Personal update; natural transition?

So, since the last post, I’ve had a few more blowups in my life, one involving an old friend and one involving my partner.  One has resolved and the other, I really haven’t had to gonads to pick up again.  I was called immature in a direct response to my last post by someone who wasn’t even involved with the events in it.  Generally when a major fight like this ensues and I walk away from it and give myself a few days to cool off, I’ll come back with a renewed perspective and see how I was in the wrong.  However, and this is rare, three days later I still don’t see what I did that was so immature other than vent about my frustrations on an online blog.  I’ve even come to reconciliation with the person I mentioned fighting with IN the blog.  But since the last thing I said before storming away from the person who accused me of immaturity was “YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW HOW IT’S BEEN,” I’m not sure how my opinion on my own personal maturity will hold up.

It’s complicated.

I honestly don’t feel compelled in any way to apologize though, because I can’t find any error in what I’m thinking, feeling or saying (other than that final blowup, which ultimately might have made the accusation of immaturity right.)  But even that, however wrongly it was said, is still the truth to me.  The last thing I need right now is someone who hasn’t been through any of what I’m dealing with giving me lectures on how badly I’m dealing with it.  I just… NEED HELP DEALING WITH IT.  I’m not finding it anywhere, you know?

I’m finding:

a) people trying to tell me how hard it is on them, which I’m already aware of and only makes me feel guiltier,

b) people telling me I’m not doing a good job of handling this, which kinda just makes things worse because I already know, which is why I’m asking for help in the first place,

c) people who don’t want to hear it, which is fine with me, as long as they make that clear up front so I can find someone else to talk to,

d) and generally just people who don’t seem too interested in supporting me- just criticizing me.

…

I don’t NEED criticism right now.  YES, constructive criticism is great.  It can really build character when you’re looking to build.  Right now, I’m just looking to hold out as everything in my mind is getting torn down.  Criticism of any kind is really like a baseball bat to the gut right now, and while I’m not looking for anyone to coddle me and treat me like a delicate little butterfly or anything, I just want you to know that if you think that what you have to say might be hurtful in any way, it’s NOT GOING TO BE HELPFUL at this time in my life.  I’ll work on building character when everything’s settled and I can start moving forward again.  Right now, I just need people to listen.

I’m spread open on the operating table and open-heart surgery is taking place.  If I let you into the operating room, if I trust you enough to let you in at this most crucial time in my life, I don’t need you barging in, unscrubbed, with a sledgehammer and a wrench and trying to fix things on top of what’s going on in here already.  This is DANGEROUS.

I’ve found myself at staggering lows of depression in the last few weeks, scary, suicidal places so deep that I’ve never known them before, places that make me want to do crazy things.  It doesn’t take much to push me when I’m even remotely like this.  Last time I got almost this low and weirded out, I wound up in a homeless shelter.  I think that, since I’ve finally found out what’s been wrong all these years and now there’s a goal to fix it, I’m more likely to keep my head on straight, but then again, maybe not.  I don’t want this to read like a threat, I just… don’t have many people I can go to, and being alone in a scary time in my life like this makes me just want to bail out.  If you can be the one person in my life who is just there for me and isn’t trying to…

fix me…

it can make all the difference.

…

IN OTHER NEWS, and ending on a much brighter note, I’ve been noticing slight changes to my body that make me wonder if my body is reacting to me focusing on transition by upping my testosterone levels.

For one, I noticed a single, long chest hair this morning that was just eccentric enough to give me the shits and giggles.  I decided not to really lay any meaning on it- it’s just a hair, right?  People grow single, random hairs on their bodies all the time.  No biggie.  But it still made me kinda happy.

But then, this evening, (well, this is slightly graphic and awkward, but it’s relevant so just bear with me,) I was spontaneously checking out various parts of my body and I noticed that my clit has definitively grown, in circumference and length.  It’s really not anything to speak of one way or the other in terms of dick measurement, but it kind of shocked me to see it.  I wasn’t even aroused.  What does this mean?

Am I seriously producing testosterone holistically?

I was on an FTM forum a little bit ago, and they were listing foods that can raise your T levels naturally.  I realized I’ve been craving a lot of the foods they listed, somewhat all my life, but particularly lately.  Maybe my body craves T and naturally knows where it can get it.

Either way, not being formally on HRT, I’m pleased with the way my transition is going.

Chest bruising and angry ranting.

I wore binding out for the fourth day in a row today.

What sucks:
– I need a REAL compression shirt of some sort.
– I currently use 6″ ace bandages, which have always worked in a pinch, but obviously not a good idea for every day wear.
– I took them off halfway through the day and noticed a weird purplish coloring, which ironically brought the “tumor” analogy closer to life. Chest bruises = not fun.
– But weirdly enough and even MORE ironically, my friend said that she heard that if you bind enough and cause enough bruises in your chest area, it can cause breast cancer (which kind of has the ring of an urban myth, but you can never be too sure.)

What’s (kind of) awesome:
– My technique has been getting better and it never really has that lumpy look anymore.
– I’m getting better at not noticing the pain until I’ve been in binding for 10+ hours.

Yeah.  It’s pretty obvious the pros are overshadowed by the cons.  Any list that has “but I’m getting better at ignoring the pain” as a positive point is pretty much the sign of a losing battle.

…

So, I just went to check out the Big Brothers Used Binder program.  I’ve ultimately decided I’m going to have to go on ahead and buy one instead of try to get one through the program.  Let’s face it, I may only make $200 a month, and that may be difficult to try and live on, but I’ve got a place to go at night, I’ve got a somewhat supportive parent, I’ve got food stamps… and to put the icing on the cake, I just blew $100 going to San Francisco a couple weeks ago.  The site said you can actually order a binder for as little as about $20, which I consider far worth it, even if it means I’m going to have to put off getting my car fixed for a little longer.  I’d just feel dirty and awful if I tried to go through Big Brothers.  But they’re an awesome program if you’re really falling on hard times.

Looks like, till I scrounge up the means to get my own, I’m going to be dealing with the Ace Horror for a little while.

…

In other news, I had my first real fight with someone over my trans issues today.  I was just trying to figure out something for my best friend to call me, because my birth name has been really getting under my skin lately, and I was trying to go easy on her and not make her call me something that would be “hard” for her, or whatever, because it’s so FUCKING hard for everyone else when us transpeople go through this… okay, I’m settling down now.

Anyway, it seemed like one of those rare things she might have a little fun with, something she could join me in and get really excited about- “YOU get to help me pick my new name, I’m trusting YOU with this,” you know?  But just like with anything else I brought up that was trans-related, she got so quiet and distant, offering only the occasional monosyllabic response.  It bothered me.  I had no idea what she was thinking- whether she hated me, whether she had no opinion, whether she thought her opinions were stupid, whether she was completely uninterested, whether she just wanted to change the subject, I had NOTHING to go on.  I’d actually been trying to stifle myself somewhat about it all, only bringing up the things that struck me as positive or funny and not really laying the issue on anyone else, but she finally blew up at me after I questioned why she always got so clammed up whenever I brought up anything.   Apparently, it’s all I’ve been talking about, 24-7, forever… Okay, now I’M exaggerating on HER exaggeration out of bitterness.  But it’s how I feel about that accusation.  Don’t we do other shit together?

I don’t know what to do.  Am I just supposed to shut it away and pretend none of this is happening?  Let her call me a name that feels like a searing hot poker in my skull every time I hear it?  Never bring up any of my current issues, no matter how relevant, awesome, or painfully lonely any of it is to go through?  This is what is going on with me, right now, and if she doesn’t want to hear it, then it’s a choice between not being with her or self-censorship.  I don’t want to make that choice, but apparently it is SO FUCKING HARD for her to see me try and figure out who the fuck I am, as long as it doesn’t comply with what she thought.  I mean, I can’t believe how hard it is for someone to use a different pronoun, or a different name, or just to accept that I can’t be in fucking public and feel like a human being if people can see these… THINGS on my chest!  I’m making myself so vulnerable to her and letting her in on all this, and she can’t see anything but how hard it is for HER to deal with any of this.

God, I can’t believe how angry I am about this.  Sometimes I feel like if I threw myself into a vat of acid and came out an unrecognizable creature, or cut and mutilated my face and chest and anything that can be seen as female on me, or even just killed myself, I’d feel free from this …thing that tortures me.  I’m crawling out of my skin day and night, but it’s SO FUCKING HARD for other people to use a different name, just to relieve a little bit of this hell I’m living in.  My message to the world:  Oblige me for five fucking seconds out of your selfish life, you assholes, and I might not hang myself when I go home tonight.

THE most awesome day in history!

I really REALLY don’t want to make this into a long-ass dragged out post because, one, I have to go do something in 15 minutes, and two, I think long-ass posts are annoying, even though most of mine are.  Case in point- I annoy myself.  God, ALREADY I’m digressing.  That’s what happens when I’m hyper.  So, let’s get right to it and go through my day by bullet point:

(14 MINUTES GO GO GO!!!)

• Last night, I had a shitload of really heavy conversations over the phone with my friends about my trans situation- for some reason, it just kept on coming up with them- so I fell asleep feeling really down on myself, but a lot more settled about some things.  I think I finally really got it across to my best friend how important and huge and real all of this is to me, and as evidenced by today, she really took it to heart.

• This morning, somehow in response to the depression of last night, the first thing I thought when I woke up was that I needed a new shirt.  All my old shirts I pretty much can’t stand nowadays (as they are made of Girly and the Devil and Fail) and I have about 2 shirts I’m comfortable with wearing, so I scrounged through all the change in the house for 2 bucks so I could get one at the thrift store.  I also found that my psychological need to go out in binding is finally so overwhelming that it overtakes any social awkwardness it could produce, so for the first time today, I went out in binding in my home town.  I usually wear guy clothes around here these days already, but with chesticles, it always looked weird, so I actually felt really comfortable today.  This is the start of a new era for me.

(AUGH!  3 minutes!!!)

• When my dad got home, I told him I stole 75 cents from him for a new shirt, and he basically responded by going into all his old shirts and gave me the shirts he doesn’t wear anymore, which is awesome.  I always used to go into his closet and “play dress-up,” and then slip his clothes back when he wouldn’t notice, and now I’m getting to actually wear his clothes, seemingly recognized as his son.  I now have about 12 shirts I like, which is probably more than I’ll ever need.  Three of them made me intensely happy- they were from his old men’s retreat annual camping meetup called “Fire on the Mountain,” and emblazoned boldly on the front of each is “FTM”.  I couldn’t stop laughing, and told him he’d know what it meant some day.

(Dammit.  Have to come back and finish this later…)

…

(later)

• Okay.  So I was in binding when he got here and he didn’t even make mention of it, which is great, but he did remember to call me Jack, probably on that count, which is vaguely awkward retrospectively because we’re merging and I’m not sure how to address the name issue nowadays.  But the whole afternoon was more Jack than me at that point anyway, and he was grateful, so I can’t complain.

• We decided to go out for an, as I awkwardly put it, “Father and… child… meal” of steak and baked potato.  This is where it really gets good.

• When we got to the restaurant, the headwaiter showed us to our table and asked us what drinks we wanted.  When he turned to me, it was “And for you, sir?”  My eyes must have almost popped out of my head.  For the first time, I was “sirred” in public and I hadn’t even REALLY been trying to go in drag- it was nothing more than a compressed chest and a t-shirt and baggy shorts!  I couldn’t stop grinning, nor could I barely express that I wanted a Mountain Dew.  Of course, when he really looked at me and realized he’d made a “mistake,” (which was funny because it was the first time someone HADN’T made a mistake in my life) he tried to apologize profusely, but I objected wildly and said it was quite alright.  My dad and I actually slapped a high five over that one.

• Later, my dad said, “You should tell him why you didn’t mind him calling you ‘sir'”.   I looked at him weirdly- “That’d be kinda awkward, dad.  What do you expect I would say?”  He shrugged.  “I dunno. ‘I’m a woman in a man’s body?'”   I almost choked on my drink.  It was crazy how nonchalantly my dad’s accepting this.  I had to explain to him that it’s not generally taken very well socially- i.e., people get KILLED for outing themselves in public.  I could have very well gotten kicked out, anyway.  But it was weird, the whole scenario showing how easily he accepts it and thinks other people might accept it, in a practically naive way.  If nothing else, it gives me faith that he’s gonna be with me on all this later down the road.

• The night wrapped up with a jam session, just me and my dad, him playing the guitar and me on the drums (a little badly, but hey, I’ve played about 3 times, period.)  It was awesome.  We played a lot of Kiss (Detroit Rock City is harder than it sounds) and some old 12-bar blues/rock pieces and I think we tried and gave up on some Santana.  It’s awesome having almost the same taste in music as my dad, especially since he plays killer guitar.

• After it was over, he wound up telling me this- “I came home from work feeling all beat up like something the cat dragged in, and then hanging with you just brightened my day.” Or something equally sappy.  And then he said he loved me.  I’ll assume he meant Jack, and me, and the whole unit, altogether, whether we’re me or I’m us or I’m a guy or whatever.  It’s all kosher to him, and that means the world to me.

…

So there you have it, the longest shortest post in the universe.  At least it was made of awesome and win.  I STILL can’t believe I got sirred today, for the first time, without even trying or looking for it.  It must all be in the attitude. I’ll try to keep that attitude up.

Signing off!

(Don’t let me forget to tell you guys the Saga of the Purple Beard.  You just WISH you had a purple beard.)

Sorry for all the bitching, guys.

Life is great when you’re starting out on this path, and all of this is internalized and theoretical, and you’re seeing all the changes you’re about to make and how comfortable you’re going to be with yourself and how much easier things will be, at least psychologically, in social terms when you get to the other side.  People seeing the real you and all that.

But the difficulty of this lifestyle really hits home when you start taking it out of writing and out of your head and out of your personal life and putting it on display and then sit back and watch how people gel with it.  Generally, at least at first, and at least in my experience, people DON’T.  Even the ones who say how supportive they’re going to be forget to even make an effort for a long time in the beginning, which really hurts, even when they don’t mean to hurt you.

The point of all this isn’t complaining, not for the 5th post in a row.  The point is saying that the honeymoon with this lifestyle is over for me, my head is out of the clouds and it’s all getting to be real life, down to the nitty gritty.  I can’t honestly post any more philosophical, “I think I’d be this way in this situation” bullshit.  Now I’m seeing what it’s all really like, and it’s harder than I thought it’d be.  Now I’m really going through what all the other FTM’s do, and I kinda just wanted to say, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for being even the slightest bit pretentious and ever thinking I really knew what I was talking about, and I’m sorry for getting all emo on you guys the second it started getting real.  Looking back, it looks like I’m all  enlightened and high and mighty right up until I tried to come out to people and apply what I’ve learned to real life, and then I crumbled and pulled into my turtle shell and did nothing but bitch and moan about how hard it’s been.   It’s really time to man up, in every sense of the word, pull on my big boy pants and get through this with my head held high and my dignity intact.

So I’m gonna get back on the warpath again and start posting about things that really matter.  Like STP’s.  And drag king contests.  And youtube videos.

Ok, maybe those things don’t matter THAT much, but they’re a hell of a lot more fun and interesting to read than “OH GOD WHY ME?!”

And sometimes, I think that’s what it’s all really about, you know?  The articles and videos I’ve seen by my fellow FTM’s that really affected me and made my life better weren’t very often the ones that dragged me down and went on about how HARD something was (unless, of course, we’re talking about a certain anatomical- okay, that was just a cheap shot, sorry).  The ones that helped me along were the ones that made me smile, gave me something to laugh at, and reminded me that, hey, life isn’t really all that bad after all.  I want to be that person, the guy who encourages all the little bro’s along the way and really makes them feel better about themselves and helps them look to the future.  I wanna remind people that things’ll be better some day and we’ll all get through it, together.

(warm melty cheesy ending.  like a Kraft’s commercial.)

…

OH!  I still need to figure out what I’m doing for my coming out party.  I want to put that in the next post, I guess.  The point is, I wanted to bring a lot of the people in my life together in a light atmosphere and say, hey, guess what, this isn’t a tragedy, it’s even something to celebrate!  Follow me on my journey.  Into a land of magic and wonder, Charlie…  *wanders off to Candy Mountain*  NO! *comes back* I mean, I don’t know.  It seems like a good idea, just something to sort of mark a point of no return and gently show my friends that, yeah, this is it.

Did any of you have a coming out party for your close friends, and what did you do?  I’m looking for do’s and don’ts, even if your own personal advice in the way of “don’ts” is “Don’t have a party!”  I don’t know protocol for this sort of thing or even if there is protocol.  Oh, it’s also going to be around my 21st birthday, so that’s a whole other level to mess with.

I’m off to go look for inspiration on coming out parties!

I’m losing it.

At the time I’m writing this sentence, I’m losing my conviction that any of this is worth it.

I know I’m just falling through a slump, and the second I even begin to question whether losing the respect and friendship of everyone I love is worth the chance to become something that’s true to myself and everyone else- the second I even begin to weigh the consequences against the outcome-  I feel ashamed for thinking I could ever find it in me to continue living out this lie just to make the rest of my life a little easier.  And even that’s a joke.  How could it be “easier” to accept the wrong moniker bestowed on me by the rest of the world for the rest of my life?  Every time the wrong pronoun hits my ears, I have to control myself- not storm out, hit people, break things, shake, yell, cry or even grimace.  It’s a personal battle because betraying how hurt I am by people’s mistakes leads to things I’d rather not deal with as I stand.  But by staying here, I’m putting a blindfold on the eyes of the world to me and letting them walk over me, and they’re not even realizing they’re killing me piece by piece.  I want people to see me and I’m tired of being seen as someone I’m not.

But every day since I’ve been coming out to my friends, they’ve seemed subconsciously determined to remind me I’m still on the wrong side of the fence, and also pretty determined to let me know that’s where they think I belong.  It’s all slow going, and nobody’s catching on all that well.

The funny thing is, I’m feeling more comfortable with myself now than I’ve been in a long time.  A lot of things are shaking apart as my mind rearranges itself and my perception shifts violently every day, but everything is rebuilding from a base of truth and fact instead of theory and guesswork, and I’m happy with it.  To reiterate, I feel more like a gay boy than anything.  This, I’ve found, is ironically putting me in touch with my feminine side.  My boyfriend said he thinks I’ve actually been wearing more frou-frou clothing since I affirmed to him that I’m male, which is an interesting commentary in and of itself.  To me, it says that, as a gay boy, I don’t much mind working with what I’ve got sometimes if I can make it attractive, but it’s generally for show and/or convenience.  It’s really not “me” as much as my more male clothing, but since it’s there and it’s clean and I really need to do my laundry, I don’t mind using it; I’m confident enough in my state as a male that I don’t feel my clothing defines that.

My problem isn’t my confidence in myself, it’s the disconnect between how others relate to me and what I really am.  Now that it’s in question and people are starting to double take and try to see me as what I’m demanding, it seems like they’re shaking their heads in confusion and sticking with what they know, and it’s making me feel like shit.  I think it can actually be harder when you’re beyond the shadow of a doubt of what you believe in and people deny it.

I have yet to even begin to explain what all of this entails to my dad, and he’s already rejecting it without even really knowing what it is.  When I said in my first post he was beginning to use the name “Jack”, it was because he was finally beginning to acknowledge my DID and the differentiation between alters.  He knew Jack was there without him even having to specify, and that’s always a big moment with an alter.  He was glowing when his own father called him by his name without even being asked.  But dad doesn’t even know about the gender dysphoria, let alone that Jack wanted a sex change, let ALONE that we’re now integrating and it’s basically down to, simply, I want a sex change.  I don’t know how he’s going to get through all this, but he didn’t take the news of integration well when I tried to explain that the end product would probably look more like Jack than me.  He’s a pretty fast study, though.  When I told him I didn’t want anyone going through my mail because I’d be dealing with some personal medical issues, he said, “You’re not getting a sex change, are you?”

My instinctual response was “NO,” because, one, that’s not exactly happening yet, and two, we’re just not ready for that talk yet, not candidly.  But I think he’s catching on.  Who knows?  Maybe he’ll take it better than I think.  But for now, I have to believe that he stands entirely against the idea, and once again, there’s a rift of communication between myself and one of the most important people in my life.  I don’t like having to hide such a huge thing from someone so close to me just to keep the peace, but there it is, a giant purple elephant in the room every time we talk.

Anyway, tl;dr version:

Gender dysphoria sucks ASS.

The coming-out blues.

What can I say?  SO MUCH SHIT has happened in the last, what, 5 or 6 days since I’ve posted.  I have to say that San Francisco is awesome, and the Castro district is, indeed, the promised land.  I’d really like to post about all that and how much fun it was before the good stuff fades from memory, but I just know it’s all going to come out sour because I’ve been dealing with some really shitty stuff that I can’t just shove down and ignore and pretend to be happy through while it’s making me want to die.

Long story short, 3 out of 4 people aren’t taking the news of my integration (and coming out) well at all.  The funny thing is, you’d think they’d be glad for me if it meant I was ultimately going to be well and whole and some semblance of normal and maybe even happy, but when I make it clear that the end product is probably going to end up looking more like Jack than me, they want none of it.  They don’t really like Jack and they never really have, and back when the dissociation put a clean barrier between him as a person and me, that wouldn’t have bothered me that much, but now that I think of him as a major part of me, it’s like a kick to the gut.

And the worst thing about it all is that people are acting like this is something that I’m doing TO them, just to spite them or something.  This isn’t something we’re “doing”- it’s something that’s *happening* to us, and there’s nothing we could do to stop it, even if we really wanted to.  But for the first time, the idea of integration isn’t scaring the shit out of us, and it’s going smoothly, at least inside, so it’s not necessarily a change that’s bad, and everyone’s acting like it is.  I hardly have ONE person who’s being supportive of me through all this, and for the first time in a long time, I feel completely

and utterly

alone.

…

The hardest part of trying to come clean and give people I love the heads up about the changes that might happen in the near future is explaining that the sex change quest that Jack was going to undertake is now a shared quest- that I, as a person, am nothing more than a gay boy in a woman’s body.  But it’s also becoming the best part of it.

Before, when the function of dissociation was basically designed to keep people from having to deal with what I really was, I was putting off letting Jack pursue his sex change until we left so I wouldn’t lose the people I love.  But now that it’s MY thing, now that the changes we go through will redefine my life, tear down what I thought was important to make way for what really is, rearrange priorities and weed out who will love me whether I’m a gay boy or whatever, now that people will come to expect of me entirely new things just by virtue of integration, I don’t feel bound by what everyone else thinks of me anymore.  I feel free to pursue sex change without time restraints and heartache.

And furthermore, I’m planning my coming out party.

😉

This is now my transition AND integration journal.

EMO RANT INCOMING.

Geez, that last post was a huge chunk to handle.  I don’t think anyone even knows how to respond to it.  But I guess that’s okay, because nobody’s ever known how to respond to my DID.  It’s one of those situations that is so completely outside of the norm that people expect, so they have no internal dialogue prepared for it when it comes up, no way of figuring out even what to feel about it.

A long time ago, in my prepubescent years, when I first started to really deal with this, really be able to even talk about it, that frustrated me to no end because I thought people were just hiding from me what they were really thinking because they were afraid it would hurt me.  But I didn’t care whether they hurt me, I just wanted even the first inkling of an outside perspective.  I wanted someone to be able to tell me what to do, what was going on- I wanted for there to be even ONE person who could say, “Yeah, I know what that’s like, here’s what I did,” or even, “I knew someone who’s going through what you’re dealing with, and this is how we all dealt with it,” or EVEN this- “I can relate to you on SOME level because I read something other than fucking Batman comics with Two-Face in them, and I know that you’re not just a media-generated sensationalistic freak or a comic book villain.”  But nobody even said anything like that, one way or the other, no implication of whether they thought I was less than human, spawn of Satan, a circus freak that should die- they game me NOTHING to go on, no indication of what they thought, they just stood there with their slack-jaws and said nothing, forever.

But the fail part of it is, I finally believe that nobody’s hiding what they’re thinking about me, because they just DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK.  And on some level, I’ve finally come to respect that.  Some things are just so weird that you can’t expect anyone to know anything about them.

I guess I’m feeling bitter.

I just wish, for once, that I was normal.  And ironically enough, being trans brings more of a sense of normalcy than anything else in my life ever has.  (Trust me, if you think the pronoun problem sucks for transpeople, it’s a definite step down in complexity from the DID pronoun issue.  But that’s hardly the point.)  People in the trans community are some of the most intelligent, enlightened, clear-minded and realistic people I’ve ever met.  It really takes living from so many different perspectives like they have, I think, to give you such an empowered, enlightened way of thinking.  Not to mention, being among the most persecuted peoples on this planet will do that to you, too.  And you don’t get fakers and posers in the trans community, not that I’ve seen, not like in the DID community.  Ugh.  The few weeks I spent trying to relate to those people were too many.  No, in the trans community, by the time they get past learning about how daunting and how much of an undertaking transitioning is, by the time they get past learning how permanent HRT is and how expensive that and different surgeries are and how socially estranged you will be and how your family is going to reject you and how you’re going to have to leave everything behind just to be yourself…

By the time you get past all that, you’ve weeded out the posers and the curious and the people who generally think it might be “fun” or whatever to be trans.  By the time you get that far, all that’s left are the tough and the true with the hearts of gold.

Not so with the DID community.  There’s no way to prove anything, no test of character, it’s a completely speculative field, and it’s obnoxious how many people are there because they think it’s “cool” and “edgy” and “unique”.  How many people out there walk around pretending they’re insane because it’s the “in” thing nowadays?  It’s heartbreaking and disgusting how so many people will basically roleplay DID for a few months online because they think it’s fun to be weird and unique, and then be like, “okay, I’m not insane anymore,” when they’re bored with it, and inexorably leave this pockmark of… of… FAKE on the credibility of the few people out there who actually have a problem.  We are BURIED beneath the avalanche of it.  How many people do you think would still claim to be DID if it meant they had to go through anything similar to a trans experience, to be visually easy to be picked out as a freak, to be socially persecuted and in danger every day, to possibly leave their lives and jobs and friends and homes behind just to be themselves?  I postulate that so many of them would go, “whoops, I was just kidding, now wasn’t I being silly?  Ha ha…” and hightail it for the hills, and only the few people who actually HAVE this problem and can’t make it go away and have to deal with it EVERY DAY would still identify and band together, just so they could have someone to relate to.  But it’s SO hard to weed out all the fakers and actually find someone who is truly, diagnostically, mentally ill with this particular condition, so fucking hard.  I don’t think I’ve ever really met one person who could convince me they were telling the truth about this, not one person who sounded like they really knew what they were talking about.

I guess, at the end of it, I’ve always been alone in that sense.  I gave up hope looking for people like me long ago.  I hate to sound emo, because I’m not, I’ve really come to accept that I’m weird and my condition is rare and that it’s just not worth dealing with so many losers just to find one genuine person, and I deal with it the best I can.  And I know I must sound like a middle-schooler in adolescent angst, thinking the world is out to get me and I’ll always be alone and nobody in the world knows what I’m going through, but the funny thing is, after 20 years of looking for even one person of my species, it’s very easy and hardly even saddening to believe that I’m the only one of my kind out there.  In fact, it’s the only way of thinking that doesn’t kill you.  If I come across someone who truly does get it, hurray for me, but until then I choose to believe that it just ain’t gonna happen, and I don’t get hurt.

/END EMO RANT

I hate indulging in those, but sometimes you just gotta get it out.

…

IN OTHER SHIT,
Tomorrow I’m going to the gay arts and music festival “Homo a Go-Go” in San Francisco.  My biggest goal for this weekend is to use a men’s bathroom for the first time.  (Well, really, it’s the second time I’ll have used a urinal, but that hardly counted because we were camping in the off-season, there was NOBODY else in the campground when I snuck in to use it, and I wasn’t even really dressed as a guy anyway.  It was more a practice run than anything.)  This time, it’ll be in a public place somewhere that’s hopefully safe.  Honestly, my biggest fear isn’t that I’ll run into trouble with any people, because people never question my gender when I put a decent amount of effort into my appearance.  It’s that I’m going to somehow fuck up getting the STP into the right position and piss all over myself, even though I’ve been practicing for months at home and I’ve “got it down cold”, as Hudson’s Guide recommended.  I guess I’m glad I put off the STP post because this content might beef it up a little.

I doubt I’ll see anyone I know from WordPress at the festival, although one of the main events is the SF Drag King contest (which I couldn’t really get into anyway because I’m not 21 till a few months AFTERwards, which sucks.)  It seems like everyone on here isn’t really from the west coast, although if anyone was and happens to see me there, give me a shoutout.  Now I really wish I’d made a heads-up on this earlier.

…

SECONDLY, a sign from the universe that I’m doing the right thing in bringing this DID stuff out.

I don’t usually buy into the whole universal-mystical-fate bullcrap, but yesterday was pretty convincing.  Not long after finishing that post, we went to go up the hill to do an odd-job for someone. ($40 bucks for this weekend, how could we pass it up?)  At this point, Jack was in-body, which is an important point to make for reasons that will become clear soon.

Now, where I live, there’s a steep grade between our town and the next, where we had to go.  About halfway up the grade, my clunker-van decided to overheat, which is a little unusual in the evening, but anyway, Jack chose to pull over at the last gas station before the final stretch and put some water in the coolant system and let it cool off.  As he was pulling in, this lady on a motorcycle was looking at him and smiling, and all he can think is, “Is that hot milf flirting with me?”

After he put the water in, she calls out- “K——“, which made Jack flinch in disgust and also wariness.  He didn’t have a clue where she knew me from, couldn’t visually recognize her.  But weirdly enough, she told him that she was Jane, my recent and favorite therapist, who I’d told about Jack and his gender dysphoria months ago on my quest to get him a transition.  On my first appointment with her, she’d taken a serious interest in Jack and helping us on our way, and then the next time I’d gone in to make an appointment, the receptionist told me that she’d left the county and closed the case!  I had been sorely disappointed.  Turns out, she’d gotten laid off like just about everyone else in this county.

But she’d never personally met him, and when he introduced himself as Jack, she was delighted.  He told her he was working on getting gender therapy, and she said that she knew someone volunteering at a local peer help group that would probably love to meet him- a transgirl!  Finally, someone in the community who can at least relate to us that much!
They talked about other things, but more or less, it was incredibly encouraging to see someone who basically knew the whole scenario and wanted to help.  Sometimes it’s hard not to think there’s a Tranny God out there watching out for us poor sinners.

Where do I even start?

I know I promised a massive groundbreaking STP post of some sort (<–more unneccessary buildup), and I estimated that I’d be posting it about… say, yesterday, but frankly, much bigger shit has been taking precedence in my life.  New shit has come to light, as the Duder would say, and now it’s been taking up so much of my thought that I can’t really honestly make a post about a piss-tube.  It’s been so hard to even express all of this to MYSELF that I don’t even know where to START on paper.

I guess I should back up some and start from the beginning, which is hard, because there really is no beginning.  The waves of things that are happening today undulate into the past; I could start with my grandmother, if I so chose, but I think I’m gonna be generous today and just start with a few months ago.

See, one of my biggest fears with this whole process of transition has been my mental health record and how they might infer from it that I’m not a healthy candidate for T.

You might recall me mentioning a past record with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I wasn’t being entirely honest when I said that was a past issue that was already resolved.  I just didn’t want to address it in terms of therapy or even bring it up with you guys because, well, that’s just the way things have always been.  The sky is blue, the sea is wet, Mommy couldn’t quit pot, and there have always been several people living in this head.  I’ve actually been afraid to even mention it here because I didn’t want some psychotherapist to dig it up and use it as evidence against my case for getting on T, when really, that’s kind of unhealthy because now it was a scenario of trying to bury and conceal things that would be a lot more healthy to just bring up and ultimately bring into some sort of reconciliation.  Another reason it wasn’t mentioned here is, integration (the DID term for melding all the alters together) frankly scares the shit out of all of us.  It’s something we’ve tried three times, always for the wrong reasons, and it always ended in tragedy, heartbreak, and further mental splits.

I won’t go into the childhood abuse that brought all this about because, simply enough, you guys don’t want to hear it, and I’ve been thinking over the last year that it’s not as relevant to my psychological situation as we once theorized.  It was almost certainly what set up our mind to work this way, what caused the initial splits.  An alter is created to protect the mind from damage.  But what created the ever-penetrating, ever-pressing ultimate NEED for Jack to identify and be recognized as so inherently male?

And what made it so important for me to differentiate from him?

For the longest time, I theorized that it was just a part of the human condition- Jack had a very strong sense of identity from the start, always rebellious, always male.  People- friends, family, etc.- have said that when he takes over, I looked completely different, to the point where it’s impossible NOT to think of him as male.  He was one of several alters (almost all of them male), but definitely the strongest as others faded to the background.  In fact, more and more often, he’s been in-body more than me.

I always thought that he just needed to be recognized as an individual, and at a point I began to modify my own actions JUST to contrast him and let him feel more manly.  Where he would naturally act towards something with a more manly mind-set, I’d act girly and cute, as a sort of martyr mindset.  I became supporting cast, the goofy sidekick.  It’s become more and more obvious how unhealthy that way of thinking is.  Jack has never been one to act a part, even if it would benefit him (his honest and sometimes brutal mouth has gotten him [us!] in trouble more than once.)  So I picked up the slack because, as the natural gap of translation between myself and him began to close with years of work in communication, I was beginning to see how much pain he was in just for being in a female body (what we recognized as gender dysphoria a couple years ago.)

There will never be any words to describe what it is like to experience the pain of another person so closely as someone inside your own head.  Even people who love each other very much have the benefit of flesh walls between their minds.  When someone you love is screaming inside, they have the option of muting it, locking it up, and hiding it from you.  You can even ignore someone else’s pain when they’re in a different body.  It’s even easier to deal with pain when it’s your own, because it’s yours and you own it and you understand it and you can do what you want with it.  You can’t do that with someone else’s pain when there’s no barrier between you and your brother’s minds.  If they are screaming in pain, 24-7, you can hear it, feel it, taste it and your mind is steeped in it.

As we grew closer like that and he began to take precedence, I began to realize this life wasn’t meant to be mine alone forever- a slow, steady realization that didn’t frighten or even much sadden me, it was just the way things were, for whatever reason.  Things were shifting and it was obvious that it was going to be his life now.  And I realized I wanted to give him something, something that would make his life bearable, almost as if it were a way to make up for forcing him to live in this so-wrong body with me all these years just because my psyche demanded his presence as a way of protection.  I felt so much guilt that things were this way just because I needed his help so many years ago.

I wanted to give him my body.  I wanted to let him take it and modify it until it fit him, instead of me.  I couldn’t see him in pain anymore.  And I knew that I’d be far more comfortable in a male body than he has ever been in a female body.  I’ve been pushing for his transition- our transition- for two years now, and it’s been our journey.  Even when I forced a female appearance for my parents, I’d always had more of a tomboy mindset than anything.  It just didn’t bother me nearly as much as him.

…

Dissociation is a funny thing.

When your psyche is trying to build walls between you and what would otherwise be destroying your mind, you will overlook the absolutely most obvious things just because your psyche thinks it’s healthier not to even notice they’re there.  When someone experiences something that’s traumatizing enough, their mind will actually blank out and ignore the entire section of the brain that stores that data, just to protect you from it.  And then, years later, when things become safer, your psyche lets down its guard, and the walls start to crumble, some of the most amazing shit will tumble out.  And usually, when you see those things, you can’t unsee them.

Such strong religious pressures from such cruel and domineering and abusive parental powers will sometimes annihilate your desire to be anything but what they WANT you to be.  For so many years, it was just easier to want to NOT want to be a boy.  And the memories have been hiding for so long- that’s so much of what the abuse was about- so much of what the forced wearing of skirts was about, not just because of their religion, but because they were afraid I’d turn out a freak- it blew my mind when it all came to light and all made sense.

Jack isn’t just a mechanism to protect myself, he isn’t masculine just because a stereotypical man’s man is a better protector.  I can’t believe how many years I explained it all away with that weak, pathetic theory.  He’s the boy part of my mind that they tried to kill, screaming to be free.  The REAL part of my mind.  Everything they made me to be, everything that everyone knows about me… was built on lies.

Why did I feel such a strong need to dissociate from him?  Because all they ever told me all my life was that he was wrong.  That I was wrong.  He’s not the alter.  I am.

In writing this blog, we’ve been hiding the fact that we’ve been separate all this time, and we’ve been writing this as a team effort.  Jack’s never had that much patience for writing, so I generally do the physical typing.  Therefore, it’s in my tone of voice, my writing style, but it’s almost all from his perspective, as if I were documenting HIS journey from the outside.  And yet, this has possibly been the most healthy thing we’ve ever done, because it’s brought us together and forced us to see the truth of things.  It’s shown us our pasts as they entwine and become one.  It’s brought us together and taught us to think as one mind- something new and so unbelievably alien, something that hasn’t even been considered as a natural way of living since before I can remember- something that may actually work this time, and not make us fall apart, because we have this one thing to work towards together now, the one thing we’ve needed from the beginning.  It’s made us see that this quest we’re on, for the right body, is more important than the individuality of either one of us. It is so important to get to the bottom of the truth, to become ourselves, one whole healthy being, one male person who loves himself and doesn’t need to be something he’s not just to be able to function properly- “properly”- it’s been the one thing that has made us see that integration is now the only way.   And now that I think we can actually work through it this time, I’m not afraid of addressing it, even with a gender therapist.

We’re on our way to a enlightened way of being.

…

I’ve finally gotten to talk to my best friend about it, a person who has known Jack and I as two separate entities for a long time.  Let’s just say, there’s a big difference between telling your best friend that your alter is some day going to be living in a male body “but don’t worry, I’ll still be a girl, *twitch*” (as I’ve been telling her for years), and telling her that you’re on the road to integrating with your brother and very soon, you’re going to come out as a totally different person, and you’re BOTH male, ONE male person, and the girl she’s known all these years is more or less a fabrication…

It gets confusing, not to mention heartwrenching.  There were a lot of tears and she said she was afraid of losing me.  But I tried to explain that she won’t be losing me, she’ll be GAINING me, the real me.    And now I have I go through what all of you have, with my family.

Now I really know what it means to be trans.

General life update; the Big STP Post is Coming.

This Summer…
{can’t you just hear Don LaFontaine’s voice already?  you know, that guy who does the voice for every major movie trailer in history?}
When a Man…
{pause, movie clip}
Without a Penis…
{pause, movie clip}
Learns to Stand Up.
{sudden, gripping blackness}
To Piss.
{KICK-ASS ACTION SEQUENCE}
Live in Fear of the…
{pause}
S
{boom}
T
{boom}
P
{booooom, gong}
8.12.09

…

Yeah, that’s about what I’m seeing in anticipation of my STP post, which is actually probably going to be pretty boring in comparison to the buildup.  But writing things like that makes me feel like Stephen Colbert, so I did it anyway.  😉

Anyway, that’s going to be among my next posts.  I have about three or four in my immediate queue, all of which require photos and graphics to properly communicate their given points, and since I’m having technical difficulties concerning getting my pictures on the computer, those entries are waiting around a bit.  But I really felt like updating since all of you have been so supportive and since I’ve also hit an average of about 40 views a day, which is a real perk to me.  Since I now feel I have a fairly steady active viewership of at least a few people, I feel like it’s time to ask a question without feeling stupid for putting a query out into open, dry space.  And I figured I’d ask a question that relates in some way to what I was planning on posting.

My question to all of you, as transmen, concerns pissing.  I realize this is probably way too personal for a lot of you, but seeing as we all pretty much talk amongst ourselves about the devices we use to pee in public urinals, it didn’t seem too far of a reach, at least within our brotherhood.

Looking back, I realize that, as a young child, I had a slight fixation from time to time with peeing outside- you know, behind a bush or a tree, not a sick fascination with it as such where I wanted to be SEEN or anything, but more of, in retrospect, probably the primal call to mark where I’d been, or something of the like.  Now that I’m much older than that “primal” age of six or seven, I hear a lot of stories of kids doing that, but-

they’re always boys.

Never once have I heard a story of a girl that had the compulsion to pee outside when they were little, and nor do I think that people would look on it as quite natural behaviour as little boys.

It’s not like there’s any data on “kids peeing outside” floating around, and it could just be that I’ve only heard the right combination of anecdotes to make me think that.  But it’s enough to make me wonder.

So, my fellow transdudes, tell me (if you dare): Did any of you, as kids, have that random impulse to take a piss in the great outdoors (even in spite of the anatomical inconvenience)?

…

In other news, these last two weeks with the parents on vacation and the house to myself have been totally awesome in terms of freedom of expression, and they’ve definitely accelerated the process of ascertaining that this is the path I want to take, with little outside interference.  It’s easier to figure out who you are when you have a nice, solid block of time where you don’t have to pretend or apologize to anyone for what you are.  Sadly enough, all of that came to an end Saturday and they’re back, and jumped right back into making me pretend with a vengeance by having church people over for a welcome home party.  These particular Jesus nuts are as conservative as it gets, convinced that any female who doesn’t wear a skirt and three-quarter length sleeves is of the devil.

I opted not to be in full “drag”, but I did wear jeans and a black wifebeater, and I might as well have been dressed as a prostitute.  It was the first time since years ago when I stood up to my parents, quit wearing skirts and stopped going to church that any of these people had seen me, and just for wearing pants, I’m sure I was the subject of gossip at Sunday School the next day.

I felt pretty damn proud of myself.

I also felt naked the entire time they were here.

It was a bizarre sensation.  I was in a situation where I had to force myself to be under the “girl” moniker, and yet I was wearing something that was outside of their expectations, so I got the girl treatment AND the weird, condescending looks at the same time.  They probably thought I was lesbian.  To these people, my only shield had always been behind a dress, so putting myself out there like that made me feel very bare and vulnerable, and yet empowered.  At the end of the day, the only thing I really regretted was not taking it all the way.  But it probably would have caused a lot more drama than I have energy to deal with anyway.  All in all, it was a statement of personal identity and strength, and by the time it was over and done with, I felt a lot more comfortable with myself than before.

…

(P.S.- Don’t forget my question!)

…

(P.P.S.- It is Coming.

8.12.09.

{dramatic terminator theme music})

Stream of consciousness; “Living” and “Being”.

I really feel like writing something tonight, but every time I start on one of the topics lined up in my mental queue, I get bogged down by the realization that I just don’t feel like tackling that issue tonight.  So I’m going to stream-of-consciousness write tonight like I haven’t done in a really long time, and hope something meaningful comes out.

Sadly enough, this whole FTM thing has become the most important thing in my life right now.  It seems a little unorthodox of me to say “sadly”, as it’s completely understandable for it to become the most important mission of anyone’s life.  It’s all about standing up against the box that people want to shove you in, it’s about bettering yourself, it’s about bravery and honesty and all kinds of awesome things, and I can think of no greater personal quest one can devote their lives to.

But there’s something about this whole paradoxical lifestyle that says to me that the entire journey is more about being myself than focusing on the transformation itself, and that becoming obsessed with the transformation is analogous with WAITING to become my true self instead of being that person today.  Yes, growing into your right gender and learning important things like standing to pee and all that, it’s all a part of the process, just like the learning process of life itself, but you really need to look around and take life in NOW instead of looking forward to living on that day when everyone else sees you the way you want them to.

I know how confusing all that was, but it’s a concept that’s really hard to put on paper, so just bear with me.  I think what I’m trying to say is, learning to become the person you’re going to be should be a peripheral life process that goes on all the time, but it shouldn’t be the primary thing you think about every day all day long, it shouldn’t be your main function in life.  LIVING is.

I need to work on placing this in its proper category.  It belongs in the slot of “Being”, and the things I want to do with my life… they need to go into the category of “Living.”  My state of Being shouldn’t become the focus of my Living, because then I’m nothing better than a self-obsessed, image-oriented social climber with the mentality of a junior-high schooler; I’m hollow, and I’m just the image that I build instead of the things that I do and changes that I make and the person that I am inside.

I want to be who I am, today, not two years from now, and not when people start to see who I am, because I know who I am and there’s nothing they can do to take that from me.

Short and sweet.   I like.