A Spark

My eyes opened and this is what I saw. You can in yourself be anything you desire. You create yourself from a point. You define your own existence. A soul defines itself. What words cannot define, they can characterize, so that the truth may be recognized as it is encountered. The existence of a soul is absolute, at once all and nothing. The qualities of a soul are both infinite and eternal. A soul is not a question, nor is a soul an answer. A soul is a statement. A soul is an expression, a unique, individual creation.

While I gazed in wonder, I realized that even before a soul embraces the awareness of other souls, the darkness of a soul embraces the light of other souls, filling the emptiness of its existence with the certainty of others, both as a foundation for its own reality, and a medium for the realization of its self. A soul dreams its dreams, innocent of consequence, immune to concern, often unaware of those who chance to share its dream. But already it is evolving. Its attention expands to encompass a growing understanding of its condition, and its will develops as it struggles to grasp the essence of its awareness.

Then I looked upon myself and had to see that in adopting a design, a soul is often faced with a limitation that arguably compromises or violates its integrity. If, within a given archetype, a design employs mutually exclusive characteristics, a soul, which by its intrinsic nature encompasses the gamut of mutually exclusive characteristics, can be stifled by the emphasis of its adopted design. Confounded by an exclusive emphasis, a soul is often compelled to find expression elsewhere. The diafracture of a soul can result in the functional and dysfunctional aspecting of a soul. The fact that such a situation can occur is not in itself damning or flawed, but a certain sophistication is needed to distinguish between a functional and a dysfunctional emphasis.

I looked upon my life and considered what was there to see. As the soul evolves, it creates. Constantly grasping existence anew and refining its understanding, recreating its universe. The power of its dreaming creating dreams. And in its dreams, it begins to experience moments of clarity. The questions and answers that it eternally weaves suddenly resolve and it awakens to a world. There was so much wonder in that. One soul can give birth to all souls, for that which can conceive of itself, can conceive of others, and in conceiving of others, can conceive of others that can conceive of themselves, and those that can conceive of themselves and each other can conceive of that which can conceive of itself.

So I understood, that one soul, dreaming of many, makes an invitation. The souls, dreaming of themselves, realizing the same truth, making the same invitation, are revealed to each other. Thus souls born dreaming alone, become souls dreaming alone together.

It took so little effort to put this epiphany to words, but the longer I looked at it, I realized that so much of it was beyond words. So much will ever be beyond words, and perhaps that is why the relationship between the body and the spirit is easier to describe than the relationship of mind and soul. Like the soul, a mind is a possession of itself, but unlike the soul, the mind is vulnerable. In a way, mind is a soul’s way of transcending itself. A soul can touch, and can be touched, only through its mind. The mind exists at a crucial threshold, as a premier interface between the individual and the infinite. Where every soul is a thing of innate perfection, each mind is a unique work of art. A mind is a soul’s way of representing itself.

At the same time, I could not help but notice that a mind is also a soul’s way of influencing itself. The power of a mind is derived of itself, in the expression of its soul. Mind is key to existence. The function of mind, to make dreams into reality, is demonstrated in our own realization of each other. The ambition or promise of mind, to realize the ideal, is demonstrated in our insistence on finding meaning in what we experience. In the world, the mind — not the body — is the seat of the soul. The mind is so central to existence that people are often blind to it, though nothing within it is ever hidden from the soul. If the soul could be said to be the light of our awareness, then the mind is the lens through which that light is focused.

It is a lens shaped by the soul, as much as by experience. It is intimately personal, yet exposed to everything. A possession of itself, a mind is also an object, a thing that can be grasped, manipulated, probed, and even possessed by, or shared, with another. I know that seems to imply telepathy, but even if there is something to that implication, there is reason enough for us to find it unsupportable. No intimacy can compare to what the mind can invite, and that is what makes telepathy, or any true example of what we would think of as psychic potential particularly difficult and dangerous for us to accept. Even without telepathy, we have enough ways to know each others’ minds. Even without other psychic abilities, we are capable of realizing that in order for the mind to influence reality, it must open itself, and become vulnerable. Only a strong, stable, healthy mind could bear to be so naked to reality. Only an open mind can touch naked reality.

Or maybe I should say, only a closed mind can avoid it. That is sort of the paradox of the position we find ourselves in. It is not our minds that define the limits of our grasp of reality, but the manner in which we perceive it. We give precedence to the senses of our body, as if the fact that our minds truly make sense of what we perceive means that the mind itself has no means of perception. And yet, all that we can ever truly know, we know only in the mind. Our connection to the physical universe we perceive as containing us lies solely in the information our minds derive from our perception of the world. The world we exist in is contained in that information, as much as that information is contained in the structure of the world, so the world we experience is really just an idea of the world. What that information really is or what it represents we are unable to know, because it can only be observed indirectly—if at all.

Our senses provide a very limited perspective. Our physical senses only provide the mechanism for transforming electrical and chemical impulses into information, perception itself is rooted in them and thus in the body, but only in the full focus of consciousness is perception truly realized, and only the mind perceives meaning and purpose. If you take the mind out of the process, information ceases to be a meaningful concept. Even limiting the mind to the function of processing information, storing and correlating data, the mind becomes distinct from the brain and nervous system by virtue of perceiving information. That transition to an information state crosses the same boundary between that which is purely physical in nature to that which is mental, or psychic or spiritual in nature. If one must look for a reason to accept these diverse terms, a justification for a soul as well as a mind, all I can offer is the common observation that what ultimately distinguishes one of us from another is the possession of our own awareness. That awareness is not always conscious and focused and it is not always neatly confined to the bounds of our own minds or even the bounds of our bodies or the world those bodies exist in. Also, while the minds provide that awareness with structure, the awareness is not passive. Awareness penetrates and pervades us, active and impulsive, persistent and pensive, focused in both understanding and intent.

It has taken me a long time to find the words to capture what I glimpsed, and that was neither the first nor the last glimpse I’ve had. I am sorry to say that these words only offer a glimpse of what I saw. If I thought I would live a long and productive life, I still do not think I could do more than scratch the surface of all that I have seen. In the life I have, I have barely made a scratch.

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.

Impulse

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the point of my existence? These are questions we all ask at some point in our lives, and we can go our entire lives without knowing the answer. I suspect that a lot of people try to avoid thinking about it, not knowing how to begin answering, and I wonder how long a person can go without asking them. There are an endless number of situations and circumstances that can force us to confront these questions, and other soul searching questions like them. For me, the question can come up as a result of gender issues, but I’ve had it come up in many other circumstances. The answers, whatever they are, test the limits of my understanding, because in many ways I am the awareness brought into focus by both the sum and the gestalt of my understanding. In the scope of my understanding, I am aware that I am not driven by a desire to be female. I am driven by an impulse that is at once too simple and too complex for words, because words will never serve to express that impulse. Because I found myself in a body that I was not able to express myself properly in, it was only natural for me to become obsessed with finding a better way to express myself. I put a lot of thought and effort into figuring out the best way to embody myself in human terms, and because I was thinking in human terms, my self image is based on understanding the compromises that allowed me to be as true to myself as possible. Of course, human limitations are based on the limitations of reality, which are the perceived limits of existence — or rather the limits of perception. The plain, simple and painful truth is that I am driven to do something that can not be done within those limits — as we understand them.

I am a person who would have to change the world in order to show myself in it. It is who I am, it is why I am here, and the end — the point — is to have a beginning. It took a long time to understand that I was not limited by what anyone else knew or understood about reality; I can only be limited by my own understanding. At the same time, I realized that people understand a great deal more than they know, and that the truth is pretty much always hidden in plain sight. As I began to see and understand more, I felt the temptation to try to share what I discovered and help enlighten others. I got side tracked trying to figure out how to describe and explain what I perceived, losing sight of my original purpose. I do not need anyone to tell me that what I intended to do was “impossible” and I got tied up in wanting to be able to explain how to do the impossible before I went off and actually did what I intended. I just ended up spending a lot of time thinking about how impossible it was to do what I needed to do. I should have obeyed my original instinct, which was to try to do the impossible without attracting any attention to what I had done, but I did not know how to do that without hurting people I loved. I was also bothered by the implications of what I intended, and the peculiar insight that motivated me to act. I intended to transform my body, but that was simply how I intended to use the power I perceived in myself, how I would truly show myself. I am not actually interested in trying to change the world, but I find myself in a position where it is necessary in order to be true to myself. But, as Morpheus reminded Neo, “there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

I know it sounds insane, and I’m not inclined to convince anyone that it is not. This is mostly a case of me thinking aloud and not much caring who hears. I have spent decades trying to figure out what it would take to accomplish this task, and discovering where I am obstructed by a lack of knowledge, or experience, or resources. I’ve shared bits of speculation in past journals and blogs, but I can never really capture my thoughts in words. Writing allows me to slow my thoughts down and get some of them out where I can focus on specific ideas. I needed to get to the root of what was really bothering me, and even if it sounds crazy, I am more comfortable with what I have said in this post than I have been with any of the posts about being transgendered or needing to transition. Those other posts have forced me to revisit the things that have torn me apart, but in the hope of being understood and accepted I tried to stay within the bounds of what seemed socially acceptable. The problem is that transition falls bitterly short of accomplishing what I really need to do. I have paid a huge price to give myself time to think this through, and for the second time in my life been tempted by the practical alternative and found the cost in terms of personal compromise to be too high. It was never an option, because I always believed in myself, even when that belief was undermined by all the doubt in the world. If I cannot act on that belief, is there really any point to living?

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.

Hidden in Plain Sight

On April 27, 2008 at 12:36 am, I began a post — this post, actually — but got no further than the title. I don’t know if that was because that title summed up my feelings so well that there was no point to writing any further about what was on my mind. Yesterday, those words came back to me at the conclusion of A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox. I’ve always thought of the truth as something that is hidden in plain sight, and approached it as something that we take so much for granted we really don’t know what to do with it. One might as well say that the truth that can be put into words is not the truth. Communication is more a matter of interpretation, and there is no singularity to interpretation. The truth is out there, and every time we encounter it, we are seeing it from a limited point of view. When we come across it again from a different point of view, we still recognize it as the truth but it not only appears different, we ourselves understand it in a different context.

As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be hidden in plain sight. There are days when it is not hard to think of myself as a very high functioning autistic, because the person I really am has almost no connection to the real world; I rely on an artificial mental construct to interact with people around me. The better that construct is, the more disassociated I actually am. As much as I hate the effect this has on me, and as much as I view it as evidence of my acquired distrust of people, I can see it as simply a more extreme form of social persona that is created by each person to deal with other people. We do not expect to be accepted for who we really are, and so we lie to gain acceptance. Little white lies, for the most part, and no one really thinks much about it. Of course, they hurt us, and this manner of hurting ourselves gives rise to shame and guilt over the lying and the possession of undesirable traits. So, maybe we all try to hide in plain sight.

By that, I mean, we try to conform. I obscured myself that way. The problem with conformity is that you have to believe in the existence of a norm. In that vein, I once looked at social gender constructs and human nature and concluded that each of us must be heir to all of human potential, so it was perfectly normal for a man to have many feminine traits that had to be denied in order to become a man. Because of social gender constructs, it was a natural if unfortunate consequence that men who possessed a number of so-called feminine traits would end up with dangerous inferiority complexes, both to conform to the social ideal of masculinity and to condemn in each other what they were insecure about in themselves. The problem with this assumption was that it implied that we have to choose but we do not have a real choice. In nature, any option that is not fatal is viable. In honesty, society would probably benefit most from men who possessed more “feminine” characteristics, and the men would probably be happier and healthier as well.

I conformed to the expectations of people around me because it was clear to me what would happen if I did not. When I really thought about it, it became obvious to me that the thing that messed society up so much was the perception of social ideals that ultimately favored one tiny group of self-justified elites. But, if that’s not who you are, you can never be happy trying to conform to that false ideal. I’ve seen a lot of people try to take advantage of these social constructs to pursue power, whether in the form of money, fame, or politics, but this is no path to happiness or enlightenment. This just reinforces the system that abuses the people under its influence. A warped social system is as responsible for creating and perpetuating the illusion of poverty as it is the illusion of prosperity. If you cannot fit in and thrive while being true to yourself, you can never gain anything from taking part. I learned that the hard way. I played the part I was expected to, only to have the life sucked out of me. If I had been paid in proportion to the personal cost of my sacrifices, I’d have billions by now.

Instead, I’ve got a hole more than deep enough to bury myself in. I have been shocked awake, as if by some near death experience, and I can no longer deny the truth of myself no matter how much of a misfit it makes me. I have to be true to myself, even if that means I have no hope of stable employment, even if it means I cannot function in the environment that would provide stable employment. I should be honest, I don’t want any job that I would have to lie to get or play a role to hold on to. I know that will only push me off the deep end. I am beginning to think that there is no place for me in the world of deep thinking, though it’s probably where I belong. I have always known that people have to figure out the important truths for themselves. It never hurts to write about them, to give people food for thought; once in a while, what you can write down is enough to lead someone else to their own epiphanies, and I’ve had enough of my own to map out a few promising paths. I would love to keep on exploring the frontiers of consciousness, but I just don’t have the right backing. I am not catching anyone’s interest.

I usually do not worry about the fate of humanity. I know that the truth is there for anyone who wants to see it; I know that people often see what they want to see, or use what they see to justify what they think, but as long as people are still curious and confront the paradox of death seriously, they can get past the usual mistakes and still get to the point. I was originally more interested in finding my own miracles and being able to point out precisely how they worked in the event I was able to solve my own problem using them. I have to pursue transformation because failing to would mean living a meaningless life and dying a meaningless death. That realization is part of what undermined my attempts to write fiction simply to support myself. I would much rather live the kind of story that comes to me than simply write it. I would rather be working actively toward my own salvation. I would rather be fighting for my soul. I would rather face the moment of my death with a smile and an understanding of what that step in the dance of life really was, and if necessary, be able to step around it.

I am not afraid of the prospect of oblivion, but I do find existence worth holding on to, even if I have to change it to make it work right. It’s a good idea and one that needs a lot of improvement, and while I may not be well equipped for that, I still want to work on it. I might have once tried to save the world, but it takes all of us to o that, so I am going to focus on ideas that might help people save themselves. I once said, “if you want to make the world a better place, you need to make better people” but I’ve revised that second part to, “you need people who want to make themselves better” and since you can’t force people to be better, you have to give them what they need to improve on their own. Society does not serve that purpose, but people can work inside of society to benefit more people. I was kind of hoping there would be people with resources and no ideas on the lookout for someone like me — I’m doing this one way or the other, with support or without, but… yeah, support would be nice — but I can see how hard it is now to believe in a single voice lost in the roar of the surf.

Thanks to the Internet, I simply have one more way to be hidden in plain sight. It’s not quite as bad as being the needle in a haystack, and at the same time it’s as bad as not being the only needle in the haystack. I really do not have much care for money, I have never been much motivated to make it since its not really the solution to the problems that really matter to me. I could use money to transition, to travel and do research, set up a better studio and information system, but most of the money I’ve made in life has been only good for paying for rent, food and bills. Most of the people I’ve known on a personal level have been in the same position. I have taken whatever work I could get to keep up with the bills. The problem is, I passed the point where I don’t care anymore. I want to keep working on some of the questions I am forever asking, and I want to share my observations still, but I am no longer afraid of homelessness and death, not enough to make the personal sacrifices I’ve made in the past for the privilege of starvation wages. If nobody sees me, if nobody hears me, if nobody really cares, that’s fine. If you didn’t notice I was here, I understand.

I have tried to ask for help. I’ve tried to catch people’s attention, and I’ve tried to put something worthy of interest out there for you. I have a lot more, but I am running out of time. I have to say that now, while there’s still a chance. I have to ask strangers for help like this because I am too inward bound to know how to get attention from the right people, people who can get what I am saying, who can see where I am going and who feel that it is as important as I do. The truth is hidden in plain sight, and so we overlook it every day. I think it’s past time we stopped and looked into it. I think it’s essential for us to survive and grow. I think that anyone who has confronted the prospect of oblivion should know better than to ignore the implications that are all around us. I think it is time we took our imagination and intuition as seriously as our reason. I think it is time we took our wishful thinking and stripped away the whimsy, and made a serious study of doing the impossible. Lots of people have dreams, but my dream has always been to achieve realization. The only way to do that is to be able to go beyond our normal thinking, and that is the stumbling block most people fall over. I can hardly get through the day without tripping over myself, but give me any other stumbling block and I can fly right over it.

A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox

On any given day, a small handful of people find their way to the eye of paradox. Some of them probably just glance at an article to see if it’s relevant to the search that brought them here. One or two might actually read something. Once in a blue moon, someone leaves a short comment. Taken all together, I do not see anything to indicate that my words mean much. Is that frustrating? A little. I think it only bothers me because I have so much on my mind all the time, and there seems to be little or nothing I can do with it. I have to ask myself, what am I really accomplishing here? I’ve said it before, I tend to write in the hope of provoking a little thought, usually because the inspiration to write is interesting in itself. I do not expect anyone else to find the result as interesting; partly because it is hard to capture a thought perfectly in words. I am not a thousand-word-a-minute typist and yet I seem to think a million miles a minute. I am not a linear thinker. My thoughts are more like a library in a hurricane. I have never really been able to explain it, but it’s what I mean when I talk about higher-dimensions of thought. The problem with that terminology is that we would all probably assign the dimensions differently, based on the way we think. I suspect that a lot of us think things out in words as a general rule, that good old internal dialogue. I have one, but it’s only one part of how I process information.

I think that most of what I think cannot really be put into words. Seriously, I find it easier to think in worlds. Every instant my brain is processing sensory data to assemble an endless stream of consciousness that ties what I perceive in the moment with things I have perceived in the past, things I imagine, things I have conceptualized, things I have analyzed, things I have articulated, things I intuit and things I have only imagined. I have this notion that I ought to be an author because stories come to me in bursts of instantaneous thought. The problem is that it takes so long to fully articulate one I will have conceived of a thousand variations in the time it takes to block out the basics of the one I started with. The sheer number of options and variations overwhelms me. I don’t find it surprising, however. This is what our brains evolve to do; in life we only get one chance to get anything right, and there are a lot of times when a mistake will cost you your life. When faced with a challenge, we automatically engage the imagination and run through as many simulations as our intelligence and attention allow. A good view of the future requires at least seven dimensions of thought. Our base line of reference is four dimensional (working in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension) and we have to be able to project that image forward to assess the consequences of our actions through to positive, neutral and negative outcomes.

The future is not on a straight line. Neither is the past, really. An individual has no problem seeing history as a line running back through events, but there is such a line for every person and every object involved in every interaction. The past that we perceive is not the only past. For any given instant, there is a conceivable alternate path leading up to it, though usually the only people who are aware of this are people involved in reconstructing events. To a lesser degree, anyone who mulls over the days of their lives will notice the variable paths within the repeating cycle. You can stop, while walking down the street and suddenly put yourself on the other side of the street in some memory. It is one of the reasons we like routine. The more times we go through a sphere of activity, the better we understand the possibilities of acting in that sphere. We use it to maintain a hypersphere of potential activity. We use something similar in the mastery of our own bodies. At any given moment, there is only one position we can be in, but we are aware of all the positions we can move to just in the limits of our own bodies. In a sense, you could say that this is the real difference between the physical nature of something and the spiritual nature. We can only ever see one instance of an object, but that one instance contains the potential of every instance of that object. When you can look at an old man and see the little boy he once was, that is a very spiritual perception.

The funny thing is that we have run into this same thing in quantum physics, the notion that things have potential that exceeds what can be manifested at any given point. In the mind, we can hold onto everything at once, seeing nothing but aware of it all, and pull whatever we want into focus in an instant. I really don’t find it surprising that reality is pretty much the same way. We work constantly to bring the world into focus, we are in a constant process of realization, learning about changes in the world and updating our own internal representation accordingly. This is how we maintain our grip on the universe, and also how the universe maintains its grip on us. Or, this is how we maintain our grip on ourselves. This is a good spot to focus on if you take the question “who am I?” seriously enough. This is where I ended up after years of asking that question in an attempt to determine if it was who I am or what I am that makes me “me”. I came to the same conclusion the characters in the Matrix did, the body cannot live without the mind. Perhaps that is an indication of gestalt consciousness, an indication that the mind is more than the sum of the body’s parts? I am still thinking on that. In the meantime, while I find myself in the universe’s grip, there is an omniverse of information in my grip. I am holding the universe in a firm mental grip, but at the same time I am holding on to many, many more in my thoughts. Of course, I might just be apprehending the possibilities of the universe that would be found in higher dimensions.

What kind of sense organ would be able to perceive higher dimensions? I do it in my mind constantly, so I would be inclined to say the brain is that sense organ, as I rush along in the wake of intuition, chased by thoughts of perception being our key to acting in our environment. I grasp all of the implications of movement in higher dimensions of space and time and cannot keep up with the possibilities that seem to open themselves up. I am riding on an epiphany, a realization of a universe that contains infinite potential. What kind of words could begin to describe it? I struggle to find them, even now. I struggle to find the time to think things through enough to achieve a less dizzying perspective. This is my true field of study, and all I can do is stand at the threshold and stare into it longingly. The irony is, we’re all at this threshold. It’s kind of like the best kept secret, because it’s hidden in plain sight. I think the only reason I noticed it is because I am too.

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.

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 Absolute Truth

The best representation of a thing is the thing itself and yet there are things that we experience great difficulty recognizing in their true form. The truth is one of those things. In speaking of the truth, what we have is a word — and as a representation of a thing, a word provides a label for a concept that is meaningless without an accurate understanding of what the concept represents. Understanding the true meaning of truth is a challenge because it calls upon itself for validation, which is a logical fallacy. Or is it? Is it illogical to state that the truth is self evident? Is this an irrational assertion? If it is, then even science is based upon the fallacy of truth because it relies upon self evident truth in objective measurement as the ultimate test of observable fact. Even though science does not attempt to define truth, concerning itself entirely with facts, leaving questions about the truth and meaning of existence to the disciplines of philosophy, art and theology, science is often used to challenge the truth of our beliefs and assumptions. All too often, people overlook the limits that science imposes on itself, and as a result upon knowledge itself.

Knowledge and understanding are two different things. Knowledge is a body of concepts supported by quantitative and qualitative facts — descriptions, definitions and observations of abstract and concrete phenomena — and understanding is the meaning, or truth, we assign to them. The truth of knowledge is certainly conditional, and we can make quantitative and qualitative assessments of the relative truth of facts and ideas, but facts and ideas are not the truth. Even the concept of truth is not the truth, and as a result the concept of truth can be used conditionally. This is where most of the confusion about the truth originates. The problem is that we try to interpret the truth, resulting in derivatives of the truth distorted by the limits of our understanding and ability to articulate that understanding. Through the ages, people have struggled with knowing the truth, but before the truth can be known it has to be understood. It is necessary to experience the truth, to perceive it and recognize it for what it is. It could be said that understanding is the condition of being conscious of the truth.

The problem that many people have with that kind of assertion is that it implies that the truth is subjective, and if it is subjective then it cannot be absolute. If truth was contained in the understanding, and subject entirely to observation, that would be a fair argument. This is not the case, however. Understanding is a specious word, one that leads us to underestimate the process we are engaged in every moment of our conscious lives. Physically, we are subordinate to and dependent upon the universe for our existence, but the experience of our existence occurs mentally in the process of resolving a conscious, coherent awareness of our being from all the information gathered and coordinated up to the moment of realization — which is a continuous process. We have this notion that the truth is “out there” when in more accurate terms the truth is right here, right now, and it’s so much bigger than we can comprehend that we have to keep processing it constantly. The truth is the absolute; it is what encompasses us even as our minds struggle to encompass it. It is the meaning that is so profound it manifests itself in everything, including our own conscious struggle to recognize it in its elegant simplicity and infinite complexity.

The truth is so pervasive we find it easier to ignore it than to truly comprehend it. The truth is this, words printed on a screen or in a book, being written, being read — interpreted,re-articulated and understood. This is the magic, this is the mystery, the miracle of life that fills my mind and fills yours, spilling all around us, a part of everything and yet apart from everything. It is a dream it takes all of us to realize, and the reality of it is the truth. In opposition to the truth we have only lies, and a lie is simply a distortion of the truth, an inaccuracy or a fiction. All lies, illusions, deceptions and distortions are dependent upon truth, either through denial, ignorance, abstraction or outright fabrication — and through sufficient fabrication, the creation of truth. In certain philosophies, the ultimate expression is the Absolute, often personified as God or objectified as the Universe. The Absolute can be perceived as Abstract or Manifest, potential or actual, dynamic or static — or in all cases, both. The truth is existence, and the truth is oblivion, because everything that is is in the shadow of nothing. Truth is the absolute condition.