Friday 28 March 2014

Blind

I am moving to my own apartment soon so I thought I'd write something now, I won't have an internet connection for a while. This is something I've spoken with my therapist about, in our last session actually. I realized several days ago something that people do and I used to do but no longer do it. It's hard for me to explain, even in person to my therapist, so I imagine I will have some trouble explaining it here.

When people interact with each other they place attributes on the other person that qualifies that person as 'them'. You see a friend, let's say Mary is her name, and she's painting her nails or something. You see Mary doing this and if she does it often, you attach something like, "Mary likes to take care of her nails." If she doesn't you may think "Hmm, why is she doing that?" because you've already decided she doesn't normally. A host of assumptions go with it, and I don't mean the bad, insulting assumptions, but you create a little part of Mary based on the fact she takes care of her nails regularly. Now I know I'm being very specific and pretty much too vague, but these attributes we place on people as we get to know them consists of everything about them that we see. How they act, what they say, how they react to things. And ultimately you give that person your version of their identity. you define them through all of these things, no differently then when you hear the word 'vanilla' you can instantly summon up the smell, taste, color, etc. When you hear the name 'Mary' you can summon up the many things that define her, according to you. It may or may not coincide with what they have identified themselves as, and they may even use what you think of them to help see who they are.

I don't do this. "Mary" is a different person every time I talk to her. Just because something was done or said yesterday doesn't mean I'll attach that to her today. Mostly I forget things shortly after they happen, certainly within a day. Negative things tend to stay with me, and that's probably another talk waiting to happen. General, 'what you do' sort of things do not stick with me, and compliments given to me don't even register. I never talk to a person another time after receiving a compliment and think to myself "Oh this person thinks I'm pretty, or funny, or whatever" That thought you had of me that brought on the compliment just as well have never happened because I have forgotten about it.

I used to do this, when I was younger. It is pretty much the default human way of interacting. I have gone all of my adult life thinking I had figured something out that others had not. My way of thinking about people does seem to lead to less judgments in general. I think it is even a part of me that people like me for, even if they don't know what it is. I get along well with people much older or younger then me because I don't 'label' them with their age, so to speak, and for example.

It was talking it out with my therapist that made it dawn on me the reality of what this comes from. I don't attach things to people to create an identity for them because I don't have one for myself. I have said several times before, usually in depression, that i don't know who I am. I said these words to my therapist this day, "I guess ultimately this all comes down to me not knowing who I am." and at that very instant I felt it for the first time. I've spent all of my life struggling with my identity, trying to learn who I am. I ended up telling my life struggle to her that day and seeing it all laid out like it was, during this talk of me trying to understand myself, I finally started to see it.

I didn't even seen what it was I was describing, most of it I have mentioned here before. My depression in grade nine and the sexual exploration that started with it, the lack of transgender vocabulary in my life at the time, seeing transgender people on talk shows like Jerry Springer, to finding a small amount of very vague information on transgender people in my late teens and early twenties. I had not looked back on these things as any way defining of who I am, they were always just something I did, its meaning and closeness to my identity totally lost to me.

I guess intellectually I seen it, but emotionally I didn't feel it, or see it as part of me. When I was done telling my therapist about this story she felt for me, seen it for what it was, and thankfully pointed it out to me. I could have cried if she didn't keep asking me questions that took my mind off of what I was feeling. There was one moment in particular in my life that I have remembered and told her about that day that should have screamed at me who I was. I had met people online, on a computer game and had been talking with one couple, the female in particular about my sexuality. I mentioned how I wanted to be a woman, but neither of them seemed to quite take it seriously. One day when I was talking to her I said something about having wide hips or that they were wider then my waist. I was bawling while typing out to her, "That means I'm a girl, right?" Her answer was meaningless, deflective, I don't even remember what it was. But the important part, the part where I'm crying, looking for some affirmation also didn't sink in.

How could I not see these things in my life, things that I had done completely on my own, as part of me? The constant exploring I have done to find myself seeming to me as something everyone did. I guess it is somewhat true, people explore to find themselves, but where I was looking should have made things obvious to me. I guess this is where the real struggle of being transgender is. So much about me was violently disagreeing with the desires I always had. How people treated me, like a boy, the names or poking fun that would come from acting, trying or doing feminine things taking a distant second to what my own mind was doing to me. Whatever the reason I forced myself to not see my budding sexuality, my wants and desires, my craving to be feminine and the constant, daily, hourly never ending inner war for what it all was pointing me to.

And that is how I created this "non-identity" for myself, and how I started placing that on others. I would want to do, or have, something feminine and I would give myself as many reasons possible on how any person would want that. The biggest reason I would give myself is, "Just because I want this, doesn't describe, or determine who I am."

That, I'm starting to slowly see, is my biggest inner lie.

Even the words on this entire blog don't feel to me as "me". Everything I write here, to me, is just what I'm feeling at the time, or what I have done in the past and what I feel about that. None of it seemed to me as describing "me" or defining who I was, how I learned about myself, and who I am,  but if there was ever any description of who I am, of how I feel, of the woman inside me and her struggle to get out, it is in this blog. I find myself wanting (and I will right after this post) to go back and read everything I have said and finally take it all in as who I am.

I can see how you, the reader, could read this and think it is something I made up. What you need to understand is how desensitized I made myself TO myself. Nothing I did carried weight to me, nothing seemed important. I made myself feel completely unjudged by myself, even though that was what I was doing on a daily basis. The result is making myself feel unjudged by the people around me, which is somewhat freeing, but ultimately, it seems, self destructive. It mattered little to me who I said what to, be it a compliment or my anger lashing out. One of those is pleasant the other is scary, as you can imagine. I didn't bother myself with worrying about how others seen me. I turned this philosophy outward as well, to the people in my life, which again, sounds close to sagely brilliant, but ultimately has made it impossible to make a connection with people.

I have no closing, definitive statement to make here. I don't know how I will overcome this. I guess time and constant practice will be what it takes because it hasn't been instant. Now that I see, intellectually, what I have done to myself, and I have had a taste of feeling it, it hasn't rushed to purge itself. I have myself trained to think this way, and I will need time to unlearn what I have done to myself. All I can really say is I hope it doesn't take me another ten years to unlearn this part of me, because I feel once I do, I'll start to really see me as who I am.

Thursday 20 March 2014

Single Cell

There is something I have started to come to terms with about myself. It is something I have been talking to my therapist about, and something I think I should write about here. There is a lot of confusion about sexuality from the cis world generated by us LGBTQ. We like to talk about a sexual spectrum, and a gender one for that matter. Many of us find it hard to define one simple place we fit in, be it homosexual or heterosexual or somewhere in between.

This realization of mine that I have recently had came from a simple question a co-worker asked me one day. He is one of the few that have been told about me because he is a manager, so I guess he has some questions and decided to ask this one rather randomly one day. He asked me if I was in to girls or guys. I told him I am Bi-sexual, which is the answer I have been giving everyone and what I have been telling myself. He even asked if I had a favorite that I like to be with, and I told him no, I like both. I am starting to see that this isn't true.

What I'm starting to see is I fall somewhere in the realm of 'asexual'. That is, I have no sexual attraction or desire to either sex or gender. It has been difficult for me to absorb. I always thought I was some sort of sexual, homo, hetero, bi, something. I still masturbate, though not very often. While I do I don't fantasize about being with anyone and in fact to do so turns me off. I can actually see now, looking back with these pair of eyes, how a fair bit of my actions and desires in the past have hinted toward this and being sexual as I was was just part of the masquerade.

There is a great deal of confusion involved because there are a great deal of things that seem to suggest otherwise, like my post about wanting to go on a date with a man. I am starting to see those things for what they are. I don't want the sexual part of being with a man, I want what a man represents, that I am a woman. I want to be made to feel like a woman like only (I guess in my mind) a man can. I also, obviously, see women as attractive but I'm starting to see that for the envy it is. I rarely look at a woman now and think "She is sexy, I would like to sleep with her." What I'm thinking is "She is sexy, I wish I looked like her."

This slow to start understanding that I am asexual or some form of it just as slowly started to make me see how much I have been doing for others. It also makes me feel even more separate from everyone else, but at the same time makes me feel the same sort of calm that all of the rest of the self-understanding has done. As I started to really feel this decision it started to let go some of the pressure I felt. I see this part of me, or at least what I want now in my life and it gives me more freedom in my new life. I don't need to choose who I want to have sex with. I don't need to decide who I am attracted to. I thought my inability to decide meant I was bi-sexual. Apparently it means the opposite. Deciding to 'choose' neither has been the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that alleviates stress, it makes it go away in fact. I just need to come to terms with feeling ok with being asexual.

I live in a world that the people you talk and interact with in certain ways means, to this world, that you want to be sexual with them. My personal world is one that these things are being friendly, or funny. I would rather not feel the pressure of being labelled as bi-sexual, or straight, or whichever. I would rather just be allowed to interact with people without them wondering if I'm trying to get in their pants or inviting them into mine. Maybe someday someone will be able to make me comfortable, or desired, or whatever enough for me to be sexual with them, but I have no desire to care about it. I have yet to see or speak with someone that gives me even the slightest inkling of that feeling now that I have started to be honest with my feelings.

As for how much I have been doing for others, it borders on anger what I have given away to people. I would cross that border with these realizations if it didn't also come with such calm. I have given my identity, my gender, even my sexuality away for other people just to make them happy or to fit some sort of stereotype I felt forced to be part of. I have seen the other two, the gender and identity, obviously my gender, and how I have given those away for a while now, many years in fact. This, however. This makes all of those things fall into place and makes me, as I said, close to furious about what I have done. How could I be so blind to myself, or willing to give myself away, that I didn't even realize that this is one of those answers that make sense? It makes sense now how every relationship has always slipped into having little or no sexual contact. How I have never been sexually active with someone outside of a relationship, or if it was someone outside of my relationship it was a result, with encouragement, of a relationship I was in at the time.

Who would have thought that defining my non-sexuality would give me so much peace? I have always felt like I was like no one else and it has depressed me. The irony now is I keep finding things about myself that are true to myself that separates me from the majority of the world but the truth of it brings happy tears to my eyes.

It does bring its amount of sadness though. For one, who really wants to be in a relationship with someone that isn't interested in having sex with them? Most of the relationships you hear that are like tend to be because of one partner or both being sexually hurt somehow in the past. Besides that, I don't know how to be in a relationship like that, or how to start one.

What does counter the sadness is being honest with myself, and therefore others around me, and that I don't want a relationship right now. I am too busy, too selfish, too caught up in learning who I am to get another person involved. I have been 'trying it out' so to speak the last week or so. I think nothing now about if I would be interested in having sex with someone, or if they are thinking the same thing. I flirt with both genders because I mean nothing by it, my flirtations just about always coming from a place of humor.

No offense to the rest of you out there, but sexual attraction and desire feels as primitive as it does primal to me. It was something that used to control my life, and I hated it, I really always did. I used to hate how much sex was on my mind before, and it was one of the things I would hope would go away if (at the time) I ever transitioned. Here I am transitioning and not only has the constant thoughts of sex gone away, I have come to realize I have no interest in it what-so-ever.

I still want to look attractive. I have no desire or plans to 'let myself go' because I'm off the list now, so to speak. I still wear make-up and intend to keep doing so. I still want to dress well, smell nice, have beautiful skin, all of these things. But none of them are done to lead to having sex with someone. They are done to express myself. This is how I want people to see me, as a woman.

So all of you people out there that are trying to find yourself and where your sexuality lands. You may be homosexual, you may be heterosexual, you may be bi-sexual. But don't feel the pressure to choose either of them, choose what feels right to your, what makes your world click. And if none of those choices makes you feel that way, then maybe your choice is none of the above.

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Crossing Over

I don't know what to call these things I'm about to write about other then "changes". I have started to see how different I am now then before far more clearly, I guess less afraid to admit to myself that I lived as a man, less afraid it would hinder my new beautiful femininity.

One of the things I have noticed that has changed just the way I feel from day to day is having nothing to hide. At every point in my life I had a stash of things I was terrified someone would find. I had a secret I was unwilling to share, one that I guarded with pain and anger. All of these things are everywhere in my life now, my desk is covered in them, make-up and "beauty products" strewn all over the place. My bras hanging off the back of my chair, panties tossed into the laundry basket. It wasn't that long ago that all of these things would have been under lock and key. It wasn't that long ago that if I had the slightest inkling someone was getting close to them I would reach a state of panic that nothing else could bring me to.

I want things now that usually most normal people want, but I never did before. Like money to take care of things like my new home, and most amazingly myself. I never cared at all about doing things for myself, being healthy being the only exception. Now, however, I want things like clothes, or ways to decorate or otherwise fill my new apartment. It makes me think about keeping my job, working more or finding other ways to make more money. All things that I never concerned myself with in the past. The difference is now I am someone I want to be, I am someone I want to take care of, someone I want to express myself to everyone.

As part of expressing myself to people, I find it actually matters to me what people think of me. Now, I'm not so foolish to think everyone will like me, or that I can make everyone like me but it would still hurt to find out someone did not. I think the main reason for this change is now I am someone I like where as before I did not like myself, so I did not expect at all for others to like me. These days I am so cheerful in general, so happy to be alive that it seems people can't help but enjoy being around me. I was in a great mood at work yesterday and one co-worker said to me how much she enjoyed it when I'm in a good mood. People make it a point to talk to me, or to say hello or good-bye as they leave. I have mentioned before how this transition effects everyone around me, I never thought I would see it effect co-workers as well and especially in a positive way.

It was talking to another co-worker who happened to be riding the bus with me one morning that made me realize something else. Before my default emotion was that of feeling attacked, or pressured some how. I always chalked that up to being angry all the time, which I mostly was, but now I see it as something else. I was defending this person I thought I was, or that I was pretending to be, every slight against me I took as a failure in being that pretend person. I would expect so much out of myself because I was trying so hard to be this person. I even think people could see through the act in a way. In the sense they could tell I was trying hard to be who I was, I wasn't just being who I was. They way I treated people, the way I treated women, was how I thought someone like 'me' was expected to treat people, it was a conscious decision until it became second nature. Now I am just myself, I treat people how I would want to be treated, I don't talk or exist with some sort of checklist of how to be who I am, and I think people see that as well. People see that I am genuine, eventually when people get to know me better, at work for example, they will find out how down to earth I can be even though I am a "bubbly little dancing girl".

I guess this goes along with having nothing to hide anymore, but I also don't feel this pressure to be something. I have always created ways in my own head to how I am, or could be exceptional somehow, a feeling that apparently I am not alone in having in the trans world. I always knew I was meant for something more, what I didn't know was I was meant to be who I am now. Now I do not have these illusions of grandeur. I don't need them, I'm happy with who I am. Sure I am intelligent, some have said off the charts brilliant, I am creative, I am empathic, I am in tune or getting more in tune with myself, but I do not feel the pressure to prove it. I am not looking for some way to make everyone stop and look at me, now I just want to do or use these things for myself, to make me happy, to be who I am meant to be. Feeling this way has shed a sort of arrogance, and in turn anger. Seeing examples of how I am not as 'special' as I wanted to believe I was would make me see how wrong about myself I am and make me angry at myself. Of course, anger being the force it is, I would almost always take it out of others. That anger now has given way to self acceptance and it is a large part of the calm I have mentioned before. Now I feel the opposite. I feel embarrassed when I catch myself trying to prove myself, I wonder why I bothered, there is so little need to. My actions and attitudes seems to be taking care of any sort of 'proving' I may want to do.

The calmness in and about myself has given me a completely different outlook on life Sure i have the occasional bad day where everything seems overwhelming but for the majority of the time now I see all the things I want and need to do as goals. Something I can do, and will eventually do, by and for myself. Even days or moments of doubt, (yes I still have doubt sometimes) are sharply countered by the wide variety of good experiences and feelings I have had recently. Emotional days usually ending with me feeling happy or better about myself because they remind me of how unbelievably happy I have been.

I also want to go out more, I'm almost sure I have mentioned this before. Before I was a hermit, for themost part I thought I didn't like myself, why would anyone else want to spend time with me. I have a few days off and today is a rare one with no doctor appointments and I don't really know what to do with myself, all I know is I don't want to spend it all at home. I will probably go to the mall and sit in the food court in between some window shopping. I need to save money for the apartment so I can't spend much, but getting out will be wonderful.

Anyway, I feel far more of these throughout my day that I just can't recall here in the moment while typing this out. I have had several people tell me of the vast difference in person I am from before to now and I take it as a huge compliment, it makes me feel amazing that my inner calm and happiness is shining so brightly to others that they can't help but mention it.

Monday 17 March 2014

Home Coming

Last week I did something that I have wanted to do my entire adult life. I finally have found my own apartment to live in, by myself. Starting with my parents I have always lived with other people. There is an ironic story about my wanting to live alone.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to live by myself, the reason? I wanted to have the freedom to explore my feminine side without having to worry about dodging roommates. It would call to me every time I explored my female side in the past. I would imagine how I could come home from work, take all of my clothes off and get into something more feminine, more comfortable. I would also fantasize about how I would be able to take men to my home for.... entertainment. I would wonder, and try to think of how, I could live in two worlds. One world being my male self that just plugged through the day, going to work, seeing friends and family, running errands. The other world consisting of having people in my life that didn't know those other friends, or family, that thought I was a girl entirely, because that was all they knew of me. 

Even though I had this desire to live alone centered around those thoughts and fantasies, I still didn't see them for what they were. I still thought I was just a guy exploring my sexuality. How stupid I was. I take a fair amount of pride in all of the self exploration I did, getting to know my own shortcomings and strengths. Regardless of how much of it I did, it still took me many years to realize those fantasies were pointing me in a direction I was avoiding at all costs, literally.

I had the ability during several parts of my life, essentially being able to afford my own apartment, but I always made excuses. I see now how those excuses were yet another way of me avoiding what I really wanted, to express my feminine side. It was always in the back of my mind, like I somewhat mentioned before, that I wanted to be a woman. Every time I explored my feminine side, wearing panties, shaving etc. I would always end up wondering "What would it feel like to be female?". Just like I used to eventually throw all of those things out to get away from the decision I was so afraid to make I had myself convinced it wasn't real, I also dismissed my ability to live on my own. Little did I know I was female, and I was aching to be myself.

The irony here is obviously that it has taken my coming out, many sacrifices, to finally see myself in the situation of having my own apartment. I no longer need one for the freedom from roommates to explore myself. I am here, as female, everyone in my life knowing I am taking this huge leap in life, in order for me to get the freedom I desired. My new apartment now being a part of my growing up, of becoming the woman I am, rather then as a tool to see if I am the woman I am.

My desire to live alone has shifted it's focus. I no longer want the isolation that it would give me. Now I see it as a step toward being myself. It is a huge step forward in my independence, and as a result a huge step in becoming the woman I am, or want to be. Instead of wanting two separate worlds, I want to be a part of the entire world. My new home, hopefully, eventually being a reflection of me. Rather then hiding, I want to have anyone over to see my new place. I have always had the desire to entertain dinner parties, the cook in me wanting an outlet. Now, money willing, I can have anyone over. I don't need to be concerned about who is in my home and what they may find, everyone knows who I am now.

Even people that I am more interested in keeping my past from, if they are coming to my house then either they already know, or are someone I would have little trouble sharing this with. The only thing in my life now that could give me away anyway is my own body and I guess my razor I use for my face. In every house I lived in before, I never had the feeling of home, even when I lived with my family, and my partner knows this, I didn't feel like it was my home. I always thought it was because I was always paying rent or living off the expenses of others, but I am paying rent now, at this new house. I am still not free to do 'anything' I want but what little I can I still feel like it will be my own, I feel like eventually I can make it my first home since leaving mom and dad.

To say the least, I am excited. I move there in a few weeks. Normally I don't like wishing time away, especially since coming out, I have already wasted enough but I can not wait to move to this new place and I wish it was happening tomorrow. I have already planned my first dinner party, most likely a few select people and a roasted leg of lamb. Every time I am out to a store, the mall or something along those lines, I am looking at things and thinking "Oooh, I would love having those at my place.", like a cute set of plates I seen and Winners.

I know these are things people do or think of regularly, but you have to understand how I never had these thoughts and feelings before. The desire to express myself through my residence was never there. Not only was it never there, it did not feel like my place to have it, that desire not being one I was meant to have. It is one of those feelings that is moving to me, emotionally, when I stop and think about it, and realize the dramatic difference.

Well, I guess there isn't much more I can say about what it feels like to want be moving, so I'll end this relatively short post here. I'll have more about my new place once I'm there.

Friday 14 March 2014

Useful Tool

    Today I thought I would write something a little different. I have mentioned before, my second or third post I believe, how much music has affected me. How much music means to me in my life. I have a passion that I can not express that attaches me to music. I recall having my high school agenda, from each year, filled with lyrics from songs I was feeling at the time, the majority of them written in class from memory while sitting there bored.

    This is a song that anyone who knows me knows it is my favorite song. This song means more to me then any of these people realize, this song has directly affected my transition. Not just my transition, but my decision to do so, my decision to follow this path I am on.

    The song is "Lateralus" by my favorite band, Tool. Yes, I am going to force you to sit through reading the lyrics. I had a craving while listening to this song on the bus today to write something philosophical and my version of creative. Here are the lyrics and a link to the song from youtube. I feel I'd do the song a disservice to write in between the lyrics, so I will continue to write after the end. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcW-j7KFgY

    Lateralus
    Black then white are all i see in my infancy.
    red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
    lets me see.
    as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
    drawn beyond the lines of reason.
    Push the envelope. Watch it bend
    .

    Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
    Withering my intuition, missing opportunities that I must
    Feed my will to feel the moment drawing way outside the lines.


    Black then white are all i see in my infancy.
    red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
    lets me see there is so much more and
    beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities.
    as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
    drawn outside the lines of reason.
    Push the envelope. Watch it bend.


    Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
    Withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind.
    Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
    Reaching out to embrace the random.
    Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.


    Come embrace my desire to
    Come embrace my desire to
    feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow
    to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,
    to bathe in the fountain,
    to swing on the spiral
    to swing on the spiral
    to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.


    With my feet upon the ground I move myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in.
    I feel it move across my skin.
    I'm reaching up and reaching out. I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
    what ever will bewilder me.
    And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
    We'll ride the spiral to the end it may just go where no one's been.
    Spiral out. Keep going.
    Spiral out. Keep going.
    Spiral out. Keep going.
    Spiral out. Keep going.
    Spiral out. Keep going.

    First off I want to make sure no one thinks I am trying to say what this song is about, as written by Tool. This is what I think of the song, what it has made my mind come up with and how I came up with those things.

    The song is, in general, about keeping your center, your "feet on the ground" but getting over your fear to "spiral out" to explore things that are far reaching for you as a person. 

    I have to take the song as a whole to get my train of thought actually on the right rails, which makes it a difficult thing to explain while writing it out for someone else to read and make sense of. So, if I can ask, try to not make this make sense at first, just keep reading.

    "Over thinking over analyzing" Is exactly what I have done all of my life. Not just in my transition but everything I do or come in contact with. It has detached me from the world, I feel, in a way that I have trouble reattaching. Every situation is analyzed to the point that it looses its humanity, and I 'hate' myself for it. Maybe hate is a strong word, but it is something I do that I wish I could shake off like a bad case of fleas. 

    It is the part about me that kept my transition from being a reality for a long time. It is the part of me that has made believing I am transgender to begin with something that I dissected for years, the majority of my life. This song, feeling this song, is what made me see what I was doing to myself.

    "Withering my intuition..." and "Feed my will..." Both instances of both of those lines gave me some clarity of what I was doing and what I needed to do. The opportunities I have missed in my life, to me, feel gargantuan in both number and impact to my life. How many things have I missed because I over analyzed my response to them? How many of those things would mean I would have a different life now? Education, money, friends, family, lovers, careers, experiences. Many of these things are not what they could have been because of my inability to just grasp the moment. Not to mention what being transgender has done. Not to suggest trans people automatically have a disadvantage, but trying to cope with it, trying to figure it out, trying to hide myself, all of these and more have affected many parts of my past, my choices, my reactions. 


    The necessity to "draw outside the line" to "cross the line" becoming obvious to me, finally. That necessity coming from the realization of what I have been doing to myself. In a moment I seen my path, even though I was terrified to take it. I knew I had to embrace myself. I had to step away from who I thought I was, who I built as this supposed "person" and reach into places I have been unaware of, or scared of in the past. 

    "Come embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, feel connected..." This is something that I wish I could scream to people on a daily bases. I feel a connection with the world around me that I feel most do not and i wish I could take people by the hand and show them. It isn't that simple, I have come to realize. It is also a part of me that I have a hard time feeling all of the time. I truly believe that is because I have been trained, like the majority of us, to not feel that feeling. Being too caught up in our day to day, mostly worthless, lives. Our lives themselves not being worthless, our "life", but what we do with them. How many of us, like myself, do things, unimportant tasks for people that do not need it? Many of our jobs being a great example, look at mine. I cook overpriced, mostly unhealthy food for people that do not need to eat it, at all. People in the world, people in my city, starving and I'm re-heating something made in a factory so someone can pay 19.95 to send half of it to the garbage can. 

    I'm not hear complaining about work or anything, just my example of the triviality and thoughtlessness rampant in our society. I wish I could lead people along to see the power we all have, to connect, or 'feel' like only a crying widow feels. To embrace the rhythm of the world that surrounds them rather then paying attention to one small sliver of life. 

    For myself, embracing who I am is part of that power. A power that, as I have mentioned before, is almost solely for us trans folk. Most people will not even know what it is to search themselves like we have been forced to, and I wish I could show them. This 'embrace yourself' isn't just for the LGBTQ community, it is for humanity. The LGBTQ community, from my experience doesn't bother much with suggesting those outside of it should do what they have done. There is an unbelievable calm that comes with it, that few people will feel. I find it hard to think that everyone who isn't trans feels like this as default. It would seem to me that if they did, the world wouldn't be in the state it is in. 

    "Swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human." This is one of the most powerful lines in this song. It says so much. We are gods, we are everything that is what we need and ever will need. We are creators and destroyers. We have unlimited power to control ourselves and most of the environment around us, if not all, eventually. We have, what seems to be, the most unbelievable ability, the ability to think. The ability to set our minds to a task and accomplish it no matter what the odds, as individuals and as a species. It is possible to grasp that power, but still remain humble. To still appreciate the beauty of everything we come from and are a part of. Perhaps we can control the universe, but it is possible to control the universe and still see how it is perfect. How if we were not here it would still be perfect, how it is inevitable we will not be here eventually, and it will still be beautifully perfect.

    I have always felt we are all gods, always. Even as a child I 'changed' my religion from believing in god, as my parents, family and community would have me do, to believing in myself. I finally embraced and understood that belief when I decided being someone who needs to transition is who I am. I embraced everything I felt about myself, free of the doubt that is given to us by others, by society, I embraced my inner god.

    The last verse has been my motto for as long as I have heard it. "move myself between the sound" as sensitive people know, in music it isn't the sounds that make it mean something, it is the spaces in between, humanity reflects this. It isn't when something is going on, when activity is happening that is important, it is the spaces in between. Too many people put a great deal of effort deciding how they feel about something that has happened. An action taken or word given by someone else. The reaction of others from the same we do ourselves. The spaces in between get ignored, your feelings about being you, about when nothing has affected you to make you have to think. 

    Every time I hear the line "open wide to suck it in I feel it move across my skin." I get shivers through-out my body. I feel the feeling it is referring to in the absorbing of the music I'm listening to, and the reminder moves through me. Now that I have started to transition, and have started to come to terms with it, it gives me more to shiver about. These words reflecting my reality. "...reaching up and reaching out... Reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me..." There has been nothing more bewildering to me then being transgender. There is nothing I have desired more to reach for then my femininity. I started to see this through this song. I started to see that I need to take the risk and reach for what ever it was that I longed to reach for. I have done nothing but doubt all of my life. I doubted what I wanted, what I felt. I have never given myself to my feelings to do or be what I wanted, what I have ached all of my life for. I had to realize I am still 'me' while I spiral out, while I reach for the impossible, I did not need to lose sight of being the human I was.

    As you can probably see by now, this song moved me in a way none other has. I call it "the perfect song" to people when I'm talking about it. Both musically and lyrically it is ingenious. This song helped me reach into my soul and pull out who I am, who I wanted to be. It made me think about myself in a way I did not have the courage to think about before. I started to see the likeness of the lyrics to my life. The things I had done in the past, or had not done. My desires for the future and my inability to let myself grasp it. That in turn led  me to understand that I had to, finally, reach for the one thing I was the most hesitant to reach for, my true self. I think everyone can take a lesson from these lyrics. Everyone should not be afraid to reach for what they desire, or who they believe they are. And as implied in the song, do not be afraid if what you reach for first is ultimately not what you wanted, or who you are, you can always reach again.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Social Anxiety

I have sat out in the restaurant several times while on break at work, eating my lunch as quickly as I can so I can have a few minutes to do nothing before I have to go back to work. On several occasions there have been other co-workers also taking a break. I have yet to sit and speak with them, or they yet to sit and speak with me. I'm not going to sit here and assume I know their reasoning, that seems like a bad idea, but I certainly know mine.

When I enter the break area and I see others there I purposely avoid them, and when I'm already sitting there I find myself hoping they don't sit next to me. It is shyness that gets me, when I think about it. I find myself having no idea how to be social with people. It is easy to be cute and funny, and talk to people while we are all working in the kitchen, there is a common goal we are all focusing on and there are many ways for me to leave a conversation if I want to. Also, when you force people to be together for that long of a time, they will almost always think of something to say first. I don't have that feeling, ever, of awkward silence. I can stand, sit, work, whatever next to someone for hours and not say a thing, it does not even get to me. The only sort of conversational thoughts I have are what the person next to me may say. So I wait, and sure enough someone will start something.

I'm great at talking to people when they talk first, I am a good listener. I can talk about any topic without much trouble. It is the pieces in between that scare me. I do not know how to small talk and small talk is where you really get to know each other. Talking about the weather, or what's going on in the Ukraine right now, or movies and tv shows you have watched are noise between the things that we say that make us us. Most people call it flirting, but it isn't all, always, flirtatious. You state a fact or ask a question, "Hey, did you hear what's going on with Russia and the Ukraine lately?" either you wait for a response or say something else, but eventually the two of you will share opinions. "Yeah it's crazy. Russia should get the hell out, they don't belong there."

I talk in facts because I'm worried of sharing my opinion. I have come to learn my opinions are mostly unpopular, or too thoughtful for people to accept well. This is something I have spoken to my therapist with. I have difficulty finding people to talk to, to connect with. Her response was, "You may have to talk about the Olympics for a while until you find a connection." Suggesting I talk about boring, unimportant crap just to start conversations because that is what most people talk about.

(btw, what's going on in the Ukraine is scary shit, not unimportant.)

My life story leaves little room for the mundane. Dealing with being a transitioning female has given me too strong of a perspective on what is important and what isn't. I have tried, throughout my life, to show interest in what the average person does and I just can't do it. Television is just utter nonsense, movies are mostly the same thing, listening to someone talk about how their day is ruined because they have to work late and can't get their nails done makes me stare blankly and think "Really? That's how hard your life is? C'mon."

Back to being social, my other problem is I'm too honest. The other thing people do to get to know each other is ask personal questions. That's something else I'm not very good at. I rarely ask people where they are from, or if they have a girl/boyfriend/partner, what they do outside of work or whatever setting we meet in, various ways of asking what their life was like before I entered it. I think it is personal, and also people tend to divulge that information without much prompting. Ask anyone who has gotten to know me over the years, I'm a mystery. I don't talk about myself much unless you ask, and I assume everyone is like that, even though most people are not. After you get to know me, after you've gotten through the majority of my walls I am an open book, with only a few pages missing.

So I have no interest in talking about the usual mundane crap people do, I'm scared of getting personal and I am not very good at asking people about themselves. That combination leaves little room for me to have a one on one conversation. I have a few topics that float around in my head. This transition I am going through and all of the spin offs of that, like the family I no longer have, the life I have left behind. More lately of how happy I am, or why I am happy, and the little girl I am doing my best to cheer up. I wouldn't mind talking about these things if telling people about them would not suddenly change their opinions of me. I have been asked at work why I'm in such a good mood and my honesty almost got the better of me. I wanted to say something like "My skin feels a-maze-ing and it is so good to feel like that now." Something that seems totally pointless to talk about, but it is momentous to my life. I do not miss the irony of how this is important to me, but not to others, so I keep my mouth shut. My answer to that question was something completely deflecting, and I do not remember what it was.

The whole point of this post was to get to how it makes me feel, how I have felt most of my life. Sitting there, on break, with several co-workers nearby talking about their lives, chatting away with each other made me feel lonely. A sort of lonely I am not sure how I can combat, the sort that feels like there is no change in sight and my best decision is to just move on and accept that I will be lonely forever. As I have mentioned, I know all of my shortcomings, but I am totally without the knowledge of how to work around them. In most situations, I am alone in a room full of people.

One thing for sure though, if you are one of the people in the room, you would have no idea. I can talk and joke with people. I'm laughing and smiling, letting people keep my attention, getting others attention when I want. It is all a charade though, it is how I have learned to get through life while hiding who I really was, and it has left me without the tools to actually socialize with people as the woman I want.

I guess this is the real point, yes I am lonely, but I really do not want to be any more. I have done enough of pushing people away to hide myself. Now I want to flourish as the woman I am, and a lot of that has to do with the friends I keep. It is hard for me to see where one ends and the other begins, where the pretend socializing gives way to the new me. It is as difficult to see as my future. What career will I have, where will I live, who will I be, and how do I make and be a friend as the real me?

I have come across a few things said by people I barely know that are giving me something to go on. One person told me, " I just thought you were a bubbly little girl." That statement has stuck with me, it is giving me some direction on who I am, and where to go. I guess keep going is a better way to say it. I can not say that that was what I was going for, a bubbly little girl, but it is more or less one of the ways I would like people to see who I am. When I was given that description of myself I was surprised. I am little, especially to this guy, but to be called bubbly was unexpected. That was a few days ago, today I was told while chit chatting that people... pretty much the entire kitchen staff and a good bit of the wait staff, have taken noticed of, and have talked to each other at least once about, my dancing at work. In a conversation that I was not part of someone said to the group, "Something something... Rebecca is dancing all the time, it's so cute."

That is about as much as I know about my personality. I know that seems counter intuitive, maybe even especially coming from me, to hear me suggest all I know from my personality is a few things I have heard others say about me. However, there are limits to what inner searching can do for you. Yes, I completely believe everyone should take the time, far, far more time then most give themselves, to search who you are, according to you. But a large part of who we are comes from the reception others give us. We are social animals after all. I still turn this inward, I think to myself, "ok, I'm the cute bubbly dancing little girl in the social circle of work." and I decide, based on feelings, if that is something I like or not. I have come to realize it is, so therefore it is part of my personality, part of the person I want people to see me as.

It still does not give me much to go on when it comes to actual conversation, actually getting to know people, or letting them know me. Even just being in a group of people and not coming off as a total social moron. It is a start, though. People see me as cheerful, which is a complete 180 from the person I was before and that is exactly where I want to be. Chances are, like everything else in my life, I am over thinking this. I just need to put myself in the situation and see what happens. The Lonely just really gets to me some times and I wish I did not have to grow into it. It seems however, literally, absolutely everything about this transition is something I have to grow into.

Thursday 6 March 2014

Inevitable Decision

I seen my therapist yesterday and talked to her about what has started to happen at work. I still haven't been approached by anyone, which she says is most likely out of respect, but really I have no idea. What we ended up talking about was how it effected me, how it has shed some light on a few of my own thoughts, feelings and goals.

I mentioned in that post about work that the only good thing about it is that is has shown me how much I want to completely pass. along with that, I have realized on my own, is exactly how I identify myself in the world of cis, trans, gender queer, interesexed, etc. It may not seem obvious, but this is something I have struggled with since coming out as transgender. Before coming out, all I really thought was I was transgender, I had no idea what that meant other then I no longer wanted to pretend I was male, and even less of an idea of how many options I had. I was still more or less stuck in the gender binary world. Since I have come out and started living the life of a transgender individual I have met many different kinds of people, and have learned so much more of the spectrum of gender and sexuality.

My struggle was between my beliefs and my feelings toward myself. It was a simple thing that ignited my personal understanding. Not long ago Facebook implemented a new feature. They now have somewhere around fifty different options for choosing your gender. It is not in a drop down box, that is still left with "male" and "female" but now has a "custom" option. If you start typing it auto-fills with quite a few choices. I took the time to go through as many as I could think of, trans-woman, trans-female, transgender, etc etc. After looking at them all, I did not feel right choosing any of them, the only one that made sense to me, that made me feel like I was selecting something I can identify with was female.

I almost felt like I was betraying friends, and myself. How can I select female when, for one, I am hardly "there", and two I am transgender? I was not born assigned female genitalia and I am currently "riding the fence" so to speak, between genders. I felt like selecting female was a lie, I felt like I was letting my trans friends down by joining the gender binary, and worse of all I felt like I was letting my own beliefs down. I truly believe in the spectrum of sexuality and gender, I could not be the person I am if I didn't hold those beliefs dear. Even deeper then being transgender, I could not be the understanding, open-minded, free thinking individual I am if I did not honestly believe in those things.

Why was it then, that I could not, or desperately did not want to select any of the options that stem from those beliefs?

Besides that, what happened to my own conviction? Do I want to hide who I am? Did I not want to choose something other then female because I wanted to hide the fact that I am transgender? I have told people often I am free and willing to talk about being transgender, does this make me a hypocrite? This is something that my constant battle to pass would make me beat myself up over often. Then that day at work and few days later, all I could think about was how I was not passing, how I was still giving myself away, how people would not always see me as I wanted to be seen, as 100% female.

Then I understood after a few days of turmoil, not including the persistent debate I just mentioned. I finally found in myself why I was having such a debate. Go back and look at the words I just wrote, the worries I had. What am I talking about? I'm talking about what others think, mostly. My own beliefs mostly becoming a problem when I start to think about how others are perceiving them and how they would see the change, if it is even something they can see. It was then, after searching my own feelings, that I realized who I was, and who I want to be.

I am female, I do not want to identify as transgender for the rest of my life. Honestly, saying that I am transgender now even feels a little "dirty" to me, like something I want to clean off of myself. Not because of some trans fear, or something inwardly ignorant, but because that is not how I feel. I have met a number of people that happily identify as trans-something. People that consider themselves as permanently intersex. That is the, I guess label, on where I thought I was obligated to be. I may be splitting hairs here, and the change is a subtle one of my own feelings, truths and goals. To me, saying I am "transgender" is basically describing what I am doing, and telling people of my goals. Maybe I am a little under educated on these terms, maybe that is exactly what transgender means. It may be that carrying this around with me for all this time makes me feel like it is something else, more like intersexed. Whatever the case, to say I am "transgender" feels to me like it tags me as something I am not. I want people to look at me and say "Look at that woman." not "Look at that transgender person."

I take pride and inner strength in what I am doing. To declare myself as transgender to begin with, to start this journey, to carry on in the face of extreme fear, pain and loss, takes courage, and I am even starting to see that for what it is. It is slowly started to surface for me just how much I am putting myself through, just how "mind-blowing" this is to the average person. To me, it is life, to others it is an impossible decision they can not even imagine wanting to, or having to, make.

I want my label (since we live in a world of labels) to be "transitioning female" because that is how I feel. There are times I feel like a pre-teen wanting to "grow-up", and I think that is exactly what I am. I am a young female longing to become a woman. With those sort of feelings toward who I am, it is difficult for me to call myself transgender. Yes I know, I am changing genders but well.. that is according to "you". All of my body parts that suggest I was once male are meaningless to me. They have been used to assign me a gender I could never truly believe, no one ever asked me what gender I wanted to have myself assigned until I started to tell everyone.

It is because of these new revelations in how I feel about who I am, according to me I have come to a decision I thought I would either never make, or be a long time in the making. I have an appointment with my GP this coming week that I made several weeks ago for another reason. I have decided, with as much possible certainty as one can, to tell her to put me on the list for CAMH. For those that do not know, CAMH is a center through which us transitioning women and men can have genital reassignment surgery.

Sunday 2 March 2014

Hard Work

I had an emotional day yesterday. Honestly, I have been emotional since my last post. The last line in it, "So this is for you, little girl. Feel better now." Made me cry while writing it, makes me cry when I think about it at any time of the day, and made me cry just now writing it again. The pure truth of it is what makes me emotional, and I've been carrying that with me since. The perspective of that post has stuck me since feeling it.

Yesterday I decided I would be sincerely honest with a few people at work. One girl who I had a conversation with that I felt bad about my comments after the fact. I didn't say anything hurtful, but my response was defensive. So I apologized yesterday and made my response more realistically honest. Also there is a woman I work with now that I used to work with several years ago with the same company but a different location. My talk with her made my already emotional day unbearable.

Not only did we work together before, but she knows who I was, she knows I am transgender. She has treated me wonderful since I have started to work with her again. She hasn't told anyone who I was, and is very sweet to me now. She has wanted to sit down with me and talk over some drinks, being the usual curious people are once they find out, especially people who knew my past. We haven't been able to because of work, our schedules just not being similar at all. I thought to myself that it was fairly likely we'll never get a chance to talk, but I wanted to thank her at least. Yesterday we were both working early, before we opened for service. I made it a point to go to her while no one was around and tell her how I felt. I thanked her for treating me well, not telling anyone and simply being kind enough to want to talk. I surprised her a bit like unsolicited honesty tends to do and since we had a little time, we talked very briefly.

What I found out came from her completely innocently, but it devastated my day. She told me people have been asking about me. I made the mistake of asking her what sort of things they were asking. I was hoping for people to be asking how it was that I could be there a few weeks and be able to do everything in the kitchen or something of that nature. Instead they are asking if their suspicions are true, if indeed I am transgender. I took her answer, to her face, fairly well. I didn't start crying or getting defensive, I just nodded and said "yeah" several times. When I walked away from her was when my emotional downfall started.

Clearly, there is something about me that isn't just different for a girl, but makes it apparent enough that I used to be a boy and that thought is killing me. I've mentioned what has happened to a few friends and they both said the same two things, generic "feel better" comments. One is "screw what people think" the other being "but you're beautiful."

"What people think" is not what bothers me. What is hurting me is that, whatever it is, I come across as someone who used to be a boy. My response to both friends was, "No one would look at you and ask a friend if you used to be a boy." Cis-gender thinking on something they can't understand because they have never felt it. Imagine if people were to look at you and assume you were once the opposite gender you are presenting now. This is what I went through for the last thirty-five years and what I'm doing everything I possibly can to avoid feeling like again because it crushes me into nothingness.

Telling me I should feel beautiful doesn't help either. I feel no where near beautiful when I know someone is able to tell somehow that I was once a boy. Would any of you cis-readers feel attractive if someone, or worse many, people were looking at you and thinking you were once a man or woman, whichever works in this example? Again, this is something I am doing everything I can to avoid from happening. I'm putting so much mental and physical effort, and time into showing people I am a woman and it is mostly in vain. People can still tell.

Up until that conversation I walked around work full of confidence and happiness. For the rest of the day after that conversation I walked around feeling like the local freak show. I feel every single stare now, I wonder how many smiles are forced, how much am I being gossiped about when I'm not around. It is making me want to run away from it all. I started to think about looking for another job, until I guess it would just be a matter of time until the same happened there. I am incessantly, urgently going through a checklist of everything I do and say, how I move, how I walk, how I talk, what words I use when I talk, what I look like, my make-up, my hair every little thing. I'm trying to think of things to fix and how to fix them. I have started to think of surgeries that I passed off before, like a trachea shave. It's exhausting, but it is the job I have to do.

I'm usually so happy when I'm at work, and all I can think about doing now is going in and shutting up. Not talking to anyone and just keeping my head down until my shift is over so I can run out of there. There is no way people will not notice.

The only way I handled my night last night was I drank ceasers until I wanted to go to bed, which was around 9:30. I have a stuffed toy that has been with me all of my life, everywhere I went. That stuffed toy knows all of my pain from grade nine, knows all the hurt I have carried with me and has been my best comfort. I went to bed with him again last night for the first time in a very long time and I felt like I was back there again, back to the days of my depression. Waking up this morning still clinging to him.

I am terrified, anxious, and stressed over if I will ever pass well enough for no one to be able to tell at all. Right now I feel like the answer is "no" and right now, that makes me feel deathly sorrowful and impotent. The puzzle of my gender and life will never have all the pieces put together. The only good thing out of this is that it is showing me, with stark reality, how much I want to completely pass.

Well, I have to go to work. this is going to be a hard day.