Procrastination and venting.

Ugh.

So, for the last five days I’ve been cleaning.

I am SO FUCKING TIRED of cleaning.

Aside from the fact that I came down with a mysterious flu-bug-type-thing that made me puke my guts all over the place and I’ve therefore been wanting to sleep pretty much non-stop lately, I’ve had to clean places in the house that I forgot existed, for people who usually don’t care that much about said places.  But when these people are in surgery, and want a house spotless when they get back, and threaten not only with the fact that there are going to be an inordinate amount of visitors in the following days, including house inspectors from Child Protective Services, but also imply that the quality of many people’s lives will depend on whether you’ve cleaned your room or not…

you have to clean.

I’m serious, things are getting out of hand.  I’ll try to keep this short because there’s really no way of fully explaining it without completely slandering my stepmom’s no-good rotten son, but basically my step-sister-in-law is in a tough spot and needs someone to take care of her two small daughters or they’re going into the foster care system for a long time.  So they’ve turned to my stepmom, and if things turn out the way everyone expects, we’re going to have two squalling foster children running around here.  Living in a bedroom two feet from mine.

I can’t begin to explain the vast number of ways this may wreck my life.  It’ll DEFINITELY change things.  For a rather petty example, I was counting on having the house to myself again in 3 months when my stepmom goes back to work, which is an unimaginably long enough stretch for me, but it’s probably going to go more like this- when she’s at work, I’ll probably be expected to look after them.

I never wanted to be a babysitter.  I never asked for any of this.  I certainly never asked for my dad to marry someone whose son would wind up in prison and dump his children on us.  I know I’m being particularly cold-hearted and awful about this, but this is the worst time in transition for any of this to happen.  I don’t want those babies seeing me like this.  I don’t want to explain to a seven year old why I’m tying my dirtypillows down every morning before I get dressed should they walk in on me.  I definitely don’t want them to walk in on me using my STP.  I don’t want to explain any of it, I don’t want her talking to my parents about what her curious little eyes may observe should she poke around like she’s so apt to do.

Long story short, it’s time to get out before things get weird.  I can’t stand being observed like this 24-7 anymore and I don’t care what it takes.  I’m afraid I’ll have to move a long, long way from here and everyone I love just to get away from things that might wind up tearing me down.  Or at least from things that might drive me insane.

And the first thing that those girls are doing to me is making me clean, way faster and more than I ever wanted to.  My stepmom is intent on pressing the point that, if my room is dirty, they’ll deny us custody of those girls and a lot of people’s lives will be ruined, including mine.  I’m sure she’ll make certain of that.  (Whereas, if I DO clean it, the ONLY life that will be ruined is mine.)

Okay, I’m being very selfish there.  One way or another, a lot of people are hurting through this.  My stepmom has a 14 inch incision on her side where they replaced her hip, and she has to take care of them through her recovery.  No matter where those little girls end up, they’re going to be ripped away from their mother and no children deserve that.  My step-sister-in-law is going crazy without her children, and even seeing them in the hands of people she can trust, she’s being denied almost ALL visitation rights.  My dad is 50 years old and, I would judge, too old to be taking care of a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old; it’s going to be tough on him too.  He was just settling into his later years, seeing his first kids out of the nest, and now it’s all starting over again.  So many more lives are being upturned by this, and I’m reacting to it like a big, selfish baby.

But I can’t help but vent about it.  I’m just thinking about little children hanging off the back of my computer chair (the family computer, I might add, is conveniently placed in the living room where anyone can bother me if they so choose- my parents at least have the tact to not read over my shoulder).  It makes me shudder.  They’ll probably invade every aspect of my life that they can while they’re here, and the thought of it drives me up the wall.

Maybe it’s a good thing.  My job hunt was grinding to a depressed, rejected halt after getting denied so many menial jobs so many times, and this may drive me to such desperation for an income to live out of here on that I’ll find a job I otherwise might have missed in my miserable stagnation.

I think I’m mainly afraid that this is going to slow the process of transition somehow, when it’ll actually probably speed it up some.  This is happening at a time that’s rousting me out of a comfortable place of nothingness I was settling into.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that stagnation is generally a bad thing, but I really needed it right now.  In that period of few events going on in my day-to-day life, I was experiencing an intensely accelerated period of mental growth, rooting out old problems and sorting through the past, really finding the root of everything.  But now that I’ve pretty much gotten to the bottom of things, my life is picking up again, whether I want it to or not.

I feel a little bit like I’ve been standing on the side of an ice-cold pool, contemplating diving techniques, swimming strokes, the temperature of the water, and all kinds of other water-related things without actually swimming…

And then two little girls came up behind me and pushed me back in without warning.

I’ll probably be pretty pissed at them for a little while, but would I have done any swimming at all if they hadn’t pushed me in… before closing time?

Time to jump back in.

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.

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.

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.