It is around the same time that she finally identifies with being a lesbian after years of internalized repression. Halfway through the memoir, Kabi comes to the crushing realization that she doesn’t love herself. She develops an eating disorder paired with already horrible anxiety and begins to slip between the cracks. She goes there with the hopes of finding community but instead feels more distant than ever. She lives with her parents and toils her life away at part-time retail jobs. It’s a manga about a 26-year-old woman who, after graduating high school, completely crashes and burns. So perhaps you can imagine the soft pattering in my chest and the tenderness with which I turned the pages as I read Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness.
As a trans woman always trying to counterbalance her learned masculinity with a much-cherished femininity, I have been chastised by both my therapist and a social worker on how I put too much energy into winning every last battle. When you find yourself only grasping at straws for years on end, your unsatisfied yearning hungers for things you’re scared you may never find. Instead of being the “Yes, and…” girl I’m way too into the “Yes, BUT…” scene. See folks, this is why I stopped taking Improv classes at 101. Haruhi from Ouran High School Club but might well read as a masc-leaning non-binary person, but she immediately gives into hyper-feminization when Tamaki starts making kissy faces at her. While I did enjoy the Comic Girls episode “Amisawa-san, Do You Cosplay?” which added a delightfully sweet yuri storyline into the mix, by the end of the season it fades into a cute joke rather than a genuine romance. While last year’s A Fantastic Woman was truly a breathtaking visual journey into transness, it could be argued that some of the film’s imagery is likely to re-traumatize someone. As a trans woman, I more often than not feel disappointed after opening my soul up to allow for validation and comfort.
It is so rare to pick a piece of fiction off the shelf that speaks to your Otherness and to truly connect with it. SPOILERS for the entirety of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. CONTENT WARNING for discussion of depression, self-harm, sex work, and transphobia NSFW images.
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