CD Had An Insane Week With Another One In the Queue

I think I put too much pressure on these posts. i've written so much and yet can't post anything cause I put too much pressure on it. Anxiety is a bitch and it hates me.

I've had a lot on the brain, as always. I made 15 collage posters based on the tracks of P!ATD's "Pretty. Odd." in between barely sleeping, being extremely locked into school projects, listening to "Commit This To Memory" by Motion City Soundtrack, having strange and uncomfortable romantic dreams about my significantly platonic straight guy best friend (which could mean nothing), and having panic attacks over even attempting to fulfill my pathetic goal of trying to sing in my "band" that doesn't really exist.

So yeah, it's been a week.

Not sharing the collage posters because this is an anonymous blog (even if my best friend is here, i hope you enjoy the lore bombs), but it was the first time where I really leaned into my style full force and had a whole room of people actually enjoy it and want more. I'm not used to feeling confident in my work and feeling like I am worth my seat in my Design bachelor's program, but this helped. My mom used to just not get my art or design, and our relationship has always been rocky under the surface because she's super homophobic and transphobic and im closeted to her, but I finally started hanging up my work in my room and showing her and she actually really likes it which is a shock. I think she's just happy I'm not closed off and that I've become "a real woman" which is a whole new can of worms. Being queer in a traditional-esc Pakistani family is complciated and different for everyone, that's all I'll say.

Motion City Soundtrack has gotten me through the year so far. I started the year listening to "Together We'll Ring In The New Year" and it's continued to represent how I'm feeling, along with being a major source of creative inspiration. It's crazy how I've known of them for about 10 years and only in the last couple have I really started to realize they are my newest comfort band. Relatable lyrics, heartwarming delivery, danceable pop punk, all while feeling like you're just talking with a friend on your level. I listened to their debut, "I Am The Movie," and it was incredible, though I think I'm attached to "Commit This To Memory" forever. 

I don't think I have a crush right now, I think I just am lonely in that specific area of my life and would kill to be the object of someone's desires. It's haunting me a bit how pathetically I am yearning for romance in as I approach my 20s. It doesn't matter but since grade 9, every crush I have had has been deeply and obviously unrequited. Guys that were nice and just in the right place, girls who were far out of my league, and one nonbinary friend who was thankfully oblivious to me falling head over heels and it would've never worked with anyways. I cut my hair real short without permission or telling my, once again, deeply transphobic family the day before first year of classes started, and while it blew up my family for months, I looked like myself for once and I realize how much the idea of dating or romance is hindered by me being physically very pre-transition and therefore uncomfortable in my body. I think I just need to find another hot and dorky trans guy and have him fall in love with me and all my problems would be fixed.

I don't know, I'm writing this on one white monster and after days of not sleeping more than 5 hours a night. I'm going to an awesome local show this Friday, maybe seeing my high school best friend that I have a complicated friendship with (I love her to bits regardless) this weekend, work at my shitty gas station Tim Hortons on Sunday, doing a presentation for a class on Queering The Map on Monday, a painting a final critique due on Tuesday, my Dad's birthday on Wednesday, the 5 year anniversary of my suicide attempt on Thursday, a debt due on that Friday, teh first session of the dnd campaign I'm running on that Saturday, and my Mom's birthday on the Sunday. 1 week of absurdness and insanity and I am not ready. Not that I have a choice, I just hope I can sleep for more than a few hours. I still have to finish the latest episode of Critical Role: Campaign 4 but I doubt I'll have the time.

Despite everything, I'm happy right now, it's just a lot. Whether thats the energy drink or me talking is up to you, Reader, but its how I feel in this moment and I think thats the part that matters.

Signing off feeling scattered across time and space yet still somehow okay. It is 1:16 PM. Have a good rest of your day!!!

-XOCD

In which CD grapples with the idea of being perceived

sometimes i forget i am a human being that can be watched the same way i watch others. the concept has become less foreign with time yet the concern it brings me has only strengthened my constant awareness and self surveillance i am constantly doing. 

i think it would be exhausting for everyone i knew if they knew how much i cared despite growing up on the belief that i shouldn't. 

in middle school, i used to get teased a lot for like shitty rock bands and being annoying about them, so i just got more annoying about it and wore my pink Pierce The Veil "Today I Saw The Whole World" t-shirt 2x as often. a girl i barely knew but was friends with admitted she really admired that quality in me and the fact that i didn't let things like being called a "wrist slitter" or "future hot topic employee" (which is honestly a compliment) get to me much. i got bullied already for being a weird neurodivergent kid that looked like a nerd and was kind of a loser but once i truly discovered music, i unlocked an unparalleled level of confidence. 7th grade me was miserable and in denial about being queer but god damn i was still confident and ready to stand on my own as myself.

i think that version of me would be disappointed in the person i've become.

not that i'm letting myself be judged by mentally ill children, i actually don't care what middle school me thinks, and i understand perfectly why im more concerned about external perception compared to when i was a kid, but it still stings. stings to know how little i have made myself for the comfort of other people, whether it be family or classmates or even people i would call friends on a good day.

i think that being on twitter from grade 8 to grade 11 (which mind you, spring of grade 8 was 2020 for me), specifically stan twitter, probably did a lot of permanent damage to my brain but also helped a lot too because i had online friends and didn't have to fret about perception as much. i wasn't a body being seen under a microscope, i wasn't a performer playing the role of Normal Human Cis Woman while hiding all my trans pins and weird behaviours, and i wasn't hearing the nasty nasal of my stereotypically nerdy voice and tone. losing that due to a pseudo-cyber-stalking-situation (story for another day), being "outed" to family (story for another day), and elon musk buying twitter (unfortunately i think most people know this story) meant losing something deeper i couldn't recreate offline and i miss it.

im not even sure if that makes sense but i hope the idea is conveyed to some degree?

this blog is the closest im getting to that feeling, with a code name and blue theme to match, but even then i still feel the need to fill a role as if im being watched. maybe i just need some weed or like, anxiety meds. or my adhd meds that haven't been refilled in roughly 2 years (yet another story for another day). there's a tension in my mind that can never die until an unstoppable force defeats the unmoveable object once and for all. 

whatever man. these musings have had no real point or conclusion gained, they're simply words on a page. but it's all ive got!! i have an busy day tomorrow of procrastination, avoiding my cool but extraordinarily long readings for my gender studies class, bullshitting my way through said class, and more procrastination. too busy to even have a finished thought

signing off at 1:41 am, feeling overwhelmed by the underwhelming and unsatisfied yet okay with it because "Elderberry Wine" by Wednesday is stuck in my head and that song is an absolute banger. hope whoever is reading this from the void is having a nice day/night wherever they are, you all have really cool blogs and im excited to keep up with them all!! 

- XO CD.

Introduction!

I'm not sure anyone's actually out there reading this except for my best friend (and reason I'm doing this) but in a way that's the most appealing part about it. Actual readers are just a bonus to the idea of an empty void to scream into.

I'm getting ahead of myself, where are my manners! Some introduictions are definetely in order:

Who the hell am I?

You can call me CD (he/they)! I'm a 19 year old graphic design student from the Toronto area who just really fucking loves music and art and the 2000s. I listen to all sorts of stuff from modern electronic hyperpop to rnb to classic punk to death metal, but 2000s emo and alt rock music has always been my bread and butter (at least for the past 11 years or so). I'm a queer south asian artist/designer with ADHD and yes I DO make it my whole personality so discussions of all of that are likely to seep into whatever I write.

Why am I here? 

Because social media sucks, I love to rant in rambles in ways I just can't do on Tumblr anymore, my best friend started one, I said I would start one last summer, and I need a distraction from the political explosions happening in the world. Stay informed and stay alive and all that jazz. 

What is this place???

This blog is most likely going to be a music blog where I infodump about my favourite songs, albums, bands, or trends tp varying degrees of coherence, and maybe touch on other aspects of my life throughout as well. I say most likely because honestly I am doing this all with no plan in the slightest. 

With that said...

If you somehow got here without coming from my friend's blog, go check out their writings as well at https://shitboyshow.blogspot.com/ ! I'm excited to be on this blogging journey with you all and to talk about music and art and the state of the world with whoever is lurking in this grand void

Signing off at 1:15 am with a new hope for the future? -XO CD

(I have to be up at 5:00 for 9 hours of class... I take back the hope for the future </3)