The Trouble with being Trans [Therapy]
The Trouble with being Trans
Am I happy? Below is a (too long) tirade against shit.
You know, sometimes people ask me if I have any regrets over my surgery (way back in 2000). My usual answer is no, and it's true - I don't have any regrets over the surgery as such. It went smoothly, and apart from occasional bouts of urinary track infections. But there are other problems with being trans, and they seem to be problems with just who I am.
Maybe I'm just fucked in the head. I thought so when I was young. Thought I had a monster in me, but later realised that it was just epilepsy. hen I was a kid I thought I wasn't human, that I was somehow alien and had to be careful or I'd be "exposed" and that would be the end of it. maybe things are not so different now.
You know, I was smart enough to know "what I was" when I was thirteen, but not smart enough to know what to do about it. I hated my teen years - they seemed so more full of fear and stress than any other decade. But, but there seems to be stuff that I've bought into, maybe starting at this age, and still haven't worked through. If I was in "SubGenius Mode" I'd call this false slack - trying to be happy based on someone else's idea of what ought to make me happy.
Like Romance.
I see it everywhere: on the news (about celebrities, mostly); in movies; in TV series; novels; web comics; everywhere. And I don't know if any of it's true any more, or if Harlan Ellison got it right when he claimed that love was sex misspelled. Guess I sound bitter. Guess I sound disappointed. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm disappointed with myself.
Half the time at least I seem to be "clueless" when it comes to affection and relationships. Had two relationships, and both came out of the blue, and both ended in trouble and upset. Maybe that's the way of things for me. I've actively stayed away from the possibility ever since, but secretly wished something would happen. Used to hate Valentines day, still do, because all it seems to do is show the gap between what's "expected" and "what is" for me. It just heightens a feeling of emptiness in me. That great big black hole that threatens to swallow me up when I let my guard down.
It's like all those silly gestures, that never seem to happen to me. the only time I got flowers was early in my gender transition, when my case worker used the wrong name, and sent flowers to make up for it. Like drinks. Two weeks ago at Wake the Dead someone, for the first time ever, bought me a drink (two in fact!). Gasp.
First time ever. Shit. I remember back in 1996. I was living in a Trans Hostel in Sydney and out of curiosity, went to the Taxi Club with another resident. I got dressed up, and just wanted to have a nice night out. Probably the wrong place to go. Within five minutes this guy came up (he was an unemployed plumber from Parramatta who's wife had left him the week before) and wanted me to go home with him to have sex. No offer of a drink, no niceties, just a straight proposition.
Not impressed. I was just a piece of meat - or worse, a sexual curiosity - to him. A few years later when I met up with someone from the local Bi group it was much the same. Only I found out much later that that was the case. Guess I really wanted something more than just a sexual fling. Guess I wanted to feel more than just a "piece of meat".
Shit - how do I do that? My social skills seem very uneven at best, maybe because I spent most of my teens in a doped out haze of anti-seizure drugs and tranquillisers. I avoided social events and hid in the school library as much as I could. After school wasn't much different. I went to work, went home, and occasionally went to a games group/club or some local fandom event.
But of course there was that one big issue that also held me back. Knowing I was trans (or rather, being in denial of it), I was afraid of getting any further involved with anyone, in case it all came out. Hated role-playing games for the same reason. But I found other ways of coping. I had a big emotional investment in Perth SF fandom which last 21 years (until at one Swancon, I became suicidal), but it was only partially satisfying, and always I was left feeling an outsider.
Leaving Perth in 1996 was the right thing to do. But a geographical shift merely gave me an opportunity to start again - it didn't guarantee that I'd do better. And it's been hard in some ways ever since. I feel more honest in many ways about myself, but that doesn't make life any easier. I don't want to get to a point where I get suicidal before something changes for the better. And I am sick of certain types of shit. I am sick of dickheads and idiots who, because they think they know something about me (i.e., that I'm trans), feel obliged to insult, abuse and harass me. These things seem isolated, but they all add up.
I used to like going to Necropolis but gradually over time it seemed like I'd attract comments from blow-ins and even regulars of the club, or from the venue's regulars. Maybe I ought to have been tougher, but these things always happen when my guard's down.
I was harassed for six months when I lived in Carrington by local Aboriginal teens. That only stopped when it came to the attention of the local matriarch's attention and she told them to cease. But there was another group too, that would come by and kick in my front door. One day I caught one of them and chased him with the kitchen knife. Around the corner they were waiting for me. That ended in a stand-off, but could have been much worse.
I moved to Barnsley about the same time I started reading Tarot at Edgeworth Markets. I got "read" at the markets and worse yet, one of the stall holders lived in my street and gossiped about me in an obvious fashion, so that before I even got to know my neighbours, most of them knew me as a label rather than a person. When I used to walk Pegasus here, one person would always be on her front porch watching us as we went by, regardless of when that was - as if I was someone who had to be watched, less some mischief was done. Later, when Pegasus was stolen from me, I heard from a witness that it was her that had stolen him, but there was nothing directly that I could do. I got him back, but lost all trust of anyone down this end of the street, until this year, when a woman across the road fed my cats while I was away.
When I went to get chips up the road once, some kids were having a party (while the parents were away) and I got abuse shouted at me (in my own street) as I walked by. I walked back and did nothing (I was walking Peggy at the time) but once he was home I went back and confronted them, saying that it wasn't good enough and that I'd come back and tell the parents if it continued. It stopped dead. And later, when private school kids on the school bus regularly hurled abuse at me, I put up with it for too long. Finally I had enough, walked onto the bus and got details. I sent a letter to the Principal of the private school complaining and actually got a "thank you for letting me know" note from him, and a letter of apology from the student!
Such victories seem few and far between though. Most often it seems to be young punks in cars shouting abuse. Once I was walking Peggy in the bush, about 500m away from the road. Car goes by, and wafting through the air I could vaguely hear a shout of "Poof!" - from 500m away, they bother! What sort of fuck wits are these?! The other week I went out the front to get a community paper. Jeb was out roaming around and I went to get him. A car drove past, honked the horn (to make sure I paid them attention) and the driver made a rude gesture at me. And then yesterday, walking home, coping it again. Who are these people?
Maybe that's why I got upset on the link road. maybe it wasn't the car that they were jeering - maybe it was just me. Because yesterday, I think I got shouted at by the same bunch in the same car. And I've had enough. I feel like doing serious harm to someone - preferably those idiots. I was going to ram the buggers into concrete, but that didn't happen. Shit knows I've been thinking of (when I do drive) carrying a mallet in the car for just such occasions (I'll either throw it, or bash it). I friend told me to use brake fluid - if you put it on the car's paint, it eats it away!
And I can't see why not, because ignoring these cunts doesn't work.
Last year, when Watson came to house sit for me while I was in Perth (and wasn't that a shambles, as he only stayed for half the time), I told him that I felt like I'd been "running on empty" for the last two years. And nothing much has changed from then to now. I juggled finances for the last three years trying to keep my car on the road, and that's been an ever increasing nightmare. I've felt more and more beaten down by all the shit round here.
The trouble with being Trans is that I look like a target.
It seems that I don't "pass" with dickheads and bastards, who see someone vulnerable to victimise. And they never do this when I'm "ready" for them - only when my guard is down. It wears me down. Maybe I should move, but even if I could, why would it be any different any where else?
When I get away from here (like to Queer Collaborations, or to Palenville), which has been rare over the last few years, it helps. But I come back, and any good stuff I experience just hi-lights what it's like back home. On good days (like today) I'm centred and everything works. On bad days I'm isolated and everything falls apart. Only it's getting to the point where the bad days are starting to outnumber the good ones.
I just wish that I could collapse, and be caught by someone who could just hold me and tell me that it's OK; or hold me and whisper sweet silly things in my ear; or hold me and just make me feel like a woman; or just plain hold me.
Maybe I should sell this place.
After Palenville, I started to see a reason why I was here. It started to make sense. But I don't know if I have the strength or persistence to make that vision come true. I long for someone else to be here. Someone I can talk to, and if things go wrong, I can at least talk it out. But they don't come, because I don't know how to find them, and wouldn't know what to do if I did.
I know some of this is linked into self-esteem and body image. I feel fat and unfit. When I first started my transition walked everywhere and love 30 kilos - I got down to a weight of 90 kg. I could look in the mirror and see someone who looked sexy. But over the last six years I've just put back on those 30 kg - I'm now sitting at 120+ kg. This is not good. I had to re-string my corset to fit into it when I went to the Goth clubs. I just don't feel attractive. Shit knows I'm not expecting to be some glamour puss - an endocrinologist in Sydney once told me that at best I'd look like a "pioneer woman". Talk about a backhanded compliment.
Some of that might have to do with being on Dilantin for 8+ years. Found out that it was an androgen. Maybe I still look a little too "butch" for some (including myself), but 've had to find a "happy medium". With big feet I tend to end up with guys shoes because they don't sell women's in my size at the supermarkets and discount stores. If I was a 'petite' size there'd be no problems but I'm not.
Gasp, I can just go on and on and one. Maybe it's the glass of Port I had before typing this. Maybe it's just me being sick of being "the last apple in the barrel" (as I told Roderick at Wake the Dead). But I don't know how to change that.
So am I happy? Don't know (probably not in this respect). Would I be happy if I could change the above? I have no idea. Maybe it's all fantasy. Maybe it's just a way of not taking responsibility for my own happiness.
But I feel down.
Not all the time, but enough.
It's really hard to "bootstrap" myself out of this emotional hole.
Suggestions please.
Am I happy? Below is a (too long) tirade against shit.
You know, sometimes people ask me if I have any regrets over my surgery (way back in 2000). My usual answer is no, and it's true - I don't have any regrets over the surgery as such. It went smoothly, and apart from occasional bouts of urinary track infections. But there are other problems with being trans, and they seem to be problems with just who I am.
Maybe I'm just fucked in the head. I thought so when I was young. Thought I had a monster in me, but later realised that it was just epilepsy. hen I was a kid I thought I wasn't human, that I was somehow alien and had to be careful or I'd be "exposed" and that would be the end of it. maybe things are not so different now.
You know, I was smart enough to know "what I was" when I was thirteen, but not smart enough to know what to do about it. I hated my teen years - they seemed so more full of fear and stress than any other decade. But, but there seems to be stuff that I've bought into, maybe starting at this age, and still haven't worked through. If I was in "SubGenius Mode" I'd call this false slack - trying to be happy based on someone else's idea of what ought to make me happy.
Like Romance.
I see it everywhere: on the news (about celebrities, mostly); in movies; in TV series; novels; web comics; everywhere. And I don't know if any of it's true any more, or if Harlan Ellison got it right when he claimed that love was sex misspelled. Guess I sound bitter. Guess I sound disappointed. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm disappointed with myself.
Half the time at least I seem to be "clueless" when it comes to affection and relationships. Had two relationships, and both came out of the blue, and both ended in trouble and upset. Maybe that's the way of things for me. I've actively stayed away from the possibility ever since, but secretly wished something would happen. Used to hate Valentines day, still do, because all it seems to do is show the gap between what's "expected" and "what is" for me. It just heightens a feeling of emptiness in me. That great big black hole that threatens to swallow me up when I let my guard down.
It's like all those silly gestures, that never seem to happen to me. the only time I got flowers was early in my gender transition, when my case worker used the wrong name, and sent flowers to make up for it. Like drinks. Two weeks ago at Wake the Dead someone, for the first time ever, bought me a drink (two in fact!). Gasp.
First time ever. Shit. I remember back in 1996. I was living in a Trans Hostel in Sydney and out of curiosity, went to the Taxi Club with another resident. I got dressed up, and just wanted to have a nice night out. Probably the wrong place to go. Within five minutes this guy came up (he was an unemployed plumber from Parramatta who's wife had left him the week before) and wanted me to go home with him to have sex. No offer of a drink, no niceties, just a straight proposition.
Not impressed. I was just a piece of meat - or worse, a sexual curiosity - to him. A few years later when I met up with someone from the local Bi group it was much the same. Only I found out much later that that was the case. Guess I really wanted something more than just a sexual fling. Guess I wanted to feel more than just a "piece of meat".
Shit - how do I do that? My social skills seem very uneven at best, maybe because I spent most of my teens in a doped out haze of anti-seizure drugs and tranquillisers. I avoided social events and hid in the school library as much as I could. After school wasn't much different. I went to work, went home, and occasionally went to a games group/club or some local fandom event.
But of course there was that one big issue that also held me back. Knowing I was trans (or rather, being in denial of it), I was afraid of getting any further involved with anyone, in case it all came out. Hated role-playing games for the same reason. But I found other ways of coping. I had a big emotional investment in Perth SF fandom which last 21 years (until at one Swancon, I became suicidal), but it was only partially satisfying, and always I was left feeling an outsider.
Leaving Perth in 1996 was the right thing to do. But a geographical shift merely gave me an opportunity to start again - it didn't guarantee that I'd do better. And it's been hard in some ways ever since. I feel more honest in many ways about myself, but that doesn't make life any easier. I don't want to get to a point where I get suicidal before something changes for the better. And I am sick of certain types of shit. I am sick of dickheads and idiots who, because they think they know something about me (i.e., that I'm trans), feel obliged to insult, abuse and harass me. These things seem isolated, but they all add up.
I used to like going to Necropolis but gradually over time it seemed like I'd attract comments from blow-ins and even regulars of the club, or from the venue's regulars. Maybe I ought to have been tougher, but these things always happen when my guard's down.
I was harassed for six months when I lived in Carrington by local Aboriginal teens. That only stopped when it came to the attention of the local matriarch's attention and she told them to cease. But there was another group too, that would come by and kick in my front door. One day I caught one of them and chased him with the kitchen knife. Around the corner they were waiting for me. That ended in a stand-off, but could have been much worse.
I moved to Barnsley about the same time I started reading Tarot at Edgeworth Markets. I got "read" at the markets and worse yet, one of the stall holders lived in my street and gossiped about me in an obvious fashion, so that before I even got to know my neighbours, most of them knew me as a label rather than a person. When I used to walk Pegasus here, one person would always be on her front porch watching us as we went by, regardless of when that was - as if I was someone who had to be watched, less some mischief was done. Later, when Pegasus was stolen from me, I heard from a witness that it was her that had stolen him, but there was nothing directly that I could do. I got him back, but lost all trust of anyone down this end of the street, until this year, when a woman across the road fed my cats while I was away.
When I went to get chips up the road once, some kids were having a party (while the parents were away) and I got abuse shouted at me (in my own street) as I walked by. I walked back and did nothing (I was walking Peggy at the time) but once he was home I went back and confronted them, saying that it wasn't good enough and that I'd come back and tell the parents if it continued. It stopped dead. And later, when private school kids on the school bus regularly hurled abuse at me, I put up with it for too long. Finally I had enough, walked onto the bus and got details. I sent a letter to the Principal of the private school complaining and actually got a "thank you for letting me know" note from him, and a letter of apology from the student!
Such victories seem few and far between though. Most often it seems to be young punks in cars shouting abuse. Once I was walking Peggy in the bush, about 500m away from the road. Car goes by, and wafting through the air I could vaguely hear a shout of "Poof!" - from 500m away, they bother! What sort of fuck wits are these?! The other week I went out the front to get a community paper. Jeb was out roaming around and I went to get him. A car drove past, honked the horn (to make sure I paid them attention) and the driver made a rude gesture at me. And then yesterday, walking home, coping it again. Who are these people?
Maybe that's why I got upset on the link road. maybe it wasn't the car that they were jeering - maybe it was just me. Because yesterday, I think I got shouted at by the same bunch in the same car. And I've had enough. I feel like doing serious harm to someone - preferably those idiots. I was going to ram the buggers into concrete, but that didn't happen. Shit knows I've been thinking of (when I do drive) carrying a mallet in the car for just such occasions (I'll either throw it, or bash it). I friend told me to use brake fluid - if you put it on the car's paint, it eats it away!
And I can't see why not, because ignoring these cunts doesn't work.
Last year, when Watson came to house sit for me while I was in Perth (and wasn't that a shambles, as he only stayed for half the time), I told him that I felt like I'd been "running on empty" for the last two years. And nothing much has changed from then to now. I juggled finances for the last three years trying to keep my car on the road, and that's been an ever increasing nightmare. I've felt more and more beaten down by all the shit round here.
The trouble with being Trans is that I look like a target.
It seems that I don't "pass" with dickheads and bastards, who see someone vulnerable to victimise. And they never do this when I'm "ready" for them - only when my guard is down. It wears me down. Maybe I should move, but even if I could, why would it be any different any where else?
When I get away from here (like to Queer Collaborations, or to Palenville), which has been rare over the last few years, it helps. But I come back, and any good stuff I experience just hi-lights what it's like back home. On good days (like today) I'm centred and everything works. On bad days I'm isolated and everything falls apart. Only it's getting to the point where the bad days are starting to outnumber the good ones.
I just wish that I could collapse, and be caught by someone who could just hold me and tell me that it's OK; or hold me and whisper sweet silly things in my ear; or hold me and just make me feel like a woman; or just plain hold me.
Maybe I should sell this place.
After Palenville, I started to see a reason why I was here. It started to make sense. But I don't know if I have the strength or persistence to make that vision come true. I long for someone else to be here. Someone I can talk to, and if things go wrong, I can at least talk it out. But they don't come, because I don't know how to find them, and wouldn't know what to do if I did.
I know some of this is linked into self-esteem and body image. I feel fat and unfit. When I first started my transition walked everywhere and love 30 kilos - I got down to a weight of 90 kg. I could look in the mirror and see someone who looked sexy. But over the last six years I've just put back on those 30 kg - I'm now sitting at 120+ kg. This is not good. I had to re-string my corset to fit into it when I went to the Goth clubs. I just don't feel attractive. Shit knows I'm not expecting to be some glamour puss - an endocrinologist in Sydney once told me that at best I'd look like a "pioneer woman". Talk about a backhanded compliment.
Some of that might have to do with being on Dilantin for 8+ years. Found out that it was an androgen. Maybe I still look a little too "butch" for some (including myself), but 've had to find a "happy medium". With big feet I tend to end up with guys shoes because they don't sell women's in my size at the supermarkets and discount stores. If I was a 'petite' size there'd be no problems but I'm not.
Gasp, I can just go on and on and one. Maybe it's the glass of Port I had before typing this. Maybe it's just me being sick of being "the last apple in the barrel" (as I told Roderick at Wake the Dead). But I don't know how to change that.
So am I happy? Don't know (probably not in this respect). Would I be happy if I could change the above? I have no idea. Maybe it's all fantasy. Maybe it's just a way of not taking responsibility for my own happiness.
But I feel down.
Not all the time, but enough.
It's really hard to "bootstrap" myself out of this emotional hole.
Suggestions please.