The Disgusting Disguise I Wear at Work

After one long-ass hiatus, here I am, back again. I'm not all too sure how much things have changed in my life since the last time I posted to this blog, because I'm still stuck where I have been stuck for quite some time. The reasons why I'm stuck can mostly be found scattered throughout this site, and these reasons are being added to and examined for a few hours each month with my therapist... but this really isn't the reason I'm writing today.

So, the one thing that HAS changed in my world since the last time I wrote anything on here is that I have a new job. Though this job isn't exactly "new," because at this point I've been there for well over a year now.......annnnd this shows you just how long it's been since I've written anything.

Anyway, a new job is an interesting thing. You get injected into an entirely new situation and are instantly surrounded by a whole new cast of characters who you know nothing about, and who know nothing about you. It's like the pseudo-classic teen movies where someone goes to a new high school and becomes an entirely new person. There are zero expectations for how you're supposed to act (you know, within the confines of a professional environment) and who you're supposed to be. This, needless to say, can be very liberating.

The thing you have to realize, however, is that this liberation from your old self can also backfire. You can be so thrown by the unfamiliar that you regress into old thought patterns and behaviors. Things that you worked so hard to rid yourself of can suddenly swamp you like a flash flood, and you have to struggle like mad to keep from downing in the torrent.

This is essentially what happened to me.

Since I've started this new job I have become more and more unrecognizable to myself. For one thing, I used to be far more healthy and active, whereas now I feel like I'm the unhealthiest I've been in years. I also used to be exceedingly more confident in who I am and where I'm going, and because I had this confidence, I used to let MUCH more of myself show to the people I worked with. Now, on the other hand, I feel like I've donned a total disguise and I'm having great difficulty in escaping from it.

And yes, I know that people wear their masks at work. Who someone is in the workplace is quite often a shadow of the true being that they are. Okay, that may be overstating it, but if the person isn't a shadow of themself, then they are at least a slightly altered version of who they are, which is NOT an inherently bad thing. I mean, I don't think very many people want to emotionally expose themselves to the people they work with, and a degree of professional decorum is something that is most certainly called for, and something that I think the large majority of people attempt to cultivate. It becomes an issue, however, when you stray so far away from your core self that it renders you an empty husk that's filled and fueled by the reactions of others. Now I KNOW I'm overstating this just a bit, but here's what happened to me...

I have almost completely reverted back into Boy Mode bullshit, to the point where I don't even know who the hell I am sometimes. This not only scares me, it also pisses me the fuck off.

Why would I do this to myself? Why would I let this happen? Why would I waste all the years I strove to find who I am and all the work I did in the process? How can I just cast all of this off? Am I THAT much of a fucking coward?

Well, being that I've been going through this transitioning shit for almost ten years and I'm still completely mired in stagnation, if not out and out careening backwards, maybe I have to accept the fact that I am most certainly acting like a coward.

In work I talk different, move different, and act different from how I used to in the past, and this has even bled over into my personal life... because if you do something for 40 hours a week, how can it not? Comments that strike me as ignorant and offensive either slide right off me or I concoct feeble retorts so I can convey a modicum of my point of view without letting anyone even gain a glimpse of my truth.

I still do express my viewpoint to a degree (hooray for small victories and all that!), but I curb it. I hold back and I slap my mouth shut during situations where I should either fervently express my displeasure, or, at the very least, try to shed light on a situation that means SO. FUCKING. MUCH. to me.

For example, there's a guy I work with who seems to love pointing out that he thinks another male co-worker shaves his legs; like it's somehow the biggest, strangest thing he's ever seen. Now when he points this out to me my response is generally along the lines of, "Who cares? There's a lot of reasons why a guy would shave his legs. Maybe he swims, or he's a cyclist, or his wife digs it, or he just ENJOYS it. Seriously, who cares?"

Whereas Old Me would say something more like, "Oh yeah, so do I," and just wait to see his reaction. I used to get something out of pushing people's ideological boundaries and challenging their preconceptions. With the way I handle this now, however, I feel like I'm essentially hiding in a corner.

When I first started at this job, there was also a time where I was in a meeting with my entire department. During the course of this meeting the conversation turned to a former co-worker (whom I didn't know) who was trans. I don't know if I could have been more uncomfortable during this conversation, and while what they were saying wasn't like TERRIBLE terrible, it certainly wasn't good. And I didn't say peep throughout all of it.

Now being that I was coming off of nine weary months of unemployment, only a few months into the job, and still in the "contract" portion of the contract-to-hire thing (not to mention that four people got laid off that very morning) I felt that rocking the boat at that juncture probably wouldn't have been the wisest decision... and yet my self-hatred swelled.

And finally, just today a co-worker who sits next to me wanted to show me a picture that he took when he and his wife were in Thailand. Before I even saw it I just KNEW that it was going to be someone who falls under the whole trans umbrella. And of course it was.

He shows me a picture of a young woman. I say, "Yeah?" and he says, "That's a dude." To which I say, "Oh, she looks good," and he responded with a disgusted "BLECH" type of sound. This prompted me to say, "What? Do you have a problem with people like that? Why? It's not like she's hurting anyone." His response: "Dude, what's wrong with you?" followed by another series of revolting sounds... and I didn't even know what to say after that.

What made all of this even more bothersome is that I get along pretty well with this guy. He helps me out a lot with work, and overall I think he's a good and funny dude... well, at least from what I can tell from sitting next to him for 40 hours a week.

The fact that he doesn't know who I really am, though, or even have an inkling that I'm anything but what his assumptions tell him—which is, presumably, that I'm a straight guy just like him—was a pretty big reason why he felt he could share a picture of what was a fairly attractive girl wearing an over-sized polo shirt and some capris, and then go off about it. And the fact that she was wearing what she was meant that she wasn't like flaunting it in his face or anything, which I suppose can cause the easily freaked out to overreact.

The whole scene that went down today makes me loathe myself even more because I KNOW that visibility leads to normalcy, and normalcy leads to acceptance. I KNOW that suffering through a few potential moments of discomfort can go a long way in helping someone understand, and it could maybe even change someone's opinion about people in my progressively shitty position. Now I know one person may not seem like much, but if that one person understands, that's one small piece of the world that's better... and we all have the power to make that happen, myself included.

But instead, the conversation died... and I let all of this hurl itself around my brain and trouble me for the better part of my evening.

Maybe if he knew someone who he was friendly with and who was contending with this, it could help change his thoughts. Though, maybe if he knew this about me to begin with he would have just aggressively avoided me altogether. The latter part of this is impossible to know now, but the first part of it isn't. So what the fuck am I doing pretending to be something I'm not, especially to this degree?

I do not like this at ALL about where I'm at right now, and I adamantly vow to muster the courage to be more true to who and what I am in the future. I have realized my fault, and it sickens me. Now what the fuck am I going to do about it?

Thank you for reading, and all the best to you, always.

My Purple Post

Today is the day when people are asked to don purple in “honor of the LGBT youth who have committed suicide in recent weeks/months due to homophobic abuse in their homes and schools” (according to the Facebook page that seems to have started this movement). Additionally, there has been a recent spate of video pieces featuring numerous celebs and the like telling kids that "It gets better." 

These efforts are tremendous because teen suicide due to anti-LGBT bullying IS a horrible problem, and because it IS something that can be remedied by love, compassion, and understanding. And, you know, it’s simply just a good idea to give these kids hope, especially when they’re dealing with something that they may be having a hard time wrapping their head around, possibly with no one to turn to, and they’re forced to go to a school where every. single. day. can be a grueling gauntlet of teasing, harassment, and violence. Public shows of support like these help raise awareness, foster understanding, and they are things that can give hope to someone who has no hope left in their reserves. 

What I don’t want to get lost in all of this, however, is that while kids may be more vulnerable to pernicious treatment, and that things WILL get better after they can leave the cloistered high school campuses and expand their social bases, things STILL aren’t all ice cream and puppy dog kisses as an adult. 

As I addressed in an earlier post, the suicide rate for trans folks is over 30 percent. 3 out of 10 trans people will kill themselves. Because it’s just that much fun to be trans in society today. And even if you overlook these statistics, how many of these people are slowly killing themselves by other means, even as adults?

Even if someone doesn’t come right out and kill themselves (which is just staggeringly horrible), there are still a lot of other, more “quiet” ways to get the job done, and that’s what a ton of people in the LGBT community seem to do. Many studies have indicated that LGBT people have a higher incidence of smoking and a higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse than their heterosexual counterparts (not that cigarettes and alcohol aren’t drugs... but I digress). Sitting in support groups for people like myself, I heard a litany of horror stories centering around these kinds of abuses. It’s like life gets better enough so that you don’t kill yourself in one fell swoop, but it’s still bad enough and makes you apathetic enough about living to coerce you into the silent, erosive ways of killing yourself: smoking, alcohol, heavy drugs, etc.

Let’s face it, sinking into abuse is essentially a way of coping (for most). I know, because I’ve done it, and I’m still waging an on-going personal war against cigarettes. But shit, cigs—one of the worst things in the world for you, that, by the by, just happens to be one of the most addictive things in the world—have certainly gotten me through some tough, stressful, hopeless times. Maybe that coping mechanism actually saved my life at one point... I don’t really know... and that’s not really my point. I’m just saying that it’s not a coincidence that people who fall into the LGBT spectrum are more likely to smoke, are more likely to abuse heavy drugs and alcohol... and are more likely to kill themselves.

Again, SO much of this can be remedied by love, compassion, and understanding. Maybe reaching the haters starts with these poor kids who have to deal with so much. Maybe they’ll see these young and innocent people who are being destroyed by fear, misinterpreted doctrines, and xenophobia, and they’ll think on it, even if just a little. Maybe seeing the stories of tragic suffering that have been personified by these sorrowful incidents may stir something greater in their souls. Maybe these kids didn’t die in vain, and maybe, just maybe, their very public display of just how much they were hurting can make the world a better place for scores of other people. I’d certainly like to think so, as I’d like to think that something good, ANYthing good, can come from such heartbreak and tragedy, and that through all of this pain, things will truly get better.