Okay, long story not so short, it’s been a crappy year…I say crappy because I’m desperately trying to sound collected and sober. However, as I’m sitting in a bar that was to be be called “Malarky” but the owner was drunk when he submitted the paperwork that it looked like two UU. Hence, it’s now called the UU, but go with me on this for a few minutes, if you will. Do I want to be a bar on New Year’s Eve? Perhaps, as it is a better choice than sitting in my living room chair and stare at the TV as movie stars laugh and love into the camera making me want to forgo anything having to with them. Looking at you, Flo Rida.

My ex-boyfriend said I needed to reinvent myself for the new year. At the time he said that I felt like cold clocking him with whatever I had with me. We did not break up due that. No, that ship had sailed earlier in the year, but we kept in touch. He found an older woman on Facebook and one day told me it was over. He then had the gall to invite me to dinner, only to have to sit at a table, opposite of “Miss-oh-so-right”. I wanted to use the seafood cracker on the table on something else other than shells.

Cooler heads prevailed…for a few minutes anyway, even during the obvious shaming he placed me under. His date knew too much about my history and his I do not dictate my life story to everyone I knew who the leak was.
“Was your surgery painful?”, “You look okay as a woman,” “Do you also go by_____ ?”
The audacity of blabbing my deadname to me caused that nerve she had been getting on to finally spark and burn through whatever calmness I had toward her, him, and the situation we were in. I simply stood up, told them both off, and stormed out of a restaurant.

My sister tried to hook me up with a friend of hers and we spent most of the time on said date just making small talk when he wasn’t staring at his phone. It was one of those types that flip open to a huge screen, and he made sure I knew as he had to take it out of pocket, push a button or two, unfold it, tap on the screen and make an expression that was a cross between a sigh and an orgasm.

I asked him if I was boring him, he stated no, it was just that he had some important e-mails he had to look at. I had to ask what kind of e-mails make one look like you want to be alone your phone? He didn’t appreciate my comment, but he turned bright red as his phone fell onto the table, screen side up, which an image of my sister along with some interesting back and forth.

So, now you can guess that Christmas was spent at my apartment with my cat. I was okay. Mr. Prickles didn’t have a cell phone, he never went to find a new owner. He sat in my lap as I watched “A Christmas Story” for the fourth time and we shared an order of General Tso’s chicken. My fortune cookie said: “stay in touch with the people who matter”. Mr. Prickles promptly ate the fortune.
But who were the people who mattered? My parents died tears ago, my brother lived on the coast of Washington and would not call me if was on fire. My sister was on my short list of “people I should lock in a car trunk and then assist the police in trying to find them.”
As I sit at this bar and stare at my drink, I realize there was only one person who matters. That person was there when I needed a shoulder to cry on, I mean without her, I would have done a lot of crazy things, but she kept me from going postal, sometimes. That someone, is me.
I matter, screw what the world thinks.

I’m a redhead. I’ve always been one. My hair was never long in the past, but I decided to let it grow out and go through a regiment of medications, lifestyle choices, and purging any anguish I had prior to my transition. My siblings did the best they could to fill out that LGTBQ+ bingo card, much to my chagrin. My parents didn’t know what to call me…I mean, they seldom ever called me by original name, so everyone—including myself—used a nickname; I didn’t think there would be an issue in calling me by the name Rebecca. Unfortunately, it was. I mean I have the options of “Becky”, “Beckah” and “Beck’, if they could not remember eight letters, but they did.
High school graduation had me wearing one of the male robe colors, at our school, maroon; the girls wore white. A student, fully decked up like she’s going to a Royal wedding and having to walk down the aisle with another girl. My deadname was listed in the program and the insult to injury was that no matter how many times I asked if the principal would call my name out as Rebecca Anne Brown, he still called out, in a loud voice those dreadful first and middle names.

Shudder.

After graduation, I removed said robe, and allowed the dress I had on to flow all around me. There were gasps and I think someone’s grandma fainted. I mean, she really fainted, as in fell back and nearly slammed her head on the person sitting behind her. Her granddaughter was the girl I walked with, ol’ granny assumed “the worst”.

As if…her daughter was nice, we even exchanged make-up tips, but she had a boyfriend who was in college. One wonders if grandma ever found out about that. One also wonders if she would have done a double back lift and a somersault as a finishing move.
I’m not going to say I look like Amy Adams (I tried at one time) or Emma Stone (ohh, I wish!) but I felt there was something to my face and locks that could attract someone who loved and cherished me. I settled for Mr. Prickles but he knew I needed someone else, and we spent a lot of time looking at faces on the single apps. I hoped he would set a paw down on the mouse and then look at me and meow that “we found him”, but his meows were usually because he was hungry.

I kept up said exercises and even went as far as getting a bicycle to ride to work, weather permitting. I’d leave my apartment with my face perfectly molded and with hair that would scream “this girl just walked out of a salon!” I would arrive at work with everything still in place but there wasn’t anyone waiting with a cut rose and s cup of Starbuck’s. I mean it happened in the movies. The movies also show a girl sitting by herself in a bar was either going to be accosted by college morons or some country degenerate who would slam themselves in the chair in front of me. I stopped watching those kinds of movies. Lately, I’ve only been watching murder documentaries on Netflix. I’m hoping to see the one about Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I’m not killing people. That counts as thinking about life, doesn’t it?

It’s about ten minutes before midnight and I have had only drink this evening. I used to drink so much I was sure my liver was pickled. There were days I thought I’d be served with a letter from a lawyer stating they were representing my liver in an attempted murder case. The drink didn’t matter, as long as it had taste. I once had several glasses of something that was a mix of triple sec, vodka and lemonade. I could only taste the lemonade, so the drinks kept pouring until I found myself in a corner in the basement with an N64 controller in one hand and vomit on the other.
That was bad, but the good thing was that no one noticed I had bene gone as they were all drunk as well. It was a party for my—now ex—brother-in-law’s return from joining the army. He got paid a nice fat enlistment bonus to join the service and was appalled he would have to serve in the Middle East in the infantry. He was discharged in a few weeks. I have no idea if he ever had to pay back all of the money, all I knew was that I had all of this booze to soak up and my eighteen-year-old self was going to attempt to drink as many tequila shots as possible.

There were blue and red flashing lights leaking in through the ground floor window and I was informed that police were not happy with the adventurous party going on outside. The neighbors complained about yelling, a few people walking around topless, someone peeing in a neighbor’s flower garden and something about an exploding watermelon.
Perhaps it was for the best I was just drunk Mario Kart driving.

Ah, but as they say: “Wait, there’s more!”

If you think I peeked at eighteen, then the last four years will make your head explode. I sunk into the ebb and flow of functioning alcoholic depression. And when I met my ex, the tab got longer. I had to drink to forget, drink to feel excited, drink to—please, fill in the blank— as every emotion and decision required the opinions of Jack, Jim and Jose. They were terrible friends, but my ex got along with them swimmingly, so we were a party of five for a while.

There was this one night, a Wednesday I think, as I got up from bed, I looked at him sprawled out on my comforter and then looked at myself in the mirror. I saw the bulge in my stomach, the sunken eyes, and the feeling of wanting to throw up—something I had not done since the party. I think I puked out a few years or life and the feeling that I ‘needed’ to drink. Did I want my apartment to look like the back room of a liquor store? Did I want to open “Becky’s Booze Bazaar”?
From that night on, I had maybe one glass of something subtle. My ex was unhappy that I had suddenly become a “buzzkill”…but at least I could find my way home and could place my key in the lock without scratching the hell out of the door.
Cheers to that, eh?

I work in IT. Yes, a horrible job to be in when you’re trying to stay on the wagon. I’m on what you could call, the low spectrum of computer knowledge, but I could translate the Star Trek technobabble of the programmers and engineers to the users all over the country. The typical workday would be as follows: try to get to work without taking a fifth of Irish whiskey in my café macchiato. Then, getting into the building and into my area without having to say good morning or threaten to answer the question when someone asks, “How are you doing today?” Next, placing everything on my next into the proper place. I would unlock a desk drawer, take out a “Sailor Moon” figurine and place her on right side of my monitor, about 42 degrees east of my keyboard. My coffee cup—with just coffee—would go on the far right of desk and my laptop would sit front and center.
The day would be hell if any one of things were executed out of order or if someone moved one one of them because they had to use my desk as a chair. It’s happened, and I never understood why they would disrespect my personal space. Why sure, stick rear on my desk so I can get a whiff of the essence of ‘edu de skid mark’.
The constant emails and phone calls were a non-issue, it was the meetings with men who assumed I was just one of guys…which was okay in a way as almost all of them were married and some were thrice divorced with enough horror stories to fill an entire subreddit. The meetings were cascade into observations and what the latest football was all about and would never recover into discussing what will happen after the next update. The update that four hours later caused a digital fire storm across the company internet. They tried to call me in, but I had my phone off and was fast asleep. I knew it was going to be bad. It wasn’t a foreboding feeling of negativity but of realism.
I came to work the next morning, amidst the screams and shrieks form the other representatives. I placed my coffee cup on the far right side and unlocked my desk to bring forth the might Usagi. Then I added a framed picture of Mr Prickles to my wall above my monitor. My cat could sleep through the apocalypse. When you can be the cat, be the cat.

Oh, then I took a sip and I turned on my computer.

A few minutes before the clock strikes twelve and a few more sips before the dude at the bar either falls off his chair in a drunken stupor or picks a fight with everyone else. Fighting, drinking, excessive shopping at hottopic.com, they’re a few of many forms of therapy I’ve tried. I even attempted aromatherapy and that one where you stick needles in various pressure points in your body. None of them ever gave me a feeling of bliss or contentment for more than a few minutes…except for the stuff I bought from Hot Topic as the bill would come in as a death note in my e-mail. I would look at the crazy amount I had racked up, start to feel bad, and then crack open my laptop to see if HT had anything else on special.

I have to make the decision of a self-intervention and to try to see joy I could have in life in the new year if I chose to do it. I could drown myself in the corner of this bar, rolling my eyes at the ridiculous “2024” plastic glasses or I could stand up, take a pair for myself, look up to the mirror under the “UU” and sign throw my hands up in a victory pose. Yes, I had survived, but was barely living, or living how others shaped it for me.

So, I’m going to do just thar. I’ll get two pairs of those glasses, maybe a few noisemakers and announce to the entire room: “Happy New Year, Becky!”