I had notions of doing something more intellectual with this post but life is what it is and as such I have delayed my effortpost about The Indigenously Produced Unmagnified Gunsights of Cuba once again. I’m going to talk about music again this time.
Oceanlab was a side project of Above & Beyond and vocalist Justine Suissa, who was also the primary songwriter. Sirens of the Sea was their sole album and it is very, very important to me.
Ok so it’s EDM okay? To be precise it’s some particular style of vocal trance but its singer-songwriter vocal trance. Above & Beyond does this really cool thing where they tend to actually collaborate with their vocalists by getting them involved with the creative process, writing lyrics, production and all that. Now, the lyrics aren’t particularly complex and they won’t impress any pretentious nerds but they resonate with me and that's what it's about yeah? Oh yeah and they do acoustic versions sometimes???? which is wild??
I was lucky enough to discover this group twice, the first time was on some lonely night when I was a teen. I came across Clear Blue Water (a single) on Grooveshark (rip), checked out the rest of their discography, thought it was pretty, and proceeded to forget about it for a decade and a half.
I am almost embarrassed to admit just how much Sirens of the Sea affected me when I rediscovered it in the autumn of ‘23. It was like a hug, a cup of coffee, and a sit-down with the Jungian archetype of the kind of woman I admired the most and wanted so dearly to become. The kind of woman who carried empathy, knew failure, was capable of struggle, yet always embraced the love and joy of life. I can’t really articulate how, but this album helped me lay down my grieving for the years I spent otherwise.
My favorite track is “On a Good Day”, and I consider it to be the theme song of my post-transition life. I just cried listening to it, like actually right now, as I write this I still got a little bit of tears drying on my cheek. “If I Could Fly” is a total bop and they did something to the rhythms towards the end of that one and it does really good shit to my brain. “Miracle” is about climate change, it slaughters me HARD because it came out over two decades ago and nothing has changed.
Under this spoiler there are the lyrics of “On a Good Day” because I thought I should include them.
a little bit lost and
a little bit lonely
little bit cold here
a little bit of fear
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I've been talking to myself forever
and how I wish I knew me better
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me on a good day
I'm a little bit hemmed in
a little bit isolated
a little bit hopeful
a little bit calm
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I've been talking to myself forever,
and how I wish I knew me better,
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me
on a good day
This is the end of this post. Take care of yourselves. Tomorrow needs you, as does the next day, and every day after.
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I've been a cat girl since as early as I can remember when I was just a little kitten, it was my first Halloween costume! Long before I had a concept of gender and yet somehow I ended up running around telling everyone I was a girl cat rather than a boy cat (in my mother tongue there are two distinct words for them but the feminine version is the more general one) and getting defensive about it when adults corrected me
. I love seeing the other kitties, pups, kits, and so on running around being themselves. And your emotes are like the perfect portrayal of that! 
I think at this point I recognize all the regulars here by username or pfp to varying degrees. The first time I saw your pfp I thought the "wow wow" was antlers but I could see the pup/pup's pronouns so I went and looked at your profile to see it larger and saw that it's a pup with text, not a deer.
I like being recognized, I was not expecting it but it makes it feel like I'm in a community. Maybe I should make a non-mod account since I feel like it happens less since I became a mod here.
cws from above + bodyshaming
Omg that's not okay re: your mom. I've worked very hard to establishing boundaries with my mom but in her case they weren't physicalWith my mom I did notice that after setting boundaries and things getting better between us, she eventually relapsed and I had to re-establish those boundaries. Reading ahead the rest of what you've wrote about her in this thread, she should absolutely get it but unfortunately from my experience that doesn't necessarily happen.
One thing that feels familiar reading this is that my mom would make comments constantly bodyshaming me, like the kind of shit that girls get through puberty which gave me some ewwphoria but with a heavy emphasis on the ew. I couldn't believe it, I'm sure she's gone through the same stuff, but I guess maybe it's a case of abuse being repeated through victims turned abusers when they have internalized rather than unpacked and dismantled the trauma.