Transition Regret & the Fascism of Endings

[@lily_lxndr]

Check out my interviews with Max Graves & Jonni Phillips on Nebula! Almost an hour of bonus stuff, where we talk about their art and get into some really interesting, personal territory. go.nebula.tv/lilyalexandre

[@LockedPOCKET]

omg i love max graves comics

[@AutisticVaxtard]

All this seems so Jewish

[@utubeisgay72]

Is this you interviewing yourself pretending to talk to a third person? What motivates this approach?

[@BrigitteEmpire]

One of the things that scared me about transitioning was how little you hear from people after everything has settled, I wanted to know what to expect, turns out what happens after that is just… life

[@gollossalkitty]

Perfect way to put it :)

[@takashimizutani1808]

I'm starting to think I'm trans where do I start I'm a poc and know noone who'd accept me that way but I feel so uncomfortable around men they're so toxic

[@AxiomMusic]

@@takashimizutani1808 an exciting time. My advice as a trans person with a non-accepting family: 1) Be safe. If you have one or two people you can trust, then confiding in them so that you have a sounding board to bounce your thoughts and explorations off is a good idea. But… if you won’t be safe coming out to everyone/your immediate family then tread carefully until you are in a position of self sufficiency where their disapproval can’t drive your life into a ditch. 2) Take it slow. You will want to race ahead and do everything yesterday, but take it slowly so that your footing is as sure as it can be. Read a lot, think a lot, challenge your own self assumptions, and try to make sure that when/if you do decide to make medical changes, you do so with supervision from a qualified and trustworthy professional. 3) Reach out. Lots of trans people will be really happy to point you to resources and information, or give advice (like this). You don’t have to be alone. Just scratching the surface but I hope that helps some ❤️

[@unclefelix3412]

@@takashimizutani1808 i cant speak for your whole situation but most people i know who are trans come out to people online first to see how comfortable they feel about it. online you can say youre whatever you want. if the people you know wont accept you, i promise you, you will find people who will. every person who exists needs to find community that isnt immediately available to them, to find people who will love and avcept them, and i want you to know that you can and will be successful in this journey. stay alive and love life, be true to yourself. Things like hormones and medical care will depend country to country

[@snarkcharming]

How little? Hm. Must be your algo. I get detrans propaganda all the time. Makes me sad. Trade algos?😂

[@munstify]

I transitioned in 2007. The president was still George w. Bush. If someone could have told me that I'd someday be pushing 40 and just living life as male I don't know if I'd have even been able to compute. I never stopped being trans but it's also just kind of "this thing that happened to me nearly 20 years ago." As of next year I'll have been living as male longer than I lived as female. Life, it do go on. It do.

[@JosephKano]

​@@jordanthompson8268 just stop. Don't be that person. It's completely unnecessary, and just the mark of a rude boorish individual.

[@munstify]

IKR 😆😆 and yet somehow it doesn't seem to matter because I've just been able to easily occupy a male space in society for like 20 years. Crazy right?

[@JosephKano]

@@ExpertContrarian "comment"

[@swagonelevenatalltimes]

@@JosephKano 'reply'

[@JosephKano]

@@swagonelevenatalltimes "subscribe"

[@lyxthen]

I think this is why Lord of the Rings resonated with me so much. After Frodo destroys the ring, the story is over. There is nothing left for him to do in the world, the evil has been defeated, and there is no space for him in this narrative. If he had died back at Mount Doom, it would've been a satisfying conclusion. But he didn't die. That is why he leaves. Trauma, particularly the one sustained for a long time, really feels like that. Like, the story is over. I survived, I won, the bad guy is dead, roll credits. Then, why does stuff keep happening? Why do I feel so bad about it? But then again, I am just 18 years old. Of course stuff is going to keep happening. Still, I feel like I've been trapped in a directionless limbo since 12. Like everything since then has been an epilogue, post game material, if you will. I had never heard anyone put it to words like you just had before, even if the context is a bit different. Either way this is an amazing video. Thank you for creating!

[@iandonnelly6684]

That’s a great point and when you think about how Tolkien was a veteran of ww2. It adds up

[@skylark6167]

lmao fuck I thought I just cried more at Frodo going because I'm full of estrogen, but I think that's it, I think I understand that feeling of your purpose coming to a close far more than I did before transition 🤦‍♀

[@blindside3233]

I think of it like an open world game: The game will continue long after the story has ended, and there are still so many side missions, collectibles, etc. to complete.

[@_supersolar]

in the books, destroying the ring isnt the end for them. theres a whole nother section called the scourge of the shire, that deals a bit with the falseness of endings and what happens next. acollierastro has a great video on it :3

[@lyxthen]

@@_supersolar Yes I am aware. It "falseness of endings" that I am talking about. Frodo really feels out of place in those last chapters, like his friends still have Plot to do but he doesn't. Sam gets married, restores the Shire, Pippin goes on to become chieftain, Merry becomes master of Buckland, Aragorn is king, etc. For almost every other character we meet, there is story left to do still. Except for Frodo. Sure, he becomes Mayor but it's clear he doesn't really want to, and leaves Sam in charge as soon as possible. And then he straight up leaves Middle Earth. I haven't really watched the movies but it is my understanding they completely skipped this which is really sad. It really left an impact on me.

[@detroitmetrodolphinskull]

Felt such horrible deep regret when I did my first T shot. Thought exactly that sentiment, 'there's no turning back' (even though, obviously, with only one dose of T there absolutely is). until i lingered on it long enough and realized, I was more so feeling grief. Grief for the girl I couldn't have been and over all the effort and time I expended on trying that was worth nothing if I was really going to be a man now. A year on T now and I don't grieve the girl I tried to be, I just love her and I'm glad I spent all that time with her.

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

this resonated with me so much... i'm not trans, just had to also leave behind a version of myself in a way. i still miss her and always will, i think i'm still in that grieving process you mentioned, but i know it won't always be that way. she gave me so much, both joy and pain, but it's time we part ways.

[@jas_nah]

I'm wrestling with whether to start T right now and this is so, so illuminating. I think my feelings are really similar to this. Thank you for putting words to them.

[@eveningpr1mroses]

this brings me so much peace

[@NikkiTheOtter]

Going the other way, it was a similar feeling. My first E dose, I sat there with three tablets in my hand for about 15 minutes. Stared at them. Did the whole self-discussion about 'is this really the right thing'. Took them. Had another hour of anxiety about 'Is this really the right choice. I can still stop now. I don't have to keep going. One dose isn't going to change anything' Then I realized I was spiraling the same way I did before, waiting in the clinic. Like I did before, sitting in my truck staring at my phone waiting to dial. Like I did staring down the barrel of my rifle 5 months earlier. And I knew the only way out of that spiral was to make a decision. So I chose to keep going. To escape the anxiety spiral. 4 weeks later my breasts started to come in and all that anxiety seemed so far behind. I knew I had made the right choice for my mental and physical health.

[@randomspider725]

Sounds like you have some things to work through, and I’m sorry for that suffering, but implying that someone experiencing personal growth is a ”privilege” is mean-spirited AF.

[@dophdopherson1946]

I sometimes get asked by coworkers, or family members, oh what will you do if you don't like yourself, what if you make a decision or do a surgery you regret, what if you're forty and realize you chose wrong, and I've learned that the answer is that I hope I'm empathetic towards myself.

[@slimdangerous1928]

Holy I needed to hear this. Just starting my journey and I need to be kinder and more empathetic towards myself. Thanks for reminding me, have a wonderful life!

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

this is what i've learned recently as well! so what? if i learn later on that i made a mistake, or i have to do something scary, or something upsets me - i'll give myself a big hug, let myself cry about it, and figure out what to do afterwards. because i'm capable of that. learning to trust myself to function without a narrative explicitly telling me what to do has been the most healing thing to happen to me... now i know i can trust myself to be kind to me when shit eventually inevitably goes down, and that makes me feel so safe

[@tabbythehapless3605]

dang... I'm in a tough place right now and ive tried to forgive myself by reminding me that I did what was best with the info I have. I don't regret it. I just have to keep moving forward

[@overgrownkudzu]

i feel like people also forget that cis people regularly deal with all those things as well. cis people struggle with self image, not liking how they look, regretting choices about their health etc. etc. for trans people it's an extra layer, but honestly not that different

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

@@overgrownkudzu THISSSS if only people were half this cautious about pushing kids/young people into careers they don't want or yk literally any other decision that has long term consequences- but no it's somehow only trans people...

[@cozygoblin]

I detransitioned four years ago and I fell into a lot of terf rhetoric. I'm better now, so much better. A lot of what you said rang true for me too and probably for many others. You believe the narrative that transition is death and not even detransition can bring you back and you swallow it hole. Because you can't be "fixed" the grief is endless. The anger never abates. There is no resolution. Once I realized that narrative was hurting me so deeply I was finally able to get out from under it and acknowledge that transition was just one part of my life, it didn't define or kill me it was an event among many other events in my life. I don't like calling it a detransition anymore but it's the most recognizable thing to call it by. It was a second transition. And it's okay if my narrative didn't go how I expected. I really liked this video, I'd never heard what I felt and experienced put so succinctly. The narrative was never real.

[@Jesse-ri5ud]

thank you for talking about your experience. im really happy and grateful that you were able to move on past your grief and anger and make peace with your life. i really hope more people learn, like you have, to come to terms with their own lives and their own decisions instead of taking out their anger on other people ❤

[@23phoenixash]

I detransitioned for a few years because of social pressures, falling in love with a girl who was religious, etc. But I returned to my transition a few years later a lot stronger and more resilient for having taken a break to really understand what it was I wanted. To me, my temporary detransition was a necessary part of my journey. People are always saying "What if you make a mistake?" but few people tell you that it's okay to make a mistake or that life will be full of mistakes. Mistakes are normal and I think, if one learns from them, they're doing it right.

[@essaeldridgeYoBro]

This is why I get scared of people who detransition, because I can never tell how many of them become anti trans because of it.

[@ElixirSpice]

I always wondered why people who detransition end up as terfs who talk as if they were the victims of their transition. I didn't realoze it was because terfs position transition as a death that you can't come back from. Im glad you're foing better ❤

[@ernie39]

I like the term/framing of "second transition"! Thank you for sharing, I'm glad you are happier with yourself and that you were able to reject those rigid narratives of how change must require sacrifice/rejection/repression of parts of yourself -- life is so full of change, it's cruel that we're taught to fear it and define ourselves so rigidly in order to make sense to others (rather than have to room to grow with others and ourselves).

[@FelixColgrave]

Really enjoyed this video, but I wasn't expecting it to start discussing Barber Westchester 26 minutes in- I'm in that movie! I voice the guy with the smaller guy on his head! So a bit of a world's colliding moment when I'm just here listening to my stories while I work, but always great to hear shout-outs for Jonni outside the indie animation bubble. Everyone should go check out her work! Unrelated, but I also liked finding out nobody bought Graham's shitty book. Enjoyable time all round

[@lily_lxndr]

Omg it’s mayor Ladelsmith himself!! Glad you liked the video Felix, thank you ☺️

[@Hellooo134]

Ahh I love your work so much

[@nowMUSH]

We like you too, Felix

[@tsudough]

How Did Felix get here, that's actually crazy

[@Frenchbootleg]

Love both of your works. Thanks for the vidéo, Lily !

[@Popthebop]

YOU SUBTITLED THE WHOLE VIDEO! I’m crying, my crops are thriving, the bread is cooling on the windowsill, and this video has subtitles. Thank you, from all the people with auditory processing disorder, and people who need subtitles to understand things. Thank you!!! Hope you have a wonderful day!

[@justseffstuff3308]

YES! 100% the same here oh my fucking god, it is so nice.

[@Popthebop]

@@justseffstuff3308 IT IS SWEET AS CANDY I AM SO HAPPY!

[@SavageMinnow]

♥️ love this, so much.

[@FayeFaye-]

Auditory processing disorder is a thing? Oh boi, what else do i not know

[@MoonlightEmbrace]

As another person who needs subtitles to reinforce and reassure that what I hear is correct, I can't agree enough with the feelings behind this.

[@otaku3OBSESSION]

I'm in the middle of detransitioning, but I don't think I really feel any regret. Binding was hurting my ribs, but it made me happy while I was doing it. Testosterone gave me acne beyond belief, but that passed with topical medication and accutane. I love my voice getting deeper, my hair thicker, facial hair and bottom growth. In fact, the only part of my transition I ""regret"" is the social aspect. The people around me didn't understand and would never understand. Instead of the validation of being treated like a normal man, you instead are treated as a sensitive snowflake. All the privileges of being a woman I once experienced were gone, replaced with a scorn for being trans. A lot of my childhood trauma sources in feeling like I don't fit in, a desperately chameleoning to assimilate to whichever group I was in. Being trans was perhaps the first time I felt I was being myself, until I realized I was chameleoning to be among men too. I don't hate my body the way it is now. I still don't see myself as a woman. But I really could never be a man, even if I looked, acted and spoke like one, I felt on the outside then, too. I'm okay with being nonbinary inside. But outside, presenting back as a woman has made the rest of my life easy again. Getting loans, starting relationships, interacting with grandparents and cousins. I think maybe when im older ill transition again. But for now, this is what im doing.

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

i'm glad you could figure that out, and that despite all your struggles and the hate you've faced you still found a sense of peace with yourself. wish you all the best, and i hope one day the world will see who you are on the outside, or at least you find people that do

[@scobeymeister1]

Thank you for sharing that. Dysphoria's such a finicky thing, isn't it? I'm in sort of a parallel situation myself - T treats me very right and I love what it's done for my body. My post-surgery chest isn't perfect - my scars are very visible and odd - but it's still mine, and it feels more like mine than before surgery. I sing as a tenor in a men's choir, but I've stubbornly held on to a lot of my old soprano range because I like the way I sound in falsetto. I wish I could tone down my facial hair because it makes me... dysphoric of all things. But I can shave it and feel better, and wouldn't do anything differently. I live day to day as a man and that fits me better than womanhood ever did. But I don't quite fit that mold either and I'm actually quite happy living outside of it. I'm happy with my body, too, "imperfect" and full of contradictions though it may be. I hope you're able to live as your authentic self and be comfortable in your skin, now and in the future. Whatever that looks like for you ❤

[@sexygaywizard]

A big under-discussed part of the whole "detransition" thing is that most detransitions happen because of the social aspect exactly like you said. Not because of the person having this big regret and feeling like the whole transition was a mistake, but because they weren't in a place or with people who were respecting, supporting, and/or understanding them-- and most do return to transition again later. I'm happy you're doing what's best for you and hope you can continue to do so!

[@multieyedmyr]

Being a man sucks. Society goes out of its way to let you know how unwanted you are every day while at the same time needing you to lay down your life to keep things operational.😊

[@scarletb2267]

I am the other side of that, and I had my first taste of the being treated like a sensitive snowflake a couple months ago at the doctors I'm still not even really socially doing anything yet, which is the source of a lot of my regret feelings because I know how things are going to be causing me issues, so when I went to the doctor (who is not involved with transitioning stuff), with birthname, all was normal, then when I was waiting in a room for blood pressure, the lady came in apologizing _profusely_ for not knowing, and when I saw the doctor himself, he also apologized about the situation with the lady at the front desk Like Jesus, it's not like I'm some fawn made out of 1mm thick glass, I'm literally the reason for this situation The whole thing had ME feeling bad, because since I'm still basically not out and not wanting to say it aloud in a whole room of people, I went and made an awkward situation for someone else somehow

[@ithinkthistimeitsgoingtowork]

I’m glad I tried E and had an opportunity to experiment with my gender. For years I repressed any femininity i had within myself and tried to overcompensate for my lack of feeling masculine enough. So naturally this all came to a head at some point and i had to seriously start questioning things. I was on E for about 6 months, but never really felt settled into my new identity. once the big changes started happening, I experienced really terrible dysphoria. I went off of it, and the only thing i have to show is some very minor breast growth that’s only really noticeable to me and to people i tell. i’ve been working out and that muscle growth has pretty much gotten rid of any semblance of breasts I could’ve had. I think the whole experience made my more sure in my identity as a nonbinary man, and gave me a much more intimate understanding of what gender dysphoria feels like, and the absolute necessity of providing safe and accessible gender affirming care. Starting estrogen was my own choice, and I accepted that when I started it. I don’t really regret it tbh

[@EmmsReality]

Love that you said non-binary man. Like too many people who wanna have queer opinions and be allies or queer themselves and always talk like nonbinary means not man or woman. And it’s like, well maybe for women but it’s BOTH for a lot of folks also. I was bigender fluid whatever and then once I started transitioning and lost my partner I had no reason to hold onto masculinity. So she/her it is now. I’m also enby.

[@noctarin1516]

Your comment has got me thinking about whether I really want to be a woman, or whether I want to be non binary/male in my own gender non conforming way. I've been on E for a little while so I'm conflicted. I'm not entirely sure about my identity. But these notions of gender identity are such complex things to process. Maybe eventually I'll come to like being a woman. I guess I'll live on nonetheless.

[@oramihi]

This reminds me so much of conversations transgender people were having online 20 years ago. I had elders telling me, "Just remember that transition isn't the end all be all. There is life after that, and you will have to figure out what to do with yourself after it's all done." It ended up taking me 15 freaking years to get there... which I suppose makes me lucky, because once I finally got surgery, the feeling at the top of the hill was one of "Yeah, this is nice. I deserve this," and "on with the financial plan and maybe some bucket list items." And also, when there have been weird feelings or concerns down there in that area, I feel like there's a big sense of simply being a woman in the healthcare system. That is, people are prone to not believe you about your sensations, but also "are these feeling valid?" It's all the same questions ciswomen I know deal with. In that sense, though this is a wonderfully ornate description of all of this from a contemporary perspective, these are also all the same things transgender people were thinking and feeling 20 years ago. Probably 40 years ago or 60 years ago (see Casa Susana). The erasure of our history and our connections with our trans elders tends to make us all grow up in these little bubbles, where "everyone is 20" is always the case. As a transwoman in her 40s, I can tell the younger folks, you're actually doing just fine.

[@creatrixZBD]

💜 this cmment, thank you x

[@flowerfields7224]

thats so sweet ty :)

[@quinnstraught9636]

tysm ❤ Best wishes to you

[@CharlotteThroughTheWeb]

Thank you for posting this. As a trans woman who came out 15 years ago and similar to your story, is having surgery in just over a month only. Because the stars aligned, this definitely makes me feel less alone. It's been hard for me because it doesn't feel like a part of it's own story, less like it makes me me, and more like it makes me more comfortable. But the sheer meaning of what that action of having surgery means is so different in our culture than what it means to me/what it was when I came out. I have lived in this world where people assume I've already done it, or they assume I'm cis. It's wild. I have felt this pressure on to figure out the meaning making because like I've lived feeling like I was just living. So what does this mean now? What is surgery part of when it's not even remotely part of one's transition? The video helped me let go of trying to make it fit into anything, but I certainly didn't expect to then scroll the comments to find someone who had lived a similar experience. Thank you.

[@6Haunted-Days]

Please don’t use cis it’s beyond offensive, I know I’m just a woman myself and not part of the alphabet but shouldn’t MY feelings matter? Can’t even remotely offend a trans but let’s have a field day with natural born women, it’s sickening. It’s like trying cancel all natural born women, the videos I’ve seen Christ just awful I’m HOPING it’s only the extreme side of trans….I’m very progressive in my politics but what I’m referring to is insanity, these TikToks 🙄

[@well_actulily]

"what happens next, if I'm lucky, is nearly everything" once again, Lily has beautifully distilled something that I've been feeling about my own transition, and what it means to close that chapter, and open another

[@Riko442]

I wish your book will be the best story in a library of possibilities.

[@thelemon5069]

I just want to finally feel pretty not "handsome" so feel happy with who I am and love my own body

[@AutisticVaxtard]

Vanity insanity

[@leahre]

going through a transition "complication" myself rn and my world is crumbling, it feels wrong when the medicine I've worshipped for years for saving my life is biting back and causing problems

[@lily_lxndr]

i know what you mean :( i'm sorry. no matter what happens, i hope you can find peace

[@livvy94]

This comment is a month old, I hope you're doing a little better now

[@wilhelm.i]

I'm trying to convince doctors of the simple math. If 19/20 people who get the condition I just got diagnosed with... You're gonna get the occasional trans man in there. That doesn't mean it's because I'm trans or because of my transition. Every one wants to associate the two but the connection is the weakest.... Then they did testing and the issue is on how my tissues are structured... Nothing to do with T.

[@jackosaulnier833]

I am having top surgery in three days, and it was a little intimindating to put on a video called "Transition Regret and the Fascism if Endings" but I knew you'd never let me down before, and you probably weren't about to start. This is exactly what I needed. Hearing that it doesn't solve all of your problems is an oddly soothing perspective, while so much of me has been battling out "is this the beginning, middle, or end of my journey?" in the background of my mind. Thank you.

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

hope your surgery goes well!

[@jackosaulnier833]

@@darkacadpresenceinblood thanks so much!

[@sealogic4552]

Let us know how it goes!

[@mikeystenning1760]

hope all goes well for you! i'm not quite there yet but ive got my fingers crossed!!

[@SunnyCress]

I hope it went well!

[@ActiveAdvocate1]

You know what really bothers me about right now is this feeling of "general malaise". People around me feel so TIRED, beaten-down, worn out, and it feels like nothing is going to get better. I really, really hope this will eventually start to reflect how my dad got through cancer. There was a point during his treatment where nothing was getting WORSE, but nothing was improving, either. I'd go to class, he'd be on the couch. I'd come home, he'd be on the couch. It was like he couldn't move on his own or do anything on his own, and I remember just putting my head down in class one day, taking off my glasses, covering up my face, and just silently sobbing or an hour straight. I sat at the front, and my professor was right in front of me the whole time, and at the end of class, he asked me if there was anything wrong (he's got a sarcasm streak a mile wide: I adore this man and we're still friends), so I told him the situation, and he said I didn't have to hand in my assignments on time if I felt like I couldn't. In the weeks following, he kind of took care of me emotionally, and he would let me vent to him when there was no one else to vent to. I couldn't in good conscience vent to my family, because they were going through the same thing as me, but he was safe because there was enough emotional distance from what was going on. I'm using this as an analogy, by the way: this really did happen, and dad's all good now, but we need to be one another's Dr. Jon. He couldn't make me happy, but he DID at least keep me, well, functional. I consider that hour-long cry the highest emotional moment for me throughout that whole year of awful: I cleaned my system out completely--best cry I've ever had, bar none--and I gained myself an ally and now a longtime friend.

[@coscorrodrift]

damn your professor is awesome

[@ActiveAdvocate1]

@@coscorrodrift, I mean, he IS kind of wonderful.

[@Kira_Martel]

So glad you had such a supportive professor and _super_ glad your dad's doing well now. 💕

[@foogriffy]

i relate to what youve said in this video so hard. transition made everything easier but... now there's the rest of my life to live. i really needed to get some things out of the way, but it's a shame i had to be so invested in this one thing that i didnt take the time to be a real person in the meantime. after i got top surgery, i had an ecstatic couple years. i was living with a friend who also recently got his top surgery. in fact he paid out of his own savings for mine. we were like brothers. we did everything together, and it felt like i was living my lost boyhood. i did a lot of healing in that time. eventually, reality came back to me and i realized im just a dude now. i'm a man in his 20s thats expected to hold a job and be a productive member of society even though all i want to do is keep resting after the trauma, to regain my stolen youth. i have to contend with the future now, and i always feel like i can't keep up. i think i knew the whole time that there wasnt going to be an 'end' when my transition was over. i was really just hoping it would make life fun going forward. but it didn't exempt me from the same struggles every other person faces in life. i'm just a guy, and furthermore, a guy with a very unique and complex trauma. that amazing friendship ended pretty badly and we don't know each other anymore. life goes on.

[@Dutch3DMaster]

This resonated with me as well. I am now hitting the concrete wall of people not realizing or understanding why you never was in a relationship. In my case that is the result of literally growing up as someone who was not yet knowing I am transgender, causing me to spend a whole lot of time to try and understand why I wasn't understanding any of it. Which made me have no room for some of the other things that other children tend to experiment with when puberty has started: it all had to be "parked" somewhere as long as I was clueless on why I was so incredibly jealous of girls, while mistaking that jealousy for feelings of being in love with them, while at the same time noticing I was clueless enough along with having a boy body just enough to not be automatically tolerated in their environment. In 2017, through a video of a transwoman I learned that my puberty screening was quite identical to that of boy-girl transchildren that she had. In my case not because I am transgender, I didn't know that at the time yet, but because my body height was below average, and there were concerns my body was having some hormonal problems. That to me now causes a lot of remorse for realizing how close I was to getting puberty halted if I only had have the words to know what was happening with me (I will add I don't know if I had acted on the information). It also put me in the position at the time of knowing full well what was heading my way in terms of what boy puberty was going to do, and not realizing why I only wanted to become taller and not have the rest. My city has a local support group that has been going to high schools in the city to give informational lessons on sexual diversity, asked me along as a transwoman on hormones (the other transwomen that regularly volunteered are not on hormones) and tell about my coming-out situation and life experience. I am unsure if it is because of the experience of the puberty screening or because of obviously knowing a bit about puberty and stuff due to being trans, but I frequently notice that the knowledge in those classes concerning what puberty does is severely lacking: puberty blockers don't prevent you from getting a low voice as a boy and many other things that in the eyes of those children (13-14 year old students) are not actually part of puberty but just "something that happens to boys". For me, I also feel that there is no end to my transition: not only did I start to late, but due to not having grown up as a girl I feel I'll spend my life learning things.

[@tristantheoofer2]

im in the start of transition shit and honestly yeah this will probably be me in 5 years or so, just living as a girl. for now im just gonna enjoy the highs though

[@dinosaysrawr]

Re: 22:11, that right there is why I have always detected and detested the ableist undertones in transphobic rhetoric. If someone's value or beauty lies in their physical appeal, and if "deformed" people are necessarily to be considered pitiable and horrifying, then that bodes just as poorly for someone with cerebral palsy or arthrogryposis as it does a trans person who is the intended target of such rhetoric.

[@bing_crilling8981]

tbh its very common to see abelism be self-reported with transphobia. think about it. they weaponize "getting therapy" (it's usually in a negative connotation, like "get therapy you freak", associating therapy with something to fix a repulsive trait they have), they think mental illness is bad enough to warrant stuff like the trans military ban back then, etc. its very, VERY common for someone to not just be transphobic. even "LGB" allies. even they aren't just transphobic. they think they're all "one of the good gays who don't make it their personality" and whatever. they likely suffer from atleast homophobia if not some other things. transphobia is really just a symptom and the top of the iceburg.

[@queenvagabond8787]

Well the whole thing is deeply rooted in eugenicistic sympathies and beliefs, and a biological essentialist narrative that upholds physical 'perfection' and supremacy, and ability to reproduce biologically as the essence of goodness, purity and validity. When those are a person's core beliefs and assumptions, its hard to challenge them, unfortunately.

[@Ellyc2929]

​@queenvagabond8787 for sure, you got it

[@GuiSmith]

You’ve said exactly what I’ve been thinking for years. Transphobic remarks about autistic individuals like myself are already pretty telling, but it goes to show what they really think about us when you look just below surface. It’s infantilisation all the way down, probably because “non-sexual child” is the only way they can imagine us sexually.

[@Gakulon]

Exactly. If I were a cis man or woman, my body and my mind would still be far from nature's "perfection" (🤣) and undoubtedly I would still be the subject of their derision and scorn.

[@Pinwheelsystem]

You don't even need to have had been incarcerated to be treated like this. Being unschooled by abusive parents doomes me to an almost identical fate. I keep trying to reach out to doctors, social workers, and just anyone I can about my future. But they all give me the same response. It's my job to work to get myself a future. Even if I'm exhausted and suffering from flashbacks and severe social anxiety on a daily basis. Social media, which is my only source of communication, often just leaves me feeling more alone. I never even had the chance to make frienships. I have around 3 online friendships, along with my boyfriend who lives in Canada while I live in the UK. And the friend I get along with the most, lives in Spain. I have my sister, who is my only connection with other humans physically.

[@JosephKano]

Sincerely hugs and wuv. Keep looking for the path, or the pathfinder. 🐱😻🐱

[@Pinwheelsystem]

@@JosephKano thx this was a nice comment to wake up too ^^°

[@apyper8432]

its shitty that the answer from so called community resources is "just do it! just work and find what you need, even though you're navigating from a current net deficit!" I've experienced my own version of this as an exmormon estranged from family at a young age. being raised like that kept me cut off from learning the skills to resource myself for the life *I* need to live. similarly, in the midst of trying to survive economically, I was suffering from severe complex trauma that has taken me a loooong time to make sense of and manage with more capacity. I really hope for you and your sister to find connection to resources that can keep leading you to more resources. I've found that there hasn't been one place, group, or person who has been able to help me get it all sorted...but it's been a path of breadcrumbs that has helped me to keep figuring out the next step. I wish our society was set up differently to help us folks who fall through the cracks, which i think is actually far more common than is acknowledged. sending care.

[@entityfangs5560]

I've been living through something similar, i stopped going to school after an emotional breakdown when i was 14, and nobody in my life knew what to do about it or how to help me, so i was left to fall through the cracks of every system, horrifically isolated aside from 1 or 2 very close friends online and a not very ideal home situation. as the comment above said, i think it's a lot more common than people would think, i really hope it isn't, but hell I've hardly told a soul until now. so many other people must be living like this silently. it's so difficult to find help when nobody understands the sheer immensity of how it affects your life, especially when everyone acts like it's a choice you made with full agency. ironically this isolation actually made it easier to be transgender, fully seperated from public perception. i don't really know what point to make here, i just want you to know you're not alone and i hope things can be easier for all of us

[@BirdNoise77]

I'm sorry that you're living through this situation, it must be very hard. I cannot tell you how to fix things, I do not know you personally, but from my side of the world to wherever you are, I hope you are as well as you can be in this moment. The world can be cruel to people and it's hard when it's you. But as cruel as this world is, it just as beautiful, the hard part is finding the beauty and holding on to it. I hope you find it, and hold onto it.

[@mordred9106]

One thing I find funny is when I found out I was trans, naturally I searched for trans guys everywhere including on youtube and found a bunch of channels talking about that classic transition stuff, effects of T, top surgery, bottom surgery and a bunch of other trans topics, I watched them religiously. As time passed a whole bunch of these stopped posting videos and some no longer posted so much about trans stuff. I got frustraded for a while but when I started T I finally understood them. I moved on on obsessing over this kind of content, and I think they probably stopped for that reason too. I guess that's another point we all have in common lmao

[@HansLemurson]

It's sort of weirds to think about moving on from such major life-changing events...but then what's the alternative? To be stuck reminiscing on one single part of your life forever, unable to let go or embrace new things?

[@ChromeSkeletons]

I transitioned 8 years ago and at this point am completely done with medical transition for the foreseeable future. I used to think after everything I'd continue to be super involved in trans spaces to offer my experiences and advice to others. And while I have done that for some people, I just don't have the drive or interest to constantly put myself in trans spaces like I thought I would. Being trans, at least the medical side of transition, just like... isn't a huge defining part of my life anymore. I don't really have to think about it much and I hardly ever experience dysphoria anymore. Before I would spend all this time on trans forums online and in queer support groups, etc. because they provided me with community of people going through the same thing. But now I kind of have to force myself to go seek out those spaces and I'm often the only person so far in my transition. I feel my perspectives on transition tend to be really different to people early on in their transition and just don't find people I relate to. It's a weird experience but I would kind of compare it to going back to your highschool as an adult and realizing no one you know is there anymore and nothing there is for you.

[@maybelater6282]

Similar experience here. I often forget I'm even trans because I'm so used to living as a man (only been on T for a little over a year though) that I don't think about it.

[@thebuilder5271]

Same, after T and top surgery I just forget I’m trans lol (or forget that it’s not normal to have a vag as a man). Except now that my state is making it impossible for me to get T I’m remembering because I’m being forcefully detransitioned rip 💀

[@cory99998]

Yeah its hard to talk about life after transition because those people dont spend time in transition spaces anymore

[@cobblestone8319]

Another part of Milo living a life with no blueprint is the fact that he technically never went to school, or at least stopped and when to “unschooling” by middle school. As someone who’s not a murder accomplice, but was forced to do homeschooling, it disconnects you from everyone else, which makes Milo’s situation even worse (also thank you for the webtoon rec just binged it lol)

[@donov25]

I suppose im being pedantic but it saddens me to see a brand name (webtoon) replace the perfectly fine word webcomic in someones vocabulary... I mean its even hosted on a site called webcomic...

[@camillaquelladegliaggettiv4303]

​@@donov25I grew up in the Homestuck days, I will never call these anything other than webcomics

[@Pinwheelsystem]

I was also unschooled

[@tablepicnic]

I also homeschooled/unschooled and processing that part of my identity (which is hard to separate from my neurodivergence) has been more difficult than processing my queerness. That felt natural and there are people that know how to talk about it with you. I’ve also been drawn to having plenty of homeschooled friends now that I’m out in the world and am able to make friends (the irony of having more homeschooled friends in college than when I was actually homeschooled), but other homeschoolers have such wildly different experiences than I do that it’s harder to find companionship in grieving not having had a childhood (in the same way). Not having experienced so many social things meant I had to learn so much but I’m still such an outsider to a lot of things and I feel like that identity will never just fade into comfortability like my gender has.

[@benjamincooper6218]

WOAH partially through this video and saw jonni phillips's animation, and that was a total shock! I was one of jonni's students at CSSSA 2018, an art program for high school students, and she was one of the nicest teacher/mentors there!! She was super supportive of me when I was struggling to finish my short film, and Ive always appreciated her and the care she gave to us young artists. Its so cool to see her work given a platform here in a video essay i decided to watch on a whim. I cant wait to see your interview with jonni!

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

this is such a sweet comment, i love to see wholesome student-teacher relationships :D she did sound really cool from the clips Lily played here, i'm glad to hear she's just as awesome irl!

[@tarakrishna2694]

wait its so crazy seeing another csssa animation alum here! (attended summer of 2022.) its so cool that jonni was a teacher, her work is incredibly thoughtful and subversive.

[@Milo-uz2lb]

when i was going under anesthesia for top surgery right before i passed out my surgeon said "NO TURNING BACK NOW" i wish i was making this up

[@josyhavik]

@@Milo-uz2lb aw, hon it was probably a hallucination

[@rileyroseinabox6754]

“The supposed end to the pandemic hasn’t done anything except rob us of the language needed to acknowledge what’s happening.” This. I keep feeling gaslit when I still act as if there is a pandemic. I’m going to school for public health at one of the top PH universities in the States and they moved on a year ago. It’s wild and infuriating.

[@andreahighsides7756]

It’s not a pandemic it’s an endemic

[@Jiihariial]

+

[@HoverDoog]

I know I can only speak for myself, but I'd wager many people share my sentiment when I say that I'd rather risk illness and death than lose another 2+ years of my life to a disease that I never caught.

[@subcitizen2012]

The virus moved on too. It's not alpha strain anymore. Totally different animal compared to early 2020. Yes it's still out there, yes it's still killing, yes it's still technically a pandemic, but it's no longer the crisis phase. If I remember right even WHO declared the emergency phase of the pandemic over within the past year or so. We've all unfortunately learned a lot about humanity in the meantime.

[@subcitizen2012]

​@@HoverDoogyou'd probably feel differently if you caught it and died and had to miss out on the 2+ decades of the rest of your life.

[@JenCool42069]

I truly needed this video. I'm newly out as trans, scrambling desperately for a surgery date, and silently harboring fears related to regretting new or removed pieces of me. I felt alone before, but now i'm up past my bedtime eating this masterpiece like dessert. thank you for being an amazing voice above the chatter.

[@MMumbles]

I hope all the best for you now, and in the years following 💕

[@robynsun_love]

If anything, I think the point Jonni Philips was making was that there is meaning even _in_ the chatter. Even in random noise, one can find meaning. I'd have gone further and suggested that the impulse to deconstruct narrative without constructing something new, modular, and syncretic in its stead; abandoning a story that doesn't work and creating a new one that does, or finishing one and moving onto another (as writers do), turning a church into a gravesite instead of a playground, is short-sighted. Unambiguously in the right direction, but not far enough. I think it also could have touched on what happens to stories that are cut short when their writer dies or gives up on them. When the mountain is genuinely unclimbable, much less descendable - the fate of every story whose ambitions and story threads amounted to nothing, whose destinations abruptly went as missing as MH370; stories less thought of than even the aftercredits. A storytelling frontier defined by its _lack of story,_ its sheer underwhelmingness, the weak-ass sound of an actual punch that isn't accentuated with a wooden-plank-hitting-a-watermelon Hollywood sound effect, the commute and commode times that aren't considered relevant _to_ a story; the blanks the audience is expected to fill, the character names they are supposed to remember, the jokes they didn't get. A Jackson Pollock-esque monument to weak writing, effectively, a celebration of failure; embracing it for what it is, and the inescapable contexuality and spaciotemporality of its existence, rather than the immaterial which it pursued - if Bo Burnham's special rang hollow not just now, but _then,_ too.

[@wen6519]

Hi Jen. I wish the best for your surgery and best of luck for life thereafter. I just had gender affirming surgery myself. A friend asked me to compare it to the hardest pain I've ever faced (breaking my ankle in 3 pieces, in my case) and decide if I regretted it. The answer was not, in my particular procedure the pain was less than half of the broken ankle. Surgery didn't cure my disphoria, misgendering, or even give me enough confidence to date other humans. But it did make me happier, and I have no regrets.

[@Alexintrinketopia]

It deeply resonated with me not only as a trans person, but as a russian. (cw: war, heavy stuff) I was barely 17, finishing school when my country just...started a war with a neighbouring country. And my generation just had to live this realization. The amount of narratives I was making up to try and feel any control over what's happening is astonishing. There was so much guilt, anger and a terrible sense of doom in the anti-war circles. (For a lack of a better name) There was so much stuff happening every day during the first month of the war, that all I did was checking the (unofficial!) news and analytics. I constantly felt like the world is soon going to collapse. The war is still there, but there is barely anything happening. It felt bizarre, applying to a uni, and taking about my future career while everything feels like its ending. But I did it. It feels like the old me has died somewhere on the way though. And maybe he had to for me to be there. Because the world is always ending, yet the life goes on.

[@ConvincingPeople]

Freaking out a little because I know Max and it's genuinely wild seeing someone with a fairly large platform talk about (and with him about) his work like this. He's a lovely dude and his work's great and strange and personal and I'm really not sure what to say…

[@alexanderkane9864]

As someone whose entire life for the last 11 years has been focused on becoming a full-time musician, and who is now grieving the loss of this dream for a variety of factors including injury, mental health, and other surprises, this video resonated quite hard with me. The idea of working towards a perfect self so you can check out and "roll credits" is literally something I've been unconsciously trying to work towards my whole life. I really appreciated the point at the end that accepting the loss of your own perfect self allowed space for new possibilities, thank you.

[@kiribonnie]

oh this one really really got me. 34:19 “got me wondering if having a purpose set me up for devastation” is such a beautifully succinct way to say it. i’m obsessed with endings as a narrative device but putting those thoughts into words is so hard and this NAILS it i can’t wait to watch this video every day forever

[@CalamityCeleste]

this thumbnail could (and SHOULD) be an album cover!

[@Flippityjibbet]

YES! That would be simultaneously SO cool and SO funny.

[@qwardel7799]

Fr! The thumbnail is beautiful

[@dmitrichernetsky8018]

I've heard an acquaintance frequently say: "If your story has an unhappy ending, then it hasn't ended yet." Although I sometimes feel like it's wishful thinking to think that you can't be doomed, it reminds me of the importance to continue to fight on, no matter how desperate or dire the situation is. There isn't a guarantee that everything is going to work out in the end, but in giving up, you sacrifice any possibility of getting better. Nothing short of murder can make your ending a death. Bad actors that would like to see you fail can't make a death. They can only manipulate you into seeing it no other way. I like your video, it is very thoughtful! Be well, everyone.

[@pablopereyra7126]

Reminds me of another phrase I've heard: "It will all be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end."

[@alim.9801]

​@@pablopereyra7126 I was just about to comment this, one of my favorite quotes I've heard :)

[@arc4705]

God I could talk about this for ages. I've transitioned and "detransitioned" (hormones, surgeries, legal documents, etc) and have loved and regretted aspects of both. People are always so astonished that I admit to this quite openly without hating myself, as if regretting a major decision (or in my case just PARTS of the decision) means your life ends or you're supposed to live in self-hating misery forever. I truly feel like it's time to stop acting like all transitions will turn out as either idyllic or hellish. Sometimes you go "Ah, so that wasn't what I thought it would be" and then you shrug and keep going. As for the second half of the vid, personally, I've come to a point where I have disengaged from the narrative of sex and gender as anyone (cis or trans) has described it, haha 😅 Hence "detransition." Idk how else to explain it. When you've lived through so many different narratives, you realize that fluidity is part of the experience. Having embraced that about my own experience with gender, when I make related decisions that I later wish to recant, I regret less and reflect more. Does this make any damn sense???? idk wtf I'm saying anymore 😅 Side note, I was so scared to watch this video bc I've been shamed for having transition regret so much that I assumed this video was going to call me a TERF or somehow morally corrupt for having dealt with this feeling 🥹🥲 Thank you for giving people a voice! PS sorry if I've worded something totally insanely, I don't have anything but youtube so idk what the online discourse is like anymore 😭

[@ryn2844]

Just commenting to boost this up because detransitioners who turn into terfs get far too much attention while people like you get none.

[@improvwithlions4173]

One thing I appreciate in even the most brutal detransition stories is the sense that it isn't the end for people, that they can pick themselves up and move on with their lives despite what has happened to them. I know somebody who is going through something similar to you and while I was caught off guard by their change in expression I'm hoping that they know that I support them, even if they surprise me lol.

[@ironyelegy]

As long as you don't insist that being trans was an inherently wrong choice and that others should reconsider, reorganizing your body to fit your needs isn't bad

[@scout8145]

I loved hearing this from you, because this is the first time I encountered a detransition story that wasn’t being used to fearmonger. (Obviously I knew they existed, but I didn’t know what one sounded like.) It makes so much more sense to me to think of it as a fluidity that doesn’t fit neatly into the legal system. I’ve done the exact same thing with identity labels and pride flags that I realized weren’t quite right for me.

[@arc4705]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@ironyelegyIMO me being trans wasn't a "choice" that can be right or wrong, it was just something I experienced. It was true and now it isn't. I feel the same way about when I was cisgender as well honestly haha. BUT I know what you're saying, and no, there is nothing morally or inherently wrong with being trans. I am very deeply entrenched in the community haha that's my home

[@akexiixi]

37:00. stopped the video here to comment. your assessment of transition as the ability to no longer want to be a certain kind of person as your main point of existence nearly brought me to tears, and has me reframing the entire journey i have at my fingertips as a trans person just entering adulthood and medical transition. damn. ironically, i feel more enthusiastic than ever before. amazing video.

[@diablominero]

I'm already "living in a damaged body," with or without transition lmao. In fourth grade I slipped while holding a ceramic plate and got a bad cut, and I still have a visible scar on my hand and a couple square centimeters of skin with no sensation due to nerve damage. I don't find it very distressing, and I'm better at telling apart left and right than I used to be. I'm waiting for a new tissue-selective hormone to get government approval before I start transition, just because avoiding irreversible effects would be nice all else being equal, but I don't think a little bit of irreversible damage is actually something people care very much about when it hasn't been politicized.

[@AnnikaVictoria24]

Holy heck my brain. This hit me really hard in relation to my chronic illness. It defies the "sick person" narrative in so many ways. It just... Continues and you have to learn to live with it.

[@AnnikaVictoria24]

I've always felt a strange sort of solidarity with people who transition and this video really put into words *why* I've felt that

[@katherinemorelle7115]

As a disabled person, same. Also I follow you, it's so cool to see you here!

[@Homodemon]

I spent a literal decade assisting therapist, psychologists, psychiatrist to know what was wrong with me and when I finally got my late diagnosis, I was super lost and basically went through the 5 stages of grief over it, it was like a perpetual "and now what?" from my part and luckily my therapist helped me to keep moving on, despite how, now, the diagnosis I worked to hard to get filled me with an odd sensation of dread

[@bellajudyy]

@@AnnikaVictoria24 !!! as someone who was a “sick child” and has chronic pain still i have been resonating so heavily with everything she says

[@resonate72]

I was NOT expecting one of my favorite webcomics to get a shoutout from one of my favorite youtubers! "what happens next" is so underrated, I hope more people check it out!!! EDIT: AND YOU MANAGED TO INTERVIEW THE AUTHOR TOO??? Holy moly this might be my favorite video of yours!!!

[@resonate72]

Also I watched Barber Westchester on this video's recommendation and I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you Lily!!! You really have great taste in media~

[@shieldsurf]

this is the comment that instantly convinced me to watch this video LOL

[@resonate72]

@@shieldsurf Glad you did, it's a great video! 😄

[@kerycktotebag8164]

our culture (im assuming ur from colonized turtle island) or "overculture"/multiple hegemonies, or at least the part of it I'm from ("dirty south, U.S") doesn't handle regret very well. regret doesn't literally mean "shouldn't have happened, shouldn't have done it", it just feels that way in the moment

[@Tom_Fuckery]

And so they squirm exponentially as reality and their role in it sets in. We don't need guns and walls to protect ourselves in a civil space. Only mirrors. The Orks will do the rest to themselves. I swear, I can hear the Churchill/Nixon lips flapping obscenities now with the cadence of Wallace

[@queenvagabond8787]

Yeah, absolutely. I had GCS a few years back and at times I've had 'regret' - during the healing process, then euphoria once that was complete, then again in the past two years where I have also had some complications with pain. But, like, I can still experience deep emotional and sexual pleasure, so the fact that everything isn't 'perfect' isn't the end of the world. Plus I've known so many AFAB folk, including my partner, who have chronic pain issues with their genitals. There is also a hetero-normative, male-desire focus to judging if your 'parts,' and therefore your womanhood and femaleness, are valid. Like, you're not a 'real' woman unless - 1) A dude can get you pregnant. 2) You *want* a dude to be able to get you pregnant 3) You aim to have a 'natural' birth (Caesarian births are so frowned upon, or seen as a 'second class' birthing option in many circles, despite being the best or only choice for a 1/4 of pregnancies,) 4) You've actually borne a child and 'become' a woman, but also your parts remain perfect and identical to how they were *before* you bore a child... 5) you 'naturally' lubricate fully and sufficiently *always* to have sex with a man at any time they demand it. 6) You enjoy penetrative sex with a man. 7) you can engage in *and enjoy* penetrative sex with a penis of any size and shape, (because of course all women are infinitely flexible spaces, and its *definitely* not the case that most women can only fit 3-6" inside them anyway, even if it is comfortable to do so. 🙄) At any time your womanhood is to some degree conditional and gradable based primarily on your adherence to all these factors. Its ridiculous.

[@merlin8015]

And don't forget, if bad things happen to you, it means God is punishing you! (Hate it here)

[@pageturner2958]

My favorite example of this is when conservatives get all up in arms about queer people "confusing children" and "making them think they are gay." It is such a "no turning back" mentality over this. Just a story of "ooooo, Little Timmy heard that gay people exist and was confused about his sexuality ooooo" without adding that eventually, through his life experience, Timmy did figure out what his sexuality was and it was helped by the fact that he understood from a young age he had option other than straight. "ooooo, Little Martha learned about gay people and thought it was trendy so said she was gay, but she was straight oooo gay people scary" while ignoring that Martha eventually found out she was exclusively into boys and now identifies as straight. Worst thing that thinking she was gay did is make her cringe at her younger self a bit, but hey, don't we all.

[@lolly9804]

The start of the pandemic feels like decades ago for me. My life feels so different. And yes even when I was wearing a mask at the hospital recently, I got so many dirty looks from other patients in the waiting room.

[@theothertonydutch]

For me, it feels the same. I was more worried about my parents and especially my dad, and a lot of people passed away in the last 3 years in my environment except... not because of covid, but because of cancer in combination with old age. They were all uncles and aunts well into their 70's (my dad passed that mark recently and my mom will in january) Now that the world is "moving on" from covid, I'm still most of my days at home with the same old chronic fatigue. I've made some changes where I live a more healthy livestyle, and got recognition for it which makes life easier, but everything just sort of feels the same. It's weird how that works. I suppose I'm somewhat lucky? I don't know. I never know how to feel in situations and it always takes me a long time to process feelings where I know where I stand on a subject. And that just hasn't arrived in me yet. Also, not sure if it helps, but those people who gave you dirty looks for wearing a mask, they have probably already forgotten about you.

[@macabrecitrus2127]

Yep... Or healthcare workers being like "You know masks aren't mandatory anymore ?" ... While I'm the only person wearing one in the building

[@lolly9804]

@@theothertonydutch Aww thanks, but I'm not put out by it. for the sake of my own elderly parents, that I currently live with (one of which is too sick to be allowed the vaccine). I take those precautions even though my country's death toll at the start of the pandemic was so low. Yeah so far it's heart attacks and diabetes taking out a lot of my family. It's that chain of grief that marks the slow change into being among the oldest of generations. My folks certianly are starting to feel like the last ones left at the party. Dad in particular has become contemplative about it all. I've heard that grief can make things feel like everything has stopped. That it takes time before you start to feel involved again. But that's just a guess without being nosy, or offering advice you've likely already heard.

[@lolly9804]

@@macabrecitrus2127Yeah totally

[@oramihi]

Yeah, I definitely felt that section of this video hard. I saw everyone "going back to normal" and I'm like... but we didn't stop covid. Wasn't the point of... ALL the stuff we did... to STOP covid? I tracked my regional numbers at work, including the downloadable spreadsheets, until the agencies themselves stopped reporting them... When I see people wearing masks now, I actually feel like they care and yet it also suggests they might be sick... even though I'm on their side, I don't know how to feel. I don't wear masks right now, because it's the consensus not to, but in the first few weeks in March 2020 it was also the consensus to not wear masks, and I wondered, "But we knew this would be here in January and no one did anything... and now that we know it's literally here in our area... no one is wearing a mask..." Consensus seemed indefinable and mysterious... then the first week of April, everyone started effectively saying, "We're all going to wear masks now, and it's weird if you don't." While I was glad to wear a mask, I was also like, "What about March? What about February? Why did no one care then?" And why does no one care now? It's baffling... There's no consistency. Any certainty or social uniformity seems entirely elusive... I'm so glad Lily included this analogy in her story for this, because it's very real for a lot of us and still a kind of unanswered question for everyone who went through it all... It reminds me of how I feel about having lived through 9/11... In that sense, I can tell you there may never be definitive answers. Moments like this in our lives are so charged with emotion and historical significance that they will always seem to stand out from the others, and they won't mean anything the same to people who weren't there for it, who haven't experienced it. And they'll always be indefinable. And then we move on...

[@daneeyul759]

Loved this! Letting go of self-image and tired stories is where you find the life in living.

[@alextopfer1068]

(watching this over on nebula) this resonates a lot with me, in terms of what to do after my partner died of cancer. Very much that being past the end of the story feeling

[@nickreynolds9745]

Gonna binge this comic thank you❤️ as someone with ptsd, “it doesn’t really feel like it’s over, sometimes I wake up and feel like it’s still happening” is very relatable

[@anedaneran5666]

I watched already on Nebula and I'm here to boost the algorithm. And I have to say, at 00:30:50 when you cut to the trees on the interview it feels great. I have rarely seen a point-of-view shot in this format. It works so well. You were right, video essayists do need to go outside more.

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

also, the yellow fall leaves are a really neat choice symbolically for a video about endings that aren't really endings... the leaves fall, but they grow out again a season later. life goes on.

[@SpencerCHale]

I cannot begin to describe how cathartic it is to hear someone speak about how COVID is still very much a threat. Thank you for this video.

[@wakingcharade]

I actually had to pause the video because I started crying. Staring down the barrel of another holiday season everyone is annoyed at me for missing because they were annoyed at me for asking if any precautions were in place. They're done. The world is done. If your body won't let you be done, the world is done with you. And no ones body actually is done with it, they just think they are. The scorn is only compounded by the fear for those who have decided its over. Genuinely, Lily, it means so much to hear someone acknowledge the reality instead of acting like COVID is a thing of the past, just because our societal effort to contain it is.

[@prettyhatemachine8887]

No it's not. At least not anymore than many of the things in everyday life.

[@SpencerCHale]

​@@prettyhatemachine8887 While it's definitely portrayed that way in the media, COVID is way more of a threat than other things in every day life, like the annual flu. The long terms effects of repeated COVID infections are way more deadly and debilitating than the flu. The scientific literature is there.

[@rayosdeluz]

I never got a positive result from covid test until today. Almost 4 years without getting sick at all because I've been very careful. But then my gf got it, and now I'm also quarantining. I've had family members almost stop breathing entirely from this virus and still claim it's not a big deal and that they want to move on from it.. rn it's the brain fog that's the worst

[@wakingcharade]

@@rayosdeluz The best things you can do, as far as we know, are 1) get paxlovid asap if you can and are medically able to take it. 2) rest, rest, rest. I've heard it called it 'radical rest'. Society makes it almost impossible, but taking it as easy as possible physically and even mentally is one of the few suggested things for reducing the chances of longer term symptoms. Not just while sick, but after for as long as you can. Some people suggest, if you have access and can manage, getting a full medical check up including blood work as soon as you're testing negative, but I don't remember the full suggested panel. Others say to wait a few months as some people will have a resolution of symptoms in a month or two? It's ridiculous that its impossible to avoid a virus with this much potential for long term disability, let alone acute death. I'm so sorry. rest up

[@Dragowolf_Rising]

I didn't get started on transition of any sort until I was 36. I finally got to start hormones a few months before turning 38. I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford any surgery. The only regret I have so far, is that I didn't fight to be myself earlier in life. Thank you for your content! You're a beautiful young woman and I hope you have a long and fulfilling life.

[@goosie8207]

I’ve noticed that a lot of younger people, including myself when I was first at uni, what next doesn’t seem to enter their mind. No I’m transitioning as a woman of a certain age I’m not focused as much on my transition end point but how it interacts with everything else in my life. I’ve had ups and downs, fears, worries about side effects of some of the changes, fears I won’t ever be able to finish my transition, but I’m learning that it’s not my transition that will define my life just make me more comfortable with myself and to stop having to hide who I am. I’m still hopeful I will be able to get to the end of the road with transition, but I know I will have another path to follow, or another journey I will have to travel.

[@eric_lambert]

I've been coping with the idea of, "What happens next..." since dropping out of school during early COVID and having a surprise kid with my wife. Now, four years later, I have what many would consider an ideal cishet ending for a man in my situation. I have a comfortable job with a retirement plan, a cute three year old son, a beautiful wife, two cars, and a small apartment with a view. I have time to pursue a hobby or two and still be a present father and husband. BUT, I've felt for all these years that this isn't my story book ending. My insides scream for a different direction. I don't need a different ending; endings suck. But I do need to switch paths. For me, this will likely look like transitioning in some way. I want to take on the titles of wife and mother. I want to be known as a woman, to feel like a woman. I know this isn't going to be a quick switch or one with an end point, but at least it will be a path I can walk knowing that it's what I need. Just being on that journey is enough for me.

[@SuperDuckyWho]

I've come to realize there are a lot of people who just want others to suffer. The suffering of others they deem as wrong justifies their own unhappiness as necessary and right.

[@Dutch3DMaster]

Next to this, especially when the anger comes from women, I seem to also see a lot of resentment that causes them to hold their anger and grief over the absolutely ridiculous beauty standards that they themselves might not adhere to in a way they should or never adhered to against transwomen. Not necessarily for them existing, but sometimes for merely being capable of "adopting" (for lack of a better word) those stereotypical ideas better than they have (even if this is only their perception). Instead of fiercely advocating for the removal of the patriarchy that upholds those beauty standards, they take out the fact that they suffered sexism because of not adhering to them on transpeople. When it comes to politicians (The Netherlands recently elected a fascist party along with 2 other very problematic, pretty far right ones) outing transphobic rhetoric, it's adults showing how normal it should be to have your political motivation exist and center around the basis of bullying children. The fact that media doesn't call out that worrying, sickening behavior says a lot about either not realizing what these people are doing (and that is next to the fact it is obviously not going to stop with transpeople, I suspect to see an attack on abortion within the upcoming year), not caring, or lacking the knowledge about the lives of these transchildren. It is worrying when media is not calling out the fact that politicians are loving the idea of making the lives of transchildren more unsafe, that they wish harm upon them in the hopes that these children will stop appearing in future statistics: not because they stopped being trans, but because they committed suicide prior to reaching adult age...

[@modulated_]

absolutely love this video. the way you let your natural train of thought run from topic to topic unedited in every video - but then tie it back into the overarching topic is just wonderful. the way you let ideas interconnect to show the ebb and flow of a through-line is actually so addictive and, as a viewer, feels very organic. i have a hard time sitting down for essays sometimes, and the videos of yours i've watched so far always hook me in after 3 minutes and i watch the whole thing. i really appreciate hearing your perspective + experience in this video, but wanted to take a second to just commend the way you make these videos, as i've been feeling it over the last few i saw. these rule - im staying subbed for a long time. have a great day!

[@lily_lxndr]

this is incredibly sweet. i'm gonna save it to reread on a rainy day. thank you!

[@beefcube2414]

I remember right after I got top surgery, I was sitting in my apartment with my boyfriend and I couldn't stop thinking about the difference between pre and post op, specifically in how close my heart was now to the outside world. I know that's a strange way to look at it, but because of the reduction of tissue around my heart I felt as though I could literally see it through the skin. I started panicking, wondering if I made a mistake and if my heart was too exposed (whatever that means). Looking back, I was clearly spiraling and anxious, and I'm extremely happy with the choice I made. It's just strange to think about.

[@Weird0W]

Not going to lie, I was a little afraid to start my day with this video because of the title. Pretty much for all the reasons you talk about around "transition regret." But this actually felt very hopeful and beautiful. And I am glad you talked about chronic pain, from transitioning and from existing in a body in general. Thank you!

[@henryefry]

I heard someone say "Congrats on moving to your next chapter in life" several years ago and it's stuck with me. It's how I've thought about my life ever since, there isn't an end to your life story until you die. However, there are chapters to your story. I just graduated college in May and started transitioning last month, so I am in a bit of a chaotic chapter right now. Once I "finish transitioning" I expect to start a new chapter of actually living my life as myself. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't live without a narrative direction to my life. What would I do, just go through the motions everyday without making any progress towards anything? I have things I know I want to do in this short time I have on this planet, and I am actively working towards those ends. I might find out that "space is fake" but I've already had that happen once with me realizing my gender is not what I thought it was, and having to reorient myself. So if/when it happens again, I'll be able to handle it and figure out a new path forward. To quote Full Metal Alchemist "Stand up and walk. Keep moving forward. You've got two good legs. So get up and use them. You're strong enough to make your own path." Don't just sit down and let the world push you around, make your own path, your own meaning in chaos, your own future.

[@vlacroix]

Adding my voice to the chorus: I wholly appreciate that you so clearly acknowledge the current COVID situation. My friends look at me like I'm crazy when I mention that COVID is bad right now and that I want to avoid Long COVID.

[@bees4839]

This is how it's been leaving mornonism, which I was raised in. Just this sudden opening up of life that is hard to know what to do with? And in some ways, hardly anything changes at all. It really is whatever I want to do with my life, in the most boring and lovely way. I've been wanting to write and Illustrate a story with that feeling in mind but it's been hard to get anything down.

[@bromleykatly]

whatever it is put it down. even if you start with something that seems unrelated. you can always edit and build off and play with it. you don't need to aim for final draft from a blank page. I know an expansion like that can be both exciting and scary/overwhelming. best of luck with your next life chapter!

[@eric_lambert]

Mormonism is a hard thing to leave when you've been raised in that culture. Even though I haven't decided to leave myself, I've had to deal with so many engrained toxic beliefs that have made it damn near impossible to operate in the broader world. I wish you the best in the process and finding a way to express yourself. You've got this :)

[@anyalazor7978]

Thank you sm for talking about the fact that the pandemic isn't over. As a chronically ill disabled person, I'm glad there are still people who continue to mask and talk about it.

[@SuperWaterdrinker]

I really want to watch this video but 9 minutes in I see that I still need like 2 year of therapy to handle these ideas. Thank you for making this video. I hope I manage to watch it soon ❤

[@SuperPukebucket]

I started working EMS in 2021. I remember the nightmares of Covid wards in nursing homes, visible cockroaches on the floor, uneaten food dropped in rooms by nurses/staff who would run as soon as they could. There wasn't enough PPE to go around, I never even had surgical masks until 2022, and when I started my medic program I finally got two KN-95 masks and was told to make them last the whole course. Ive now gotten Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. Delta when a hospital just forgot to tell me the covid status of a patient. Omicron from dropping a king tube and bagging a patient in cardiac arrest. I can't smell, my lungs hurt, my sinuses are full of polyps, and I've managed to develop hypertension. I have now admitted to myself that I'm trans, finally overcame all that cognitive dissonance early this year(2023). I think realizing how disposable I was to society and just how disposable the most vulnerable people are, finally let me overcome my deep terror of societies judgement enough to recognize myself. Two months into hormones and I have no idea how Im going to turn out, I can no longer care. "Heros Work Here™"

[@livvy94]

Sending you energy

[@cherenkov_blue]

This video has come at exactly the right time in my life to utterly devastate me. To make a very long story short, I've been feeling for the last couple months like I was fed a purpose by the people around me and society at large that I'm fundamentally incompatible with. Basically, I'm trans, I hate my career path, and my body and brain are falling apart in a million different ways. The narrative itself sure does feel like the greatest evil right now.

[@Dasketti]

Oh my goodness. And you’ve helped put to words a feeling I’m also currently grappling with and trying to understand, and you helped me understand myself a bit better. So thank you

[@biggiemac42]

As another trans person named biggie, hi I hope things feel better in this raw and wild universe for you soon ❤

[@SpecialBlanket]

hey, i'm disabled. my body falling apart was terrifying and the medical system treated me like shit. but it's 5 years later and i'm in my dream job and the best relationship of my life. push thru yr horrifying journey and you will get insane self-knowledge, boundaries, and power. remember this.

[@fluffyphoenix8082]

@@SpecialBlanket I hope this is true. I so badly do. I'm disabled as well, struggling currently with the medical system, can't find work because employers think I'm too high maintenance. I have a partner I'm really in love with, I wanna move in with them, but I need SOME kind of income first. A job - something that's so normal to so many people - feels like an absolutely insurmountable obstacle to me. I'm terrified. Everything feels so needlessly complicated and I feel so, so lonely being far away from my partner. Hearing from another disabled person gives me some small amount of hope.

[@multigrandmarquis]

It felt like you cast some kind of hex or curse on me at 20:00 . The visceral, childish horror I felt almost dropped me into a panic attack. Amazing way to get me to pay more attention to the video. 10/10

[@enirya]

It's so good to see someone on KZbin acknowledge the ongoing pandemic. I used to post about the realities of covid on social media a lot, trying to make people see what was going on. Now I do it less and less because it doesn't feel like I'm changing any minds anyway and all it does is get me screamed at.

[@VermisTerrae]

Dude, I miss quarantine SO BAD, even though it was one of my lowest times and I never really fully recovered from it mentally. Everything was quiet. I didn't feel ashamed for already spending so much time at home. For a while, everyone could relate to everyone all at the same time. I guess it was just the world taking shape in such a tragic way that my usual neurodivergent behaviors were the norm.

[@FayeSomething]

It’s really great to hear somebody else talk about What Happens Next. It’s one of my favorite comics and it’s good to see others sharing it

[@rexzs794]

It’s funny, listening to your feelings on the pandemic is what for a lot of disabled people, who live with these health worries, every day is like. The pandemic felt like any other time for me.

[@jessisamess4062]

this reminds me a lot of the whole coming out myth that exists around sexuality as well as transition. as an ace person, even though i first came out years ago, people still assume i'm straight all the time. i thought when i came out that it was some all-important moment, but i've realized since that it's more like the beginning of the rest of your life of coming out, which is exciting in its own way

[@Homodemon]

Is really funny to see teens be very giddy about wanting to listen about others "Coming out story" as this huge exciting thing, and I used to be like that when I was a kid too, thinking that "coming out" was this big moment in your life you had to be ready to do and prepare But realistically coming out is not a once in your lifetime sort of deal as people make it sound

[@3tangents]

"Nostalgia for early COVID" I'm disabled and have an immune disorder. I still can't go to hydrotherapy nearly 4 years later, the only treatment that helps me. I've never met my niece, who's closer to starting school than having been born. In the first year or so, people treated the virus like it existed instead of talking around it some awkward taboo, and at least pretended to care about the lives of "vulnerable people". I've lost my job over and over again the last couple of years, each time they decide to stop allowing remote work. I keep watching my friends and colleagues playing roulette with a virus that ruins their immune systems, flirting with and getting ever closer to having to live a life just like mine, and watching them seem to not particularly care. Watching the entire world enthusiastically embrace passive suicidality instead of choosing to care for themselves and each other because that was too hard and they just don't want to. Yeah, you bet I'm nostalgic for early COVID.

[@shoveitshovel9338]

she mentioned that she’s guilty about it? its not immoral to feel an emotion

[@3tangents]

@@shoveitshovel9338 it sounds like you’re suggesting that I’m chastising her for something? I’m unsure why, since that’s not what I’m doing. I have noticed though that people who know they’ve responded poorly to the ongoing pandemic do have a tendency to project their own guilt onto me and other disabled people, just out here living our lives, benignly agreeing with KZbin videos. It’s pretty unfair imo but that’s living in a eugenicist society isn’t it.

[@wakingcharade]

I've watched my cousins kids grow up on zoom the same way. I've offered plenty of compromises to family. They don't want to meet me part of the way. Shouldn't be that much of a surprise. They've refused to accept that I'm actually disabled my whole life. Got told it was an attitude problem again today on one of those zooms. Nicely, of course. Out of concern, of course. From a school teacher with no masks or air purifiers in the classroom. I'll just keep nodding along, I guess. What else is there to do.

[@3tangents]

@@wakingcharade Same. "I think... I think I'm done" has very much been the theme for me this year around it. I'm done trying to push against this colossal tide of unreality everyone else is infinitely invested in. I can't.

[@itstymeforcats5059]

I've tried to start masking in public spaces again (as a student) and sanitizing when possible, but I'm wondering if it's disrespectful/too passive to go to events with many people for fun?

[@flora4026]

this week i posted a little “transition timeline” on facebook for trans awareness week, just because i was feeling particularly good about myself. and i got a comment on it from someone i barely know that said, “congrats on getting through that, flora.” and now i’m really thinking about how stuff like that does sort of play into the narrative that transition has an end point, or that transition is The End. the final struggle i had to face before becoming my fully realized true self, which obviously is where i am now. i got “through” the crucible of transition and came out the other side, not dead, and so i get a round of applause. it’s bizarre

[@evankinsella9756]

Those last few minutes hit so hard.I'm 17, and I feel like kinda a mess recently.The notion that you don't need a purpose, kinda makes me feel better.Thanks :), your videos are genuinly always so insightful and probs amongst the best on this platform

[@chatterbotanics]

things will get better ❤

[@keeganwymer3145]

i got top surgery in early march 2020, i had been dreaming about it for years and years. i could finally feel comfortable in my body, but my mental health ended up getting worse anyway. i started having delusions and hallucinations and everything i saw was a sign that i wasnt supposed to be alive. in the lens of transition, there was some guilt that i took a surgery spot and resources for someone who might actually be human and want to survive. but i did survive and im feeling better than have in like, a decade. i still struggle with not feeling like an actual human but im feeling optimistic.

[@JosephKano]

Wherever you go there you are. Be well, being you. Hugs and Wuv.

[@lotta_kannfastalles]

This got me in the right spot, especially as I was dead to the outside world until two weeks ago when I submitted my thesis, masked up, booked my train home and started looking into boosters.. and when making sure I’m safe to travel to my immunocompromised family, promptly got COVID probably from someone near to me without any symptoms. With my thesis done, I‘m now in a spot where I feel like I „should really do something about“ my transition and look into surgeries much more seriously, but the weird (ongoing and personal) corona limbo and the looming abrupt end to two decades of schooling makes me so paralyzed in finding what are the right decisions and narratives for me. Also thanks for the recommendations since I‘m doing nothing but slowly going crazy in my little dorm room without face to face contact with anyone.

[@HansLemurson]

Yeah, it's weird how "endings" don't end things. Life just keeps going on, even if we've lost the context to understand it in the old way. You're just supposed to move on and figure it out? Trying to move on from the pandemic hasn't made it go away. But finishing your thesis (congrats, btw) really does mark a real change. But...life will still go on? You still eat and sleep, text with friends, and it's not the last project you'll ever work on. This random internet stranger can only really offer you sympathy and understanding, and maybe some encouragement that you'll always be able to move forwards in any path you choose. Choosing the "right path" isn't required, but all paths lead somewhere new and interesting.

[@free_siobhan]

absolutely your best, most poignant work so far. and that’s saying a lot, as a young trans girl who has been massively affected by your essays. they’ve helped me to understand myself in a way that makes me feel not only comfortable and assured in my identity, but fully ready to brave the beautiful mess that will be gender transition and its aftermath. from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[@guiltyguildleader]

I never got this mindset. Why would things be over after your transition is "complete"? Thats when you can finally live, when decades of pain and years effort finally pay off! Right now wherever I go, unless its a carefully crafted safespace, I am the freak. Getting stares or nasty comments, having to justify and explain my existence, fighting insurance and government for rights. But this isnt my life. Sure, it absorbs a lot of my time, because its a lot and important, but I am so much more than my transition. Its just a means to an end, to live a fulfilled life in less pain.

[@rays7805]

Thank you. Thank you for your sensitive take on "What Happens Next". You're absolutely right. One of my very favorite people is Heather d'Aoust, who killed her adoptive mother at the age of 14. The story of the horrific, traumatic childhood she lived through, that so badly destabilized her mind at that age, is only starting to come out. Her life has a lot of parallel's with Milo's. More than I can reveal here. She, too, had her story told in a TV documentary, which was highly biased and got a great amount of the story wrong. Frankly, they slandered her. She has been in prison, at this point, for the majority of her life. We, who love her, hope the state will see fit to release her next year. And all the questions of what will happen next are very real for her. The public wants the story of her life to be over. They think that since she broke the rules, her life should be at an end. They think that about a lot of people, don't they? They don't want to give her another chance. But I don't think she really stood much of a chance in the first place. Really, that's true of so many people in prisons that I have corresponded with. The world ate them alive, and no one would help. She's still on the lookout for pen pals, if you have any interest. Her last name has changed to Cochran. She can be found at the California Institution for Women. Thank you for treating the subject with so much compassion. We need more people who care about the humanity of the incarcerated. They're people; they've always been people; their humanity does not go away just because society wants it to.

[@SlugcatDahlia]

It's really important to know that a lot of these regrets just get incredibly better with time and even goes away entirely. This is a result of not having a conscientious ego yet. Most people are stuck in phase 5 self-aware, or all our favorite bigots, they're stuck in phase 4 conformity because obviously they are. I was closeted until I was able to kill off that toxic ego I had that came about all those years ago in my childhood because of being persecuted for being trans which induced an ego death during the harassment which is traumatic enough when you're an adult, but a 2nd grader... I had a psychotic break because I was intensely paranoid and couldn't even remember my own name. Catatonic, I was brought to the hospital where the new ego born of ptsd starts to develop with 1 purpose only, never experience that trauma ever again. And it repressed and denied. And for the next 2 decades, that toxic ego was abusing me and forcing me to pass as the gender I knew I never was. An ego death is the death of the sense of self and your defense mechanisms. In a horror movie it's where the torturer says something like "I'm trying to break him" he's trying to induce an ego death. The ego is finite, if enough verbal/physical abuse, it WILL die. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to transition slowly and even that is painful and meloncholic, this is when people say they are having an "identity crisis." It took another ego death to finally be able to let go of those insanely strong defense mechanisms and accept myself for who I really am and love myself and have actual self-esteem. It's because I'm conscientious about me now. I've let go of all that ptsd and I have a healthy relationship with it now. I forgive everyone who induced it, they were kids, they didn't know, did they even have choice in it, they're part of a sick system that has been on life support for too long and needs to die. I know I can be happy on my own without my group of friends. Compare that to conformists who would likely off themselves if they lost the comfort of their conformity. They really are miserable. This is why they always seem so hateful of us being so happy and them being so miserable because THEY ARE. Getting to the 6th stage is mostly about age, all of this Loevinger's 9 stages of ego development is about age for the most part. The regrets we have will always be there but we can accept them and know that we couldn't have changed anything. There is no why. That only leads to negativity because there never is a why, only a how. I know I am happy with myself as a woman right now BEFORE even getting on HRT. It's VERY unhealthy to set an unrealistic goal of being a victoria's secret modal, I don't even find that attractive anymore. Gimme those wider shoulders and cute long feet and slender hips any day of the week! That's my ideal woman right there! Seriously. It is what I find most attractive now. And that's how I KNOW there are MANY women out there who find me most attractive too. Attraction is subjective and actually grows in real time the more you love someone. If we don't love ourselves before our transition, that is okay but we are setting ourselves up for failure. This is a MASSIVE process where many things can go wrong. If you don't have a conscientious ego going into this, you may easily get held up on the little things and it will affect you. And if you get affected by the little things how do you think you'll react when something big happens like bottom surgery complications?

[@oleanderrots]

@@SlugcatDahlia beautiful comment ❤️ thx for writing it, im saving it :))

[@Tuvabaluba]

Loved this, as always. I reached an end-point in my disability journey last year, when I finally got my disability recognised by the state. This was a really big deal, but when I got it it felt... kinda anticlimactic. Here was this thing I had been working towards for years, this end goal which would save my life and my future, and when I got it all I could think was "... so what happens now?" It's been a year, and I haven't figured that one out yet. And I'm starting to think that that's OK

[@HansLemurson]

Imagine an adventure movie where the hero goes on an epic quest, fights countless monsters, breaks into the fortress of doom, and then is greeted by an old man at a desk who stamps a piece of paper, gives it to the hero and then just says "next!". Then the hero just like...walks home?

[@Tuvabaluba]

@@HansLemurson 😂 jup exactly

[@quinnsjogerman188]

I think for me a silly and true feeling way to think of it as less of a "I am the main character and I am living out THIS narrative" and more like thinking of yourself as a player in a giant confusing ttrpg and everyone else is playing with you. You can't control how everything will turn out, things will happen that surprise you, but you can still tell the story of your character. The trick is you have to remember that everyone else is telling the story with you and you can't cheat the dice. But there can still be narrative and stories, you are still telling the story of you, you just can't create a perfect story because you aren't the only one telling it. How lonely would it be if you were, after all?

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

you put it so perfectly!! we all do have a story, it's just not The Story™ because it's intertwined with all the other ones. i cried out of happiness over how interconnected all of our lives are the other day, it's such a beautiful thing - the book that brought me to that realization was Tess of the Road, awesome book by the way!

[@quinnsjogerman188]

Yeah, I think the video is right of course, there isn't some narrative written in the stars that we can follow. Things don't end for us until we die, and even then they keep going for everyone else. This is kinda why I like the TTRPG analogy, because the stories you get from that emerge from the choices you make, the choices your other players make, and also the facts and chance of the dice and world you are playing in. You decide what your character attempts, and that does influence the story, but it doesn't decide the story. The story is just what happens when all those things meet each other, it emerges. In this sense the world is scarier for not being something you can control, but also I think a little more magical for being something collaborative and unknowable. I think this video is just about the idea that like, life just keeps going until you die. The stories we tell, we can tell them, but you are still playing the game until its over. You don't reach the end, until the end. We place a lot of importance of endings, but we benefit from not letting that be how we judge and value the real world. It is kinda like a relationship. There is no happily ever after, but there is happiness to be had. Relationships do happen, they matter to us, but they are ongoing. They don't end until they end. Transition is similar, it is a relationship you have with your self. There is no happily ever after, because the story you are telling is life long. Most peoples endings look pretty similar and are sort of the least interesting part of their story, we are served well by putting less stock in them. That is at least partly my take away from this video.

[@luna010]

Already watched on nebula and rewatchingthe premier. I just want to say, as a young trans person, your videos have helped me a lot. I'm 16, and realized I'm trans and started hrt since the start of the pandemic. I cried a few times watching your trans youth series. Having trans people who do things that inspire me outside of the process of transition has been very significant.

[@mintymints7]

thank you Lily, you've expressed a feeling about the loss of humanity as society has given up on the pandemic that my family and i have been feeling very strongly for a while also a LOT to think about what an ending actually is. i've watched a lot of video essays and i'm not sure i recall one with this topic will watch Barber later

[@redrooster3420]

I appreciated this video and it left me a lot to think on, thank you. Also, it is devastating that I am so shocked to see a youtuber finally mention the ongoing pandemic and how so many of us have been left behind, struggling to protect our communities as the world abandons mitigations like masking while this virus does so much damage still... I feel so much pain that this is the first and only time I've seen someone even mention that on youtube... Please, if you can, don't stop talking about that. To have a platform where someone might learn what's going on from you is a big deal... I'm so isolated as a housebound/bedbound disabled person, and it would mean so much to me if more people spoke about this issue, even if it only made small impact. Any impact is better than none. I realize it's unfair to have to take on the responsibilities that public health officials should be doing but, they have abandoned us for capital and we must not abandon each other. Thank you and take care.

[@slimjimshady0]

I live in Kansas City. Looking back on the pure elation that happened as the Chief's won their first Superbowl since 1970, to the dread of lockdowns, all while I worked at a major grocery chain is bizarre. Its such a whiplash for me I really don't think I'll ever be able to fully process it. I went from cheering with customers around a tv, to tbeing yelled at because I had to tell them to wear a mask.

[@bipbapboop1140]

Where I live, you need to be 18 to legally transition. When I was a kid, it was all I could ever think about. Everything in my life revolved around "making it" long enough for me to do so. My hobbies, my interests, the way I lived my life were all subservient to just surviving in this state of stasis. I didn't feel like I could develop as a person until then. Those were 18 very, very long years. I turned 18 last year. And for a long time, despite now being able to do so, I couldn't bring myself to make an appointment. Some part of me shriveled up at the thought, my stomach felt like it shrank and sucked in my lungs and abdomen. I kept putting it off, and I didn't know why. It's only now that I realize that I was afraid of "the ending". Like I would die the moment I became "trans enough". That everything about me would shift into the natural state it was supposed to be in and whatever husk I'd been living as would just wither away. I realize how stupid that is. In an effort to save myself I've been denying my own existence for the past 18 years of my life. There is no magical man waiting for me at the end of the HRT tunnel. It's just going to be me, flawed as I am, for better or for worse.

[@DanielleStarry]

wherever you go, there you are. try to work on your inside for now if you can. external validation means nothing if you're not right with yourself. someone once told me we should treat ourselves with the same kindness we would a puppy.

[@cottonclouds]

I never thought I would make it out of high school. I was so suicidal at 14 that I just figured I would k*ll myself at some point before I graduated and that made me stop thinking about what my life would look like beyond graduation. Then I switched schools, my mental health got better and suddenly I'm 18 and graduating. Post-graduation, I spent a year spiraling and socially isolating because I did not know how to explain that I never thought I would get to this point. Now, I'm a year out from that. I've had to completely rebuild myself because to be honest, I did not and to some extent still do not know who I am beyond school and depression. I just expected that at some point things would just be over and I would not have to deal with reality like everyone else because I was so trapped in my own head. But life just keeps going. I am somehow still going. I still have very little vision for the future and I definitely still need to be treated for stuff but I'm still living. I try to take care of the people around me and myself, I try to stay afloat, I try to breathe. Life just goes on. Things are going to keep happening. I also try to comfort myself with the idea that age will give me perspective because even a year has given me that. IDK to whoever is reading this and needs to hear it: you'll live, life keeps going and you fucking live.

[@gingganggoolie]

Your experience sounds very similar to my own. It can be so hard to move past the point where you assumed your story would end. Thinking about just how much time you have ahead is kind of scary when you haven't planned for any of it

[@Homodemon]

This resounds within me I was supposed to kill myself at 21... well, I'm 28 pushing 29 now... Guess that didn't happen...

[@twynb]

25:00 I can really feel this part - being a trans lesbian who started transitioning at 17, I basically have no role models for what my life looks like in the long run. If I were a cishet guy who wanted a wife and kids (as was expected of me), there would've been plenty. Even just in my family, I've spent my life seeing how my dad and grandad live just like that, with their wife and raising/having raised children. I see what their everyday life looks like, how they interact with their family and surroundings and everything like that. I have so far seen one (1) post from a trans person who transitioned many years ago and grew old since. One. And his life (the little bit shown in the post, that is) seemed way different from what I want mine to look like. Hell, I don't personally know any old cis lesbian couples who've been together for long, even. So I have no idea what my life *could* look like, what an average life like mine would look like. I just find out myself, and it's kinda scary in a way.

[@mcjohn5420]

I think that making a decision, any decision, means letting every other possibility scatter to the winds from your open hands. We regret any loss, no matter how consequential or in-; the bigger the loss, the greater the regret. We can easily, however, what-if our lives away, and part of growing is acknowledging the loss and stepping forward out of grief into a world that is new with each sunrise. I really needed to hear this right now. Thank you.

[@aidenburgess217]

My grandma and grandpa just got out of the hospital with COVID. We thought they might not make it. Was a massive slap in the face to the family as we've all took massive measures to keep especially my grandmother safe, as she is non-functioning with dementia. All these years gone by, everyone's moved on, but yet still dangerous.

[@birdwatching_u_back]

This video hits so hard, my god. The past week or so has felt really pivotal for me, and this coming out just now has just felt so perfect. I haven’t transitioned yet and am still nebulously unsure that I will at all, and I’ve noticed that I’ve been framing it as a sort of decision that would trap me the rest of my life-a kind of climacteric, a purely formal ecstasy, preceding a long, long spiral towards death. The “decision” (as if there could ever be a single moment of pure rational clarity in this) became an ultimatum whose implications I knew I couldn’t understand. But at the same time there’s been this electric undercurrent to it…the feeling that there isn’t a neat linearity to transness or its relationship to anything in particular. An intuition about something free but unrelated to static truths. There are so many narratives around “transness” going on right now that I’ve forgotten that there is no such singular thing, no such platonic ideal. There’s the body, there’s ecosystems. I like the animator’s comment on ecosystems a lot; ecosystems are structures living themselves out, in most ways blind to themselves. The root “eco” comes from the Greek (I think) “oikos,” which means “home.” Ecology is the study of homes; ecosystems are the movements of homes. A home makes itself, occupies itself, changes itself, and in that, it is never equal to itself. It is infinitely alien to itself precisely because it IS itself, and lives inside and outside itself. I vaguely remember some line from House of Leaves that describes the home, the house, as “that which is unknowable.” In an ecosystem, there is no place you can stand and define the ecosystem, because you are living it, it is living you, and none of it has any room for any singular, isolated, conclusive story. Narrative can quickly turn a home into violence. Thank you so much for talking about this.

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

you put this so beautifully... i don't have anything even half as smart as what you said to say, but i just want to let you know this comment really touched me because this is the exact realization i've been coming to about myself and about life in general and you put it into words perfectly.

[@birdwatching_u_back]

@@darkacadpresenceinblood:)

[@cryptilli]

this video is really hard for me (but it is exceptional, as are your other videos, ofc.) its even more deeply personal in a way i dont know if you understand, if you ever read this. i recognize the steps and where you filmed most of this because just a few years ago, i was visiting (im assuming) montreal with the intention of building my new life there. i had built a narrative in my head that i would go off to this great school (mcgill) for the next four years and i would grab all my ambitions by the balls and take charge of my life which, up to that point, had been so violently out of my control that i thought i would finally be able to grab onto something. for the first few weeks, i felt in control. i felt as though i was going to do this. the places you are standing are the very places i saw my story beginning at, ending one chapter and opening another. i was so sure i was going to become something better, more beautiful. ...and then my disabilities kicked in. i was forced to go home to florida. i've been stuck inside my house perpetually since 2021, my sleep disorder keeping me from having energy to do much of anything. my other health issues have gotten worse and worse. i have spent the last two years feeling even more out of control than i have ever felt. and this video is a reminder, in so many nonsubtle ways, INCLUDING THE LOCATION, that everything i had wanted and planned for, that i had assumed would be some kind of pillar in my life, was pulled out from underneath me. the wallowing in my house doesnt even include the horrible inhuman my own mother became. i dont write all this to be like woe is i, im venting in the comments, but more so because i feel poignantly attacked almost by everything in this video and its framing and its subject matter in a way that i can relate to, and again, you somehow filmed this in a place i was with my parents waiting for everything to begin for me, for the worst of my life to end. only for it to get worse later. its not exactly a rare location, but, like.... the coincedence is almost painful. cheers. to the rest of our lives

[@ragdollrose2687]

My partner is at the beginning of her transition. We met less than a year after her coming out. I feel privileged to be there with her through the process, to be able to support her, especially since she doesn't have many queer people around her who can understand. But I'm also looking forward to the point where she'll be able to settle into who she is and feel like her transition is pretty much done. It's a beautiful process of discovery, but I see how difficult it is for her too, the amount of emotions she has to manage on a daily basis just towards the changes she's making (and that's not counting the transphobia she has to endure every day). It's just at the front of her mind at all times, and I wonder who she'll become when her dysphoria has lessened and the anxiety doesn't bother her as much 😌

[@sunny__41]

* another great video on lily's ever-growing catalogue!! this one might be on my top 3 tbh. the editing is PHENOMENAL and the topics are just super interesting (as always)!! can't wait for what's next!!

[@rileylovebucket6080]

This was really nice. Last week I was able to legally change my name and gender, and it was a bizarrely banal and bureaucratic experience, even though it was the last official step of my transition. It felt like it should have been somehow much more meaningful after years of struggling, and it felt surreal to be thinking about what I would have for dinner later. I guess I can only agree with the sentiments shared in the video and the comments-- endings are an illusion. The meaning we place on indivual moments or states of being are maybe helpful, but arbitrary. Good and bad and boring things will happen and eventually fade with time and memory. It's kind of a mind fuck but also quite liberating.

[@poppyasher]

This was an odd video to me. I couldn’t wrap my head around the conflict of being shocked that life continues happening and there are no solid endings in life. About halfway through this video I had the thought, “This feels like a 20-something realizing that life just keeps going.” Then I heard your age and your life goal and it clicked. I work in the health care industry. I was in school when the pandemic started, and the initial thought I had when it all started to go down was “Welp. This changes everything. This is going to define our time and be talked about for generations. We probably won’t be able to properly contextualize it for decades.” There was never a sense that COVID would “end”. Lockdowns would end, or pause, masking may decline, but from the beginning as everyone was looking for solid definitive answers, I kept seeing the frustration and borderline disgust towards scientists and health care professionals. Why is there no clean narrative? Why don’t you have answers? Why do you keep changing your mind? It’s because we’re learning and every day we learn something new. This will never completely go away, it will just change and we need to keep doing our best to learn and adapt. We can give educated predictions, but those too will change. I now work in research and am back in school for public health, with a focus on chronic diseases. My passion will never end because the problems I want to tackle will always be there. There will never be an end to sickness, suffering, and injustice. In between trying to learn how to work within and change a system, I do my laundry, walk my dog, pay my bills, and exist. Some people have callings that drive them forwards. If what’s driving you forward is achievable, then there really is an end, a “what now?” moment. You have to either find happiness in simply existing or pick goal that will never end, even something as simple as “Create more art.”

[@lily_lxndr]

oh yeah, while making this i joked that it was about “how turning 24 is the most fucked up thing that’s ever happened to anyone”

[@hedgeberg]

Yes, this. Life is all about finding your *personal* purpose. The best part is that you can choose your own calling if it doesn't feel like it comes to you naturally. Whatever we end up doing, life continues all around us.

[@lucastudios86]

The pandemic made me realize the power of the media. The moment news outlets stopped talking about it most people basically forgot its existence. The last time I’ve been in quarantine was less than 3 years ago, and yet it feels like a decade

[@Drawoon]

I almost feel like I have the opposite. My childhood was terrible. It was the promise of a better future that kept me going. So far things have been getting better, but I still don't feel like I'm living. All this time I've been waiting for my life, my story, to begin.

[@CharlotteThroughTheWeb]

Thank you so much for writing and producing this. It is yet again, a wonderful analysis, not just of the threads of a conversation, but of those missing from it altogether, despite being evident in the tapestry overall. This video especially has been an amazing connection to what I feel I am struggling to explain to others in my life right now. I am part of that generation of trans women who came out without real resources outside the community, but grew up in a world where those resources were quickly becoming available, but not to us. A system that in some ways many of my peers felt we were grandfathered out of. I came out almost 15 years ago. I lost my family, my community, experienced what would socially be referred to as an uncountable number of sexual assaults. But I persisted. In some ways that challenge was proof I was something real, because something that doesn't really exist can't be treated as such a threat. I was one of those people who came out by just showing up to school in a dress. I had always known who I was, and felt frustrated the world couldn't see it. And so I manifested it into the world myself. In some ways transition feels like a kind of magic, not the transformation of a witch, but the glamour of a fairy, your actions change, not who you are, but how the world around you sees you. I had always been there, and you cannot only partially uncage a desperate animal. To me, as was the way of my "generation" (or cohort if you prefer) transition was majoritively social. It was a journey, not to change your body, but to be yourself. People accessed what medical care they wanted or could, but regardless, the ultimate goal was to leave behind the facade of the past and learn to just be. It was far harder to learn to be yourself, when it felt like you had lived a life where no one had really ever seen or talked to YOU, than it was to learn to perform femininity or womanhood. In your video asking if there really are binary trans women, you talk about the intergenerational tension in the trans community. I think one of those tensions is that many trans women in my generation never thought of themselves as men or boys, we watched womanhood from behind a mask, learned it practiced it, whereas I know many younger women who take up this identity of "recovering men." I offer no judgement, I just feel it has changed the way they approach transition. One generation becomes or grows into a woman whereas the other lets her out of her cage. What this amounted to was a life where we'll over a decade ago, I was well into HRT and had so thoroughly embodied my own womanhood that my own brother once asked me if it hurt when my partners bumped my cervix during sex. He had simply forgotten I didn't have one. And I lived a comfortable adjusted life as an adult woman, despite the fact that I couldn't afford surgical care. And time continued to pass. My transition was over. I saved money for surgery, but saving money when you started out as a homeless teenager is nearly impossible. And then we had Healthcare coverage, but I had a resume too spotty and was too disabled from past injuries to maintain a job that had health insurance. And so time continued to pass. I stayed involved in the community, I continued to do activism. I watched conversations change from people struggling to access care to teenagers who felt rushed through medical care by cis parents hoping to legitimize them. (Teenagers I taught that transition was whatever it means to you and that it can go at any pace you find comfortable and meaningful.) People went from asking if I had had "the surgery" to feeling it was inappropriate to ask, to assuming I had and asking who my surgeon was, and to still assuming, but now assuming my experience must be so old as to be outdated. Spaces that once nurtured me, that I then lead, I began to require members with institutional knowledge of my transness to access, as youger members assumed me a well intentioned cis invader. It has been a wild ride. But two years ago, the stars started to align. I got married. My wife got a new job at a tech company with insurance so good that it literally pays for our flights and hotel stay, and I got bumped from a 4 year waitlist to a 5 month cancelation. After 14 years, I'll be having surgery. And like I honestly don't know what to feel. I am in awe, I feel lucky, and I do feel some joy, but in the way a friend knows seeing Gandalf the Grey, knowing he is about to ask them to do something that is both trying and painful, as well as the best opportunity for a happy future or at least one with less hardship. It feels like a Harbinger and I think that is because of two things. The first is that what it actually means, sociologically, has changed. It isn't like just like a private and personal thing some trans women do to feel more comfortable in their skin, to not wince when they shift in a chair, to improve their safety, and/or to have more meaningful sex. It is that, yes, but it is also a symbol. It is social validity. It is, as many would consider, the particular plank that makes the ship of theseus no longer the ship of theseus. It is the completion of transition, the end of a journey. Which obviously conflicts with my lived experience and narrative. If you go to travel, and then you stop and stay in one house for thirteen years, and the you hit the road again, is that the same journey? In the narrative I don't personally subscribe to of transition as transformation, is it the same transformation? A butterfly that just sat in the chrysalis without leaving? But then what of my life in between? Was I not yet me living as Schrödinger's Woman for over a decade? Is this truly "completing my transition" as friends would say, or is it something else? What it has manifested is a world in which I have told almost no one. A continued difference of experience. Where others I see get community support and meal trains and dog walks, I get my wife. And that is okay. Frankly I think it feels a little odd, having not done anything that looks remotely like transition in over a decade, to like tell people about the current status of my genitals? Especially in a world where so many people assumed the opposite about my, current state. I have struggled to process though, what this means emotionally. If to me a chapter of my life is long over, to others it is just ending, and yet a future of adjustment continues ahead of me, what narrative does my experience even follow. How can there be more story after the ending. And of course even after that there is so much more. There is healing, any potential complications, developing new comforts with my body, medical care with my body, heck, there's even having one's sexual awakening at 30. These are all parts of my journey as a woman. But when does it stop being transition and start being just a woman struggling with discomforts with her body, the ways the world mistreats her because of her body, the education she gives and receives from other women, and the joys she finds in her body, just like every other woman? What is the end? Does the end matter? I feeled freed by your analysis that there really are no endings. Instead there are places where others like to put in a bookmark and put the book down. The human version of "If this is other most interesting part of the story, then why aren't you writing that part instead?" I was Bilbo, and I had my adventure and it was taxing, and then I went home, and I lived in a state where I was in some ways haunted by a vestigial part of it, which I the passed along for one more journey. That journey has brought up old memories, pains, joys, and fears, but ultimately, the truer version of it is now being completed by indirect descendents, and I will once more retire to a comfortable life, yet again different in a new land with new challenges. It both is the same story and it isn't. It's an epilogue and that's okay. Thank you so much for giving me the language to say this, to get it out of my head. I cannot tell you how many months I have been struggling to make meaning of a superposition. But above all, thank you for showing me that I am not alone, that like so many parts of life, I'm just living a part of the story that never gets told.

[@beebalmbadil]

it's a beautiful thing when the exact thing you need just pops up in your KZbin feed like this did. thank you

[@evrypixelcounts]

When I first decided I wanted to transition I always thought of it as this metamorphosis, that it would happen in a vacuum, and I would continue with my life afterwards. It wasn't until recently when I actually started the process that the reality of transition hit me. I can't even fathom what my life will be like in a few months let alone after transition (if it ever truly ends.) I've put my life on hold waiting for transition in the hopes that I'd magically start living the life I dreamed of once I take that first pill, but life just doesn't work that way.

[@sensiblegh0st86]

The close-to final line of "What happens next, if I'm lucky, is nearly everything" is really impactful to me. Very good video as a whole, also I read What Happens Next in one sitting before watching this and it gutted me, thank you for the recommendation.

[@toyosibee.mp3]

LOVED THIS, I inhaled What Happens Next and plan to check out Barber Westchester next!! The end of this was so hopeful to me as a creative stuck feeling like I’m still acting out the motions for a story that ended pretty squarely in 2020 when I graduated college. Like…okay, that section is done. I don’t know what comes next, but god, now that just sounds so riveting!

[@CasaDuroTinyHome]

I'm revisiting this video a while after I first watched it. It's hitting me in so many new ways after the death of a family member this week, and how people attempt to assign a narrative to make sense of a seemingly random and sudden end to a life. Even with our view points being quite different, our experiences so far from one another, I found every bit of wisdom you and your guests shared like shining a flashlight in a dark room. This is the potential of content creation on youtube, the beauty of what it should aspire to be. Diving into the nuance and leaning into the uncomfortable nature of life. This was by far my favourite video I watched in 2023. Thank you for all the work you put into this and for the vulnerability you shared.

[@tristanband4003]

Plenty of decisions carry a risk of regret. But we shouldn't prevent people of any age from making them.

[@LunarOverdrive]

*Any* age?

[@tristanband4003]

@@LunarOverdrive yes, any age in principle.

[@LunarOverdrive]

@@tristanband4003 What does "in principle" mean in this context?

[@tristanband4003]

@@LunarOverdrive It means it obviously will vary from person to person. But make your premises explicit.

[@sopadumacacoumadelicia5]

​@@LunarOverdrive Nice try, con.

[@musicplaylists6718]

Thank you for talking about What Happens Next, I heard the basic description 3 minutes in and immediately stopped to go read it because it sounded right up my alley. And it was!

[@bigmichael2765]

God damn, always knocking it out with each release in their own way. You are one of the few creators I feel like I actually walk from with a takeaway. Massive kudos and thanks for your output :)

[@RedMeansRecording]

Wanted to let you know the theme you bring up here of your narrative being your prison REALLY resonated with me. Thank you for this video.