On the transforum I frequent, there was a post asking, essentially, "Where were you a year ago?" I'll do a longer narrative at some point, but I thought it'd be interesting to skim through last year's (and, as it turns out, the year before's) journal entries and highlight just the progress of my gender identity. Looking back, I engaged the dysphoria more than I usually give myself credit for now. It's a frequent presence intermittently. I started making comments between these excerpts, but I think they speak better without commentary. I may still be a boi, but I'm so much further than I was...
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All told, it's a lot of progress. And I can honestly say I feel more optimistic and hopeful, even in the face of so much uncertainty, than I ever have before. I'm getting there, one day at a time.
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And, of course, part of me wonders if I'd just be at peace if I was a woman (not because women have it different, but because for some presumably chemical but possibly socialized reason it's what I feel peace and comfort in imagining), but somehow I imagine that's a small piece to the aforementioned puzzle. -7/22/2008
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And I realize it will likely always be this way. I wonder if it's all dissatisfaction with myself, wanting to be someone I can't ever be. Which is ridiculous, because I'm no materialist, identity is a construction and biology need not be limiting to those who would create themselves. Right? The angst and anger tell me it's not true. The hope that someday I can overcome and be happy plead with me to believe it is. Solipsist I am, I posit myself as people in situations that are impossible. I'm famous. I'm beautiful. I'm important. And I know each and every time, given my psychologies and philosophies, I'd find dissatisfaction. I'd always want more. Everything's only a matter of scope and scale, micro and macro. The basics stay the same. -12/13/2008
Sometimes I wonder if I'll be able to make it through the entirety of my life without trying to kill myself again. I was just thinking earlier today how simply wonderful it would be to disappear, leave notes behind attempting (probably in vain) to deter those would follow me, and just... die without them knowing. Of course, the old questions of how and where would come back and, really, the devil is in the details. But it's honestly the second greatest point of comfort to me in times when I'm not distracted by other significant stressors.
I wish I felt natural. I wish I was in tune with my body, could divest myself of this pisspoor platonism and embrace the kind of realism that I logically believe. As it is, in order to have much hope at all I have to hope, by necessity, in "something after," when I can become whole.
I mean, it's not so bad feeling broken. But it pains me whenever I see an attractive woman and part of me wants to fuck her and the other half wants to be her. As if she doesn't know how blessedly good she has it.
At any rate, I do wonder how sustainable I am. I've been doing a lot better over the past few years, but I don't think I'll ever escape the feeling that I'm settling for less. I'm settling for pulling strings, for being a cyborg when I want to be a real (girl). If I wasn't such a skeptic, if I could play pretend, maybe that would work. But instead I can only run from the thoughts, the discord, the pressure within my chest that just wants to implode because of the implacable desire to be something I can never truly be.
Settling for less isn't so bad, most of the time. But for an entire life? An entire life where I know there is absolutely nothing I can do to feel organic, complete? Sometimes I'd rather just pray and die, hoping I'll come out whole on the other side. Maybe that's what everyone feels like. Sooner or later, I guess we'll all find out. -7/20/2009
--- (Watching Mulholland Drive, with Naomi Watts as the main character, haunted me. She's a tormented lesbian, a representation of myself that resonated so strongly I couldn't ignore it. She was the reason I awoke, decided to pursue counseling to address my transness, because I had to feel that real. I simply had to.)
And here I am, haunted by Naomi Watts. I don't even have the decency to be beautiful when I'm tragic. Yeah, you've lost love. But at least you have the privilege of still being who you think you are. You can find love again; you can't reclaim what you've never had. But you're so goddamned beautiful, so goddamned gorgeous in your sadness and rage. I feel like I should be you, meld into you, love you while hating myself because I can never have it any other way.
I feel like I can endure anything, because none of this is real. It can't be real. It doesn't, hasn't ever felt real. Let me die and pull back the curtain, find the self I must have had before this cruel joke was thrust upon me some twenty-three years before. This life is just smoke and mirrors. It has to be. And I want to smash it. I want the shroud to fall. I want to be real again.
I'm not even that miserable. This is a passing phase, one of my bad days. A pleasant reminder from paralyzed years gone by. I can't help but believe, though, that I'm not better, merely shielded. Your sphere extends only so far, love. You're a bubble in time and space. And if you ever burst, love, I'll burst with you. I hope you don't bear that burden, don't understand it. Because as terrible as it is, as wrong as it is, it's true. I want to burst. That last paragraph is my default. You're the realest thing I know, but there are times when even you're separated by the shroud and I'm encased in plastic, separated from you and life and organic feeling, wishing I could feel like a piece of the puzzle instead of dust on cardboard. Life, not Limbo.
Oh, what a virtuous sinner I am. Blessed with wit, intellect, compassion, love and devotion. All that's missing is God's love. A vagina by any other name... -8/9/2009
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I want peace. I don't know what it looks like. Yet I can close my eyes and imagine not sunny beaches, not friends and family, not wealth and fame but simply a slightly altered me, gliding through a life not too removed from this one that seeks to share its blessings. I think happiness will follow, but, if not, my sad smiles will have a warmth not shrouded. And that, I think, would be enough.---
I'm working on it. One of my friend commented upon my strength of idealism and hope, a strange thing for someone to see in a self I often think of as so grim. But they're there. What I lack in faith I make up for in hope: the desire for better things without the belief they will come to be. I can see a life so beautiful it hurts to believe, for the fear that it stops too short of true. Yet I have said the same thing of a body, and it's a wonder what one shaved leg can do. -12/24/2009
I haven't been this terrified of not being accepted since high school. I haven't been this self conscious since I was a shy introvert who always worried what others thought instead of a person who started gauging reactions instead of fearing the worst. Oh God, I can't take myself seriously, I can't. And yet I take her seriously. Dylan is a wry joke. Yes, she makes wry jokes but is herself sincere by virtue of legitimacy. She's beautiful and whole, and Dylan can be a shell, a skeleton, a twisted and crumpled figure that animates and slinks and is not to be taken seriously, in and of himself, because he knows he's just a game and a joke. Or, at least, he knows that's the way the game is played. -1/19/2010
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It's probably because I'm not the me I want to be. That fundamental incongruity means I have a wall built up, a barrier that makes the "real" me inaccessible because she must be protected. It'll hurt too much when she's not, because she's real, unlike the shell. If she's accepted, though. If she's loved, if she's cared for... I don't know. Maybe that will be real.---
Yet I worry. Is happiness a myth? Is Laura the best, maybe the last love I'll have? Am I ever going to find something I enjoy and can do well and can help others at? It sounds like such a feeble complaint, in many ways. But I refuse to live my life simply to survive. I just don't know if I'll ever really find the chance to live it any other way. 2/2/2010
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The second thing is transitioning. I'm at an impasse, not really sure how to keep progressing, but, damn it, I'm on the right track. I've felt good. I've kind of liked myself, at various non-school related times. And I want to follow that.
It's kind of strange, because today I regressed a little. I wasted my entire afternoon, ate entirely too much simply because I was kind of sedentary and depressed, and I was fairly unhappy. but the best part about it was how much of a contrast it was to the rest of my past month. I used to do this all the time, and now it's unusual. It's marginally troublesome, but it's no longer "the norm." And I like that. I like not feeling wasteful and miserable all the time.
I'm not happy yet, of course. I'm a long ways away from that. But I genuinely feel I'm making progress. I have found things I'm passionate about, things that will help me like myself and that I think I'll enjoy. Naturally it won't be easy. But, damn it, I've spent too much time guarding myself against who the hell knows what. It's time to take some chances. -2/6/2010
The personal connection, and, since this is me writing there has to be one of those, is that I have always felt like a Hamlet or Iago. I have always felt that pressing question of "to be or not to be" (in so many senses). I have always felt that "I am not what I am." And it has always been the source of so much anguish, so much tortuous angst because I have struggled for more than a decade with choices of how to "be." It has never occurred to me to simply accept what I am, be it by biology or deeply scribed and inscrutable psychology. I have never "been" without making a choice of how to "be."
But as I walked away from Oedipus's grim ruin, I felt a kind of peace. I am who I am. The gods, or the secular equivalents, have seen fit to bless me and curse me in various ways, and it is my role to accept some things and adjust appropriately. That is not to say that I abdicate my responsibilities. Yes, the prophecy of my genetics is there. I am what I am. That doesn't mean I need to gouge my eyes out, punishing myself for my inherent baseness (and goodness knows I would love to do so). I, like Macbeth, still have the power to shape my destiny and do it ethically. But I do not have complete power over myself and my world. We have our gods, no matter how we wish otherwise. And there is something to be said for accepting those limitations. -2/20/2010
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Last night was even worse. Some horrific monster, ostensibly my father, held me captive, has dark plans, goes places and devours people, girls, leaves them disembodied and rent, bloody. I follow him, am dragged by him, petrified of when I am next, helpless as I watch the horrors he wrecks upon so many others. He is snarky, morose, malicious. And when I struggle, when I connive to escape, when I run through forests, flee through streams, desperate and full of terror, he chases with a speed I know I cannot match, and I am taken back to him, waiting my grizzly turn. I am helpless, I am overmatched, I am captive and desperate and in terror and horror.
And I am her.
That fact, actually, brings me some relief. That I dream as her makes me hopeful. But I think it's also significant. At first, I focused on the loss of control and the utter horror, thinking that the dreams might be a reflection of my waking sense of simply waiting and hoping instead of genuine agency.
But then I thought of her in the box, packed away, and it occurred to me that much in those dreams was about the futility of escape, the inability to get away. I am the captor, I am the violence, I am the thing that rends myself, that devours and horrifies myself, that keeps myself contained and in terror. I am the hope and the horror.
But I can't let her out, let myself out. And it's killing me. So I fill my time with work and distractions and I lay plans and I try to ignore the screaming, the crying from inside. I am the hope and the horror. And I am not what I am. -3/14/2010
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They call transitioning a "second puberty," and I've thought of it comparably. I use the metaphor of butterfly and cocoon, but I do feel like I'm building and growing. I think of myself blooming, replacing my distant moroseness with an easy smile (and an obligatory hint of irony) as I swish and sway, and I like it. What will it be like, to like myself? What will it be like, to be able to feel so good about myself that I can truly devote myself to my external relations? What will it be like to live instead of merely existing? Oh, hope springs despite my temporal tears. -4/15/2010
All told, it's a lot of progress. And I can honestly say I feel more optimistic and hopeful, even in the face of so much uncertainty, than I ever have before. I'm getting there, one day at a time.
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