I am a queer of gender (and many other things) human who has been forcibly assigned many identities - Assigned Female, Assigned Bipolar, Assigned ADHD. This is my journey of uncovering through the assignments and finding my human self.
I am so grateful. For boundaries For self awareness For saying yes to both compassion and capacity. I still struggle. But I know that self pity does me no good. Compassion and belief in my capacity do a world of it.
there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.
she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”
the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.
only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.
that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.
You know when you notice something, and then you see it everywhere? Next thing you know, you've got a theory on your hands. Most trans folks have had their reality questioned by the world, even outright denied. There's the obvious, "You're not a ___." that happens over and over again, over the course of years for most. And then of course, there are the usual ways the world denies one's perception of reality because it does not match their own. This is what I'm attributing to a challenge I fight in myself and see in my trans family. This propensity to seek validation from others and being met with fear of being crazy. Little things can trigger it, like being told you've misremembered a story, or done something you don't recall. And this passing comment from someone else, dismissed - "uh huh, sure skye." Can send me in a tail spin. What we are really communicating to one another is "I see the world different than you do, and maybe even our brains work a little different..." And the part that's missing is "And that's ok."
Things I've learned in the past two weeks: 1. I am an introvert with a people pleasing problem 2. I prefer simplicity 3. Complicated as it may be, I am not ready to fall out of love with you
This is how I feel after fighting through my Healthcare system for the last 6 months... United Healthcare seems to have no system of telling what doctors are LGBT or even just trans friendly - which has left me to calling each doctor one by one and getting a series of denials. 8 doctors called, zero comfortable treating trans patients. Instead of calling and potentially getting rejected by the remaining 192 on my list, I just call and schedule with the doc that has decent reviews of bedside manner. The appointment day came and was pretty terrible, but I figure I just need an endo referral and I don't ever have to see them again. The first endo they refer me to is out of network, and the new doc is out a 3 month wait. I have just enough T to make it. Morning of the appointment and 40 minutes before check in, the phone rings. The doc reviewed my chart and needs to cancel. He isn't comfortable treating trans patients. They don't have anyone they can refer me to. Oh, except for the guy that isn't accepting new patients. And they do a great job of misgendering me the whole time. Luckily I am scrappy as fuck, and resourceful as well as gainfully employed with a vehicle. So I drove all over SoCal going to this clinic and that, making shit happen and paying out of pocket. And aside from being super annoyed, I can't help but think of all the other trans folks who may not have the privilege and resources that need medical care. If you are trans, I highly recommend against United healthcare. Their system is not setup to treat trans patients and they refuse to entertain any potential improvements.
Call for contributions to a collaborative trans tarot deck. #trans tarot
Send me a message to contribute.
This is the first image taken for the collaborative trans tarot deck.
The 13th card of the major arcana is the death card. It is a card of transformation and rebirth. Of clearing space and new beginnings. A card holding both masculine and feminine, death asks us to make good use of what is now past, to carry those stories with us.
The 12 empty bottles and the one still in use is 18 months of hormone replacement for a white trans man. Gathered up in meditation of standing at the precipice of permanent male passing. What will he do with the experience and understanding from the past?
We build our future from the structure of the past. Your structure has been built. The death card clears away what is not to serve you in your current venture. See the space.
I’m jolted awake in the middle of the night - Worrying.
About everything. Am I ready for work on Monday, how is my mother doing, am I connected enough with my community?
After tossing and turning, I give boo a kiss and sneak out of bed to surf. In hopes of distraction.
Open up chrome to find most recent visited - A blog she has created with another lover. It comes up every time I use our shared computer and I have not yet given into temptation to read the words.
Oh dear, I’ve just sprinkled a new worry on top of this sundae.
The blog, from what she has said is a co-occurring history from two perspectives. Cataloging their experiences together, each party writing a story and then sharing each into one title.
I love the idea. In fact, boo and I have done a few of these ourselves. It was a great excuse to write each other love notes in a public forum, shrouded in the privacy of the massive internet information blob. Hot and heavy diatribes of all night love making under the stars - what I smelled, what she felt, how it was all the same and all different.
When we first dove into each other, boo wanted me to do a lot of things - A lot of things that are now being done with this other lover. And I really shouldn’t be jealous - In a lot of ways, the things she is doing with boo seem more fitting then when I tried.
I guess mostly it makes me annoyed with myself. That instead of being up writing love notes, I am angst blogging about why we don’t do more things together. When I really am honest with myself - I don’t want to be her everything. I want to be fiercely independent yet always eager to show love to her.
Mostly, I am sometimes afraid that I need her more than she needs me. And I don’t really want either of us to need each other. I really want us to just GET each other.
It seems more often than not that I am the one most in the way of my own happiness.
With every intention of not seeming trivializing of emotional challenge, I know I personally can practice choosing happiness. Cheers to resuming that practice. Cheers to feeling better and sleeping through the night.
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