’t roused from my standing-coma until the second, “Alanna? Your seat is behind [this-is-getting-embarrassing-but-as-you-all-know-I’m-too-candid-for-my-own-good]. Isn’t that funny? You two were sitting in each other’s assigned seats totally by coincidence!” He turned around and smiled at me (fully aware of the crush I’d been harboring for him all this time) and for the rest of class, I didn’t hear a word anyone said except his, all of which made me blush to the point where my face was the same color as my hair.
This is our only picture together. What a cute couple lolamirite?
I continued to be in love with him until November of my 11th grade year when I made the conscious decision to fall out of love with him. I changed up all the ways I walked in the halls so as not to see him between classes, I stopped going to lunch and study hall (he was in all of mine because the universe has a sick sense of humor), and I avoided all school events he was likely to attend as well as stopping going to church because our families always went to the same mass. Eventually, I stopped thinking about him and met my very first boyfriend. That year, my crush graduated and other than a couple times watching Penn State football games and a few Christmas masses, I haven’t seen him again.
Until about a month ago, that is. And not in real life either. Just whenever I go to sleep.
I’ve actually tried staying up days at a time, but when I finally fall asleep, the dreams are longer and more vivid than ever. I have no idea what’s happening but it needs to stop. It’s actually come to the point where I wake up and am surprised by Alessandro being next to me instead of him. Maybe I should re-watch the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies and see how those kids handled it. (Although I’m pretty sure they all either killed themselves or got locked up in insane asylums. If I stop blogging, you guys know where I am.)
So why is this happening? Can somebody dig up Freud to help me? At this point, I’d kill for a night of tossing and turning over ghosts or killers. High school is truly to be feared…
(Also, shut up. Everybody’s got an opinion, and frankly, I don’t care about them. Except you guys’ opinions. Because you matter and aren’t assholes.)
Pretty much everybody in my life are being dicks recently and I’ve been daydreaming about buying them all plane tickets to some remote island with a badass 5-star resort (all-expenses-paid-type-deal) but then tell the pilot to drop them all off and leave them there and then they find out there’s no resort or actual phones or internet or boats and they just have to all be together with their dickishness.
This is what I imagine it would look like.
Then, after a suitable amount of time to suffer my wrath and my irony, they would be allowed to come back and never criticize me again because of my epic superpowers and leader-of-the-world-ness which I plan to gain via Faustian bargain.
This plan is foolproof.
So who would you send to Penis Island and why? Also, should this be a real place? (I think it is actually.) Let me know in the comments about the dicks in your life. Love y’all :)
(Jimmy Buffett & Rupert Holmes knew what they were talking about. I just figured out how to make mixed drinks with my NutriBullet so I think it’s safe to say I’m getting my life together.)
Hello, my darlings. It’s been a long time. I’ve longed to feel your sweet caress against my parietal lobe. Or whatever part of your brain can see blog notifications. Once again, the world has taken me hostage with homework (avoiding it), bleakness on the news, and the fact that I JUST discovered “vlogging”.
It’s blogging, but with videos. (Otherwise known as crack.)
Shane Dawson is currently my favorite, as well as anything with ghosts.
Supposedly, vlogging has been around for over a decade but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the new hip thang yo. Sure, I used Youtube for listening to music, but I had absolutely no idea there was so much awesome stuff out there.
Ghost hunters, conspiracy theory videos (my long lost love), and people reacting to things… it’s like I was in an internet-coma and finally woke up. It’s actually making me consider making my own “vlog” but I’m not totally sure how to do that and I don’t know if anybody would bother watching because my life is terribly boring.
I could vlog about the ghosts in my attic? Although they’re not too talkative these days. My hope is that they’ve moved on to heaven or whatever but it’s more likely they’ve decided to haunt more interesting/less-talkative type people.
(Perhaps my Burmese nextdoor neighbors? A nice spooking with the added benefit of being introduced to a different and fascinating culture. Good for you, ghosts. Eat, Pray, Love and all that.)
The other reason I’ve been absent is because school. It’s trying to kill me but I remain strong. Plus I’ve been getting involved with people and things which is completely out of character for me.
For example, one night I had rum and pina colada mix and my Nutribullet was like, “Hey there pretty lady, ya know you can add those ingredients to me with ice and have a party,” and I was like, “OMG WHY HAVEN’T I THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?!?!?!” And my Nutribullet said, “Because you’re not the sharpest blade in the blender,” and I was like, “Good one, Nutribullet.” So I took the advice of a household appliance and got pretty tipsy on some delicious iced cocktails.
Then I was all pissed cause Alessandro was watching Fox News and the world is getting on my nerves with political nonsense so I thought to myself (out loud), “Why don’t I write a letter to people and tell them to shut up because they’re being annoying?” and Alessandro was like, “You should do that,” but I wasn’t talking to him so I said, “I wasn’t talking to you,” and set to work on writing a rum-and-stupidity-fueled piece to Thought Catalog(which I had no idea that they’d publish because I mean come on, but they did).
Anyways, I made the mistake of assuming nobody in my real life pays attention to me or what I do on social media so I posted the link on my actual Facebook page. Somehow, people saw it and then started seeing links to my blog and my instagram and twitter for my blog, and now everyone(ish) I’ve ever known since high school found me and is following my stuff.
“Why is that bad?” you might ask. Well, if you’ve been following me or know my writing even a little bit, you know my candor vis-a-vis the people I know in real life and how I say terrible things about them as well as revealing many secrets about myself. So whether it’s libel or slander or just being a dick (because what I say is true so technically it’s not libellous), I’m gonna piss a lot of people off.
Have you guys ever posted something you’ve later come to regret? Or have stories of family and friends kill you for what you write?
Tell me about it in the comments. Or come to my house and chat because that’s how easy it is to find me now.
White Girls Be Like... 