Staring into the Face of Truth

“A story is as good a way to organize your thoughts as anything else,” she points out, poised in the shadows in the doorway. I quickly conclude that she is playing the part of my conscience. That, or devil’s advocate. Either way, she’s me. I cannot say she does not really exist without implying the same of myself. She is in my mind, and of my mind, so I do not look at her. She cannot be seen, not in the flesh anyway, but it’s not like I have to look at her to see her. “It’s been a long time since you’ve done this, though,” she observes, watching me carefully. I can tell there’s something on her mind. I can feel it. Technically, it’s on my mind, but I have long since learned that her thoughts are her own when she chooses to assert herself. It’s a bit like being in two places at the same time, a way to step outside my normal perspective and look at what I’ve become.

“That’s because it takes more effort than thinking, even if it is no more contrived than any other thing written; it isn’t really a story,” I respond. I do not have to add that this manner of confronting myself is one of the reasons my stories never get finished; she knows that as well as I do.

“It helps when you need someone to talk to, though,” she argues, crossing the room to sprawl on the couch next to my desk. There are times when I wish that I could have visual hallucinations; it would be nice to really see her when she goes to the trouble to try and fit herself into the world. Instead, I can only see her in the way I see what I am reading about in books, from everywhere and nowhere. Of course, with her, there is no book, no words; she is self-rendered thought. “It gives me chance to be myself, too.”

“You mean, get some distance from being like this,” I amend somewhat bitterly, in reference to all the unpleasant facts of my reality. Normally, I do not have the patience to write like this. Once I discovered I could split my attention two or three ways, it did not take long to become good enough at it that I would just talk to myself when I needed someone to talk to. I can confront any part of myself that way, even the parts that are smarter and wiser than I can normally be. I have come to believe that this is what angels and demons are, projections of ourselves, impressions of others and the personification of our hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts. It’s what I think of as five-dimensional thinking. “So, what do I need to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you posted yesterday. Okay, that’s still weird; it’s as much my post as it was yours,” she sighs and scoots closer to the opposite arm of the couch, tucking her feet under herself. “I know what it has to sound like to anyone who reads it, and if people have trouble understanding and accepting a transgendered person, well…” She cannot finish the thought, because I already know what she is going to say.

“People have a hard time understanding and accepting anyone different from themselves. It took me too long to realize that there is nothing I can do to make anyone understand or accept me. People have to take it upon themselves to understand anything, and it is impossible to truly accept what is not understood. I am inclined to think that an inability to accept something is in fact proof that you do not truly understand it,” I find myself declaring. I had been unable to understand what was expected of me as a child, and so the role imposed on me was unacceptable. When I learned enough to understand what made me a boy, I also understood that I never had a choice, and that was unacceptable. When I worked it out enough to realize I also had no power to change what I was, that too was unacceptable. This lead me to ask some devastating questions. What is the point of being able to choose if you are not given a choice — especially about something that virtually defines you? What is the point of living if you are given a life you did not want? “I am not the only one to suspect that there has to be more to life than this, or that there is more to us, for that matter,” I tell her, in response to her unstated concern for what was at the heart of that post.

She tilts her head and shrugs in agreement, picking at imaginary lint on her skirt. “I know, but I did not stop at that, did I?” I can feel her studying me. I can’t really meet her eyes, but I can imagine myself looking over at her, seeing thoughts written on her face.

“I know, some of this is impossible to put into words, but yeah, the post was really about believing in myself and the impulse to act on that belief,” I admit, picking up on the thoughts this little game was bringing to the surface with a small sigh. “Although, there really is nothing hard about changing the world. The world changes with or without our help. What is hard is getting the results you intended. I might have gone out on a ledge by saying what I wanted to do, or why I wanted to do it. If there was a problem with what I posted, it was not being able to say how it could be done.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. I know what she’s thinking, because I am thinking the same thing. I have not been able to invest the time and effort needed to figure that out. “The hard part is not figuring out how it can be done. There’s plenty of scope for the imagination there,” she insists, prompting me to think of thousands of stories I’ve read, and hundreds I’ve tried to write, where suitable means were presented.

“No, the trick is establishing that there are means and methods available, and pushing ourselves beyond our current understanding. It is kind of hard to work on that if it is not your job, though,” I laugh, bitterly. Of course, there is no job like this. That has been the other reason I have been totally lost in this world. That sobers me up. “Honestly, even the little I’ve managed to find time to think about would take a lot of writing, and I don’t need another ‘job’ I don’t get paid to do!”

“And yet you sit up all night writing a blog like this?” she teases.

“Until I figure out what to do, what will make a difference, I don’t really have anything better to do,” I point out tiredly. As usual, I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the things that are on my mind. Writing is too slow and time consuming a way to deal with such thoughts. She looks at me, knowingly, and I shrug. “Things have to be done in their own way. If this were a story, I could skip over all the deep thinking. Even in a simple blog post, I could just focus on making a point. You intended to ask me how this is going to work. You really want to know how much more of this you have to endure.” I close my eyes and lean back in my chair. I know what it would take to set her free, and that I have to find it in myself. The problem is, as long as I am not her, I can’t really be me. I roll my head to the right and look at her. She cannot be seen, but she does not let that stop her. An obvious truth, always staring me in the face.

It Takes a Village to Break a Child

I do not often get comments on my blog; if I exclude the pingbacks, spam and my own replies, I’ve received twenty-two comments from ten different individuals since I started the eye of paradox two years ago. Four of those people have identified themselves as transgendered, and like every transgendered person I’ve known, it has affected their lives as bad or worse than mine and I do not have to explain myself to them to be understood. For a long time, I’ve understood that this condition is difficult or even impossible for people who have not experienced it to comprehend. In order to live with normal people, the “cisgendered” if I use the term that’s come into use to describe those who identify with their birth sex, I’ve had to go to incredible lengths to comprehend and empathize with them. I’ve tried many, many times to find a way to describe what it feels like to live with this condition, hoping to make it easier for my family and friends to understand me. As I mentioned, I do not always like what comes out when I write on this topic, because it is a very intensely emotional issue and intensely emotional writing just encourages people to accuse me of being mellow-dramatic. I honestly expect most people to be driven away by the things I have written. Growing up, it did not take me long to learn how incredibly unsympathetic most people are about this issue. I was never asked to explain myself. With the exception of my adopted mother, who confronted me when I was six to ask if I wanted to be a girl, no one ever asked me why I acted like a girl. By the time she asked, I knew better than to admit it, since every other time someone noticed I was just slapped, spanked, or jerked around while being criticized for acting like a girl and being commanded to stop. That does not mean I was not asking myself why I acted like a girl. Even though the question was often on my mind, the only answer that ever rang true was the one that the facts denied.

Because I was being held to a standard of behavior I truly did not understand and which did not come naturally to me, I had no choice but to conceal my pain and confusion in order to conform to that standard. As I’ve said before, it had been made clear to me that my “disobedience” was justification for punishment, rejection and abandonment, so it did not take long before I was conditioned to assume that anyone who enforced the male standard of behavior could not be trusted. I could not ask anyone why it hurt so much to not be a girl or why nothing about being a boy made me happy. I could never understand why compliments and praises highlighting my qualities or accomplishments as a boy left me feeling hurt, hollow and unhappy. I did at least feel relief and gratitude for the fact that it made people happy with me, and at the time I thought that was what happiness was. I was not always caught on the double-edged sword of gender conflict. No one can be, because one thing that Sophia Marsden pointed out is true; life is full of things that can be appreciated no matter who or what you are. In fact, I pretty much lived for those things, using them to distract myself, and in my preoccupation I pretty much forgot myself and acted like a girl — perhaps a tomboy, I should say, since I managed to get away with it more often than not. If there is a bright side to my childhood, it was that I found ways to be as much like a boy or a girl as I wanted to, as long as no adults were observing me. Unfortunately, I was never comfortable with my genitalia, or the fact that the sensitive organ served as a constant reminder of why I was not a girl. It pissed me off that I was never allowed to let my hair grow, and I hated the clothes I was forced to wear.

The simple fact is, there was always something bringing the gender conflict to the fore. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient, practical and realistic, the notion of myself as a boy never took hold. I was always caught off guard by the realization that I was male, and even when I was trying my hardest to keep that fact in mind, I would look at the girls around me with admiration and envy, forever underscored with an ache of loss. I did not really wonder why, because I knew why I felt this way, and knew it was forbidden, so I simply did not allow myself to think of it most of the time. I just locked myself away and died a little more each day. In a sense, when I got my hands on an anatomy book and finally found out why I was not a girl, I understood what was expected of me. I still did not know why I felt like a girl, and I still do not know. I do not know why I feel like I am lying whenever I act like a man. It is a feeling that makes me feel so sick, I cannot even get past the stupid “male or female” check-box on a job application. I mean, if you look at me and assume I’m just another guy, then, well, whatever, I cannot blame you for what you see, but if you ask me, I no longer know what to say. I am no longer a child to be threatened with abandonment, I am no longer willing to give anyone the power to reject me. I am more than willing to do any job asked of me, but I am no longer able to ask for a job, and if I care even an ounce for my own well-being, I cannot say anyone can pay me enough to endure what I have to do to myself in order to work. I got into temping and contracting because, for the most part, I am never in a position to ask for work, I am asked for; unfortunately, even that is drying up, and once my savings run out, I’ll be stuck homeless in Alaska with winter around the corner. The scary thing is, that doesn’t frighten me. I’m long past the point where I can be motivated by fear. Or, I am more afraid of compromising myself ever again.

I do not want to die, and I do not want to quit, but I do not trust anyone, I know I do not fit in, and even though there are people who understand and care, I know they have to take care of themselves first. I have made little appeals for anonymous help because I know I need it, and since I do not really expect anything to come of it, I really feel no guilt for asking. When you hurt enough, you scream. It’s human nature. Walking by and pretending not to hear the screaming is too. I really have no idea what I would have done if anyone had stopped and asked what was wrong. I would really be at a loss if someone thought they could help and offered. If someone wanted to throw money at me, no strings attached, I’d take advantage of it; it would be stupid not to and even if I’ve lost the will to go on living like this, I’m still too stubborn to die. I go through these spells of crying for help unable to decide for myself if they’re the remnants of my morbid sense of humor, a way to make it clear that I can manage a cry for help without killing myself, or simply an example of believing in people even if I am no longer able to trust anyone. In the end, the reason I write is not in the hope of salvation, but in the hope of understanding the answers to questions I do not even know how to ask. The people who shaped my childhood did not understand me, and their actions hurt me because they were carried out by kind and caring people I depended on. I could not tell you who is responsible for breaking my spirit, or failing to simply ask “why does this boy think he’s a girl?” My father stepped out of the picture when I was three, my mother’s parents convinced her to put me up for adoption when I was four, I was passed around between extended family members and foster care like a hot potato. Someone, perhaps more than one, saw my natural personality as a problem and whatever they did, the damage was done by the time I found myself in a safe and stable environment. I guess that just means that sometimes it takes a village to break a child.

Point Penetrating Points Overlapping

A number of my posts, particularly the ones dealing with transgender issues in my life, have been written on a long, dark night of the soul. It can be difficult to come back and read what I’ve posted and resist the urge to delete what I’ve written, because of how dark they are. I have moments when I think, if ever a family member happened to read them, some of what I’ve written could really hurt them. That was never the intention, and yet, there is a ring of truth to the posts I am not able to deny. It is an unfortunate fact that I’ve been hurt a great deal by people who never meant me harm because of things neither I nor they had any control over. It is not their fault that efforts to encourage my growth and development as a son or brother caused me so much pain; they were simply responding to what they perceived me to be. Our current society is the end product of thousands of generations of people struggling through life trying to make sense out of it. If that resulted in the division of human traits into masculine and feminine, and if the cultivation of gender roles led to a society that could not understand that there was a difference between the things that make people who they are and the things that make them what they are, it is not possible to assign fault or blame to any specific group, let alone a given person. As much as it would have made a difference in my life to have been raised among people who were more perceptive, or in a society that was more accepting of individual differences, I would still have grown up with the more difficult problem of being a girl in a boy’s body.

I can look back now and say it would have been better if I had been more assertive, but like most people I did not come into the world with all the answers and because I understood the reality of my situation, I tried to adjust to it. It took a long time to prove to myself that I was right from the beginning to think of myself as a girl. I had to destroy myself trying to be a boy and a man to understand that the only way I could survive as a person was by being true to myself. That was hard, and it is still hard, because there is nothing I hate more than the idea of being a woman trapped in a man’s body. How can I possibly be true to myself when I am betrayed by my own flesh? What future is there for a living contradiction like this? So, even when I am tempted to regret allowing myself to be forced into a role I cannot endure, I can understand how I could try to hard to be what everyone else expected me to be. I tried to be the person everyone thought me to be in the hope that, if I could not hope to live for myself, I could at least live for the people I cared about — the people who cared for me. I had no idea it would cost me so much, or that in the end I would be driven into isolation and have to face the simple, horrible truth of my existence. I lived a lie, and that is why I do not feel deserving of the love my family and friends have had for me. I hate the person I tried to be, and in that irrational way of such emotions, I hate everyone who ever loved that person. I’ve never been the type to hold on to negative emotions; I know that they arise in response to things I perceive to be wrong, cruel and unfair. I could never point a finger of blame, because I keep analyzing the problem until I understand it and what I did, or did not do, to bring it about.

I am a girl in a male body because I found myself and believed in myself, and it ended up hurting me because I allowed the circumstances I was in to overwhelm me. I knew the truth and allowed myself to doubt it. That doubt was all the leverage needed to turn my life into hell. I tried to deny the truth and struggled to believe the lie I created to survive in the world of doubt I had embraced. Why? Do the facts really matter if they contradict the truth? Is reality worth holding onto if you have to dispose of yourself in the process? I could never silence these questions, and part of me struggled to hold onto the one truth I had. I know there have been times when I wondered why this was happening to me, and there are answers I could give myself, but in a lot of ways it was not the question that mattered. If I tried to look at my life as a story, then everything that happens is just part of the plot, and if I think of myself as the protagonist of the story, then it’s all a puzzle I have to figure out. Even if I just call it a life, then the challenge of every experience is to find meaning in what is happening to me. When I open my eyes and consider what is happening with everyone all over the world, then it begins to look like a proving ground, and the purpose of everything that happens in life is to find out what it takes to destroy us. When I think about it, though, I feel like I’ve survived too many things that should have destroyed me, often in ways I would have preferred not to have survived. Even worse, it often seems that it has been because of my weaknesses, not my strengths, that I have been able to survive. I mean, if a person can really die of a broken heart, I could have died a thousand times a day.

The hardest thing to endure is the idea that this is a world without magic and miracles, a world where it is not possible to transform this body of mine in a way that would make it mine. I cling to my sanity in the face of a reality in which the very thing that supports my existence is the thing that denies me the ability to truly live. I’ve always known that there are others who have experienced a conflict between who they are and what they appear to be. I also know that appearances matter no matter what anyone says to the contrary. It is not necessary to be gender dysphoric to feel betrayed by one’s body. It is enough to simply look different. In many ways, it is easier to accept what other people look like than to accept our own appearance. I always had a hard time with the fact that I appeared perfectly normal to other people but felt horribly deformed, with parts of me literally turned inside out. I feel the distortion of my body image by my physical senses as a constant dislocation and disorientation, like I have two bodies, a male body overlapping a female body — which is a lot like wearing over-sized boots all over. That should go a long way towards explaining my instinctive understanding of four-dimensional space, as well as my intuitions about the nature of the mind, soul and spirit. Even as a child, I found it easy to comprehend magic and miracles in terms of multi-dimensional functions, though even now it’s difficult to describe what is clear in my mind using words. Of course, what I think of and associate with the terms “magic” and “miracle” are a bit different from what I find in most literature. For a while, I thought it might be more appropriate to use the term “psychic” or “psionic” instead, but even those terms are met with suspicion and skepticism these days, and I can understand why.

I recall pointing out somewhere that magic is the ability to change reality in spite of what you believe, while a miracle is a change in reality based on belief, and that both are expressions of psychic potential. These were clarifications I made to distinguish the concepts for my own use, both in fiction and in philosophy. As far as I am concerned, there should be no stigma attached to these words, or any mystery or occult terms passed down into the English language, even if scientists and skeptics do like to view them with contempt. Concepts are necessary to communicate ideas, and even if there is no scientific basis for their use, they provide a rich vocabulary for expressing ideas that are otherwise hard to articulate. It’s an approach I’ve been using all along, in previous posts. It was inevitable what I would reach a point where I would feel the need to comment on my use of such terms, just as it is inevitable for a child born in the wrong body to wish for metamorphosis. If all I had done was wish for change, I would have lost it a long time ago. The part of growing up and outgrowing fairy tales and children’s fantasy would have left me hopeless. So, I had to put more effort into searching for a way to change, which meant doing my own research into miracles, magic and medicine. Since I did not have money to throw into it, I was pretty much limited to what could be found in libraries and book stores or what could be learned from other people. It is not hard to find people with strong beliefs about magic or religion, and medical practices are pretty well documented; it did not take long to conclude that what I was looking for was beyond the reach of medicine, and what most people who believed in magic or divine intervention would consider possible.

I should say, anyone who believes in God would say He has the power to transform a body, but since He is our Creator we are meant to be the way He made us. To believe otherwise is perceived as a sign of demonic or satanic influence. I have had this kind of theology used against me, and it falls apart with just a little analysis. We could not be vulnerable to demonic or satanic influence upon our identities unless we had the capacity to redefine ourselves, and we would only have the capacity to redefine ourselves if we were meant to assert our own identities. God might determine where we start out in life, but I don’t think we would be able to live without free will; if it’s all God’s will, then there’s really no one here but God playing with meat puppets. If we are free to make our own choices, who we are is a reflection of those choices, even if we cannot act on them. The problem most of us face in life is not having the opportunities to make the choices we really want to. One of the ways you find out who you are is by understanding the path you choose to take, and why. In any case, the world we live in only makes sense if we have true free will; there is clearly nothing limiting the choices people have except the consequences of those we act on. By chance or design, we are free to do anything we take it upon ourselves to do, and it’s up to us to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do the right thing because it is what we choose to do. In the end, we become better people by choosing to be our best, without the need for threats or coercion.

For all I know, the point of my life was to come to this understanding, to live a lie long enough to want nothing more than to be true to myself and find a way to be true to others, to understand how vital it is to be true even if the truth is out of reach. Perhaps that is something that can only be understood when you need something you cannot have, when you aspire for something that cannot be obtained with words, or actions. The thing I have sought my entire life is the power to change myself, not because I want power for its own sake, but because I need that power to become the person I want to be, the best person I can be. I can be honest and say I am not happy to be the best I can be; it’s not enough to make the most out of what I’ve been given. I want to be the best I can dream of being, and I wish I could achieve that on my own, without compromise. I’m not sure if that is possible in this world. I believe in the possibility, but what I believe only affects what I can accept as possible. In all probability, I will die for that belief because I don’t want to live in a world where it will not come true. Until then, however, I will keep thinking about what it would take to change the world just enough to make myself truly part of it.

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.

The Damage is Done

I wonder what is going to happen next. I wonder if I can hold it together to get a job and move out on my own. I wonder if I can manage to hold on to that job and support myself. I wonder, because I am not really wanted where I am. The only support I can count on, the support of my family and friends, is conditional. It always has been. It has always been conditional on me finding a way to get steady on my own two feet. The irony of that always brings a smile of agony. I know what they want, and that they want it for me, for me to become independent. It is something I do want. The problem is that it leaves me alone inside a life that holds absolutely no meaning for me. This person that I pretend to be, because he means something to his friends and family, means nothing to me. He does not mean enough, to the people who employ him, to have any purpose. He can be replaced by anyone and cannot compete with the living.

He is useful to me; like a suit of armor, he has protected me from so much that is so much worse than I have suffered. He is a little dented and out of shape, the former because he has taken many blows for me, the latter because he cannot maintain himself and I do not know how to keep him from falling apart. I can barely carry his weight, and when I stumble, he falls and shatters. I keep picking up the pieces and putting them back together, but after so many falls, it has become a cascade, a walking disaster. The only way to keep him together is to pour more and more of myself into him. This is how I am dying. I cannot live this lie, but it’s the only life I have got. It is not a life. This tragic joke goes on only because my will to live is strong; stronger and more defiant with every rip and tear in my heart, for every blind piercing agony in my soul. I get knocked down and get up so fast, so often it is like the flicker between two frames in a film.

You cannot see it happen. You do not even know that the look in your eye hit me like a freight train. You do not realize that the small gestures you make without thinking, your unconscious responses to the man standing between me and you, strike me like fists. You cannot know, so I stand there and smile, screaming in agony inside my armor. When you ask me my name, the lie floats lightly off my tongue, the cost of uttering it slicing through me with the crack of a whip. I barely flinch. I dare not. My disguise will not hold up for an instant if I falter. If I raise the slightest suspicion, this interview is done; this door closes and the time and effort and expense of getting here is wasted, my resources diminished with less hope of replenishing them. But the first lie is followed by another, another fact that hides and obscures the truth. I am older now, and my long search for a way to fit in — misfit that I am — betrays me, raising doubts about my stability and reliability.

I already know you do not want him. He is stained with my blood, the undeniable evidence of my constant failure to be what people expect. You cannot see the brilliant light of my mind, the glorious beauty of my soul. You cannot see this angel walking proudly through hell, head high, perfect in her understanding of herself. I pity you as you gently turn me away. I came here to die for you, to add your labors to the burden I carry for a pittance of money I need only to pay the toll of my existence so that I am not a burden upon the people I love; people whose love for him blinds them to my very existence. They see my suffering through him, but they do not understand this tiny glimpse of me. They cannot fathom the true depths of my suffering. When I tried to show myself, they saw me as his defect. They do not realize that if I were not forced to be something I am not, I would be perfect. I realize that if I even speak of my desire to be myself, I will hurt them.

I struggle to survive because they love him. I struggle because no one else wants him. No one else needs him. He is not normal and they can sense it. My own weakness, my desperate attempts to express myself, have undermined his position. I have left proof of his flawed nature where it can be traced back to him. I compromised my own cover. I have rendered my armor useless. It is such a shame I cannot take it off. It is so sad that it is crushing me. The weight of this sorrow staggering. It makes me wonder. It keeps me up at night, my fingers dancing in the ache of words, the gentle sound of keystrokes the only tears I can shed. The tide of desperation gently eroding the sand on which I stand. I have to do this. I have no more choice in this than I have about searching for a job. I am alone and I am not wanted, but I must find someone who has some small thing for which they need someone — and someone like me will do.

If only I had time. If only you would stop taking more than I have to give. I am willing to do anything. I am utterly without shame. Just give back enough to me for me to be able to pay a world that has denied me everything and charges to let me stay. I can do so many things, but all of them take time. I know you expect me to prove myself, you keep telling me I have to earn my keep. Telling me that while you keep taking, taking everything you can take from me. That’s fine, if you want it so much take everything; I have nothing left but me. I don’t have anywhere to go. I cannot escape from what is happening to me. It kills me to go on living, but I do not know how to let go. I no longer want to keep moving. I need to stop and say no more. Oh, but who do I ask for mercy? I don’t know who you are. Even if you can hear me, why should you listen or care? It’s been ten years since I really stopped hiding and finally cried out for help. With only my soul left to bargain with, I need help with no strings attached.

So, what kind of hope am I made of? I know better than to hope for such help. I know that I’ll just be called lazy and probably even crazy. Even the people that love him have thrown that one at me. The truth is that I have tried everything, done everything asked of me. I am lost and alone and exhausted. There is nothing left of me but my dreams, broken and bleeding as me. I’ve tried to make something of them, but it was never the right time. More and more my thoughts return to them, because it feels like I am running out of time. I just want to sit down and write them, but the opportunity dried away. What once was my one hope of salvation is now just another broken dream. It does not matter if I have something worth giving. Not if it is not in my hand. If I do not have time to produce it, well, isn’t that just too bad? I do not belong here. I wonder why I try?

A True Identity is Nothing to Fear

The response I received to my last post, Conundrum, prompted me to check out the recent posts of the people who commented or posted blogs in the transgender category yesterday. As a result, I became aware of the outcry against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), to the work group responsible for revising the entry for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders. The first blog I read on the subject, posted by Gender Outlaw, struck a very personal chord with me. In addition to being transgendered, I was put up for adoption when I was four and spent a year in foster care while the state attempted to contact my biological father so that he might claim his custody rights. It was during my time in foster care that I was terrorized out of identifying myself as a girl and learned to keep my true identity a secret. It took time to learn how to restrain my natural impulses and act like a boy, and the threat of abandonment and rejection was used to reinforce “correct” behavior. By the time I was adopted, this conditioning had scarred me for life, rendering me incapable of trusting anyone with my true thoughts and feelings. When my new family noticed my feminine traits and confronted me with questions about my behavior, or offered even a mild rebuke for “acting like a girl” I was consumed with that fear of rejection and lied to deflect any suspicions.

To this day, I can not remember where I gained the fear of being institutionalized and subjected to shock or aversion therapy. It could have been something someone said to me, or around me. I do not recall, but having suffered an accidental electrocution when I was five I knew what it would do to me, and that fear ensured that my distrust extended to medical professionals in particular. I tried to understand why no one accepted me. Between the ages of five and six I learned the physical facts, and by the time I was seven I knew what a sex change was and how society viewed transsexuals. It confirmed my belief that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the thoughts and feelings that made me who I am marked me as abnormal and insane. To protect myself, I could never allow my true thoughts and feelings come to light — no matter how painful it was. The promise of abuse, the threat of violence and possibly even death was certain. I did not want to live like this. I wanted to be a boy, to be sane and normal and wanted in the world.

I did everything I could to accept the reality, carefully controlling my thoughts and feelings, training myself to think and act like a boy, even though I was often clueless about how. I observed and studied boys intently, trying to understand why they did the things they did so that my own actions would seem appropriate. I learned how to be friends with boys and stopped being friends with girls. I became lonely and miserable, my confidence tattered and thin because I could never trust my own instincts. Nothing I did could alter or prevent my true thoughts and feelings from asserting themselves, however. The plain and simple fact that I was not a girl caused instant agony, whenever it crossed my mind. I could understand girls without trying; often better than they understood themselves because my intuition flowed into an analytical mind that questioned everything that others took for granted.

I knew I was supposed to be female, but I did not have the right body and no means of changing it, though I pursued every possibility in secret to the point of absolute frustration and disappointment. I have not given up. I never gave up on finding a way to get the body that goes with my soul, but I struggle and fail to obtain the resources needed. The pose that I maintain, even now that I have overcome my fears enough to assert myself, costs too much. It takes so much out of me. I pay a price for every thought, word, or gesture committed to disguise the emotional tempest that has built up inside of me.

I do not like to answer people when they ask me how I am doing or how I feel. I have to lie, because there is no way to tell the truth. There is no way to describe how I feel, but I would not ask my worst enemy, the most abominable thing in existence, to feel this; how could I ever ask a stranger? How could I put that on a loved one? One moment of this pain is too much to bear. Sadly, when it is there every moment, you learn to. It can not destroy you because it can not exist without you. It is you. It is me.

…

I followed the posts to a petition against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. I started this post to include the comments I left along with my signature, not realizing that cracking open that door would let so much out. Now I can see that my comment expresses the conclusions I reached on the repression of identity.

The use of any method to impose a state or frame of mind upon an individual to subvert or subdue that individual’s free willed expression of identity is nothing less than assault with a deadly weapon. No external agent or agency should be permitted to impose a belief, theory or system of thought upon any individual against that individual’s will. Voluntary self examination or constructive therapy should be sufficient to ensure that an individual with ambiguous feelings or confusion is able to resolve any uncertainty that could have negative consequences if an individual were to act in haste.

No one has the right to tell a person who he or she is. A body might house the mind, but it is the mind that makes a body into a person. It is a person’s privilege and natural obligation to assume and assert his or her own identity in accordance with his or her best understanding of him or her self; no one else has sufficient access an individual’s psyche. Social pressure of this nature is threatening enough to the formation of identity and causes significant trauma by itself; as a medical practice it would be an abomination.

Conundrum

Today I find myself puzzling over the weird fact of my existence. The Internet created an opportunity to show a side of myself that I had long kept hidden. I am transgendered; in spite of being born and raised male the core of my identity is female. It is not a convenient or desirable situation, and it puts me in constant conflict between who I am and what I am. It would be simpler to let myself be defined by my body but the simple fact is that I am defined by my mind, or to be more accurate, my mind is what defines me. It is the nature of my thoughts and feelings that define me as a person, and it is by examining and understanding my thoughts and feelings that I find myself forced to admit I am a girl in spite of being a boy. It could mean that my brain structure and chemistry is feminine, or it could mean that the character of a soul is stronger than the imprint of a body. There is no way to know. What I do know is that being male, thinking, acting and being perceived as a man, does not make me one; it does not change who I am. It only means that few people are ever likely to see me for who I am.

That is the real curse, the real tragedy of being transgendered. Short of changing the way people perceive me, by changing my physical appearance, there is little chance I will ever be accepted for who I am. Actually, short of a miraculous and literal metamorphosis, there is no chance. What I am stands in the way. What I am distorts me no matter how I appear. I am not a woman. Looking like a woman, dressing like a woman, taking hormones and getting surgery to make my anatomy more like a woman’s, will not make me a woman. A change from transgendered to transsexual is a lateral move. I’ve been tempted, because it would allow me to be much closer to my natural self, but I’ve always known that the physical facts would still prevent people from seeing me for who I am.

But, who am I? That is the question it always comes back to. That is the question that stops me in my tracks every time I meet someone, or interview for a job. I am a lifetime full of facts that obscure the truth. I am a consciousness trapped in a reality that denies me my own reality. My body is nothing more than the earth in which my awareness is rooted. To conform to the flesh, I have to deny my own identity and assume the one that circumstance has provided. To survive, I have to conform to the flesh, and the pain it causes leaves me with no doubt as to the existence of the soul. The only thing in reality that can explain the cause and nature of this pain is the fact of my own reality, the fact that I, myself, am real. This pain, though it has repeatedly broken me and driven me to the brink of suicide, is one thing that assures me I am true.

I know who I am. In spite of having nothing to support me, nothing to confirm my identity, nothing in this world to base it upon but the understanding of what makes me true to myself, I know the truth. I have always known it, even when I tried to deny it for the sake of others who expected or demanded that I conform to their perceptions of me. I am different from most people only in knowing exactly the cost of the circumstances of my birth. In philosophy and religion, it is common to hear that we choose our place in reality, but if you examine it more carefully the choice is not one based on getting what we want out of life, it is based on getting what we need to perfect ourselves; it is a test, a trial by fire. I assumed that my test was about self-sacrifice and accepting reality. Acting on this belief, I nearly destroyed myself.

It is obvious when you think about it. It does not matter what you are if you lose sight of who you are. If you take the person out of the picture, it ceases to have a frame of reference, a perspective that gives it significance and meaning. All of my life I have listened to people asking “what is the point of all this?” and as soon as I realized that without us all of this has no point, I understood. We are the point of all of this. We give this focus. The problem has always been that we have never really understood our purpose. We do not understand what it means to be the point of existence. In today’s world, “existential” is practically a dirty word. No one wants to be existential. We have turned our backs on the spiritual, the ephemeral, the insubstantial, intangible and invisible, and in the process turned our backs on ourselves. This is the path to destruction.

All of the pain and suffering in the world is a product of us walking down this path. If we fail to see the point in our own existence, we cannot truly see the point in anyone’s existence. In a pointless existence, we are driven only by the impulses to avoid pain and seek pleasure and either way we are rendered too numb to think. Without thought we are blind and indifferent to the consequences of our actions, the pain and suffering we cause. Instead of thinking, we rationalize. Instead of solving problems that we have created, we justify them and in the process we create injustice. We end up pitting ourselves against each other, struggling for power to rise above the conflict, creating institutions that marginalize and alienate us further. Each step on this path of destruction strips away a layer of our souls and makes it easier for us to destroy each other.

As a misfit, I have always been painfully sensitive to the suffering of others, and the world’s suffering eclipses the imagination. The mere apprehension of it is overwhelming. Everyone is aware of it on some level and I am sure it is the weight of that apprehension that discourages so many, leaving them wondering if there is any point to existence, unable to understand how a meaningful universe could be so cruel and indifferent. I usually wonder why I am so desperate to find a place for myself in it. All I know is, this world is the one dream we all share and I am tired of dreaming alone.

The Best Way to Fit In? Don’t Stand Out

Grouping is an activity that comes instinctively and automatically to people. It is part of a filtering process that allows us to make sense of our universe. Anything can serve as criteria for grouping, but because this is a perceptual-interpretive process; differences and similarities in physical characteristics are the most prevalent. As we learn and grow, we also associate ideas and experiences with the items in our cognitive inventory. We give values to people, places and things based on personal experience, inherited attitudes and beliefs, and assumptions. Part of our ability to form instant impressions and make immediate judgments is based upon preconception — ideas we have formed previously.

Stereotyping is the result of reaching conclusions based on limited observation or information — often inaccurate or unreliable information. The thing that really differentiates the act of grouping people from the act of stereotyping is thinking. When grouping, you are engaged in a thinking process, perceiving and interpreting raw information, but when stereotyping you are simply calling up some predigested conclusion to save the time, effort and attention required to make an accurate and appropriate judgment. It is called “jumping to conclusions” and it is something we do so much that we rarely even notice it. What this means for social relations is disastrous. By assuming that we “know” what we are confronting when we encounter another human being, we actually fail to perceive that individual as a person. We not only take him or her for granted, we automatically dismiss them as being worthy of greater consideration.

The tendency to concentrate into isolated ethnic groups is a natural instinct for most people. It stems from the desire for a common identity or a desire to belong, and apparently the easiest way for a person to fit in is to not stand out. It is an almost universal aversion to being different. It is the differences between us that become the focus of conflict, as immature as it is. The ability to single a person out of a group gives the group power or justifies decisions that would otherwise be unjustifiable. There are no human traits that are immune to discrimination.

Height, weight, color, sex, intelligence, class, nationality, regionality, whatever it is that makes an individual unique can be used to shut them out of the group. Racial discrimination gets a lot of attention, but what about gender-identity discrimination? When a person who has female psychology and male anatomy acts normal (that is, dressing and acting feminine) and gets raped and or murdered, that is an example of extreme prejudice and discrimination.

The fact is, being different is enough to get a person killed. The reality is, civilization is founded on an impulse that encourages intolerance and breeds fear of individuality.

Each new generation is raised in an environment defined by lingering prejudice and emerging enlightenment, responding to the lingering injustices in positive and negative ways that inform the next generation’s prejudices. The victims are not just disadvantaged minorities isolated from “mainstream society” in ghettoes, or resentfully integrated into “suburbia.” Most of the people in the world struggle with poverty and discrimination because poverty and discrimination tend to be self-sustaining and mutually reinforcing. The thing most people overlook is the fact that the rich are a minority isolated from mainstream society — including the majority of individuals of their own race or ethnicity.

While this may sound like a discriminatory statement, minorities continue to struggle with the System mostly because it is not their System. The government and industry of the United States was created by a specific group with the specific purpose of supporting and promoting their own group. It is a privileged system and while it’s laid out on paper as ideals and laws, it is made real by people who do discriminate and are prejudiced — sometimes negatively, against people of other races or ethnic origins, but primarily positively toward their own race and ethnic group. It is perfectly reasonable to point out this selfishness on the part of the elite, and it is not entirely enviable, but it is human. A better system can only be created by people who hold less exclusive views of people.

Being at Odds with Life

I never imagined that I had a monopoly on being at odds with life. It is simply a state of being with which I am much too familiar. I have spent most of my life struggling with things that most people take for granted, stumbling and falling in places where most people stride with confidence and conviction. Strangely, I can dance through other places where most people crawl along blindly in fear and confusion or turn and run from in terror. I am not like everyone else, and I can not just be like everyone else and do what everyone else does. In order to live like other people, I have to learn the role and act the part — but the performance I put on never ends and by going through the motions I end up not having a life of my own.

There are people who are paid millions of dollars to use the skills I use simply to survive. My life has been a job that no one hired me for and no one pays me to do. I do this simply because I was born in a body that disguises my true nature. I do this because it is the only way I can do anything, be anything, have anything at all. There is one interesting benefit; I am in constant turmoil because of a conflict between who I am and what I appear to be. I know I have a soul, because my mind is not strong enough to exist at such complete odds with my body. In spite of every effort and encouragement to conform to my physical reality, I continue to exist as a girl in my own mind.

My mind has fallen apart and reset to this female identity too many times for me to question who I really am. Trying to be a man destroys me. There is a limit to how long I can play the part before it kills me. It is like holding my breath under water. I have to surface one in a while to breathe or risk drowning. Unfortunately, I have to keep taking that risk because the people around me can only acknowledge the person I appear to be; only the physical part of me is accepted as being real or legitimate. Oh, I can talk myself blue about who I really am, but most people will continue to perceive me as a mentally defective man — or worse, a sexually defective man.

I could get a sex change — pardon me, I mean, I could elect to undergo gender reassignment surgery — in which case I would no longer be considered a man. I might even, with lots of work, pass for a woman. But I would not be female. I can not even begin to explain the problems I’ve had with the very idea of surgical intervention, but it was being forced to confront it as the only real option available for correcting things that drove me to the brink of suicide. That is a very odd place to end up as the result of wanting a real life. For now, the fact that I literally can not afford it, and for health reasons should not risk it, is all that keeps me from pursuing in desperation to get out of living as a man.

I am actually afraid of what would happen if I could afford to go through with it. Not because I would regret doing it. I’ve spent so much of my life hiding who I really am, I am not sure if I would know how to just be myself. The other concerns, real and terrifying as they are, just don’t compare to the fact that I would end up alone and uncertain of myself. The hardest part of what I have survived is the one part that will be emphasized most if I were to do the right thing for myself. I know that I would get past that point, and survive if the process itself doesn’t kill me — a risk I was always willing to take. In the end, the final curse is that no matter what I do, I have no idea how I am supposed to fit in anywhere. If I have no place in this world, either way, why do I put myself through all of this misery?