Thinking Trans

Sometimes you forget how people would overlook you--how they'd stare and try to figure it all out in the twenty seconds it took to cross a crowded bar. They want to see which door you choose. Either way, you've lost.

You forget how hard you had to fight to be taken seriously as a man in this world, and you forget the price you had to pay for that respect. Some wouldn't call it that at all. Some may say privilege. And they may be right.

You forget the angst and the activism and just start living. The weeks pass and you pass and you finally get everything you've always wanted, along with a whole new set of misunderstandings. The assumptions may be different, but people claim you as their own, trying to squeeze juicy answers out of you until you are shriveled and worn. 

I still haven't lost that fear that someday there will be a problem in the locker room, a situation at the airport, a confrontation at the gas station. But I'll be damned if you think you can make me stand up to pee. 

Today, I remind myself how hard it still is for people who don't look like me. I've never had to worry about my chest--even though I do--and the color of my skin doesn't exponentially increase the chances that I'll be beaten bloody and left to die. 

I understand that I have become somewhat complacent, and I cannot be ashamed of this. But I can work harder to make sure others have the same luxury . And that's the road I have chosen. 

Untitled Poem

All the love in the world will not make

My chest any smaller

My face any clearer

Standing by the mirror

I see half a human 

The other half 

Looming in the shadow of 

Someday

And all the squats in the world 

Won't matter in the end 

When I can't look at myself

Without wondering 

how I got this way

Inside my head

There's no exercise 

In any book I've seen

That can fix 

All that can't be seen 

All the time in the world 

I hear less often 

A mind gone mindless 

Is dead

Trying to Decide if I Should Perform This

Do you know what it’s like when your eyes hold their breath?

I’m sitting here in this blue box built for a boy who’d rather build his own--perfectly pink, plastic-people-populated and perched perpendicular to my past, our lives intersecting where mine became his. Where pink became blue before either of us had ever been born.

I have fumbled my way through a series of pendulums, dodging left and right, falling face first in the mud and failing to see them swinging right for me each time I rose my head to breathe and I breathed in genderqueer and choked on an indecision that felt like sitting on the fence.  With a post up my ass.

And I wiped the mud away and fell backwards in time through the dirt and the dust of trying to forget years of looking at my body betraying every move I made and every pound I benched and every mile I ran, and I coughed up the night I first saw my chest flattened against my skin with her by my side

And before I could inhale that moment one more time the smell of my past caught up with my plans and I puked up the five-year-old, naked and peeing outside

And in the puddle before me I saw the second-grader who didn’t understand why her middle name couldn’t be Matthew and the fourth-grader with a rope around her neck and a knife in her lunchbox and the sixth-grader with a pen in her cheek and a face that never saw the light of day again, throwing fists and throwing chairs, and locking doors and running away into the seventh-grader who found music and got lost in the notes of sad songs, black clothes, and the chorus of “You’ll grow out of it eventually”

“You’ll grow out of it eventually”

Eventually. Eventually.

Eventually if you say a word enough it stops sounding like a real thing at all, like the sound of my birth name

bleeding out the mouth of the boy whose ex-girlfriend’s lips bleed for no one not even God anymore.

(Because she’s a man now.)

I lay there night after night, sweating out the years I spent as a genetic fraud, broad shoulders tucked tight, sleeping tight, breathing tight and then

I swallowed the pink and blue and white flag-shaped pill with a capital T on the back and a blank slate on the front,

Hoping to finally be able to fall asleep with a blue blanket pulled over my head and an empty needle in the can

but then came the side-effects.

I woke up in the mud again, just like now, coughing it all up, layer by layer

Unexpected expectorant, the not-this-again guanifisan,

Warning: Never change gender on an empty stomach.

Mucus covered labels no longer stuck to the inside of my lungs, no longer clinging to my alveoli like the child who became the girl who became the boy who became the man who clung to a blanket of blue and shut out a world of rainbows

And there they were, covered in snot, just lying there.

Genderqueer. Freak. Shim. Faggot. Sped. Retard. Butch. Twink. Nerd. Woman. Princess. Liar. Tranny. Female. Male. Lesbian. Gay. Asexual. Bottom. Top. Girl. Boy. She-male. Dyke. It. Masculine. Feminine. Nothing. Everything. Whatever you want already as long as you stop asking me what’s in your pants,

 does your family hate you?

 so what are you really?

What’s in your pants?

When are you going to get surgery?

What’s in your pants?

What’s your real name?

Oh and by the way what’s in your pants?

I’m tired of picking up snot-covered pieces of the people I tried to become—the identities I snorted so that I could just learn your name before you said you only dated real men and too bad you don’t have a dick and well I can still see the girl in you and you know

Sometimes it gets really old doing trans 101 when all I want from the woman whose name tag says becky is my fucking chicken quesadillas.

That’ll be 8.66. Please pull ahead to the next window and have your genitals ready.

Here’s your receipt.

So what’s in your pants?

Fine.

Four years and a lot of awkward conversations later, I can tell you that It’s pink and blue and people-shaped. No. Pink. Blue. A mixture of the two. Somewhere in between like the infinitesimal cracks between visible and invisible light, indivisible, no gender, under God, with liberty avenue and gender justice for all. A man. A-fucking man. Fucking men. Sometimes. Fucking women sometimes. Fucking sometimesmen and sometimeswomen and sometimes no times fucking at all.  

For B, Who Has Been Waiting

Peter came into Rainbow without really knowing me as Elise. (That seems so strange to write when it isn't on a medical form.) But he told me that he always perceived my energy to be masculine, and he said this and acted in ways that really made me believe it. There weren't many extraordinarily detailed conversations about the process: no Trans 101. Peter was the kind of person who educated himself on these details so that he could enter into a conversation with a trans person as an informed ally. He focused on me when he was with me, not my transition or my trans status. But what impressed me more was the he embraced genderqueer concepts in his own life. As a cisgender gay male, that's not an easy thing to do without facing some sort of backlash. The gay male community is full of bottom-bashing stereotypes and pressures of its own. I've grown to fear some of them myself.
He told me a few times how he knew there was a bit of woman inside him. That he didn't really care about his penis but found it quite useful. Peter had his own sense of style, both internal and external. The best part about that was that these things hardly ever had to be discussed. Two people who know themselves never have to defend their identities around each other. That's what was relieving. No walls.
I didn't have to prove my masculinity any more than he did. Or femininity. Or gayness. Or anything.
And that allowed us to approach both public and private interactions at a much lower level of tension.
He made me feel safe because of this. Not necessarily in a physical sense, but in every other way.

Peter

I've been waiting for words to come all day, and I don't think my emotions have entirely sorted themselves out.  I got a message this morning on Facebook. I had to check the news reports to make sure it was real. It still hasn't managed to feel real. You were 25 years old. Your car hit a retaining wall and caught fire, but we know little more than that.
Throughout the day, I've been getting hit with memories that have made me smile more than frown, and the most incredible thing about this experience to me is that just as you had this unique way of bringing together groups of friends from vastly different social circles in life, so you have been able to bring so many of us back together to celebrate the beautiful person you were, even though you have passed from this world.
I know I will never be able to capture in words all of the memories with which I am left. I'm not even sure about the exact day we met. I feel like you grew into a bigger and bigger part of my life as I began to grow into myself and open up to people who had been trying to get close to me for months or even years. You grew into such a big part of my life that I remember spending almost every single day with you and never wanting to be apart. You were the one to help me pick up the pieces when I thought my life had fallen apart, on more than one occasion, during the most difficult summer of my life. You always had this way of turning tragedy on its head. You made me feel much stronger than I thought I ever could be.
I remember how you, James, Joseph, and I were the Golden Girls, and you were Blanche, of course.
I remember finding a box of bagels and cream cheese with you on the corner across the street from the Cathedral, as well as being curled up in pain with you on the floor of the Rainbow office after deciding it was somehow a good idea to eat them.
I remember dancing with you at Kelly and Chance's wedding this summer and how we both laughed because we couldn't figure out who should lead.
I remember the random summer walks, playing board games on your floor in the blazing summer heat when you had no air conditioning.
You loved mugs. You had the best mug collection I've ever seen, and I fondly remember our trips to Goodwill where you'd buy about five or six at a time.
I remember that time where we lived together without actually living together and how we only had that apartment for about a month. It still felt like home. I think that's because we both wanted it to be so badly.
I remember that you didn't own more than one pair of shorts. You insisted on wearing long pants all year round. As Melissa said, this is because you are a hipster. But you always denied it. Proving the point.
Speaking of which, that night we decided to scale a fence and go tagging was one of the best nights of my college life. It felt like we were in Stand By Me. That was way better than studying for finals ever could have been.
I remember walking along the train tracks with you and Kelly in the summer of 2010, taking a ridiculous picture of the two of us biting the same piece of meat on a stick after already having taken so many absurd pictures before heading to Pride in the Street that same year.
I remember how you talked often about how you talked with Paul McCartney when you were in London, and I thought this was the coolest thing ever.
I remember how much you desired to find someone with whom you could start a family and have children. We both agreed you'd make an awesome dad.
You also loved hotels. And now I totally understand why.
I remember the time you carried me out of my house and into your car when I was too sick to even walk.
I remember how you always slept with a fan going because you just couldn't fall asleep otherwise.
I remember the way you used to hold me in just the right way so that the tension just melted away. You made me feel safe and loved. And you were one of the first people in my life to truly see me for the man I am. You were one of the few people whose understanding of gender made me sigh with relief. For this, you were an invaluable asset to the transgender community of Pittsburgh.
I remember how valuable an asset you were to the entire queer community of Pittsburgh. You seemed to know everyone. You've touched the lives of so many people. You always brought people together. Every time I look back at pictures of us out on the town, we are surrounded by at least a dozen loving friends. Even when you were going through your own periods of darkness, you somehow managed to spread light wherever you went. You had this way of making people happy and bringing out their love for life whenever you came near. I wonder if you knew just how important to our community you were. How many people will never be the same because you were a part of their lives.
 You helped me discover and grow into the person I am today, and you will always be a part of me. I miss you so much, and as I fight through this sea of conflicting emotions and struggle to grasp the reality of this situation, I think about what you would have wanted your closest friends and family members to do. As much as we must mourn the loss of a truly great and inspirational human being, we must also do you the honor of celebrating your life and continuing to work for the equality you believed we all deserve. It was tattooed on your hand, in plain sight, because you believed something so important should not be hidden. You were unapologetic about what you believed. And that made us all a little more comfortable with ourselves. You helped us learn to carry our spirits like you carried your tattoo. You helped us understand that we were not put on this earth to hide.
I think that is the most difficult part of all for me to handle. We were put here to live. And you embodied the idea of living life to the fullest more than anyone I knew, really. It seems cruel that the world has lost someone with such a zest for life--someone who had so much life left to live and so much more left to give. I haven't gotten all of these feelings sorted out yet, but this is what your memory has helped me learn in just the last half a day or so.
I had no idea that that dance this summer would be the last time I would ever see you. But it is truly one of the most beautiful memories with which you could have left me.
 Even though you might have laughed at me in life for saying this, I do believe you are here with me, helping me along the way in this process of grieving. I want to thank your spirit for staying with me, and I want to thank all the friends who have reached out to me with phone calls, messages, and comments just to let me know that they are here. We will help each other through this because we are family. I love you all, and this whole experience--being completely new territory for most of us who have never had to deal with the loss of a peer so early in life--has made a lot of us realize how precious these friendships really are and how valuable our time together can be. <3 p="">

Something Cute From Paper-Gender Math

I am thinking of a gender between one and three
An algebraic mosaic of x and y like sex
and why
do I write stories of my life between the valleys of my veins
Carve the dreams across my body
Starve the soul only a mirror can love
A numerator standing stop a vinculum of uncertainty with nothing underneath,
undefined and falling
searching for the common denominator that binds me to the x's I can never see
To the y's I can never know
Negative me plus or minus the square root of every lie I've ever told and ever smile I've ever faked
and every excuse I haven't even thought to make
I'm thinking of a gender between one and me
That isn't just a symbol of values long forgotten
A gender with ups and downs
Curves and swerves like the sine wave
that was my very first road
into the blankness of queer.
Every calculation became a question with two answers
Equally valid and to an equation
I can't even remember
Like the calculus I learned to forget
when they asked me to integrate. I laughed
and lived
and left the note in a bible in a motel six
in a town that couldn't even count that high
The hated (per)mutated masterpiece
that is the variable I.
Imaginary and unwilling to accept my fate,
I have taken to the Cartesian sea,
hoping to one day drift right back to the origin
where x and y meant nothing and it was all the same to me my mom and the boys next door.
Up the slope I go,
the letter m.
Acceleration made flesh.
A force to be reckoned with given enough distance
and time.

Fact

I am honestly more self-conscious about losing my hair than I am about keeping my chest.

The T in LGBT

Why is the T in LGBT when it has nothing to do with our sexuality? I've seen this question arise in a number of support groups for trans people, and I really think we need to look at this from a different perspective. We don't need LGB people to help us or fight for our rights. We need to fight for theirs. Allow me to explain, briefly.

Trans people live in contrast with the binary model of gender/sex that exists in our society, and what we are fighting for is the recognition of our gender identities as valid and the right to express our identities in whatever way we choose. And that is not a right that we alone deserve. All people deserve this right, and I believe it would greatly benefit the people in our society to not have to conform or face social isolation, among other things.

Much of the violence perpetrated against LGB (and T) people, from the time of childhood, is based upon behaviors, mannerisms, preferences, etc. that heteronormative people associate with the "opposite" gender. There is the pervading belief that real manhood and real womanhood are observable and quantifiable, and that one is less of a man or woman if certain criteria are not met. This greatly affects LGB people because society characterizes people who don't have a certain number of manly or womanly traits as gay without hesitation. Well, not all gay men are effeminate, and not all straight men are macho. I'm not even arguing for the idea that many trans people first find acceptance as members of the gay community. Aside from this, we are fighting for the same rights. As a transman, I am fighting for acceptance as a real man just as much as a so-called effeminate gay man. I'm not in the we're-just-like-the-rest-of-you-straight-people camp. No. We are different. We don't have to pretend to be straight or act in heteronormative ways or have body parts that are heteronormatively associated with the gender with which we identify in order to be considered real and granted the real rights we deserve.

And since sexuality, sex and gender are so linked in our society, homosexual behavior is considered a transgression of gender norms as well. We're all breaking the same rules. And we are fighting for LGB people, trans people, and straight people, and everyone else to be able to express their sex, gender, and sexuality in whichever ways they choose. Do you know how many times people have commented to me that certain people just "act too gay" for them? We're fighting against that mindset. People seem not to have an issue with gay people as long as it can be ignored or hidden, but when the gender transgressions occur, it cannot be ignored. Many young boys learn to fear and hate gays because, as they grow up, they are fighting to attain manhood/masculinity, which is incompatible with any sort of feminine behavior or transgression, which homosexuality is again a part of. In fighting for our rights to express our own gender identity, we are fighting for gender justice for all, to quote the IDKE slogan from 2010.

Now I think I will go post this in response. I never do that, but I think this might be one of those important times where people might actually get it.

Pouring Out My Brain

Today is a heavy sigh kind of day. It's Friday night, and I'm a little worn out from a double session at the gym today, preceded immediately by 6 hours of torturous work in a retail environment. I'm not in the mood to go out, but I wouldn't really be opposed if I were to get invited tonight. But that call will never come. I have a few things that need to be done, but it seems so late already that I'm afraid to actually start anything. And maybe I'd just like to relax and enjoy some time to myself, though not really to myself since my parents are upstairs, and I don't have a door, meaning I can hear everything that's going on up there anyway. I don't think I get a chance to really be alone very often, and maybe that would help me to feel less lonely. It sounds strange, but being by myself gives me time to recharge and to process what has happened. I feel like I can't keep up with my life when I don't have this opportunity. There are other things that interfere as well, but this might be the most troubling one. I seemed to be doing a lot better when I had my own place and could make my own rules about my living situation. And I didn't have to worry about someone being there when I didn't want them to be. I could know what to expect when I got home, recharge for even a few minutes or an hour, and be ready to go about my evening. Public transportation here is almost non-existent, so I literally always have to get a ride to go anywhere other than the shopping plaza near my house, which is still probably a little over a mile away.

There is no sense of community here either, not in the way that I need it. It's weird not having any trans or queer friends. I have what I would consider gay friends and acquaintances, but they don't quite get the concept of queer. As far as I can tell, I might be one of the only people in the county who does. Probably multiple counties. I miss being able to talk about queer things and am just bored by conversations and jokes that rely on stereotypes about men and women. And yet I am sometimes forced to use this same stereotypes to make connections with customers when I could honestly care less.

I think I lied. I forgot to mention something, so I didn't do it on purpose. The other day, a transwoman came into the store. I needed to use her ID to look up her credit card and complete the purchase. The ID was still in her birth name, and I treated her just like I would have any other woman coming through the line. I know she may not have noticed. She might have prayed for things to go smoothly, to not get any weird looks, to just be able to get in and get out without having someone questioning her identity or mocking her as she walked away. I know the look that someone gets in these situations. I wish I could have told her that I understand. I wanted to have some way of sharing with her that I got it and that there was someone else in this fucking shithole town who deals with the same thing on an almost daily basis. But I didn't want to draw attention to her. And I don't think she would have wanted me to do that either, but it still might have been nice for both of us. This is what I meant about losing my queer visibility. Not being able to make that instant connection. Not being able to look at another short-haired, obviously female-bodied person and exchange stories without saying a word. Just blending in and exchanging glances with people whose eyes have no stories to tell, who don't want their eyes to have a story to tell.

Without a whole community of transmen and people who get them, I find myself very lost up here. I'm all about education, but I don't want every interaction I have to be a lecture on gender theory. Sometimes I just want to be in a room full of people who get it. It's like trying to play a game of basketball but stopping all the time because your teammates don't really know the rules. There's no flow. No rhythm. And it's awkward.

It's not even ten o'clock. If I were in Pittsburgh, I'd be with my trans friends, most likely, or sitting next to the boy who wouldn't have broken up with me because I moved away. Because I wouldn't have moved away. I hate doing this to myself. If. It doesn't exist, so there isn't much point indulging in fantasies about a life that doesn't exist, at least not anymore. I would probably be having an easier time if I had been ready to leave. But there was so much that I didn't get to do. I was in the middle of so many important things. And I got blindsided. I had to leave against my will and with virtually no time to get my shit together. Maybe leaving home for college was so easy because I had all that time to get ready. Maybe planning to leave was easy because I would have been ready. I would have found a way to become ready. That never happened, and I still don't know how to handle it. I don't know how to get past what I assume is the feeling of regret/loss. I have a hard time letting things go. And an even harder time letting people go. I don't want this to be the end of things. But it just has to be. And it hurts every single day. I keep seeing and thinking about things that remind me of my friends and my old life. And I don't even feel like I could possibly be the same person, with the life that I am living now. I get tastes every now and then when I visit. It feels like the city is calling me back and telling me that everything is waiting for me to pick up right where I left off. It feels like everything will be the same. The comfort of a warm blanket and the arms of people who know you intimately, who can know you when you are unable to know yourself. I wonder if I will ever have that again, but more importantly, I mourn over the fact that I will never have anything like it ever again. Because each hug is different and each person radiates something different into my life. I can still feel the ripples, but they are fading, and I fear that I won't remember how beautiful it is to be loved.

I am losing my understanding of the experiences of love/intimacy because I live without them. I'm afraid that I will be so damaged by the experiences of the last few months (and years) that I'll never be able to fix myself, meaning that moving to a new city will leave me feeling exactly the same.

I'm still toying with the idea of going out tonight. But I'm leaning towards no because if I were to go, I'd really like to be able to do it myself. Maybe this thought kept coming back to me because my brain is trying to tell me what I need to do. But not all of my brain is telling me this. Other parts are afraid of going out. Am I afraid of going out because I have no connection or because I don't want to have a connection to this place? Will not having one make it easier to leave? It's ironic that misery can be comfortable. Or at least more comfortable than some things, like the unknown.

I just want to have a real conversation with someone again. To feel like we are really communicating something to one another instead of exchanging pleasantries and talking about things because we are afraid to be silent around one another. I won't go out tonight. Maybe I will next time, but I think I always say that. I don't want to have to pretend when I go out. Maybe I don't have to. But I'm always worried that a problem will arise, and I won't be able to get out of it, and no one else will know what to do. Or maybe I'm just fishing for excuses now. That last part sounds like something my brother would say.

I'm worried about stopping the writing again. Silence. Nothingness. Moving on to doing nothing. At least this might serve some purpose. I can't even tell if I am more or less agitated by doing this, writing when I can't stop thinking and/or when there is nothing else to do.

"do" is a word that made the list of jobs/career paths I've considered in the past year and a half flash in front of my eyes. PA, teacher, pharmacist, doctor, researcher (in different fields), personal trainer, businessman, entertainer. over and over again. i'm pretty sure art school was in there somewhere too. Social work. You name it. I have probably considered it. I don't know what the fuck to do. I wonder if I am any closer. I need to do something soon. If I don't, I may never do anything, and I would like to believe that doing something is better than doing nothing. Something queer. That always comes up as well. I wish I knew what made the most sense. I wish this were a decision based on logic or some magical equation. But life just doesn't work that way, or maybe it does and I don't know the equation. I suppose most people factor in money. And maybe time. But then everything kind of ends up the same when I think about it. I need to stop thinking about everything, all the time. There's no time to live with all of this thinking.

There's no time to live with all of this thinking. Interesting.

I'm terrified about having to take the bus tomorrow because I think I will miss it. And I don't know which route it takes or how early I need to be there. What will most likely happen is that I will leave ridiculously early and still be paranoid. And then I'll be too stressed out from the ride to handle a 5-hour shift on a Saturday night. I wish I weren't able to predict this. At least buses here are cheap, even if they only run until 4 PM tomorrow. I don't exactly hate this place. I just hate the way it works. And how people are morons. There seem to be way more of them here than anywhere else I've ever been. I'm honestly not surprised, but I wish I didn't have to deal with them every day. Morons with a lot of money, talking down to me. At least I treat them with respect. Even in real life, I treat idiots with respect. Idiots can still be nice people. (Please see the sarcasm here. I'm not really this much of a jerk.) I think I only use these terms when the combination is mean AND stupid. I suppose I get upset when people yell at me because of THEIR OWN dumb mistakes. It's fine if you yell about mine. Well, no it isn't, but at least I can understand that.

I have that feeling in my chest again. I think it has been there all day. But it's like something is sitting on my chest or compressing my insides. All the fucking time. And I know this isn't normal because I have a fading memory of the few weeks where I didn't feel like this. There were probably other times years ago, but those are difficult to recall.

I don't understand my own feelings all the time. I spend a lot of time trying to figure them out, and I get worried that this means I don't really know who I am. Then I think to myself, who does? This is really all over the place, isn't it? Makes sense to me.

I might not even be done tonight, but I think I am for now. Maybe I'll find something else to write about when I can't fall asleep later. When. Not if.

T

It's the distance between myself
and my thoughts
that got
me coming back.
I'm this.
That.
His life is this life because of the "t"
and the difference between
vial
and vital.
the one letter
that changed my face
into the finest facet
of my life.
it's nice.
the difference between a lie and the light.

New computer

It seems fitting that this is the first place I visit with my new computer. Call it a symptom of growing up in a society more concerned with technology than almost anything else, but my computer is very important to my life, partly because it is the vehicle through which I can access most of the important memories in my life. I felt like my old computer was a fitting symbol for the past seven years, with a heavy emphasis on "past". So much baggage, unnecessary pain and suffering, and outdated ways of dealing with problems of the present. A new computer means a new start, a literal blank slate just waiting for new memories to be recorded. I haven't forgotten the past seven years, which are securely locked away on an enormous external hard drive sitting right next to me, but those years can't be my focus right now. While I would have preferred to wait until I had a bit more money saved, it was definitely becoming urgent: The poor old Dell couldn't even open a Word document without completing freaking out on me, let alone handle what I needed it to do with Photoshop and Audacity. Computer rage is a really interesting phenomenon, and I imagine road rage is similar. There's no reason to be as upset about something so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but somehow, people always get worked up to the point of wanting to throw their computers in the lake. It's actually quite satisfying to have that option.
Maybe we like to break things so much because we enjoy having that power over the material objects that have taken control of our lives. Maybe it's nice to feel that humanity, and maybe it brings us closer to separating ourselves from the supposed "necessities" of our present age. Then again, some people just like to smash shit.

Mostly unrelated: I came out to two more people at work today, and I seriously think I made a girl's brain explode. It never gets old, at least when the good kind of brain exploding happens. However, I am finding it more and more difficult to be the educational voice ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I just want to talk about normal things like being pissed off at the Phillies, not having enough money to get all the cool things I want, and where I want to go on a vacation that I probably won't be able to take for ten more years. I don't mind talking about it, but I find that I am choosing to delay the conversation these days simply because I don't want to spend the next three weeks of my relationship with someone explaining gender theory and all that. And that can get pretty awkward for cash register conversation.

I feel like crying tonight because it feels so wonderful to just let go of the things that have been hurting me. It feels amazing to know that I have the ability to let go and that letting go does not mean giving up. I want to cry because I can't believe that it is getting easier, and I wonder if it should be doing so. Does it make me a bad person to stop caring about the things that once hurt me or affected me so much? If not, what does that mean?

Interjection about work: I got pretty confused when two separate customers decided to "joke" with me about being upset by saying rude things or making negative comments. I definitely did not think either person was joking, and then I became pretty embarrassed by it. It didn't help that the one lady kept laughing at me afterwards, but what can you do?

Also, don't get pissy with me when I ask to see your ID when you've clearly written "Ask for ID" on the back of your card. But this one just makes me laugh.

I still find it very strange that almost everyone at work hangs out with one another, even though there are about 50 people that work there, including my ex from high school, a kid who dated my friend in high school, the supervisor who used to play roller hockey with me, and the occasional formerclassmatecustomer that doesn't recognize me. I was invited to a party next weekend, which I'm assuming means I've infiltrated the social structure of store 342. Christ. I'm fucking weird. lol

I may not be on the verge of freaking out, but there is one thing I would like to have happen. I would like for the heavy feeling in my chest to go away. I've noticed that it's been a constant in my life for years. It's always there. Maybe there are those brief moments when it goes away, but I live in a constant state of anxiety. I never thought anything of that until I learned that most other people don't have that issue, at least not to this degree.

Jon called me out of the blue a few nights ago. At 1230 in the morning. I haven't had that happen--where someone just wanted to talk and didn't want something from me--since we broke up a few months ago. And before that, he was probably the only person that did. I'm not sure who came before that, but I suppose that's irrelevant. Whatever. It was NICE. It was nice to be the person someone could call just to bullshit. It was nice feeling like someone not only needed me but wanted me. Trusted me. Something so simple and so small made me feel important. I need to stop being scared of telephone conversations because if I feel this way about it, maybe some of my friends would appreciate a call from me just as much. A no-strings-attached call. If only I still had all of those numbers.

I am getting so excited for Boston. I haven't had a friend adventure in ages. Hell, I'll probably cry then too, but I've been crying at weird shit lately. Roller coasters, random pictures, etc. I tear up now more than I ever have. Maybe I'm just okay with that now.

I like not having to be anything in particular. But I don't like not knowing what I want to be.

I'm still working on that playlist. I need to make it just as long as the drive to DC will be, which shouldn't be hard since there are some very specific songs attached to my overall memory of Pittsburgh. Is this necessary? For me, yes.

Now, since I'm not able to sleep, I'll listen to more music. I might even get some performance ideas out of this that don't involve publicly humiliating someone else.

Night.

Being Out

It is because of senators that are allowed to remain in office when they so clearly believe that death should come to transpeople who defy the arbitrary laws of gender expression constructed by our society that I will never be able to live as stealth. It is because of those who fear and hate a seven-year-old transgender girl scout that I cannot remain silent about the issues that are important to me--the issues that affect the lives of millions of people both like and unlike me. Silence is just not an option.

Home Improvement

I'm prepared for this to be excruciating. My heart is heavy. My brain and body are equally troubled, tortured, and are becoming useless. No one ever wants this, of course, but I still feel the need to say that this is the last place I ever wanted to be, though I may have suspected it at various times in my life. Still, it's one of those things you never actually think will happen to you, like a heart attack or cancer.

I will interject with this random thought before continuing: I will never be normal. I just want to be capable. Regardless of success or failure, the latter is necessary for me to be (happy).

I don't know where to start, or how. I don't know why I am hurting so badly or why it happened at this particular time in my life. I am tortured by the fact that I need to know everything, all the time. That fact alone is not something a lot of people can quite comprehend. It's hard to understand pain you've never felt before. I suppose it's even harder to understand pain you've never let yourself feel before, for whatever reason. Maybe it was intentional or maybe it was self defense. I've been thinking a lot about last summer and how I could not see what was happening, and I have no idea how I am supposed to feel yet. There's a letter I never answered, and I am not sure I ever will, but the fact that I went back to refresh my memory should tell you something about the way your words have affected me and probably always will, whether I like it or not. Don't take that for any more than what it is.

For the record, "I told you so" is not an appropriate response.

I've slipped into something I haven't been able to control. I deleted the word "can't" from that sentence, so maybe even this is a start.

Transition does not automatically solve all of your problems, for those of you that seem to think unwavering happiness is the natural end to the course of events in the physical process. What I have come to find is that I am just now beginning to deal with problems I could not confront before. Your body tries to respond to the most pressing threat, and so does your mind. Transition was something that needed to happen in order to move forward with my life, and that means enjoying life as well as dealing with its unpleasantness.

It's become clear that I don't know how to do the latter very well. I ended up where I did because every coping skill that I have ever learned has recently failed me. Because I believed (and am still fighting against the belief) that my life--my job, my ability to deal with stress, my ability to be happy, my financial situation, etc--will never any better and that I will be stuck in this place of depression, anxiety, and limited capacity to function...forever.

I struggled to get myself out of bed every morning for weeks upon weeks, maybe even months. And that was until I just couldn't do it anymore. So I didn't. And I quit my job. But I had already checked out of doing things that make me happy because everything I love has now become everything I fear. I am stressed by everything, saddened all the time. Sometimes there is no reason, and this is something that I can't stand.

I spent three full days in the crisis center because I really didn't know if I could trust myself to be alone with me, and I really couldn't take another day of being home. I didn't move from my bed for almost two days, and I barely ate anything at all while I was there. I kept turning over the thought that this is how my brother might feel every day of his life, surrounded by people he cannot connect with and unable to do anything on his own. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and it's only going to get harder. But it might get better. I'm hanging everything on that one little word, and everything in the logical part of my brain is telling me that it's a really stupid way to go about living. But clearly that part of my head has been sucking lately. Or maybe logic just doesn't have anything to do with it.

It's obvious that I can't hold a job right now, no matter how much I want to and no matter how much I need to have money. Sometimes I still don't really believe that this is who I am and that this is what is happening to me. The fact that I can't have a job right now is just one more thing that makes me terrified that I will never get out.

But when you are isolated for three full days, you start thinking even more. And that really sucks if you already think in overdrive all the time. But it's not something I was able to avoid. So I barely slept and I didn't sleep at all during the night. But I thought, and something in my realized that I needed to stop waiting for the people there to make me better. I needed to make the first move or I wasn't going to get anything out of being there. And I wasn't going to get out of there period. I could barely speak when people tried to talk to me, and I couldn't breathe or look at them, but I did what I had to do during those last 36 hours or so. I did it all because I just wanted to go home. And maybe that sounds stupid because you would think that I would want to get better. But going home was part of that. The fact that I WANTED something...That meant everything. That I was doing something in order to achieve something I wanted, and that must have meant that I thought enough of myself. That I thought I was worth the effort. And no matter how miserable or useless I feel, I need to keep thinking about that. There's a part of me that does want to be here, and it's the same part of me that wanted to get out of that place so badly. It's that part of me that wants to want to do things that used to make me happy. It wants things. I want things. I don't always know what they are, but that's everybody, I suppose.

I am terrified about the decision I might be making. It's something I had in the back of my mind, and when someone else made the suggestion when I hadn't even mentioned it at all, I knew I had to think about it again. PA school. And I'm still thinking. But another thing that's really tough for me, which I learned or rather re-learned over this past week, is believing and trusting that I don't need to know everything or do everything or have everything today or even soon.

I am allowed to be unsure. I am allowed to be unfinished.

I am 23 years old, with two college degrees, a beautiful transgendered body, a boyfriend who loves me for who and what I am, a clean and well-organized bedroom (thanks to the boyfriend who loves me), who is going to nationals for drag in a few months, who is going to go back to school, who is going to make big things happen in this city I've learned to call home, who is not going to let depression, anxiety, fear, pain, or a different way of thinking stand in his way anymore.

Now all I have to do is believe this. I will make this real.
I am allowed to be unsure. I am allowed to be terrified. But I will not allow myself to lose this fight. If I can bring myself to think that my body deserves to live, then my soul should have that same chance. Obviously, it's going to be hard. Here it comes again, and I think it's fucking ridiculous how it appears again and again throughout my life. It's like it should be a tattoo or something.

Nothing worth having is ever easy.

Good

One phone call made all the difference today. I heard my parents' voices for the first time in over two months, and I nearly cried. Talking to them seemed to relieve me of all of the stress I've been accumulating over the last several weeks. And a short time ago, talking to my family was the most stress-inducing aspect of my life. I'll never be able to be one of those people who goes months without talking to his family. I can't be that disconnected. I'd been lonely for months, even around other people who love and care for me, and I was starting to get worried that I might be depressed again. But those feelings vanished. When I hung up, I was smiling and happy. And I felt like things were finally going right for me. I felt like I was headed in the right direction. Maybe it was good to hear all of those things from them too. My family is crazy. But I love them. And I'll never be able to stop, and I'll never be ungrateful for what they have been able to give me, even if there were some things I wish could have been different along the way.
I tried to be the kind of person who turned his back on his family when they did not show immediate acceptance, but I'm not capable of that. It tears me apart. On some level, I think this is true for me no matter what type of personal relationship I have with someone. I suppose I will always have some level of love and concern for those who are no longer in my life. At the very least, I'm not one to hold on to bitter feelings. I don't believe that this makes me a pushover, though it did before I learned more effective and more appropriate ways to manage my affairs. There is a part of me that believes that some doors never really close, but the rest of me seems to want to fight that. Two parts of my nature are in conflict with one another, and I figure that it's better to let the fight play out than to interfere by trying to rationalize my emotional behavior. Everything is going to be okay.

Reflections on Coming Out

I vividly remember being angry this time last year because so many people, both gay and straight, had failed to understand the importance of coming out. Indifference is one thing. Outright condemnation is another, and trying to convince someone that "acting like everyone else" is the only way that queer folk can attain equality is equivalent to saying this: "We can't accept you for who you are, and we aren't comfortable giving equal treatment to people like you, so you should be like us. Then you'll deserve it. Problem solved." And if we don't feel comfortable pretending to be like everyone else, then we deserve to be treated as inferior. You can't ensure equality by attempting to eliminate difference. Do this, and you perpetuate the inequality. And it makes it that much harder for the next kid to come out and face a world of people telling him that the only way he can have the same rights as straight people is to act just like them, whatever that means anyway.
I could go on and on about this type of backwards thinking in the world of straight white males, but the truth is that my own community still has a long way to go in terms of treating its own members as equal. Think about how LOGO portrays the LGBTQ community. I don't see much of anything but cisgendered gay men. Let's make it a little more personal, though.
Coming out as trans opened me up to a whole new world of prejudices, and they came at me from both sides of this mythical line. Suddenly everyone thinks that I have to be straight. Suddenly I am called out for not acting enough like a man. Suddenly, I am treated differently in conversations with strangers and friends alike. I can understand people with no exposure to the queer community making such assumptions, but the difference between one's gender and one's sexuality is still perceived through a heteronormative lens, regardless of the onlooker. Are we still telling gay men that they should become women? No. Why shouldn't it work that way for me? I have so much more to say, but I feel very uncomfortable because I am not alone right now and feel like the only reason this other person is awkwardly sitting here is because I am here. And I don't know how to say what I need to say to make him understand that I need to be as far away from other people as possible right now. I can't write when there are other people around. I can't tune out the discomfort enough in order to do it well, so I'm feeling like things are very disconnected right now because I am constantly worrying about this situation. And now I don't even know what I was saying anymore.
Coming out keeps getting easier for me. Liking myself for my queerness keeps getting easier too. I am not shy about this part of myself. I am quite proud of it, and maybe that's because I'm making up for all the time I spent being ashamed of who I was for over twenty years. Maybe ashamed isn't the right word. I was...disconnected. And I guess I really didn't care. I could be proud of my accomplishments or skills that I had mastered, but never of myself. I was never proud to just BE, and I guess I felt like I needed all of those things to fill that space. Coming out as trans felt like coming into the world and being allowed to be a part of it. Even before I started hormones, I began to feel more real because I was the person who chose that. I allowed myself to participate. I allowed myself to experience the world. I became exposed. And things began to change.
There are other kinds of coming out that aren't as easy. It's still not easy for me to accept that my brain works differently. It's not easy to accept that this comes with limitations. And it's not easy to accept that there is a good chance that this is as good as it gets in terms of how I react to things.
How many other kinds of coming out do people face every day? Everyone does it, and I think we'd all be a lot better off if we had an entire community behind us.
Feeling disconnected again. But I need to get it all out. Coming out is important, you young gay people. Staying in the closet is staying invisible, and that's exactly what a lot of anti-gay individuals want. It's a way to keep us divided and to fool the masses into thinking that we are a freakish minority. On a more personal level, coming out is important because you can finally stop being afraid. You don't have to worry about being discovered. And people won't be able to hurt you with your own identity if you truly love and accept yourself. But that's not easy. I know.
I want to connect this with an experience I had earlier today at work. A rather rude customer said something to the effect that I have no business working in a GNC because of how small I am. I was just stunned because he also wouldn't drop the subject. Before I continue, I'd like to point out that I've never had any of the really big dudes talk to me like that. It's only people who are smaller--often smaller than I am--who feel the need to prove something. But even knowing this, I had a hard time. I started to feel like shit about myself. I started to wonder if that's what other people see when they look at me. I started to feel like everything I am doing is a waste of time. And that's when it hit me that I've begun to experience a whole new kind of inadequacy based upon physical appearance. Standards for men really are just as unrealistic as those for women, but it definitely depends on the environment. I feel like I could explain that better at another time.
I felt inadequate for a little bit. But that went away. I love my body. I love that I am in control of it. I needed to remember something that I tell people all the time when it comes to working out. Well, a few things. (1) Know your own body type, and use that knowledge to make it the best it can be instead of trying to be something you are not. (2) Never compare yourself to anyone else. It doesn't matter how much the girl over there can lift or how far this guy over there can run. Concentrate on what you are doing and making yourself better. If you let what someone else can do discourage you or make you feel inadequate, you have already lost. You have defeated yourself, and you'll end up denying yourself what you are depressed about not having been able to do in the first place.
The same philosophy can be applied to anything at all, not just working out. And that's what is extremely difficult for most people to understand. You need to concentrate on making yourself better instead of trying to make yourself as good as someone else. Being proud of your own identity is far more effective than comparing who you are to someone else. Don't try to be that other person. These points do connect rather nicely, don't they? lol

CouchCouchCouch

For a few weeks, I thought that working at GNC had taught me that I would never be able to stand working in such a heteronormative environment for an extended period of time. But I started to think about how people within my own community respond to the idea of being transgendered, and I'm not actually sure which group I've found to be more accepting. Maybe the people I work with don't have a clue what really goes on with being trans, but they're always respectful when they want to know something, and sometimes you can tell that they really think about how their questions will affect you. I see genuine curiosity in these people and in a lot of the straight people that have interviewed me for whatever reason. Most of the bullshit that I've had to deal with has come from within the gay community. I feel that young gay men in particular are the most problematic. The way the questions are phrased, the way I am seen as an object, etc. I know that this is not a complete picture, and there have been other times in my life where the majority of my frustration came from having to deal with ignorant straight people, but I think the present situation is very interesting.

Topic shift. I'm working on my outfits for Mr. Cattivo. I'm getting excited about it. I feel pretty proud of the one that's almost done, and I've been really excited to do this number for a while now. I can say that I don't care if I win and that I just want to do the number, but I would definitely be lying. I always want to win. I don't know who doesn't. And I have to go through all of the motions with the idea in my head that I am doing this to win. Is that complicated since I am good friends with and live with someone against whom I am competing? Eh, not really. I'm mature about it. I'm competitive, yes. But I'm not an asshole. I'm down to the wire here, and I know it, but I've got a handle on it this time around. I'm in such a different place than I was a year ago (in some ways). And in some ways, that's entirely a lie.

The TV is making it hard for me to write. I have a lot of distractions coming up. That'll be good for me. They make me less likely to worry about making meaning out of my life.

I need to work on music and costumes and my bio tonight. I need to get those things for the bags for Friday. And it's almost 7:30. This isn't looking good right now. I also have to work until 6:30 tomorrow. Ugh. I need to tell people something tomorrow, and I don't know if they are going to like it. But this is something that I have to say because I don't want to explode.

Time Out.

Sunset in July

I just opened my old journal, which I had found while visiting my parents but haven't had a chance to sit down with until now. It was from when I was twelve years old, and I am pretty amazed at how far I have come in the last ten years. I guess it's that whole growing up thing. My obsessions were pretty apparent, as I referenced them in almost every single entry. My handwriting was even more atrocious than it is now, and I really didn't seem to talk about anything other than facts and very basic statements of the emotions I was feeling. Learning how to turn even those basic feelings into words took me until high school, it seems.

I haven't taken my shot yet, and I was supposed to do that last night. I just completely forgot about it with starting my new job and being mentally prepared to convince people to buy shit, which means being mentally prepared to have conversations for eight hours a day. That's the part that makes me nervous. The other stuff is easy. I actually reorganized the entire stock room today, and my co-worker for the day is pretty sure that our manager is going to piss himself when he sees it. I think they were expecting me to just leave the place a mountain of cardboard boxes and crap thrown wherever it would fit while placing even more items in what little space was available. It was actually easier for me to just overhaul the entire room. Then I could know exactly where everything needed to go.

There are quite a few things building up inside of me right now. I'm at a very strange point of being in between caring and not caring about feeling attacked. I'm naturally pretty combative. When I feel that I am being attacked or that my friends are being attacked, I get intensely protective of them, meaning I will do and say things that exist ordinarily as passing thoughts. I also need to be sure that I'm not feeling attacked because of a combination of small things that have happened over the years. I want to try to separate those instances from the current situation. As I do this, I'm seeing that this in itself really isn't something I should worry about either. People are going to say what they have to say. They're going to say what they need to say in order to find happiness. The human brain is partly so fascinating because of its ability to rationalize irrational thoughts and behaviors so that it can continue functioning properly. It prevents errors from occurring by fudging the numbers. Your brain is 1984, basically. You don't even know what's real anymore, do you? And you might even be clever enough to come up with an argument about what constitutes reality in order to distract yourself from the terrifying possibility that your consciousness is built upon a rather shaky foundation of falsities.

I am angry. I am hurt. I feel a sense of betrayal unlike anything I have known previously...And I've been betrayed more times than I would like to admit. But temperance is the virtue around which I aim to center myself. I will let my anger dissipate. I will express what I need to express. Only then will I be able to forgive. But I honestly may fail this time. And I don't think that's ever happened before. I do not like what you have tried to turn me into. I will not be bitter. I will be free from this sinkhole and all its negativity. There is no blood on my hands. This is my return to purity. I will not run.

Envision my eyes, harboring depths so great that they seem almost black. But they are not cold, even to you. I am fire, while you are ice. I may melt you down, layer by microscopic layer, warming all those around with my presence. But this is always at a cost to myself. I will burn out. And you will be a puddle on the floor. We are elements that have been thrown out of balance, not meant to exist in the same circle in this age.

My sadness for what has been lost is slowly dissipating as well. The happiness of the memories that remain has begun to fill me up again. My brain will remember things as it needs to in order to progress along this journey, as will yours. But I still acknowledge the point at which happiness left this relationship, leaving behind a much more sinister core. And the fight against reality was causing the pain. I'm allowing myself the chance to be real now, and this upsets you. Your words will never bounce off of me but always flow through me, penetrate me. It is a connection I cannot sever, no matter how hard I may try. Even now, I spare your feelings by saying these things alone. You must realize--see it in my deep brown eyes--that I know exactly how to make you hurt from within. This is my last act of unselfishness--that bit of holding back. That not giving in to the anger and pain you have made me (and others) feel.

I am not immature. I am not inadequate. I define my own manhood, as always. I will not be brought down into that again. And I am guilt-free in saying what I must, as are you, obviously. There is no reason to hide these feelings now, and I'm not sure there ever was. My brain and heart have found a way to protect themselves: You're already gone to me. You've been gone. And shortly after I allowed myself to discover that, my life improved. And I began to feel happiness again. Real happiness.

I am real. I am not the source of your ultimate frustration. I am only a target, and I can only hope that that hasn't always been the case. You will need to find a new soul towards which you can project this negativity, if you cannot allow it to simply yet painfully pass through you. Choose wisely.

I don't expect I'll hear from you or see you again, and I'm working on how that makes me feel. I don't think I'm feeling anything either way right now. And I think I'm happy about that. That doesn't make me a terrible person. It just means that all of my feelings, positive and negative, about this entire situation have been exhausted. Now the healing can begin, and the truth will flow freely and unfiltered by such intense emotions.

I can only be a little sad that there are still some truths you (and all of us) are not ready to hear. Give it time.

Goodbye

It's not that I'm fighting to stay awake; I'm fighting to stay upright. I will probably lose consciousness if I put my head back down again. I feel uncoordinated and limp. Lethargic is the proper term here, but as always, I'm looking for the reasons behind it. I woke up around two in the afternoon, wandered in the direction of her house to recover my wallet only to find that--because of my inability to rise before most people's workdays were coming to a close--it was already too late to get it that day. I felt a little off at that point, but I decided to try the GLCC after getting a phone call from Lyndsey and taking a few minutes to clear my mind. I suppose I just didn't feel right because I only stayed for about ten minutes. I was lucky to have gotten that transfer from the trolley driver. Otherwise, I would never have been able to get back to Beechview. I turned on the TV and lay down on the couch. No one else was home, and it was really nice to just be there curled up by myself with a cool breeze coming from the other room, even if it was artificial. Something about it seemed nostalgic. It reminded me of a time when I felt like I was in control of many more aspects of my life. Maybe it was peaceful enough to put me back to sleep, and maybe my desire to capture the energy of that moment was enough to make me want to stay asleep. When Lyndsey came home, I literally had to force myself to sit up. My body was trying its best to disobey me. And my whole day has been wasted because of it.
No matter what the reason, my mind always goes back to the same thought: There's something wrong with me. Some people will say that there is, and some will say that there really isn't. I'm not so sure what the right answer is these days. There is merit in believing in both. But I can't live by either one of them alone, which is what I have tried to do for my entire life. I've lived according to the idea that I'm no different than anyone else--that I can do anything and everything and nothing can affect me so much as to prevent me from being a completely functioning and capable human being. And I've lived believing that I'm broken and incompetent and that no amount of help can fix me and that I'll be this way for the rest of my life. And there have been a lot of people who really want me to live in accordance with the latter belief, though they may say the exact opposite. I think that I am learning that there is something wrong with me, and I need to accept this, but I'm also learning that it doesn't matter. The people who really care about me will understand my limits, and they've often been the ones to recognize them before I have. Everyone has limits, and everyone reacts differently when pushed to those limits. I react in a way that is different from most, and it's not normal. And maybe that's what I mean when I say that there is something wrong with me. It's the definition of the external world that gets applied here, and fuck, maybe that's the problem. I've never used the world's words to describe who I am in any other respect, so why should I apply them to this part of myself? Part of myself? I act as if I can separate this little piece from the rest of my soul. I remember doing the same thing before I came out as trans. I believed I could live my life as genderqueer, going back and forth between man and woman, and while this works for some, I couldn't live two separate lives. I couldn't box up the pieces of my identity and put labels on them because I would always end up with some items that didn't belong in either box. And now here I am trying to decide what pieces of me are normal and what pieces are not. Normal for whom? This is the only me that I have ever known. And when I became aware that other people didn't think and act this way or didn't see things this way, it was a pretty overhwelming epiphany of sorts. I'll never know how it feels to not be this way. I think I did once, but I was on some serious drugs. As fucked up as I was, there were moments of clarity when I almost cried because I kept thinking: This is what normal feels like.

This is what normal feels like.

I remember having that same feeling another time, actually. It was very shortly after I started T. I started to feel balanced in a physical sense. But it's not the same. And maybe the drug-induced realization wasn't real. I don't know. I'd like to think what I have is real. Wouldn't we all?

Maybe this is what normal feels like.

I feel like I'm in the eye of the hurricane when it comes to deciding the who and what of my life, and maybe I've been so paralyzed because I recognize the importance of this point in my journey.

Some things are meant to stay in the past. Some people are meant to stay in the past. I do realize my own limits these days, and maybe I overestimate them at times, but I think I have this one right. I am no longer willing to expend unnecessary energy on certain people. My life has no room for this negativity, and I will not engage in this behavior or these conversations any longer. And that should be enough. I will no longer play a part in the destruction of my own self, and I cannot allow anyone else to do the same. End scene.

Yet More Gender Shit

I'm a transman with a very low tolerance for people within the community who feel that, in order to affirm their trans identity and represent it to the rest of the community, they must rely on binary stereotypes. I do enjoy a great many stereotypically masculine things, but I also do some very stereotypically feminine things, and those things are just as much a part of me as the others, and I am not ashamed of them. I'm trying the best I can to prove to those around me that these things we call masculine or feminine are just attributes that cannot be partitioned objectively. My "feminine" attributes are included in my own personal definition of masculinity. From a lifetime of experience, I feel that my essence is masculine, and anything that comes from it, regardless of how society may label it, is rooted in my internal sense of masculinity. I do not need to reaffirm my masculinity by using external definitions to shape my behavior, and I do not need to represent it to the rest of the world in stereotypical ways.

Another person may describe hir internal essence as feminine, a mixture of the two, neither of the two, etc. To me, it's the same sort of issue I have with arguing that they are still men's clothes when a woman is wearing them.

My head seems to be all over the place tonight, but I have to say this as well: I know what it is like to not feel masculine. There are times when situations arise to disconnect me from my internal masculinity, and this masculinity is NOT replaced by femininity. It is an emptiness. A feeling of nothingness. Femininity is not the absence of masculinity, and again, this is known from the inside, not the outside.

I've been ranting about gender a lot lately, and I'm glad. I was having a lot of doubts about feeling disconnected from some of my friends because of the way I view my own gender, but when I opened up, I found that there are many more friends of mine who actually share similar ideas about what role labels play in how a person is represented in the community.

Shifting gears just a tad...

I don't think that I believe that I should have been born male. (I'm still working on this one.) I don't generally believe in the phrase because things either happen or they don't. Oddly enough, that's one situation where the binary thing kind of works. Perhaps the only things that "should have" happened are the things that DO end up happening.
I was born in a female body. And perhaps there were things already in me at the time of my birth that would lead me to discover this trans identity of mine. I think this is the body that I was meant to have, and I think I was meant to make this decision to change it. If I want to use the same old terms, my body and mind didn't line up, but I see nothing wrong with that, just as I see nothing wrong with making the decision to align them. Believing that there is something inherently wrong with being a man born in a female body seems insulting to those who do not choose physical transition. For me, I knew it was wrong to stay. For me.

I'm going to have to develop this further. I have so much to say about this because of a few recent conversations that have really helped me get closer to a person who is remarkably like me, as I've been privileged enough to discover over the last several months.

I don't know if I need to say something else tonight. Today. I mean, it is almost six in the morning. If I do, maybe it should go in another post.

Body Developments

I caught myself looking at my hands earlier today. I saw the veins that weren't visible just over a year ago, unless I had just finished working out. Now, they're always there, and I feel like new little branches find a way to surface every now and then. I remember literally feeling the expansion of my vascular system during the first few months. It feels like a tiny pop in your arm, with a little bit of a slap in there. You feel like you just missed rupturing something. I keep wondering if anyone else knows what I mean.

I've said it before, but it's extremely difficult to remember what it was like to have a different body. I can see pictures of what I used to look like, but I can't FEEL it anymore. And that is very strange to me because I am very, very good at feeling things when given any sort of stimulus. When I sit here and look at my arm, I can't replace what I see with what used to be there. It just feels like it's always been that way. I see pictures and wonder how I could have ever been that small or how my hips and ass could have been so big. I never felt small. And, for a female, I definitely wasn't. I mean, I was small in certain ways, but I think you all know what I mean. I can only attribute this to the fact that I tried to ignore my body for so long. I avoided being alone with it and wanted to separate myself from it any way that I could. I would cover up the parts that bothered me the most.

Just now, for the first time in over a year, I caught a memory of what it felt like for about 0.5 seconds. And then it was gone. I was standing in my underwear, looking at myself in the mirror. I turned around. I wanted to cry. I was disgusted by the lower half of my body. Nothing I could do was going to change what was there or make my clothes fit better or make me feel happy. The only thing that made it better was to cover those parts and forget about them. To have the lights off during sex so I didn't have to think about what the other person was seeing--didn't have to think about what I was seeing. I would try on clothes in dressing rooms, thinking they'd be awesome, but I'd leave with nothing except the urge to cry again because I was there with nothing but those bright lights and a mirror to show me nothing but the truth.

The most ridiculous part of this to me is that I know that people found me to be an attractive woman. And I can understand why looking back at these photographs. But at the time, I just couldn't get it, being immersed in a body that I really wasn't that happy with. There were things about it that made me happy, and those were the things that I had managed to change or was fortunate enough to have been born with. I have very broad shoulders and a great back. I've always had these attributes, and it made it almost okay for me to look at the upper half of my body. My chest has been hidden behind this little bit of breast tissue for a while now. I wish I could know what it will look like. I still look in the mirror sometimes and feel terrible about it. I'm getting more comfortable, though. I can walk around the house without a shirt on sometimes, but that is still a little tough. I think people might find that surprising considering how naked I get during some of my performances. Yes, I am more comfortable with my body than I have ever been, but I have a long way to go. It's not a bad thing. It's just where I am at, and I know that I will get there. I was terrified about the gold booty shorts. I would NEVER have worn something like that as a woman. I would have tried to cover as much of my lower body as possible. I would have felt fat and disgusting. And I hadn't tried anything like that at all in several years, and I was worried that wearing them would make me feel all of those terrible things again. But it didn't. And looking at the pictures, I know that they looked great. I'm proud of myself for being able to do that.

It's now light outside. But my mind wants to keep going. I think I'm starting to get better because I'm really starting to think again. I just need to be careful not to push things too soon.