Decrying Gravity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucky me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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