Awakening

I have pointed out before that my struggle with gender dysphoria prompted me to search in all directions for a solution to being born in the wrong body, and the determination with which I pursued that goal in spite of all doubts and discouragements — even attempts to accept things the way they were, adapting to and adopting the identity imposed on me by circumstances — says a lot about me, and even about what I ultimately concluded. My existence may be supported by reality, the physical, chemical, biological and sociological fabric out of which we all seem to be spun, but none of these things are me. I exist in my mind and that is why the way I perceive myself in my own mind can not only contradict my physical form, but trump it in importance to my survival. I have heard the theories and arguments on nature versus nurture and taking my own experience into consideration I can say that there are elements in both that can help shape who you are, but only by presenting the options or stimulus necessary for you to determine who you are. I cannot tell you if this is a process of creation or revelation; it feels like both. I am the driving and defining force within my own mind; my mind is the structure and articulation of my soul.

I was born in a context in which everything and everyone seemed to deny my existence, in accordance with the belief that who I was was based upon what I was and where I came from. I was not encouraged to express myself in ways that were inconsistent with my appearance. I’ve described some of the ways I was discouraged in other writing, and how it affected me. The most important result of this situation was that it did make me conscious of the fact that there was more to me than just my body. I have long since realized that most people are not very clear on what a spirit or a soul really is, but I never really had a problem with that. It was difficult for me to understand the modern view of consciousness and things like mind, spirit and soul as mere epiphenomena. I eventually understood the limitations of scientific thinking responsible for promoting this view, as I understand the way it drives scientists to look for a physical mechanism for the origin of consciousness. On the other hand, I had no difficulty understanding that the mind was central to everything that really mattered about existence. Perhaps that is a result of being hyper-conscious of every thought and action I took as a consequence of being forced to override all of my natural instincts and impulses to conform to people’s expectations of me.

I spent my childhood engaged in a constant, intensive observation of myself and everyone around me. I analyzed the world and all my experiences in it as if my life depended on it, often discovering new ways in which it clearly did. In my day to day life I was as deliberate in the control of my thoughts and emotions as I was in the control of my body. I had to understand as much as possible about how my mind and body worked to achieve that degree of control, which included managing or bypassing a number of “hard wired” behaviors and responses. I was thinking hyper-dimensionally long before I learned that was the way to describe what I was doing, or how to explain the process to someone else. I think the first step in thinking hyper-dimensionally involved the unstated realization that everything in my existence occurred in my mind; the “outside” world distinguished from my “inner” world by my physical perspective in it and limited influence over it. In my “inner” world, I was everyone and everything, everywhere at once — all on the verge of being nowhere, nothing and nobody. My consciousness was an all encompassing point with unconscious depths in the shadow of oblivion.

I began to understand that there are many things you have to figure out for yourself, in order to know and understand them, and consciousness is one of those things. I suspect that the scientific study of consciousness will inevitably conclude that it is a complex form of a basic property of “awareness” inherent in energy as the combined medium of information structured in space, time and mind. It might arrive at that conclusion with more esoteric and granular terms, but that is pretty much what it will amount to. Any other proposition runs into the problem of spontaneous generation of the subjective state phenomenon that is the prerequisite for any observer of the objective state. The consequence of any reductive analysis is an increase in relative potential; which is to say that everything is implicit in nothing. The information potential of a singularity is infinite. The interesting thing is that I am not saying anything new here. The same observations have been made again and again in many different ways. None of them make any sense to people until they observe it for themselves. I have no idea what conclusions a scientifically valid description of it will lead to. The first steps in this direction were taken when science confronted the quantum paradox and the possibility of observer based reality.

For my purposes, this observation is not the end; it is just the beginning. To be perfectly frank, I find myself in an untenable position and this can only be corrected in a world where things we would think of as magical or miraculous can occur. In part, this is because any question of physical transformation runs into problems related to the preservation of the mind. I ran into this while contemplating the use of future nanotechnology to remodel a living body, picking this as the most scientifically plausible method of turning a man into a woman. Biological processes can and should be viewed as proof of the concept of nanotechnology, in which complex organisms are constructed on a molecular level. We know that some aspects of personality can be passed on biologically, but there is no indication that the subjective consciousness is transferable. If you were cloned, the clone would be his or her own person, with a unique subjective consciousness. He might be like you, and assuming your exact brain structure and chemical memory was copied precisely, think he was you, but you would not be him. Nothing we know of suggests that there is any continuity of consciousness in that kind of situation. In a transformational process, there is every chance that the thread of subjective consciousness would be broken as one form was broken down and another built up.

The possibility of transitional death forced me to focus on understanding the nature and survival requirements of the mind, and this is ultimately a question of significance for all of us in the face of the inevitability of death. Death is the inescapable paradox. It is reasonable to assume that it inspired the concepts of spirits and souls. The prospect of oblivion is something that drives us to truly assert ourselves, to dream of and strive for immortality. In our lives we experience oblivion in different ways. In a way, the singularity of our consciousness exists in a bubble of oblivion. It is not hard to argue that individual consciousness can only exist if it is shielded from universal consciousness. Until we actually die, we cannot know if death is the end of consciousness, the end of individuality, or the beginning of something else. All we can do is ask what the existence of the mind really depends on. One possibility is that the body and brain is the foundation on which the mind is built, while the other is that the body and brain are merely the scaffolding used in building a mind that can stand alone. We might as well be asking if the world is really what it appears to be. As it happens, it is not. The world as we know it exists only in our minds.

To be more specific, we exist in our minds and the world we perceive is constructed in our minds based on information provided through our senses. What we can know about the universe is based on the information that can be derived through its structure. Perception is the conversion of structure into information, through the structure itself, into our minds. Our bodies, our physical senses and our brains are part of and can be found in that structure, but our minds cannot. Our minds possess structure, based on they way they use information, however; this gives us information and structure in both abstract and manifest states. The process of transition from a manifest state to an abstract state presents us with one dynamic. The constant transformation of structure in the universe and in the mind gives us another dynamic, in general terms “change” or in more specific resolution “time” which we derive from the continuity of perception. It is possible that consciousness emerges from the organization of awareness in the structures of perception through the interpretation of information derived from static interactions with dynamic structure in the universe. The interesting question, of course, is what does the existence of the universe depend on?

I am not sure anyone claims to know an answer to this question, but science has given us a lot of ideas derived from tested information about the universe. It does not give us an origin for the medium of space-time or energy, but it can tell us that all matter is derived from energy and structure. I am strongly inclined to look at space and time as part of the way energy is structured, viewing dimensionality as a component of structure along with size, scale, position, etc. If, as I suspect, awareness is a property of energy, then even the mind can be fully encompassed in the universe. Mostly, energy seems to be the most persistent and pervasive thing encountered along the spectrum of extrapolation or reduction. I would hope that anyone critical of my inclination to view awareness as an inherent potential of energy will understand that I simply find awareness too fundamental to our experience of existence not to be implicit in energy. I think that the obvious complexity of structure found in the human brain and perceptual processes is evidence enough of the difficulty of focusing potential awareness into coherent consciousness. I do not pretend to have a hypothesis for how the structure and organization works, or where in the process proto-awareness becomes awareness or proto-consciousness becomes consciousness. I just see it intuitively in life in the world around us.

I did not get to this point in my speculation following a straight and direct route, and some of the most interesting and useful things I spent time on were essential to getting me this far, such as a study of dimensionality, part of which I have elaborated on in explaining the different dimensions and part of which I only hinted at in this post — dimensions of mind. It is a lot to go over and again, too much to really explain inside another topic. We do not truly know what energy is, but it does seem to be pervasive and universal enough to be a base medium that, through structure in manifest, static, dynamic and abstract ways would give us space, time and mind, the three media that encompass existence as we know it. Information and structure both have intimate relationships with energy. Our bodies and our minds can easily be seen as structured energy. We are energy and information forged into a truly dynamic state. With all the universe to show us that energy sustains information, it seems absurd to think it would simply delete information like us. Most of all, I would think that energy organized to the point of self-awareness would somehow be self sustaining. If we could become more complex by one dimension of space-time-mind, I suspect that maybe we would. Of course, that’s just me commenting on a mountain of unshared speculation.

Slightly Left of Nowhere

I rarely have time to write or draw, and as my friend keeps reminding me, I’ve little hope making a living as an artist or writer. I have to agree, knowing that even brilliant writing and art takes a massive investment of time and effort up front. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life, however. I have never really had the things I needed to succeed in life. I have almost always had a reasonable substitute for the things I lack, which I am sure could have been used to achieve success, if success meant anything in the absence of a life worth living. The hard, cold facts of life undermine my identity and force me to live the life of a person that does not exist. I succeeded in earning enough to live and function as a man, but the process left me with no sense of myself as a person; nothing that I did felt real to me and nothing that I engaged in felt meaningful.

I tended to find purpose in living for other people, and that worked when I was close to the people I cared about. I did not do that well when I was removed by one degree, living on my own. Alone, I shift from positive distractions as a productive member of a household of family or friends to negative distractions, focusing on work, school, art, writing, reading, and latching on to anything I can do to entertain or amuse myself so I do not dwell on the problems I am not able to solve. I do not go about it in a healthy, productive way. It is more frantic and desperate than anything healthy should be. I get a lot done, but I am never satisfied by my accomplishments, because I know they are not contributing anything to my true well-being. I know I am distracting myself and that I am neglecting many of my real needs, but I keep doing it because I will fall apart if I stop.

Work and school take the bulk of my time and effort, and while one allows me to pay the rent and other costs of living and the other improves my future career prospects, I’m really just treading water as I drift out into the ocean. A degree is a bit of a plus on one’s resume, but it is no guarantee of a good job, and may not offset the negative impact of any transition attempt, and the financial aid debt will drain the financial resources I need to transition successfully. So, even doing all the right things, I am digging myself into a hole I might not be able to climb out of. I have tried to use my need for distraction and love of art and writing together in a positive way, to kindle a creative source of income, but my creative impulses are driven by a need for self expression and I end up putting too much of myself into them. I do not mind that, but I doubt there is a huge audience for transgender themed art or fiction. I have put a few things out on the Internet to test the waters, and while I have gotten some great responses, they have been pretty scarce. Not very confidence building!

I’m a pretty stubborn person, though. I feel pretty fragile because I seem to be bruised inside and out, and that makes everything painful — but it does not really stop me if I accept the pain and push forward. I have mostly been tripped up by indifference. Yeah, okay, I know I’m no one important, and I’m slightly left of nowhere, but it is humbling and humiliating to put myself out here about as naked as I can get, and not even get rude cat calls! Personal feelings aside, though, I realize that I am not catering to anyone’s tastes here. I am just being my self, commenting out loud on topics of random interest between fits of bitching and moaning. I use my blog and various journals as a relief valve, and pretty shamelessly at times. I try to share thoughts of greater interest, and I present only observations and insight — I do not try to present myself as an authority. I am happy if I simply inspire thought, and I would like to get enough feed back to know that I do on occasion. I do not think I would change how I express myself to win over an audience as a professional blogger.

On the other hand, if you have ever been slightly left of nowhere, you are my target audience. If you are a misfit or a dreamer and yet believe there’s a place for you in the world, and that our dreams are worth sharing, you’re my people.

It is where you can, and yet… can you? On writing what I know.

I may have commented on it in passing, and it is something I certainly never miss, but my art and writing have always brought out the real me. In a sense, that is appropriate enough; isn’t it a common recommendation that writers draw from their own experiences? I often feel that my escape into fantasy or science fiction has been good for my sanity, but bad for my hopes of a writing career. I could be wrong. I see enough gender bending in books, manga and film. I find it interesting that most cases involve a boy turned into a girl against his will. Interestingly enough, the first time I picked up an issue of Ranma 1/2, I put it back when I discovered that Ranma considered his ability to become a girl a curse. I did not think I could stomach reading about a guy hated having what I so desperately longed for. Months later, I gave Ranma 1/2 a second chance and eventually came to like him and appreciate what he was going through. I became a fan, read all the manga, watched as much of the anime as I could stand (if you’ve tried, you know why I say that), and even wrote over a million words of fan fiction. I’m still trying to complete volume five; it’s hard to give it my attention when I am struggling to hold myself together and it’s writing that doesn’t pay.

It is not a hugely popular story; people either love it or hate it, it seems. I mostly only hear from the people begging for me to write more, and it bothers me that I usually have no time or energy after coping with work, school and stress. I will say this, it was nice having a set of characters and situations that were so well suited to the topics I always wanted to explore but was always resistant to exploring in my own writing. I wanted to write, and deep down I wanted to share the experiences and insights I’ve had in my life, but I had a hard time with the fact that writing myself into fantasy or science fiction, where the problems I face can be resolved so the character can move on to other things, I was engaging in a degree of self-destructive wish fulfillment. I threw a lot of stories aside because I kept writing myself in and then writing myself into a corner. I tried to get around it a couple of times by jumping past that part, as in The Eve of Paradox, but then I lost the opportunity to show the reader what made the character who she was. I think the only way to break this pattern is to accept that it’s the story I have to write, and hope that it’s a story people will read, love and beg for more–because there is a lot more.

So, there it is. I can say that I chose to write fantasy and science fiction because that’s where you can present a problem like I’ve lived with and get past it. It is a story I’d rather live than write, and I know that has been part of my frustration. I know that there is the option of transitioning, to get close to where I belong, but there will always be a part of me that knows that what I really want would be like magic, a miracle, a true transformation. Even then, there would be part of me hurting for the childhood and life experiences I missed. I have all my dreams, and the problem there is that in all my dreams I was alone. No one in here but me. Perhaps by sharing the dreams and stories I’ve kept silent all these years, it won’t seem like that as much. I dunno, but it’s what I’ve got. Why shouldn’t I make the most of them?

Recapitulation & Reflection

A person looking at my blog might get the impression that I do not get much writing done, and it is true that there are a lot of things in my life that get in the way of me writing most of the things I want to. The inside dope is that much of what I do write, I am not sure I want to share. Does anyone not afflicted with gender dysphoria even care about transgender issues? I honestly do not know. I’ve known people who were sympathetic, curious, interested, confused, upset and even terrified by the topic. It is an uncomfortable topic, and I do not blame people for not wanting to talk about it; and if no one wants to talk about it (except those of us who have to live with it) why would anyone want to read about it? I dunno, but I do have a lot to say about it, and sometimes I do not realize how much until the words start to spill out. Once they do, I begin to find clarity and focus. It helps me to write it, it helps me to come back and read it, and it has a place here in my blog, because it deals with the paradox of my life.

May 04, 2009, 12:04 AM posted to my deviantART journal
When I made the decision to come to Alaska, my family and the handful of friends that know me in my male guise were worried. They were concerned that I would end up alone and cut off from anyone who cared about me. They did not know that I pretty much felt that way already as a consequence of having to live on my own and support myself while stuck in this male body. I had tried to tell them how much it cost me to present as a man, and I had confided that my inability to stay functional made any attempt at maintaining the act over a long period of time a danger to my health. I do what I have to do, but there is a point where I fall apart. If I am lucky, I have a nervous breakdown. If I am not lucky, I attempt to mutilate myself. I’m not proud of that. There is nothing rational about it except in the sense that an animal will chew it’s own leg off to escape a trap. What I’m tempted to cut off, to escape from the trap I find myself in… well, it does not take much thinking to know I would probably bleed to death after cutting it off. That makes it a suicidal impulse to me, but if I had the ten or twenty thousand dollars, I’d happily give it to a surgeon for SRS.

I don’t have the money and I don’t have the stability I need to make that kind of money, and the things I do to cope with this cruel reality only make the prospect of transition less likely. The irony is, I work really hard. I have been going to school and supporting myself for most of the past five years doing IT contracting, office temporary or customer service type jobs. When I have spare time, I try to work on my art and writing–still in the hope of starting a career that allows me to support myself in a less painful manner. In spite of what feels like a heroic effort to make my life better, I continue to hover on the edge of oblivion because I have no time or outlet to be myself. I came to Alaska because I had a friend here who seemed to understand what I was going through, who was going through a little of it himself. We had discussed sharing a place and possible transitioning together, but when I arrived in Alaska, it was painfully obvious that he could not. Gender issues or not, his life revolved around his son and once I was there in person, and not just chatting online, he seemed to have no idea how to relate to me.

So, maybe my family was right, in the sense that I did end up stranded alone in Anchorage. This does not feel like a safe place for me to transition, but even San Francisco did not feel right without a secure job and supportive friends. Now that I find myself between jobs, waiting to hear back from my agency or about the jobs I’ve applied for, all of the stress and anxiety I pushed aside to get through my days at work has come right to the surface. It is staring me in the face and making me wonder if there is anything to hope for. I’ve vented and raged about being transgendered enough times in my journal, my blog, or in random scattered posts, and I don’t expect anyone who bothers to read this to have any real answers for me. I know there are people who care, but I also know no one has the resources to help. I am alone, and if that was going to kill me, it should have done so by now. No, it just makes it harder to quit smoking, or exercise properly to lose those annoying few pounds around my waist, or fall asleep, or wake up, or… whatever.

If I wanted to die, it would be easy. Quitting is easy. Not being able to quit, hard is all I’ve got. It’s stupid, it’s unfair. It’s my life. I have tried to use my creativity to give my life enough purpose to live in spite of not being able to transition. I went back to school hoping that a degree would help me get a job that would allow me to save up for transition. I got a job to support myself while I was on my own and going to school. I ended up with no time for creative work, I spend all my money on rent and bills, and every day I get farther away from transitioning, farther away from hope, farther away from my family and friends, and using every ounce of will and wisdom to keep from losing it altogether. I don’t think anyone should go through something like this alone. Of course, I don’t think anyone who is going though this is in any position to help anyone. People who are not going through this, well, the price for their help has always cost more than I could afford. I have been hurt beyond their comprehension, I need more to heal and recover than I could ever ask for.

I think it would be easier if I wanted to die. The problem with being transgendered is that you want to live and your own body stops you. Instead of living, you lie. When I say I want to die, I really mean that I want to escape from this lie. I would prefer it if there was enough magic or miracles in the world to literally transform my body and make it true to me, and I would consider it merciful if medical professionals fixed problems like this immediately so that the cost is paid by a healthy individual, instead of dropping so much extra weight on someone who is crippled. I wish I could say these things to someone who could actually help me, and I wish I had been able to trust my family when I was young enough that their help would have been enough. Instead, all I can do is fill the silence with the painful realization that the most horrible aspect of being transgendered is that it can force you to isolate yourself.

May 04, 2009, 01:45 am posted to Susan’s Place
My name is Andrea. I am almost 39, M2F transgendered, and it’s killing me. I find myself a little on edge tonight. I would have transitioned in the 80’s if I had believed anyone would have helped me. I have spent the last ten years recovering from the breakdown that resulted from my initial attempt to transition in the late 90’s, and tonight I got blindsided by the airing of three transgender programs on Discovery.

I am severely transgendered, to the point where the pretense of being a man drives me regularly over the edge into a complete nervous breakdown or dangerous flirtation with self mutilation, and, well, that has never been a good thing. I have spent my life destroying myself to appear normal enough to get through the day. I pay for it most nights. Most of all, I pay for it by achieving nothing for all my effort. I’ve literally turned myself inside out to make less than I need to survive, almost every day of my adult life. I’ve gone so far beyond the point where I could have killed myself… that was the day I first read the standards of care.

It broke me but I tried to follow them. By the time I had asked for help, I was too damaged to do what was required to get it. I still don’t understand how I can be too strong to kill myself but too fragile to function on my own. I tried to do better. I sacrificed transition hoping to strengthen my foundation, slowly, painfully, pulling my life more together, living on my own, supporting myself (barely!) while acquiring an Associate’s Degree in Business and pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology for Visual Communications. Unfortunately, my income has been so limited I have not been able to afford therapy, let alone any of the other expenses of transitioning. I’ve been at a stand still. Tonight, I found myself forced to confront the fact that I will not survive much more of this.

I am currently in Anchorage, AK, lured up by a job and the possibility of mutual support (a transgendered person I had become close to online) only to have the job opportunity vanish into thin air and, well, somehow, the support evaporated as well. He is caught up in a child custody conflict and concerned about what would happen if we shared an apartment (with or without transitioning). I was able to find a job and get an apartment, then began temping at higher paying jobs, but because of the instability I’ve been through, chronically, my resume is no asset for finding real jobs. I may have a shot at a job by way of a temp assignment–I’m a solid and talented worker when my brain is not in the process of imploding–but on the off chance that falls through, the only hope I have is that I get another temp assignment right away.

If not. Well…

Things are looking pretty scary right now. But, that’s kind of the story of my life! Trying to transition in 1998-1999 left me homeless and with stitches in something I never should have had in the first place! I have to laugh, though. I kind of have to sigh, too. It took a long time to learn how to say these horrible things so openly and so simply. I used to kill myself trying to make people like me and to make them believe I was happy, healthy and normal. Now, I look at the tragic joke of my life and laugh. I cry a little and then I take a deep breath and keep moving forward because I am not dead yet. I’m scared, alone, afraid I will never escape from the trap I am in, and have no idea what to do if I ever do; but I am not dead yet.

I’m barely surviving… and that’s just not good enough. As strong as I am, this condition is STILL tearing me apart. It’s more than I can handle, and much, much more than my friends and family could handle. Even the ones who would still welcome me on the other side find the reality of where I am now inconceivable.

If only it was….

Anyway, I thought I should do a little screaming before I went over the edge.

May 04, 2009, 09:46 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I managed to keep my head through several hard years of, well, long dark nights of the soul. I have to be honest, a day when I feel merely depressed is a good day. It’s the high point of my emotional scale, sad and disturbing as it is to say. I pull myself together to get through the day, but the toll it takes on me… day after day… I get to a point where I’m too numb to function. I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve been killing myself trying to just get on my feet but no matter how hard I work… the hole I keep trying to climb out of just keeps getting deeper. It is infuriating, and that is much more dangerous than depression. That… I can’t bottle up my fury and outrage at a situation that is insanely unfair.

I do not let myself get angry or upset, because I learned the hard way that it is what causes me to lash out against my body. I do get angry though, because I need stability to earn money to pay for the help I need to become stable enough to earn the kind of money needed to transition. The worst thing of all is knowing that I work so hard every day, and it’s all for nothing. It costs too much to survive.

I have spent ten years working on this problem, and I am tired.

I know there are no simple answers, but I hope that I can hold on long enough to find what I need to escape from this circle of hell. Last night, and tonight, I need to be screaming frantic, here, so I can stop doing it in my head. I need to find a direction to move in that gets me off this slippery slope, lets me take real steps forward.

I am strong, I work hard, I have enough skill at just about anything to be able to make a comfortable living.
I am fragile, and my confidence is so torn to pieces… and I’m so scared of what I want it can be paralyzing…
I hope I find friends and support, I hope I can set myself free!

I hope I still have enough in me to survive surviving this.

May 05, 2009, 08:14 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I do pay attention to the trials other people are going through. My sister lives in constant pain from a back injury, and there was a time when it was too much for her, but she overcame her addiction to pain killers, changed her life, found a job she loves working with animals, and she had been doing very well. Most important, she did the hard part almost entirely on her own.

At the moment, I am focused on finishing school and finding a job I would be able to keep through transition. I had intended to focus on my writing and art, because they are both things I can do very well, but it takes time to get an artistic career going and work and school have left me with little free time. For now, I just work on trying to build up my portfolio, posting work online (I have to check to see if I can post a link to my deviantart, wordpress or fictionpress accounts, for anyone interested in seeing what I’ve done) and scratching away on one of the dozens of stories I’ve started over the years.

The most difficult part of all is worrying that I am physically not a good candidate for hormones or SRS. I am not as concerned about the possibility of not passing as long as I can transition fully. I am concerned that fifteen years of smoking put me at risk of heart disease. It was hard not to smoke when I believed that transitioning was hopelessly beyond my grasp. During those dark days, I did not expect to live long enough for it to matter. I hope I don’t pay too high a price for that lack of faith.

I did look online to see what local support was available, and I plan to follow up in person. At the moment, I have a good reputation with my temp agency, so while I dread the periods without work, I am glad for the work I can get. I am hoping I will get a job I applied for. The interview went well and I believe it is a job that will help me move forward. I guess it was pretty natural to focus on what would happen if things do not work out, and to panic.

I have a long way to go before I am “okay” and I’ve had to deal with all of this pretty much on my own. I am amazed at how much I’ve been able to do on my own, actually, but I know there are parts I cannot deal with alone. I just… got so focused on that “one step at a time” I forgot to look for the kind of help I can get from my trans brothers and sisters.

Now that I am doing something about that, I can take that deep breath and calm down.

May 06, 2009, 07:25 pm posted to Susan’s Place
It is amazing how pessimistic I can get, because at the core I’m a pretty optimistic person. It is because of that inner optimist that I can manage to get through everything. The stuff that drives me crazy is always going to drive me crazy, but most of the time I have a sense of humor about it, or at least a highly refined sense of the absurd! It is the unrelenting nature of this condition that wears me down and pops all my psychic fuses. There are days when good advice makes me scream, when I cannot bear to hear “one step at a time” because I can tell I am stuck on a treadmill, not actually going anywhere. On the other hand, treadmills would not exist if people did not get something out of them. Perhaps I’m just building up the endurance for when I will really need it to get through all the hurdles of transitioning. Who knows?

May 07, 2009, 09:06:35 pm posted to Susan’s Place
Those of us who are transgendered find it very hard to live for ourselves. In most ways, we are like anyone else; we want to be a part of the world around us and be seen and accepted for who we are. Unfortunately, appearance plays a huge part in how people see us, no matter who we are, and that affects the way people relate to us. No one is entirely what they appear to be, and the difference between the person we are inside and the person we appear to be can cause problems for just about anyone. No one gets to choose what they look like, and the person you really are is something you have to discover for yourself. You look at what feels right, natural and normal for you to be and to do, and you identify yourself accordingly. Gender is part of that identity, it is based more on who you are as a person than what you are as an organism. If you’ve ever looked at your picture or reflection, or the things you’ve said or done, and felt that it was not right, or that it was not quite you, you’ve felt a little of what a transgendered person feels every moment of his or her life. A conflict between who you are, your gender, and what you are, your sex, is something you can never really escape from.

The amazing thing about people is that they can choose how to think and act, and control how they react to their feelings, so when a transgendered person–a girl in a boy’s body, for example–is growing up, she starts out thinking and acting in a manner characteristic of most girls. This starts even before she knows what the difference between male and female really is. She has no idea why people tell her to stop doing what comes naturally and act “like a boy” but to make people happy, she does what she is told, even though it is uncomfortable or feels outright wrong to her. No matter how good she gets at being a boy, that feeling of wrongness never goes away, because of course she is acting, not being. I can tell you, from experience, that you can go a long time not being yourself, if there are people you care about that expect this from you. The problem is, you cannot live your entire life trying to be something you are not. It poisons you, it tears you apart, and while you tell yourself to be strong and to “be a man” about it, you are doing more damage to yourself every day.

The consequences are worse the more successful you are in life as a man, because it all comes at the cost of denying who you really are as a person. You will be living and experiencing everything as a man, and in virtually every way, you will be as much as if not more of a man than any man around you. In a lot of ways, that is because the measure of a man is often based on what he does, not who he is. I think that’s a flaw of our whole species, that we tend to value men and women for what they are, what they do, than for who they are. I think that most of societies’ problems can be blamed on the fact that we only value a few people in our lives for who they are. That is what we call love. Unfortunately, our love for people can be tied up with how we perceive them as people. How you see someone plays a huge part in how you hold them in your heart and mind, and because our physical perceptions form the basis of our memories a person’s physical appearance plays a huge part in how we see them.

I always knew I was a girl, but because my body was male and because I was always seen as a boy, the love my family had for me could never be for me. Because of him, they never knew me. I had to pretend to be something I was not in order for them to love me, and I did it, no matter how much it hurt, because I loved them. Unfortunately, the longer I went on denying myself, the harder it became to live for myself. I had no hopes or dreams. I had to give up everything I wanted to be and most of the things I wanted to do to be able to play the part I was trapped in. When I went off to college, and no longer had my family to perform for, I literally fell apart. I did not know how to live. I wanted to just be me, but my body would not let me. All I had to do was relax, and I would slip back to thinking, feeling and acting like a girl, but exhibiting that behavior in a man’s body only made me more conscious of how wrong my body was for me.

The older I get, the more I feel like I will grow old and die without ever having lived. I gave up so much out of love for my family, but when my siblings all moved on, making new lives and starting families of their own, and when my mom got cancer and died, I realized that I was lost without them. I did not have an intimate place in their lives, and I had no life of my own. I spent my whole adult life unable to stay on my feet because the life I had was an act, a lie that no longer served a purpose. I came out to my family, and they pretty much asked me not to change myself, and yet, they all want me to pull myself together and have a happy and successful life. In the end, the cost of their love became impossible. I would have gone on doing this for them, but when they asked me to do it for me they could not understand that what they were asking for would destroy me.

All I ever wanted from my family was to be loved for who I was, no matter what I happened to be.

May 14, 2009, 12:22 am posted to Susan’s Place
I would describe the times when I am “okay” with being male as the times when I am coping well. I never had a problem with being male in the moment, but I cannot bear to be male in every moment. I built my whole male identity around doing, starting with the fact that I presented as male to make people I cared about happy (or to keep them from worrying about me, or worse, thinking I was damaged goods). There are some things I can do where it does not matter what I am, and there are things I do because they have to be done no matter how I feel about it.

There are a lot of things that can blind side me and turn me into a complete, paralyzed wreck. Being around girls can turn me upside down, it only takes a moment to see myself in a girl’s shoes (so to speak) and as soon as I do, I am hit with the reminder of all the things I am denied because I am not female. At other times, being seen as a man by someone, anyone really, can tear me apart, because in that same instant I see myself through their eyes and what I see is not me. The same thing happens when I see my reflection or a photo. It does not matter much where I am or what I am doing, the feeling of not being me hits like a splash of ice water and suddenly I am fighting to assert my own identity in a situation where I really cannot assert myself.

There was a time when I thought of myself as an invisible girl with an autistic brother. I was always me, but no one ever noticed I existed, and I spent all my time protecting and taking care of my brother, keeping the world from noticing that he was not all there. Eventually, I realized he was the one who did not exist and trying to make it seem like he did was destroying me. In spite of that severe dissociation, the realization allowed me to see that the man I pretended to be for so long had always been a part of me, and in a lot of ways, I make a really great guy. I can be him for hours, days, even weeks if I have to, but the moment I stop acting, I am just me, lost, alone and unknown.

Being him gives me something to do to distract myself from the fact that nothing I can do can make up for what I’ve been through or for what I’ve been denied. But, I can only be him when I have the strength to endure reality. I’ll be honest, it is much easier to pretend to be him, and be seen as a really great guy, than to try to be myself through him and be seen as a tragic, twisted and confused freak. I spent too much time learning how to read people, particularly men, to not understand instantly how people see me. I say that only to point out that I would find it easier to stay male, be the man I appear to be, and be thankful for the life I’ve got. It is easy to tell myself I am okay with this, that I’ve grown up and I am better off being the man I spent a life time learning how to be than I would be trying to become a woman who missed out on all the experiences she needed from life.

It sounds logical, but to be that man, I have to cease to be myself. It’s not hard. It’s like holding my breath… um… yeah, not really a good, long term solution. Why does the girl in me keep coming back? Well, she’s telling me to “Breathe, Idiot! Breathe!” You can be anything you want to be, anything you can find in yourself, as long as you don’t deny who you really are.

June 20, 2009, 02:10 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I’ve been having a hard coping of late, and I have begun to wonder if I was ever really coping or if I just got really good at distracting myself. If it was the latter, I guess I distracted myself to the point of exhaustion. For a good while, it helped a lot to find something else constructive to think about or work on, and that would get me through the day. Unfortunately, the nights got harder to get through and I began to dread facing the ticking emotional time bomb waiting for me at the end of the day. I will never kill myself, but I can be self destructive in other ways, like smoking and biting off more than I can chew. I’m used to the nervous breakdowns, but they put me out of work on occasion. That sort of thing makes me too unstable for transition, and only transition will give me enough stability to stop it. So, I do my best to hold on while I figure out what I can do, instead of going crazy about what I can’t. I have to accept the losses and failures that have brought me to this point and forgive myself for making them, or they will forever dominate my life.

June 21, 2009, 01:54 am posted to Susan’s Place
I’ve always felt the need for instant, complete, perfect transformation. Transition is what is available. I would have done anything to be able to complete it successfully right out of high school, but real life and fear and simply not being able to function as a male always got in the way. I would have thought, once it became apparent that I literally lost it so bad trying to be a guy, that I could not hold myself together for more than a few months at a time without a breakdown, I could have gotten some help getting through transition and into a more stable situation before worrying about the costs. I can do it to get through collage, but not to fix the body I live in… go figure! So, yeah, this waiting and waiting for something I won’t have until I finally transition makes me blow a fuse pretty regularly.