Decrying Gravity

There's a book I'm reading now which switches POV between characters each chapter. And one of the POVs is that of someone who's been tortured. Not just tortured for a few days, but tortured over many months if not longer, who has had every impulse and sense of identity retrained to be "less than human." He is terrified of everyone who would help him, mistrusting always, compelled to do absolutely anything requested of him because he knows, knows so agonizingly well, what horrors could truly happen to him. He knows pain. Pain which, by its nature, those who have no experienced it can barely even grasp intellectually, much less emotionally. And the worst part of all is that it all just feels so S.

She told me, that last night, that "pain is greater than all." And I didn't dare protest. Because as much as I, as we who have not been so hurt may want to believe we would be different, when hurt enough we will break. And once broken, all we can do is strive to make our miserable existences slightly less so.

She wrote, in her last email, "I have kept asking you to wait while I have yielded to weakness, weakness, weakness." And it broke my heart not just to know that she felt that way, but moreso to learn that I would not get the chance to try to convince her otherwise. That I had waited months, with silence, with doubt, with omnipresent fear, with unquenched need, with utter longing, with broken love, with fickle self-hatred, with with with to finally be able to wrap her in my arms and hold her and let her feel some ounce of safety, some bit of reprieve that surely she deserved that I knew I could give her if only given half the chance, that I had waited so long and come so close only to have, with a few words, us both be dashed.

I am angry, often. Angry at the intangibles, certainly. But angry with her. If I was convinced she was better off without me, I could heal my new hurt with some solace. But instead it all just seems so pointless. I am angry. Because I wanted to love her so very much. Because I knew I was uniquely positioned to do so. And because it all became too much *so close* to realization.

But pain is a marvelous teacher, and I have learned not to want answers. I have learned that sometimes people are hurt and stay hurt for no reason. Nothing preventable, nothing avoidable, it just... happens. And although we perhaps have control over our responses, since we can never be right where another is, judgment is the province of the self alone. Was she right or wrong? That's really for her to decide. And, knowing her, I can pretty well imagine her decision.

It still hurts, of course. I read these chapters in this book and I'm just profoundly struck by a desire to love. Not to save or protect, for I am illfitted for either role (if even any person could fill them). But I so dearly want to love that hurt. To let my faith in the goodness of the wretched permeate through the cracks that are in their armor (despite their beliefs to the contrary), to love and let them finally need and to have that need be answered. I want to love that character. I want to love all who have been hurt so very badly. I want to love S.

And I need to remember that. Because I feel so rough and raw that it is difficult to focus externally. I am almost appalled when I speak to others who don't know what it's like to live in constant fear, with no safety and no saviors, with "need" being so clearly a luxury they cannot afford. And I *know* the other side of this coin, that *I* don't know pain, that *I* am so so fortunate, that *I* am not one to raise my suffering upon any podium and say "the line of legitimacy starts here."

But it's so difficult to do. Because I, in truth, feel as if I love no one. I feel that I cannot need anyone and have them be who I need them to be. I feel so alienated. And even as I like being around people, it is only Sisyphus being excited about reaching the top of the hill, only for inevitability to follow.

I want to need someone. I want someone to love me. Love *me* and *know* precisely the wretchedness they're loving. And I feel that with that foundation, like a spring of cold clear water beneath my craggy surface, I would be overflowing with what I could offer others. And I so do want to love.

Essentially, what this comes down to is "I need to be loved to love." And sans some Galatea, the common sentiment is that I must turn towards Narcissus instead. "Love one's self to love others."

I wonder, after I'm able to woo my heart and win my trust, how long it will take before I too break up with me? Empiricism indeed.

[Trigger Warning: Mention of sexual assault, abuse, and after effects. Not explicit.]

I've often wondered why, exactly, I seem to resonate more with victims of abuse and the way they think/see the world than that of others.  While, certainly, my living situation was difficult, and I was constantly afraid, what I *feared* was never something that happened.  I was never beaten; no more than a skant few spankings.  I was never, have never been sexually assaulted or abused.  My needs were never neglected.  I was never told I was worthless.  And while I certainly deeply internalized various signals that my parents gave me which indicated nothing less than perfection was acceptable (and even that was simply what was expected), I don't think I ever really pushed or challenged such notions.  I never rebelled, I never fought back.  Never, against anyone but my mother, and even that was often because anger seems to be the only thing that makes her ever stop or change.

It wasn't until just thinking about it, though, that I realized my worldview is inherited from my father.  I, of course, already knew that.  One of my favorite stories from high school is when everyone in one of my classes was asked to describe one other person in the class for a new teacher and then we guessed who was being described.  At least 25% of the class wrote some variant of "cynical" for me.  I was surprised not only because they'd singled me out more than my peers, but also because I didn't think my skepticism was that obvious and memorable.  After all, how could anyone think anything else?

But "cynical," really, only captures part of it.  I didn't merely expect people to act selfishly.  I expected people to hurt others, intentionally or out of neglect, simply because that's the way the world worked. You could never trust anyone, you always had to have documentation to defend yourself, copies upon copies and always receipts. Your family would not protect, your friends would leave you when it was convenient, you were alone and lonely and while you would be nice to people it was largely because they'd hurt you if you weren't. And partly it was because people are ignorant and selfish. And partly it was because you're as bad or worse than they are.

I think that's how my father viewed/views the world. Through the lens of sexual abuse. A lens that is constantly dark, constantly fearful, constantly seeing threats in everyone, constantly seeing worthless and abject monstrosity whenever turned inward. "Love" is a word people say because they're supposed to care. But it doesn't mean a damn when it comes to protecting you.

If you met my father, he would probably smile a lot. And laugh. And he'd do innocuously sweet things like make it a priority to give treats to animals and buy things for you. You'd probably never see him angry, never see him yell or rage, never see him kick the same animals whenever they got in his way. He is an actor. Just like I learned to be. An actor who projects what's "good" so no one can see the immense pain, the immense fear, the immense resentment inside. An actor who tries to ensure you have no need to see the real person inside, a person you will undoubtedly leave and reject.

To an extent, that's me reading myself into him. But it's also me knowing where I come from. I have the worldview of the abused because that's who taught me what the world was like.

But I was not abused. Thank God. I was not abused, and I have the privilege of hope. I can believe that things can get better. But I also know that horrible things happen. I know that while my father's worldview, my worldview, is dark, it's dark because of what *has happened.* Not what could happen or might happen, but what *has* happened. Rapes, murders, torture, neglect, bitter isolation, learned self-hate, more more more, they *happen.* So much more often than the vast majority of us think.

Most people only care abstractly until it affects them, if at all. They don't "get it." And then when your loved one is afflicted or attacked, you look around and often have a hard time understanding why no one else is as pissed off about it as you are. Why no one else is as afraid, no one else is as confused, no one else seems to feel like you.

I don't want to be that way. I don't want to wait until I'm affected by something to care about it. I don't want to be a part of the problem until I have a reason to be part of the solution. Because I know that horrible things happen. I know that people suffer in ways to extents most of us privileged folk cannot, hopefully will not ever be able to imagine. And I don't want anyone else to end up like my father.  Because although he may be right, that people hurt each other, that people aren't trustworthy, that people are people, I haven't been hurt yet to the point that I think people are irredeemable.  I have the privilege of believing we can do better, we can be better. And if I believe it, then I don't see any other solution but to make that belief a reality. Or lose my hope trying.

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.

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...

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

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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

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

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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

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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.