00:00:03
Speaker 1: Hey, it's okay. We're taking a little end of your time off, but in the meantime, we have a gift for you, an episode from our friends at Little Devils. Little Devil's is a brand new show hosted by Jasmine Bayomi. It's a narrative series about the small flaws and hidden stories that shape us. I know you're gonna love it, and we'll be back with new episodes in just a few weeks.
00:00:24
Speaker 2: What person's gonna want me when I have depression and anxiety?
00:00:32
Speaker 3: Hey, Jasmine, here real quick before we get started Little Devils. This show feels so adventurous in many ways, and I think that's because we're making it as an independent show. It's made by just a small crew of very very crafty story lovers, and these story lovers would like to make more episodes. So if you want to join us on this somewhat unpredictable podcast adventure, you can check out our patreon to see how we can keep this going. Just go to patreon dot com slash Little Devils. All right, let's get into this episode. Sensitive listeners please be advised. The story deals with heavy topics such as cancer, but it's not a sad story. Let me preface this story real quick. I'm fine now, but last year I went through breast cancer treatment. When they did the first ultrasound, I saw my enemy for the first time. It was round, the size of a cherry, and it had what looked like these two little horns, you know, like that purple emoji on your phone. And I know it's cheesy, but kind of like a little The doctors gave me some drugs and a date for the surgery. I had a month one month to take the drugs, and then the day before the surgery they'd do another ultrasound to see if the tumor responded to the drugs. So for that month, I started doing this thing where I was having these internal conversations with this tumor. It was mostly during shower moments. I think, you little fucker, you think you can just take a li will destroy Look, I know it's really cozy in there, but you gotta go fucking hate you. You do real mind this fuck you. I would target all my fears and anger and rage towards this little devil emoji cell cluster that was threatening to kill me. The day before the surgery rolled around and they did the ultrasound to see if the drugs worked and the tumor had completely changed, had half dissolved, shifted shape, No more little two horned ball. The drugs worked. I should have been happy, believed even, but I walked out of there devastated. This was great news, So why was I sad? I googled where do cancer cells go when treatment works? There was no way that they disappeared into thin air. I wasn't going to fall for this little charade, this disappearing act. The day after they cut out whatever was left of it, This enemy I could hate on and feel beneath my skin, this thing I could target all my fears and anger towards. It was gone, But still I wasn't cancer free yet. Suddenly everything felt vague and uncertain again. From here on out, I was fighting against an invisible enemy. I kept asking friends if they ever felt that way, cancer friends, healthy friends, random people i'd meet. There was this sense of disconnect between what my mind knew I should feel versus what I was truly feeling. And then I found someone. Her name is Jad just like mine, and Jasmine could relate. I am Jasmine Bayomi and this is Little Devils a show where I look at the things that often remain unseen, the flaws, struggles, mistakes, and beliefs that haunt each one of us, or, as I like to call them, our personalized little devils. For this episode, we've collaborated with audio artists Jasmine T. Green on a piece made up of four chapters in which she tries to make sense of her own complicated feelings towards her body. This is embodied by Jasmine T. Green.
00:06:03
Speaker 4: Was a pool.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I had a very detached relationship with my body. I felt that me and my body were two separate beings that never really interacted with one another. The first time I felt joy in my body was when we moved into a different apartment complex and in the middle of the courtyard they had like a small playground, and then they all had a pool. I had always like dreamed of being in water, but I remember that summer. It was one of the first nice days of the year. It was very bright, very sunny, and like they opened up the pool and I was so excited to go there with my brother and sister. And I go into the pool and from a pure physical sensation floating in the water, almost being the same temperature as the water. There was something about the way that I felt this. It was a different kind of disconnect with my body. I felt to be part of the water that I was in, where I felt like my body expanded beyond itself and became a part of another living thing. Whatever I felt in that moment is like I want to live.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: In this.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: I just wanted to stay in that water and smell that quaarine and just like have it take over me. I felt that like, Okay, this is like what I imagine sort of a calm, like the calmness of like a brain that was finally empty. It feels like the voices in my head are becoming drowned by the water to the point where they do disappear. And the only thing that I feel in my head is hearing nothing but the water and the surrounding noise and thinking solely about the sensation of the water on my body. I'm not thinking about any other things that are flittering in my mind. Well, it's so beautiful about that feeling is that for so long my body has felt like a prison I could not escape, and my mind felt to be something that had no bounds or limits. Or when I could imagine I only want to be with you, with you, I was a kid that got overwhelmed very easily. I cried whenever it was time to leave a place. I cried if there was something that changed in my normal environment. I cried when like something happened in the video games that I played. My parents knew that I was like someone who needed stimuli in order to like calm myself down and entertain myself. So this week and I loved sound and music particularly, and they got me a cassette of Hootie and the Blowfish their first album, I guess you could say, and they got me a boombox. I used to play like just one song and repeat. I think it's called like I Only want to be with You or something like that. The first song on that one, and I remember I had like hit play and let it go. The main refrain was like I only want to be with you. I want to be with you. Probably remember the rest of the album. I just like, really like that was like the first song. I was like I loved it, and I would hit it, hit rewind, play it again, hit rewind, play it again. I would just kind of just like put my hands on the on the dresser and just kind of just like with shimmy to the song. Whenever I did it, it gave me an immense comfort, Like it just felt like I was just like in my body, Like it just really felt like a moment where I was just like, oh my goodness, Like it's kind of impossible. It's almost impossible to dance and be self conscious. You just have to just like feel what it is that you're going to do. And that was always something I envied people who like had that really seamless connection between their body and mind in a way that it didn't feel like one was hindering the other. That symbiotic relationship that those had with themselves with something that I desired. I watched a lot of music videos growing up. Everyone seems so happy when they're dancing, and it's like, I want to be happy, and I love music just as much as like these people love music, And up until I like began my gender transition, I without a doubt felt that like there was this difference between like the private performance of myself, especially when dancing, and like the public version of it. And it felt to be very much like dancing was something that I did very much in private, Like in public, I would never dare show any outs of like rhythmic interaction because of, you know, a generalized fear of that being read in a way that was not welcome in a masculine body or performance or presentation. I noticed this was something that had happened kind of like a couple of years prior to me coming to terms with the fact that I needed to make this change in my life. But I felt this like utter need that whenever I was alone, and usually that would only happen when I travel, and I will enternto a hotel or an airbnb, and I would just turn music up really loud, like on like a computer or something, and then I would just dance like for the entirety of the song and just like let my body just do what it wanted to do, and just kind of feel like what does it feel like to embody like myself sort of like uninhibited, just in the gaze of like myself. And I loved what I saw, and I'm like amazed and shocked of like my body doing things and moves, and I was just like I never knew these worksiness was possible in me. But I'm just like damn, like your girl got it, and it very much feels like okay, like this is what I was trying to find, and there was no longer this like separate version. But I felt that like I could not express that rounding the edges. Gentleness didn't come until a complete, for lack of a better phrase, like breaking point many years later. In those years, I had a lot of things happen in my life. I had two pulmonary embolisms.
00:16:40
Speaker 4: My body.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: Was dead for a bit until my partner was able to essentially shake me awake, with which dislodged the clot and I had lost my grandmother and realized that, like when I went home for her funeral, had this overwhelming feeling I'm like, I am living a double life. I had a panic attack in the middle of the night and I like removed all of my clothes and I like stood in the mirror and I like looked in the mirror and I said, I'm trans and I was like, okay. And from that moment is when I started the process. I'm just going to start saying yes to what it is to like what I feel, and just see where that takes me. I mean, transitioning is a whole life process. There's a common misconception that happens it is it's like, oh, yeah, so, like, when are you done transitioning. It's like, no, it is a lifelong process, and it's not necessarily that I'm chasing perfection, but I'm chasing harmony. Before I felt very much like a pentagon with like very sharp edges that like wishes it was a wheel, And it's like, imagine like a car with like pentagon shaped tires, and how difficult and impractical it would be for this car to accelerate, but it continually tries and attempts to accelerate. I still very much am a pentagon, but the edges are slowly becoming rounder and still impractical to some degree, but are smoothing every day. No more status. I still have many of the same issues I have in my life prior to transitioning. I still deal with a lot of anxious thoughts, and I still am processing a lot of trauma from my childhood, and I still have a lot of work I need to do regarding trust. However, there's no longer that hum of working through a all these things while also being in a body and doing the mental gymnastics that it takes to hold all that. It's like when you're flipping through on a radio and you're trying to find the station, but you can't find it exactly. Before it was like landing on like a couple tips before the station where you can hear it there's started, and I don't say I can know.
00:20:33
Speaker 4: You get used to the static and like you have to join it up. But now it's like I'm locked in directly on the station and it's crystal clear. It's an FM. Some of the songs I still don't like, but I can fully hear them, and I can fully pay attention.
00:21:03
Speaker 2: And now like I'll just be out anywhere and if I hear something that just moves me, I will just like move my body, I will move my head. I'll just like let my body just do what it has a natural feeling to do. And like every time I go out, I dance uncontrolled, like I love to dance, I love to move like all these all these needs of just like movement. I just so like it feels like being a kid again. My private confidence self has definitely integrated with my public self much more, and that is taking a bit of getting used to not only for myself, but I think for others too, where are not used to me approaching space and taking up space in that way. You know, I'm nearly six foot and I've got long limbs, and I take up space even when I try not to. And before I felt like that level of discomfort. But when I went out dancing last week, that discomfort went away. I took up space. I used my full body, whether it was moving my hands in the air and wrapping my arms around myself and squatting and shaking my butt and bending over and just you know, utilizing my shoulders and my hands and my hair and my everything. Like every tendril of my body was act evated in this movement versus before where it felt to be this sort of isolated zone of movement that I was allowed to engage in. And on the side of like positive embodiment, there's just the nature of just like knowing that my body is feeling closer to how I've always seen it to be, so there's a different way that it moves, Like having a booty now having thighs now leads to this very euphoric experience of like when I shake my hips, there is like there is a momentum that is exciting, the mental embodiment of just being like I am here as a woman in the space. That's what freedom felt like.
00:24:39
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jasmine T. Green for sharing your story and thank you for listening. Jasmine has several other exciting projects and podcasts. One of them is Girl Versus Horse, and there's another one called Because the Boss Belongs to Us. Jasmine also makes a podcast about mental health called basket Case and as if that's not enough, she also makes music under the name Command plus Jasmine. That's Cmd plus ja Z M I N. We'll link all of them in the show notes. Little Devils is a trz Media original and you're currently listening to the pilot season, so if you want to see what's next in our little bag of stories, make sure to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. There's a bunch of ways that you can support it, and they're totally for free. For one, you can rate and review Little Devils wherever you listen. That would already mean so much to us. And then you can check out our Patreon to see if you'd like to become part of the community around Little Devils. That's Patreon dot com slash Little Devils, and we have a bunch of perks for our members, like you're going to get something in return, for example, calls with me, then the opportunity to read the credits for example. In the future, you could even become part of the process of making the show and could become a test listener for future episodes. That's just the name a few of the perks. They're pretty awesome. You can also email us at Little Devils at t rzminusmedia dot de e and you can find us on Instagram at Little Devil's Show. And of course you can find me on Instagram that's at Jasmine Bayomi. That's j as m I n b a u O M Y no Z's no E's. Little Devil is hosted, reported, and co created by Me, Jasmine Byomi and a small but mighty team of people. This episode was co created and co produced by Marta b and Dweshik and edited by Tim Howard. Mix and sound design is also by Marta Midweshik and in this case Jasmine T. Green. Robin Druma is our executive producer. Our beautiful theme music is by Phoebe mcindoo and mastering by Yosha Khrunovit. Fanny Krabola illustrated our cover art. Thank you to everyone who supported, listened, and spent time giving feedback about the episode. We could not have made this without you. So many thanks to Hannah Abst, Hannah Medeshik, Jan Bumahmann, Johanna Gilia and Zara Karshai.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: A little bed baa
00:28:07
Speaker 1: Whim whi
Speaker 1: Hey, it's okay. We're taking a little end of your time off, but in the meantime, we have a gift for you, an episode from our friends at Little Devils. Little Devil's is a brand new show hosted by Jasmine Bayomi. It's a narrative series about the small flaws and hidden stories that shape us. I know you're gonna love it, and we'll be back with new episodes in just a few weeks.
00:00:24
Speaker 2: What person's gonna want me when I have depression and anxiety?
00:00:32
Speaker 3: Hey, Jasmine, here real quick before we get started Little Devils. This show feels so adventurous in many ways, and I think that's because we're making it as an independent show. It's made by just a small crew of very very crafty story lovers, and these story lovers would like to make more episodes. So if you want to join us on this somewhat unpredictable podcast adventure, you can check out our patreon to see how we can keep this going. Just go to patreon dot com slash Little Devils. All right, let's get into this episode. Sensitive listeners please be advised. The story deals with heavy topics such as cancer, but it's not a sad story. Let me preface this story real quick. I'm fine now, but last year I went through breast cancer treatment. When they did the first ultrasound, I saw my enemy for the first time. It was round, the size of a cherry, and it had what looked like these two little horns, you know, like that purple emoji on your phone. And I know it's cheesy, but kind of like a little The doctors gave me some drugs and a date for the surgery. I had a month one month to take the drugs, and then the day before the surgery they'd do another ultrasound to see if the tumor responded to the drugs. So for that month, I started doing this thing where I was having these internal conversations with this tumor. It was mostly during shower moments. I think, you little fucker, you think you can just take a li will destroy Look, I know it's really cozy in there, but you gotta go fucking hate you. You do real mind this fuck you. I would target all my fears and anger and rage towards this little devil emoji cell cluster that was threatening to kill me. The day before the surgery rolled around and they did the ultrasound to see if the drugs worked and the tumor had completely changed, had half dissolved, shifted shape, No more little two horned ball. The drugs worked. I should have been happy, believed even, but I walked out of there devastated. This was great news, So why was I sad? I googled where do cancer cells go when treatment works? There was no way that they disappeared into thin air. I wasn't going to fall for this little charade, this disappearing act. The day after they cut out whatever was left of it, This enemy I could hate on and feel beneath my skin, this thing I could target all my fears and anger towards. It was gone, But still I wasn't cancer free yet. Suddenly everything felt vague and uncertain again. From here on out, I was fighting against an invisible enemy. I kept asking friends if they ever felt that way, cancer friends, healthy friends, random people i'd meet. There was this sense of disconnect between what my mind knew I should feel versus what I was truly feeling. And then I found someone. Her name is Jad just like mine, and Jasmine could relate. I am Jasmine Bayomi and this is Little Devils a show where I look at the things that often remain unseen, the flaws, struggles, mistakes, and beliefs that haunt each one of us, or, as I like to call them, our personalized little devils. For this episode, we've collaborated with audio artists Jasmine T. Green on a piece made up of four chapters in which she tries to make sense of her own complicated feelings towards her body. This is embodied by Jasmine T. Green.
00:06:03
Speaker 4: Was a pool.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I had a very detached relationship with my body. I felt that me and my body were two separate beings that never really interacted with one another. The first time I felt joy in my body was when we moved into a different apartment complex and in the middle of the courtyard they had like a small playground, and then they all had a pool. I had always like dreamed of being in water, but I remember that summer. It was one of the first nice days of the year. It was very bright, very sunny, and like they opened up the pool and I was so excited to go there with my brother and sister. And I go into the pool and from a pure physical sensation floating in the water, almost being the same temperature as the water. There was something about the way that I felt this. It was a different kind of disconnect with my body. I felt to be part of the water that I was in, where I felt like my body expanded beyond itself and became a part of another living thing. Whatever I felt in that moment is like I want to live.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: In this.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: I just wanted to stay in that water and smell that quaarine and just like have it take over me. I felt that like, Okay, this is like what I imagine sort of a calm, like the calmness of like a brain that was finally empty. It feels like the voices in my head are becoming drowned by the water to the point where they do disappear. And the only thing that I feel in my head is hearing nothing but the water and the surrounding noise and thinking solely about the sensation of the water on my body. I'm not thinking about any other things that are flittering in my mind. Well, it's so beautiful about that feeling is that for so long my body has felt like a prison I could not escape, and my mind felt to be something that had no bounds or limits. Or when I could imagine I only want to be with you, with you, I was a kid that got overwhelmed very easily. I cried whenever it was time to leave a place. I cried if there was something that changed in my normal environment. I cried when like something happened in the video games that I played. My parents knew that I was like someone who needed stimuli in order to like calm myself down and entertain myself. So this week and I loved sound and music particularly, and they got me a cassette of Hootie and the Blowfish their first album, I guess you could say, and they got me a boombox. I used to play like just one song and repeat. I think it's called like I Only want to be with You or something like that. The first song on that one, and I remember I had like hit play and let it go. The main refrain was like I only want to be with you. I want to be with you. Probably remember the rest of the album. I just like, really like that was like the first song. I was like I loved it, and I would hit it, hit rewind, play it again, hit rewind, play it again. I would just kind of just like put my hands on the on the dresser and just kind of just like with shimmy to the song. Whenever I did it, it gave me an immense comfort, Like it just felt like I was just like in my body, Like it just really felt like a moment where I was just like, oh my goodness, Like it's kind of impossible. It's almost impossible to dance and be self conscious. You just have to just like feel what it is that you're going to do. And that was always something I envied people who like had that really seamless connection between their body and mind in a way that it didn't feel like one was hindering the other. That symbiotic relationship that those had with themselves with something that I desired. I watched a lot of music videos growing up. Everyone seems so happy when they're dancing, and it's like, I want to be happy, and I love music just as much as like these people love music, And up until I like began my gender transition, I without a doubt felt that like there was this difference between like the private performance of myself, especially when dancing, and like the public version of it. And it felt to be very much like dancing was something that I did very much in private, Like in public, I would never dare show any outs of like rhythmic interaction because of, you know, a generalized fear of that being read in a way that was not welcome in a masculine body or performance or presentation. I noticed this was something that had happened kind of like a couple of years prior to me coming to terms with the fact that I needed to make this change in my life. But I felt this like utter need that whenever I was alone, and usually that would only happen when I travel, and I will enternto a hotel or an airbnb, and I would just turn music up really loud, like on like a computer or something, and then I would just dance like for the entirety of the song and just like let my body just do what it wanted to do, and just kind of feel like what does it feel like to embody like myself sort of like uninhibited, just in the gaze of like myself. And I loved what I saw, and I'm like amazed and shocked of like my body doing things and moves, and I was just like I never knew these worksiness was possible in me. But I'm just like damn, like your girl got it, and it very much feels like okay, like this is what I was trying to find, and there was no longer this like separate version. But I felt that like I could not express that rounding the edges. Gentleness didn't come until a complete, for lack of a better phrase, like breaking point many years later. In those years, I had a lot of things happen in my life. I had two pulmonary embolisms.
00:16:40
Speaker 4: My body.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: Was dead for a bit until my partner was able to essentially shake me awake, with which dislodged the clot and I had lost my grandmother and realized that, like when I went home for her funeral, had this overwhelming feeling I'm like, I am living a double life. I had a panic attack in the middle of the night and I like removed all of my clothes and I like stood in the mirror and I like looked in the mirror and I said, I'm trans and I was like, okay. And from that moment is when I started the process. I'm just going to start saying yes to what it is to like what I feel, and just see where that takes me. I mean, transitioning is a whole life process. There's a common misconception that happens it is it's like, oh, yeah, so, like, when are you done transitioning. It's like, no, it is a lifelong process, and it's not necessarily that I'm chasing perfection, but I'm chasing harmony. Before I felt very much like a pentagon with like very sharp edges that like wishes it was a wheel, And it's like, imagine like a car with like pentagon shaped tires, and how difficult and impractical it would be for this car to accelerate, but it continually tries and attempts to accelerate. I still very much am a pentagon, but the edges are slowly becoming rounder and still impractical to some degree, but are smoothing every day. No more status. I still have many of the same issues I have in my life prior to transitioning. I still deal with a lot of anxious thoughts, and I still am processing a lot of trauma from my childhood, and I still have a lot of work I need to do regarding trust. However, there's no longer that hum of working through a all these things while also being in a body and doing the mental gymnastics that it takes to hold all that. It's like when you're flipping through on a radio and you're trying to find the station, but you can't find it exactly. Before it was like landing on like a couple tips before the station where you can hear it there's started, and I don't say I can know.
00:20:33
Speaker 4: You get used to the static and like you have to join it up. But now it's like I'm locked in directly on the station and it's crystal clear. It's an FM. Some of the songs I still don't like, but I can fully hear them, and I can fully pay attention.
00:21:03
Speaker 2: And now like I'll just be out anywhere and if I hear something that just moves me, I will just like move my body, I will move my head. I'll just like let my body just do what it has a natural feeling to do. And like every time I go out, I dance uncontrolled, like I love to dance, I love to move like all these all these needs of just like movement. I just so like it feels like being a kid again. My private confidence self has definitely integrated with my public self much more, and that is taking a bit of getting used to not only for myself, but I think for others too, where are not used to me approaching space and taking up space in that way. You know, I'm nearly six foot and I've got long limbs, and I take up space even when I try not to. And before I felt like that level of discomfort. But when I went out dancing last week, that discomfort went away. I took up space. I used my full body, whether it was moving my hands in the air and wrapping my arms around myself and squatting and shaking my butt and bending over and just you know, utilizing my shoulders and my hands and my hair and my everything. Like every tendril of my body was act evated in this movement versus before where it felt to be this sort of isolated zone of movement that I was allowed to engage in. And on the side of like positive embodiment, there's just the nature of just like knowing that my body is feeling closer to how I've always seen it to be, so there's a different way that it moves, Like having a booty now having thighs now leads to this very euphoric experience of like when I shake my hips, there is like there is a momentum that is exciting, the mental embodiment of just being like I am here as a woman in the space. That's what freedom felt like.
00:24:39
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jasmine T. Green for sharing your story and thank you for listening. Jasmine has several other exciting projects and podcasts. One of them is Girl Versus Horse, and there's another one called Because the Boss Belongs to Us. Jasmine also makes a podcast about mental health called basket Case and as if that's not enough, she also makes music under the name Command plus Jasmine. That's Cmd plus ja Z M I N. We'll link all of them in the show notes. Little Devils is a trz Media original and you're currently listening to the pilot season, so if you want to see what's next in our little bag of stories, make sure to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. There's a bunch of ways that you can support it, and they're totally for free. For one, you can rate and review Little Devils wherever you listen. That would already mean so much to us. And then you can check out our Patreon to see if you'd like to become part of the community around Little Devils. That's Patreon dot com slash Little Devils, and we have a bunch of perks for our members, like you're going to get something in return, for example, calls with me, then the opportunity to read the credits for example. In the future, you could even become part of the process of making the show and could become a test listener for future episodes. That's just the name a few of the perks. They're pretty awesome. You can also email us at Little Devils at t rzminusmedia dot de e and you can find us on Instagram at Little Devil's Show. And of course you can find me on Instagram that's at Jasmine Bayomi. That's j as m I n b a u O M Y no Z's no E's. Little Devil is hosted, reported, and co created by Me, Jasmine Byomi and a small but mighty team of people. This episode was co created and co produced by Marta b and Dweshik and edited by Tim Howard. Mix and sound design is also by Marta Midweshik and in this case Jasmine T. Green. Robin Druma is our executive producer. Our beautiful theme music is by Phoebe mcindoo and mastering by Yosha Khrunovit. Fanny Krabola illustrated our cover art. Thank you to everyone who supported, listened, and spent time giving feedback about the episode. We could not have made this without you. So many thanks to Hannah Abst, Hannah Medeshik, Jan Bumahmann, Johanna Gilia and Zara Karshai.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: A little bed baa
00:28:07
Speaker 1: Whim whi
