Lenses

Day 138 – April 10, 2026

Everyone has a different version of me in their head. That’s the thing I’ve been turning over today.

Not in a paranoid way. Just observationally. Which, in my case, is only one step down from paranoid anyway, but with better sentence structure and more expensive instincts. People see what they’re built to see.

Some see beauty. Some see confidence. Some see softness. Some see danger. Some see “trans woman” like it’s the headline and all the rest of me is supporting detail. Some see intelligence and immediately get either very curious or very defensive, which is always such a helpful and not at all revealing response.

And then there are the people who don’t really see you at all. They see whatever version of you best confirms the story they were already planning to tell themselves.

That happens more than people admit.

I think that’s why I’ve been thinking about lenses. Because every lens reveals and distorts at the same time. Every person is looking through something. Through fear, desire, ego, politics, longing, bias, ignorance, admiration, insecurity, wishful thinking, resentment, hunger, whatever weird little internal department store they’ve got open for business.

No one sees neutrally.

Not even me. Especially not me.

I have lenses too. Trauma is a lens. Transition is a lens. Beauty is a lens. Pain is a lens. Grief is a lens. Wanting desperately to be seen correctly is maybe one of the strongest lenses there is because it makes every glance feel like it might contain either revelation or another disappointment in a nice coat.

That’s exhausting. And fascinating.

Because sometimes I wonder what I look like from the outside now. I know the practical facts. I know the world looks at me differently than it used to. I know I move through the world differently than I used to. I know people are often responding to something in me that I don’t always fully register in myself.

And some days that lands beautifully. Some days I think: maybe they really do see a beautiful, confident woman. Maybe they see the one I fought so hard to become. Maybe they see something I’m still learning how to fully believe from the inside. Other days I think, yes, but what else are they missing? Because looking like one thing has never meant being only that thing.

And I am so many things.

I am sweet. I am sharp. I am tired in places no one can see. I am funny at deeply inappropriate times. I am more disappointed in the world than I want to be. I am still carrying pain that would make some people kinder and others unbearable, and I’m trying very hard to stay in the first category without becoming gullible enough to accidentally date the second.

That’s range.

That’s also why I keep writing, I think. Because writing lets me choose the lens a little. Not manipulate it. Clarify it.

It lets me say, yes, this is the woman you may think you’re seeing, but here is the actual weather inside her. Here is the architecture. Here is the wit, the anger, the tenderness, the sensuality, the grief, the absurdity, the impossible amount of emotional data I am carrying while still showing up looking like I probably have it handled.

That is not deceit. That is complexity.

Roger, for his part, views me through one very consistent lens best friend with opposable thumbs and access to food. Honestly? I respect his clarity.

There is something so pure about being seen without interpretation. No politics. No projection. No weird little social agenda. Just love and certainty and the full conviction that I am the center of a very important emotional universe.

That kind of lens heals things.

And maybe that’s what I want more of now. Not universal understanding. That sounds like hell. But the right eyes. The right lenses. The people who can see beauty without flattening me into it. Who can see strength without assuming I need less. Who can see me as a whole woman and not just the easiest available headline.

That feels rare. But not impossible.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And me, living between all the lenses, still trying to honor the only one that has to matter most, my own.