She calls.
Seven times.
She leaves three voicemails:
"WHY are you so hard to get ahold of?"
"What are you DOING? Call me back!"
"Aaaaaaggghh, you NEVER answer your phone!"
A Facebook message.
She calls on Skype.
I'm in the shower.
The Skype chime rings, and rings, and rings.
I get out of the shower. I call back.
"THERE you are! God, you NEVER answer your phone! What have you been doing all day?"
"Same thing I do every day, mum. School. Work."
"But you're never around! I call and call and you never pick up!"
"I'm at work, mum. I have to go to work during the day."
"We just never hear from you, that's all."
We talked for over an hour three days ago.
"Mum, what's up? You called a bunch of times. Is it something important?"
"What does Travis want for Christmas? Can you make me a list?"
"Sure, Mum. I'll send you one tomorrow."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm doing my homework."
"What kind of homework?"
"Nothing, ma. It's just notes for class."
"What else are you doing? Are you ready for Thanksgiving?"
"No. I haven't shopped yet."
"What do you mean you haven't shopped yet?"
"I haven't shopped yet. I'm going to do it tomorrow. I haven't had time."
"What do you mean you haven't had time? It's Thanksgiving."
"I haven't had time."
Silence.
"Well, I guess we'll just let you go, then." Her voice is pathetic, Eeyore-like. She turns the corners of her mouth down, stares at the floor. "We don't want to take up your time. We know how busy you are."
Is that why you called seven times?
"No, ma, it's not that. I want to talk, I do. I just don't really know what to say."
Frown. "Just say what's new!"
"Nothing is new. I do the same things every day. I just told you earlier this week everything that I'm planning to do between now and next weekend."
Silence.
"Well, that's sad for you, then, I guess."
Silence.
"I guess so. Sucks to be me."
Silence.
"We just want to talk to you, you know. We just want to be part of your life. I know there isn't much room for us any more."
Silence.
She talks to fill the gap. A friend of hers I haven't seen in ten years--she ran into her at the Fred Meyer, isn't that incredible? She has a ninth-grader, loved seeing pictures of the boys. She talks about parent-teacher conferences. She tells me my eyes are too dark underneath. She tells me all of this every time we talk.
Am I a bad daughter?
I'm leaving that word because it's the first word that came to mind, and maybe that's more telling than I want it to be.
Daughter.
Her daughter.
Her little girl.
"What have you been doing? Why didn't you answer the phone?"
"Where have you been all day?"
My job.
Being twenty-six.
Being an adult.
Writing a journal is stupid. I don't know what else to say about any of this.
My shrink calls it "emotional inertia"--a spring that snaps back to scare me away from real progress. Says that every time I start to feel something, to think something for myself, I wake myself up. I say "I don't know" because it's easier than working. Depressed people do that, she says. They become so detached from themselves that all they can say is "I don't know," "I don't know."
"You have to move," she says. "You have to work. I want you to feel something."
I want to feel something, too.
But I don't really feel much of anything.
I feel like a handbag.
I feel like an attachment--a vacuum hose, a PC peripheral.
Like I'm here to get a job done.
Like maybe I'm just here for display purposes.
Like my job is to feel her feelings, not mine.
You selfish bitch, you selfish bitch, you selfish bitch.
I don't know if I'm talking to her, or to me.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
A post that was left in draft for a long time that I just finished
When I was a little kid, I went through this phase where I thought that I wanted to become an astronaut. (It was 1995 or so, and my favorite show was Space Cases--had Star Trek entered my life around the same time period, my future might've coalesced into something entirely different.) I read books about NASA, watched space documentaries on television; I imagined what it might be like to take off in a rocket, to work on the International Space Station, to look down at the Earth from a capsule in space. It took me a few years to give up the ghost and let that dream die, pending a striking realization: I'd never really had any genuine interest in studying astrophysics or aeronautics, nor did I have any real desire to spend months working on the space station. My dreams, at the time, had hinged firmly on three concepts: being able to flip around weightless all the time, having an unrestricted supply of dehydrated ice cream, and being able to pee in my suit.
Nothing has changed.
I am the same naive child that stared up at the night sky and wondered whether sleeping in a space blanket was basically like being a burrito (I was a weird kid). I'm the same kid who pledged for nineteen years to become a pediatric neurologist, only to flunk out of my first college chem course and take up drama instead--and then, with a sudden raging ambition to work on Broadway, to summarily fail out of drama and flop into sociology as a last resort. I wanted to be a doctor SO BADLY for those nineteen years--I never doubted for an INSTANT that I would become one. I imagined myself in the coat, striding purposefully down hospital corridors, making life-or-death calls in the ER during my residency. I was fascinated by medicine--I read medical dictionaries, textbooks, and web pages incessantly, for years. I consumed everything I could about the medical profession. I got straight-A's in high school, took on extracurricular activities, everything I could think of to prepare myself for a high-quality college education and for my future in medical school.
And when I got into chemistry, I looked up at that blackboard, and I thought, "Eh, I never really wanted to do this anyway." And I left.
But I HAD wanted to do it. I'd wanted to do it DESPERATELY, for more than three quarters of my life to date. I was dying to do it.
Or so I'd thought. Had I? Had I really? How can I ever know? Clearly, I was unprepared for chemistry; clearly, I lacked a full understanding of what being a doctor actually entailed. If being a doctor meant I had to learn chemistry, I didn't want to be a doctor any more. How badly could I have wanted it in the first place? Maybe I just THOUGHT I wanted it--maybe I'd talked myself into it, kowtowed to parental influence, convinced myself to want it even though I didn't.
And my God--if I can talk myself into wanting something I don't really want, what CAN'T I talk myself into?
That's how I know that it's entirely possible I talked myself into thinking I'm a guy.
That's how I know that no matter how much I might think that I want to, I cannot and should not pursue surgery, hormone therapy, or any other form of medical transition.
If I can't trust my own mind, what the fuck can I trust?
How am I supposed to know what I want when I can make myself want anything?
Why, of all the ludicrous, impossible, unfathomable things, would I want to make myself want this?
Nothing has changed.
I am the same naive child that stared up at the night sky and wondered whether sleeping in a space blanket was basically like being a burrito (I was a weird kid). I'm the same kid who pledged for nineteen years to become a pediatric neurologist, only to flunk out of my first college chem course and take up drama instead--and then, with a sudden raging ambition to work on Broadway, to summarily fail out of drama and flop into sociology as a last resort. I wanted to be a doctor SO BADLY for those nineteen years--I never doubted for an INSTANT that I would become one. I imagined myself in the coat, striding purposefully down hospital corridors, making life-or-death calls in the ER during my residency. I was fascinated by medicine--I read medical dictionaries, textbooks, and web pages incessantly, for years. I consumed everything I could about the medical profession. I got straight-A's in high school, took on extracurricular activities, everything I could think of to prepare myself for a high-quality college education and for my future in medical school.
And when I got into chemistry, I looked up at that blackboard, and I thought, "Eh, I never really wanted to do this anyway." And I left.
But I HAD wanted to do it. I'd wanted to do it DESPERATELY, for more than three quarters of my life to date. I was dying to do it.
Or so I'd thought. Had I? Had I really? How can I ever know? Clearly, I was unprepared for chemistry; clearly, I lacked a full understanding of what being a doctor actually entailed. If being a doctor meant I had to learn chemistry, I didn't want to be a doctor any more. How badly could I have wanted it in the first place? Maybe I just THOUGHT I wanted it--maybe I'd talked myself into it, kowtowed to parental influence, convinced myself to want it even though I didn't.
And my God--if I can talk myself into wanting something I don't really want, what CAN'T I talk myself into?
That's how I know that it's entirely possible I talked myself into thinking I'm a guy.
That's how I know that no matter how much I might think that I want to, I cannot and should not pursue surgery, hormone therapy, or any other form of medical transition.
If I can't trust my own mind, what the fuck can I trust?
How am I supposed to know what I want when I can make myself want anything?
Why, of all the ludicrous, impossible, unfathomable things, would I want to make myself want this?
EVERY NIGHT FROM NOW ON, DAMN IT
The first step in posting more frequently is to actually post more frequently.
It's not that I don't want to post--I do, I really do. I feel better when I do--more in control, better equipped to process whatever it is that I'm processing. And it's not like I don't want a record of this time--if anything, with Travis being sick and the possibility of transition looming, I feel like I need a record now more than I ever have. This time will never come again, and it will never be as fresh or sharp or present or urgent as it is right this very moment.
But maybe that's why I can't post. Sometimes I feel like sitting down and committing it all to paper makes it feel too...fast, somehow, like if I put the time to paper it leaves my hands entirely. I feel like keeping these moments in my head--forcing myself to remember them, to constantly rehearse them in my mind, to be as viscerally present as I can make myself be in any given interaction so I don't forget it--means they stay mine. That's silly, though. If anything, I'm losing them up there--memory is hazy, and it lies, and I have trouble remembering to begin with, the urgency aside.
I'm very scared, sometimes.
I'm scared that there will never be enough time.
I'm scared that time seems to pass me by so quickly.
I'm scared that it gets wasted--that every second idle is a second misspent.
Sometimes I worry that all of this time is just trickling through my fingers--that all these years I could have been happy, could have been present, and I threw them away because I didn't know how to want. Other times I think that I've already wasted so much time, what does it matter if I waste any more? We make our beds, and we lie in them.
Some times--times like these--I feel like transition is almost inevitable, like it's falling forward, without me, out of my hands. I feel like there is no other way--that to go back would be heinous, a fabrication, a death. But the feelings change so quickly that I can't reconcile them, can't decide, can't commit--sometimes I feel the opposite, and for that reason, I know that transition is impossible, know that I could never, should never, would never think to do such a thing.
I waste time thinking about all of this, instead of studying for prelims.
But there's such an incredible effervescence to it, a brilliance, an undeniable strength some times, so rich I can't turn away, my thoughts absolutely captivated by it--this confidence, so taken aback sometimes by my reflection in the window that the laugh comes before I can catch it. I'm building strength. I'm building presence. I'm building a self. I feel so earnest, some times--convicted, drawn forward, compelled by destiny. I feel like I'm almost there, even if I don't know what "there" is.
But I don't know what it means to be a man, and I'm ashamed, and I'm scared. And I spend all my time stoned on pot, trying to still the crackle, the electric flutter of my nerves and my neurons and my neuroses, too full of knowing to admit what I know. So high right now, even, that this entry doesn't even make any sense, and ashamed about that, too.
What will I look like when I'm forty? Will I have crawled my way back into lesbianism, a butch bi-dyke with a punk haircut and an attitude? Will I be a nerdy, effeminate academic--the older self that my ten-year-old self imagined growing up to be? Will I be a guy? (Spoiler alert: If I'm not now, I never will be, and I shouldn't be, whether I think I'd fancy being or not.) What kind of a man could I possibly be? A man without a boyhood? A man who never learned to talk to other men? A man, no doubt, who could never be taken seriously.
But that man--he gives a great speech. He gave one this afternoon, and it was well received--a little shaky on the introduction, but altogether mostly well-executed, and with good presentation. He's young, inexperienced--a little shy, awkward around people he doesn't know very well, but he's improving with time. Today, he was ready. Today, he was confident. Today, he got up, and put on a suit and tie, and went before his colleagues and spoke without fear. He found his footing, and he stood.
That man doesn't know how he's going to do it yet, but he's starting to think he's going places.
Who (and what) am I to tell him no?
It's not that I don't want to post--I do, I really do. I feel better when I do--more in control, better equipped to process whatever it is that I'm processing. And it's not like I don't want a record of this time--if anything, with Travis being sick and the possibility of transition looming, I feel like I need a record now more than I ever have. This time will never come again, and it will never be as fresh or sharp or present or urgent as it is right this very moment.
But maybe that's why I can't post. Sometimes I feel like sitting down and committing it all to paper makes it feel too...fast, somehow, like if I put the time to paper it leaves my hands entirely. I feel like keeping these moments in my head--forcing myself to remember them, to constantly rehearse them in my mind, to be as viscerally present as I can make myself be in any given interaction so I don't forget it--means they stay mine. That's silly, though. If anything, I'm losing them up there--memory is hazy, and it lies, and I have trouble remembering to begin with, the urgency aside.
I'm very scared, sometimes.
I'm scared that there will never be enough time.
I'm scared that time seems to pass me by so quickly.
I'm scared that it gets wasted--that every second idle is a second misspent.
Sometimes I worry that all of this time is just trickling through my fingers--that all these years I could have been happy, could have been present, and I threw them away because I didn't know how to want. Other times I think that I've already wasted so much time, what does it matter if I waste any more? We make our beds, and we lie in them.
Some times--times like these--I feel like transition is almost inevitable, like it's falling forward, without me, out of my hands. I feel like there is no other way--that to go back would be heinous, a fabrication, a death. But the feelings change so quickly that I can't reconcile them, can't decide, can't commit--sometimes I feel the opposite, and for that reason, I know that transition is impossible, know that I could never, should never, would never think to do such a thing.
I waste time thinking about all of this, instead of studying for prelims.
But there's such an incredible effervescence to it, a brilliance, an undeniable strength some times, so rich I can't turn away, my thoughts absolutely captivated by it--this confidence, so taken aback sometimes by my reflection in the window that the laugh comes before I can catch it. I'm building strength. I'm building presence. I'm building a self. I feel so earnest, some times--convicted, drawn forward, compelled by destiny. I feel like I'm almost there, even if I don't know what "there" is.
But I don't know what it means to be a man, and I'm ashamed, and I'm scared. And I spend all my time stoned on pot, trying to still the crackle, the electric flutter of my nerves and my neurons and my neuroses, too full of knowing to admit what I know. So high right now, even, that this entry doesn't even make any sense, and ashamed about that, too.
What will I look like when I'm forty? Will I have crawled my way back into lesbianism, a butch bi-dyke with a punk haircut and an attitude? Will I be a nerdy, effeminate academic--the older self that my ten-year-old self imagined growing up to be? Will I be a guy? (Spoiler alert: If I'm not now, I never will be, and I shouldn't be, whether I think I'd fancy being or not.) What kind of a man could I possibly be? A man without a boyhood? A man who never learned to talk to other men? A man, no doubt, who could never be taken seriously.
But that man--he gives a great speech. He gave one this afternoon, and it was well received--a little shaky on the introduction, but altogether mostly well-executed, and with good presentation. He's young, inexperienced--a little shy, awkward around people he doesn't know very well, but he's improving with time. Today, he was ready. Today, he was confident. Today, he got up, and put on a suit and tie, and went before his colleagues and spoke without fear. He found his footing, and he stood.
That man doesn't know how he's going to do it yet, but he's starting to think he's going places.
Who (and what) am I to tell him no?
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Everything is old is new again (again)...
And how strange this fire, this figure
That draws such things from still and silenced hands
That calls me to write her
The gentle dark inside my eyes
A warm itch beneath my skin
The siren heart beating, beating
Until the wave bows back
Aching, crumbling, crushed by gravity
And the restless turning of the earth
I need to hold her
So intensely that I cannot hold myself
Tight in my cheeks, in my bow-string shoulders
The surging blood of every lost and agonizing Romeo
God, to sleep inside her voice
Is to know that my heart will never truly sleep again
And in her I hold everything
But my own compass,
A surrender spinning what was lost
With what might be
To love like this is to be possessed completely
To love like this is to inherit the earth
Monday, April 1, 2013
What dreams may come
I had the strangest dream last night.
I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing my teeth, and I noticed that my lips had become terribly chapped--they were cracked, little lines of blood rising up through the foam of the toothpaste. I stopped brushing, rinsed my mouth, and reached up to tug at a flake of dead skin, dangling from my upper lip.
But as I pulled, the entire lip came away--the skin tore up my face in a long ribbon, and without my prompting other strips dropped like water from my chin, and then the blood was everywhere, just pouring out of me like a fountain, and knowing there was nothing to be done, I stood aghast and watched the whole of me trickle down the bathroom drain.
I wonder what it means.
I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing my teeth, and I noticed that my lips had become terribly chapped--they were cracked, little lines of blood rising up through the foam of the toothpaste. I stopped brushing, rinsed my mouth, and reached up to tug at a flake of dead skin, dangling from my upper lip.
But as I pulled, the entire lip came away--the skin tore up my face in a long ribbon, and without my prompting other strips dropped like water from my chin, and then the blood was everywhere, just pouring out of me like a fountain, and knowing there was nothing to be done, I stood aghast and watched the whole of me trickle down the bathroom drain.
I wonder what it means.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
A new beginning, or is this the end?
I think I'm really going to do this.
I'm 25 years old. I've lived like this for so long, running, hiding, hoping to escape. And the more I think about it--and I think about it a lot--the more convinced I am that the only way out is through.
I heard this song for the first time a few days ago, and it literally brought me to my knees. It's by the Silent Comedy. I heard it as part of someone else's transition video, which I'm gonna go ahead and link:
I don't know what happened to me. I couldn't watch it all at a shot, with that song.
Oh my God, please help me
Knee-deep in the river trying to get clean
He says "Wash your hands, get out the stains
But you best believe, boy, there's hell to pay
Yeah, you best believe, boy, there's hell to pay"
I paused, got up, paced, came back, got up, paced some more. I left the room, went out and paced in the kitchen, stared out the window, came back, left again.
Oh my God, please help me
Waist-deep in the river, can you hear my plea
He says, "Son, you come like a beggar in the streets
You might make it, boy, but by the skin of your teeth
You might make it, boy, but by the skin of your teeth"
I could feel myself sweating. I beat my fists against my thighs, craving the sting, searching for the ground beneath the treads of my boots.
I've rambled with the worst of them
Fell in love with a harlequin
Saw the darkest hearts of men
And I saw myself staring back again
And I saw myself staring back again
I watched, listening, intent, until the music changed. Then the music changed, and I felt my heart surge, every thought I've ever had, wish I've ever made, every single emotion I've ever felt churning behind my eyes, and I talked to myself, but I don't know what I said.
Oh my God, please help me
Neck-deep in the river screaming for relief
He says, "It's mine to give, but it's yours to choose
You're gonna sink or swim, you're gonna learn the truth
No matter what you do, you're gonna learn the truth"
That song changed everything.
Ate the bread that once was stone
Fell from a cliff, never broke a bone
Bowed down to get the kings overthrown
And I'm all alone, and the fire grows
And I'm all alone, and the fire grows
I'm pretty sure that I'm running up against the closest thing to a religious experience I'm ever likely to encounter. I don't know what will happen to me next. I'm pretty sure everything will be okay in the end, but I don't know if everything will be okay in the beginning, and for that reason I don't know where to start.
My aunt Christy was diagnosed three days ago with Stage 4 triple-negative BRCA-1+ breast cancer. It's unbelievably rare--less than one in a million. Everyone in the family has to get tested now for BRCA-1, which is an "oncogene" responsible for many rare forms of breast and gynecological cancers in women, as well as prostate cancers in men. If it turns out that I have this gene, I will have to have a prophylactic mastectomy and hysterectomy--persons with active BRCA-1 have a 90% risk of developing breast cancer at some point in their lives, and a 65% chance of developing ovarian cancer, so right now prophylactic removals are the first line of defense.
When my mother told me that Christy was sick, my first thought wasn't even about Christy. It was about getting to buck the system. It was about hoping that I might get sick too--that they might take my breasts and my uterus and my ovaries and there would be nothing my mother could do about it, and I would have absolutely nothing to explain.
It makes me feel sick, knowing how selfish I am.
But it also tells me something else, because I meant it. For a few spasming seconds, I couldn't wait to get breast cancer. And THAT...well, that's something that's going to have to change.
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Sing, sweet charity
Take what's left of me
A new beginning, or is this the end?
Sing, sweet seraphim
Take me back again
Or watch me make the messes of men
I'm 25 years old. I've lived like this for so long, running, hiding, hoping to escape. And the more I think about it--and I think about it a lot--the more convinced I am that the only way out is through.
I heard this song for the first time a few days ago, and it literally brought me to my knees. It's by the Silent Comedy. I heard it as part of someone else's transition video, which I'm gonna go ahead and link:
I don't know what happened to me. I couldn't watch it all at a shot, with that song.
Oh my God, please help me
Knee-deep in the river trying to get clean
He says "Wash your hands, get out the stains
But you best believe, boy, there's hell to pay
Yeah, you best believe, boy, there's hell to pay"
I paused, got up, paced, came back, got up, paced some more. I left the room, went out and paced in the kitchen, stared out the window, came back, left again.
Oh my God, please help me
Waist-deep in the river, can you hear my plea
He says, "Son, you come like a beggar in the streets
You might make it, boy, but by the skin of your teeth
You might make it, boy, but by the skin of your teeth"
I could feel myself sweating. I beat my fists against my thighs, craving the sting, searching for the ground beneath the treads of my boots.
I've rambled with the worst of them
Fell in love with a harlequin
Saw the darkest hearts of men
And I saw myself staring back again
And I saw myself staring back again
I watched, listening, intent, until the music changed. Then the music changed, and I felt my heart surge, every thought I've ever had, wish I've ever made, every single emotion I've ever felt churning behind my eyes, and I talked to myself, but I don't know what I said.
Oh my God, please help me
Neck-deep in the river screaming for relief
He says, "It's mine to give, but it's yours to choose
You're gonna sink or swim, you're gonna learn the truth
No matter what you do, you're gonna learn the truth"
That song changed everything.
Ate the bread that once was stone
Fell from a cliff, never broke a bone
Bowed down to get the kings overthrown
And I'm all alone, and the fire grows
And I'm all alone, and the fire grows
I'm pretty sure that I'm running up against the closest thing to a religious experience I'm ever likely to encounter. I don't know what will happen to me next. I'm pretty sure everything will be okay in the end, but I don't know if everything will be okay in the beginning, and for that reason I don't know where to start.
My aunt Christy was diagnosed three days ago with Stage 4 triple-negative BRCA-1+ breast cancer. It's unbelievably rare--less than one in a million. Everyone in the family has to get tested now for BRCA-1, which is an "oncogene" responsible for many rare forms of breast and gynecological cancers in women, as well as prostate cancers in men. If it turns out that I have this gene, I will have to have a prophylactic mastectomy and hysterectomy--persons with active BRCA-1 have a 90% risk of developing breast cancer at some point in their lives, and a 65% chance of developing ovarian cancer, so right now prophylactic removals are the first line of defense.
When my mother told me that Christy was sick, my first thought wasn't even about Christy. It was about getting to buck the system. It was about hoping that I might get sick too--that they might take my breasts and my uterus and my ovaries and there would be nothing my mother could do about it, and I would have absolutely nothing to explain.
It makes me feel sick, knowing how selfish I am.
But it also tells me something else, because I meant it. For a few spasming seconds, I couldn't wait to get breast cancer. And THAT...well, that's something that's going to have to change.
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Sing, sweet charity
Take what's left of me
A new beginning, or is this the end?
Sing, sweet seraphim
Take me back again
Or watch me make the messes of men
Friday, January 11, 2013
Dancing with myself
My therapist keeps asking me whether I ever "felt different" from my peers, growing up. I did, but not in the way I think he expects.
I think what he wants me to say is that I always knew I was a tomboy. That I tore the ribbons from my hair and threw tantrums over dresses, that I shopped in the boys' section from the time I was five years old, that I told my parents to call me "Mel" or "Melvin" as soon as I was old enough to talk. He wants me to say that I looked in the mirror and knew that my body wasn't mine. He wants me to say that I traded my Easy-Bake Oven for the neighbor boy's ride-on tractor, that I cried when I got my first period, that I wore five layers of clothing to hide developing breasts. He wants me to say that I've always known I was different--that I was not a girl.
None of those things happened, of course...except for that very last.
I have always known that I was different.
Different from the girls, of course--different from every single girl I knew, and radically so (as they were all too quick to remind me). But beyond that. Different from the girls, different from the boys--just different, profoundly and irreconcilably different, as far back as I can remember, before school, before language, I was as strange as they come.
That, in itself, sounds like an incredible conceit. Perhaps I've always been this narcissistic. Maybe that's my only real problem, here--shameless, irredeemable self-involvement.
But that in itself is strange. And I have always been strange. Not just different--certainly I was awkward, clumsy, "nerdy," out-of-sync, all the sundry attributes that contribute to childhood isolation, but at the same time, there was (and often is) something so far beyond that that it becomes difficult to articulate.
As far back as I can remember, I have felt...alien. There's really no other way to put it. Sometimes, I feel such a total disconnect between myself and my surroundings--so all-consumingly "Other"--that I have to remind myself that I am even human. I have to work damn hard to place myself within the context of my kind--my gender, sure, but everything else, too, the totality of my being, everything so palpably off about me that it goes way beyond anything I think my therapist will be able to resolve.
Sometimes, I feel like I can't even trust my own reasoning--like I have the power to deceive myself, to con myself into believing the impossible, the power to will things to life. Sometimes I feel like there IS no "essence" inside me, no doer behind the deed--like I'm just a pile of other people's ideas, a reproduction, a regurgitated synthesis of someone else's truths. I feel like I am no one. Of course I have never been a girl. I have never been anything.
I feel different. I will always feel different. But where the therapist thinks that this anomie will dissipate given adequate quantities of testosterone, I know otherwise. Changing my sex will not save me, for I have never felt my sex was "wrong"--I've barely felt my sex in general. This is fundamental, unresolvable, and core-strong. As I come "into my own," over here, I come into another copy, another simulation of a self that doesn't really exist.
Who is he to say that this one is better than the last?
I think what he wants me to say is that I always knew I was a tomboy. That I tore the ribbons from my hair and threw tantrums over dresses, that I shopped in the boys' section from the time I was five years old, that I told my parents to call me "Mel" or "Melvin" as soon as I was old enough to talk. He wants me to say that I looked in the mirror and knew that my body wasn't mine. He wants me to say that I traded my Easy-Bake Oven for the neighbor boy's ride-on tractor, that I cried when I got my first period, that I wore five layers of clothing to hide developing breasts. He wants me to say that I've always known I was different--that I was not a girl.
None of those things happened, of course...except for that very last.
I have always known that I was different.
Different from the girls, of course--different from every single girl I knew, and radically so (as they were all too quick to remind me). But beyond that. Different from the girls, different from the boys--just different, profoundly and irreconcilably different, as far back as I can remember, before school, before language, I was as strange as they come.
That, in itself, sounds like an incredible conceit. Perhaps I've always been this narcissistic. Maybe that's my only real problem, here--shameless, irredeemable self-involvement.
But that in itself is strange. And I have always been strange. Not just different--certainly I was awkward, clumsy, "nerdy," out-of-sync, all the sundry attributes that contribute to childhood isolation, but at the same time, there was (and often is) something so far beyond that that it becomes difficult to articulate.
As far back as I can remember, I have felt...alien. There's really no other way to put it. Sometimes, I feel such a total disconnect between myself and my surroundings--so all-consumingly "Other"--that I have to remind myself that I am even human. I have to work damn hard to place myself within the context of my kind--my gender, sure, but everything else, too, the totality of my being, everything so palpably off about me that it goes way beyond anything I think my therapist will be able to resolve.
Sometimes, I feel like I can't even trust my own reasoning--like I have the power to deceive myself, to con myself into believing the impossible, the power to will things to life. Sometimes I feel like there IS no "essence" inside me, no doer behind the deed--like I'm just a pile of other people's ideas, a reproduction, a regurgitated synthesis of someone else's truths. I feel like I am no one. Of course I have never been a girl. I have never been anything.
I feel different. I will always feel different. But where the therapist thinks that this anomie will dissipate given adequate quantities of testosterone, I know otherwise. Changing my sex will not save me, for I have never felt my sex was "wrong"--I've barely felt my sex in general. This is fundamental, unresolvable, and core-strong. As I come "into my own," over here, I come into another copy, another simulation of a self that doesn't really exist.
Who is he to say that this one is better than the last?
My mentor
Sent Clarke an e-mail. Now I'm just sitting here, tapping my fingers, waiting for a reply.
I miss him so much more than I had ever expected to, and I had expected to miss him a lot. I hope he can feel how badly I wish he were here.
I need my Jack Donaghy, my Doctor Cox. My mentor. My cheerleader. I need someone to have my back, someone to point me in a direction, someone to tell me I'm doing the right thing.
I'm such an idiot.
Why do I need people to love me so much? Am I really the narcissist I hear, reading this back?
I don't know. If Clarke were here, I trust that he'd tell me the truth.
I hope he does anyway.
I miss him so much more than I had ever expected to, and I had expected to miss him a lot. I hope he can feel how badly I wish he were here.
I need my Jack Donaghy, my Doctor Cox. My mentor. My cheerleader. I need someone to have my back, someone to point me in a direction, someone to tell me I'm doing the right thing.
I'm such an idiot.
Why do I need people to love me so much? Am I really the narcissist I hear, reading this back?
I don't know. If Clarke were here, I trust that he'd tell me the truth.
I hope he does anyway.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Matches
I remember my mother telling me never to play with matches.
This is my first day with a cock, and trundling down the hallway of the Student Union building, it feels like a lit match, edging back and forth between my thighs. I keep looking at it, shifitng a hand in my pocket to make sure it's still there, quiet urgency pressing at the edges of my consciousness, reminding me to let go, LET IT GO, lest the matchstick crumble and my fingers singe.
That's what this whole experience has been--trial by fire, smoke-choked, lungs burning, an endless boundless cresting sea of flame. I hurt. Sometimes I struggle to breathe. My nerves, bare, throb relentlessly against the inside of my clothing, twitching and flexing and tensing against the heat. I am red and raw, scraped, bleeding, blackened, searching for that boundary where the pain bursts through a final crescendo and I emerge, impervious, invincible. If I can do this, I can do anything.
I am so afraid. I am no Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, or Steven Seagal. I hate sports, and I hate pool, and I drink fruity pussy drinks with thick sugary mixers and tiny umbrellas, and I don't know how to dance, and I am shy and awkward and uncomfortable and short and my hips are too wide and my shoulders are too narrow, and my hands are small and sometimes I still shave my legs and I will never be able to do this, never be taken seriously, even by myself.
I know all of that. I repeat it, endlessly, everything I'll never be spooling around inside my head like Shari Lee Lewis, until my mouth is dry and my hands are trembling and sweat beads warm and wet against my temples, and I can't stop. I just can't stop.
I nudge my dick again, like an addict feeling their hip pocket before getting off the bus, or a mother looking in on a newborn in the night. Just to make sure you're still there. The tension is impossible,
one moment strung into another like beads of water sliding down a blade. Do you know how hard it is to play hide and seek with yourself?
Clarke sent me an e-mail asking where I've been. I don't know what to tell him, other than that everything is different. That I've been here, crouching in the dark, bright heat in my chest and my pockets and my head. That I've been playing with fire. That my bridges have all caught, are all burning in my wake. That there's just enough light from the match head to see my own face. That even if nothing happens--if I can't do it, can't go through with it, change my mind--there is still the inevitable truth that nothing will ever be the same. I am not as I was. I don't know yet who I will be, but that person will never be again, and that in itself is transformation.
This is my first day with a cock, and trundling down the hallway of the Student Union building, it feels like a lit match, edging back and forth between my thighs. I keep looking at it, shifitng a hand in my pocket to make sure it's still there, quiet urgency pressing at the edges of my consciousness, reminding me to let go, LET IT GO, lest the matchstick crumble and my fingers singe.
That's what this whole experience has been--trial by fire, smoke-choked, lungs burning, an endless boundless cresting sea of flame. I hurt. Sometimes I struggle to breathe. My nerves, bare, throb relentlessly against the inside of my clothing, twitching and flexing and tensing against the heat. I am red and raw, scraped, bleeding, blackened, searching for that boundary where the pain bursts through a final crescendo and I emerge, impervious, invincible. If I can do this, I can do anything.
I am so afraid. I am no Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, or Steven Seagal. I hate sports, and I hate pool, and I drink fruity pussy drinks with thick sugary mixers and tiny umbrellas, and I don't know how to dance, and I am shy and awkward and uncomfortable and short and my hips are too wide and my shoulders are too narrow, and my hands are small and sometimes I still shave my legs and I will never be able to do this, never be taken seriously, even by myself.
I know all of that. I repeat it, endlessly, everything I'll never be spooling around inside my head like Shari Lee Lewis, until my mouth is dry and my hands are trembling and sweat beads warm and wet against my temples, and I can't stop. I just can't stop.
I nudge my dick again, like an addict feeling their hip pocket before getting off the bus, or a mother looking in on a newborn in the night. Just to make sure you're still there. The tension is impossible,
one moment strung into another like beads of water sliding down a blade. Do you know how hard it is to play hide and seek with yourself?
Clarke sent me an e-mail asking where I've been. I don't know what to tell him, other than that everything is different. That I've been here, crouching in the dark, bright heat in my chest and my pockets and my head. That I've been playing with fire. That my bridges have all caught, are all burning in my wake. That there's just enough light from the match head to see my own face. That even if nothing happens--if I can't do it, can't go through with it, change my mind--there is still the inevitable truth that nothing will ever be the same. I am not as I was. I don't know yet who I will be, but that person will never be again, and that in itself is transformation.
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