I’m Funny

I have a board beside my bed. This year I pinned it with notecards of four different script competitions I entered my TV Comedy Pilot into, the dates of announcements, and what the prizes were.

A few came and went and I didn’t advance to a higher level, and that was fine. You get used to disappointment, and move on. With one, I ordered judge feedback, and was offered some disheartening notes on my 29 pages of work. They said there was no story, that they didn’t get a good grasp of the characters, they critiqued my rule breaking on things like the slugline and action description because I wasn’t doing it the way they thought it should be. Well maybe I’m just a rebel then.

Just before I’d gotten that feedback, and for their obvious reasons, did not advance in that competition, my pilot made it into the quarter-finals of a different screenplay competition – a universal contest with 6,300 entries, and I was one of the quarter-finalists. That was a huge success for me, and I loved sharing it with my friends, and family, and instructors and classmates.

It was a month until August when we’d hear about the semi-finalists. And would you believe it, I made that one too. I was starting to believe that I had something special in my hands. People far away from me, who didn’t know me at all, were into what I was writing about.

I could barely breathe come September. I repeated over and over in my head that there were far more talented people in this competition – in the TV Comedy category, that I would not make it into the top 250 overall, and the top 10 for my category. But then I did. I was split at this point. I wanted to win so bad, and I wanted to stay humble and graceful if I didn’t place. The top winner took home $25K and I tried not to let myself think of what I could do with that kind of money. I told myself that it was special just to be in the list of 250 finalists. The other places for each category were Gold, Silver, and Bronze, and if I didn’t make it, then someone more deserving got it, and it just wasn’t my time.

I couldn’t sleep this past week. My head was overloaded with thoughts of winning and losing, and people who were routing for me, and people I wanted to make proud, the self-esteem I wanted to feel for myself. I dreamt of quitting my job and the emails from producers and important execs from Hollywood – or better, Vancouver – who would want to work with me. It all kept me up until it was making me sick, and I relied on sleeping pills for a couple of forced nights – never waking up refreshed. Just waiting for Saturday to get here so I could get rid of this dread that I felt.

I had physio today for a work injury. I took the train home to stop off at the grocery store to pick toilet paper. I was near my stop when I thought I would check the Page International Screenwriting Awards Facebook page for the twentieth time. They’d announced the winners so I clicked with a shaky hand. I wasn’t the grand prize winner, but I kept scrolling.

And that’s when I saw my name. The first under TV Comedy Pilot for Gold. “Adulthood?” by Sam Macneil.

I stared at it so hard, afraid it would change if I blinked or looked away. The train arrived at my stop and I smiled while looking at my phone to the stairs and down to the street.

When it really hit me that it was my name on that winners list, I called my mom’s cell and I started freaking out, and she started freaking out with me, and it was ridiculous! Four long months and I got to celebrate a huge win for myself.

This is a huge win for myself. But not just for myself. This is a huge win for queers.

My TV series is about a group of queer friends, who, upon graduating college, are left wondering how to adult after realizing they are ill-prepared. With a transgender lead character named Ezra, it turned semi-autobiographical, and I get to write about real life situations that I’ve found myself in while being a queer adult. Friendship, and love, and discovering yourself as a grown-up human – all the things everyone experiences, but it’s important because it’s queer, and queer communities, and queer youth need to see themselves on the screen. It isn’t enough to have one token queer character. I’m showing the queer friend and relationship dynamics that happen when you find those who are your people.

And not only that, but I’m writing about intersectional feminism, polyamourous relationships, queer sex and empowered masturbation, queer identities, transitioning, body-positivity, challenging stereotypes, things that don’t get talked about like ableist language, race and white-washing in TV and film (Master of None by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang do this so well and it’s been a huge inspiration to me on writing). I want this show to be revolutionary. A part of me thinks that I’m being too cocky because who am I? But I’m passionate if nothing else. And this could never be the show I want it to be without passion.

One of my first thoughts today at 1 pm in the toilet paper aisle, was of all the people in my life who I have to thank. Two of my instructors, Rick and Ita, were at the forefront of this in film school and helped turn it into something worth reading. My classmates who helped me workshop my pilot in class really have no idea just how much their feedback and notes and helpful criticism was valuable to me.

My best friend has read and edited every single episode I have written multiple times. They always tell me when something is off, and I’m always able to make it better after the edit. They are my sounding board for every new idea I have for Adulthood. They’re so invested in my dream that they think about scenes for the show on their own time and relay them back to me. My fellow writer roommate and I speak in “writer” at home and often talk about our characters as if they’re friends of ours. I’ve been lucky to have two handfuls of friends who have wanted to read the pilot and following episodes (up to episode 7, and working on 8), whether they have notes for me, or just want to see me explode with smiles. Friends who have kept me calm and breathing or allowed me to vent, you’ve been amazing.

This has been a great and overwhelming day. I’m excited and scared of the future.

I’m the luckiest duck today and always to have this win, but more importantly, to have these people in my life.

Here’s to this adulthood.

I Shook the Whole Way Home

I thought it was fate, I’ll be honest.

Matching on Tinder while you were in the city in May, we briefly talked about getting together, but then the summer came and went, and we didn’t talk much.

Then you came back, and I knew I wanted to see you.

Nearly two hours to Wreck Beach, but it was worth it to learn your laugh, and your smile, and your eyes. But it was just the surface. I didn’t know I’d get a better chance to know you.

I packed a book on that bus trip to Bellingham, but I never read. I stared out the window and thought about the day we had ahead of us. Each of us away from home on a tiny romantic adventure.

I was so excited to see your face.

History lessons, laughing at old photographs on walls, and making up stories for creepy dolls. Do you want to hold hands while we watch this history video? I couldn’t breathe, but we laughed so hard. And you touched my arm and made my heart flutter.

I was scared of being queer in a small American town, but that date was the most adventurous I’d ever been, and I felt alive holding your hand down streets.

You taught me how to leave a tip in the US.

Maybe better than our first kiss at the creek that left me wanting to take you home, was that sighting of the man carrying a fish in his bare hands. No fishing pole required.

We sang to 00’s pop punk songs and “1985” was stuck in my head the rest of the night. I think I talked about different stores along the way that we don’t have in Canada, and I sang the jingle to Sleep Country Canada.

I was shaking when we hugged goodbye at the bus station, and I don’t know if you felt it. You kissed me so hard I thought that I would just melt right into you, and it felt like something right out of a movie I’d seen.

I looked back at you. Of course I looked back. And then I shook the whole way home.

The next week couldn’t pass quick enough. I needed to see you, kiss you, hold you, touch you, breathe you. But Saturday finally came, and it was perfect. The entire day was perfection; walking around Granville Island, drinking coffee, and sharing in each other. We talked about all the things we knew of each other’s country.

When you left Sunday afternoon, I didn’t know what had twisted in the air, but it felt uneasy. It didn’t feel like Bellingham. We made no plans to look forward to.

So I cried. For hours, I cried. Uncontrollably while texting my best friend who had to come over to console me.

Because I liked you. You were this exciting new adventure in my life, and then it felt like it was suddenly stunted. I didn’t want that. I wanted to go to Seattle. I wanted to know your world like I had only begun to show you mine.

Another long week. A miscommunication that left us both standing in limbo, but after a talk and vulnerable feelings, another plan was made.

I bought my ticket to Seattle a few days later.

Two weeks. Just had to make it through two weeks.

And I nearly did.

I’m devastated. I understand that you don’t have enough time or spoons. I understand the stress of life and work. I hate that I always understand the reason why people leave.

So I cried in the bathroom at work for longer than my break was, and then a little longer. I didn’t want to believe it was over because it had felt like fate, and it had only just started. I wanted to see where it could go.

But I guess I did.

I dreaded this weekend coming. The thought of when I should be getting on that bus Friday evening, when I should be seeing you, when I should be holding you. All the memories and laughs that would be made.

Now I’m faced with the struggle of trying to put you behind me. But it’s difficult when your name was still on my board until I wiped it off tonight, when the memories of us are still at the surface in my mind, when there’s a bottle of real Canadian maple syrup in my cupboard from Victoria that was meant for you. I’ll be trying, but it won’t be easy.

I feel deeply when I fall.

I didn’t know how to tell you any of this.

Take a Breather

 

This year I danced into the world of polyamorous relationships, knowing full well what I was getting myself into. The funny part to me is that that isn’t why it fell apart. I had no qualms with the person I was dating having a partner already – in fact we got along quite well I thought.

The problem came with communication and feeling like they weren’t hearing me and my needs. Not seeing the warning signs with them only wanting to call one of their partners, “partner” – good luck with future…well you’ll think of a word, or rather they will, cause you never did.

So I still hold some resentment which I will work out in time. But that person is out of my life. A decision that still wrenches my heart at times.

I turned 26, which I’m happy about – I’m glad Benjamin Button was the only of his kind. I only want to keep getting older.

But my cat died back home and I wasn’t there to hold him one more time. I didn’t feel the weight of that until a few days later and bawled over the loss of my near 17 year old kitten.

But then I started fostering my platonic life partner’s cat with my roommate, and besides the vomit, and the threat of getting kicked out of our not pet-friendly apartment, it’s been fun having someone who wants to see you when you get home, if only because they want food.

I made a new queer friend who has been a crucial part of my social life these days. Their friendship has meant so much to me and has brought me one good thing from Tinder.

I decided though, that being heart-hurt over one person wasn’t enough. I am never done being masochistic. So I fell for this new amazing human. Whose life was already too demanding and full and probably shouldn’t have tried to tack this rambling, romantic queer idiot onto her life.

Once I get past the not being with her part of this, I will remember the moments we shared and smile as I cherish a rooftop date night, long talks about films we watched, and those first nervous kisses.

I just want to dream about her, if it didn’t well tears up into my eyes to do so.

So I’m done with dating adding more hardship and pain to the rest of my life. This year being off Testosterone has just been blown into a sea of salty tears and I’m done with it.

This ship is docking. The fish can wait.

I’m going to focus on writing for a while. See if maybe I actually can make it into a career. Build a relationship with the characters in my head and the words that pour out through finger tips and ink. I’ve got two queer projects I’m working on, but I could be working harder.

Cupid and Tinder are gone.

This isn’t a “learn to be with myself before I can be with someone else” ordeal. This is a be with my writing deal. Focusing on something that is going to get me somewhere in life.

The experiences in dating certainly don’t hurt the writing process. I write what I know and I know what it feels like to get your heart clobbered.

But it’s time to give my clobbered heart a breather.

This Love is my Education

Snow covers my grounds. Cold knuckles hide under flannel. Hail beats down across Lynn Canyon suspension bridge.

You’re gone.

But for the best. The couple weeks, maybe more, I didn’t know who I was talking to. Didn’t know the body I was holding in front of mine. Face looks the same. That giant-ass smile. But something was gone.

So I had to be gone too.

“Are you happy?” Sparrow asks me.

Sometimes I am. But only when it’s good. When was that last time? I give myself, and my heart, and all my care to a being unresponsive of my love.

“I’m not happy, Panda,” I tell my best friend.

And so my heart slid out onto the side of the road. It bled for remembrance. It screamed for a chance. It sighed for life is like this.

There is no reason why people should simply be together, than for the effort and sweat they put into a relationship. Commitment comes from all sides. Has to be wanted. You either didn’t want this, or you were too scared.

I hold no ill will towards you. We all have our things to work on. This was our door. Run like cats cooped up through winter at the first sight of a melt.

My heart grows each time. Expansion through education. This love is my education. Never closed off, but rather open for opportunity. Can’t be held down by broken bones. I am stronger than the distant memories that occupy space in time in bed alone at night.

You will be a moment of my life. A sprinkle on this sundae.

I wish you well.

I’m in This

I wish I could articulate better the feelings I have for you.

This is far from easy. Us together. How do two people find each other in the vast sea and decide to stick it out? When did you know this wasn’t going to just be a second date and then try again with someone else?

Less than ten. It was less than ten coffee dates until I met you. I guess the others just didn’t hold up. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I still don’t. Not really. Not anything more than a human to kill time with. We don’t have to grow old together.

But I like burying my head into the crook of your neck when you share horror movies with me. Holding your body into mine keeps me asleep, knowing you’re safe and sound. I’m giving you that look because you’re here with me and I can’t help but be weird with you. Reading your poems gives me a tunnel into your soul. I’ll keep telling you how much I love your reading voice, and how much I love that we share a bond through writing. I want to know you like the great glass elevator.

I’m still afraid, because everything before you has broken. I’m afraid of this not lasting. Afraid of thinking too far. Afraid of being the only one.

But I’m in love with you now.

And I won’t tell you how many times I have typed I love you into our Facebook Messenger chat and then deleted it.

We’re both broken humans. Skeletons slipping around in tissue bodies. Easily bruised and always running in the dark. Depression seeps into everything. I always need bandages and pills for these lacerations.

But I’d rather be broken with you. You don’t fix me. But you make life a little more bearable. I can’t heal your wounds. But I can be the safe place you need when you’re lost.

I love you means I will keep growing with this relationship. Feeling the stings and the fireworks. My heart is in this, whatever happens.

Get it all Out

All my life I was told there would be one person for me. One perfect person who I would find, and love, and want to spend the rest of my life with. With Christian parents, I was encouraged to find a good Christian boy who went to church. We’d date a few years, get married, and have a couple kids, and eventually die.

In my early early twenties I began to rethink this idea. A few relationships, and finding myself, being honest with myself, leads me to this current day.

The idea that two people in a relationship are supposed to only have eyes for each other seems unhealthy. I’ve still found other people attractive when I’ve been in a relationship, and I know my partners have as well. Because it’s natural. But I was brought up to think that your partner has to think that you are the world, their only world, and if you thought that someone else was attractive, it somehow broke down your relationship.

I’m trying to reverse everything I’ve been taught, but it isn’t easy. Dating non-monogamously is tricky business. I’m attracted to a lot of people right now. I like a few people right now. I know in my heart that that doesn’t take away from the person I’m dating. Our relationship is still important to me. Even if or when I start dating someone else, the connection I have with this person will still be ours, and I will still want it.

So if they start dating someone new, I should know that it won’t take away from our relationship either. But I still fear jealousy over someone more interesting or attractive than me. Or someone who has more in common with them than I do. I fear not getting enough attention from them. I’m still trying to lose the idea of needing to be enough for someone. If I’m afraid of not being good enough for someone then I think that’s my problem and I’m the only one who can work on that.

This barely articulates all of my feelings.

It’s going to take a little more than two and a half months to really get used to it, but I will because I want this.

You are Capable. This is Doable

I’ve been thinking about the past year. And because I write, and then I edit, and then I ponder, and rewrite, and edit, and spend time carefully selecting a photo, and then do one final read over before publishing, it will probably be past midnight, which means I’ll be 26.

This time last year I was seeing someone who I’ve written about, and who I had fallen in love with, and who mistakenly gave me up. Because you may not know this, but you ought to. I’m a fucking catch. I have been a great girlfriend, I’ve been a great boyfriend, and I’ll be a great partner. I’m extremely devout, and attentive, and I feel your feelings as if they’re my own feelings. I’m self-deprecating, but I turn that into humour to make you laugh if you get my weird sense of humour. I send photos of your favourite animal when you’re feeling down. I am at that bus stop ready to go if ever you should need me.

This year has been about trying to let go of the thought of you. I had a thought of you. I thought the early mornings at the beach with coffee from around the corner meant something to you. I wish I didn’t feel sorry for making you feel bad for making me feel bad.

There is a part of me that would still follow you home and I hate myself for that. That part that still remembers the smell of your apartment and your hair. Why I can’t use the lotion in the drawer of my bed because it reminds me of you. I’ve been a broken wreck of a human. Just shattered pieces of humanity.

But I am capable of pushing forward to see just what kind of love I deserve. I can do this. Another year. I’ll give myself more time to get past this and know that it isn’t a fault to feel shame for wanting you still. It’s just a process. A long one. But some day I won’t think of you when I think about salmon. Or popcorn on the stove. Amélie and falling asleep on your chest.

I moved to Vancouver on my own at 24. Just packed up my shit, kissed my boyfriend goodbye, and cried an hour and a half through the flight. Maybe it was the humidity in the air around me when I landed. This naive little human. But I knew I would survive. Because the only other option was admitting defeat and going home. But I still had a dream to conquer. I was capable of enduring the process of moving alone and I stuck through it to live my entire twenty-fifth year in this city.

I’ve always been afraid of failure with my writing. I doubt myself constantly. I never think my words are good enough. But as I learned the past year at film school, your next screenplay is always better than your last, so keep writing. Going through 12 months of intense workshopping with other writers, tearing myself apart, and being put back together, gave me what I needed to believe that this is doable. If I put myself and my work out there into the world, it is doable.

Something that has been proven for the second month this year alone as I’ve had my TV pilot cold read by actors right before my eyes, and have heard the characters in my head carry out real voices, real emotion, real authenticity. Fearing the audience wouldn’t laugh or wouldn’t understand. I mean, sometimes they didn’t, and my heart jumped, but then there are the people who really get it, and they have a special place in my heart.

The point, is that I tried. There have been plenty of times when I have failed and there will be again. But this just proves to myself that I can actually do this. Maybe I can actually write after all. Maybe someday this creative habit that kept me up at all hours of the night and made it difficult for my parents to drag me out of bed for school in the morning will actually pay the bills.

It’s worth a shot.

I think most things are.

I talk to more potential dates online now than I’ve ever talked to people ever. And I always make a point to ask them out first. Because what is the worst case Ontario?

They say no? I’ll move on.

That theory will serve me well with a lot of trial and error through out my life.

I grew a lot from 25 to 26. I made two ex’s two of my best friends. That alone says more to me about my emotional growth than anything else. Being able to let people back in and reform the structure of relationships has been one of the most valuable and beneficial actions of my life so far. I think it made me ready to move into this non-monogamous portion of my life.

What about the time recently when I said, “I just want to befriend everyone,” and then I blacked out and forgot who I was for a moment.

I became more body positive. While unintentionally doing it, I lost the 20 plus pounds I gained over the school year. I learned to sleep naked and appreciate my body for what it is. Still not everything makes me happy, but that was never the point. Hating my body took too much energy. Energy that could have been fuelled into something useful.

Hate is something I reworked this year, which has been a process. Hates breeds from jealousy and jealousy has to be thought out carefully to get to the root. Why do I hate my body? Because I was force-fed 25 years of being told to be “this skinny”, try “this diet”, workout “this many times a week”, “wear make-up”, “shave your legs”, because you need a flat stomach, and you need perfect arms, and a perfect chest, and flawless proportions.

Well fuck that shit right up.

My body can be awkward and weird and not typical at all because that is just who I am. I am of the non-binary variety and I didn’t choose to be this queer, but fuck if it doesn’t look good on me.

To twenty-six we go. Just another year. Just another number on life’s calendar. But one I’m ready to tackle.

Because I know this is doable.

Invalidation

 

This happened a while ago. But this happens a lot. People who don’t know, don’t know how else to act. When it happens within the community, it needs to be addressed.

My non-binary identity doesn’t make me less trans. A tree cannot be more or less a tree. Without its branches, without its leaves, as a stump, when it dies. It will always be a tree.

Transgender is a cross between gender. Maybe I don’t feel either, anything at all, like nothing. I will always be transgender.

This has been a process. I’m not finished. Still in the second act. It’s a long act. I’ve been busy growing inside. Conversing with the demons. Making compromises, breaking promises, and laws.

Just because I’ve grown to love my vagina. Just because I’ve let myself feel my own nerves without needing to disconnect my body from my mind. Just because I love my clit and oh fuck, the people who want it too, oh fuck, oh fuck, I’ve never let myself feel this. Doesn’t mean I’m any less trans.

Non-binary. It is what I make it. It is mine. You’re allowed to listen, not to make assumptions. I don’t care if you’re trans too. You are not my identity. I am not yours. If I speak with you, it means I trust you. But if you use your mouth to crush my identity into nothing like I haven’t struggled all this life to find some sort of home inside myself, I will take back my voice and use it to shame you. That was a privilege to know me.

My growth is a fluid motion, but I am not genderfluid. My mind will tell me what it wants when it finds it. When it converses with my body. Maybe we will break more promises, and laws. But they’re mine to break.

Don’t Do It

 

Don’t apologize for your body this time. When it comes to being close with people now, don’t apologize. Don’t apologize for your shape and size. Your marks and imperfections. Your scars.

You’ve worked hard to be where you are now. The gains you’ve made and the weight you’ve lost is a win. It isn’t the world, but it’s still significant.

I have always put myself down first so that others don’t stand a chance. I know everything wrong with myself inside and out. I tell them because I need them to know that I know my body isn’t perfect. Because I couldn’t possibly think my body is perfect at this weight.

But not any more. Not with this person. Not with the next.

This person thinks you’re funny, and interesting, and gorgeous. Their one deal breaker in this new found relationship is not gonna be with how you look naked. If it was, they would have already figured it out and left.

This poly thing. I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just trying to stay guarded so I don’t get hurt again. But it feels nice. And good. And safe. This human is lovely, and deep, and surprising. Funny, and beautiful in every way you look at them. So I’m still here because I want to know more.

They want to know more.

Be kind to yourself. Too many times, you’re not. Leave this one thing alone.

Fix Your Fucking Unhappiness

First remember to take your fucking antidepressants on the daily. They keep your head from feeling like a wave and your toes from tingling. Oh, and something about the chemicals in your brain and all that.

I got cut at work. Last week doing my job like I always do, and a coffee mug poking out of a black garbage bag sliced me open. Didn’t see it. But then I saw all the blood pouring out of my pinky.

I should’ve gone to get stitches that night. Should’ve left work right away and gone to the emerg. But it was the first real time I’ve been hurt that bad at work so I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know I had rights. Apparently.

Two stitches the next morning. Well that’ll show ’em. The supervisor who didn’t think I was worth sending home. Who didn’t think I was worth a WCB case.

Just my luck, stitches got infected. I always get stitches infected. So after the real emerg visit that took a short three hours, my finger is a gross mess and I wish I’d just fucking seen that broken mug handle.

But really I wish that who ever broke it in the first place and decided it was an okay idea to leave it in the bag had there skin broken. Had their perfect tissue shred by china and their precious blood drip to the floor. I wish they had to have a needle jammed into their tiniest finger with numbing liquid so they could be thread back together. I wish that person was going through the small hell I am right now feeling like a burden at work and feeling like an ugly sore.

So I’m not happy about work. Not happy that they felt so strongly that I wasn’t important enough.

But only I can fix that. By leaving.

Sigh.

If only it were that easy.

I’ve been thinking lately why I didn’t become a tradesperson. I lived in Alberta. I had the perfect opportunity. Or why I didn’t go to college straight after high school. I’ve been hating that all I am is a writer. But that’s the self-loathing, self-deprecating writer to the core. I like other things, but I may not be good enough at them to make them a career.

I’ve applied to other places. Been thinking how I get a government job like my mom. Lately I’ve been wanting to work outside for the city – you know, cutting grass and planting shit. Get ripped.

I’m unhappy and frustrated. Everything else in my life is going well for a change. My writing has caught the attention I need to get going in this city. And I’ve still got three amazing best friends who listen to me complain about my life – and listen to me talk and text about the incredible human I’m into.

I’m a cynical person, but I’m forever hopelessly fucking optimistic. I’ll fix this fucking unhappiness. I’ll start right fucking after this post.