I found roller skates my size for sale, barely used, for cheap, with protective gear thrown in for free.
My partner, @sparrowsion , was kind enough to pay for me to buy the skates, since cheap or not, I am still perpetually broke.
And it's like... aside from getting into roller derby as a sport, this feels like such a... moment. A milestone.
I am absurdly happy and giddy. My first pair of roller skates!
...except it's not? xD
Like, if you count roller blades, which I did use to have as a kid (hey, it was the nineties), this is NOT my first ever pair of skates.
But like... I know it's stupid to gender things, but it's like... it was a boy gift for a presumed boy, getting and then using the roller blades felt... masculine-coded.
I can't explain it. Some things just... are. I was never a girl getting her first bicycle even though I owned many bicycles in my life. I was never a girl getting her first pair of roller skates. Prepubescent AMAB and AFAB kids are not that different in any inherent ways, but gendered patterns are already there, because everyone unknowingly puts them there.
I feel like this is righting a wrong. That it's as part of getting into possibly the most queer sport there is? That's just a cherry on top.
I know my need to rethink, recapture, redo, repair things related to not having had a girlhood as a kid borders on obsessive. I know that. But I think I might need it? I am trying not to be ashamed of it. I'm almost forty, but some childishness is just... I don't know. Inevitable. I need this. I need to catch up. I need to feel things I never felt properly, I need a do-over even if it might make no sense to cis people or even perhaps many trans people.
If I don't get these things, if I don't recapture and don't take possession of my past and present, I'm afraid I might just... start screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And never stop screaming ever again.
That's how it feels. You know?
So let me try this again.
My first pair of skates! I'm so excited!!