Part III: The Lovely

Now's the time for the much-delayed conclusion to my "The Good, the Bad... and the Lovely" posts. If you remember, these were about three different experiences I had dealing with health care professionals while being trans. As I said, this is the third part, meaning it's time for...

The Lovely

It's the summer of 2006, and I'm driving in the direction of my mother's house. She's on the phone and I'm telling her that I have to go to the emergency room because I'm having chest pains and feeling dizzy and just in a bit of a daze. It's the middle of the week and it's around midnight.

She's telling me that I should go to one of the ERs in the neighborhood, because the wait will be much less there than if we go into downtown Philadelphia. At the time, she knew I was trans, but she didn't know that I was on hormones (i.e. doing anything about it), though I had been for just over a year. That being the case, I wanted to avoid these neighborhood hospitals and go someplace that promised to be a bit more accepting of my situation. I insisted that we go into town – to the hospital that was affiliated with the LGBT center that I was getting treatment at. Now I don't know what would have happened at another hospital, but in hindsight I feel safe in saying that going to the hospital I wanted to was very much the right choice.

After we'd gone through all the waiting, they finally take me back into an exam room. A nurse was there and he said that they wanted to do an EKG on me to check my heart. I was nervous to begin with, and getting this test done made it even more nerve wracking, because, like I said, I had been on hormones for over a year, and that being the case, I was starting to get some noticeable breast tissue. Still, the test occurred and nothing was said by anyone in the room as far as anything being abnormal about my appearance, though the nurse did tell me that there was something slightly irregular on the test. Of course, I got a bit worried about this.

I realized at that time that I had to let the nurse know what was going on with me and what hormones I was taking, just in case I was having some kind of reaction. Since my mother was sitting right there, however, and I figured that this was NOT the way to let her find out what was going on, I waited until she left and went back out to the waiting area. I then began to jitteringly tell the nurse that I was trans, and that I've been or hormones for a year, and that I waited to tell him this privately because my mom didn't know.

He immediately put any and all of my concerns to rest, saying something along the lines of: "Don't worry about this at all. I'm gay myself and we deal with people in your situation all the time. Don't worry about any of this stuff, it's all fine." And he smiled and he was super-supportive, and it was simply amazing.

After this conversation, I was sent back out to the waiting area. There I found my mother. We went outside to get some air and that's where I told her that I was on hormones, and that I'm telling her this now because they found something a little odd with my EKG, and they also said that there may be a chance that the hormones were part of the abnormality. Since my mother was at the ER with me, I figured she should know this.

My revelation, however, was met with her tears. That sucked. That was a bad, bad part of the evening. To try to comfort her in some way... in any way... I told her that I mentioned all of this to the nurse, what he said about everything, and in doing so, I told her what was the most important lesson that I learned that night...

There are going to be people who will be fervently against me and what I'm doing. It's just the way it is. Either they have a problem with it from a religious standpoint, a societal standpoint, through lack of understanding, or just out and out fear of the different. I get that people are going to be like this, because the news is inundated with stories of this kind of hatred and intolerance. What we often fail to see, however, is that there are people who will IMMEDIATELY jump to your aid just BECAUSE you're in this position. You get support from literally out of nowhere, just like I did by the nurse who was treating me who just happened to be gay himself.

I stayed in the ER overnight that night, and underwent a litany of test. I remember around 6 in the morning the nurse who was treating me earlier, and who I hadn't seen since the EKG, came into the little cube that my bed was set up in and said that he just wanted to check on me before his shift ended. He squeezed my hand for a second or two and told me, "Don't worry, sweetie, everything's going to be okay." Then he asked if I needed anything before I sincerely thanked him and he left.

So... not only do you get support from out of nowhere, but you also get support like this. You get support that will take people out of their way to make sure that you're okay. You get support in that people will look out for you. And I think that in this case it comes from an almost kind of kinship that people across the LGBT spectrum share with one another. There's a lot of looking out for one another, or so I've seen.

Additionally, there are people who aren't in this group who are just kind, caring, and supremely understanding people. They seem to truly comprehend two things about what I'm going through:

1) This is NOT something I chose.
2) It's DAMN tough to deal with.

And once people get these two things, it really seems like their heart opens up to you... and in amazing ways. When you hear story after story about trans people getting attacked, or murdered, or being fired from their jobs with no recourse, you tend to get more than a bit dejected. Then someone comes along and bowls you over with an intense act of kindness, and it's truly astounding. It smacks you in the face with hope and shows you just how insanely good people can be to one another. This was the first time I witnessed anything like this when it came to dealing with health care... and it was quite simply lovely.

Flying Blind... But Still in the Air

"Of flight or fly, This choice is left ye, to resist or die."
- Alexander Pope

It's been about 6 months since my last inspirational and uplifting post, and over 7 months since my last post of any real substance. In that time I've experienced a kind of "shut down". Essentially I just couldn't process and/or deal anymore. I didn't know what else to do, so I tried to shut off my brain as best I could. Seemed reasonable... or not. Actually, I think that it was more of a defense mechanism than anything else.

You see, the majority of my thoughts during the past months just flat out hurt. They hurt to think about. They hurt to dwell on. The hurt to write about. I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to think about being trans, or my place in the world, or just about anything really. I just wanted to be. If only.

Pretty much every bad thought about being trans had a few good kicks at my ribs (and/or my psyche) during that time, and writing about it would usually help to ease this. Writing would get these thoughts out into the open and help me to deal with them more. Writing would help me to see my way around them and maybe even find a solution buried in the ranting. In this case, however, writing made it worse, because I was thinking about an impossible situation even more than I had been. It mired me in The Bleak even more so than I was already. I couldn't do it. I no longer felt liberated and mentally cleansed after I was done writing. What I did feel was hopelessness, sorrow, and yet more hopelessness. Writing proved to be nothing more than an intense dwelling on the unattainable. I couldn't do it... and for years and years it had been my predominant way of coping.

What I have come to realize through this sunny stretch of time, is that what I want out of life is truly unattainable. I will never have it. And when you're hit with the realization that all you want out of life is the one thing that you can never have, it kind of leaves you in a "ready to die" kind of mode. Not a lot of fun. It was best not to exacerbate it. So, I shut my brain off to it and just tried to be... an especially black-or-white decision, since the alternative is NOT to be. Aren't I just SO fucking Hamlet-esque? Bleh.

The important thing here, however, is that through all of the shit... through all of the despair... through all of the life-loathing thoughts of suicide... I still plodded on. I still tried to be. I still tried to exist. Even when it seemed like everything in my world was telling me not to.

The key to this was staving off my constant thoughts of trans-like issues in any way that I could. Old bad habits resurfaced – overeating, smoking, not caring that I was overeating and/or smoking. The last of these being the most telling indicator of where my head was at. I mean, can you really give a shit that you've gained 20 pounds or that you're killing yourself slowly with cigarettes when you're just out and out apathetic about the very concept of being alive? If so, I'd have to think that it's pretty damn difficult to do.

All of the above came about (in short) because I truly realized what I stated earlier: I can never have the only thing in life that I ever really wanted, and the only thing in life that I really care to get out of it. Never. It's not going to happen. Ever. Never. Ever. Ever.

So... now what?

Well, here comes the part of my life where I completely reassess what I hope to get out of it, what I'm looking to attain in this world, and what steps I can/should take to salvage something good from the rubble of my utterly smashed hopes and dreams. It's quite literally cultivating a change of my entire perspective on the world and my place in it, AND doing this while still dealing with the fact that I'm oh-so desperately trans. I mean, that feeling isn't going to go away (and from what I've seen, it's only going to get worse). So, how do I deal with this issue – THE issue – inside these new parameters?

Well, first things first.

I am throwing away the lens that I used to view my life for so many years. I have to find a new one, and I don't think that's going to be a swift process. Until that time, however, I have to be okay with the fact that I don't have any real idea of where I'm going. I mean, it's hard to know where you're going when you can't even see.

Be well.