Reeling in Recovery

In the tomes of literature I received from the doctor’s office prior to my facial surgery in November, I read a few things about how patients should try their best to stay positive in the weeks following surgery, and that depression or regret is natural. I certainly felt a tinge of that from the first surgery I had in contending with this gender bullshit that is the utter bane of my existence, but at least with my bottom surgery I also had the feeling that part of me was finally right… so there was a bit of internal harmony that drowned out most of the depression I felt when I was laid up, cloistered and healing.

The experience I have been contending with since my facial surgery in November has been quite different. I saw this surgery as crossing a finish line of sorts. I saw it as the second of two surgeries I wanted for decades, and that I needed to have so I could be the truest version of myself, fit this truest version of myself into the world, and grant me some semblance of internal peace.


Wow, has it not been that at all.


First off, I need to say that, even though it’s been three months since my surgery, I still feel pretty beat up. My chin is almost completely numb, as is my upper forehead and the crown of my head. I also now have an incision that crescents across the top of my head from ear to ear, and the scar is very visible because they had to shave that area to make the incision AND because the scar there is going to prevent a swath of hair from growing back. Couple that with scalp trauma from the surgery itself and the hair loss that seems to come from going under general anesthesia, and my hair has never looked worse and never looked thinner.

Add in to all of this, that while the surgery has helped soften me a bit, it’s still nowhere NEAR enough. While the frequency may be a little less than it was before, people who see me on the street still pretty much instantly “sir” me. In short, to the world… and to me… my face ultimately still looks male, and my staunchest hope in going through this ordeal is that this would NOT be the case.

On top of that, my neck and jaw still look SO wrecked that they may have looked better before surgery, and I don’t know how much, if any more, I'm going to heal.


All of this is CRUSHING to me.


People have told me, “Well, if you’re not happy, you need to tell the surgeon. You paid a LOT of money for this and he should be able to fix whatever you’re not happy with.”

But the thing to realize here is that: a) you can only do so much, and I kind of trust that the doctor did all he could, and b) if I have to go through the pain and discomfort of yet another surgery (not to mention cover the additional cost of reserving another operating room and anesthesiologist, which both aren’t covered by the surgeon), the very thought of it makes me want to dive headlong through my third-floor window and plummet skull-first into the concrete below.

I just can’t bear the thought, especially after going through the insane pain, expense, stress, and struggle of having two major surgeries in the span of 11 months.


But if all of this… if all I struggled DECADES to get to and get through... isn’t enough, then what do I do? There is nothing left for me that I’m planning on. There is nothing I can look forward to for solace.


Before the surgeries I had, I was depressed, and hurting, and upset at my situation in the world, BUT I lived with the constant hope that once I got these surgeries taken care of, it would be enough for me, and I would feel better.

Now that these surgeries are behind me, and there is nothing else I can point to that will help me live my life and help me fit my new self and my new life seamlessly into the world, I am beyond depressed. I am completely forlorn and utterly hollowed out. I am supremely bereft of hope. Because I know now, FOR CERTAIN, that no matter what I do and no matter what I struggle to achieve when it comes to this transition, that it’s not EVER going to be enough. People are ALWAYS going to see me as something I’m not. I’m ALWAYS GOING TO FEEL WRONG… ALWAYS. There is NOTHING MORE I CAN DO ABOUT THIS.

And with all of this weighing on me, I can’t think straight, I can’t be social. I hole myself up and avoid everything and everyone. I struggle just to make it through the work day and be constructive and it is enormously tasking just to do that. I have never felt this hopeless in my life. I have never felt this upset in my life. I’m trying to fight on and do whatever is next for me, but I have no idea what that even is, because with this plan there wasn’t another step. There were the two major, difficult steps that I took, and now there is nothing. There’s just me contending with the results and trying not to break down every other minute of the day… which is even more difficult every time I look in the mirror.

I feel completely crushed and I don’t know what I can do to make me feel better, if there is anything at all. It hurts in ways I can’t even describe. I feel like my life has careened into a dead end. How do you recover from this? What do you do next?


Well, if you’re me, you continue to go to therapy, and work on your weight and your overall health, and hope there is still some miraculous healing that’s going to take place and things can somehow still get better. What else is there to do? I’m stumbling like a beat-up zombie through the world at this point, trying to find any source of joy I can in what has suddenly turned into the most excruciating and painful time of my life.


And for those who say, “Well, you just need to learn to accept it,” well, they just need to learn what it is to be trans and about the pain that comes with it. They need to learn that THIS is what the experience is… you CANNOT accept it, because if you COULD accept feeling SO off and SO misunderstood all of the time, then you wouldn’t be trans. It is the VERY DEFINITION of what it is. You feel wrong. Always. I hoped that this would make me feel not wrong, and while the first surgery did to a big extent, it’s still not right. It’s STILL all wrong. It’s all wrong and I don’t know how to make it better.

THAT is what the experience of being trans is in a nutshell. Dealing with these feelings and trying to just hold on in the middle of a raging tempest. Though why I’m holding on at this point is anybody’s guess. Yet, I do. I honestly don’t know what else there is to do.


All the best to you.

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As an addendum to this post, actually writing this stuff down and getting it out of my head and onto “paper” has helped a little. I felt a bit of an uptick in my attitude from a few days ago when I first spit all of this out of my brain. I’m still plodding on the best I can and trying to take the best care of myself… even when the depression hit so violently that I heard cigarettes calling to me again after spending years with the habit pretty much kicked. I was just looking for that stress relief again, and, really, a distraction. It says something that I haven’t gone back to them yet, like so many other trans people do… because, let’s face it, when you have no hope, do you care about the damage that nicotine is inflicting upon you? Apparently I'm hanging in there enough to not go back down that path.

That said, I’m still not good, but I’m a smidge better than when I wrote this post initally. This being a blog about the whole trans experience, though, I felt it important to share the rawness of it all.


One final thing. Yes, I’m partially destroyed at this point, but I still do realize that people have gone through worse than this and that I do not hold a monopoly on life struggles. This is just my struggle… and while there are worse things to go through, it doesn’t make what I and other trans people are contending with any fun at all. In fact, it’s still pretty fantastically terrible.

Thanks for reading.

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.

The Decision Rests in Your Hands

As I have stated many times before—and in what has probably become the underlying theme of this blog—being trans is rough. You're tortured constantly, and getting the help you need is often a herculean task because a large portion of society thinks that you're more or less some perverted sociopath.

Trans people are born with this condition, and it's something we deal with and struggle with every day. We're good people who, just like everyone else, are simply trying to make our way through life and carve out our own piece of happiness; we just happen to be dealing with an excruciating set of circumstances in the process.

Now why I'm writing today is to say that things don't have to be so bleak for people like myself. There IS a way for things to get better for trans people.

The first thing that could make it better is eliminating the fear of the disproportionate amount of physical violence that is needlessly levied against us. 61% of trans people were the victims of physical assault and 64% were the victims of sexual assault—all simply for choosing to accept, deal with, and express publicly a condition that we were born with and attempt to cope with every day.

There's also the matter of employment. 97% of trans people have experienced some form of workplace discrimination, and the trans unemployment rate is TWICE what the national average is, with this number being even higher for trans people of color. In 34 states it is completely and totally legal to fire someone because they are trans and that person would have absolutely no legal recourse.

Could you imagine what it would be like to live in one of the states (as I do) where you can be fired simply for having this condition... simply for being who you are? Additionally, this monumental searing thing that is literally ripping your life apart is something you have to hide, and is something you can't express in any way in the workplace unless you want to live in fear of either being harassed on the job or fired.

Now some may say here, "What's the big deal? It's not that serious, because it's not like it's a life-threatening condition or anything." Well, these people would be wrong.

Being trans doesn't kill in the way that something as insidious and awful as cancer and a myriad of other diseases do, but 41% of trans people attempt suicide. 41%! (Compare that to 1.6% for all Americans.) And this 41% only takes into account the cases that are actually reported. Additionally, this doesn't address the more quiet ways to commit suicide. Over a quarter of trans people have misused drugs or alcohol (national averages are 7.3% for alcohol and 1.7% for prescription drugs), while over 30% smoke cigarettes (almost 10% higher than the national average). These numbers are so high for a reason. They are so high because trans people are dealing with something that causes severe and relentless mental anguish. So being trans doesn't kill by attacking and destroying someone's body; it kills by ravaging a person’s thoughts, emotions, and psyche.

And while people with other life-threatening conditions most often get care and compassion, trans people get treated with misunderstanding and sometimes revulsion. 19% of trans people were refused healthcare, 28% were harassed in medical settings, and 2% were the victims of violence in doctor's offices.

So, to put it lightly, people are SUFFERING because of this situation. BUT some of this suffering COULD be alleviated by making the road for trans people easier—by NOT treating us as pariahs, by fighting the violence perpetrated against us, by allowing us to go to work safely without fear of discrimination or the threat of losing our jobs, and by giving us access to healthcare and include in that healthcare the coverage for procedures and processes that will help us to safely deal with our congenital condition.

I'm very happy to say that there has been SOME progress. The Matthew Shepard Act expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Now some may question the effectiveness of this and other hate-crime legislation, but hey, it's a start. If it gets even one person to not attack another due to the fear of the severity of the penalty, then the law is working.

Legislation like the Student Non-Discrimination Act and the Safe Schools Improvement Act have been introduced in Congress, and the website stopbullying.gov has been founded—all of these are designed to help provide an environment where ALL students can feel safe to learn without fear of harassment. This is pertinent to what I'm saying here because, according to a 2009 GLSEN survey, nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment at school in the past year and nearly two-thirds felt unsafe.

There is also a proposed bill in Congress called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (or ENDA) that would protect LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace. This essentially extends to LGBT people across the country the employment protections already in place to cover discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, national origin, age, and other classes.

Personally I have been watching the progression of the ENDA through the years because this obviously concerns me a great deal. As someone who is "out" to almost everyone in my life, I still had to be ultra-careful about letting anyone in my workplace know anything about a situation that I have been contending with for decades. This was to the point of basically having to hide who I am to almost everyone I worked with, to the degree of taking up a very vague Facebook moniker so that acquaintances in work couldn't find me online. This is because something as innocuous as my Facebook profile could possibly have been the source of me getting fired or discriminated against in work, and if that did happen, there really wouldn't have been a blessed thing that I could have done about it, because trans people have ZERO protection where I worked.

But then there's this bill, and it would cover the WHOLE COUNTRY. No LGBT person would ever have to live with these kinds of fears, or, at the very least, they would be greatly lessened.

The kicker here, and the greater point of this post, is that most Democrats in Congress support the ENDA, and President Obama has also ardently backed it. Most (if not all) Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, would not vote for it, which is why this bill hasn't even gotten to the floor since the mid-term elections of 2010 when the GOP gained control of the House of Representatives.

SO... how could I ever possibly be expected to vote for people who would rather me and others like me live in fear? How could I ever vote for people who would never give me a second thought? How could I vote for people who think me sick and perverted? How could I vote for people who say that I shouldn't be allowed to have a job like a teacher because children should never be exposed to people like me? (Some—possibly a great many—also say and think these things about the gay population in case you were wondering.)

I will tell you FLAT OUT, if you vote for pretty much any Republican at the national level, you are voting for the continuance of these attitudes. You are voting for me and for the entire LGBT population to continue to suffer. If the Republicans have control over Congress, and especially the presidency, there is NO. WAY. that life will get better for me, people like me, or anyone else in the LGBT spectrum until they no longer have that control or there's a massive sea change in their entire party's platform.

Now everyone should vote with their hearts and vote for what they personally believe is right, BUT if you are voting Republican in this election, are the reasons why you're doing it strong enough and valid enough to counter the fact that me and people like me will continue to suffer?

This really says it all.

In contrast to the Republican viewpoint, Vice President Biden called transgender discrimination the "civil rights issue of our time" at a recent campaign event in Florida. Both he and President Obama have embraced forward thinking ideas about LGBT people such as endorsing gay marriage—the first time in history that this has ever happened from either a sitting president or vice president. So, there are people like this who are open-minded and concerned about the welfare of millions of Americans, and there are those on the other side of the aisle who are so adamantly against this idea that they want to pass a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to BAN gay marriage, which, by the by, would also effectively negate the marriages that have already been performed in an ever-growing number of states. Many, including Governor Romney, even balk at the idea of full civil unions for gay couples.

Additionally, there are many Republicans who don't want gay and lesbian couples to be able to adopt children, thereby depriving children in need a loving set of parents just because it offends them in some way. I honestly don't know how ANYONE could be in favor of that. It boggles my mind to a ridiculous degree.

And if you say that politicians are all talk, don't get anything done, and no matter what party gets power things will stay the same for LGBT people, I will say that during President Obama's first term: the Matthew Shepard Act got passed, Don't Ask Don't Tell got repealed granting LGB members of the armed forces the ability to proudly serve their country without fear of dismissal, benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees were extended... twice, federal employees could no longer be discriminated against on the basis of gender identity (protecting trans people for the first time), the passport process was made much easier for trans people helping to ensure that those like myself can do something as mundane as travel safely, and the list goes on and on.

With this established record on making the lives of LGBT people easier, if President Obama was given four more years and the Congress tilted in the Democrats' favor, I can only see this kind of progress growing exponentially in the future. ENDA will get passed, acceptance of LGBT people will continue to grow, and people like myself who are struggling like hell with this tormenting condition may even one day get coverage for the health care we desperately need. Things will get easier for millions of people, maybe even enough to stop over 40% of trans people from trying to end their very lives because the pain and the suffering is that great.

Though if this new extremist Republican party gains control of the government and they continue to be fueled by ignorance and hatred, it seems for certain that not only will there be NO progress for LGBT people, but things may indeed go backwards and millions of people who are already marginalized, like myself and many, many others like me, will continue to hurt.

So... what will you do now? The decision rests in your hands. Please vote and vote with where your heart leads you, no matter where that happens to be.

All the best to you all... always.

Sources

- 2009 National Transgender Discrimination Survey
- Center for American Progress
- National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report on Health and Health Care

- National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
- Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network