Author: Lillian Denney

This is somewhat of a controversial issue. If you are easily offended, then this might not be the best blog for you.

As most people know, I am a woman athlete.  The issue has risen of letting trans women play women sports.  While I completely support trans people and whoever they would like to be seen as, it just is not fair to cis women.  

Trans women in high school are typically not on hormones, which means they have the strength of a full man.  No one would let a man play women’s sports.  While they are a female they have the biological strengths and advantages of a man.  Even if they are on hormones they still have the strength and height they gained during their time as a man, and despite our best medical technology we are currently unable to change it.

A good example I think of is a female high school wrestling champion.  She had been champion for like 3 years in a row, when a trans women was entered she completely creamed the previous champion. This kind of thing would not happen if she didn’t have some kind of advantage.

Biology and differences go down to our very bone structure between the two sexes.  People with XY chromosomes are typically much stronger and taller than people with XX chromosomes.  Even women who train their whole lives to be strong still fail to compare to most men, even those who are not that active. It is all down to chemicals, men have more muscle building hormones and therefore can build more muscles with considerably less effort.  

It is not an easy decision, no matter what the call is, someone will be treated unfairly.  The best idea is probably to just let kids in high school play with their birth gender and for professional just have a different category for them.  It just wouldn’t be fair to the millions of cis women athletes to give them competitors that have so much of an advantage over them.  It’s really how to be fair to more people.  It sucks but there really is no way to make it fair for cis women if trans women can compete with them.  So you have to make it fair to the majority.

As a women athlete I just want the competition to be fair for us, that’s the whole reason sports are not co-ed after kids go through puberty.  It is similar to a women on steroids, it’s not fair and is ban in sports, it is the same type of thing.  Hopefully in the future our medical advances will make it so there is no advantages that trans women have, and then it would be fair if they can compete.  However we simply are not there yet.  

I am not trying to attack trans people. I respect people and their gender identity. I know some of this might not seem fair, but it really is all down to science.  

I don’t really have anything to blog about so I’m just gonna talk about how I have been doing lately, spoiler alert, not good.  With many deadlines fast approaching and my motivation getting increasingly lower I am not sure I can keep up.  Our literary portfolios are due this week and I’m still not finished and I am struggling for motivation.  I’m struggling to just have the energy to get out of the bed and do something.  

I’m trying to combat this with things I enjoy.  The other day I watched shows with my friend over discord.  It was a nice time to just relax and take my mind off of things.  Sometimes you just need to take a break, and that is fine.

Working yourself to death won’t do anything but make your work look rushed.  Taking breaks is essential to keeping yourself productive; and also to your mental health.  

Balance is a key element that helps keep yourself in order.  A mix of pleasure and work is typically the best course of action to get your work done and not become too overworked.  

Try taking a minute to do something you enjoy.  It will help in the long run.  Talk to your friends, play your favorite video game, maybe just take a snack break, it really doesn’t matter as long as you can take breaks.

Remember your health is more important than a school assignment, no matter what the school system tries to tell you.

Chains

Despair and hope

Virtue or vice

Joy or sadness

Depression and anxiety 

Resilience over pain

Break out of your chains.

Yeah I know, short and sweet.  Compared to others who were writing half pages I felt mine failed in comparison.  There was no minimum word count, but I still felt it was too short.  Often I feel I am in a place surrounded by talented people where I am plainly average.  Everything from MSA to on the court.  Even as I have been recognized as talented, when people outweigh you by so much even talented people can look very boring in comparison.

It’s not that I’m not accepted, I just don’t feel like I am as accepted as everyone else.  I never feel completely like I belong anywhere.  Of course, more here and on my current basketball team than I did at my old school.  

One thing I’ve always longed for is acceptance.  Something I never really had the chance to experience.  Everywhere I went I was outcast– from a child in Sunday school being bullied to high school being the “weird kid” to being trashed on by lots of different people– they say these are the best years of your life, but honestly I don’t know if I can handle it getting any worse.

The place I feel like I belong with the most is my friends that I never get to see.  I have met so many kind people on the internet, some that aren’t even from the same country.  Most of them have drifted away. Losing online friends can be especially difficult when you have no real friends.  My hometown is just so small and narrow minded I didn’t really find too many people who were compatible with me. 

Thankfully, now, I have some good friends, like my friend Alex.  Her family dynamic is much different than mine, but her family always makes me feel so accepted.  I went with them and some of her other friends for Halloween one year. Although I did get a few weird looks because I was the only white person in the group and had a much more elaborate costume, I still had fun and didn’t feel left out.  Last time I was home I got to see her, too. I mainly just sat in on them running errands, but it was still nice to be able to get out of the house.  In fact, I still have a cut from a wire that was sticking out of their car’s chair gashed on my knee.  A mark of friendship, if you will.

Oh boy, where do I even start. 

So yeah, recently, I’ve been gaining weight pretty fast even though I am very active and everything.  I also keep getting more and more stretch marks.  I am really self conscious about them and they have gotten to the point they are all over my body, pretty much.  Some would make sense as I grew tall very quickly, but I don’t know why I keep getting them on my legs and stuff.  It is also weird because they don’t run in my family at all.  My mom never got any, even when she was pregnant.  I can’t even wear a crop top anymore because every time I do, someone asks me “What’s wrong with your hips?”  Nothing, I just have gross bright red and purple stretch marks all over them for no reason other than my body spites my existence.  I wouldn’t even mind if they weren’t so noticeable, but they are.  I don’t even know why they are there because I didn’t get them until after the majority of my growing.  

My mom (who is also a doctor) has suggested I might have Cushing’s disease.  It is caused by an overproduction of cortisol, and leads to weight gain and bright purple/pink stretch marks.  As well as other things such as acne and easily bruising, all of which line up pretty well.   

I don’t like how much weight I’m gaining or the amount of bright vibrant stretch marks I’m getting.  Of course me stressing about it has only led to me stress eating, which isn’t helping.  As someone who has always struggled with body image, and was actually starting to like the way I look until I gained so much weight, is very upsetting for me.

*Screams into the void* 

Here’s a resource:  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cushing-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20351310

So, this Tuesday (yesterday most likely as you read this).  My basketball team heads to the final four.  Semifinals is the game this Tuesday, if we win then we go to the finals on Friday.  Being close to something so great can be very nerve-racking.  You may taste greatness, or you may fall into failure just before you can touch that beautiful hope.  My team is amazing, and I do not doubt our abilities; in fact our biggest hindrance I believe is the tendency to get sloppy because of pressure.  The times we seem to make the most mistakes are in difficult situations, and obviously this is a very normal reaction.  I haven’t getting much playing time as I haven’t been able to go to practice on school days because of my schedule, which has not helped me in emotional and physical ways.  We have had some Sunday practices recently, and I can at least make them. 

Another problem is every time I try to move about I start hacking my lungs out.  It isn’t COVID, so if you hear me coughing don’t run in terror.  I had this same type of thing before earlier in the school year of just coughing up gunk, it wouldn’t go away until 2 full rounds of antibiotics, and the fact it came back makes me a bit worried.  I also have had a lot of sinus pressure, assuming that is from the same thing.  The sinus pressure is really bad for me because I can do nothing to fix it in my dorm room as I do not have the proper sink, and my sink doesn’t get warm.  It causes intensity in my migraine pain and I have tried taking medicine for it and it has little to no effect.

So, my coach is nice enough to not kick me off the team, but no one is going to let someone play when they have no clue what is going on.  So I just sit there anxiously on the bench, I do get in if we are winning by a good margin or at the very end sometimes, so at least I get some time touching the floor.  I’m not a post player but one of my teammates is 6’4ish, me standing at 5’10, which is very tall for a female I might add, just can’t compete with that.  Even though I had more skill she could block peoples shots by just standing there and letting them run into her.  I don’t consider her a rival though, she’s actually a really nice friend to have, even if it is a bit weird having to look up at someone.  

I have felt so excepted as a member of this team besides me just coming onto it as a Junior and not really going to their school, not to mention I am the only white person on the whole team and staff, I don’t mind this it just makes me stick out a lot.  But still, I feel like they are very accepting of me. The whole team just has a much more positive attitude than my one back in Picayune.  At Picayune, I was basically the slaughter goat, if something went wrong it was my fault, didn’t matter how, or even if I was in the general place it was happening.  Someone threw a pass ten feet over my head?  I’d be expected to catch it and if not I would get yelled at.  I was the tallest on the team, that doesn’t mean I’m an Olympic high jumper.  The coach there let this sour attitude go unpunished, so it continued.  They would always find ways to be mean to me or exclude me from things.  

Overall, I am just much happier here, so I am really excited, but also nervous.  

Warning: Spoilers for Danganronpa V3

For a long time I would always be obsessed with things.  I thought it was just a thing I did but apparently it’s a symptom a good amount of autistics go through.  Hyperfixation is defined as: a condition that creates interest and develops it consistently in humans for something or someone.  

My newest hyperfixation is this cute little bastard.

For those of you unfamiliar, this is Kokichi Oma from Danganronpa V3.

His character is very interesting, he loves to act all evil but in reality he’s just a mischievous person who really is a good person after all.  I actually did a short character analysis video I will link here.

Everyone seems to dislike him throughout the course of the game because he lies; but in the end he sacrifices his life to try to save them all.  His plan was perfect, it just happened to be messed up by the other characters.  

It is the saddest thing to me that even as he is about to die and it is harder for him to breathe because of Maki’s poison arrow.  He reveals how he’s felt all along and Keebo is the only one who believes him.  The fact he was painfully dying of poison and his real tears instead of the over theatrical ones he does as fake, proves the fact this is the truth.  Also, why would he save Kaito and Maki and choose to sacrifice himself if he was truly evil?  

Here is the video of Kokichi’s last words.

So yeah, not evil.  He was just lying to execute his plan and save himself pain.

He secretly good boy.

Thanks for having common sense, Keebo.

“Basketball players don’t cry.”

What makes people think just because I play a sport means I can’t have emotions?  Basketball players cry a lot, at least this one does.  I cry over being bullied, I cry over my life situation, I cry over my crush not accepting me because they’re studying abroad next school year.  Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m crying. I just can’t stop the tears from flowing. 

Truly, I have always been an emotional person, a crybaby most would say.  The truth is people need to stop running from how they feel.  Oftentimes growing up my father would tell me to “Stop crying or he’d give me something to cry about.”  That is the toxic behavior that instills into people making them think they aren’t allowed to feel emotions.  Emotions are not a bad thing. They aren’t the problem. The problem is the people who refuse to acknowledge their emotions and simply call a person weak for showing them.  In reality, it shows strength to let yourself show emotions, to be vulnerable.  Stop telling people with depression to just go outside, you wouldn’t tell that to someone with cancer, would you?  People with disorders such as depression can sometimes not have very good control of their emotions.  If you always feel numb and nothing, you would want to feel something, at any cost.  

Society has made up this allusion that you must always be happy all the time when in reality this is not possible.  If you were never to experience sadness, you would never know the thrill of excitement.  No one likes feeling upset, but hiding that pain does nothing but hurt you more.  

Now I’m not telling you to hit someone because they stole your french fry, but you have the right to tell them to stop doing that.  

So let’s all just be a little kinder and consider each other’s feelings.  Just because you don’t get upset and someone who ate your sandwich doesn’t mean you can eat other people.  I know that is a dumb example but the point still stands.  Trauma has clawed at some of us; even simple mentioning of simple words triggers us to have flashbacks.  Some things are sensitive topics for people, for example, I get upset when people flaunt food I can’t have because of my restrictions.  I miss being able to drink coke so don’t chug one right in front of me, it’s super disrespectful. 

This idea to talk about this was actually inspired by an exercise we did and Diego’s contribution.  This is not about a specific religion but most examples will come from religions based around the Bible as that is the one I am most familiar with in terms of modern religion.

Religion has caused endless pain and war all throughout history.  From ancient crusades to forcing Native Americans to adopt Christianity or be slaughtered like animals.  What kind of impact could influence people to be so hostile and hateful?  In short, the brainwashing of religion. 

You see, humans are very willing to except something if it sounds nice and sounds like it could be true.  

For example, did you know Iceberg Lettuce is called that because it floats in the water with part of it out and most underneath the water, just like an iceberg!  

Except, that’s completely false, but you believed it didn’t you?  

If not you probably just saw that coming from me basically telling you I was about to lie to you. 

So if some well dressed man stands up every week and tells you all these things for your whole life, you no longer question the things that do not even make sense.  It all goes down to human psychology.  If everyone you know tells you the same thing, over and over again, you are most likely gonna start to consider it the truth.  

There is plenty of inconsistencies and things that don’t work in the Bible, and Christians always seem to get upset and just shut down as soon as you mention them.

For example, did Jonah get eaten by a big fish or a whale?  I know this was a long time ago but whales are definitely not fish, and last time I checked there are no man eating fish.  Also, it makes no sense at all that he just sat in somethings stomach for 3 days and was still alive.  Do you know how corrosive stomach acid is?  He would have been dead on the spot.  Then even if he somehow survived that, there isn’t gonna be any air down there, so he would have just suffocated.

So yeah, that’s my whole  rant for now.  I just wish people would not try to shove Christianity down my throat, that is one of my main problems with the south.  Just leave people alone and stop screaming at us outside of movie theaters that we are all going to hell (yes this happened to me).  You can believe whatever you want, you have that right, but stop trying to take others rights to things like birth control just cause you don’t like it, it isn’t hurting you so just let it go.  If you hate abortions so much then maybe actually teach teenagers how to use contraception and have safe sex.  My sex ed was legit “Never have sex or you will get AIDS and die.”  I get you don’t want teenagers having sex, but they are going to regardless, so why not at least tell them how to be safe about it, it would prevent a lot of teen pregnancies.  Even if someone doesn’t have sex as a teenager, they most likely will eventually, so they will need to know how to at some point.   

I’m Sorry

I’m sorry for all the mistakes I’ve made

I’m sorry I can’t keep things straight

I’m sorry sometimes I get so mad

Sometimes to cover up the bad

I’m sorry my feelings don’t make sense

I’m sorry my apologies aren’t enough

I could never bring people back

So I lay awake in the tear-stained black.

Why do I feel as I will never be enough

Maybe it was being compared to people my whole existence

Maybe it was so many people trampling my heart

I apologize a million times a day 

But never enough for the big mistake 

The big mistake that is me.

Every time I’m around

People seem to get hurt

I try to make people smile

Then…

why is everyone staring?

This is a poem I wrote as a sort of vent for myself.  Definitely not the best thing I have written, but it was not supposed to be.  It was simply to get the thoughts out of my head.  I often feel like I am not worthy of normal things.  So common to me is the feeling of insignificance.   

Life always seems to throw things at me that I can’t seem to dodge.  Sometimes they are so hard to avoid because even I don’t see them coming.   Then again, sometimes, I can and still just can’t prevent it.  I try, I try my best to prevent all the things thrown at me but they come too fast and are thrown too hard to be stopped.  After all, you can’t dodge a speeding bullet.  That really is what it feels like sometimes, that you are just getting shot repeatedly.  Then instead of someone helping you up they take the opportunity to shoot you while you are down.  The best way I can explain it is: to see someone injured and take the chance to hurt them even more because they are less able to fight back. That’s pretty much how it’s like.

I guess the lesson here is to be kind to people who are already hurting.  No one wants to be shot, but absolutely no one wants to be shot repeatedly.  So, just be nice. If you have a problem with them, try talking to them 1 on 1 instead of just cancelling them in front of people because it makes you feel superior.

I don’t really like my new schedule.  I have two hard classes and I have another class 4th block so I can’t go to practice.  One of my teachers is a bit “work-happy”– giving out huge packets and won’t even let us use the bathroom.

Also, we’re doing jumpstart, an ACT prep program, right after school gets out, which is going to fry my brain like a toaster.  How am I gonna learn anything when my brain is already really tired from the school day, and then go and do all my homework after that? Ugh. 

In short, I’m dropping out of school and becoming a cat.  (For legal reasons that’s a joke.)

Not being able to play basketball and having a much more stressful schedule is having a negative effect on my mental health.  I also have been having really bad sinus pressure which gives me more migraine attacks.  My stress and anxiety have also been not happy.

I want my old schedule back.

I know it is not reasonable to never have hard classes, but multiple of those with no stress outlet is very just, hard on me.

Yesterday I went to get some shots up.  Being the only one practicing in the gym was very strange and pretty unnerving.  Also the boys coaches kept watching me at first and it gave me much anxiety.  There was also this boy outside who probably thought I was stupid by going to practice at the wrong time.  

An hour of that, my shot was actually really good, considering I haven’t gotten to shoot in like a week because of my new schedule.  Also, the basketball goals at MSA are both busted.  

I’ve been pretty stressed, depressed, lemon zest.

I finally had the motivation to wash clothes yesterday, which was nice.  Never got to folding them though.  

Also, I’m not looking forward to doing work from dawn to dusk.  Not exactly my thing.  I can’t stay focused that long, my brain will legit turn into swiss cheese.  

On the positive side I learned how to make recycled paper and plan on trying it out as soon as my tool comes in for it.  At least that sounds like fun.