Acceptance?

I’m not saying this is a first for me. I live in a little purple part of a very blue place. But it’s so “untypical” that it throws you, a little. You know?

Grocery store. I need coffee and cream, a salad would be nice, and protein. Grab and go plan.

I’m in olive green baggy pants, soft ones, they flow, and a hoodie from the Gap I got second hand (that I love). I’m not tucked, but I’m tight, and the pants flow, so.

I have in stud earrings, work-mom makeup, and it’s been a good hair day.

My bag is a dimpled leather cross body that I’d probably need a friend “willing to ask no questions,” if I’d ever had it stolen. It’s always in hands reach. Always. Metals on it match the metals on me.

I was productive at work, and I feel pretty good about it. Heck, my eye liner lengths might even match on close inspection. So, in short, I’m feeling fine.

Grab and go plan.   

So, where I go, there’s a section that also sells clothes. You know, leggings, sweaters, stuff. I’ve glanced, and I’ve bought.

This time, I get distracted by a light zip-up top and, for a moment, I loose a little “space.” The next thing I know, a woman with a cart is next to me. We catch eyes.

“I like your pants,” she says. We smile, and she walks away.

I’ve had a woman throw an open bottle of blue nail polish at me in a Target. Ruined a cute pair of shoes.

As I grabbed the cream, it felt like people were “nearer” to me. I know that sounds kind of funny but I tend to notice the way people move around me when I’m in public and not distracted.

It’s like a “filter.” Interactions in the general public?, always feel like there’s a tiger in the room, you know?

Anyway, the proximity?, it felt nice. It didn’t trigger my spidey sense 🙂

I grabbed the cream, and as I moved for the salad, I remembered that as I walked in, I glanced at the seasonal flowers, you know for a second (at that point, I was still optimistic about the grab and go plan) and as I did, the gentlemen also glancing, didn’t “move away” when he glanced at me.

Same thing as I grabbed a bag of salad, “presence.” But at a natural flow. The movement of life.

Salad, coffee, cream? check, check, check. Now for some protein.

I’m not really ashamed that I went with a frozen pizza but I’ve made better choices.

Oh, and my store is having a sale on this amazing frozen “shrimp and rice” that comes in a box of six portioned lunches that I love, and it’s getting low on the shelf.

I don’t know about where you shop, but where I shop, items you find and then love will often sell out, never to reappear. What will appear, is anyone’s guess.

Okay, I’m “grab and go,” so I don’t have a cart. I have pizza in one hand, shrimp and rice box stacked on top, cream, coffee, and the salad in the other. Loaded, but manageable.

Four cash registers, two open. Only one in use. One customer at the register, two of us in line. I hang back. Casually. I give space. I wait.

They don’t write magazine headlines like they used too. No one seems to notice me, or care. We wait. “Life in the fast lane” by the Eagles is playing. We wait.

Line moves, guy in front of me, starts to unload his basket onto the belt. Suddenly, another cashier appears at the other “open” register.

“I can take you,” he says.  He’s smiling, but it’s a real “patient smile.”  A real one.

I glance at the gentlemen in front of me, he’s just starting to stack his few items on the metal lip, and he smiles and me in that, “smh” sort of way, letting me know it’s karmically cool.

So I move to the register, freely through space, his smile never waning, no one “watching” as I unload before him.

I’ve been filmed on cell phones often. While buying coffee at a Starbucks, for example. I like to think positively about what becomes of the videos.

He says, “Have you tried the rice before?” as his machine starts beeping and I take my spot by the, seemingly to me, always angry looking “pay machine.” (But maybe that’s just me anthropomorphizing the continuous state of my finances 🤷🏻‍♀️).

Meanwhile, the “small talk chatter” continues in a most beautifully benign way while he finishes scanning and I finish pulling my wallet from my bag.

I do the pay box dance and then he points out my “savings.”

That’s it. I grab my sack, and leave as we say goodbye.

I am visibly trans femme.

Passing is a privilege.

Though like all privileges, they come with their own burdens. As independent subjective experiencing beings, everything is “relative,” after all. All the way up and all the way down. How could it not be?

Today, just “a trip to the grocery store,” by any other name, is acceptance.

That’s what I aim for.

For all of us.

[my cat, Pepper, was trying to eat my pizza while I was writing. She’s never done that before 🤣. I kept moving my plate and she kept following it. 😬]

Pepper and pizza 🤣