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Failure
I’ve been transitioning now for over three years and I still can’t seem to wrap my head around how my friends are making it seem so much easier than what I’m going through. It seems to me that all I do is struggle to simply clear my head of all the shit that I’ve got in there, only to have something happen that fills it back up again. It’s like being at the bottom of a septic tank, manually shoveling out the shit and painstakingly lifting each bucket of filth out of the hole. Each day I look at my progress and congratulate myself on how far I’ve come. I pat myself on the back for having gotten to the halfway point, the shit isn’t floating by my head anymore. And then, way off in a distant house, someone does something they do every day and unbeknownst to them, they dump shit on my head all over again. I throw my hands in the air in disgust yet again, I look around at what I’m dealing with day in and day out, and I get disgusted with myself again. Knocking over the buckets that I’ve already removed from this pit, I fill it back up because that is what it’s for and it’s where I live, this is my home and I can’t escape this place or this shit.
That’s my life. That’s how it feels to me.
On good days I’m positive and upbeat, I feel like I’ve got a handle on this thing called life. But then something happens, like it always does, and someone does something that tears my world apart.
And they never realize that they did anything.
For some reason, I can’t deal with it. For some reason, it rips me apart and it’s like I can’t help myself, I have to rip me apart too. I know that I shouldn’t. I know that I should stop once I’ve started. But I can’t. I can’t stop this thing once it’s started. I can’t NOT hurt myself.
So, I retreat into myself because I’ve failed yet again.
I try to be kind in my own head. I try to tell myself that it’s okay, that I’m a work in progress. I tell myself that I’m not broken, that I’m a perfectly normal human being who is dealing with a lot of trauma. But ultimately, the other voice wins. It’s the voice that tells me that my parents never wanted me and never loved me. This voice holds up their actions and most importantly, their inactions, as proof. This voice tells me that I’m a shit person, a horrible friend, a complete fuck up, and that everything I touch turns to shit. That’s why I live in shit, it can’t be any other way.
People want to be my friend until they get to know me, and I inevitably turn that relationship to shit, eventually they make excuses to not be around me, to exclude me, to make me feel unwelcome so that I stop coming around. That’s the mantra of this voice in my head, and when it starts in on me, I can’t get it to shut up. Whether or not the voice is correct or not, I find myself fulfilling it’s proclamations. Because I can’t believe what people tell me. Sure, they say kind words, but people lie, even to themselves. They mean well, I think. Or maybe they just don’t want a guilty conscious? But I see the writing on the wall, I know the score. We aren’t friends, not really. Acquaintances yes, but not friends. I don’t have any of those.
And it’s at times like these that I struggle the most to not grab a bottle and just start chugging. Because I know where that goes, I know what happens next. I swan dive into my pit of shit and I rub it all over myself, because that is what I deserve. I vomit my self-loathing on anyone and anything near to hand and then I chug on that bottle some more for being a train-wreck of a wimp for not being able to handle my shit like everyone else. Eventually I work my way up to being so drunk that I think I can finally do it. So, I pull out a gun and set it in front of me and I wonder if I have the courage this time. And each time I either pass out because I keep chugging, waiting for that courage to finally hit me, or I put the gun away because I know that I’ve never had the courage, so what’s the point in teasing myself?
At these times, I want nothing more than to end it, to find a sweet release from this life. Because I know that even if there’s nothing afterwards, it’s still better than this pain. Because even if hell exists, it still has to be better than the hell I’m living right now. When you know that people hate you simply because you exist, it’s hell. When you know that even the people who support you, are so repulsed by you that they refuse to even entertain the idea of dating you, that’s agony. When you know that despite the support they give you, even your supposed friends can’t see you as being the gender you are, it’s a never ending nightmare.
My life is all of these things. My life is agony, it is hell, it is a never ending nightmare.
And yet, there are some good things. I know there are good things, it’s just really difficult to remind myself that they exist. And it’s really difficult to break out of that negative spiral. So, I try to distract myself. I try to find something to do, I try to get out and spend time with people, to get away from my thoughts. But people have lives, they have plans, they are busy doing things. When I can’t find anyone to help me distract myself, it gets even more difficult to stay out of that negative spiral.
I can’t seem to give up for some reason though. I guess the one thing I fear more than hell, death, or any agony is… failure. And yet, that is all I ever feel like, a failure.
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Fundamental Shifts in Self Realization
I hate being called “Sir”. I hate it with such a passion that it makes me want to turn on the person saying that to me and verbally eviscerate them.
But I also don’t like being called “Ma’am”. While my reaction to this is somewhat less evocative, it is nonetheless, a negative reaction all the same.
What would I prefer in place of “Sir” or “Ma’am”? I have no fucking clue.
After so much time being seen as male, it’s been like a soothing balm to finally be seen as female. I’ve been able to explore aspects of myself that I’d previously shut down and pushed away from my center. I’ve swung from very masculine into very feminine, almost as a reaction to my being forced to be something I’m not for so many decades. I’ve stayed there for a while now, but I’ve been slowly stepping down from hyper-femme into what I’m now calling enby-femme. For those who don’t know, enby is literally the letters ‘N’ and ‘B’, and it stands for “non-binary”. Which is to say, I’m feminine, but not entirely.
The binary definition of gender that we accept in our society today tells us that you are either MALE or FEMALE. While I’ve known since the beginning of my journey that there are those outside the binary, like many of us, I’ve had a hard time accepting anything outside the gender binary box. I was able to accept it and respect it in others, but to consider that I could be non-binary myself? Psssshht! Naw, that’s just silly!
And why?
Fear.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t be seen as valid, that if I was anything other than hyper femme, people would say that I’m not transgender.
I was afraid to go less than “all the way”. I couldn’t let myself land somewhere in the middle, because anywhere in the middle between the binary of male and female was unacceptable by society.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t be taken seriously and that the parts of me which are masculine would over shadow my femininity.
So, as far as I can tell, this is how things are for me right now. And, I say right now because it can change. Transition is a journey, some would say the ultimate journey, of self-discovery. I know more about myself now than I’ve ever thought possible. And I’ve come to believe that humans are always evolving, always adapting, always changing depending on a lot of different factors. The core of who we are may stay the same, but as we get older, we begin to distill who we are into an ever more concise definition of the kind of person we’ve always been. And so, here is the person I have been distilled into in this place and this time.
Male pronouns piss me off. They cause angst, anxiety, and an expectation that I’m supposed to be something that I’m not and something that I could never be. It’s something that I tried very hard to be for a very long time and it fills me with dread, depression, and hatred of myself whenever they are directed at me. Because I tried to live up to a standard that was impossible for me to achieve. Because I’m not male, never was, and never could be.
Female pronouns are okay. In fact, they were great at first! But more and more, I find that they aren’t entirely accurate. I prefer they be used over male pronouns, obviously, but they are also not painting the correct picture. Think of it like when someone looks much younger than they actually are and how they are okay being referred to as a girl, but they really wish people would start talking to them like an adult. It’s kind of like that, it’s close, but doesn’t quite fit.
So, what would I prefer? Right now, I’m good with They/Them/Their. I don’t care if you don’t like it or think it’s odd or grammatically incorrect (pro-tip: it isn’t!) The more I think about it, the more I like these pronouns.
Does this mean I’m going to de-transition or stop where I’m at? HELL NO!!
I like looking like a woman. I think I look a hundred times better than I did before! And I have every intention of going through with my bottom surgery in the spring! And I have every intention of having another Facial Feminization Surgery when I can afford it! And I have every intention of getting to be a C cup even if I have to pay for that surgery too!
But if you’ve been paying attention to my FB account, you’ll notice that I’ve not been very feminine lately. You’ll notice that I stopped posting pictures of myself for a long while there and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to post pictures again. And it isn’t because I don’t like makeup or looking cute. I love looking cute! But I also like looking bad ass and mean occasionally. I like being tough, I like knowing that I can do a lot of “guy things” better than most guys! And I don’t think that my self-image should have to bend to the will of society when society can’t even get it’s act together on something as basic as equal rights and basic human decency!
So, if you know me, if you call me your friend, I ask that you please use the They/Them/Their pronouns for me. If you slip up and use She/Her/Hers, not a big deal, I just appreciate the effort. But if you slip up and use He/Him/His? You best make an apology real quick, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I appreciate your support in this everyone, thanks for being so awesome!
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Never Again
I’m through with dating sites. I’m through trying to date. I will die single, quite possibly alone, and almost certainly lonely. Men in my generation don’t have the capacity to understand. They don’t have the ability to rise above the views of others to make their own decisions. Attempting to date those who are so much younger than me has likewise, been a disaster. Not because they don’t understand, they do, but they’re also impossible for me to connect with. I couldn’t even tell you the names of the social media platforms they use. I couldn’t tell you what they are talking about when they speak of shows they used to watch or things they loved as a kid. And this is in addition to it feeling creepy as fuck!
People tell me to be patient, that it will happen. The problem is, I haven’t had one, NOT ONE decent guy stick around to even find out if we’re compatible. I never get a second date. Hell, I barely get the first one! In the meantime, I watch my cis friends find and reject people repeatedly. I don’t mean that they are finding the kinds of dregs of society I usually attract. I mean that they are finding quality people with at least a little of a connection. And they are rejecting them for other reasons. Reasons that I personally can’t understand in most cases. Minor issues like chewing with their mouth open. A physical body problem. Talking too much. Talking too little. Being too frugal. Not 420 friendly or smoking too much weed.
Do you have any idea how frustrating it is for someone like me?
Because I’m Demisexual, I go through life NOT being attracted to ANYBODY.
Let that sink in for a moment.
That hot younger guy with the muscles and shoulders? Nada.
That older gentleman with the salt and pepper hair who obviously takes care of himself? Nope.
Vin Diesel? No.
Jason Momoa? I got nothing.
Sean Connery? Just another dude.
Do you see why it’s taken me so long to figure out my sexuality in the first place? I see men and women the same way. They are ALL equally uninteresting to me in that way. I’m good at playing along with people, but this is the truth here okay? And the truth is, I got nothing.
Each time I meet someone, I don’t know if I’m attracted to them or not. That feature doesn’t come with my software, I never got the upgrade.
But I do feel attraction based on emotional connection. For others, this is usually when things get serious. They were attracted enough to want to get to know the person and then felt a deeper attraction that meant that they’re falling in love.
I guess you could say that I almost need to fall in love before I feel attraction. It’s backwards and stupid.
So what does it mean? It means that I go through life without making any connections with anyone because NOBODY CATCHES MY ATTENTION. You can literally be the hottest thing on two legs and I won’t feel anything, it DOES NOT REGISTER.
How do I find dates? Dating sites. I read the profiles, all of it. Then I decide if I could be interested in that person enough to be friends. If I think there’s potential for friendship, then I go for it, if not, I don’t.
That’s how I find them. Now, next level, how do I date them?
If we connect and talk a little bit, I try to ask questions. I try to see if we have anything in common or if we seem to be getting along. If I think there’s still potential to be friends, I go for the meeting. But ONLY AFTER I tell them that I’m Transgender.
That’s usually the end of it right there, but occasionally…
And that’s only the beginning, next I get to know this person before I can even know if I find them attractive. It’s already happened twice that it turned out I wasn’t attracted to them. Thankfully, they turned out to be assholes in the end, so it saved me the trouble.
But do you know what damn near everyone in the world does on the first date? Kiss. Hold hands. MORE??
I want you to imagine kissing someone that you don’t feel attracted to. That’s me. So, each time I go on a date, I get to do that. If I refuse? Goodbye! If I hang in there and go with the flow? It’s like they sense something is off and it’s goodbye! Or they want more from me than just kissing and when I won’t do that it’s goodbye!
Do you see how extremely time consuming and difficult this is?
So, I’m done. It isn’t worth the effort.
It isn’t worth dealing with the guys who practically dog slobber all over me or how they use my face as a fucking chew toy because THEY are into the make out session.
It isn’t worth the pressure from guys who are interested in me only because I have the one body part that has turned me into a fetish in their eyes and all they can think about is fucking me in the ass. Or even worse, the ones who want me to fuck them in the ass!! *Convulsions, vomiting, and panic!*
It isn’t worth someone making up excuses for why they can’t be with me as I watch all my hard work and the potential relationship go swirly because they can’t deal with the thought that SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE may think they are GAY! (God forbid you join us in the gutter you repressed, bigoted, transphobic, piece of shit!!)
I refuse to let myself be rejected again knowing that it’s because of how I was born. And I know that’s the case, because I have my cis women friends as examples for what it’s SUPPOSED to look like.
And I’m tired of being the pitiful laughing stock of the world. I’m not going to give them more ammunition.
And I’m not going to repeat this same situation over and over again like I have been.
NEVER AGAIN.
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Never Say Never
It’s been a while since I paid attention to this blog. I suppose you could say that’s because my life has improved so much. I created this blog to allow me to express my pain, all those dark, hateful things I have wrapped up in my head. It’s served this purpose well, with this blog and therapy, I’ve managed to get ahold of nearly all of my issues. I’m not cured, that word isn’t used when it comes to dealing with CPTSD and depression, it’s more like I have the tools to be able to deal with things myself before it becomes a problem.
But there is one thing that I can’t deal with very well and it’s really starting to annoy me.
Man.
Relationship.
Connection.
Romance.
Love.
For some reason, this particular little issue is very difficult for me to deal with. See, when I was a kid, a lot of traumatizing things happened to me in regards to sex, sexuality, attraction, and all that. I was convinced that being queer was going to get me killed, either by my father or the boys at school. So, I had to STOP being queer. And that’s what I did. I tried to be a boy and to like girls. AWKWARD! No, seriously, I was awkward AF! Eventually, I managed to lay down such a harsh level of repression and denial that even I didn’t know I was queer anymore.
So, you can imagine what it’s like for me when I discovered that I’m attracted to guys, right? “Mind Fuck” is the phrase that comes to mind…
Since coming out and the end of my marriage, I’ve had a handful of experiences with guys. Of those, I was only ever really attracted to one. …it took me a while to figure out the Demisexual thing. (For those of you who don’t know, I’m not attracted to anyone, y’all are house plants as far as I’m concerned! Wanna know more? Google!)
Now this is the problem here. You see, I’m a biker, I ride a Harley and hang out with other bikers. This is so much a part of me that I doubt I’d ever give it up and it tends to take up a good portion of my spare time. In the biker community there are a lot of people who aren’t very open minded about queer folks. Fortunately for me, I’ve managed to find friends who are pretty accepting and it’s really awesome tbh! But, this community has a foundation of machismo, of being tough and strong. Everyone in the biker community has this same, underlying twist to them that we all share. We like this aspect, we like to be tough and to ride around on our bikes looking badass, it’s why we bought the damn thing!
I’ve met a lot of really nice guys in the biker community though. But do you know what I haven’t met? I haven’t met one guy who would be willing to openly date a trans woman. How do I know, you ask? Simple. I know men. In fact, I probably know more about men than most women. Even when men say that they’re open and accepting when it comes to trans women, it doesn’t mean that they want to date us. Even when men say that they’re good if another man dates a trans women, it doesn’t mean that they won’t give him shit about it. Even when men say that they find trans women attractive, it doesn’t mean that they are going to introduce us to their friends.
Do you know what I don’t date anymore?
I got tired of guys being ashamed of me.
I got tired of guys treating me like a sex object.
I got tired of guys saying and doing all the right things but ghosting me until their dick gets hard again.
I got tired of trying to get to know someone only to have them disappear on me after a chance meeting with an acquaintance of theirs where they have an entire conversation and don’t bother introducing me.
I got tired of meeting someone who shares a lot of the same interests and we really seem to have a connection who then cancels our next date with a lame excuse but in reality it’s because I found him on Facebook and had the audacity to send a friend request.
I got tired of being made the absolute LAST PRIORITY.
I need a connection. I need trust. I need to get to know someone. Just to have a chance at feeling attracted to them. Without that, I got nothing.
So, what do you think is going to happen for me in the biker community? First, I’m not stealth. Why? Because I CAN’T TRUST anyone who doesn’t know that I’m trans. Because if I screw up with my voice or I tell a story about my past and I accidentally outed myself and the people I had called my friends were suddenly against me, it would crush me. I need to know that my friends have my back no matter what. Second, being Demisexual, I’m not having sex on the first, second, third, fourth, or maybe not even the fifth or sixth date! It takes a while and I don’t see me feeling anything for months unless a lot of stars and planets have aligned…
Any guy I would date is going to have to be:
1) Okay that I’m an out and open trans woman
2) Confident/tough enough to stand up to bikers.
3) Able to resist toxic masculinity and peer pressure.
4) Willing to date indefinitely with little to no physical intimacy.
5) Must ride a motorcycle.
6) Must put me as one of his top three priorities at least.
7) Must be willing to put up with my Neuro-diversity, CPTSD, Social Anxiety, and depression.
And I don’t see it happening. I know that’s me being negative. I know that it could happen and all I’m doing is stacking the deck against myself. And I try SO HARD to not do that!
But when damn near everyone you’re friends with is either married or in a relationship, it’s pretty difficult to have a positive outlook on things when you’ve not been on a date for over a year! And as the cherry on top of this shitty sundae, the friends I have who aren’t dating anyone can usually pick up the phone for a booty call. Me? My foreplay is going to the store to buy more batteries…
So, when I hear someone say something like “Never Say Never”, understand that you’re just pissing me off. It’s been 2 years since I’ve even felt attracted to someone!
I don’t begrudge the people around me who are in relationships or dating or whatever. I’m HAPPY FOR YOU!
But when I say something about the fact that I’m single and miserable, just… shut up. I’m trying to be happy with myself and with being alone. I can’t even get the momentary pleasure of physical satisfaction when having sex with someone! It DOESN’T WORK! DEMISEXUAL. And please try to not throw what you have in my face. I know you’re happy and I’m happy that you are. However, I honestly don’t believe that I’m going to get that. I honestly don’t believe that there is a guy out there for me. When I say never, I mean it.
So, it’s never going to happen. Now, give me some time for those anti-depressants to kick in.
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Clueless And Okay With That
One of the things that I keep running into that has been a source of angst in the past has been my complete lack of sexual attraction to anyone or anything. Now, I know that this is a completely foreign concept to others. I’ve attempted to describe my situation in the past and I’ve never really been able to get people to understand. I’ve finally come up with something though, and I think you may start to understand. So, stick with me here.
I want you to imagine that everyone else in the world is a house plant. Each of us is different, varied, unique. Even if we are alike in one way, we are still not exactly the same because we all grow different, we get planted in different pots. Now, imagine if all these house plants are hooking up. Like, a cactus is chatting up a fichus, and you’re just standing there going WTF? So, this is how the world of sexuality looks to me. NONE of it makes sense!! I watch people interacting and I have learned how to imitate and blend in. But in reality, I don’t get it, I never have.
Just like what happened today. I had lunch with a friend. The guy taking our order gave me a free Mojito. I thought he was just being cool. My friend told me after we left that the guy was into me. I had no idea. I was clueless and didn’t understand anything about his interaction with me. My friend pointed out other things than just the free drink. Again, all of that blew right past me. It absolutely NEVER occurred to me that this guy could be into me. And when I think about before my transition, my “flirting” was simply learned behavior, repeated and refined based on what I’d seen and learned. I was flirting with people because it was the expected thing to do. I never really understood what I was doing which is the reason why I sometimes was told that I “flirted too much” or “wasn’t flirting at all” or that “I was flirting” when I didn’t think that I had been. You see, I never knew what I was doing before, I was imitating others and trying to fit in.
To understand just how much I’ve become a chameleon, let me tell you about my martial arts past. I was considered a prodigy. No ego there, those were the words of not one, but several of my instructors. I could watch them demonstrate something only a couple times, then repeat every movement they did, almost exactly. I only needed minor corrections. My supervisors at work have all said that they don’t have to repeat themselves, that I learned what they were teaching immediately. You see, I’m a mimic. I can do what you do in a matter of minutes instead of a matter of years… for the most part. There are limits.
Now, I’ve been TRYING to understand the simple art of “flirting”. I was told that this art was “simple” by several people. For me, it’s anything but SIMPLE. To me, the art of flirting is a god damn viper pit and I don’t have any burning torches or a whip and a cool hat to save myself with! I’d rather just stay topside with the Arabs and the Nazis so that I can foment chaos and panic in their supply chain at every opportunity… Okay, enough Indiana Jones. But you get my point, right? I have NEVER understood this! It’s like being at a Middle School dance and you don’t know how to dance! So people keep coming up to me, trying to dance with me and I flail around like an idiot or just stand there wondering what I should do! And now that I’ve transitioned, it’s even MORE confusing! I learned how to mimic the behavior of cishet men in order to blend in. I DID NOT learn the behavior of cishet women! And I wouldn’t understand it even if I knew what to do!
So, occasionally, this situation changes for me. I don’t know how it happens, why it happens, or when it will happen. But one day, out of the blue, someone will stop being a house plant. It’s like magic to me. One minute they are a house plant and I don’t understand them or the rest of society, the next minute they suddenly resolve into someone that is inexplicably attractive to me. It’s a complete mystery to me and I really wish I understood it better. It’s like I suddenly want to dance with someone, and I kind of have a clue how to dance, but I’m awkward AF because I don’t do it very much and I suck at it!
You have to understand how rare this is for me. It’s been two years since the last time I felt like this and at that time, I felt attraction to a Transgender woman. AHEM! Ya’ll. I’m straight. Yeah, I still maintain that. Because *IT’S THE SAME FOR ME* both sexual attraction and deep emotional connections like friendship. I literally can’t tell the difference. It’s taken me A LONG TIME to sort things out and to discover that I prefer men. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can dig women too. It’s just that men are physically more attractive to me and they are who I want to physically be with. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT TOOK FOR ME TO DISCOVER THIS!! Everyone is a house plant… remember?
Maybe I feel attraction and deep friendships so rarely that the two are intertwined? Maybe it’s because I can’t feel physical attraction like other people, so I get confused about my emotional connections being the same thing? And ya’ll, society seriously fucks with a mind like mine. Like, EVERYTHING is subtly geared towards us finding a mate and having a family and popping out some kids. Do you think I EVER believed that I could be something other than ATTRACTED to someone else in this world? MY GODDESS! Just take a walk in a grocery store! Don’t get me started on department stores!
My dilemma is this. Do I go back to that sandwich shop and try to awkwardly do the flirting dance in the hope that I get it right and he wants to ask me out so that I can MAYBE feel a connection to him one day? Or should I continue to ignore this shit and go on doing my damnedest to have a good time for the few years I have left on this world?
For the longest time my answer would have been to pursue the possibility of a relationship. I would have thrown caution to the wind and even have changed my plans simply to sit in the restaurant and wait to see if he was working that day. Now, I’m not sure it’s worth my time. I’d hang out with this guy, going on date after date, just for the hope of a connection. So, I’m trying to decide my next step. Part of me wants to ignore it and continue finding cool and fun things to do with my time. Part of me wants to not throw away the chance at a connection and a chance to finally know what it’s like to have sex with a guy the way that I’ve always wanted to. I’ve been afraid that I’d never have that experience and that I’d die never knowing what it’s like to be with a man that way. And now I’ve come to the point in my life that I don’t care about that. I don’t care about having sex. I’m pretty sure that I’m better at giving myself orgasms than any man could ever be. So why do I want to deal with a man?
See my problem? I’m clueless and okay with that, I’m just not sure that I should be.
Image blatantly stolen from: https://planamag.com/confessions-of-a-demisexual-d945920d59ee
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My Mistake
“You know you’re going to make a really ugly woman, right?”
The cold of the mountain air combined with the speed of my Harley was making it difficult to move my fingers on the levers for the clutch and brake. One of the first curves I’d encountered on my way up this mountain had shown me gravel strewn across the middle yellow line as my headlight illuminated it in the curve and now, I was being cautious. But it was only getting colder and I knew from experience on this mountain that if I didn’t want to spend the night up here, I’d better get back down to warmer weather, fast! When the car in front of me got out of the way, it was time to open the throttle. I knew that I was pushing myself to the extreme when my boot heels were scraping the asphalt and I was barely able to hold my bike in my lane. Now, finally, I was being forced to concentrate to the exclusion of everything else. My troubled mind was forced to think about my survival instead of the pain. Until I made it off the mountain at least. The air was warmer, thicker with oxygen, heavy with moisture. But it seemed like no matter how much I challenged myself, a voice in my head just wouldn’t shut up.
“You know you’re going to make a really ugly woman, right?”
Earlier…
Pride. I wasn’t feeling it this year. Too many fucked up things had happened to me recently, things that made it difficult for me to have any pride in being transgender, in being a member of the LGBT+ community. I’d been considering letting the event pass while I was home with a bottle of whiskey in my hand like I’d done last year. But I went because I had a friend to go with me and because I knew some other friends would be there, and, well shit… I didn’t have anything else to do. It actually ended up being a pretty good day, and I had worked out of my funk a bit. I was having fun and enjoying the event. And that’s when I saw something that I absolutely fell in love with, a bikini top done in “scale mail” (small metal plates), in the colors of the transgender flag. I REALLY wanted it! I got the impression that the seller REALLY wanted to sell it, I didn’t realize until much later that it was probably a white elephant to them.
I hemmed and hawed a lot, I knew I shouldn’t be buying it. I knew that this was going to be an impulse purchase and given that I’d maxed out almost all of my credit recently, this WAS NOT a good idea. My friends weren’t helping, egging me on because they knew that I really loved it. In the end, I caved like an old wild west movie’s mine explosion and tunnel collapse scene. And because they knew they had a sucker on the line, they threw in a pair of matching earrings. I was hot in my shirt, I had a bra on underneath, and well, this was Pride dammit! I took off my shirt right there and put it on! I should have known my mistake when the saleswoman helping me started telling me what I should buy to extend the ties in back. It didn’t click. Thankfully, I didn’t walk around that way for long, it was pretty much the end of the day for me and my friends.
“You know you’re going to make a really ugly woman, right?”
I got back to my apartment and as soon as my ex/roommate saw me with this metal on my chest, she started in with the requests to show her what I’d bought. I’d put my jacket back on for the trip home, so I proceeded to put my things down, take off the jacket, and show her my new bikini top. She laughed. I said something about it, and she told me that she was laughing at the fact that I bought something like it, not about how I looked.
I know better.
One of the things that people can’t seem to realize is that I am FAR more sensitive to the subtleties of human behavior than you could possibly imagine! I KNOW when someone disapproves of me or my behavior. I KNOW when someone is uncomfortable around me. I KNOW when you use words to cover your initial reaction to me. I KNOW when I’m not accepted. I KNOW when you laugh AT me. I KNOW when you’re making fun of me.
I KNOW. EVERYTHING. YOU. THINK. ABOUT. ME. …and quite a few things that have nothing to do with me. Your body language is like reading a book.
I had to develop this ability to sense your true emotions. It’s a survival trait for me. Not knowing if someone accepts me or not, was a life and death situation when I was growing up. If I trusted the wrong person, or was in the wrong crowd, well, getting beaten down was the least of my worries. I was afraid of dying. I was afraid of being murdered. When you are THAT afraid, every day, all the time, you develop some skills to help you with that. So, I can read you like a book, it’s like I look inside you and you can’t hide from me. I know what you feel, when you feel it, and why. Even when you don’t. When you think you are hiding your emotions from me? Ha. Yeah, right. Let me tell you what you’re feeling, how you’re going to react, and what you’re planning to do next. …no, I’m not kidding. If I don’t know you as well, yeah, you get a pass on some things. But if we’ve known each other and spent time together more than a dozen times over a year? I probably got your number….
SHE. LAUGHED.
She laughed at me. Not with me. Not because of something I’d done.
SHE. LAUGHED. AT. ME.
My ex. My roommate.
“You know you’re going to make a really ugly woman, right?”
Those words, that sentence, sealed the fate of my marriage. This was spoken to me when I’d only ever come out to one person, my ex. She said them to me in a moment of weakness I’m sure. She was, after all, losing her husband. But I’m Demisexual and without a connection, trying to be intimate with someone is like offering myself up to a molester or a rapist. So, when she uttered those words to me, when she betrayed my trust in her acceptance of me as a trans woman, that’s when my connection to her was severed.
I tried to not let that be true. I desperately wanted it to not be true. The agony of what I was going through and how I felt like I was losing her was a regular occurrence when I went to my therapist. And I begged my ex to get into therapy as well, either with me or without me. But no matter how many times I asked, no matter how much I begged, she never did. Even now, years later, she won’t do it. She wouldn’t do it for me, she wouldn’t do it for our relationship, and she won’t do it for herself. So, our connection remained severed. And “we” ceased to be.
In that moment of laughter, I saw it in her yet again. Whether she sees me as a woman or not is irrelevant. Because what she sees is laughable, ridiculous, and worthy of being mocked.
I went into my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, yup, I looked like shit! But I thought, maybe it was because I was wearing my bra up underneath it? I took it off and, in the process, realized that the straps to tie it in the back were so short, they almost wouldn’t reach enough to tie it. I persisted though. I’d just paid a small fortune for this piece and by all the gods above and below, I was going to look halfway decent in the damn thing!
Once I had my bra off, the bikini top on and adjusted, it did look better on me. But, as they say in the south, “If you put a dress on a pig, it’s still a pig.” You see, I’d gotten to feeling so good that I’d forgotten one of the cardinal rules for being a trans woman who started transition late in life. NEVER wear anything that shows more than legs, arms, and MAYBE belly, if you’re skinny. But wearing a bikini top? It’s the worst of the worst things for someone like me to wear. My chest is at least ten inches wider than it should be. Even if you ignore the shoulders like a linebacker, the width of my chest causes the blessing of my B cup breasts to look more like A cup, probably less. So, what does that look like? Yup, it looks like a man wearing a bikini top and makeup.
That’s probably why she laughed at me.
I’ve learned that there are some things that I have an instinct for and that I should just do them when the mood strikes me. In that moment I knew that I had to leave, I had to clear my mind, I had to get away. If I didn’t, my depression would overtake me, and I’d be in crisis again. I changed quickly, putting on my riding gear, checking the weather to be sure the thunderstorms had passed, and grabbing my cold weather stuff. As fast as I could, I was out the door and firing up my bike. Having no particular destination in mind, I set my GPS for a favorite spot in the mountains that didn’t get much traffic. I’d been there many times, but I’d never taken my Harley up there and I knew the road was insanely curvy. I knew it was getting late, but I’d ridden in the dark and cold many times before.
What I hadn’t done was ride in the dark and cold to the top of a mountain in the Rockies. But I didn’t care, I often don’t these days, because I really don’t have many reasons to care.
“You know you’re going to make a really ugly woman, right?”
I used to hate every aspect of my body and I never wore anything less than a tee shirt and jeans outside my home. With transition, with HRT, with surgeries, I’d begun to be okay with how I look. I’d started to want to show myself off a bit more, even if I was overweight and needing to lose thirty or forty pounds. So, my expensive, impulse purchase of a metal bikini top was my attempt to feel… feminine, cute, desirable, and maybe, just a little more comfortable in my own skin. And now it’s hanging in my closet, I expect it will stay there until the day that I get sick of looking at it and I throw it out. Because I can’t see any of my friends wanting to wear it either. There are limits to modern medical science, and they don’t have a surgery that can fix this one. So, yet again I’m reminded that I’m never going to look right, I had forgotten that.
My mistake.
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Note to self…
…never let someone else’s optimism into your life, ever again.
Why do I say this, you ask? Simple. It’s called self-preservation. You see, when you’re optimistic, you get your hopes up. You can’t have optimism without hope. And hope is the problem here. Hope is what leads to dreams, hope buoys you to a higher level and helps ease you through dark times.
Until the moment when you realize that the darkness is unending for you.
When you come to understand that other people have hope because they aren’t forced to live in darkness, then the darkness you live in becomes that much blacker. It’s like living your whole life in a room with thick curtains completely covering all the light from the windows. And one day you manage to get a glimpse through a part in the fabric. You see sunlight, green meadows, flowers, and all manner of happy things. You reach for the curtain, only to have your hand slapped away and your jailer pushes you further into the room, further into the darkness.
You see, this is how I feel. This is how I see my world. Each time I attempt to have hope, to be optimistic, I’m forcibly shoved back into the dark. It’s not my actions, it’s not my wish, it’s not anything that I can control.
People keep trying to encourage me. But those same people aren’t in my situation, they don’t understand what I deal with. Transgender. Demisexual. Autistic. Complex PTSD. Depression. If I could completely eliminate one of these things, I may have a fighting chance. But three are out of my control, written into my DNA, one was given to me at such a young age that it’s part of me now, and the other is a symptom of all the others.
So, when you are tempted to give me a shot of some of your cheerful optimism, remember that all you’re doing is coaxing me closer to disaster.
THERE IS NOBODY OUT THERE FOR ME.
I destroyed my life because I wanted to be free to live as the person that I have always been inside. In doing so, I lost the one person that I could go to for comfort. I did this. I made this mess. It’s not as big of a mess as what I had before, but it’s still a mess. And the only difference is that now, I tell people about my mess instead of keeping it bottled up inside so that I become a rage machine.
Trust me. I’m better off without your optimism.
Without optimism I can put my hope into a box and bury it. Then, instead of bleeding my pain and anguish all over the internet, I can go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather outside my window.
While I pretend that I don’t need comfort.
While I pretend that I don’t need to experience what it’s like to be with a man.
While I pretend that I’m not abhorrently ugly.
While I pretend that nothing is wrong.
While I pretend that I’m drinking because it’s a family trait.
While I pretend that I’m not sad.
While I pretend that I’m not lonely.
While I pretend that everything is okay.
While I pretend that I’m happy to be alive.
While I put all of this back into the damn box I had it in before your FUCKING OPTIMISM cracked it back open!
Fake it ‘till you make it.
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Happy Mother’s Day
I’m supposed to be at a bar, meeting other women who ride motorcycles, having a drink and getting to know them. Instead, I’m sitting in my bedroom which has become my sanctuary and my tomb, and I’m writing this. Not because I didn’t have enough spoons to go, not because I chickened out, not because my car broke down.
I went to the bar, and I was the only one to show up. Because this group that I’m trying to get to know is full of a lot of people who are friends already. And outside of the event page, they discussed this event and decided to cancel it because of other things people had going on. And nobody thought to cancel the event, nobody thought to mention it to me, nobody cared.
Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this kind of thing. You don’t get through much in life without having the aforementioned scenario happening to you. Shit, as they say, happens. But my emotions in relation to this is the problem here.
To me, this is a soul-crushing situation. This has me home alone, partaking of edible marijuana (fuck you, I’m in Colorado and the shit is legal!), drinking and crying and fighting off a negative spiral that threatens to ruin every aspect of my life for the next three days at least.
Wanna know why?
Because this was how I grew up. This is why I’m always saying that I’m broken. This is what is known as Complex PTSD. Emotional flashbacks that leave you shaking and traumatized all over again. A return to a pattern of behavior which may be destructive, but is a known method of dealing with the things stirred up in your head. I’m trading my long tern health for short term solutions and I don’t fucking care that I’m doing it. I honestly wish I still had some Oxycodone from my last surgery to take with all of this, because honestly, I don’t want to feel this right now, I don’t want to feel anything at all! That would be preferable.... That’s how much this hurts....
I first discovered this aspect of myself in a slightly different situation. Surrounded by family and having a wonderful time, my guard was down and I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of emotions. Something happened, something innocent and ordinary, but something that “said” to me that I was an outsider, I don’t belong, and nobody wants me there. I was unprepared for the torrent of emotions. I was filled with self-hate, toxic shame, and an absolutely brutal inner critic who quickly convinced me that I had been fooling myself about my family’s acceptance. I was an idiot, they were laughing at me, they didn’t want me around, I was comedy relief, a joke, and not even worthy of pity.
In that moment, all I wanted to do was get away. I wanted to turn my back on them and their laughter and their fun. And I almost did it. I almost disappeared without saying a word to anyone. Because that’s how I handled it when I was growing up. I would turn my back on my tormentors and pretend that it didn’t hurt me, I would pretend that I wasn’t upset. And I almost did that. In fact, I almost went to extreme measures to get away from them. It was simple chance that kept me there, if I’d had the means, I probably would have left. As it was, I had been considering walking home if necessary.
So, you see, the best way to hurt me is to abandon me, to cut me out, to leave me behind, to forget about me.
That was what my childhood was. My mother didn’t care about me. I would come home from school covered in blood with my shirt half ripped off of me and she would barely comment. She knew I was getting bullied and beat up at school, my teachers called her about it several times over the years. But my mother didn’t want to be bothered, so she got my father to address the issue. His solution was to teach me to fight back. ….against five, six, seven? …ten?! …fifteen?!! A veritable pack of rapid dogs, and I was always “small for my age”. So, my father taught me to fight back and gave me a complex that caused me to black out and go into “rages” that had me wreaking destruction on anything I could come into contact with. And after he was done, he left me like that and went back to his drinking. Because, let’s be honest, my father loved alcohol more than he ever loved me, and actually caring about my safety was simply beyond both of my parents.
As a child I reached out to my mother when I was in need. She passed me to my father because she didn’t want to be bothered with me. My father gave a token effort that did more harm than good, then left me to fend for myself. And that is the theme of my childhood. Over and over and over and over again. My mother would do whatever it took to be left alone so that she could smoke her dope in peace. My father would do whatever it took to be left alone so that he could drink his beer in peace. That is how I grew up. And all the while they told me that I couldn’t trust anyone but them. They told me that the world was a dangerous place and full of people who wanted to harm me. They told me that THEY were the only ones who cared about me and that nobody else in this world would give a damn if I lived or died.
And when it was my father who was hitting me, did my mother come to my rescue? When it was my adopted brother molesting me, did my mother do anything about it? When a gang of boys on bikes chased me all the way back home because I had the nerve to ride my bike down their street, do you think my mother said anything? When I came home, nose still bleeding, face cut up and bruised, because I did what I was told and “stood up to the bully”, did my mother do anything about it? When my father grabbed his belt in a fit of rage and laid into me so badly that, to THIS DAY, I still can’t remember the beating, did my mother stand up for me?
So, folks. The moral of the story is, try to remember people like me when planning your events. Update that shit, don’t assume everyone got the memo.
Oh yeah. And Happy Mother’s Day. Just not to my mother. Mother’s don’t get today just because they squeezed a kid out. They earn that shit. My mother didn’t earn a damn thing.
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Sick and Tired
I used to have a serious anger issue. I tried many ways to deal with it. The military, martial arts, meditation, letting it out on inanimate objects, bottling it up to deal with later, all kinds of things. But nothing has ever helped me to get rid of it completely. Nothing has ever allowed me to be free of my anger, rage, and hatred for this world I live in. With the epiphany that I’m transgender, I thought that I’d finally discovered the source of my anger. I thought that it was because I had been forced to hide myself from such a young age. I thought that I had learned at a very young age that I was allowed to be angry, but I wasn’t allowed to be sad, and that was why I had such issues.
Upon discovering that I should have been born a girl and that there’s nothing wrong with me for being this way, I began to drape myself in femininity. I figured that repressing the girl inside was causing my issues, therefore, immersion in the female would cure all my ills. But it didn’t work as well as I thought it should. To be sure, a lot of my issues have been reduced to the point of practically being non-existent. It’s kind of like saying that the inferno has been reduced to a candle flame. And for that, I’m eternally grateful! You have no idea what it’s like to have the spoons to deal with my life instead of lashing out physically or internalizing things to the point of physical symptoms of the stress and rage I carried. I had always been only moments away from doing something extremely stupid and the slightest things would have set me off.
I don’t want to minimize the benefits I’ve seen from my transition, to the contrary, I’m more relaxed and at peace now that I have probably ever been. However, my anger issues persist, and I really don’t like that about myself. As I realized that covering myself in femininity wasn’t helping me as much as it should have, I began to back off that. I allowed myself more freedom in my expression, I allowed myself more room to grow in my gender, both the expression of it as well as my sense of it. I started to allow myself the freedom to simply BE. I found that I don’t like the feeling of vulnerability I get when I am looking really feminine. I found that I prefer to wear a “persona” of sorts. It’s the same kind of persona that I used to wear in high school. By being someone who looks tough and mean, I gain a kind of armor against the hatred and cruelty of this world. And I’m okay with that, it’s comfortable to me. What’s more, this persona, this armor, it doesn’t cause me any stress or anger or angst. If anything, I don’t get the chance to take things as far as I’d like, my boss wouldn’t like it very much if I came to work with a mohawk.
But my anger issue is coming from somewhere, and lately I’ve been trying to figure out the mystery. Because I don’t like being such an angry person all the time. I don’t like needing to meditate. I don’t like having to use the discipline taught to me by the military and my martial arts training. I don’t like having to swallow my irritation in an effort to keep from lashing out at someone undeserving. I don’t like needing to apologize for when I’ve been unable to control myself. All too often I find myself an emotional wreck. All too often I find myself choking back tears for things that shouldn’t be as emotional as they are to me. All too often I find myself dealing with a swirl of anger, guilt, self-hate, depression, and confusion. All too often I find myself wondering what the fuck happened?
I used to think it was just me. I inherited my anger and rage. Then I thought it was how I was raised. I learned my anger and rage. Eventually I came to understand that my anger and rage were a reaction to the world around me and that once I got the world to see me as I am (for the most part), my anger and rage began to dissipate. What remained confused me though. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t shake it. It came in waves too. Waves that I initially determined were due to the medications I was taking. And it was true, and it did seem to follow my ups and downs for this medication which was VERY out of specification. And so, I’ve been going down the road of adjusting things, waiting for my body to metabolize the adjustment, and then getting retested. A process which takes 2-3 months on average for each adjustment. Meanwhile, I asked that people be understanding of how things are for me. I didn’t want to inadvertently offend anyone.
Things still aren’t as they should be, however. I know that this medication is VERY likely not the cause of my continued anger issue. The level has been adjusted enough, and I’ve been sensitive to the symptoms, enough so that I can now say that I’m positive that the medication isn’t the cause. While I’m also VERY sure that the imbalance of the medication was a contributing factor, I’m also VERY sure that it isn’t the cause by itself. There are other symptoms when my medication is out of whack, and those symptoms are easy to detect and track. And while the meds can make my anger issue worse, they don’t follow with my issue or the initial outbreak of my anger.
What my experience has shown me, is that my issue is being caused by one specific person. It took me until today to fully realize what’s been happening. When I finally realized it, I had one of those forehead slapping moments when you just want to degrade yourself for being a fool for not having seen it earlier. But it’s my nature to be a different (vulnerable) person to those close to me. And therefore, it’s those close to me who can do me the most harm. As they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and this is a classic example of that. Now that I see, now that my eyes are open, I’m going do my best to keep this person from messing with my head. That means that I’m going to have to distance myself from them. In my world, it’s not easy to get to know me, it’s not easy to get behind my walls. Once there, I’m an open book, and that’s easily used against me.
The thing that I’ve had to learn to come to this conclusion is this. I’m not here to make other people happy. No matter how much I love you. No matter how much I care. I’M NOT HERE TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE HAPPY. Because if all I do is make others happy, there’s no happiness left for myself. If I don’t allow myself to be who I am and if I’m not loved and accepted for being that person, then the relationship/friendship is built on a lie. No matter what it looks like I’m throwing away, I’m not. Because it was never there to begin with. I would rather throw away something that I’ve never had and walk away to look for something true.
Because I’m tired of being angry all the time. Because I’m tired of not being allowed to be the person I am inside. Because I’m sick of pretending that everything is okay when it hasn’t been in a VERY long time. Because I’m tired of being confused all the time. Because I’m tired of being depressed all the time. Because I’m sick of being the “bad guy” all the time. Because I’m sick of doing whatever is necessary to keep the peace all the time. Because I’m tired of living a life that I’m not happy with. Because I’m tired of trying to help those who obviously don’t want my help. Because I’m sick of helplessly watching someone I love continue to walk a dark path. Because I’m sick of feeling guilty for simply trying to be happy. Because I’m tired of explaining myself to someone who always misinterprets my actions in the worst possible way. Because I’m sick of drowning myself in alcohol all the time in an effort to drown my feelings of guilt. Because I’m tired of never getting what I want out of my life. Because I’m sick of not being trusted. Because I’m tired of giving everything I’ve got and it’s still not good enough
Because I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.
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Reforged
In a few short months it will be the three-year anniversary of my realization that I’m Transgender. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the past three years. There have been many things that I’ve gone through that were more traumatizing than I thought possible. Losing old friends, losing family, suddenly being a minority, suddenly discovering that I’m hated for simply existing, realizing that I’m a fetish to men, just ugh! But there have been many things that I’ve gone through that were so epically beautiful that I can’t properly describe them with words. Getting on HRT, being myself in public for the first time, going full time, being kissed by a guy to the point of taking my breath away! So many things!
I’ve had a lot of revelations, about myself, about the world we live in, about the people in my life, about the nature of humanity. I’ve come to understand that I’ve been a person drowning and reaching out for anything that will sustain me. Each time I’ve grabbed ahold of something I’ve done so with the belief that THIS would be the thing to save me, to fix me, to make it all better again, to finally allow me to be content, to finally have some peace and happiness.
There isn’t anything in this world that can save me though.
That was my mistake. I researched transition with a fervor matched only by religious zealots. I knew the pitfalls, I knew where I would go, at least in theory. What I didn’t know was that transition isn’t just about becoming the person you are both inside and out. Transition is about learning who you are in the first place. It’s about learning how to accept the person that you are and learning to live with parts of yourself that you may not necessarily like.
It’s like a bad sunburn, road rash all over your body, being covered in papercuts, or being whipped all over. There is pain, so much so that you became desensitized to it, and you’ve long since stopped noticing it. But because you live in this state, you don’t have enough spoons to deal with life. When you begin to learn this fact for the first time, you resist doing the things you should do to heal. You’ve become so accustomed to your life that you can’t imagine it being any different. You actually fight it because this pain is all that you’ve known for so long, you can’t imagine life without it.
Accepting that things MUST change hasn’t been enough. I accepted that things MUST change when I realized that I’m trans. Acceptance was never my problem. My problem has always been that I’m quite comfortable being miserable. That’s one of the things I discovered that I’m not liking about myself. “They aren’t happy unless they’re crying.”
The key to my understanding of this came when I began to understand how badly I beat myself up about things. I’m my own worst critic. I’m the one berating myself constantly. I’m the one telling myself that I’m worthless, lazy, stupid, ugly, fake, a liar, a cheat, and an all-around waste of oxygen…. And I’m being more kind in the telling of this than I would be inside my own head.
Coming to this conclusion has been monumental for me. I didn’t understand just how deep this went for me. I can’t honestly accept a compliment. The second someone compliments me I immediately deflect it. And when I know that someone won’t let me deflect, it actually causes me angst. I honestly don’t know how to respond, I don’t know how to feel about it, and I can’t believe that the person giving me the compliment believes it themselves.
So, I’m trying something different.
Rather than being my own worst enemy and being happy to be miserable all the time, I’m going to try turn things around. I’ve learned that I became this way when I was very young, but that it is possible to change, to heal, to become better. This isn’t going to be easy for me. From what I can tell so far, I’m going to be doing a lot of struggling against my own inner critic. I’m going to fail a lot. But I’m going to try to not be hard on myself about that. I’m going to attempt to de-program all the negativity that was shoved into my head as a kid. I’m going to attempt to pull out of this slow-motion nose dive, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally learn to fly.
The military was supposed to “break you down and rebuild you”. And they did that to me. But I don’t think that’s the way to do it. Being broken just made things worse, and they didn’t rebuild me. They left me adrift in a world I didn’t understand. I put myself back together the best way that I knew how, and I did a really bad job of it. This time I’m going to try and fix myself the way that the experts say I should. I’m going to slowly, over time, change how I think about myself. I think it’s worth a shot.
When it’s all said and done, I hope to be someone stronger, more confident, better. I want to be someone who knows what they want and goes after it. I want to be the kind of person that is proud of who they are and what they’ve accomplished. I want to be someone that I like, someone that other people like, and someone who can make friends easily. I hope that, like a thing of legend, one day I will tell the story of how I was reforged. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it…. (sigh) Being positive is SO difficult!
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Big Dreams, Die Hard
There have been only a few dreams that I’ve wanted in my life. Because of who I am and how I was raised, some of those dreams were never within my grasp. Still, I tried to reach for those dreams several times in my life. Against all hope, against all rationale, I kept trying. The reality of those dreams was that some of them actually were impossible, I may have not known it then, but it was made plain to me in time. I had to make my peace with things that were medically impossible of course. That was a huge factor in my repression and denial for years. Only, I thought that it was medically impossible to change my body in significant enough ways that I would be seen as female. I had been proven wrong on one aspect of one of my dreams. Sure, I would never be able to carry a baby and to give birth, but I could be female for all intents and purposes otherwise.
Realizing that I could have part of one of my dreams has made me search out the other dreams that I’ve always had. Some of those other dreams are still within reach, and I still can make them happen. Ride my motorcycle all over the western parts of the states, totally possible. Swim in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans before I die, halfway there. Climb to the top of a really big mountain, I got over ten in view from my bedroom window, shouldn’t be a problem. Build my own chopper, I’m sure I can do it when my finances are straightened out.
There are a lot of things that continue to be outside of my grasp though. And it’s not only a fact of biology that dictates my inability to achieve those dreams. I will never be a good chess player, I know the rules, but I suck at strategy. I’ll probably never get to see China, Japan, England, or any other nation on the other side of an ocean. Even if I could get a passport sorted out from all the legal mess, I doubt that I’ll ever be able to afford it. I may be able to make my body look mostly female, but I’ll never be attractive, and I doubt that I’ll ever be with a man the way I should be. Why would a man want me when he’s got plenty of other women to pick from that don’t look like a hulking beast? Bottom surgery is for me, so that I can live with myself, I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever get a guy. But being a writer was another big one, a really big one. I’ve wanted to be a writer for over twenty-five years.
I’ve bought books on how to write. I’ve followed at least a dozen different methods for writing a successful book. I’ve written for nationally distributed magazines reviewing products, I’ve written for blogs, for my high school paper, and any random person I could talk into letting me put something together. Flyers, handouts, advertisements, class schedule descriptions, even a bio or two for friends which they never used. I was told that you get better at writing by doing more writing, so I’ve tried to write more than ever. This blog, another blog, poetry, articles, opinion pieces, novels. I’ve written so much that I find myself sitting at my computer, staring blankly at the screen with a blinking cursor because I forgot what I was supposed to be writing this time.
It doesn’t seem to be helping me though. Even when I think I’ve made some progress, somehow my strides forward are revealed to me as nothing more than walking in place. I’m on a treadmill, a hamster wheel. I’m in a nightmare where no matter how much forward progress you seem to make, you never go anywhere, and the specter of the world’s ridicule is always about to grab you. And yet, I’ve persevered, I’ve persisted. Because everyone told me that is how you do it. Because I’ve seen others do it and succeed. Because I’ve wanted to succeed at this more than I’ve wanted almost anything. I’ve given up before, and I still came back to this. I’ve walked away and said that I’d never try again, yet, I still came back. Even during my worst repression, denial, depression, PTSD, rage issues, and suicidal thoughts, I’ve written.
I’m about to give it up again.
Part of me thinks that I’m overreacting, part of me is saying that I should step away, clear my head. But part of me is saying that if it wasn’t true, shouldn’t I have something to show for my effort by now? Shouldn’t I have at least gotten paid for something I’ve written? When am I going to admit that I’m not good at this? When I pay to be published? When I pay for the paper to be printed on? When I pay for the advertising to try and get people to buy my work?
There are people out there who are truly shit at writing. Just like there are people out there who are truly shit at any number of things. I can recognize that I’m not very good at chess and I’m okay with that, but I keep slamming my head into the wall over writing? Maybe I’m just shit at this and I need to recognize that. But I don’t know what else I could do. Writing is what I have, besides my gender and sexuality issues, writing is the only thing I’ve honestly wanted in my life above everything else. I could happily give up all the rest, just to be a writer. And maybe I’m just a shitty writer.
Big dreams really do die hard.
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I’m a monster
One of the things that is very common among Transgender people is the feeling that we don’t fit in or belong with cis people. For many of us, this is reinforced by the circumstances of our physical appearance as we transition. It’s difficult to not feel like you are “other” when people are constantly looking at you, or in many cases, blatantly staring to the point of being extremely rude. Each of us must deal with this unwanted attention in different ways. For those who are fortunate, this is an experience that gradually happens less and less as our transition progresses. For those who aren’t as fortunate, it’s a daily occurrence for years, perhaps even decades, possibly even the rest of their lives. In my case, I’m very fortunate, and after only a short time I was able to blend in with the dominate cis gender population.
You would think that would be the end of it wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. It’s one thing to finally be able to blend in with society, it’s a completely different thing to feel like you actually belong there. Just as our transitions are individual and unique to each of us, so to is our ability to feel as if we are part of humanity. Various factors can weigh on a trans person and it affects our abilities to identify with others. The acceptance of those around us, whether they know us to be Transgender or not, also plays a vital role in our feelings in this regard. We’re often very sensitive to the looks, words, and actions of others as we try to determine if we are accepted in their hearts and minds. Most of us were told from very young ages that we’re weird, strange, or odd. We were treated accordingly, therefore, we know when people are paying lip service to the ideals of acceptance and equality. We know when they think we’re weird, and we know when they don’t really want us around.
What cis people don’t know, or for some reason they can’t seem to comprehend, is that we crave this acceptance, this tacit approval from society. We want to belong to this greater thing! As well as all the subsets of society that everyone else seems to enjoy such as family, friends, clubs, organizations, or any kind of gathering of people who share something in common. We often go overboard in trying to fit in to these groups. Some of us invest more time, money, and energy into a hobby than we have ever put into a job, simply so that others in the group will “like” us. Simply so that we can gain that sense of belonging and acceptance. We can invest so much into a group that we lose perspective, allowing others to take advantage of us, or even purposely volunteering ourselves in that capacity. And even when we try to reign ourselves in, even when we try to approach things with some restraint, we often fail to do so.
I won’t even go into what it’s like to deal with this in the context of a relationship or how it’s further complicated for me because I’m Demisexual! That’s a whole other can of worms!
After a while, most trans people can find a place in this world. We have family, either by blood or by bond. We get hobbies, we get social circles, we get friends that we share a connection with. In short, we gain this acceptance and approval in society that we’ve always wanted, that we’ve always craved. Things settle down and we move on with our lives. Our struggles continue, but they are the normal struggles of every day people, just like the world around us. Instead of talking about our transition all the time, we move on to other things because we’ve accomplished our goals of transition and it’s become time to get on with our lives instead of being stuck in one place all the time.
So, I find myself, after forty-some years of life and over two years of transition, still unable to connect with humanity for any meaningful length of time. I’ve tried joining churches and clubs, gym memberships and classes, socializing in nightclubs and restaurants, committing to family and friends. I’ve presented myself in different ways, thinking that maybe I was being too much of one thing or another. I’ve been as real as I can be, showing my true colors from the beginning. I’ve tried to be part of groups from as small as two to as large as thousands. I have invested myself fully, to the point of madness. And I have restrained myself in an effort to gain some sort of moderation so that I didn’t “burn out” too quickly.
But none of it works. Not even when I try to “stick with my own kind”.
I inevitably receive a signal, or a series of signals, which lets me know that I don’t belong, that I’m not actually one of them. I am different. I am other.
The more I identified with the group, the more it hurt me. Fantastic betrayals and epic incidents of backstabbing have become things that I see coming from very far away, and as such, have very little effect on me. I have time to prepare, I have time to harden my heart. However, the subtler the rejection, the more pain it causes me. When I let myself be taken in, when I really believe and start to think that I belong, that’s when it hurts the most. And yet, I still let myself be taken in, I let myself believe.
Not anymore.
You see, I’ve come to understand why I don’t fit in, why I always feel like I’m “other”.
The first character I played in D&D was a “Half-Elf”. In the game, half-elves are outcasts from both elven and human societies. As a half-elf, you are too human for elves to accept you and too elven for humans to accept you. In other words, you don’t fit in anywhere. This was exactly the way I had always felt, every day of my young life. I never fit in.
Later in my life I played D&D with a man who had only ever played the first edition of the game. When I told him that I was playing a half-elf, he looked at me and said, “So you’re a monster!” You see, in the first edition of the game, you couldn’t be half-elf. They were only found in a book called a “Monster Manual” which held all the nasty things that you could encounter in the game that would want to do you harm. It wasn’t until the second edition of the game was published that you were allowed to play a half-elf, and to his mind, I was going to be playing a monster.
So, you see, it’s not a matter of my inability to fit in. I can’t fit in. I’m too elven for this society. And even though I can understand a good chunk of human society, I will never fit in. Because I was never supposed to fit in. I was outcast from the beginning. I’m not like any human being out there, because I’m not completely human. I’m a half-elf. I’m a monster.
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Reborn
I’ve been on a roller coaster ride of epic proportions. At least, that’s how I see it. Part of this has been fueled by my medications being thrown off, it’s made me more emotionally unstable. But another, much more considerable factor, has been my self-hatred and self-loathing. It’s actually kind of difficult to describe, but essentially, I’ve been attempting to get others to validate my existence. When I was hiding what I am, I sought out relationships with women, not because I wanted to be with a woman, but because if I had one it meant that everything is RIGHT despite my feelings on the matter. It meant that I was doing/being/existing correctly. Those relationships were rewarding, just being WITH someone is like balm on a wound. Human touch is such a necessary thing for human beings. And for me, it was doubly so because I’d been denied so much affection from my parents. After the age of seven, my father only ever hugged me once. After the age of nine, my mother only hugged me when I came back home to visit as an adult.
So, human contact has been lacking my life lately, and it’s helped to foster my feelings of loneliness, isolation, and rejection. I’ve been hesitant to have physical contact with my ex/roommate because I’ve been unable to put clear definitions in my mind about what our relationship was becoming. And even now, it’s not as if we are hugging each other daily, or even touching. Because that is how a friendship is, more would be too intimate. My remedy was to go out and start dating. But dating as a trans woman isn’t nearly as dangerous as I thought, but it is as emotionally damaging as you could possibly imagine. Perhaps others see it differently, but for me, meeting a strange man in an attempt to see if he’s someone I want to date kind of feels like offering myself up for sale. I’ve always been more concerned about whether or not they are going to like me as opposed to whether or not I have any attraction to them. Their interest in me has been my validation as a woman and has been my attempt to fill the hole that is my loneliness. With each failure, I felt it was confirmation that I shouldn’t exist and that nobody in this world could possibly love me.
But as I said, my feelings have never come into play in these encounters. I’ve sought their approval but none of them have sought mine. They haven’t even attempted to find out what my feelings are, or even tried to learn anything more about me other than what they needed to get me into bed with them. (With one exception, the one nice guy that I’ve met and that ended for one of the many reasons relationships don’t work out.) I’ve attempted to coax them into the deeper relationship that I need. I’ve attempted to ignore them in the hope that their interest was piqued and that they would seek me out for curiosity’s sake. I’ve been brainy/nerdy. I’ve been active/fit. I’ve been trendy/cool. I’ve been domestic/family centric. And everything I tried, failed. Was it because I don’t know how to date men? Maybe. Was it because I’m trying to date the wrong kind of men? Could be. Was it because I was willing to have sex with them too soon in the relationship? Doubtful. Was it because I refused to have sex with them in the beginning of the relationship? Probably in that case. Was it because I’m too old/young/fat/skinny/small breasted/large breasted? No idea.
I’ve asked myself what I’ve been doing wrong and come up short of answers so many times I felt like I no longer knew anything about relationships, men, women, love, or happiness. Then one day I had to admit to myself that, I’m the common denominator in all of this. And given that there are trans women in relationships with cis men, I had to conclude that I’m the one doing something wrong in all these instances. And because I’ve been frantically running around “finding myself” by being all these different things, I also had to conclude that it’s connected. That means that I’m not “finding myself”, I’m changing who I am to be what they want. Sound familiar? I’ve talked about it here before. Many trans women have talked about it. How we changed our behavior, how we want to look, so that we can be the gender that society wants us to be. And I finally could see that I’ve been trying to be what I thought I should be, what society could accept, a trans woman who dates men.
But is that me? I now understand that by fitting into one of the slots that society gives us, I was shoving myself back into a box. It was just a box of a different kind. It’s the box that a lot of people find themselves in later in life when they wake up one day and realize that they aren’t living the life that they wanted. None of it has been me. Aspects of me, to be sure, but not me.
Because I hate myself so completely. Because I loath what I am so much. I’ve sought love/companionship/acceptance from others and I was willing to do anything to get it. My situation was further exacerbated because I’m demisexual. And forcing myself to have sex with someone when I feel no connection is like asking to be raped. Even in the best experience I had, it wasn’t very enjoyable for me.
However, with my epiphany, I also came to know myself better. I understand why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. I had to come to terms with the fact that I may never find someone to be with. But more importantly, I had to come to terms with not even trying to find someone in the first place. Because my actions weren’t the actions of someone who is seeking a relationship because I want someone to love. I wanted someone to show me that I’m worthy of simply existing.
With my newfound knowledge, I found the strength to stand. I’m not trying to date because I don’t want to deal with it. I haven’t given up, I’m not depressed about it. If someone comes along, hopefully I’ll be ready for that. But I don’t feel that I need it anymore. I’m also not willing to say that I won’t date women. The semblance of a cis-hetero relationship is no longer a requirement for me. If I click with someone, I’ll spend more time with them, hopefully they would feel the same.
But I’m through with facades and boxes. I’ve already spent so much time getting here, I really don’t want to spend more time making myself miserable so that society accepts me, this time in a different box! If that means I don’t blend in to societies standards, so be it. I can’t say that I won’t ever do it again, but I can say that I don’t believe I will fall back down into this hole quite as deep as I recently have. And I will say that I’m good with being who I am, with living my life for me and me alone.
And yes, that is a picture of me with my new Harley Davidson motorcycle. Check another box off the bucket list. 😉
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Title: GFYS
Dysphoria is something that most cis people can’t understand. It’s something that we try to explain again and again and again and again, to the point of exasperation and exhaustion. But when you are having a normal day, nothing strange, nothing different, nothing difficult, and you suddenly get smacked with it, it’s kind of hard to ignore. It just happened to me, not a minute ago, again. You see, as a trans woman, this kind of thing doesn’t disappear when we transition. It doesn’t disappear when we’ve had surgery. This is something we live with EVERY DAY of our lives. And we can choose to ignore it, or we can choose to accept it and deal with it.
One path leads to understanding and peace, the other leads to destruction and ruin. I know, because I’ve been there.
So, what is gender dysphoria? Simple, it’s touching something that shouldn’t be there. It’s feeling something that shouldn’t be felt. It’s being something that you shouldn’t be. How is this different from someone who wants to cut off their leg or arm? Simple, our symptoms go away when we get treatment. That’s why gender dysphoria is no longer listed as a mental disorder.
So, what’s it like? I’ll tell you.
Just now, I went to the bathroom to pee. And I had one of those rare moments when I wasn’t blocking/mentally prepared for the event. I freaked. Because what I have ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. It’s unlike anything cis people could possibly understand. I LITERALLY freaked myself out because of my own body parts. I got the “whilly’s” the “hee-bee-gee-bees”, whatever you want to call it. Do you know how I dealt with it? I punched myself as hard as I could. Yes, I did. Hell, I still feel like doing it again.
Physical pain is the only way that I know to deal with my condition. Whenever something causes me distress, I hurt myself. The more distressful, the more pain I inflict on myself. I learned this from an early age. I know nothing else, so I deal with things in my own way. I used to use the pain to help me also repress the emotions and memories. But I’ve managed to work past that now. It wasn’t easy.
But just reading this makes me want to turn my thighs into hamburger. I want to cause myself so much pain. Because I don’t think that I should exist. I was taught this. I am wrong, I am broken.
Understand that, one minute, I can be perfectly fine.
And the next, I want to have all of my nerves light up with pain. I want punishment, I want my flesh torn.
I treat myself with tattoos and piercings, for the pain that it causes me and the aesthetic of being an outward representation of the pain I feel. These are my Red Badges of Courage before I transitioned, now, they are my Scarlet Letter, my punishment.
I didn’t stop it this time. I just pounded my thighs into submission. If you want to understand, try punching your own thighs as hard as you can, keep it up until your fist hurts.
You aren’t tougher than we are. Nothing is tougher than a trans woman.
I’m not this way because I’m transgender.
I’m this way because I wasn’t accepted as transgender when I was a child.
And this world, your deity, your dogma, your twelve step program, can all go GET FUCKED!!!
I’m not changing.
And neither is anyone who is like me.
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The End of the Beginning
I’ve been wanting to get back here and write for a while but, life has been getting in the way as it sometimes does. There have been several times that I had some good subjects that I wished to explore. But a busy schedule has left me far too overwhelmed to do much more than stare at my screen for ten minutes every evening before it’s time to get into bed! That isn’t a bad thing, especially with my hormones being so completely off as they have been, so now that my medications are adjusted, that situation should be over with thankfully! Still, my life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately and I’ve barely had time to catch my breath! And as luck would have it, I have recently gotten some good news that seems to be the cherry on top of what is rapidly turning into the sundae that is my life!
When I finally began to realize that I’m Transgender, one of the things I discovered were women who had fully transitioned and did something called “going stealth”. I found out that these women were able to blend into society completely, that nobody knew they were trans women. I discovered that several of these women claimed that their surgeries were so complete that even doctors didn’t suspect them of being trans. This blew my mind because twenty years ago when I’d given up on ever being able to become a woman, it was unheard of for a woman to pass a doctor’s examination. At least that was what I had come to understand!
I began to investigate all the different procedures, pros and cons, complications and costs. If you’ve kept up with me then you know that I’ve already had a few things done to reverse the ravages of testosterone on my face. I have some other surgeries I’d like to have done as well, but I guess you could say that my bucket list has some priorities! By getting a few things fixed on my face, I felt like I could at least go out in public without being self-conscious. Despite all that money and despite all the pain I’ve endured, I’ve felt like it’s been worth it because I have no problem being myself in public. To me the benefits have been even greater than I’d expected, certainly on the same level as what being on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) has done for me!
But my next milestone that I’ve been looking forward to is Gender Confirmation Surgery (GCS), what is commonly referred to as “bottom surgery” in the trans community. For some of us, this is the “holy grail” of medical procedures. For others it doesn’t have the same sort of connotations or importance. I’ve been told on numerous occasions by several trans women that they don’t want this surgery and would refuse to get it even if it was offered to them. But for me, this surgery has been like making a fantasy come to life and if you know my full name then you probably know that I’m all about chasing the fantasy!
When I was going through my first puberty, I tried to remove my own genitals because the changes in my body were so distressing. I won’t go into detail but suffice to say that I caused myself a lot of pain to no avail. And so now, here I am with a surgery date just over sixty-two days away because of a last-minute opening! The fulfillment of my greatest fantasy, the one dream that I thought could never have been accomplished, has finally arrived! Part of me wants to whoop for joy and the other part of me wants to puke my guts out! I’m ecstatic and nervous and happy and terrified and worried and, and, and… EVERYTHING!
In this maelstrom of emotion, one thought crystallized in my mind though. And that thought was that this is the end of the beginning. With this surgery I’m about to close the first chapter of my new life and begin on the next one. I will finally be fully and entirely whole to my own sense of who I am. No more accidentally bumping something that isn’t supposed to be there. No more turning my hips to the side to avoid the cabinet door handles when I’m putting my makeup on every morning. No more worrying about whether something can be seen depending on my choices in clothing. No more discomfort because something got pinched in my efforts to hide it and now it’s too late because I’m only just now feeling it and I’m in public!
And this next chapter of my life will finally be me, as I believe I was truly meant to be, exploring who I am and finding out the kind of person I want to be. It can be said that is what I’ve been doing all along, but honestly, how can you say that when I haven’t even known what it feels like to be in the right body? But my chance is coming, it’s only a few months away! It feels like I hit the lottery and it’s being delivered to me by a leprechaun riding a unicorn that is spewing pure gold glitter out it’s ass! WHOOP!!
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Soup-Sandwich-Pizza
I’m writing this because nothing is more messed up than me. I can’t even find an image to describe an approximation of what I am. So you get this image, the image I present to the world even though I wish I didn’t have to. And in the days and weeks to come, you will get to see what hides behind that image and all the ugliness therein.
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