Making Myself Post
I've found myself not posting the last few days, mostly because I'm not sure what's in my head, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. But avoiding putting my thoughts on paper (or into pixels) because they're not finished or clear or prettily worded kind of defeats the purpose of this blog as a place to be honest and be real and work things out through writing about them and create a record of the process of figuring this stuff out.
To be honest, I don't know who - or what - I am, and that scares the crap out of me. Since I came out to my husband I've been mostly focussed on my marriage, on helping him dea with it, on being terrified of losing this amazing life we've built together and of losing him. I haven't been thinking as much about what I need. And part of me was thinking that maybe this whole thing was an exaggeration, something I'd bown all out of proportion. Not on purpose, and not out of a love of drama, but because it had been bottled up so long that it was concentrated. See, transition goes only one way - you cannot ever change your mind if you decide to do it. And if you don't have serious gender dysphoria before you transition, you will afterward. As if that weren't enough, which anyone who has dealt with it will assure you it is, you will also have destroyed your relationships with friends, family and significant others - both present and future - alienated yourself from society, set yourself up to be the victim of violence and possibly murder and potentially destroyed your ability to be employed or housed. All for a single mistake. On the other hand, the rates of suicide amongst transgender folk, especially those who choose not to transition, are enormous. One figure I heard was 33% - and I'm sure that doesn't include those who are in enough denial to have never admitted it to anyone. This thing, this nebulous idea of gender identity, is literally a life or death decision. And yet it's so vague. No one can pinpoint it, no one can tell you what yours is, no one is even certain whether it's a physical thing or a mental thing or a thing of the soul.
I've felt literally sick all day. I'm having cold sweats and I feel like I need to vomit or burst into hysterical tears or claw at my own skin. And I don't know if it's that I've been stuck as a girl for days now, since R's schedule has been out of whack and I'm never certain when he's going to be home, or whether it's that we're having money stress and that, on top of everything else, is just too much to deal with, or whether it's having my hormones fluctuate too much while I've been trying to get my perscription refilled, or whether it's something else entirely.
Some of the random thoughts that have been churning around in my head:
I've never liked the way I looked, and I've always avoided looking too much at myself in mirrors or in photographs. I'm not filled with self-loathing or self-conscious of my looks or anything. The opposite, in fact. What's bothered me most about images of myself is a deep sense of, "That's not me, is it? Do I really look like that?" I've never even used pictures of myself on any of my internet accounts, like FaceBook or Twitter or LiveJournal. It never felt like a good representation of myself. My guitar-and-books icon, I felt, showed much more of the true me than my face ever could. And I've never thought much about this. I'm hardly the only person in the world to not like the way I look, after all, and the sense of disconnect I have with my appearance seemed totally normal to me. I didn't exactly have any other experience to compare it to. But the pictures I have now, of myself as Tad, don't feel that way. They feel like me, in some inarticulatable way. Which is strange for pictures where I look so radically different than I ever have before. Shouldn't they feel strange rather than familiar? I also look disturbingly like my father, but that's a whole 'nother subject.
One of the videos I stumbled across on the internet the other day, called "Transgender Secrets" featured home-made signs people had created that expressed thoughts they felt they couldn't say aloud. One of them said, "Just because my gender dysphoria was caused by a hormone-producing tumour doesn't make it any less real, or less permanent." This caught my attention because my husband has been so focussed on this whole thing possibly being the result of some kind of hormone imbalance. I had an ovary that had been completely replaced by a fibroma, half again as big as a softball, and now I've gone into surgical menopause and am getting all my hormones from a pill. It's been a long, long time - if ever - since I've had normal hormones. This person's experience said that it's very possibly that my husband could be right - but it also said that that may not matter at all.
Another person, who had created a vlog of his transition, said that he had transitioned because of body dysphoria rather than social dysphoria, so he was amazed at how much more comfortable and happy he was socially since transition. I've definitely got more body dysphoria than social dysphoria (especially since I'm a misanthrope and a hermit and when I do hang out with people they tend to be just as oddball as I am) and I've really been wondering if that counted as transexualism at all. After all, I can't imagine my life being demonstrably different as a guy, so why would I bother to deal with all this crap and wrench my life through a process that will turn everything and everyone in it inside out if I can't even pinpoint with certainty why the change matters? So it was interesting to me that other people decided to transition and were offered transition as the logical treatment choice when they didn't have crippling social dysphoria. And more importantly, that they were happy afterwards. More happy than they expected to be, even.
I haven't done much dressing as a guy, yet. What I have done has been around other people: my husband, or my friend B. And I've felt so self-conscious when I do it, like I'm playing dress-up or putting on a role. But the other day I decided to take some pictures, so I dressed while my husband was at work. He came home not long after I finished and I had no idea when R would be home (he still doesn't know about any of this, which is a whole other layer of stress when he's an intimate friend and lives with us) so I changed back fairly quickly, but those few minutes I had alone without having to worry about how others were perceiving me or how rediculous I must look to think I can appear as a guy, felt very comfortable. Despite the special misery of the binder. Like, even though my body wasn't different I could still relax into my own skin just a little bit more than usual. I need to experiment with it more to see if that was a true reaction or a fluke. Next week R's schedule should be more predictable, so I may try living as a guy close to full-time and see how it feels.
Another strange realisation I had is that I am now a gender transgressor. I present as something other than my biological sex, at least some of the time. I'm one of those people I used to look at, half-fascinated, half-disturbed, and wonder how it felt to be them. I'm not sure what to think about that, yet, actually.
I had a weird moment last night on DDO. I was playing one of my female characters and somehow the conversation turned to how old we were and whether we were married. I mentioned that my husband played DDO, too, and then had this sense of panic about the fact that I knew they were assuming I was female. And I didn't know whether to disclose, or how to disclose, or what. But I felt really guilty about letting them think I was a woman. Even though, right now, I am. This is bloody confusing.
I don't have any conclusion from any of this. I just want to know what will make me happy and I have no idea how to figure that out. And I want to know what will make my husband happy, or at least what he can live with. And I want to not be hiding this anymore, to not have to worry about what people will say when they find out and what friends and loved ones I'll lose forever because of it. At least I feel better having written all this out, whether it makes sense or not.
To be honest, I don't know who - or what - I am, and that scares the crap out of me. Since I came out to my husband I've been mostly focussed on my marriage, on helping him dea with it, on being terrified of losing this amazing life we've built together and of losing him. I haven't been thinking as much about what I need. And part of me was thinking that maybe this whole thing was an exaggeration, something I'd bown all out of proportion. Not on purpose, and not out of a love of drama, but because it had been bottled up so long that it was concentrated. See, transition goes only one way - you cannot ever change your mind if you decide to do it. And if you don't have serious gender dysphoria before you transition, you will afterward. As if that weren't enough, which anyone who has dealt with it will assure you it is, you will also have destroyed your relationships with friends, family and significant others - both present and future - alienated yourself from society, set yourself up to be the victim of violence and possibly murder and potentially destroyed your ability to be employed or housed. All for a single mistake. On the other hand, the rates of suicide amongst transgender folk, especially those who choose not to transition, are enormous. One figure I heard was 33% - and I'm sure that doesn't include those who are in enough denial to have never admitted it to anyone. This thing, this nebulous idea of gender identity, is literally a life or death decision. And yet it's so vague. No one can pinpoint it, no one can tell you what yours is, no one is even certain whether it's a physical thing or a mental thing or a thing of the soul.
I've felt literally sick all day. I'm having cold sweats and I feel like I need to vomit or burst into hysterical tears or claw at my own skin. And I don't know if it's that I've been stuck as a girl for days now, since R's schedule has been out of whack and I'm never certain when he's going to be home, or whether it's that we're having money stress and that, on top of everything else, is just too much to deal with, or whether it's having my hormones fluctuate too much while I've been trying to get my perscription refilled, or whether it's something else entirely.
Some of the random thoughts that have been churning around in my head:
I've never liked the way I looked, and I've always avoided looking too much at myself in mirrors or in photographs. I'm not filled with self-loathing or self-conscious of my looks or anything. The opposite, in fact. What's bothered me most about images of myself is a deep sense of, "That's not me, is it? Do I really look like that?" I've never even used pictures of myself on any of my internet accounts, like FaceBook or Twitter or LiveJournal. It never felt like a good representation of myself. My guitar-and-books icon, I felt, showed much more of the true me than my face ever could. And I've never thought much about this. I'm hardly the only person in the world to not like the way I look, after all, and the sense of disconnect I have with my appearance seemed totally normal to me. I didn't exactly have any other experience to compare it to. But the pictures I have now, of myself as Tad, don't feel that way. They feel like me, in some inarticulatable way. Which is strange for pictures where I look so radically different than I ever have before. Shouldn't they feel strange rather than familiar? I also look disturbingly like my father, but that's a whole 'nother subject.
One of the videos I stumbled across on the internet the other day, called "Transgender Secrets" featured home-made signs people had created that expressed thoughts they felt they couldn't say aloud. One of them said, "Just because my gender dysphoria was caused by a hormone-producing tumour doesn't make it any less real, or less permanent." This caught my attention because my husband has been so focussed on this whole thing possibly being the result of some kind of hormone imbalance. I had an ovary that had been completely replaced by a fibroma, half again as big as a softball, and now I've gone into surgical menopause and am getting all my hormones from a pill. It's been a long, long time - if ever - since I've had normal hormones. This person's experience said that it's very possibly that my husband could be right - but it also said that that may not matter at all.
Another person, who had created a vlog of his transition, said that he had transitioned because of body dysphoria rather than social dysphoria, so he was amazed at how much more comfortable and happy he was socially since transition. I've definitely got more body dysphoria than social dysphoria (especially since I'm a misanthrope and a hermit and when I do hang out with people they tend to be just as oddball as I am) and I've really been wondering if that counted as transexualism at all. After all, I can't imagine my life being demonstrably different as a guy, so why would I bother to deal with all this crap and wrench my life through a process that will turn everything and everyone in it inside out if I can't even pinpoint with certainty why the change matters? So it was interesting to me that other people decided to transition and were offered transition as the logical treatment choice when they didn't have crippling social dysphoria. And more importantly, that they were happy afterwards. More happy than they expected to be, even.
I haven't done much dressing as a guy, yet. What I have done has been around other people: my husband, or my friend B. And I've felt so self-conscious when I do it, like I'm playing dress-up or putting on a role. But the other day I decided to take some pictures, so I dressed while my husband was at work. He came home not long after I finished and I had no idea when R would be home (he still doesn't know about any of this, which is a whole other layer of stress when he's an intimate friend and lives with us) so I changed back fairly quickly, but those few minutes I had alone without having to worry about how others were perceiving me or how rediculous I must look to think I can appear as a guy, felt very comfortable. Despite the special misery of the binder. Like, even though my body wasn't different I could still relax into my own skin just a little bit more than usual. I need to experiment with it more to see if that was a true reaction or a fluke. Next week R's schedule should be more predictable, so I may try living as a guy close to full-time and see how it feels.
Another strange realisation I had is that I am now a gender transgressor. I present as something other than my biological sex, at least some of the time. I'm one of those people I used to look at, half-fascinated, half-disturbed, and wonder how it felt to be them. I'm not sure what to think about that, yet, actually.
I had a weird moment last night on DDO. I was playing one of my female characters and somehow the conversation turned to how old we were and whether we were married. I mentioned that my husband played DDO, too, and then had this sense of panic about the fact that I knew they were assuming I was female. And I didn't know whether to disclose, or how to disclose, or what. But I felt really guilty about letting them think I was a woman. Even though, right now, I am. This is bloody confusing.
I don't have any conclusion from any of this. I just want to know what will make me happy and I have no idea how to figure that out. And I want to know what will make my husband happy, or at least what he can live with. And I want to not be hiding this anymore, to not have to worry about what people will say when they find out and what friends and loved ones I'll lose forever because of it. At least I feel better having written all this out, whether it makes sense or not.