Decrying Gravity

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.

Well, I was warned.  I tried to do my research.  And I asked multiple people.  But I think, ultimately, I'm just the sort of person who needs to make mistakes and learn from them.  I don't know what I want until I find what I don't want and adjust for there.  So, when it comes to getting my hair cut, the main problem is not the actual cut-fail (or rather communication fail); it's the waiting until it can be fixed and looking like an emoboi while doing it.

In the spirit of learning, then, let's recount my fail.

First fail: I did not bring a picture.  I started to, but I was 1) afraid of bringing in a picture of a woman because, well, I'm afraid of transphobia and 2) I thought I'd be able to describe what I wanted without the picture.

Second fail:  Not describing what I wanted.  I am terrible with descriptions.  Just terrible.  I can't imagine physical alternations, I can't conceive of slight changes, I have no idea what I'll like.  So when I go in and tell the stylist "sideswept bangs," she makes some suggestions and she may as well be speaking Greek to me.  I tell her "androgynous if not feminine."  She's the expert, I have no idea how to conceptualize what I want, I defer to her judgment.  So she gives me sideswept bangs... and takes absolutely everything else.  She thinks I want gay.  Le.  Sigh.

Third fail:  Thinking people have communication skills like I do.  When I see a nervous person, I don't think "Oh, they're just nervous; they need positive encouragement."  I think "Oh, they're confused; they need a series of questioning and details about the options available to them, and the more dialogue to investigate."  When someone's really positive, I fall for it because I'm insecure.  So she was really positive, I assume it'll work out.  What I needed was for her to detail my options and walk me through everything.  Ask me specific questions.  Instead, I got her trying something on me since I didn't really know and couldn't describe.  I don't blame her, certainly.  But it's an important lesson to remember.

Fourth fail: Overconfidence.  I have improved in terms of confidence, but I am still easily terrified.  I got stage fright, panicked, and have to pay for panicking.

What's the cost of these fails?  $40 and seven months hair growth.  I get to look like an emo gay boi for a couple of weeks/ months.  And it'll be largely shameful to tell everyone why the hell I look like this after growing my hair out and loving it long.  But I've endured worse, I suppose.  It beats the hell out of high school...

Laser Hair Removal Therapy (Henceforce: LHRT) went a lot better, though.  The "aesthetician" (lovely title) didn't ever ask me why I wanted it, like I was afraid she would.  She didn't even question me to make sure I wanted something so permanent.  She just told me the mechanics, set up a regiment (6 sessions spaced 4-6weeks apart, "ear-to-ear," ~$715), and started zapping.  It felt like a needle being jabbed into my face, which wouldn't be so bad if it was one or two times.  But this was more or less unabated for 15 minutes.  It was good, yes.  Each prick felt like I was sticking it to my follicles, my masculinity, my pisspoor shaving skillz.  But it was intense, too.  Apparently, laser is the easy way; it used to cost thousands of dollars and possibly a few years to get things done with electrolysis.  I guess that's one benefit for waiting so long to transition, heh.

So good, bad, and lessons learned.  I only hope I can do better next time.

I have two posts halfway written, and even more I need to write.  But I think time is one thing I'm about to get an abundance of; my apologies for the disjointed nature of the next few days.  It's quite the transition.

Speaking of transition, I thought of Laura earlier.  I haven't talked to her since Valentine's Day, and I don't really anticipate that changing (save from random happenstance) anytime soon.  But, although she's not an active player in my drama, she' still very much a presence, and I think that bears attention.

Laura broke me.  That might be harsh, but I say that with the knowledge that she also, in many ways, put me together.  I was hers to break.  Before Laura, I was suicidal, self-loathing, perpetually depressed, often suicidal. I'd been that way, with brief exceptions, for three and a half years.  And then, in one swift week, I made progress in group therapy about my dad and, one afternoon, Laura came to my dorm, climbed into my loft bed, and kissed me.  It was never simple.  It was rarely easy.  But from then on, I had what I'd always thought I wanted: someone who loved me.

There's no doubt that Laura loved me.  Or, she loved a construction of me.  Whether of my making or her own (or, of course, both) is hard to say.  It wasn't even delusion; it was an authentic part of me.  But it was a part.  She never understood my depression, never understood my dysphoria, never understood the depths of despair I was capable of reaching.  But she loved what she understood.  And when the rest started becoming overwhelming, for myself and her, she found me different from the person she loved.  So, as people do, she stopped.

When she stopped, I broke.  For two and a half years, she had been my linchpin.  I looked forward to seeing her like I'd never anticipated anything before.  Just seeing her name appear on my Caller ID was worthy of flutters.  Her laughs, her drollness, her enthusiastic cuteness.  I do disservices to people with my descriptions. But even towards the end, she was the brightest force in my life.

Of course, part of the reason I'd always been so desperate for such a person, such a love was that I was incapable of fostering such positivity in and of myself.  I was a non-entity:  I didn't identify with my body and my mind was a twisted weapon of self-abuse.  I hated myself, found minimal pleasure in life, and, when left to my own devices, crumbled.  But with Laura, I could feel vicariously.  I could like myself, vicariously.  Hell, I could enjoy life vicariously.  And it was lovely, since I'd never done it before.  But it was still second hand.  And it was unfair, to her, to use her as a vessel for my fulfillment.

But she was also all I had.  All I had in the face of an increasingly bleak career-setting, a place of daily terror and inadequacy.  And when she left, when I no longer had any joy in my life, when I no longer had even vicarious hope, I broke.

It's hard to say how things might have been if she hadn't.  Impossible, really.  She's said that she couldn't handle my transition.  Maybe I wouldn't have taken so many risks.  I certainly wouldn't have leaned so heavily on so many people.  I wouldn't have flailed and floundered and felt so miserable for so long.  And I'd already started exploring the dysphoria before she left, so it's not as if she was the impetus.

But even if her departure was not the impetus, I can't help but think that it was the catalyst.  Finding myself in utter misery, lost and abandoned with seemingly no salvation in sight, I had to fundamentally shift my worldview.  Up til then, I had always opted for the "safe" choice.  I did not take risks, I did not rely on feelings, I did what was best for the greatest number of people, what was easiest (in the sense of nonconfrontation) for them to handle and for me to sustain.  I'll talk more about teaching, but, suffice it to say, it was the safe choice.  UT was the safe choice.  Ignoring my gender dysphoria was the safe choice.  Settling for possible contentment instead of taking a risk on happiness was the safe choice.  And all of these safe choices, all of these decisions made to minimize risk and chaos had led me to where I most feared: hating myself, hating my job, having no hope, and suffering it all alone.  Safety betrayed me.  Safety, ironically enough, was practically guaranteed to do myself harm.  And when Laura broke me, it was the culmination of years spent being safe only to find that I had been deluding myself all along.

So I was broken.  And where Laura had once built me, I had no one to do it for me now.  I had to rebuild myself.  And through a lot of counseling, introspection, thought, and feeling, I've been doing just that.  From that moment when I was broken, I was on a path to becoming a new person in so, so many ways.  Not the person I thought I should be but the person I was finding I needed to be, wanted to be, had to be to be happy.  And where once I needed another for acceptance and joy, I hope to be able to foster both within myself as I move forward.

Laura broke me.  But I'm not angry at her.  She reminds me of what I had and now lack, certainly.  But I think I needed to be broken.  I feel like I've been through a forge, steeled, hammered, molded into something more powerful, more durable than before.  I have hit the bottom, as I see it, and, in my privileged way, cannot easily fathom going lower.  Before me are seas of risk.  Tomorrow, I'm getting my hair cut.  And, if things go as planned, I'll look, at the very least, obviously androgynous if not feminine.  I'll start laser treatment, a "point of no return" which, coupled with the hormones, represent permanent alternations to my body in somewhat intimidating but so very freeing ways.

Before being broken, I would have been really scared about tomorrow.  Going into get my hair cut and telling a stranger I wanted to look like a girl.  Going into the laser hair removal place and, as a male, saying I wanted to permanently remove my facial hair.  In our culture, that's practically like castration.  In our culture, such things entail a great deal of risk.  But they're also both potentially quite rewarding.  And even if I'm rejected, those rejections simply cannot be worse than when I was broken.

I am forged anew.  I have a confidence, a stoicism, hell, an optimism that I've not had before.  I have a cadre of friends (and quite the diverse bunch, too) who have supported me throughout.  I don't want to say it will get easier from here.  Changing one's gender is not exactly an easy thing to do (the state of Tennessee says it's legally impossible, bee-tee-dubs).  But I have been through daily agony for so long, have seen the myriad hidden costs of so-called-safety, have experienced the void left by keeping one's self not one's self, and I can't help but think that this time, this time I'm building something that's worth the risk.  That won't need to be broken again.

Tomorrow is my last day of teaching high school.  Likely, forever.  And although I have been counting the days, for so many reasons, it's akin to ending a losing sports season: I will be glad it's over, but it doesn't feel particularly good.  It's not a metaphor I've really thought much about, truth be told, but it's apt.  Teaching high school, I've learned a lot.  About myself, about people, about authority and institutions.  I've had some positive influence, and I've tried to make my failures negligible in terms of actual costs to my charges.  But there is little doubt that I will watch the students rush from my classroom tomorrow and know, without a doubt, that I have failed.  I have lost more than I've won.  I have wasted more than I've created.  I have hurt more than I've helped.    I have disappointed, bored, underserved, and been deficient.  And it's a wound that won't soon heal.

Where the sports metaphor fails, though, is that every year, a team renews.  Every team is undefeated in the offseason, and hopes can't help but soar.  I have my hopes, certainly.  But I can't help but think that my previous defeat is a fundamental indicator of inadequacy, evidence pointing towards an unfortunate truth I cannot shake.

What am I good at?  Writing, I suppose.  I have a fluidity with language and expression that is fulfilling and has potential.  I am fairly rational/intelligent, although this is increasingly tempered by my wariness for absolutes and a fundamental lack of confidence undermining whatever good it might do me.  I am fairly empathetic, having experienced and explored a variety of my own intense emotions while striving to understand and explore the feelings of those around me.  I am witty, although this is both a blessing and a curse as it can easily overtake any sincerity I may try to foster either in attention of message.  And, largely, that's about it.

These are all decent things to be, I suppose.  But in terms of practical applications, I so often feel... inept.  As if I am lacking in some instrumental way, in a way that others do not, and without this je ne sais quoi I am doomed to mediocrity.  And I really don't want that.  I don't want to be the best at something, as if that could be measured.  But I don't think my life could have meaning if I wasn't evidently good at something valuable.  Good in a way that people notice, that makes me someone to be looked up to, referred to, cited as a model.  And I don't say that out of ego; I'd be glad to have such accolades go to a nom de plume or anonymity.  I just want to be good at something valuable.

Teaching, undoubtedly, is not it.  That's no great loss, I guess; I'd assumed as much since the onset.  But I'm really worried about discovering this again.  I'm worried that what I see as particular tendencies and skills that specifically lend themselves to certain paths might, in fact, be inherently mundane or misinterpreted.

And I wonder.  Should I have stuck with Math?  I was so comfortable with it; it calmed me and called to me. It was beautiful in a pure and idealistic way.  Where others struggle, I would sing.

But I made a choice.  I knew that such perfection was the stuff of fantasy.  The uncomfortable and nebulous beauty of English is what I opted for.  I sought ambiguity because it was real.  I wanted to dive into uncertainty, to engage in the pursuit of "truths," no matter how unpleasant, precisely because they were made of lives, not objective theorems.  And although my life might have been simpler, less challenging, had I pursued mathematics (or even had a chance to explore physics), I think I'd still make the same choice today.

So perhaps I am not good at something valuable.  Or, more likely, I will have to work for it, just like everyone else does.  I cannot simply expect to be good; I have to build and work for it and want it.  And I don't really want to be good at teaching high school.  Or rather, if I were to choose to be good at something, it would be counseling.  Lord knows I've learned and grown more with my counselor in the past year than in so many classes with so many good teachers and professors.  Perhaps more importantly, I've never been interested in education; I've been interested in humanity.  I've been interested in life, in the "real," in the calamities and compromises of our individual experiences.  English is one outlet for that, certainly.  But I'd like to think that counseling is a better one.

Perhaps I'm rationalizing my losses away.  It will be disastrous if I get into this brave new world and find it to be Teaching II: The Undeaducationing.  Perhaps.  But whereas, in the past, I would have started this post and ended it in the same emotional tenor, I've reaffirmed myself.  I've talked myself out of my decline.  I've found something, something I didn't have before.  And I hope that's the thing that makes the difference.  But first: tomorrow.

My name (or at least the one I was born with) is Dylan.  And I have a beard.

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

I've tried to start a few entries, but they aren't focused.  But I have one thing I simply must write.

On Wednesday, I gave a presentation of my research to the Fulton staff.  It went alright.  Most people commented about how they enjoyed the few jokes I told, a grim reminder of my fears of being a mere entertainer.  But that's as much their apathy as me not being more than wit.  I wasn't particularly good at articulating my research (I so rarely am under time constraints), but I did manage to stress the importance of relationships over academics in teaching.  That was my most significant finding, and I think it'll mean more to me than most of the other lessons I've learned (more on that later, probably).

But little did I know that Mr. Petko, my high school Algebra II teacher, the man who had inspired me to teach, to be more than an apathetic teenager, to care, was in the audience watching.  He's now moved on to supervising the county's math teachers, and lest I make him out to be the end all be all, he wasn't.  He was the man who taught me the value of enthusiasm, the infectious nature of passion, the extent to which a person can care about something and have that passion transfer to others.  He was the beginning of my queer brand of extroversion, my life as performance.  He brought something out of me that no one had before.  Of course, he was conservative, passive-aggressive, often bordering on fake in his Andy Griffith joviality.  He was a good man, though, and he gave me something invaluable.

He talked to me afterwards and told me he agreed with me.  He hadn't remembered any of his math teachers, yet he went on to teach math.  And he said that he remembers a time where his family couldn't pay the utilities and was just trying to survive, a time (during high school) when he justifiably so wouldn't have cared much for school.  But people at school cared for him, and that's what mattered.  And I told him that I didn't remember much Algebra.  I do, but it's not really helped me much.  I do, however, remember him and his enthusiasm.  What he did for me was more than almost every other teacher did.  No other teacher affected my personality so much.  Ms. Jackson taught me to write, yes, and she has her place in the pantheon.  But Mr. Petko, in an odd way, taught me to care.

Yes, it's possible that I could become that sort of teacher.  But when the academics seem notably secondary (pardon the pun), I'd much rather pursue a career where I can focus on those emotional and personal changes that do matter.  Emotional support is the cornerstone of connection and growth, and that's what I want.  I have learned that teaching, even if it's taken me awhile to reconcile that with my feelings of inadequacy.  I have learned that, though, and it is a lesson I don't want myself to forget.  Life's so much better when you care about who you are, what you do, and all of the things in between.  I think I'm getting closer to that.  So thank you, Mr. Petko.  And thank you teaching.  I'll be glad to go, but I don't regret having been there while I was.