the ripples that dance upon the surface, do they telegraph something more than external stimuli?
I’ve started writing something that I wanted to because I have been suffering from what I call ‘blankness’ every time I click the ‘post’ link on my livejournal. And while a snappy play-by-play account of my day might make thrilling reading for some it’s not the goal I have when I decide to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking) on that site.
I recently read someone else’s journal, and while I was pouring over this Idlewild’s “American English” came on the radio. This song was a big hit in 2002 when I was an undergraduate and it got me thinking about those days in Aberystwyth (where I studied) that were both special and sad for so many reasons.
I know I’m not that person anymore; and the change in me is more than just the cause of age and surgical intervention. I’m certain I’ve gained experience over the course of the adjoining years and I know I’ve become more rounded as an individual, but I know that I’ve have certainly lost something that I had back in Penbryn and PJM and Llanbadarn. I think that something was an emotion somewhere between ignorance and innocence. My life was insular due to my circumstances and I was comfortable in that soft yielding bubble. In hindsight I was happy but sad at the same time - this feeling is not uncommon for people hiding secrets from their friends - happy with the acceptance and camaraderie but unhappy in the knowledge that if I did tell my friends then what I was feeling in my heart I would have lost them.
In the end I left Aber to do my training and I lost them anyway. Then I came out and really lost them. I don’t think I lost them permanently, in fact when I returned for the reunion back in 2007 some were so supportive of me it was nice. It is just that is all a reunion is though - the process of reuniting former friends and comrades for a short space of time which is all too finite - and when it was over, and real life was restored I was left on the outside looking in.
I have new friends now, and they are good. But that person that I was back in 2002, I really miss them more. I don’t know why I do, that person was so unhappy throughout that year, or the latter parts of that year, that there were times when I felt like reaching for the pills again like I’d done in 2000 and revisiting Bronglais A&E dept.
I think though, seen from another angle, I’m sorry for that person. Because they put up with so much, and would put up with more in the following years, that the unhappiness they felt at the time became the norm. it established a normal baseline for their emotions. They were so used to feeling terrible that ‘average’ became ‘good’ and the thought of actually feeling ‘great’ was about as viable as taking a rollercoaster to the moon. I’d so want to be that person and feel how I feel now (current managerial situation in work aside). Happy, stable(ish). Well stable enough to live out of the family nest in an apartment that, despite the horrific heating system, has a truckload of character and charm. Being creative enough to take the chance to have my pictures exhibited and sold and the desire to take the next step with my writing.
The one piece of my life I’ve still having problems and issues with is my personal one. But I get that impression from friends that those issues are universal right now, it’s not only people like me having them. I split up from ‘friend with benefits’. I don’t see us having a relationship that could go anywhere; or at least go anywhere that I wanted it to. His drug use, alcohol and mis-feeling of my physical situation made the situation tenuous and the feeling I was getting was that I was being treated as his ‘bit on the side’ whenever he had the urge to get his rocks off. I mean, that’s what his hand’s for, he doesn’t need me for that and he wasn’t interested in doing anything else.
But then was I a bad person too? Probably I guess. It wouldn’t surprise me if I could be labelled as asexual. I like men and women, and I’ve gotten the vibes that people I have met in my travels over the past two years like me too, but I don’t trust anyone to get close to me. That severe sense of mistrust is still there, it has always been there ever since I was little. Sometimes I think anyone who was interested in me would - for lack of a better word and I don’t mean this in a sordid sense either - have to literally tame me before I would let them in to my innermost domain.
And to continue the ‘wild animal’ metaphor, I doubt most people would have the time, patience or inclination to talk me inside their house. Which is unfortunate I guess, and a little upsetting at the prospect of spending a period of time emotionally lonely. However I am getting work on this with my counsellor who has counselled many people like me stricken with the PTSD or versions of it. I hope that he can help me get better, because I so want to get better but I know there is no quick-fix to this. This is going to have to be earned, and if I’m honest when he plans to make me face 90-94 in a couple of weeks’ time I’m hoping he can not only expose the roots of these problems but he can plant some seeds of change that can take this negativity, negativity that I suffered at both the hands of others and my own defective body at that time and allow nicer more confident feelings to flower there instead.
But I still miss that loamy Aber smell. The rain, and the cold and the damp that rots the bones.
Which considering the damp we currently have in this flat bears a striking relationship to the Aber damp (distant cousin?) is remarkably odd.
I still remember the one day back in 2004 when a friend of mine, Jeni Gordon put me up for my third night of three in her new house she was staying in for her senior year. It was the day before my 25th birthday and after hanging out with her for the previous evening she said I could crash at her house for the last night, save myself 50 bucks on a hotel room and hang out. Her two other housemates were not there at the time so as long as I didn’t mind her cleaning the house obsessively and crashing in a room which was decorated with around a dozen copies of FHM magazine I was welcome to the bed.
I accepted. Her house was by the railroad track on the outskirts of town. And though it was a Sunday we walked into town in the pouring rain (it rains a lot in that town. As Abereans well know!) under umbrellas to go shopping for prom dresses. And that was there I bought my first prom dress for 35 bucks (down from 110!). Jeni was fine with me, easy with my transgender fears and happy in her cleaning of her new home while I made black tea (don’t ask about the milk) and we ate chocolate éclairs and pizza all evening.
The following morning I kissed her goodbye and left her in the little yellow split-level house by the railroad tracks to walk to the station in the summer drizzle.
Those are the days I miss. And I’m not sure why I do miss them but I do. Nothing major happened that day, no big event. But life just seemed simpler for me right then, trans-stuff be damned.
I asked my best friend kB to help me out when it came to my therapy and she wrote down a list of my Good Points and Bad Points a few weeks ago. I don’t remember all of the bad points but the one that sticks with me is ‘Weariness’. I came across to her, to everyone as being very weary or world-weary. I don’t think this is necessary a good or bad thing. I do think life is getting a little on top of me over the past 18 months and that can come across as a exhausted weariness of both body and spirit. I don’t know how to change this and keep my job, which as some know is one of the most physically demanding jobs I’ve ever had, I get very physically tired due to my physical limitations. I contracted glandular fever as a child and it hurt my stamina to a surprising degree. This was only increased following my transition and loss of testosterone to prop up my body’s energy levels. In addition to this physical setback I also have adopted an “eastern-front” approach to my life that I think at times can come across as being more self-destructive than I initially thought. But there are times when the words, actions, opinions and beliefs of others towards me, and those like me are very hurtful and I need something to keep me positive and upright. And the stories of those Soviets trapped in Leningrad or the Stalingrad resistance give me inspiration to stand against those who look down on me like I’m something that shouldn’t exist. Another example would be the story of the Beliski partisans, this tying into the Jewish theme which occasionally dogs me in work as well at the moment. If I’m honest it’s hard NOT to feel weary when all this rains down on you. But you endure and you try and fight on, though you know that you shouldn’t have to see it as fighting at all. But you do, and I don’t know if I can see a healthy positive alternative on the horizon at the moment, one that does the same job as ‘fighting’ but without the violent connotation.
I recently read someone else’s journal, and while I was pouring over this Idlewild’s “American English” came on the radio. This song was a big hit in 2002 when I was an undergraduate and it got me thinking about those days in Aberystwyth (where I studied) that were both special and sad for so many reasons.
I know I’m not that person anymore; and the change in me is more than just the cause of age and surgical intervention. I’m certain I’ve gained experience over the course of the adjoining years and I know I’ve become more rounded as an individual, but I know that I’ve have certainly lost something that I had back in Penbryn and PJM and Llanbadarn. I think that something was an emotion somewhere between ignorance and innocence. My life was insular due to my circumstances and I was comfortable in that soft yielding bubble. In hindsight I was happy but sad at the same time - this feeling is not uncommon for people hiding secrets from their friends - happy with the acceptance and camaraderie but unhappy in the knowledge that if I did tell my friends then what I was feeling in my heart I would have lost them.
In the end I left Aber to do my training and I lost them anyway. Then I came out and really lost them. I don’t think I lost them permanently, in fact when I returned for the reunion back in 2007 some were so supportive of me it was nice. It is just that is all a reunion is though - the process of reuniting former friends and comrades for a short space of time which is all too finite - and when it was over, and real life was restored I was left on the outside looking in.
I have new friends now, and they are good. But that person that I was back in 2002, I really miss them more. I don’t know why I do, that person was so unhappy throughout that year, or the latter parts of that year, that there were times when I felt like reaching for the pills again like I’d done in 2000 and revisiting Bronglais A&E dept.
I think though, seen from another angle, I’m sorry for that person. Because they put up with so much, and would put up with more in the following years, that the unhappiness they felt at the time became the norm. it established a normal baseline for their emotions. They were so used to feeling terrible that ‘average’ became ‘good’ and the thought of actually feeling ‘great’ was about as viable as taking a rollercoaster to the moon. I’d so want to be that person and feel how I feel now (current managerial situation in work aside). Happy, stable(ish). Well stable enough to live out of the family nest in an apartment that, despite the horrific heating system, has a truckload of character and charm. Being creative enough to take the chance to have my pictures exhibited and sold and the desire to take the next step with my writing.
The one piece of my life I’ve still having problems and issues with is my personal one. But I get that impression from friends that those issues are universal right now, it’s not only people like me having them. I split up from ‘friend with benefits’. I don’t see us having a relationship that could go anywhere; or at least go anywhere that I wanted it to. His drug use, alcohol and mis-feeling of my physical situation made the situation tenuous and the feeling I was getting was that I was being treated as his ‘bit on the side’ whenever he had the urge to get his rocks off. I mean, that’s what his hand’s for, he doesn’t need me for that and he wasn’t interested in doing anything else.
But then was I a bad person too? Probably I guess. It wouldn’t surprise me if I could be labelled as asexual. I like men and women, and I’ve gotten the vibes that people I have met in my travels over the past two years like me too, but I don’t trust anyone to get close to me. That severe sense of mistrust is still there, it has always been there ever since I was little. Sometimes I think anyone who was interested in me would - for lack of a better word and I don’t mean this in a sordid sense either - have to literally tame me before I would let them in to my innermost domain.
And to continue the ‘wild animal’ metaphor, I doubt most people would have the time, patience or inclination to talk me inside their house. Which is unfortunate I guess, and a little upsetting at the prospect of spending a period of time emotionally lonely. However I am getting work on this with my counsellor who has counselled many people like me stricken with the PTSD or versions of it. I hope that he can help me get better, because I so want to get better but I know there is no quick-fix to this. This is going to have to be earned, and if I’m honest when he plans to make me face 90-94 in a couple of weeks’ time I’m hoping he can not only expose the roots of these problems but he can plant some seeds of change that can take this negativity, negativity that I suffered at both the hands of others and my own defective body at that time and allow nicer more confident feelings to flower there instead.
But I still miss that loamy Aber smell. The rain, and the cold and the damp that rots the bones.
Which considering the damp we currently have in this flat bears a striking relationship to the Aber damp (distant cousin?) is remarkably odd.
I still remember the one day back in 2004 when a friend of mine, Jeni Gordon put me up for my third night of three in her new house she was staying in for her senior year. It was the day before my 25th birthday and after hanging out with her for the previous evening she said I could crash at her house for the last night, save myself 50 bucks on a hotel room and hang out. Her two other housemates were not there at the time so as long as I didn’t mind her cleaning the house obsessively and crashing in a room which was decorated with around a dozen copies of FHM magazine I was welcome to the bed.
I accepted. Her house was by the railroad track on the outskirts of town. And though it was a Sunday we walked into town in the pouring rain (it rains a lot in that town. As Abereans well know!) under umbrellas to go shopping for prom dresses. And that was there I bought my first prom dress for 35 bucks (down from 110!). Jeni was fine with me, easy with my transgender fears and happy in her cleaning of her new home while I made black tea (don’t ask about the milk) and we ate chocolate éclairs and pizza all evening.
The following morning I kissed her goodbye and left her in the little yellow split-level house by the railroad tracks to walk to the station in the summer drizzle.
Those are the days I miss. And I’m not sure why I do miss them but I do. Nothing major happened that day, no big event. But life just seemed simpler for me right then, trans-stuff be damned.
I asked my best friend kB to help me out when it came to my therapy and she wrote down a list of my Good Points and Bad Points a few weeks ago. I don’t remember all of the bad points but the one that sticks with me is ‘Weariness’. I came across to her, to everyone as being very weary or world-weary. I don’t think this is necessary a good or bad thing. I do think life is getting a little on top of me over the past 18 months and that can come across as a exhausted weariness of both body and spirit. I don’t know how to change this and keep my job, which as some know is one of the most physically demanding jobs I’ve ever had, I get very physically tired due to my physical limitations. I contracted glandular fever as a child and it hurt my stamina to a surprising degree. This was only increased following my transition and loss of testosterone to prop up my body’s energy levels. In addition to this physical setback I also have adopted an “eastern-front” approach to my life that I think at times can come across as being more self-destructive than I initially thought. But there are times when the words, actions, opinions and beliefs of others towards me, and those like me are very hurtful and I need something to keep me positive and upright. And the stories of those Soviets trapped in Leningrad or the Stalingrad resistance give me inspiration to stand against those who look down on me like I’m something that shouldn’t exist. Another example would be the story of the Beliski partisans, this tying into the Jewish theme which occasionally dogs me in work as well at the moment. If I’m honest it’s hard NOT to feel weary when all this rains down on you. But you endure and you try and fight on, though you know that you shouldn’t have to see it as fighting at all. But you do, and I don’t know if I can see a healthy positive alternative on the horizon at the moment, one that does the same job as ‘fighting’ but without the violent connotation.