Decrying Gravity

[Another fairly explicit post, particularly towards the latter half, though not as bad as two weeks ago.  Rape and explicit sexual writing are both quite present.]

I've always felt that lesbian relationships were "pure" in a way sexuality is normally not.  It's not a reasoned or rational opinion; it's quite literally how they feel to me.  This is, at once, illuminating and problematic.

I've mentioned before that one of the forces that truly pushed me to finally commit to transitioning was seeing Naomi Watts character in Mulholland Drive.  The film starts with some light-ish romance that eventually goes awry, leaving Watts's character to masturbate in a gutwrenching and desperate scene as she tries to recall whatever it was she might have had.  And it haunted me.  It was almost impossible to tell whether I wanted to be her or fuck her more.  She felt so real.  So... resonant with how I truly felt.  I identified with her and wanted her so very badly.  And she simply wouldn't fade away.  The desire was too strong.  The longing was too entrenched.

Although I wish it was otherwise, this... holy affinity I feel for lesbian relationships extends primarily to "straight-looking" women; "femmes," I suppose you'd call them.  I certainly don't have anything against butch women, but, all told, I have a hard time understanding on a visceral level why a woman would want to mask her femininity (as defined by traditional norms).  I like movie/TV lesbians.  The (usually) fake ones that are meant to be titillating for straight men moreso than representative of lesbian identity.

That's not to say that there aren't femme/femme lesbian relationships (and, certainly, even such distinctions are problematic and ultimately trivial).  But I'm acutely aware that the women I'm attracted to and the relationship models I feel affinity for tend to mirror "straight-male fantasies."

What's perhaps odd, then, is that their allure only works in television or cinema.  Lesbian pornography does little for me.  I'm still primarily turned on by humiliation, terror, self-hatred, and those are usually (but not exclusively) caused by men in pornography.

By contrast, I find men, usually, tainted.  As if the very idea of a blowjob requires some element of degradation and compromise (whereas cunnilingus is practically a sacrament).  And again, this is felt not thought.  I smile at cute gay couples.  In certain pictures, where the male/male partnership, butch/butch, butch/femme, or the female/male partnerships seem to make both parties feel "loving" and happy, I "enjoy" their joy but I'm usually not aroused by it.

No, it's really only in TV/film where I have emotional investments in the characters that their relationships become poignantly felt.  For instance, in the series I'm watching tonight.  It's revealed that a character you thought was having an affair with the photographer is actually sleeping with his wife.  And I instantly fell for both of them.  They're not... artificially feminine, but they trended towards straight norms of beauty.  And it felt so pure!  It felt divine.  I envied them, so much, but even moreso I just felt... peaceful.  Like that was the ideal.  Two beautiful women gently kissing each other, playfully teasing, simmering with lust and love.  I want it so badly that I almost can't acknowledge it for fear that it will never manifest.  It seems right in a way that nothing else does.

And I don't understand it.  I don't like attaching such arbitrary corruption to "the male."  I fantasize about being fucked by a man and, honestly, I really do want to perform oral sex on one/some, but I can't help but feel a significant part of both would just be to reaffirm my femininity.  Imagining myself fucking/being fucked by a woman is about me, her, and love.  With a man, it's... sex.  It's carnal, it's me, small and girlish, him larger and with the capacity to hurt me he has so much strength.  He doesn't, and although I have rape fantasies, none of them are of *real* rape.  It's kind of sweet, in a way.  He says I'm beautiful.  Thinks I'm pretty.  I sit on his lap, I put my head on his chest as we lie in bed, he fondles my breasts because they're so goddamn wonderful and "other."

It's fun.  Cute.  Binary traditional.  Only after sexual reassignment surgery.  But it never seems realistic when I try to love him.  I want him to throw me on a bed, wrench my legs apart, and fuck me til I howl and he bursts inside me, withdrawing as his semen leaks from me.  I want him to stick his cock down my throat and use my head as a proxy, fucking me until I taste him, savor, and swallow.  But beyond fucking?  I'm sure he's nice and all, but he's not who I want to fall asleep beside every night.

 And maybe that'll change.  Maybe I'll find the right guy, as I've found a very small handful of young women, and I'd love him.  But I worry I'd just be loving my femininity, using him as a foil instead of loving him as a person.

Again, I don't like it!  I don't know how much is me, how much relies upon my visceral notions of what gender is, how much is a reaction to my hatred of myself and my body, whether that is merely a backlash against authority structures coded as male and summarily rejected.  I don't know.  I don't know that it matters.

I want to be a thin, pretty (by straight norms) lesbian.  Not just a woman.  A lesbian.  I suppose there are worse things to want to be when you grow up, no?

To say I'm "depressed" seems egregious.  In terms of feeling "bad," in the way I used to feel "bad," I really feel alright by comparison.  There is limited angst, there is limited explicit self-hatred, there is little that makes this moment "miserable."  I am not miserable.  I'm not happy, but I feel .... ok.

And yet.  I can't get out of bed.  I can't.  I lie there for hours, just... staring, sometimes falling back to sleep, sometimes thinking "I should get up, getting up really isn't that bad, come on just do it!" and I don't move.  I've always been pretty late to things, but now it's breaching hours late if I even go at all (as long as I'm not "responsible" for the "things" happening, of course).  And all I do, instead, is lie in bed.

I get up, eventually.  Usually after two hours or so of being awake but still in bed, I get out.  And, as predicted, it's really not that bad.  I don't feel bad, it's not too uncomfortable.  And it used to be alright, as I'd have things to do.  I'd go to class or work or whatever.  After all that stopped being an option, I started exercising and then waiting til S got home.  And I'd play some video games.  And I'd do whatever it was that I did to procrastinate on grad applications.  And then I went to Boston.  And then I stopped exercising and focused, almost exclusively, on doing and procrastinating on graduate school applications.  And then I did them.  And then I started playing World of Warcraft again.  And I started sleeping late, and S was out of commission save for very rare communication, and I just played WoW and used it to distract me from her absence and hoping for her.

And then WoW lost its appeal, at the one month mark (unsurprisingly).  And I bought a new game for $7 and it was fun for a day or two, but now it's fun for 30 minutes at a time before I'm done with it again.  And I think of S, and I wait for the maybe 15 minutes I'll get to talk to her, and the rest is spent thinking about her and transitioning and graduate school and my mind turns over and over and over again and there's nothing until I find something to read to distract me, and sometimes it really compels me and I think I want to read more, listen to more, learn more, and sometimes I do, but then I don't.  And eventually it inches towards 7a, and I know, like a vampire, I need to be in bed before sunup.  So I go there.  And it takes me ~thirty minutes to fall asleep.  And then I wake up.  And then I go back to sleep.  And then I wake up and lie there.  And then I go back to sleep.  And then and thenandthenandeaneteantheanthetean

Thinking on it today, I wondered if I liked staying in bed because it's the only place/way (other than "smoking") that you can just "be" and not be expected to "do" anything.  I can think and be and the hours pass faster for having been half-slept and eventually I wake up entirely and stare and eventually something inside me just jettisons me into the "day" (which is really night) and I fumble around, hoping S will call, but as the night goes on (especially if I've already gotten a small phonecall or a text) it's clear she won't and I just feel rejected and alone and try to distract myself.

Except the distractions aren't working.  Except now, none of my games compel me like they used to.  Now, I want to *do* and *be* something and nothing simultaneously.  I am purposeless, aimless, *waiting* and although I can come up with a long and vivid list of things I couldshouldwould do, she's at the top of it and the rest just feels like delusion and tedium.

I thought I'd learned, from Laura, that I needed to be ok with myself before I could be ok in a relationship.  And I made some progress.  I was fragile, I was needy, I hurt, but it was all shielded and protected in a veneer of self-hate, apathy, and the "resilience" so many of us foster to overcome the core to do what needs done.  But now, I'm shedding the veneer.  And I've nothing that "needs done."  And she cracked it.  She laid it wide open, for me to need again, that needing was ok again, that desperation was ok again, that I could be damaged and that was ok because someone understood and loved me, not just cared and wished me well, but *understood* and then *loved me* withfordespite it.  And she's the only real thing in my life anymore.  And she's running away from me, running away from all of it, like I'm running from it, like I'm over it, like I just want to be done with it, except that she doesn't want to or doesn't think she can take me with her.

At the root of my conundrum seems to be the omnipresent but latent dilemma of "purpose" in a well-established existential ontology that has asserted "purpose" cannot exist outside of what one, individually, determines and ascertains.  As such, I have seen fit to live vicariously through the feelings of others (particularly in terms of regarding myself) for I've little interest in constructing meaning for myself, in and of myself, if it's always going to be delusional.  This is at once selfish and unsustainable, for I become little more than a parasite, latching onto the meaning of others, and once I am rejected, found wanting, or otherwise deemed disposable, I rapidly lose all of the pseudo-meaning I've gathered.  But to reconcile my self with what I perceive as an almost irrepressible lack of objective purpose, as I think I charged myself with, now seems impossible.  Sisyphus is not smiling, and to imagine him doing so we are still engaging in delusion as much as any other meaning creation is.

I think of how I felt about WoW.  It was fun, for awhile, and it had a lot of potential that it rarely lives up to.  Ultimately, though, the waiting and the work didn't seem worth the occasional moments of transcendence.  Why should life be different?

I have no doubt that better times could come, that things can improve, that things, indeed, have gotten better after previous periods of worse.  In fact, I would hazard a guess that there is a positive correlation between time and my happiness, all told.  Perhaps I will weather this, as I've weathered all else, and emerge better, anew, continuing this cycle of stripping myself down and rising back up.  But so too, I note with no small aggravation, that buying a gun in East Tennessee is a whole lot more complicated for me now than before.  It's the little things you don't expect that really make some things hard, ya know?  I didn't know how good I had it.

I went to bed at 7:30a.  I got out of it at 6:15p.

I was at 116lbs; the lowest I've been in quite awhile.  It's a side-effect of only eating one meal a day; it seems odd to eat "lunch" at 11p and "dinner" at 5a, so I settle for one meal mostly.  Playing video games is escapist enough to make hunger abstract.

In fact, everything is dulled.  My life is not bad.  But it is purposeless.  The pain.  The joy.  Everything is gray.  I live in twilight, sleeping inane hours, waking to immerse myself in escapist folly only to return back to sleep hours later.  The days pass seemlessly, fading into each other.

I found out today that Indiana's at least going to interview me.  That's something.  Indiana, unlike UTK and BC, would be completely new.  I would know no one, be involved in nothing, have only my commitments to my program and (hopefully) my love.  A hermit cave by any other name.  And part of that really appeals to me.  I don't want to become attached to it or really consider it further unless it's truly a choice to make.  But it sounds... nice.

Life is ethereal.  I have goals, purpose, drive.  But, at least at the moment, it all seems so abstract.  As if I can look upon it almost objectively as if to say "Ah, yes.  That.  How quaint."  The priorities that matter are the ones I run from.  At least until they're within my grasp.  Funny how that works, no?

I tell myself this is a cocoon to make myself feel as if it's part of a natural growth.  But really I'm just biding my time.  While others progress with their lives or, at the very least, sustain them with income, I'm the pinnacle of privilege and failure: living with my mother, sleeping 10-12 hours a day, and playing World of Warcraft when I'm awake.  There are a few things I do that have implications of productivity: I'm increasingly active with the high school students at church.  There are some LGBT things I do on campus.  And there's "research" I volunteer for.  But they may as well just be reasons to get me to wake up before 4p each day.  For all intents and purposes, I'm  worthless.

Of course, I'm not entirely sure how to change.  The only immediately viable option is employment and while I could risk prejudice and daily terror if I needed to, I don't.  And I really think that's what I'd be in for.  This early, I'm still not very confident about passing.  So that fear (and the possibility of situations arising) combined with the soulcrushing nature of retail/food service (what other jobs could I get?) makes the experience sound terrible.  The couple hundred dollars a week I'd make from working just aren't worth it.  I still have most of my money from undergrad saved and while WoW may be a lot of things, expensive it is not.

So I'm waiting.  Waiting to hopefully hear back from graduate schools.  Waiting to grow into Juliet more.  Waiting for S to claw her way out of hell.  None of this is new.  But I don't feel like I have ever really had a period of my life *wasted.*  Up until now, I have always been making progress, always been inching forward.  And now?  Now I'm not.  And I can't wait until I am again.

That is true.  Partially.  But as I've been able to, essentially, fall apart without consequence, I've found myself increasingly afraid to leave home.  I don't know what I'm afraid of, exactly.  But I feel safe and ok here.  And out there?  Out there has become a constant exercise in vulnerability.  And while it's one I can face, I don't really want to if I don't have to.

The safety, within my self and without, that I've found in my cocoon has led me to be more open, I think.  I cry a lot more often, now.  Some folks on the trans forums have said they do too, and they often attribute it to the estrogen.  But I think it's also a comfort within myself to access those hurt parts of me and let them out.  I've cried more since June than I think I cried in the previous... 11 years combined.  And I'm kind of glad I can and do.  I'd feel better if it was crying too someone instead of just alone and vulnerable.  But even then, it's nice not to feel so protected all the time.  So twisted and wrenched and wrong.  Now, I'm fluid.  I'm easing into myself.  And while it's difficult, it's wonderful at the same time.  For just as I often burst into tears, I also find myself sitting and feeling like Juliet, feeling female, and I'm so glad to simply *be.*  I'm becoming me.  I'm becoming real.  And that's as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

It's puberty, really.  And as much as I don't like the wait, I think it'll be worthwhile.  I just have to keep telling myself that and have the patience to endure while I wait.

[Small note:  I'm still engaging in escapism, but I don't *need* it as much as I used to.  I love my female avatars.  And I love being called "Juliet" and "she" in our voicechats.  I've been playing with a few gay guys I found via another game/online forum, and it's nice to have a close group of friends I just kind of... hang out with every day.  Outside of gaming, I doubt we'd have much in common.  But, to them, I'm female.  And the "escape" isn't nearly as necessary as it used to be.  I'm biding my time, certainly.  But how I don't need to completely detach from reality anymore.  And while I envy my avatar to an extent, I also feel like she's a representation of me instead of some fantasy ideal.

Related voice notes: My voice isn't perfect, but it's passable.  When the nurse at the clinic asked if I wanted my "yearly pap smear," I knew I'd made it.  It's also fun for folks to come into our voice chat room and say "Who's the girl?" after they hear my voice.  I'm the girl!  And, listening to me, that's what they think I am!  It's *real!*  And most of you have no idea how wonderful it is.]

[I cannot emphasize this trigger warning enough.  This is violent, explicit, and very possibly triggering for those who have experienced sexual assault, rape, and other abuse.  Please read cautiously, if at all.]

When I was six, I used to use my action figures to fight each other.  Because that's what they did.  They fought.  So they'd punch and kick and presumably go "pewpew" or whatever and then make dying noises.

Except the girls.  My Hexadecimal, my Dot Matrix, my April O'Neill.  They were the sympathetic protagonists.  Who got punched and kicked in their cunts, in their breasts, aching in pain.  The only ones whose pain was real.  But I didn't show any signs of being trans.

When I was nine, I used to be fascinated by fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Street Fighter.  Mortal Kombat, especially, was notoriously bloody.  And Sonya Blade, and later Kitana, were the token females.  I used to be terrified of the game, but always peek.  Hoping to see them.  Hoping to see the move where Johnny Cage punched someone in the crotch, hoping to see it happen to Sonya.  And then they'd get killed.  Their hearts pulled out, their heads cut off, their bodies mutilated to the sound of their screams.  And I'd want to throw up.  And I'd hate myself for watching.  And it was so sickeningly sweet.  But I chose to be trans.

When I was ten, eleven, whatever, I started dreaming of Black Orchid from Killer Instinct.  She was the whose "finisher" was to open up her shirt and flash the opponent who would have a heart attack.  Maybe it was fantasizing, but I'm fairly sure it started as a dream.  I'd follow her, fighting her way against the wolfman or the raptor.  And as she fought, her clothes would be torn.  It started with her breasts being exposed, bursting forth to her humiliation.  And then her cunt, and fear filled her as the men and animals she was facing howled with blood and lust.  And after a long period where she'd merely be attacked in her cunt and breasts, eventually it turned to rape.  I was a twelve year old with a rape fetish.  But I just "need a change" in my life.

When I was fourteen, fifteen, seventeen, I started looking for pictures of them online.  "Hentai" was the word used for "erotic art."  Cartoon porn.  I'd use all kinds of rationalizations, going in through backdoors via hyperlink so I wouldn't have to lie and say I was 18 to get in.  Because lying, because being dishonest was horrible.  Because these were just drawings, not real women being hurt.  And then, once in, there were all these women I'd fantasized about.  Naked, often.  The better pictures were ones where they were being penetrated.  There was titillation in that act of penetration.  But it was the facial expression that made the effect, that sealed the deal, something few "actresses" could truthfully accomplish.  Their surprise, their pain, their fear, that's what resonated.  I didn't masturbate.  I just looked.  And felt terrible all the while.  But I am pervert.

I had wet dreams.  I didn't know what they were the first few times; I thought I'd just had to go to the restroom and had been in too deep a sleep to wake myself up.  But when I dreamed of Chun-Li being raped right before my penis started violently pulsing and I woke up to another grizzly mess, it became clear they were connected.  It'd be years until I figured out that it was so messy because it was semen.  Because I was ejaculating while I slept.  Because even if I had no interest in orgasm, my body did.  And because it was so dreadful to have these fits, I resolved to try and masturbate just so it wouldn't happen anymore.  It took a long time to figure out how.  To figure out the feelings.  Because the act was not pleasurable.  The trick, though, was in the screams.  When Samus screamed as she was hurting, it opened me up.  And I finally let go, a month before I turned nineteen.  But I am a deviant.

It took me a few more years to look at "real people" pornography, and most of it still didn't interest me.  Sometimes the moans and screams were nice; I could imagine women I was attracted to making them while I imagined having sex.  And it wasn't in my hand on my cock.  It was in their sounds.  Their pleasure.  Their desire.  Soon, that was boring.  I'd never been remotely interested in blow jobs.  But I ended up watching one where the woman looked like she was having such a bad time, where her smile was fake, her enthusiasm was so fake, her entire behavior seemed to say "I hate having to do this."  And we he came upon her?  She smiled.  With a frown.  And the humiliation was enough.  But I'm sick.

In therapy, I can barely even say "I want to be female."  Because that's sick, insane, impossible.  Even admitting it makes me insane.  "When can you imagine being happy, with yourself?" Caroline asks.  And I feel bad.  Because I feel like she's saying I should have.  Because I feel like she's saying I'm lying when I can't remember it.  When I can't ever remember feeling anything other than this deadness to myself.  And she eases me out of that shell.  Gradually.  And finally I  have to tell her.  I have to tell her of this horribleness.  I'm so afraid she'll be terrified of me.  Leaving me wouldn't be as bad as me hurting her with my immense perversion.  I'm a feminist.  With a rape fetish.  And I walk her through it.

A woman is raped.  She's screaming.  She's in pain.  Every thrust another violation, every tear another defeat. And she's laughed at.  Cum upon.  And left.  Alone.  Alive.  Very alive.  No blood, no bruises, beautiful still.  But used.  So utterly used and hurt and hollowed.  And I am not the ones who leave her.  I am not those callous, unfeeling men with their shrinking dicks, hurting her and walking away.  I am her.  Or I want to be.

The female action figure, the female video game character were my avatars.  Able to feel when I could not.  And part jealousy, part envy, part identification, part empathy coupled with immense self-hate and a fierce desire to be abused, for it is what I deserve, makes me feel so terrible for them.  Makes me wish that *I* could be raped, that I could be penetrated, that I could be so hurt.  That I could feel.  And sometimes I am them.  Or as close as I can (hah) come.  And sometimes I'm watching them, crying for them, wishing I could help them.  But I am them.  Which is why no one finds these broken and violated women and tells them they're good, they're safe, they've been unjustifiably hurt but now someone will love them, someone won't leave them again.

No, they're alone.  And I'm alone.  Wishing I could be so raw.  Wishing I could be so used.  Wishing I could *feel* it.  Because if I was to feel anything, it would be that utter violation, that dehumanization, that pain.  Because there is so much pain I just can't feel.

 But unlike them, alive and crying, I'm dead.  I was born dead, a stillbirth.  From the moment of my mother's first surprised words "It's a boy?!"  From the moment whatever development in my incubation led to an anomaly sprouting between my legs.  From the moment everyone saw it and knew I was a boy.  A perfectly healthy, sane little boy who, out of the blue, decided to be a lady.

But then, you understand what it's like, right?  You know I'm choosing to sin against God.  You know I'm a pervert, a deviant, a monster.  You know that if only I tried *just* *a* *little* *harder,* I could beat this thing.   You know that it's best to humor me.  You know that I'm exaggerating.  You know that it's because I hate my father.  You know that people make this stuff up for attention.  You know that this is really hard on you.  You know that I'm a gay man who couldn't handle the pressure.  You know that it's just a passing phase, one of my bad days.  You know that I can never be a real woman.  You know that I'm choosing this.

You know me.  Better than I know myself.

I've briefly mentioned before that I read threads of comments about transsexual people to center myself, if I find myself growing too complacent or feeling safe.  That action's problematic, in and of itself, but it's not really what I'm thinking about now.  What I am wondering about is what, exactly, I'll say when someone challenges my identity.  Thus far, such challenges have been relegated to when I've come out to family members who have cast it as a "youthful indiscretion" and tried to talk me out of it or otherwise stressed that I am too young to be making/taking this seriously.  As is this case in pretty much every "argument" about myself[or maybe "discussion" would be more apt], I've a plethora of reasons and well-thought out rebuttals that, at the very least, leave me having answered every concern (even if it can never be to their satisfaction).  In short, I know why I'm transitioning.  I've exhausted my alternatives.  And what every argument boils down to is whether someone knows me better than I know myself.

A person thinking they understood another person better than that person knows themself is an almost surprisingly common attitude.  Certainly the scores of people who think even homosexuality is "a choice" are guilty of such thoughts when so many homosexual people tell them otherwise.  But it can be as innocuous as presuming someone's motives to thinking you know what another person wants.  It's the logic behind "no means yes" and "I'm doing this for your own good."  And although I'll grant that it may be occasionally accurate, I think in the long run it's bound to do more harm than good.

I'm guilty of this, too, but predominantly just with my father (and I'm getting better about the few others).  His paranoia and depression seem so clear to me, stemming from various traumatic events in his past, and he fits one of the profiles I've seen developing of abusers: mainly by making your victims believe that they are the ones who are hurting you and never stop accusing them, even when they call you on it.   That's how, I think, my father can believe that I'm transitioning because I hate him so much.

He's done it his whole life.  When I was six and told him "I love you" and he said "No you don't" with no way for me to convince him.  When my parents were divorcing and he called me a "traitor."  When I've been one of if not the only person who has never stopped talking to him or visiting him no matter how afraid I've been, I still hate him.  I can't not believe that he hates himself and could never believe anyone cares about him regardless of what they did and remain sane in the face of everything he says.

But otherwise?  Like so much else, I've tried to learn from his example, remember how what it felt like when he did it to me, and not to do the same to others.  For some people, it's quite hard to do.  But if transsexuality has taught me anything, it's that no one knows you like you do yourself.  And, ultimately, no one deserves an explanation for things you do with yourself (that don't hurt others).  Whether that will be enough... I have no idea.

When it counts, I have always been able to keep it together.  Even while teaching, even the weeks after Laura broke up with me when I was just starting and I was filled with terror, when I couldn't eat or sleep, I never missed a day, I never failed to do what needed to be done.  I might not have done it particularly well, but it was not for lack of trying [at least, as far as I "try" at most anything].  In high school and undergrad, I did not miss days.  I missed class to work the 2006 and 2008 elections, and I may have skipped one or two classes after all nighters.

Apparently, though, things no longer "count" because I am feel I am falling apart.  That's melodramatic, naturally.  But I find myself nervous to whole new extents around people I don't trust, recently.  To wit, this morning I was helping my mom with volunteer work she does every December in connection with church and all of the new people there really got to me.  Someone asked me to buy them donuts, and I was acutely aware that (1) I do what I'm told and (2) I hate being told to do things because that just gives me an opportunity to disappoint someone else.  I weathered *that* storm, and went to my grandfather's to watch football.  That was alright; he feels obligated to make more small talk now that I'm transitioned, probably because I make him nervous.  But when my aunt, uncle, and great aunt unexpectedly arrived, I was terrified.  I practically started crying on the way home.  Not because they said anything [other than calling me "Dylan"], but because I am so convinced that I make them uncomfortable and feel compelled to leave lest I ruin more for them.

And I leave and part of me feels angry, coming up with various arguments and rationales for why what I'm doing is *not* something that should make others uncomfortable etc etc, but I know as soon as I am with any of them that I will go back to giving them every benefit of a doubt and being calm and quiet.

And I think the biggest change, really, is that I *feel* as if people are noticing me more.  I can't evade like I used to, can't be invisible because my very presence asserts itself by virtue of who I am [or was].  And partly that's the spotlight effect, it's paranoia, but partly?  Partly, it's true.  They do talk.  They are uneasy.  Whereas in my teenage years my monstrousness was largely a figment of my abused imagination, now it is reflected in their eyes.

Of course, it's also because they sense *I'm* nervous, so they get nervous too.  It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: I think they don't want to be around me so I get uncomfortable and visibly shaken and they get uncomfortable by my discomfort and and and.  *But it's not just that*.  Even if I could act and fake it like I used to, they *are* thinking and talking and judging and-

And I dash home.  Leaving home, now, is so draining.  This constant hypersensitivity.  And I admire more and more those who transition without any kind of "break" [often because you can keep your job if you transition while you're on it, but it's more difficult to get hired anew; hence, one of the many reasons I haven't even bothered looking for employment].  And I worry, I wonder how I'll handle school.  And working.  And.... life.  And I know that I do what needs to be done.  I cram the fears and insecurities and anxieties somewhere inside me and I press forth.  But right now?  Right now, without that exigence, I'm not.  I'm scared.  I'm lonely.  I'm angry.  I'm tired.  And I'm so many horrible things.  Because I have the freedom to be this way.

Lucky me.

Today, I was reading the church bulletin board when I read an article about how the Maryville PFLAG was formed.  One of the primary impetuses was when one of the founder's sons came out to her and told her he hated himself for being gay, and, after some brief struggles herself, she realized how terrible it is to hate yourself because your society tells you to and wanted to do something about it.

I almost started crying on the spot.  I'm almost crying right now.  And it's not because his mother wanted to become an advocate to help him.  I truly think it's because I was written on that page, plain as day, and it was just one straw too many.

I hate myself.  I don't know if I'll ever stop hating myself.  And it is a terrifying realization to find that I cannot feel the love of anyone else [with one notable exception].  It is terrifying to look at myself and see how thoroughly protected and distant I am.  How lackluster and wretched I am.  How inadequate and useless I am.  How I have so many gifts but lack the ambition to give back in kind.  I am weak.  I am lazy.  I am beaten, broken, and bruised and the bleeding continues beneath my skin whether it seeps through to the surface or not.

And I know this will pass.  And I know that I have never been better than I am now.  And I know that I see Juliet in my mirror just as often as I see Dylan, perhaps more.  But he's still there.  I see pictures of myself and whatever delusions I have when I see my reflection are dashed.  I am not him anymore, thank God.  But to say I am fully female, to say I am who I want to be... that sounds like nothing but utter folly.

And I wonder what, exactly, triggers my fits of depression.  And honestly?  Honestly, what I think really shatters me into all of these desolate pieces, yet again?  Is when I believe people care about me.  Is when I believe people like me.  Or at least appreciate what I'm doing.  I'm crying right now, even typing those words.  Because it means I'll fail them.  It means I'll disappoint them.  It means that I can't believe they are apathetic or just going through the motions or just saying what's expected for them to say.  I believe them.  And it hurts.  It hurts so so much.

I think to the last time I cried [or almost did] when my father apologized after yelling at me over the phone.  And it was as if, after so much careful preparation and protection, after planning how to mitigate his anger, after trying to decide to defend myself or defer and evade as I always should do, he unexpectedly seemed to feel bad about possibly hurting me.  And I almost broke apart.  Like I am now.  Like I did on the last day of GSSE when they all left, these people I believed cared about me as I cared about them.  And the losing hurts so so much.  But the caring, *believing* that someone actually cares?  That's what destroys me.

And I'm not entirely sure why.  With my father, it was almost as if it was now safe to be hurt and to feel, as if the pain I was just going to sweep into the closet where the rest of my untold volumes of rage dwell was allowed to exist.  And then, when people complimented my speech Friday, I warmly said thank you [a huge improvement over even a few years ago when I would have not even said thank you but  proceeded to describe how inadequate what they heard actually was] without agreeing.  But one person, who's really a wonderfully committed straight ally and a really loving person, was so adamant about how good he thought it was and how I needed to share it...

I didn't cry then.  I didn't cry until I started writing this.  But I think that's what made me so depressed.  I actually started reading the hateful comments about trans people on an article someone posted on facebook to help me feel better, because I at least know what to do with hate.  I know what to do with intolerance and hurt and fear and insecurity.  I know what to do when I'm not safe.  But when I'm safe?  When I know someone cares about me?  When I *believe* them?  I have no idea.  I have no idea at all.  And so I shatter.

I'm tired.  In the "earned" kind of way.  Drove 8 hours at night to place to stay, got there at 1a [thanks again LB].  Went to Rally.  Stood for a few hours.  Couldn't hear or see much.  Left.  Left LB's at 6p.  Drove or was at exit from 6p-5a.  And it's starting to catch up with me.

Transitioning has made me paranoid.  Paranoid in the way that illustrates how nice it is to be white, male, TAB, cis, neurotypical, straight etc.  Paranoid in the "They kill transsexuals when they're not laughing at them or talking behind their backs, true story" kind of way.  Paranoid in the "even around my well-intentioned and mostly supportive friends/family, it only takes one slip for me to be outed and irrevocably changed for the people around me."   "He's" are contagious.

I was driving through Pennsylvanian backroads [like, bright-lights on, OMGWHEREAMI roads], and I thought: if I break down, I'm more vulnerable in this situation as a female.  I'm more vulnerable because a police officer just has to see the "M" on my ID for things to get tense.  I'm more vulnerable because I'm not normative.  And it's a feeling that really is difficult to understand [or understand the lack of fear] unless you transition between the two.

Nothing happened.  Nothing happened at the gas stations.  Nothing happened in the women's rooms.  Nothing happened at Subway.  Nothing happened at the Rally.  Nothing happened at the toll booths.  Nothing happened today on the train.  Nothing happened at the vegetarian event.  Nothing happened walking around Harvard.  Nothing happened at the restaurant.  Nothing happened.

Can it really be this easy?  Do I pass?  Are people just polite?  My biggest problems, so far, have mainly been with people who have known me having a difficult time with pronouns/my name.  Sometimes they slip up and it's clear they've been trying.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem important to them to change unless I ask.  My sister's particularly egregious about the latter.  Perhaps it'll come.  It's unfortunate, but it'll take time too.  But if that's the worst thing I'm dealing with...  I presented as female across the country, in hordes of people, in rural conservative areas, in the middle of the night.  I'm sure prejudice will come up with jobs and if I'm outed in more interpersonal relationships.  But honestly?  I did not expect this.

I have been so afraid, for so long.  And to have everything just... work out?  Hell, I had a full beard a bit over five months ago!  I only came up with my name in August!  I went outside at UTK mid-September!  I came out on facebook two weeks ago!  It's all so fast.  And relatively... painless.

And it feels right.  When I feel like Juliet, when I see female, when others see female, when I *am* female, it feels so so good.  Relieving, like a giant weight is gone.  I might get SRS surgery.  But, honestly?  I can feel female without.  It's in my face.  And sometimes it's there.  And sometimes it's not.  And I'm growing into it.  But when I do feel it?  I feel wonderful.  Alive.  Excited just to be.

I'm actually making it.  I don't know how well.  And I am still afraid.  Nothing happens, and I'm afraid. It comes with knowing that I am the butt of so many jokes, that I am a deceiver less than human, that I am bringing all of the wrath and isolation upon myself.  It comes with knowing that Trans Remembrance day is coming, and all it takes is the wrong person at the wrong moment and I'm on there, too.  It comes with knowing that I am a freak, even if people are polite about it to my face.  It comes with knowing people talk and stare.  Nothing happens.  But it is so real a possibility that it could.  That it does, and I don't even know it.

But I'm making it.  I am.  And, for one of the first times in my life, my hopes are being made real.  So much promise.  And the promises, at least for now, are coming true.

When I was around four, I used to sleep with my father in his room [my parents stopped sleeping together... I'm not really sure, because I can never remember it  actually happening].  I can't remember the specific reason.  I know I was afraid of the dark, and I know I had a very active imagination that would turn the lamest of scary villains into pernicious demons bent upon, I suppose, my destruction.  Maybe I knew my father liked it, and I didn't think I could tell him otherwise.

Regardless, he had a rather large king-size bed.  As a child, it seemed colossal.  While this could make for interesting pillow fights [which my father hit hard in and always seemed rather intent upon winning], it made getting out of it hell if the person with you was a light sleeper.  I was acutely aware of this threat, so I would spend what seemed forever, slowly inching off the bed in an attempt to get out and to the bathroom without waking my father.  My father was wrathful about many things, but being woken up made him incredibly angry, and I continued to be surreptitious any time I left my room once he was sleeping until college.  At any rate, being a young person still naive, I told my mother or mentioned it in one way or another.  She, in turn, told my father, who was at once quite hurt, disgusted, and furious.  "Am I some kind of ogre who rampages through the house, preventing you from even going to the restroom?"  It was disastrous.  And that's when I learned not to tell my mother anything, not to standup to/criticize my father, and that it was best if I never expressed my needs or the truth.

To him, anyway.  I have difficult time truly recalling my childhood, but I know I was relatively spoiled.  I got most toys/video games I wanted [I was rather materialistic to the point of excess until I realized it only felt empty, swinging me in the opposite direction; it was probably a good investment], I was an incredibly picky eater [so my mom would fix something specific for me instead of just making dinner for everyone; I never helped], I was sarcastic towards my sister, I didn't do any chores except, occasionally, taking out the trash throughout the house, etc.  My sister and I walked all over my mother; I can't say, precisely, how much of her serving me was me not respecting her or me hating myself to the point where I wouldn't feed myself or do anything for myself so she felt she had little choice but to [if she didn't fix me anything, I was generally ok with not eating].  Neither of my parents established clear boundaries [too permissive v. too authoritarian and carpicious], neither of my parents established anything like a mutually respecting relationship, and neither of my parents made me feel that I was safe with them or that I could trust them.

I write this because I want to try and explain what it was like for me, growing up.  To you, to myself, to my future selves.  I want to try and elaborate upon the fear, the paranoia, the worthlessness.  I want to find some insight into my self, to explain the problems I encounter today.  Why do I have such a hard time connecting to people who haven't experienced significant pain?  Why am I so afraid of the anger and opinions of others?  Why am I never satisfied, can never see the good for staring holes through the bad?  I want to answer these questions, and the 80% of my life under my family's roof seems so ripe for such insight.

But I can't.  Not entirely.  Not satisfactorily.  Not without making it sound so... small.  That story?  About me being afraid to go to the bathroom?  That, to me, is symbolic of my entire relationship with my father.  I learned from a very, very young age that I had the capability to seriously hurt and to do serious wrong by simply being.  I learned that I needed to be what he wanted me to be.  To spin all of my feelings to assuage him.  To read his face and features to try and tell if now was a good time to ask for that essential thing or permission that my mother could not grant and so I had no other choice.  And I was scared, we all were.  We walked on eggshells when he was home.  We never talked, as a family; any criticism of him was invariably personal, was invariably my mother being a stubborn bitch and "always getting her way."  I cannot explain the fear.  I cannot explain how any small mistake was liable to provoke immense wrath.

But I was also spoiled!  I had many nice things [primarily because my grandfather doted on us].  It wasn't... immense, but it was still pretty spoiled.  My mother practically waited on me.  I even remember risking my father's ire to play my online computer game which would tie up our old dialup modem so he'd know when he couldn't call home.  And I can't make it fit together.  I am abused and resilient.  I am cowardly and selfish.  I was worse off than I can say.  I was better off than I know.  I was hurt.  I hurt.  It's a war narrative by another name.

I'm learning to trust my mother.  But I still don't.  [She still cannot keep any secrets to herself].  I'm learning to not fear my father.  But I still do.  [I can run from him, but I can also hear the liquor over the phone; I can not even mention my transition for fear that he will deny me yet again].  I'm learning to allow myself faults.  But I still self-hate.  [There's so much I need to do and so much more I need to do better].  I'm learning to be more responsible for myself.  But I still let my clothes pile up until my mother finally breaks to wash them.  [Do I wash them sooner just to stop her?  I will wash them, eventually, when the need seems great enough.  But she always moves on mother time which is three steps faster than mine].

These things haunt me.  And in retelling them, I see "Oh, so that is why I think of myself as capable of causing so much hurt: my father's wounded voice coated with so much anger."  I see "Oh, so that is why I cannot trust my mother: she would bring his wrath upon me, for even as my advocate she was merely a catalyst for more acrimony."  I see what I cannot explain.  I see in the words of others "My father used to get angry about the little things, furious if a cabinet door was open" and I say YES YES that is what it is those are the words you know the fear you know it!  But we only know parts.  I know.  But my knowing is years too late to be a thing of truth.  Now I look at ripples.  Now I stumble to the bathroom, for I do not care enough to tread carefully.  But I don't dare call my father after 8.  For he may be sleeping [or in the company of his liquid friends], and he so hates to be awoken.

A week ago it rained.  Darkness feel, the kind of darkness only autumn wields, the long deep darkness after so long light, and it poured.  It poured, like the aftermath of that night swallowing my apothecary's pills in a sardonic concrete tomb.  It poured, like my looking out across the neon orange, waiting for the inevitable blow to come, waiting for the ax to fall with "I do not love you, anymore" with "I cannot do this" with "You drain me."  It rains.  And drains.  And when the sky returns, with a beautiful pallet of color, I am born anew.  Dead, but acutely aware that these colors, so distant in the sky, represent a longing for a life I've yet to live.  Longing for the rains to cease, for the colors to seem more real than the dark skies and white noise and cold.  Noise and cold, death.  When what I want is living color.

I'll just come out and say it: I hate October and I'm depressed.  October is all about terrible memories of breakups and suicide attempts, the school year revealing itself as yet-another "I can't wait until next time" event, my weeks entering a cold monotony of procrastination and self-hatred.

I have written variants of this at least three times, but always stopped, because I want to like October.  I want to like the dark and cold, because it's always felt more "true" than a callously bright summer, the way rainy days feel right because they make the world look how it feels.  I want to like October, because I want to need, I want to need someone to keep me warm, to stave off the past and charge the present, to have the darkening days be all the more reason to stay close at night.  I want to like October like I want to like depression: it is rich and real and painful.

But I hate it.  I hate it because it feels terrible.  I hate it because time is running out, and I have so much to do that I am not doing.  I hate it because I need someone, I want someone, and she's so far, so sparse, so hurt herself that our moments together are wondrous and our hours, days apart feel like wasted time.

I feel like I'm floundering.  I hardly ever work on grad schools.  Each day passes almost imperceptibly, and I have no idea what I do or where it all goes.  My ambitions about self-improvement and growth are crashed; I'm lucky to stop myself sleeping just nine hours, to read 30 minutes before I sleep, to do something, anything I can look at and say "This matters."

She matters, of course.  And she takes up my time.  We start talking and hours leave us in droves, yet we still crave more.  We never stop for lack of words, we never stop for lack of desire.  Sleep, work, the tormentors of our time and distractions of our days pull us apart, violently, and we are left clinging to vapors.

What was going to be "PhD or Death" has turned into "Hope for PhD, settle for Social Work" and I feel so comfortable in settling, as long as I have her.  It is dangerous, perhaps unhealthy, but I think I'm ok with my priorities and desires.  I'm ok with my massive need, I'm ok with my insecurities, I'm ok with capabilities and limitations.  I can always improve, certainly.  But love matters more to me than all else; it's all that's ever made me happy, all that's ever made me feel alive, and I've seen nothing in my life to prove to me anything else will do.

So so much now seems wasted time.  So much now is a ghostly state, where it is not real but for imagining her in it.  What I watch, what I listen to, what I think and feel, is contextualized in some hypothetical space with her, just as I used to do with teaching.  I want to share it all.  Everything.  I want to never be alone, and all of this profound aloneness makes me feel dead.  I think of myself as a vampire, sometimes; alive only when I feed upon others who are living, a state only tenable if the other feeds on me.  As she does.  Perhaps being fed upon is just as important as feeding.  But alone?  In and of and by myself?  I am a ghost.  I'm becoming a ghost I like more and more, a ghost that can survive on her own if need be.  But a ghost all the same.  And I so desperately want to be alive.

That is where I am.  Waiting each day to come alive with minutes on the phone, hours via more damned words upon a screen [the vast majority of my emotional life has been textual or, to a lesser extent, auditory; but I crave touch and site and closeness of an immediate kind so so rarely fulfilled].  And when I see her, for brief moments, when I see her I cannot help but smile, cannot help but love entirely anew, cannot help but lust and laugh and sigh and think "Would that this screen was but a window, with my hands, my lips, my breasts reaching through."  I live with her.  Already.  Because it is the only way I can be alive.  All else is shade and shadow.

It is not healthy.  It is not safe.  It is a mistake I have made so many times, a mistake I know I make but I have made, am making, will make again and again for I cannot live alone.  I cannot bare to be by myself.  Such is my monstrous need.  Such is my gaping void demanding sacrifice.  Such is who I am and how I am and changing that seems at once like what survival demands but I do not wish to survive.  I do not wish to haunt this realm, pale and ethereal.  I wish to live or die by love.  And, indeed, I have been able to do little else.

This is terrible.  This is perverse.  This is the stuff of torment and tragedy, filled with briefly blissful trysts between apothecaries and tombs.  Even in living, I die by my hand, distraught over the corpse of another.  My name is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I love.  I live.  I lose.  I die.  And the rest is October rain.

Things are moving rapidly.  Time is flying, a product of both my age and my relative lack of stress.  Transitioning isn't even the greatest source of anxiety in my life.  It's not even second.  But it's the one that takes up most of my attention, because it's the one I can actually do something about.

About a month ago, I posted about my struggles accepting "Juliet," of conceiving of myself as female.  And it's still not all the way there.  But, undoubtedly, I am making progress.  I *feel* like Juliet, now.  I call myself Juliet, unless I'm almost forced not.  Someone called today asking for "Dylan," and I almost couldn't admit it was me.  It hurt.  But it hurt in a "I'm finally really embracing Juliet" kind of way.

Last Friday was the first time I went to a restaurant as Juliet.  That night, I went downtown in a bra but khakis and a pretty standard t-shirt, but I  heard someone ask as I walked by "Is that a boy or a girl?"  The next day, I was at a tailgate party for the LSU game, and the friend who hosted it said, afterwards, that her friends [who I'd never met] asked if I was a guy or a girl, even though I wasn't even wearing a bra.  And this week, I've been on campus a fair amount, even talking to people etc., and it's gone fine.  No one said anything, I didn't notice any looks [although I try to look straight ahead so I don't make myself nervous], no one yelled anything.  It was good.  Hell, last night an older lesbian said she'd be "drooling over me" [in an endearing, not creepy way] and that I looked like Julia Roberts, in response to me talking about my dysphoria more.  I felt like Juliet.  They didn't even seem tempted to say "he."  I felt female.

In fact, I got overconfident.  So much so that, when I went to a restaurant tonight and I heard my waitress say something like "Es bella por un chico, si?" it hurt ["Is pretty/beautiful for a boy, right?"].  I mentioned it to one of my friends, who said "That's good, right?"  And I kind of agreed, moreso because she seemed so convinced it was.  As if I couldn't reasonably expect better.  As if all my confidence, all my assurance that I'd been gaining was founded upon politeness, not genuine passing.  Pretty.  For a boy.  Half of that is good.  The other half... goddamn it.

I feel close to being female.  My voice, my dress, my self are all converging on  female.  I cause confusion even in "boi mode."  A fair number of people have called me pretty, and I don't think they were all just doing it to be complimentary.  Hell, even the waitress who said the comment was really nice.  I imagine she said it just to compare notes, to point out that she had noticed and to see if others agreed.  She didn't think I would understand what she said.  But it still hurt.  It still took me away from Juliet and reinstilled in me the fear, the doubt that accompanies so vulnerable an expression in most of our society.

Will I always be "pretty for a boy?"  There are worse fates, but that would be a bitter pill to swallow.  Will I always have my confidence increased only to have some errant comment or clocking [what we call the act of ascertaining I wasn't born female] shatter me?  I feel like I've made a great deal of progress in the past nine months, hell in the past two [I decided upon "Juliet" mid-August].  But at each individual moment, it seems like I've so far to go.  It seems like I'll never *truly* get there.  It seems like I may try and I may get close, but I'll never get quite close enough.




It seems that way.  I know, compared to where I was, that such thinking is very premature.  I know, given the advantages I have, that I'm quite privileged in so many ways.  And I know I have so much to be thankful for.  I am.  I really am.  But, as selfish as it may be, I don't just want to be "bella por un chico."  This isn't about being pretty [although that would be a wonderful bonus].  It's about being who I feel I need to be.  It's just unfortunate that I need others to believe it, too.

Goddamn it.  It's been a few weeks since I've been on the trans-forum.  For awhile I'd check it as a proxy for doing anything tangible, particularly when I had my beard.  It was encouraging and helped, but oh the envy.  Things have been progressing recently [and Indians are taking up an increasing portion of my time.  MY LIFE IS BEING OUTSOURCED!?!? True story?], so I haven't felt compelled.

But tonight I did.  And goddamn it.  I swear, it's voodoo.  There are before and after pictures that make me want to scream.  Pretty standard looking guys transitioning into beautiful women.  I mean it.  You doubt, if you haven't seen for yourself, but you not only cannot tell they were even male, if you're attracted to women it's ever-so-much a moot point.  If you know what I mean.  And you might, I don't really know.  I'M TRYING TO SAY THEY'RE REALLY PRETTY, OK?

Anyway.  It bothers me.  Yes, there are some who are... not.  And I have a lot to be thankful for, in so many regards.  But I see so many of the others, so gorgeous, as if by magic, and I want some of their magic.  I want to know where I can find it, what I have to do to implement it, how I can effectively replicate this magnificent transformation.  Because, honestly, I feel like all I do is change clothes and use a smidge of makeup.  I shave, too, and sometimes it's enough to make my stomach not feel repulsively infested for a day.  But they... they're beautiful.  And I so, so want to be beautiful.

I am making progress, though.  I'm 2/3 through with LHRT [lazer-hair-removal therapy, and it's delightful not feeling compelled to shave anything but my upper lip unless I'm otherwise inclined [although the upper-lip is ghastly].  I've been on hormones for ~four months, although I've only been on my "full" dosage since early July.  I'm not great at noticing differences, except that my arm hair is growing back clear, and I now have breasts.  They're undoubtedly A-cup, but they're also really breasts [I never had manboobs, for better or worse, so it's a novel experience].  My hair is smoother, thanks to prolonged and consistent conditioner use.  And it's entirely possible that various body hairs are regrowing blonde ["invisible"] without my knowledge, although that doesn't stop me from staring at them with so much ire.  My voice is higher as a baseline, although I think I can still improve it.

And I'm progressing socially, too.  I've told just about everyone, aside from the grandparents/my mom's conservative family.  I'm pretty consistently Juliet at home.  And, hell, I went to campus on Monday and no one explicitly confronted me, even as I nervously strolled through the Commons.  I am progressing.

But I can't help but feel stagnant, too.  Part of this, I think, relates to never having felt "like a woman trapped in a man's body."  Certainly, I can pretty safely say I've almost always wished I was born a girl.  But I didn't feel as if I was a girl.  I felt I was a boy.  One who hated himself and wished so desperately that he was not, but a boy nonetheless.  So now, as I transition, I can't help but feel I'm still... kind of a boy.  "Juliet" still sounds strange, especially when people introduce me/I introduce myself.  I think of it in the same way I think of receiving compliments about my insecurities: it hurts, and I want to immediately counter by saying "Oh, no, no, I was Dylan.  But now I'm Juliet.  I don't deserve to be seen as a woman, if you were tempted to do that, which you probably weren't, because I'm pretty clearly a boy in women's clothing, right?"  I have a hard time requesting it, if people don't ask about it.  As if I don't deserve to be called Juliet if they don't think I do.  It's as if I want to have a giant asterisk hover next to my body that, when pushed, says: "THIS BODY IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION FROM MALE TO FEMALE.  PLEASE IGNORE/TOLERATE THE AFFRONTING INCONGRUITY YOU SEE BEFORE YOU AND ACT AS IF NOTHING IS WRONG EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY IS."  Yes.  Caps and all.

Am I Juliet yet?  Well, kind of.  In the right lightning.  With the right mood.  In the right frame of mind.  I am not Dylan unless compelled, certainly; I won't sign my name as Dylan unless I have to, I won't refer to myself as Dylan unless I have no choice.  But Juliet?  It's almost of a form of self-hate to say I'm not quite her yet.  At least, not all the time.  And I don't just mean when I'm presenting as Dylan for my grandfather, and going back to Juliet when I'm at home.  I mean, even dressed as Juliet, I can look in the mirror and sometimes see a rather cute woman looking at me and sometimes see a disconcerting mess of a person, a male with cavernous hollows under my eyes and cheeks, egregious and conspicuous facial hair, a hair style that is "eccentric," and cartoonish features.  Hell, I can look at pictures from the GSSE prom and see the same thing.  For instance:

I can see arguments for both sides.  Makeup helps a bit [I rather love mascara], and I guess I could brush my hair, too.  But that's how I look with clothes changed, and it doesn't improve [too much] otherwise.  Everyone reading this knew me as Dylan before Juliet.  So that somewhat colors what you see.  It affects what I see, too.  But what does everyone else see?

Gah.  It makes me think of Mulan, a transnarrative by another name [although a good case can be made for The Little Mermaid, too].  Indeed, it's entirely fitting that Mulan is painted and fit into the trappings of gender performativity to begin with, and as the song progresses she exposes its artifice as she wipes it all away.  [It's disheartening and ironic, though, that the initial image is of a woman with a "beard" made for comical effect.  Oh, look, a woman who is not entirely feminine, even masculine.  Let us laugh.  Oh, wait, isn't that exactly contrary to the film's message?  Disney, Disney, Disney...]



"Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
or a perfect daughter..,
Can it be 
I'm not meant to play this part? 
Now I see 
that if I were truly 
to be myself 
I would break my family's heart. 

Who is that girl I see 
staring straight 
back at me? 
Why is my reflection someone 
I don't know? 
Somehow I cannot hide 
who I am 
though I've tried..

When will my reflection show 
who I am inside? 
When will my reflection show 
who I am inside."


You can read it twice in different ways, struggling with decided to transition and then struggling while trying to transition.  It depends on which "part."  If that part's male?  Definitely, not meant to play it.  But what if it's female?  Will I ever pass for a daughter, much less one fitting conventional norms?  What if I'm not meant to play female, either?  Hell, who is that person staring back at me?  When will that image be who I feel expresses the me I feel inside?  And how do I recognize hir once ze's there?  Or is it from the inside out, me  coming to terms with how I look and owning whatever femininity I have?

I don't know.  It's all still new.  Juliet, as a named identity, is not even a month old.  But god, I see the magical transformations of those gorgeous transwomen.  And I'm left staring at my reflection, wondering if I'll ever see something so beautiful myself.

So, as of... now, I'm twenty-four.  It's not terribly noteworthy; I've been referring to myself as 24 for two months now, and I have no plans and don't feel bad about it in the slightest.  But I suppose it's as good a point as any for reflection upon where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going.

I took the opportunity to look over some past entries around my birthday over the past 6 or so years that I've kept a blog.  I considered linking to them, but they're honestly rather embarrassing.  My 18th birthday post is so very indicative of the tension I negotiated for most of my newly adult years: irreverent, distracting humor and hints of hurt begging to be seen, felt, and touched.  My 20th birthday post is a direct reference to this tension, with a more mature articulation of the dynamics involved and signs of my increasing wariness with keeping up a veneer that was so very evasive as to be fruitless to all involved.

I say I'm embarrassed because the writing seems distinctly different.  It is not real, not honest, not the relentlessly exposing force I've turned it into.  I struggled with authentically engaging my emotions for years, and I suppose I still do.  But then, even as I felt miserable, I danced around them, hated them, tried desperately to intellectualize them and fight them instead of just acknowledging them as real regardless of what I thought they should be.  I was intensely aware that I was being read, and even as I strove for more authenticity, there were still fears of an audience that may or may not have existed.  There were still fears of admitting to myself the depth and truth of what, exactly, was going on inside of me.

I read the madcap attempts at humor on my 18th, attempts informed by puns and randomness, and I cringe.  It's a type of ridiculous, absurd humor that rather leaves me cold, today.  I read the poem with its stilted rhyme and all-too-blunt messaging, and I cannot help but shake my head.

The entry for the 20th, two years later, already shows more realness.  At that point, I still felt an intense desire to create something that would truly express myself, something that would give my life some meaning by the value it had to others.  I am not as brash, I am not as manic, I am not as.. young as my younger self's post makes me seem.  But I also feel old, feel desperate, feel that time is wasting.  At that point, Meredith was an increasingly distant memory and Elise was a raw and fresh pain, a reminder of my continued ineptness in lieu of any kind of validation.  I was still grappling with purpose and personality, identity by any other name.

But in that process, I was also becoming more artistic in my language.  It's rather pleasant to read something your past self wrote that you rather like.  In this case, it's the imagery evoked by humor.  "But humor cuts.  Humor stabs, humor gores, and its targets bleed laughter."  Its targets bleed laughter...  I really do like metaphor.

And I say this to say that I honestly feel I have grown, have matured over the past six years.  I am so thankful that I am who I am today instead of those people then.  I feel as if I have a handle on who I am and who I want to be.  My worries are decidedly terrestrial, at the moment.  And I know that's a phase. [I will relish the time when I will have solved my relationship with my self to a sufficient degree so I can focus more completely on how I relate to others].  But, aside from fits, I do not have existential dilemmas.  I do not feel that I am underachieving; unfulfilled in the challenges presented to me, perhaps, but I am not doomed to a mediocrity beneath my potential, traveling upon my present course.  I do not feel intense desperation over love, for I had one that was valid, and I now have one that may, perhaps, be sound.

I am becoming my own.  "Juliet" sounds so queer to my ear; it hurts the same way it hurt to hear the wonderful things my students described me as at governor's school that wonderful/terrible final night.  As if I don't deserve it.  As if it's not me, no matter how badly I want it to be.   But I am increasingly looking in the mirror and seeing her staring back.  I recorded my voice today, and I liked the way it sounded.  I can run my hand along my face and appreciate the new smoothness after the lazers have done their sci-fi magic.  I can cup my nascent breasts, stand topless, side-to-the-mirror, and see femininity sprouting.  I can fantasize about love and sex and not feel as if I am in an unnatural role with unnatural expectations.  I am not there, by any stretch.  But where I once felt primarily fear with small hope, I now feel so much hope with small fears.

What has changed me?  "Age," in and of itself, is unlikely to be the culprit.  Certainly, cognitive growth may have some minor role.  But in the years since I was 18, I have taken hundreds of hours of college courses.  I have become a feminist and immersed myself in its culture and philosophy.  I have written over half-a-hundred short essays for my peers to read.  I watched "The Wire" and defined my political philosophy.  I've begun to embrace the process of making Love a religion.  I loved and been loved for the larger part of two and a half years.  I've awakened my sexuality and grown into it.  I've come to terms with my gender dysphoria and begun transitioning to a self that expresses me authentically.  I've endured terror and finely-honed anxiety on a daily basis for a school-year and survived.  I've changed a not-insignificant number of lives for the better.  I've made better friends than I ever expected; friends who keep in touch no matter how far they are; friends who have not left when it's convenient.  I've been thoroughly humbled by being poor at something I tried to do.  I've been thoroughly encouraged by being good at something I wanted and enjoyed doing.  I've found someone who mirrors my strengths and insecurities with an uncanniness that defies reason.  I've begrudgingly embraced intuition, appreciating a knowing that operates outside of pure logic.  I've failed.  I've survived failure.  I've come to appreciate many of my strengths, come to acknowledge many of my weaknesses.

So even though I am unemployed, skeptical about my future plans, lacking in backups, at a perilous place in my expression of my identity, even though I am so much uncertainty in a place I never expected to be, I have grown and I am glad for it.  I think of the seventeen year olds I know (and there are an eerie number; it's senior year of high school all over again), and I wonder how much they'll change in the same time frame.  Hell, I think of myself, six years from now.  I will likely have been Juliet as an adult just as long as I was Dylan.  And, outside of that, who knows what will have happened and where I'll be or what I'll be doing.  If I've learned anything, it's definitely that personal prognostication is a fool's errand.  But I've learned that change is possible.  That hope is not illfounded.  That terrible, heart-wrenching things can happen, that depression, anxiety and stress can reign supreme, that failure can manifest its ugly head daily, and that, despite all this, I can survive and come out on the other side a better person for it.

And yes, this is a passing mood.  Just yesterday, I was self-doubting, terrified, bruised and raw.  But, at the moment, I'm thankful.  And I'm glad for the growth.  And I so look forward to a lifetime more.  Happy birthday, indeed.

And so another phase is complete, and the long cocooning begins.  Til now, I've had cause to leave my bed each morning, some exigent reason prompting me to rise in my normal hurried pace to pay for a few minutes ill-gotten sleep with more stress and rush is due.  I've had cause to don the vestments of my genetic predisposition, to cast myself as the unnatural in natural, put the lie to the world's apathetic gaze.  My days have been full, my nights akin to wonder, and although it is not the ideal, it was at least something more than the upcoming oblivion.

For now that my final class is done, my superfluous degree as good as inevitable, I have to turn to the more abstract tasks, the ones sans structure, sans rules, sans anything but a distant deadline that I only wish would speed this way.  When teaching, I learned of the desire for structure; individuals desperately wish to know what to do and how to do it; creativity and self-control are the bane of easy action.  And although I resented this pull then, I can see it now.  I can see it in my inability to rise from bed, in my days of ensuing isolation, in my gross uncertainty that cakes the resolutions of my new triad of narratives.  And what are these three arcs that I am hoping to complete before a year has passed?

1.  Transition.  Go "full time" and pass in public.  Establish a wardrobe that can maintain me through weeks and seasons.  Establish a speaking voice that shall not reveal the incongruity I so seek to hide.  Establish an internal and writing voice that forces out the gravelly reverberations of the male and leaves me authentic in my thoughts and words.  Change my name, socially and legally.  Change my pronouns internally and externally.  Own my femininity.  Be female.  Be it in my mind, in the minds of others.  Assume it from the moment I rise to the moment I sleep, and let no one be the wiser that I am the butt of a cosmic joke.  In short, maintain congruence with the internal self and external expression of that self.  And then take the damn thing out for a spin.

2.  Graduate school.  The GRE has been vanquished, leaving me with the less definite tasks to go.  Establish a list of schools with professors, deadlines, requirements, and everything in between.  Research professors' areas of study and, in so doing, determine my own preferences; then match.  Construct a resume that belies my lack of any employment paying over minimum wage.  Write a personal statement that at least compels admissions to move me to the interview stage.  Solicit letters of recommendation and then thank ever so profusely.  Assemble all the required materials and submit by the beginning of December (or other suitable deadlines).  Wait and worry and hope.  Hopefully get invited to interviews.  Hopefully do as well as I have in the past interviews.  Hopefully get accepted.  Hopefully find assistantships to pay for the damned thing.  Then go for six years!

3.  Love.  Yet again, by what I hope is coincidence and not some proclivity towards the depraved, I find myself in a relationship that defies convention.  I suppose, to an extent, that all of my relationships will take on this quality as a result of my transition, but I think even I'm overachieving on this one.  If it didn't have the trappings of the divine, the sheer illogicality and improbability of it (not to mention the rather tenuous ethicality) would force me to deny whatever sundry desires manifest and resign myself back to isolation.  But if I am taking to heart this rejection of absolute logic, this embrace of the intuitively, narratively felt in complementation to the previously unchallenged primacy of "reason," then I owe it to us both to see this through.  I have never felt so drawn, never felt so implicitly understood, never felt a desire to be so close, to so share in such intensity each aspect of life in a way that is thoroughly and wholeheartedly reciprocated.  If my metric is concrete, such abstractions are the ravings of a rationalizing madperson.  But I am in a different plane, a place of intuition and self-direction, a place that explores and tries instead of fears and stays safe in the petty superficiality of expectation.  Part of me still wants to label this insanity.  But the rest is completely enamored, magnetized and electrified.  She makes me feel scintillatingly alive, a conflagration instead of a candle in the dark.  So, this year, I'll love her, write her, talk to her each night in an ocean of more.  And again I find myself waiting, a year instead of weekly.  But I'll love, in all the ways I can, throughout this year.  Then I'll see where my love and our damned inexplicable dynamic lead.

So, three disparate goals, distinct in their implementations and results but common in their discoveries and elaboration.  On the path to those, there are a variety of intermediate goals:  Learning how to be properly domestic (cooking and cleaning) not because it's feminine but because I need to know how to do it damnit; reading everything I said I'd read when I got the chance; establishing an exercise routine and somehow acquiring a non-flabby stomach; getting through some of the hordes of video games I've purchased during Steam Sales but never played; writing at least one letter a week; etc.  I'll probably develop those as I go along.  August's goals:  Figure out insurance and don't sleep more than 8 hours a night.  I think that's manageable.

That's where I'm at, in all its banality.  I can feel the depression and the guilt looming, and I imagine it'll only get worse as we move towards winter.  But I'm also coming to terms with my hiatus.  And, thanks to goal 3, I really feel... ok.  Like I'll still be important and matter and be loved even if I fail.  And it helps to be loved.  It truly does.