Pardon Me, I Need to Rant

Alas, the time has come yet again for me to decry the ravings of fools.

And, truly, I don't mean to start off with an abusive or attacking tone, but those screaming sheer preposterousness for any and all to hear about people like myself... about trans people... well, it's difficult for me to see this in any serious light.

Firstly, to these people... not that you would probably ever really read this blog, but I speak to you anyway... You say trans people are mentally ill. You say trans people are simply confused. You compare saying that you're an animal... like a panda or a rhino... to being a human gender other than the one your appearance leads people to think you are...

...okay, see... that last thing you say... this is why I used the word "fools" to start the post. Because really, if you can't see the difference between someone saying their gender is more nuanced and different from most people's and SAYING YOU'RE A DIFFERENT FUCKING SPECIES... well, you a fool.

As far as the other nonsense above, this is actually REALLY simple.

Ready, here it is:

1. Who made you a doctor, such that you would know these things and can diagnose ill people? Do your numerous degrees in Psychology give you a deeper insight of the inner workings of the human psyche?
2. Are you aware that most mental health professionals recognize that trans people are not insane, and that a large portion of mental issues they may have are caused by society's attitude towards them? Do you realize that attitudes like yours make us crazy? Do you realize that your attitude, when tossed into the caustic din of attitudes like yours, costs us lives? Do you realize that when people constantly berate you and degrade you just for being who you are, that we're only human and, as steely as us transfolks can be, it eventually starts to hurt? Are you comfortable with inflicting pain on people for no good reason? And if you do think we indeed have mental issues, do you enjoy inflicting pain on those who have such issues?
3. Who knows more about a subject, someone who lives and deals with it every day, or someone who gets cursory glances into it through media blurbs that are quite often sensationalistic? Chances are that I don't share your job. Do you think after hearing 30 minutes of scattered news stories about your job that I could possibly know more than you about it? Do you think I would know anything at all about it other than what the name of your job is and maybe a really high-level understanding of what it is that you do? Do you think I could have many erroneous assumptions about your job? Can you now see that when you say the things you do about something you barely understand that you could be very, very wrong? Do you think you could possibly know more about gender and the conflict that it can cause than someone who lives with it, literally, every second of every day? Do you realize that trans people are supremely aware of gender and think about it all. the. time., and this includes researching and reading many things about it from a wide variety of sources? Do I need to go on?

Look, this is probably the most abrasive blog post I've ever written, but when you ask and ask for understanding and you get more and louder voices screaming back to you about how you're twisted and inferior, it tends to grate. All we're looking for is understanding. An open mind and/or an open heart. That's it. Can you strive for that, or would you rather stay mired in hatred?

Either way, I'm a fucking hippie at heart, so I'll send you love back, and hope, at the very least, that maybe you'll think twice before plastering hurtful words for your own misguided shits and giggles or to scratch at whatever itch you may have.

And for those of you who are awesome and supportive, I'm sorry you had to read through that, but feel free to send anyone who doesn't get it here if you ever get stumped in trying to get through to them.

I can't thank those in my life and other trans people's lives enough for the good that you do whenever and however you do it. You honestly don't know how much you help, especially when there are people saying the utter shit that this post addresses.

All the best to you all, always.

The Bounce

A few months ago I was enjoying a night of dining and drinking with a bunch of people I work with. One of these people, who is in the process of learning about me, though who knows I’m trans, was chatting with me. During the course of the conversation, I said something that I can’t even remember now, but whatever I said sort of took him aback. His response to my comment was a sentiment that I’ve heard thrown at me quite often, especially over the past few years. Basically what he said was…

“You’re one of those people aren’t you? You’re just….special. You’re an extremely good person who goes out of their way to be nice and respectful to everyone. I know so few people like you, that when I meet someone like you, I’m always amazed.”

And despite the fact that this is a wonderful thing to hear, I essentially shrugged it off.

This is because I knew what he said was true (well, with the exception that I always thought there were more people like this in the world than he made it out to be… though perhaps that’s just his experience). I also knew that people saw this kind of “specialness” (for lack of a better term) in me, because people have a tendency to tell me about it. I’ve been told something similar to this dozens of times, because apparently I have a “really good energy” about me or something.

Anyway, after he said this, he essentially continued with, “I especially don’t know how you do it, because if I was in your situation (read: trans), I would be mad at the entire world and wouldn’t know how to hold it back. So the fact that you’re exceedingly nice astounds me.”

Again, I shrugged this off, because, at the time, I thought to myself, What does being mean, angry, and mad do? It’s not going to change the situation, and it would really only make things worse. And while what this person said has stuck me with (obviously, since I’m writing about it), it’s not something I thought much about since then. Well, not until recently anyway.

The first time I admitted to having any trans-fueled feelings to someone was in 1998. I started hormones in 2005. And through all that time, while I have made great strides in the process of accepting myself and moving forward with this snail’s-pace crusade, the way I live now is STILL a lie. And even though the people closest to me—and perhaps even ALL my family and friends at this point—know that I’m trans (an achievement in and of itself), I STILL live a lie.

One of the gigantic reasons for this is because I have a severe issue with how I look. I struggle incredibly with my appearance. Actually, to be completely honest, I loathe my appearance… and I find it impossible to try to be true to myself while feeling the way I do about how I look, as I appear NOWHERE close to who I actually am.

My appearance, or more specifically my feelings about my appearance, holds me back in a MAJOR way and keeps me from publically jumping from the Male side of the fence to the Female side… which is something I desperately need to do. I’ve been saving money for years to try to address this in any way I can, and recently I thought I had FINALLY scraped enough together to make a good, solid push to address it so that I can FINALLY feel more confident about moving forward in this process… and, you know, just feel better about the everyday action of looking into a mirror.

So what I want to do (and have wanted to do since I first came to this I-am-trans conclusion) is have surgery on my face to feminize it, to make me feel better about looking at myself, and to help me make the huge and scary-as-hell step of entering the world in a way that is more representative of the person I am. (Though the thought of surgery certainly is frightening to me, but that’s a topic for a different post.)

After exploring what surgeries were available and how they could help me, I reached out to a surgeon, who is apparently excellent at this kind of work, and I had a good consultation. The next day his office sent me an estimated cost of the surgery. That cost was $28,000.

As I’ve mentioned, I have been saving for years to try to get the money together for this, but this price was FAR more than I expected it to be, and it sent me spiraling into a wild exploration of my options and what I could do to make this happen as soon as possible.

And, let me be clear when I say this, I need this to happen as soon as possible. This is because the way I’m living my life now has simply become agonizing. Every day I’m forced to endure living like this, and all the badness that comes along with not being your true self to pretty much anyone, is excruciating. To think of doing it for even another year is unbearable. To think of suffering it longer than that… well, that’s when I start thinking about giving up on everything and just yanking the power cord out on my life.

Yes, it is THAT painful, and destructive, and maddening. This is why trans people are so disproportionally self-harming. This is why over FORTY PERCENT of trans people attempt to kill themselves. Whatever you think about this situation, please keep in mind that the feelings associated with it can be THAT horrendous.

On top of this, I’m overwhelmed by bitterness that I need to spend THAT amount of money in an attempt to physically get myself to the point where I feel I somewhat coincide with who I am mentally, which is something that 99.9% of the population doesn’t need to even think about. (Though I do realize that people who aren’t trans experience body issues, and image issues, and all of that awful stuff. I’m coming at this purely from the whole contending-with-being-the-wrong-gender standpoint here.)

Despite all of this, I have recently been exploring options that basically boil down to taking a loan or using some crazy combination of credit cards just so I can get through THIS part of it. And I will say that while I make a decent salary, I would barely make enough to cover the not-at-all-extravagant expenses I generate now if you throw another huge monthly payment on top of it.

Still, if this was just for a few years, I could tighten my belt for this time and I’m sure I could navigate my way through it. The additional issue, however, is that this is just the first surgery for me, and the other surgery… the bottom surgery… is something that I also need to have as soon as I possibly can, because every day I feel wrong is another day that erodes at my will to go on. This surgery can cost up to $20,000, and I would then have to save for that, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I took a loan or credit card payment for this first round of surgery, because I would have exactly zero extra money to put away with the massive monthly payment the first round of surgery would rain down on me.

All of this, combined with a bunch of other factors in my life right now, are a swirling mass of stress and pain that surrounds me. And that stress and pain was insanely exacerbated when I finally got the strength and resolve to try to address this, and then just hit massive roadblocks that I don’t know how to navigate around.

The past few weeks have been a tornado of awfulness, and it’s certainly started to affect this nice, respectful person that was referred to at the beginning of this post. Because this pain is transforming me into a sullen, bitter, spiteful, hurtful, terrible person.

I’m an ardent believer that people have a good nature, and that when you see people acting in awful ways, it’s due to a pain they’re experiencing… either due to the fact that the pain makes them focus on themselves so much that they can’t see past it to see how they affect others, that this pain fosters anger in people and then they take that anger out on those that surround them, or the pain makes them so bitter that they just stop caring about anything and anyone.

This is the road I can feel myself getting pulled down. This once always-good person is now finding that I’m careening towards being someone who is so engulfed with bad that I am now taking it out on the people around me. I am not at all pleasant to be around. I can’t sleep at night. I can’t steer out of destructive behaviors, and I truly fear where all of this is leading me. I don’t know how to address it and I don’t know how to make it right.

I’m am trying, though… at least for now. Though, because of everything I described above, I had an EPIC meltdown over the past weekend that literally left me gasping for air. For someone who has undergone their share of stress and panic attacks, this is the worst that I have ever felt, and I am not exaggerating when I say that for a while I was keeled over in tear-ridden agony, uncontrollably shaking, nauseous, and hyperventilating, and then spent 24 hours in and out of overpowering crying fits and ugly tears, like to the point that I was amazed that someone could cry that much. And to top all of this off, also mixed into that 24-hour period was an insanely nasty fight between me and someone who I considered to be my best friend.

So, you know, life has been a cavalcade of fun for me lately.

All that said, I feel that 24-hour span was my rock bottom, and when you hit rock bottom, oftentimes you get a bounce, and with that bounce comes a much-needed catharsis that can clear your head and give you the resolve to move on with a little less burden, because you cleansed so much of that bad emotion from you through tears, and painful howling, and having most of your brain functions shut down just so you can process everything that’s screaming at you through all of these horrific feelings.

And so I try to find a way to muster on through this. I try to find a way to resolve these issues… but, that said, I feel like I’m doing so as a lesser version of myself, and as someone who has a festering overload of hurt and bitterness that forces me to not be nearly as good as I want to be to the people I come into contact with and to the people I’m closest to.

So, you may now be wondering, “Okay, emo kid, do you feel good that you dumped this mountain of shit on us?”

Well, no, of course I don’t, though one of the reasons I decided to write and post this was to try to find some sort of clarity and strength through writing about it and getting these thoughts out of my head and on “paper”. I also put this together to show just how much of a picnic this whole trans experience can be (since, you know, that is what this blog is about)… and yet all I continue to hear from certain people is that we’re dangerous because OH MY GOD THE CHILDRENZ IN THE RESTROOOMZ!!!111! (Again, a topic for another post.)

Lastly here, I wrote this as an attempt to tell people that one person’s pain is all of our pain. When someone is hurting, if affects them and their behavior, and will affect those that surround them. If you could make someone’s pain less, everyone’s interactions with them become better, as they become a better version of themselves. So I implore people to reach out and help others with their pain as much as they can, because in doing so you are truly improving someone’s life, and in turn, making this world a better place. One day soon I hope I can again be the kind of person that my friend from work described above, because right now, I feel as far from that person as I can possibly get.

All of this said, I’m actually going to leave you on a positive note.

In the time since this magnificent meltdown, I did indeed get that hitting-rock-bottom bounce that I mentioned above. Since then, I called about getting back into therapy, I reached out to someone about a trans support group (that I plan on attending next week), and, oh look, I’m actually writing again, which is something that has provided great solace to me in the past, though something I’ve steered away from over the last few years because I work as a writer, and with that being the case, sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get home after a long day is write for myself. I’m currently re-realizing just how helpful this can be, though, and I already have more writing ideas that I’m working on, which is good.

On top of all this, I have gotten some amazing support, care, and love from friends who realize the severity of what I’m currently going through, and I am insanely grateful for this and for them. Again, nothing but good.

While I am still not entirely well right now and still a lesser version of myself because of what I’m contending with, what I’m trying to get through, and the pain that this is causing me, through all of that I wish much love and nothing but the best to you all.

You May Be Right... I MAY Be Crazy

Essentially, I am magnificently sick of things being the way they are now. I keep pushing and pushing for things to get better, and they're not. They're simply not getting better. If you want to know why, it's because every single time I look in the mirror I can only think one thing, and that thing is: You're fucked. You are totally and completely fucked.

That's it. That's what I think when I get up and look in the mirror every morning, or when I'm in work, or even when I'm driving to work and I get a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror. When I see myself in the mirror over the sink while washing my hands in the bathroom, I think You're fucked. When I see my reflection in a car window, I think You're fucked. When I see my SHADOW, I of course go on to think this happiest of all the happy thoughts. You know, the one about me being utterly and fantastically fucked. Yes, that one.

Not surprisingly, I used to LOATHE looking at myself in the mirror, just because I thoroughly detested what I saw in there. It may sound funny, but I like looking in the mirror better now than I did before. When I look in the mirror now, I see the effect that the hormones have had on me, and that does make it easier to look upon any visage of myself. Still, I've been taking these hormones now for coming up on 4 years, and still, all I can think when I look at myself these days is... well, you get the picture. This is discouraging (to put it lightly), especially when you consider that there's not a whole lot that's going to make this situation any better.

Being the size that I am (6'4"), I'm just far too gargantuan for the hormones to even the playing field in any way. To complicate matters... I used to be rather heavy. I lost something like 70 pounds over the years, and I'm looking to lose some more weight (read: I'm still a bit overweight, making me even bigger than "gargantuan"). New weight loss, however, will at least make me look somewhat smaller. There's also the option of facial feminization surgery (or FFS), which would help me to look more as I feel, though where I'd get the 10,000 to 30,000 dollars for the appropriate surgeries is anybody's guess. Even if I did get the money, and had these surgeries, and lost weight, and whatever else, I still feel like it's never going to be enough. Yet I still go at this gender stuff full-bore, as I feel like I'm doing my best and giving my all in an attempt to simply be myself; even taking it to the point where it's meant chemically altering my body and spending ridiculous amounts of money while uprooting my life and the people in it. Fun.

These feelings I have, however, are a need... a craving... a longing... an obsession. They encompass everything I do at all times. It's all I ever wanted, and all I really want. It's the only thing that means anything to me on a personal level, and it's the one thing that I can never have. How do you live when that's what your life is about? The only thing that matters to you is the thing that you can never have. So, you spend the entirety of your life chasing this idea of it, what it is, what it means to you, hoping that it will ease some of the frustration, and self-hatred, and jealousy. You hope that it will help you to think straight, and to concentrate, and to just live your life without having these blinders of obsession on.

But the point to all of the above is that I'm never, ever, EVER going to get what I want out of life (i.e. to be unquestionably female), which really bites some sweaty ass, because nothing else in my life even matters to me in regards to what I want out of my life. NOTHING. It's not even CLOSE. I honestly don't even know what else I care about other than this. Now obviously I care about the people I love, but other than that, life sort of holds nothing for me. I have no hopes or dreams for myself other than to go through with all of this. Travel, sex, family, whatever... they have no meaning to me, and things of that nature offer me no solace. Especially when you consider that odds are very slim that I'll ever get married, or have kids, or anything like that. (Not only am I trans, which is a pretty big strike in the whole dating arena, but I have pretty high standards for stuff like this, so the list of potential partners for me is about all of 2 people on the planet; and chances are pretty minuscule that I'll ever even bump into them, since, you know, in the entire world there's just these 2 people... but I digress).

So, that's it. There's nothing else in life for me, because nothing on that personal level really matters to me... other than this. THIS is what's left. THIS. That's it. Just me and my fucking gender crisis. It's enough to make me scream for the entire year, starting right.................... now!

Okay, so I'm not screaming, and at times I think that maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Maybe this is just how it all goes. Maybe I just forget about all logic and everything I know, and I say, "I'm a girl, I've always been a girl, I was just born differently," convincing myself to the point where I don't even question the notion, which may induce some blissful ignorance into my life. Maybe I just start acting in any way that's going to make me faux-happy, because, as we've already established, I'm never really going to be happy. It's tough to be happy when your whole life is built around the crushing premise of being something that you can never be and living a life that you can never live.

You can call it whatever you want, but I've long felt that I will never actually be a true, "real", female. I'll be some wannabe fabrication of one. I'll always have a secret. I'll always feel flawed and out of place, and these feelings crush me on a daily basis.

HOWEVER... as with most things, there's another way to look at all of this:

I feel pretty insane by "normal" standards. This is because, while going through the process of changing my sex, I keep telling myself, This is insane... there's no way to win here... this is a lose-lose situation; and I think these things all the time. Yet I continue to do this. I continue to move in this direction. Pretty crazy, right?

Then you throw in the fact that when you start down this path, all of this stuff that you thought about for decades starts to come to pass. Things get more real. It actually almost gets to be TOO real, because there is a sharp contrast between reality and what you've been dreaming about for years and years. The reality of this situation, as I understand it to be currently in my life, is that this whole process simply isn't going well at all. The further I go along with this, the more feminine I look; and I look a lot more feminine than when I started. Yet, even after all of this, I look like nothing but a guy. But do I stop? Nope.

Again... This is insane and there's no way to win here.
Yet, still I go on.
Crazy.

So, why am I doing this then? Why would anyone do this to themselves, especially when they think nothing but the above thoughts about the entire situation?

There's only one reason I can think of as to why I'm doing this. That reason is: because I am female. That's just what I am, even if no one can see it or no one ever sees it. Even if people do their best to ignore it and to see only what the cover of the book tells them. Maybe I'm going through all of this pain, annoyance, loneliness, frustration, and everything else, because I actually AM female and I'm simply trying to bring that out into the visible world so I can better live my life as one (hopefully), and live as someone who I truly am.

This is the only answer to the question of why I'm doing this that I have at the moment, and it's a stark difference from the philosophy that I laid down before saying that I was more or less neither sex, and that I was something else entirely. If I am not female, however, then why would I be trying as hard as I am to live my life this way, even when I know that it's a no-win situation to go down this path, and no one is ever going to see me how I see myself (even if I go all the way through the process)? It's cost me so much... friends, family, opportunity, money, stress, worry, and major portions of my life lost to depression and the overwhelming, quicksand-like malaise that goes along with it. This has cost me SO much, AND I think that going down this path is nothing but a futile effort for reasons I delved into above. So, why the hell ELSE would I be doing all of this if I wasn't simply someone who IS female? Who else but someone who was female would deal with all of this pain and shit to look more like a woman and live their life as a woman, even if it'll NEVER be right? Who would do that???

Well, the only other answer I can think of to this question is that I'm crazy. You can call it that, I guess. What I defined above certainly sounds that way. Even if I am crazy, I'm certainly not harmful, and I actually feel like I function a TAD too well in the world to be truly considered crazy, and what even defines "crazy" anyway? Who makes that call?

So, this is the answer I have at the moment. Either I really am female (albeit with a gigantic, male-ish body)... or I'm crazy. I'd really like to think that I'm NOT crazy, so what does that leave me with?

All the best.