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.