Here I Am

Talk about leaving things in a cliffhanger. I mean, I post over five months ago about how I’m going to have THE surgery… about how I’m getting ready to take THE biggest and most profound step I’ve ever taken… and then I don’t write for almost half a year.

Well, you see, the thing is… it’s taken me that long to even BEGIN to know what to say about it.

I had surgery on December 27, 2017. It went fairly well. I mean, I’m still healing, so we won’t know final results for another few months or so, but at this point in the process and with what I’ve gone through so far, I’m pretty, amazingly happy.

There have been some complications, but nothing all too major as far as I can tell. Mostly it’s simply about dealing with the simmering frustration that comes with recovery. You finally reach a point where you almost feel back to normal, but you’re not quite there yet. You’re just on the wide periphery of healed, and the closer you get to the core of fully better, the more the impatience nags at you.

All that said, I still really don’t know what to write about. I don’t know how to sum any of it up. I have so much to say about it to the point where I can’t get anything out. It’s like a tidal wave of thoughts are trying to escape my brain through a keyhole, and it’s so excessive that it just gets dammed up.

What I do know is this…. I’m happy that I’ve had the surgery. In fact, I’m beyond ecstatic. I can’t even describe how much better, and clear-headed, and content, and giddy, and confident this has made me. Even with the complications. It’s like someone has been screaming at me for the past few decades and it’s finally stopped. Know that car alarm that goes off for WAY too long and it starts to drive you slowly insane? Imagine that going on for DECADES… then imagine it stopping. THAT is how I feel right now. A thought that constantly entered my mind in the first few weeks of this new experience was: I don’t know how to be this happy.

I truly didn't, and I'm still trying to figure out how to be.

This is all just SO very different, and even I have a difficult time wrapping my head around it. At times I don’t even think it’s real. It’s like I think I’ve somehow fooled myself and suddenly I’ll be reverted back to what I was. All my life I’d imagine SO intently what I SO desperately sought… I’d visualize it to SUCH a degree that I could almost fool myself into believing this blissful lie. Like if I concentrated hard enough, I could pretend I was already fixed.

But then, sooner or later, reality would come crashing in and destroy this illusion I so desperately tried to get lost in.

But… this time…. this time it is real. This time the illusion is that I’ll revert back to that painful feeling. This time the illusion is that I’ll ever have to feel that way again.

THIS is what this experience is like. It is SUCH a hard thing to encapsulate, and I try to even do it a modicum of justice with my description on this page.

Yet, with all of this said, there’s a bad side to it too. You see, I still very much and near unmistakably look like a man, even when I try to present as female. Now, I’m not the most girly of girls, and to be honest, I really prefer jeans and t-shrits over anything more fancy. I’ve always strived for comfort more than anything else. And what would be read as “comfort” on other women, gets read as “completely male” on me.

And even if I play it up… even if I throw on a dress and try my best to appear as “feminine” as possible to people who meet me, I still come across as male.

This makes me hide. Because it’s easier to hide than to deal with the disparity between my perception and the world’s. If I’m not trying, then it hurts less than if I try and still get the same treatment. It’s like my mind can justify it by saying, “Well, I’m not trying, so it’s not as bad.”

And so I hide. Both in the way that I dress, and in the fact that I barely leave my apartment and have become, for all intents and purposes, a shut-in.

My hiding has become even worse since surgery. Because when I’m here, alone, at home, I am INSANELY happy. When I’m not dealing with what the world reflects back at me, I am INSANELY happy. It’s like a drug, and all I want to do is feed that addiction and live in this altered state of reality, because the other version, the REAL version that lurks outside my door, is so very much more painful and biting.

Before surgery, I still had the pain of feeling wrong, so I would hide but still go out and do things to try to deal with and distract myself from this pain. Now that this pain doesn’t exist, it is VERY difficult for me to try to move in and around other people. I don’t even leave the house to go to work, because I can work from home pretty much any day I want to… and lately it’s been every single day. I haven’t been to the office in weeks. I’m telling myself that I’m going in tomorrow. I see even just telling myself this as a sign of progress toward eventually getting out into the world again… but we’ll see if I leave the house tomorrow morning.

Maybe this is only a temporary thing, though. Maybe I just need to be with this and with my new self for a time and process it all. I’m not certain, but I know that I’m still planning for the future and trying to find a way I can move more easily in the world… so that’s good, because at least I’m still looking out there. Maybe someday soon I’ll be a part of it again.

Until then, I shall stay in my happy little bubble.

Things could most certainly be worse.

All the best to you. Always.

White Coat Hyperstressing

A few weeks ago I had an appointment with a dermatologist about a shiny bump I had on my face (which turned out to be nothing to be concerned about). However, since I’m in my 40s and have very pale skin, the doctor suggested I come back in a few weeks for a full body check. I suppose this is a smart thing to do, but now it’s causing me a ridiculous amount of stress, as most doctor’s appointments tend to freak me out for various reasons, a lot of them having to do with the whole trans thing.

This anxiety is exacerbated even more because the procedure I’m going in for requires me to strip down, and, since I have been on hormones for almost ten years now, my body is a mishmash of two different sexes. 

Now all of this could turn out to be totally fine, and with the visibility and empathy that trans people have been getting lately, and with the fact that this office is in the heart of downtown Philadelphia (a very LGBT-friendly city), many of my fears should be allayed. Yet they still exist.

And these fears still exist even after writing all my medications (hormones included) on the patient information form I filled out during my initial visit. I also even had a conversation with the dermatologist and another doctor about some minor scarring that has appeared on my face (probably) due to the extensive hours that I’ve had a needle repeatedly stuck in my face during my electrolysis treatments. 

When I told the doctors that I was having electrolysis, they asked if I was just getting ingrown hairs and other similar problems addressed, or if I was having my whole face cleared. I answered that I was getting all of the hair removed from my face, and that was pretty much that. The conversation may have paused for a second, but then they jumped right back into what could be done to treat the scarring, and even talked about how their office offers laser hair removal (though that doesn't work for me due to my blonde hair).

I should have just told them that I was trans then and there, and that probably would have helped me either feel more at ease with my upcoming appointment… or realize that I should cancel it altogether (as I wish I could've with some of the other AWFUL doctor's appointments that I've had in the past). But that ship has most certainly sailed.

So, what I described above would make many people think that everything would be fine, and that I should just go down and not worry about it and get checked out. But I also want to go because I was MUCH heavier than I am now, and I have just AWFUL stretch marks under my arms that trail onto my back and chest. So I’m hoping that something could be done about this, as sleeveless things are SUPER comfortable to wear and also make me look a lot more feminine, but I would have issues with going out in public like that because (among other reasons) it looks like someone dug in and scraped a rake down my armpits.

All of this being said, I’m STILL thinking about cancelling this appointment, because this is how heavily the whole situation is weighing on me. And because the scarring I’m looking to have addressed is where it is (primarily talking about my chest here), I’m just SO filled with agita about it. I keep thinking about what I would have on during this exam, and how things would play out, and it just makes me nauseous with how much it’s making my head spin.

On top of ALL of this, I’m just INCREDIBLY annoyed that I feel this way, and that I’m thinking about being a complete coward and cancelling this appointment. This leads me into beating myself up for ALL of the fear that has rooted itself deeply into my psyche, not just with this doctor’s visit, but with the entire trans issue.

This very minor situation is making me realize more and more that I am utterly immobilized by fear, and me being trans is at the core of it. After all this time, and all the progress that I have made, and all the effort I put into trying to be okay with myself and who I am, I still can’t fucking bring myself to do it…and it’s killing me. 

And the fact of the matter is, what many friends have told me about the trans thing is more than likely true: “No one cares about this as much as you do. NO. ONE. Most people give absolutely no shits about it.” So why the fuck do I care so much? Why am I so mired in this horrible position and why do I keep doing subconscious things to keep me pinned where I’m at? How do I get past this fear? 

Well, I think I can start by realizing that people are who people are and they feel what they feel (even if it's open contempt toward me), and accept that fact and be who I need to be regardless of that fact. People being who they are should have ZERO impact on me being me. Other people should have no impact on me EMBRACING who I am, and not just grinning and bearing it. This is a lesson that I desperately must incorporate into my life, because even in spite of all of this, I’m STILL thinking about cancelling, and I have about two days to decide to do so. 

If anyone has any suggestions for how to get past fear, please let me know. In the meantime, however, I wish all the best to you, always.

The Retreat

As we all know, life can tend to get a little nuts. From time to time we all feel like we’re caught in the clutches of a raging shitstorm, getting battered and tossed about like we’re out to sea, riding through a hurricane in a dinghy.

It’s during these times, when you’re getting hit with blow after blow and you’re stumbling and reeling in every misguided direction, that you need to stop everything, slow it all down, and regroup.

When 2011 began, I was caught in such a maelstrom. I was being whipped and whooped by life, no matter which way I turned. In an effort that I thought would cultivate momentum and push me through the beating, I blindly plodded forward, making poor decision after poor decision and completely losing myself in the process. I was essentially a shattered shell of a person as last year began, and when something is shattered, you have two choices: either you throw it all out, OR you start the laborious process of piecing it all back together again. Since I didn’t really want to toss away my existence, I chose the latter route.

So, how do you start putting your life and your own self back together? Well, the very first thing you have to do is to get out of the storm. You have to retreat. You have to seek shelter. It’s impossible to build anything in the middle of a torrent.

For me this meant completely pulling back from social interactions and from people in general. Not that all of the people in my life were causing problems for me or anything like that, it was just that they all contributed to this din that was slowly crushing me. I had to remove myself from it and find center again. I had to find myself again, specifically the self that existed outside of all exterior influences. In short, I had to quiet all the noise so that I could better listen to the voice inside me that was growing more and more faint.

So, this past year I spent a whole hell of a lot of time alone. Not that I was secluded like a shut-in (side note: “Secluded Like a Shut-In” would be an excellent name for an album), but my social interactions were extremely limited. It was a lonely year, it was a sad year, and it was a very tough year to get through. By the end of it, however, I had quit smoking, I had lost weight, and I had saved a small but decent-sized amount of money. Most importantly, though, I had found my center again. I found the parts of me that were completely lost. I reestablished my identity on my own terms by figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be, and through that I regained my confidence.

I simply cannot stress enough how much confidence governs one’s life. As an example, I was on a trip once, cruising along on an empty mountain road, when I got hit with a mild panic attack that caused me to suddenly question my driving ability. Now I consider myself to be an above average driver, so it’s not like I had any doubts about this stuff before. It was just a rare occurrence that struck me one afternoon, and because of it, not surprisingly, I started to drive a little less straight, I had to pay a lot more attention, and the very simple act of rolling along this lonely, serene mountain road became a herculean task.

To get past this, I first had to stop these insane thoughts from coming at me. Then I had to simply trust myself again. I had to remind myself that I’ve spent two decades and hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel of a car. I had to know that I could do this and that it really was no big deal. Once I did that, once I trusted in myself, I didn’t have to think about the process of driving at all, and I just coasted along merrily.

The point to all of this, is that when you don’t trust yourself, everything gets 100 times more difficult, and when last year began I had absolutely zero trust in myself. So I retreated from everything, pulled away from most, and wound up regaining my edge, my mojo, or whatever other word you want to use for it. I began trusting not only in myself again, but also in who I am. By doing this, I rediscovered the following things about me.

Your smile is endearing.

You’re quick and you’re clever.

You can make people laugh.

You’re a delightful smart ass.

You can handle what life throws you.

You don’t care a smidge about what people who are unimportant to you think about you.

You can laugh at yourself and at the problems of day-to-day life.

You are able to understand deeply and love unconditionally.

You are a fountain of untapped potential.

You are worthy of any and all kinds of love.

And finally…

There is no one else exactly quite like you. Embrace it.

Yeah, 2011 was a BRUTAL year for me, but wow was it important. I think you can probably understand why.

I hope all is well in your world, that you know all of the many good things about you, and that you are feeling supremely confident. There really is no other way to live.