One of those mornings.

I've been waking up late, lately. It seems like the days just kind of catch up with me and I am left with a wave of exhaustion that will not go and I am overcome and pinned beneath my duvet for the day. As if that wasn't enough for one day, I woke up lonely, it happens when you live alone I think it must. Don't get me wrong I am really enjoying living on my own, being inappropriate in my own company, lounging around in my boxers all day, that sort of stuff. Every once in a while though I wake up wishing I could roll over, slip my arm round someone else's waist and pull them in close for a morning of just half dozing in each others arms. It's a lazy, sensual activity, that usually ends in one person kicking the other out of bed to make coffee or get some toast and some mornings I just wake up missing it.

Appointment pt3

Another unnaturally beautiful morning, I've been out all night and am woken at 7:30am by my phone ringing. I am waiting on a job offer so thinking it might be that I leap up and run for the phone I have drunkenly left in the front room. Once I answer it it turns out to be my Doctor seeing if I can come in earlier to see him. Sure, why not I am just round the corner and the sooner I get it done the more of the day I have to do other things. So I wash up get some clothes on and walk down to the GP in the amazing sunshine, I'm feeling pretty damn happy today.

I've been having real issues with my food over the last few months. I am a punishment eater, I don't eat for comfort I eat to punish my body or at least I have in the past. Stuff it full to bursting with any old crap I can get my hands on to hurt it. Since I have come out as trans I have been getting a hold of it, the idea that I could actually have the body I want or something closer to it has allowed me to take more control over my food and start working out and for the first time I think in my adult life, I am being body aware. I'm thinking about what I want my body to look like and I'm taking steps to try and achieve it.

In the last month or so though I was finding it harder and harder to stop going back to my old habits. Bit by bit I was slowly reverting back to the old tortured eater and would stuff myself with food I didn't enjoy as some way of blocking out the world and hurting myself and I think in a way it is also a way of hiding my body. I couldn't work out what it was that was bothering me and then I noticed it.

I don't know if anyone else plays this game, I expect they must because I think it's just human nature to do this. I play a game when I am out in the world, in my head I call it body shopping. I look around at guys and when I see a guy who's body I like, I think to myself I'll look like that one day. Or I'll see a guy and think I'd like to have pecks like that or legs like that. I'd stopped doing it and when I started to think about why I had stopped I realized I needed to do something about getting referred. Part of me very much needs to explore this option of body modification and though other parts of me seem content to carry on, this part doesn't think life is worth living if I don't have at least a look. So I guess this is a part of me that I have kept pretty quiet for a long time and now it's got a voice it is yelling at the top of it's lungs to be heard.

At first when I started just the possibility of being recognized and addresses in a male context was enough for this part of me it made me believe that that was indeed how people saw me and it gave me the space to start getting control of my eating habits. This only existed in a little bubble of space though and as I grew more comfortable with my male space I wanted to expand that out. I started to realize that I was still being seen as female especially in male company which made me want to revert back to invisible, because being invisible for me is better than being singled out as a girl. It was a relief to realize this in a strange way in fact any revelation be it one I want or one I don't is a good thing it helps to give me some kind of anchor in the sea of what ifs I seem to be constantly drowning in. They change too but for the time they are true for me it gives me a chance to work out how I feel about things and helps me to find enough clarity to make a decision or understand something about myself a little better. Sometimes that is all I can ask for.

Anyway back to the Doctors. He was very open and friendly today, such a sweet fellow, I do get the feeling that he genuinely wants to be of help to me and that for me is a very amazing thing. I told him about the call to the GIC and that they said I needed to be referred to a local psychologist. He said that they have one attached to the clinic and wrote out a referral letter for me and said it should take 2-3 weeks and if I hadn't heard anything by then to contact him. I don't want to rush this so I am almost grateful for the waiting, it can be deeply frustrating I expect, but I am trying to see these waits as positive. A chance to take a breath reassess and see if this is really where I want to go and to try and get my body closer to what it is I want.

Whirlwind

Since I have started this journey, a lot has happened. It seems silly to say I guess, but when I take a look back over these last few months. Look at where I started and where I am now it is lightning fast. For me it doesn't seem that way because in actuality I have been bursting at the seams for these changes since I was 15 when I first told my mother I wanted a sex change.

I remembered this while talking to her and my dad today. We were having our general catchup chat and she was asking that usual mum questions, so how are things, anything new going on? I am seized by a strong urge to say, well you know that whole trans thing we were talking about a few months ago when I said I wasn't going to do anything, well I am and I've kind of started, made appointments, got referrals. I can't tell her this over the phone though, not any of my family I have to be able to look them in the eye, so they can see my eyes and know this is not something I have undertaken lightly. I know they would not think I would but I have noticed more and more when taking to people who do not have a disconnect with their gender that they really don't understand what it is to not be the gender you are identified as. It really is a deeply alien thing to them and unfortunately it is not an easy one to explain.

There is not quick dirty combination of words that's snaps them into enlightenment for this, or none that I have found yet. I keep hoping I will think of them, I don't want the next time they see me to be a me so changed from what they know that it becomes even harder.

When I started this journey in October last year, I could barely say the word trans, I was afraid to tell people and afraid their reactions would be negative. Sometimes I am still afraid but not so much now. I was lucky to fall upon a group of people at Wotever who let me just be me and are supportive and encouraging when I make decisions but don't try and force me to do anything more than I have decided. It could almost be considered nurturing, yes that is a good word for what I have found there.

They respect my identity in a way I don't find anywhere else, I have other groups of people who I love, some even more deeply than those at Wotever but they don't really understand what my identity means to me right now, just how delicately balanced I am between joy and despair when it comes to finding this real me. It's been a part of me so long and parts of me want it so so much, but at the same time I have learned to live with what I am and I am afraid of what I could loose as I keep moving down this road. A part of me desperately wants to be more male, have a more male appearance, use the mens, be called Sir and not then correct to Miss, be one of the guys in a way that doesn't lead to me being singled out as a girl 5mins into the conversation.

I also don't want to stop being one of the girls though I don't want to loose my sisterhood ( for want of a better word ) I'm not going to be a man, I don't want to be a man, I'll be something in between. Not a negative, neither man nor woman, but both man and woman I think there is something beautiful about that. I don't want to deny my femaleness, I just can't find out what that is in me until I have gone through this. I can't explore anything male or female really because all I can explore is the disconnect, I am an uncomfortable me, trying to present me but being called out as something else by people around me.

So now I've started getting referrals and I am telling people about it, I am getting a lot of "But I thought you said you weren't going to do anything about it?" It must seem confusing to them one minute it seems I am hell bent on not, then I am. What I say is simply this, I can't work out what it is I want and what I really want to do unless I start doing it. I can spend my whole life asking myself, do i or don't i? Yes I am scared for a million and one reasons one of which is the very real fear that I may do something irreversible that I don't really want, but I am going to have to just trust my judgement here. I am just going to have to believe that I am smart enough not to do that. I can't of wanted to do this for this long and still want to do this without there being something very real about it and I must now in earnest ask some very real and difficult questions of myself. I need people who have seen it all before to help me deal with those questions one at a time. Work through them, keep me focused on them and that is what I am hoping for by starting this, I need grounding and a bit of reassurance that this isn't something new. I have to do this because if I don't I will just keep running around in circles and getting nowhere.

Not Unexpected..

I called the GIC this morning still holding onto the referral letter like I am afraid it will suddenly disappear if I let it go. I tell them I have a letter from my GP and he said I should just turn up with it and they said no that isn't how it works. I am not really surprised, I felt it was wrong all along but I really was hoping against hope that I could just magically just turn up with a letter and then I could start getting things done. Well it is an important lesson for me to listen to the people who have already gone through this and not my GP, funny how when in a situation where I am unsure of myself, I almost always automatically defer to the nearest person of authority even if I do not trust that person knows what they are doing. It's a dangerous trait, one that could get me into all sorts of trouble.

Luckily the letter he has given me is not completely useless, I can send it in and they will have it on record for me and use it to contact my GP so it sort of like half of the puzzle key. The other half is to get a referral to a local psychologist, I suspect this could take quite a while so I will need to get onto that, but at least I am doing something I think that is also part of the battle for me. I allowed myself some dreaming yesterday. Wandering through the sites of FTM's who have been through or are going through their journeys. I was excited at the prospect of that being me one day but also sad. The more I look at this the more I want to go forward with it and the more I realize that I have a lot to loose. Those questions won't ever go away I don't think and the thought of no longer being part of the lesbian community because I don't look like a woman anymore is deeply painful. I hope in the time it takes me to change, things will have moved on a little for us and that this trend toward fracturing in the Queer community finally has it's day and we can all just be queer together.

Post Appointment

What a unexpectedly beautiful day, so clear up there that it feels like you could see all the way to the other end of the universe. I'm looking out the window of my front room, it's darker and quieter in here and darker and quieter in me thinking about how I will talk to my GP about getting referred to start transitioning, though I feel like I'm doing that all the time. I'm unsettled by it all, that the day should be so clear and so beautiful and I should feel so unsettled and disquieted by this. Am I taking steps forward or steps back, is this brave or is it copping out? I can't decide I need help to decide, this is why I am doing this. I feel impatient about some things like the idea of having top surgery, reticent about others like taking hormones. It's funny don't you think that I would feel less concerned about major surgery than an injection?

Walking down the street and it's like I am suddenly noticing men and women for the first time. How they walk differently, look around differently, hair, body parts, I feel like some sort of alien looking at humans for the first time. I my vision slightly tinged with panic, words running round and round in my head, how do I tell this stranger probably one of the most personal things in my life, something I haven't even dared to speak out loud for the last 20 years. How do I explain this, what if he doesn't believe me.

I sign into the doctors office it's one of those new touch screen sign in thingymajiggs, I haven't been in a GP surgery for almost 10 years, they have come along way in making sure the patients do the work, not so much with the waiting times though. I sign in and find myself hesitating over the question am I male or female, I don't know how to answer this question anymore. I know what I want to answer but I think of all the confusion and questions that will probably follow and I reluctantly touch the screen, I feel like a traitor and a fool all at the same time.

The screen says the doctors running -32 mins so I look around for something to occupy my time with reading but there is nothing. I sit there just me and the lady in the burka, who eventually gets up and after a confused exchange with the more pleasant but less than helpful receptionists she leaves the office. I am alone now in this waiting room, waiting for my name to skip across the moving LED panel and tell me to go to room 2, it's always room 2, I don't actually think there are any other rooms here. I sit there reading the moving adverts that tell me to go have a smear test or let the surgery know if I have changed my mobile number ( spelt mobil, should I tell them it's spelt wrong, I don't think they would care ) and wondering how am I going to explain this.

Eventually the sign beeps and tells me to go to room 2, I walk down the hallway and knock on the door. "Come in." Old habits die hard I've never been able to walk into a room with a closed door without knocking first. There he is, sitting at his cluttered desk, watching some sort of video on a computer screen I can't see and he is very careful to make sure I can't see it. It sounds like a movie of some sort and I find myself trying to work out what they are saying but he calls my attention back to the room and indicates he is impatient to get to the point. GP's they are all business no chit chat, in a way I am grateful for the conveyor belt approach as it means generally that as long as you are confident about what you want you get it, but it is still not easy to say the words and what words. He looks at me impatience growing in his face and I still sit there. I look at him, a tall man of African decent, his accent tells me he didn't grow up here, maybe a blessing I think. Round his neck glints a crucifix so tiny dangling there made even tinier by his huge neck but it may as well be the biggest thing in the room. The words still sticking, he coughs gently, his face is not angry, it is a mask of any emotion and yet it is gentleness I sense in him despite his unremarkable GP manner.

Deep breath, "OK, have you ever heard of the term Transgendered?" I look him dead in the eye, I dare you to scowl at me, dare you to rebuke me, dare you to throw these words back and send me out. He looks at me, still no expression of any real note I am impressed by his control. He nods and says he has and then taps some keys and says he must refer me to the Gender Clinic, I am taken aback by his reaction. I am not really sure what I was expecting, I feel embarrassed, deflated even, unsure of what to do next. He says he needs to have my full records first to see what I have had done and I tell him nothing I want to start the transition process and he says he can write me a referral letter to the Gender Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital and I can take it in myself.

I feel confused, "Can I do that?" He seems confused by my confusion and seems to think I can, so I say yes I can do that. He asks just to be sure "So you are a woman and you want to be a man." I look at him, I want to say a million and one things, I won't say the word man, I just say male, I nod and say yes. He asks "Is this something you have always felt or did something happen to bring it about?" I look confused, I'm sure, I think what possibly could happen to someone to make them suddenly wish to do this? I say no I have always identified as male. Again "So you are a woman and you want to be a man." I say well this body is female, I won't consent to calling myself a woman, I've never thought of myself that way and being asked outright, I realize I never have. "Have you had any difficulties in your life with this?" I almost laugh, if it wasn't for the fact that he seems completely sincere when he asks me these questions I would outright laugh in his face for them. I say well of course it is not easy living this way and mutter something about having to deal with depression because of it. I don't want to go into my long and sordid history, I don't think he wants to know either so I decide to save it for someone else, I'm not sure who but I don't think it's him.

He finishes typing out the letter of referral and prints it out, sticks it in an envelope and addresses it to the Gender Clinic, I watch him as he does this thinking he has nice handwriting, kind of artistic and it reminds me of my fathers handwriting. I can't seem to look at him anymore and just keep staring at the posters on the wall. He hands me the envelope and give a little smile saying there you go, a good smile one that's trying to say I am trying to look like I want to be kind and helpful to you. I say thanks and smile back, and for a moment I want to give him a hug and shake his hand and say what a great man he is for being so calm about it all, but then I think better of it and just walk away with my letter clutched tightly in my hand. Now what? I get home ring the number for the Gender Clinic but it is too late and the phone just rings and rings and rings. I will try tomorrow maybe.

I still feel unsettled though, like nothing is really set in motion by this, I take all my nervous energy and use it to clean the flat do loads of laundry and then go out and buy containers and organize my food cupboards. I feel like I should feel like something is set in motion, instead I feel like I tripped over my feet as the starting gun went off. I find myself being afraid that I am gong to get through to the clinic and they are going to tell me I've done it all wrong and I need to go back. If I do then I will no big deal so I don't know why that bothers me. I guess I feel like I should know what is going on that I should of left there with some sort of roadmap, you know like 6 months see Psychiatrist who will work out if you are crazy in the right way or not, 12 months change name legally, take T something like that, but then nothing works like that does it..

Take 2

Well I managed to get myself up this morning and headed off to the GP, not feeling the best anyway so it won't be a wasted trip I think. The receptionist was very pleasant today unlike the time before maybe it was the sunshine and the warm weather who knows but it was good to not have to do battle with and angry receptionist about why I missed the fist appointment.

So to my surprise she offered me an appointment today, which I took before I could think about it. Now here I am sitting at home on a truly spectacular day in my dark front room, worrying about not saying the right thing to get my referral. I mean I am not in the business of being dishonest about my gender identity but I know that in a system one must meet the requirements of that system to get what one requires, do I meet those requirements? Do I tick the magic boxes? What are the magic boxes? Can my GP refuse just because he doesn't agree with what I am trying to do? Do I even need to ask for anything more than a referral and not even mention my gender issues? So many questions, even more than the ones here. All I can do is trust that what ever it is that occurs I am able to deal with it.

If at first..

I'm going to try again, get up tomorrow and go down to the doctors and make an appointment to get referred and not forget or avoid going in anyway. I am worried though that he will not refer me. Am I supposed to say some sort of magic combination of words that opens the secret door to transition? Who knows? Guess we will just have to wait and see, I have decided to try and take that approach with this whole thing from reading other peoples experiences this takes a bloody long time and I need to be prepared to let things take a long time. I know I can be impatient when I get something into my head that needs to be done. I'm a feet first kind of guy who doesn't hold back because I could be dead tomorrow so I may as will give it a full measure.

I tend to take that approach with a lot of things in my life, when I was younger I watched a lot of people give up on a lot of things ( myself included ) some made it and some didn't and I guess that has kind of left me with this might as well do it now because tomorrow may be too late kind of ethos. Well for some things anyway. For others I will procrastinate till the end of days because I am afraid of a million and one things that could happen some I want some I don't, but I guess most people are like that really. So yes tomorrow, tomorrow I'll give it another go, stop worrying about the what if's and the what could happens and just get on with it. Hop back on the treadmill and get a running.

Moments.

I went out the other night with a friend of mine, I'd had a terrible day and he and I went out to party like rock stars as we do every now and then. Needless to say he is one of my favorite people to go out with. So it's about halfway through the night we've hopped in and out of a number of places and I am getting pretty drunk and not really even keeping track anymore.

I don't know how it started but I remember the conversation turns to using male toilets. I tell him about it being one of my big fears being caught out in a male toilet and people being pissed off and maybe even more for me going in and using them. I am constantly challenged going into female toilets but it doesn't bother me in the slightest in fact I kind of like it because it means to me they think I am a guy ( which of course I am ). So anyway I tell him about someone I talked to about this a while ago who told me that he would make fake noises in the cubicles in order to not seem odd for using them in the mens. He thought this was funny and announced that he used the cubicles all the time and didn't think twice about it and in fact he really didn't think anyone in the mens toilet would care at all.

I must of looked surprised and I admit I was and it did leave me thoughtful for a while until the next round of drinks and some more dancing and I thought no more of it. Later on I announced I was going to pop to the loo and he grabbed me by the hand and lead me into the mens. Initially I was shocked, half expecting a pack of angry men to appear out of nowhere and pounce on me, but no one did no one even batted an eyelid. We stood in line with other men waiting for a cubicle and when my turn came he ushered me in. No bolts of lightning from above no mobs, no fuss I had to laugh at myself a little.

Thank you.

A change is as good as a rest

Well I've been off out in the wilds these last few days and it has truly given me a chance to just take a breath and be myself and not think about anything to do with my body or gender. I went out to a festival ( my first ) and camping ( my first time ) with a few friends of mine who I am very blessed to have because they let me be me in a very unique way. I can be whatever I want and they still very much full of affection for me and I pay them the same courtesy. I suppose that sounds trite to some, used to death, beaten to it's corner, but these are the breaths of fresh air that remind me that it's OK despite all these questions and trying to work out who I am and what I am about. There are some pretty incredible people in my life who think I am pretty dam special and I need that.

When I am swimming about in my mental drama's and turmoils as I am want to do at times, I can get myself back to ground by remembering that there are some very cool and beautiful people out there who think I am pretty cool and worth being around and they don't give a monkey's what gender I am or if I decide to dye my hair pink and start wearing mini skirts. These are the people who make my life worth living, I spend a lot of time worrying about what people will think, how they will react, that I may hurt people with my decisions. These people are the people who tell me it's not about them, it's about me and it's my life and my self who has to ultimately live with this stuff these people are my gold, my treasure and I can't imagine not having them in my life now I have them there. It's funny that we stumble upon each other by accident almost, there is no expectation that at that moment you may meet someone you will truly love for just being them and that they will love you back. This isn't about being lovers, it's not sex or attraction in that sense, but it is deep and sometimes uncomfortably intimate ( for someone who is used to keeping people at a distance ) but it's not something I ever want to walk away from.

Afraid..

I am afraid, afraid that you think I came across this easily, that somehow it is some childish whim, this dialectic between body and mind. I am afraid that because I cannot find the words to tell you, that the best I can do is point dumbly at a TV screen when something similar to the way I feel comes on. That you see me as some kind of perverse child pointing out the latest toy of obsession from the Saturday morning advertisements. That I am somehow playing with fashion, a desire to be special and cool like the other kids. Not that this has wriggled around inside me for decades, that it eats away at my flesh from day to day. Each time some stranger sees me, the not me, not the me, each time a friend calls me out exposes my un me ness to someone I have just met and am hoping for a second or two that they may see the me ness and know me thus.

It is like I am a boy in a dress, I know I am a boy yet everyone can only see the dress. They do not care that I walk and talk and feel like a boy, they only know that girls wear dresses and so I am a girl. I cannot take the dress off, at least not easily and I am afraid that if I do take off the dress then I will loose a part of me I can never have again. What does it all mean, what does this mean? Am I imagining this? One day I am sure I want to take the dress off and the next I am clouded with confusion, drowning in questions and self doubt. Waiting for some magic answer to answer all my questions and set me down on the road I need to travel.

It's not like this body and I do not share intimacy, we have shared the same space for 30 odd years now, felt the same joys and pains. We have known love and self destruction together and survived and although I know it is not mine I cannot deny like my oldest of friends this body knows me. It bends to my will, whether it wants to or not, whether I want it to or not. I am afraid that if I finally give in to this need to change this body I will be doing it for the wrong reasons. Afraid that in change I will become part of the problem and not the solution. Where does my responsibility lie? And yet here I am again and again and again, the same question, the same need to rid myself of this body and find my body, to keep this body and learn to live with this my body. Over and over again, I am exhausted by it, demoralized that I have come so far and yet it is the same set of questions over and over that I still cannot answer.

Again!?!

I know it seems almost incomprehensible that I would be posting again. I guess I have hit a prolific patch no doubt triggered by my misery as seems to be the way why can I never write reams of prose and poetry when I am feeling stable that's what I want to know. I've had a lot of thinking towards the poetic in the last few weeks. I rarely carry a notebook with me these days as it tends to attract the attentions of drunks and homeless folk who are then compelled to sit and have conversations with me which I really don't mind but it does interrupt the flow of words I must confess. I have thought about putting them on this blog but my concern there is that my focus will be lost here as I do occasionally wander off the point at times I try and keep it at least roughly in the ball park so to speak so I suppose I may start another just for the more creative rambling it's nice to have that back.

So I was hanging out at a friends today and saw a documentary on sky called sex change, it followed the journey of a MTF having top surgery and a FTM learning to be more feminine and having electrolysis. It was an interesting show I could see that people were trying to handle the subject with some sensitivity but not really understanding the full depth of the subject. I guess a case of too much subject matter, not enough time. As always seeing the FTM having top surgery made me smile and then that familiar twang of jealousy in me as they try on a shirt and walk down the street for the first time, I can still hear myself quietly longing for it still afraid to say it out loud but wanting so much to be that person looking in that mirror at a flat male chest. I am so horribly afraid of it all going wrong I can't afford to go private and the NHS isn't known for the best care. I could of course be wrong I've never been to the gender clinic I don't know what it's like I know a bunch of people who have been and they seem to think it's a good place.

I feel that impatience in me that long standing everyday of my life longing to be a boy again. To wake up and find that these breasts, that belong to someone else, not me, have finally gone. That I am finally me, oh god, it is so tangible I can touch it, that want, that need. Run my fingers over it, feel it's smooth metallic tenseness, it's unyielding qualities, unrelenting, grown thick over the years. Buried deep in my flesh, hot with it's insistence. I don't want to give into it, I don't know why, I am afraid of it's intensity and afraid of what it will surely mean for my future life. What unsurities it will mean for my future life.

Doctor fail

I missed my appointment today, I don't know if it was an unconscious or deliberate attempt to sabotage myself and miss it because I am scared or if I am just so dam tired and that everything has finally gotten the better of me so I just didn't have enough brain space left to remember it. I am hoping it is the latter, anyway I am going to give myself a break and with any luck it'll give me a chance to get some air in my lungs again. I'll take one of those deep cleansing breaths everyone always goes on about and start again.

I've been slowly but surely slipping off the rails the last few weeks, bit by bit I've watched my triggers of control turn into triggers for self destruction again. I know I am tired and people close to me keep urging me to go and see someone who can help inevitably it makes me more rebellious at the moment like a petulant child I find myself pushing more and more against what little I have left and plunging myself deeper into the icy waters of self loathing. I don't want to lie there and yet it is a comfortable pain I am accustomed to. I hate it and yet it strangely is familiar and reassuring to me. I wish in a way I was more Byronesque in my pursuits, that I would wantonly covet the conquests of innocent ladies and nubile young men and revel in their corruption. Instead I seem only to enjoy the perverse desecration on my own flesh through the abuse of food and alcohol how very disappointing of me.

Maybe..

Maybe it's the lack of urgency about me, the way I am quite happy to just sit back and wait for my time to come round. The thing is that's fine if your the kind of person that remembers what number is on my ticket, but if you keep forgetting and slipping me down the list of things that must be done. Your going to find that I will finally get tired of waiting and just walk away, I may appear to not be taking stock but I am very much noticing every time you bump me down the list.

Maybe some people would consider this unfair, that I have not given them fair warning perhaps. That I should kick up a fuss or make some kind of indication of my irritations, but let's be fair now. If I was of a more demanding ilk sure I could bully you and bend you to my will, my will is like a steam roller and I can bend you till I break you, if that is what you'd really like, but truth be told I don't think you would so I don't. I'm just quietly watching, waiting to see where your priorities really lie.

Recuperate

I think I need a bit of time to recuperate, today I slept all day, something I haven't done in some time. I need a bit of time to put myself back into order and normality, there is something to be said for a 9 to 5 existence. I think that surety that lack of change can ground you, give you a chance to take stock and focus on what you are really wanting to do with yourself. I don't have that right now. I thought the freedom of doing whatever I wanted when I wanted would lead me to a better way of working and supporting myself but so far I have just floundered in the sea of endless possibility and though I have many things to do I seem to be getting less and less done. Maybe going back to the 9 to 5 is just what I need.

Brighton ...

Well what can be said, as I stood out in the rain, clothes wet, cold creeping in through my skin and all around some kind of TV chaos about me. It felt like some sort of post apocalyptic plague movie. People throwing up against the sides of tents, unconscious revelers being carted off on stretchers in the mud, I might of found it funny if it didn't remind me of another more dangerous time or if I'd been high.

Standing there under that tree a group of men behind us inhaling some sort of gas from a canister, the adrenaline fueled howls as the gas soaked up by blood, addled their minds and filled them with what feels like power. Surges of energy flow through veins, exploding the desire to rip the very fabric of the world under your fingers and leave it bloodied at your feet and then 30 seconds later another hit till your nothing but a twitching heap of bones and muscle slipping down that hole not sure your ever going to come out again. I remember you well, but I don't miss you anymore.

That hiss and whine in my ears, the colour of the world not brighter just hyper, less real as my mind skips and misses images, it's like a strobe in my head, maybe I'm fitting. I wish I was fitting I'd rather lie here in this mess and chaos twitch my last twitch and let that last sigh go. Slip down, down against the cold darkness and let it all go. Old me, I remember you, see you there amongst them. I know you would not feel this rain, this cold, these arms around me. Would not see the sky or trees, hear the howling and for a moment the pinch of fear as our mind considers that maybe we are to close to this potential violence. You would be wishing for it, aching for them to bend their violence upon you, that maybe this time you would not have to survive. So dark are you old me, at the edges of my mind you hover I can feel you creeping round, stalking, waiting for the door to creek just wide enough to slip your cold fingers in and take hold again. I do not miss you.

I said it out loud today, the first time the words slipped out while we were talking. I hardly noticed what was said and then, they blew back into my face with the wind and rain. Burnt my eyes, I looked away and focused out into the distance. Pretended I had not said them. I am hoping someone will prove me wrong. I am hoping someone will prove me wrong. I feel like a cheap, badly written novel character.. man trapped in woman's body fights against change, tragically dies in alleyway, shot after being robbed just moments after he realizes he is just fighting the inevitable and should go with the flow. Oh beautiful Pandora's box so rich and diverse, colourful and empty. I can't seem to think straight right now, I need some sort of empty white room, devoid of any kind of mental stimulation just so I can breathe again and let go of this tightness.

An observation

Still exhausted by this past week, I am hoping that a trip to rainy Brighton and their pride will lift my spirits. Mind you I am not depressed just a little raw inside, bit by bit I am finding myself swapping out self loathing and bringing in self discovery. Sometimes I don't like or I am not comfortable with what I find but instead of making it the stick I beat myself with, I simply decide to change it or live with it. Is this maturity I wonder, this new found self acceptance? Or maybe I am just too tired to punish myself the way I used to, ahh! those good old days ( ha! ).

It's a refreshing perspective, I am almost removed from myself, I am here experiencing and yet observing too, I move between my selves looking for balance and calm instead of madness. How ideal I make it all sound, this constant working to keep constancy, where has the old tortured me gone?

Steps and Starts

I didn't think it would be a big deal this, walking down the road to somewhere I've been before, the windows frosted so no one can look in, not that they'd want to anyway I'm sure. I've been here before long ago for a whole different reason, same purpose, different reason. This new purpose, new resolve it's a bit like burning, it warms and hurts me. Makes me question so much that I am not even sure I should be doing this. My heart pounds nervously against my ribs, I feel cold and my skin is hot as I fill out forms and give the uninterested bordering on belligerent receptionist my 3 forms of ID.

It's been playing on my mind for months now, this question, I could not find an answer. It twisted it's way around and inside me like wire, cutting and strangling out the small corner of joy and peace I had dug out. I slept on it for night after night turning the question over and over in my mind. What if, why not, but, maybe it's like a nest of worms these questions turning in my guts, strangling the air out of me until I can't think about anything else. I want to talk about it, to anyone who will listen and yet when they are in earshot I can't find a word to say out loud. My tongue rebellious will not speak of it, my guts rot with the questions swallowed by it.

So here I am, I could not ask anymore, I could not circle it one more time, here I am exhausted and broken by myself in this dirty GP office registering to ask for a referral to a Psychologist. They say at best it'll take 7 months for a referral and a part of me sighs with relief I want the time, I need it. I can't rush into this I think secretly I am hoping that in time the idea will wear away, just be a phase or someone will say nope that's not what it is, it's this. Somewhere I'm hoping against hope someone can prove me wrong. Pluck this thought out of me and put it in a jar filled with surgical spirit sterilized and confined so I can take it home and show it off like a gall stone whenever I need to whip out an entertaining anecdote. I remember the time I thought I wanted a different body *big belly laugh*.

I am terrified I won't find that middle ground I am fighting so hard to stay on, I'll be swept away in the promise of it all, find that what I really want, what I cannot deny is to get on that train and ride it all the way...

Dual existance

I am living two lives right now, my new name means that I have split away from myself in one world and am rooted almost stuck in my old name. They keep invading each other making it confusing not only for me but for the people around me. New acquaintances know me by my new name and yet are constantly confused by me and others referring to me and my old name and when both old and new are together it becomes even more complicated!

I can't seem to commit to either at the moment, the world keeps asking me to choose and I don't want to. It means I have to work that much harder, that I am that much more tired for it but I have only just found myself and part of that me is fluid and changing old to new and new to old, yes it's confusing and strange and difficult but it's more me than I have been in my life and I am not ready to let it go.

A name

It's been a while now, circling about in my mind, not many of them just a few and one by one they faded away until only one remained. Oskar ( Oscar ). It's my name, the name I've chosen, I put the question out what seems like a hundred years ago and now, no longer afraid of the answer I have heard it call me out saying, ' I am your name'. It's not the coolest or fastest or sexiest of names, it's a bit like a bear or a cat or a well worn chair, a little gruff and not overly concerned with appearance more substance and I suppose that is why we have found each other. I've gone for the Scandinavian spelling because I get to keep the K from my old name I don't much care for the other letters but the K has a certain elegance which I have always loved and thus will be happy to keep in my name. 

So far the response has been surprisingly positive my friends old and new in their own ways have been very supportive and this always surprises me I must say. I keep waiting for the rejection the derision but there is only ever support and it really does amaze me fill me with such joy knowing that they care enough about me and to show me that it's ok and I do so love them for it. Asking if they can call me by my new name saying that it suits me, that I look like an Oskar. How small a thing to them it must seem to say but it dam near breaks my heart with happiness to hear it, because I suppose to me they are saying yes I can see you, the real you in that name under all that flesh that you don't own I can see you and it helps me again to take a little more ownership of the body I am in.

I met another transguy the other day he's close to the end of transition for him and before I knew what I was doing I was bombarding him with all the questions I should not really ask, but he was gracious and decent about the whole thing and dealt with my questions directly which was very wonderful of him. Once again though I found myself faced with the overwhelming desire within to follow that path. For him it seemed such a normal and natural way, he seemed so much more complete and maybe even a little at peace with himself in a way I dream of being one day. Maybe I was just projecting that onto him I don't know but once again I find myself wrestling with the question should I or should I not? I don't want to keep living in this turmoil it is exhausting and lonely and sometimes just painful. Yet at the same time I keep thinking I shouldn't have to be the one that changes here I am a man and that's all there is to it surely that is enough. It's enough for all the other millions of men out there who are overweight, have man boobs and small dicks, why do I need to change what I am with drastic surgeries and hormones to be more like them? Am I not just falling into a trap here? My transness is not something I need to cure surely? Why can I not find a way to enjoy and be proud of me as I already am? Why can't I just not care about the people who are too scared or confused by me why can't I just stop worrying about this?

Words

Everyday I try and take a step closer to being the me I dream I am. Everyday I'm a little bit stronger for it, though some days it doesn't feel like it. I've spent so long trying to bury this me away hide him from the daylight so the people I could not bear to be without would not be horrified or repulsed by me. I'm slowly learning that they come round bit by bit once the shock has worn off the truly genuine ones they take a step back and find a way to accept what to them feels like a sudden change and I have to try and remember that. I have to find patience here, I'm bursting to get out and terrified at the same time what has been festering and clawing at my insides for decades now is finally being let out and although I am eager to be the me I have always been I am so deeply afraid of what it could mean, how far will I want to go, what if I can't trust myself to stop when I want to but go on beyond for the sake of acceptance they way I have hidden away for so long for the same. I hope I have learned that lesson and that the support I am finding in my friends old and new will keep that seemly lonely and desperate to please side of me in check.

For so long I have told myself no this isn't right no I don't feel this way and even though now I have accepted that I do vocalizing it and expressing it to others feels so difficult I have to push the words out, they stick in my gut as my tongue point blank refuses to work and the more I want to say these things the more resistant my body becomes. It's like a reflex for me now I feel the desire or curiosity build a sweet question or wandering fantasy grow and then burn into my bones where it is locked away and never spoken. So now I try and float the words before they become so meaningful find a way to say yes before the no reflex has a chance to kick in it doesn't always work but I just keep telling myself it's OK these words are mine and to say them is for me and no one else. I need these words to fly, be heard, draw pictures in the minds of others so that I too can take form and find reference in this world.

Pride

It's been an amazing year so far and London's LGBT Pride was amazing for me too, I met wonderful people, partied till I dropped and was a rock star for a few minutes. Sometimes you have to really stop and take note of what it is you actually do with your days, they go so fast and you forget to just stop for a moment or two and just recognize what you've been up to. I haven't really connected with pride much over the last few years but this year was different, maybe it was the group I was with, maybe it's because I was me and I wasn't trying to hide myself from anyone, maybe it was just the beautiful weather, I don't really know, but I'm going to hold onto it for the days when I am feeling low. I think it'll be just the sort of thing I can pull out on days when I need to remember that my life really is pretty amazing sometimes.

Heat Wave

Apparently we are due a heatwave, key advice going out on TV now apparently the most important thing is to keep cool and drink lots of water. Just another random comment in this space..

I'm not doing too well today or for the last few days, in fact I find myself tumbling down further into the depths of self loathing and for what? I know it shouldn't matter but I suppose old habits die hard, I waited so long for some approval but there was none. Even now free of that supposedly here I am sitting around looking for that approval from the same neglecting source, the same ungrateful source. I'm not sure I will ever trust again I seem to be constantly fighting against the selfishness of others, trying to keep myself open to meeting new people and new experience. I guess I am just not able to strike that balance of keeping myself open and avoiding being walked all over and now I am not sure I even want to keep trying anymore. I'm tired..

Tangle

I guess the more I accept my gender the more comfortable I become with my maleness the more I question my sexuality and this is a tough one. Can I express my sexuality honestly when I am one gender in the body of a different sex, what if those two entities within me have conflicting sexualities? How do I attract the people I am attracted to when my body isn't the body they want? And when I do attract people it's seems only a matter of time before my trans identity seems to get in the way of things.  "Well if your a [insert gender here], well I'm a [insert sexuality here] so I can't be attracted to you" It is almost as if my very presence forces these people to question their sexuality, it makes them uncomfortable. 

I grew up being taught that people were people ( seems corny I know ) and that if there was that spark or chemistry or whatever it didn't matter if that person was male, female, black, white or purple with pink polka dots. Once again I'm learning what a strange and wonderful family I grew up in. I thought everyone believed that, but clearly they don't and I find it hard not to be jaded by it. 

I do wonder

Once again in the little sanctuary of Bar Wotever I find myself talking to my friend N she's a lovely lady who opened me up to the idea of being a female bodied male by saying there is no problem with transgendered people the problem is with the definition of gender in society. It's a deeply powerful statement to say that it's OK to be me and that it's the world that's got the problem, something I had never considered before until she said it.

I haven't seen her in a while the world being busy as it is so I made a point of thanking her and telling her just how important that was for me to hear. We spent the rest of the night chatting about all things Transgender which is always really great for me, to find someone else who I can feel comfortable with talking about these things is rare but rarer still to find someone with a passion for talking about it someone I can talk things through with who doesn't get tired of me working through my thoughts and ideas but actually finds them interesting. That is a truly wonderful thing.

I talked to her about the unspoken pressure to transition I feel in the transmale community and how it seems to me that it is almost as if transitioning is seen as a cure for the condition of being a trans. That it is seen as a natural progression of the condition that once I have identified as a male in a female body that I would want to cure myself by going through the process of transition, but I'm not sure I believe in that anymore. I don't think I am sick or wrong or whatever word one would like to use. I don't think I do need a cure I have found a richness and diversity in this garden that is my transmale identity, a continually changing and evolving identity that I am beginning to enjoy. Yes I have tough days, days where I am disconnected from myself, where I doubt my maleness and question my decision not to try and make my body look more like the body the world tells me I should have as a male, but don't we all have those days? I also have good days days where I feel at peace with myself, days where I feel as male as any man that walks down the street and real and here and connected to the world and this body I am living in. The fluidity of my existence is more and more important to me, more important than fitting into the box that will bring me acceptance. I have jumped out of my box and I am running around the garden, my hands waving above my head and the wind in my face, I don't want to go back, back there I cannot breathe. 

She is right it's not my problem that people can't see past the flesh I carry, in fact it is often the case that the passing glance reveals the real me. It is then that I am addressed as 'Sir' once a closer look is taken then it's the uncomfortable and uncertainty of 'Miss' and though I pretend not to mind it is disappointment I feel in this correction. Yes it's both right and wrong my body is female but I am not, this is a lonely garden few people it seems stay out here. The box is safe full of comfortable pronouns and others the same, sharing similar thoughts and responses and bodies making it all comfortable and safe. You know who you are, your wearing the right skin, and that skin attracts the right people to you.

 

Depression

I've been fighting with the dark cloud the last few months and lately it feels like it's winning. I get up every morning, but can't seem to get myself out into the sun or even some days off the sofa. I sleep and sleep and sleep and when I am not sleeping I am eating. Funny how quickly you forget the pain of living with this cloud only a few months ago I was bouncing round the city as if I'd never known the emptiness the spacial silence of this mood destroyer of this living death.

I am resolved to fight it though, I have already given 20 years away to this demon and I won't give in again without a fight. I keep asking myself what is it your so afraid of? why do you let this madness paralyze you and stop you from finding some acceptable existence. I dream of travel and experience nothing excessive mind you. I don't want to be a millionaire or famous, I just want to live the life I dream of the one where I want to do something and I do it, how can that be something to be afraid of? 

Reflection

On reflection, I've come to realize that I was always a little jealous of my brother, he suffered for it being the youngest and me an angry elder child. I hadn't really any understanding of it then but when he was born my place as a girl in the family was more firmly set. I didn't know it but I felt it, he was the beautiful boy I should of been and I was no longer the surrogate son of my father. I could be a tomboy as my mother had been growing up but I would never be a boy. 

Earlier than expected

I woke up earlier than expected this morning, my eyes, full of grit and dry with tiredness against my will, creaked open and forced me out into the world again. I haven't had a dream like that in years dreaming I was lying there quietly knowing, waiting for some dream entity to kill me.  I am calm inside, I see it coming but I don't try to run from it like I have before. My dreaming mind conjuring every image or sensation it can in am effort to illicit that cold sweaty terror I don't seem to feel anymore. Finally hands around my throat, it's a new sensation not the usual knife frenzy I knew so intimately in my younger days. It's cold hard hands trying to squeeze the life out of me, I feel myself struggle, the urge to stay alive kicks in and I fight back against these dream hands, then I am awake. It's morbid of me but somewhere in those seconds of awakening before I get out of bed there is a small me in the pit of my gut that's a little disappointed. Here I am awake again, alive again, stuck in this flesh again.

I thought I was past this and somehow here it is creeping back and gnawing at me, I'm angry that it's here, kicking it's heels against my ribs in tantrum. Insecurity and doubt eating at me, filling me with questions again. Is it real or my imagination, how can I say I am this, how can I prove it. Must I prove it, why do I need to change myself now after all these years, I have found revelation and acceptance and here the same old dusty questions come on out again. I went to a trans salon last night, I thought it was more of a forum, I should of read the blurb a bit better maybe. I thought it was about the diversity of the trans community but it was really about transition itself. For the first time in a long time I felt the pressure to change hang in the air around me. That I could not be a male without the hormones or the operations to take away the offending parts and give me the parts I feel I should have. I don't think it was the intention of the people who put on the show to say this it's just the feeling it generated in me. I needed to talk to them but I didn't, I should of, but I didn't. 

Dorian Wood

Every once in a while you get to see magic in action, you may not always recognize it but it's definitely there and you know something is going on but you just cant quite work it out. Last Tuesday was a full moon I didn't notice it till afterwards when I walked out of a sauna like Bar Wotever (BW) and looked up into the sky and saw her looking back at me.

I wasn't going to go that evening, I was tired and fed up and a little angry with the world for being so unresponsive to my worries and frustrations. I thought a quiet night in may be just the ticket and thought again and again about canceling the meet up I had arranged with my friend there. I didn't even know he was playing, I didn't even know who he was. At about 6pm I finally dragged my ugly carcass out and made my way over to BW I was just going to have a quick non-alcoholic drink and then head back, the place was already full and full of faces I recognized either met before or saw before I was a little taken aback by it. The room was humming a little with that quiet excitement and anticipation. So I sat with my friend and talked to her for a bit she wasn't there for the show so I wandered about a little, made a clumsy attempt at wishing Gregory Happy Birthday, luckily no one was hurt in the exercise. It's funny really I never got into school politics but my nervousness around people I want to talk to but can't seem to is kind of like me being a nerd and trying to talk to the cool kids, I know it makes no sense, anyway I digress.

So on talking to some people I can talk to I discovered that a young singer songwriter by the name of Dorian Wood was playing. That he had played about a year ago before and was back everyone was very excited about it and like me I found a lot of people had considered not coming tonight but were really glad they did, subtle magics bring people together. The place was packed by the time Dorian was announced, just a keyboard and a rather imposing figure with his head wrapped in a lace scarf. I had seen him before I remember feeling a touch of intimidation because of that scarf, funny really something so delicate could be used to provoke that in me. Then he plays..

It's been a long time, a long time since I have heard a voice that could sing my heart to pieces and make my soul want to sing out with it. Such depth and tone washed over me, such richness and delicate beauty, and words that grabbed me and shook me and made me drunk for more. 

The room closes in around me it's attention swung in the direction of his playing and he sings, what a voice! Every so often you hear a voice that can reach down into you and rip out your heart that's Dorian Wood. There is a richness of tone and emotion that is a rare thing to hear. His lyrics dark and beautiful reminding me of something in myself I had long since walked away from, something I had in the past only ever associated with self destruction he celebrated and used it to create something deeply beautiful. 

I was inspired and uplifted by his work and I was not the only one. The audience hung on his every note and when he called on us for reprise many responded with enthusiasm the room was full of the love in his music and we all were affected.  I didn't want it to end but sadly it did though the magic of his music hung there for the night, people left calmer, softer and a little happier than when the got there, all glad we had managed to be there to share in it. Thanks Wotever for an amazing night!

Block

I keep trying to find words for what is happening to me, way to express the things that run through my mind, run through my heart from moment to moment. At times I am strong full of my own self belief and solid in my conviction then moments later I struggle with myself question my decisions, choices and statements. I feel one moment real and the next a fraud.

This is a lonely gender, when I say I am a Trans male all focus is on physical transition, when are you going to transition, oh so your not transitioning yet as if this is in some way a mark of my maleness. I am male my body is not, but I am male, I don't see myself as a woman, I know I am not a man and I don't want to be a man but I am male. How does this work I hear you ask. I have spent my life so far hating the body I am in because I believed that in order to be male I had to have a male body. As a result of that thinking I have lived with self loathing and have in many different ways self abused and tried to kill the body I am in and some nights in the dark with no one around to tell me I was OK I thought I had managed it, but I kept waking up with the sun. A bittersweet sense of relief and disappointment so closely interwoven I could not separate them. If I had had the option of physically transitioning at 19 when I first found a way to tell the people around me how I felt then I most likely would of taken it but back then it was not an easy thing to do and I was more prone to self destruction I suppose. The only thing that kept me alive I think was a promise I made to my mother to not kill myself after she caught me trying to. So with that promise in my head I took the route of slow death as I  got older I became more and more despondent more and more isolated and were it not for the tireless care and patience and love of some very special people I may have succeeded but I still could not say aloud the words that burned in me I am male. I want you to recognize me as male.

Finally in my 35th year I realized I didn't want to die like this anymore, I began to look after my body and found that I could make it look more like I wanted it to in my mind this helped me to keep on. I then met some more amazing people who offered me not only acceptance but the option of being male and not physically transitioning. How is that possible? I asked myself and found within me an acceptance of my female body if I was able to define myself as male this has opened my mind up to so much the landscape of my gender and sexuality have been laid waste and change from moment to moment I have no words to define myself anymore I try and use the ones I find in websites, so far I am comfortable with Transmale or female bodied male,  and for now I believe I can find comfort in the acceptance of the community around me.

Today

I feel a beautiful melancholy today, I feel a part of my old life soul back there tapping me on the shoulder and saying hello. It's wrapping itself around my inner discomfort, pressing it's warmth to me and squeezing till the vibrations of my anxiety are smoothed, leaving in the place of silent rattle a soft hum.

I'm not sure why today, maybe it was the revelation that is Dorian Wood, hearing his voice and words. Soaking in a room full to bursting with love and acceptance that made me feel for the first time that, that darkness I have worked so hard to contain and control is part of me and even though it is dark and frightening and sometimes completely bizarre and random it has a place and is part of the magic that is me. What an amazing find in the early hours of the morning, here I am twisted and dark, shadowed and otherworldly lost so long, now here just lying there as if you had never been packed down and forgotten ..

Post Paris very post

So again here I am, not posted for a while and still have those tow reviews sitting in my to do list calling at me. I just seem to be out a lot at the moment due mainly to the lovely weather out there, I have been thinking about carrying a notebook to jot things down and then transpose to the blog as a way of keeping things up to date.

I have in the last few weeks met an FTM who is currently coming off T I have been looking at taking it myself mainly because of what other people have said re increased confidence and feeling better about oneself, I have also been a little curious about the strange side-effect that has now popped up on a few occasions regarding T usage and it's effect on sexuality. So here's the skinny, it looks like roughly in a very unscientific way I have observed that guys taking T have as much chance of changing their sexuality than of staying as they are.  What does it mean? How does it happen? I don't really see how T can have this effect on people but if it does in a purely chemical way then, well theorizing on it in a purely fantastical non-scientific way. In the wrong hands it could be developed and used for creating things like a straight drug. I don't like the idea of that. 

This forced me to think very carefully about what I was looking at doing, I don't need help passing really I do every day without any effort at all, in my mind I am male and I think that projects out and people pick up on that. In my family the men are as hairless as the women sometimes even more so I don't feel the need for any facial hair though sometimes I think it would be fun to have there is no certainty that I could even grow any taking T. Also I do think T has an effect on mood and I am trying very hard to stay stable at the moment after years of instability and I don't want to mess with my new found equilibrium. Finally increased sex drive, this may sound like fun but as I spend most of my time keep what I have under control the idea of more of it doesn't appeal all that much, it just sounds like more intense frustration. I am not however saying it isn't for others this is purely about my personal thoughts on me taking T not a judgement on anyone who takes it, I'd just like to say that. Everyone has to find their own way with this and everyone has a different way.

So with these thoughts in mind for the last week or so and the idea that societies binary demands on gender are the problem I took this issue to task in my mind and here's kind of how it went. I am male, I am not a man even with all the T and surgery I would not be a biological man. In a new gender landscape where my maleness is not defined by whether or not I have the right body parts can I find a way to accommodate the difference of inside and outside. I have done this for many years in a very destructive way and more recently in a more positive pro body kind of way and that is also down to the acceptance I have found in the Trans community, meet and being with people who accept me as male despite my female body has given me a huge amount of confidence and self worth. I have felt less and less like a freak with something horribly wrong and more and more like an actual person with a stake in the world. Strange I know I feel I have a place and a voice and a place to be where people will listen and not judge but share and grow with me, it is a lifeline this community.

I went a little off point there. Anyway accepting I am a male in a female body and that that is OK in the world, that I can indeed be a female bodied male I sat with that idea for a bit, I kinda liked it. In this new world where I can be any gender or combination of them and that's OK I can be this, obviously I can't get over years of being unhappy with my female body when I am male overnight but something changed in me with this idea that regardless of the shape of my body I could still be male, not a butch woman but male seemed to sooth something in me. I don't know how long it will last, if I will change my mind next week or next month or next year, but I am going to try and keep this image as long as I can and see where it takes me.

Back from the brink

Well here I am again, it's been a while I have been living the life of the party hardcore in Paris no less and thinking a lot about writing but not getting much done. I have started on the entries I want to do for two other films but can't seem to find the right way to express them right now so I thought I'd just jot something down here so that there was something new at least to see.

I had a lot of interesting experiences over this weekend I had a spate of putting myself out there and telling some more people ( still no women ) about my identifying as Trans they were so unexpectedly lovely about it, it truly broke my heart and filled me with a great big love for them not once did I feel like I was being judged for my choices and even some I told spoke of how they also identified in a similar way it was beautiful. 

I also talked again to the friend who I had told a while back and felt uncomfortable for it and realized that the discomfort was mine to own and he had actually gone out of his way to find out more about it so he could talk to me I was blown away truly. I could of died happy there, I know it won't always be that way, I know some people will never understand or at least not want to and that is always going to hurt a little but this gave me so much hope and strength it really did and for one beautiful weekend I felt like one of the guys in a real sense not just an invisible one.

So it has also left me wondering about what the Trans community is indeed doing to the gender/sexuality landscape and funnily enough another friend of mine tweeted re this in the context of an FTM letter sent to Irene Chaiken about the way Max has been portrayed in the L word. I so starved of anything even remotely close to what I was lapped this character up and not thinking about it in to deep away saw it as a positive step for trans people to be in the series and having issues delt with, getting information out there, but reading this letter ( to be found here http://www.autostraddle.com/a-letter-to-mama-chaiken-from-ftm-computer-search-champion-mighty-max-sweeney/ ) Made me look at his character in a wider context and I have not seen the last season so was unaware of just how bad it had got.  

I could indeed see the erosion of this character in the series going from a reasonably central position with story lines that tackled some of the issues and the potential to educate to a sideshow anomaly to be gawped at and pitied. I was of course saddened by this and can only hope that we can find a way ourselves in the Trans community to get messages out there and let people know what it means. 

I also saw a very interesting quote on this site speaking about the potential of Trans people to rewrite the gender/sexuality landscape because we can't be defined by the rules in place it was put much more eloquently there another reason to go have a look. It really spoke to me and has left me having to think very carefully about how this landscape of mine is changing, everyday it changes sometimes radically sometimes barely at all but it is in constant flux and I am finding more and more comfort with that. 

I have started using the male pronoun in some places and being more deliberate in my attempts to pass. I am learning to find the courage to define myself for the first time in my life and answer the sometimes tough and sometimes stupid questions that come with that statement I am slowly coming out and it does scare me, but so far everytime I have taken a step out I have been rewarded for it and that is something I never expected.

I have also been thinking more and more about taking T, I have been reading what has been said about it from those who have taken it and I am still investigating what it will do to me mind and body. Taking anything like this I don't think should be done lightly but I am very much interested in knowing more.

Lovers and Fighters

Off to The Lovers and Fighters Convention by some magic of the universe I am dressed as smart as I can to the one show I desperately wanted to see but couldn't get tickets for. It's funny how the world just does what you want sometimes.

So my lovely new butch friend from the RVT had her friend drop out at last minute and she thought of me to ask to go and see it ( amazed and grateful I really was, how lovely of her to think of me after such a short time of knowing each other ). So got there early and met another friend as I was crazy excited about going and I sure as anything wasn't going to sit at home and bounce a hole in the floor :). We sat watched people drank gin and bourbon ( not together of course ) and then she had to go catch her movie. Not much later my other new friend turned up in cow print pajamas and quite unsurprisingly carried them off very well, I think it's a confidence thing myself you can't have style without confidence.

Anyway off we went to see the film I was super excited people around me also had made an effort we were the best dressed in the NFT that day.

The film was a video document of a performance of The Genderqueer Playhouse, filmed in front of an audience ( some of whom I recognized hehe ) interwoven with interviews with the performers themselves. I was instantly jealous that I had not had the chance to see this myself but very glad that someone ( in this case Mike Wyeld ) had had the idea to record this for people like myself to see. This film spoke to me as a celebration of the myriad of gender identities out there and it offered me a huge comfort once again seeing people I know, some of whom I have seen perform, once again giving of themselves so personally to get the message across that this is not a binary world in terms of gender. There are many twists and turns to finding that place we can be ourselves in. Sometimes the journey is fun and sometimes painful but definitely worth it.

For me just beginning to find my feet on this journey this is a deeply important message, before I started to accept my own identity questions and reach out to other people who had already started exploring this I didn't know there was any other option open to me other than being male or being female and that's a scary place to be for me finding myself asking questions about my gender again after so long. 

Like I have said before if I was 19 and had the options available to me now I probably would not have thought all that long about it, I would of gone for it no question, but now I've lived in this body coped with it found ways of not hating it a part of me has become more afraid of the idea of changing it. Which is in itself strange, someone asked me quite recently what if I had the surgery and I didn't like the results and my reply was even if it all went horribly wrong and I was deformed by surgery it would still be no worse to me than the body I already have. That answer shocked me I didn't see it coming the words fell out of me like they had been sitting there for years waiting for that question and when it came I didn't have the time to filter it for me or for my questioner. I don't know what to do with that answer, I don't know how it fits into this new world and I am afraid of where answers like that will take me.

For now though I am just holding onto the messages from the film I hope in the future I can see some of the performances I haven't had a chance to see yet, I look forward to getting to know some performances better and to see where the Trans community goes with the documenting of it's history. Already so much has happened in my lifetime I have seen so much change and it has given me hope for the future. I hope we in the Trans space can continue to keep its inclusiveness I think it is the most powerful tool there is. To make everyone welcome and accepted is a message that cannot be eroded I hope.

I also think it is incredibly important that people are starting to recognize the importance of documenting the Trans movement more and more. These are the voices and stories that will help and save more people like me looking for somewhere safe to think the things we have not dared to, to find the spaces and people to talk to about what we could not before and this sense of history and community can help to reach out to more of those people lost in their own gender wastelands.

Pedro

Film about the life and activism of Pedro Zamora, I wasn't expecting much from this and I'm not sure why. I had seen the series of "The Real World' he was in and remembered him in a vague curiosity sort of way. Funny really that it took a film about his life for me to take notice of him I am a bit sad about that. 

I think I was the only female body in a cinema full of men ( at least I didn't see any other female bodies in there ) which I thought was kind of sad as I think it is important for men and women to share their stories with each other. It is our collective struggle and pain that makes us who we are as a community and these are the stories that remind us that we are all human and vulnerable and finite and beautiful and so much more than the easy stereotypes we use to identify and niche each other with.

It was a well crafted film with a good pace and narrative it managed to gather up the complex and full life of this young man and deliver quite succinctly the passion and determination of him to us as an audience. There wasn't a dry eye in that theatre by the end of it. We didn't hide our tears as we watched a bright and beautiful man fight with his condition and finally pass away at the age of 26. Together we mourned him, listened to his message, let our hearts break with each other and as we walked out of that theatre though we didn't know each others names, we didn't even really look at each other, we had shared something raw and painful and close to ourselves that we would not have done were it not for that darkened room and that powerful film.

My friend and I walked out into the sunlight hugged each other and cried for ourselves as much as anyone else and maybe we are selfish because of it. We didn't share that with anyone just him and me and tears in sunlight.

Back and Forth

Well thought I better get something down this week as I haven't in some time and I am beginning to feel like I may be loosing some momentum. I'm sure that's not really the case I have been very busy with other parts of my life like singing and old life friends which has led me to over commit, run myself down and now become sick.

Sometimes being sick is a good thing, at least for me though unpleasant it forces me to stop and take a break otherwise I would just keep going at a faster and faster pace until I spontaneously combusted I suspect.

Well I've had a few things pop up this week a few issues with ladies showing interest in me then blowing me off for no apparent reason i could fathom ( not unusual for me but irritating as I like to know the why of things ) and an old friend who keeps trying to make arrangements to meet for coffee then canceling and saying "Oh we must meet soon" in the in feeling that surely if you wanted to meet that much you would make time as I had with my schedule, I said I was too busy which I was and then silence so I guess that's the end of that eh? I don't think I should feel bad about it yet I do like I'm the one who didn't make the effort and I guess it is just one of those things I need to work on. I do tend to take on responsibility for the discomfort of others and try to accommodate them. This is a fools game though because it means I won't ever find the time for myself surely.

The End of the Week is Nigh!

Hey All,

Well a night of wild dancing abandon wasn't exactly where I ended up more like a sad lonely dance floor gasping its' last breaths and me desperately trying to keep it alive. In general I find lesbians to be not the best at keeping the dance vibe going ( emotive I know and please forgive me my sweeping generalization ) they tend to enjoy groping, conversations ( usually involving making fun of the people dancing ) and getting so drunk they can't speak ( which is sad )

Anyway I had once again over comitted myself so this week I not only missed Switchs' Sexy Mustache party ( which totally broke my heart because I have a real thing for a girl in a fake mustache I don't know why just do ) and then Lynnee Breedloves' show ( which I was again really sad about. It has made me wonder about how I am going to stitch these two very different lives of mine together. How do I bring my old friends whom I love dearly and my new friends who understand parts of me that I have never been able to talk about together? Is it even possible. I don't want to give up the history and time invested in these relationships but a lot of my old friends I have never even discussed the idea of Trans identity with. They know me as a female and not a transgendered entity. How do I talk to them about this?

My new friends ( well I hope they will be ) I feel we have clicked and I want to spend more time with them they have stories to tell that I want and need to hear and I have things I want to share with them. I want to be part of these amazing experiences seeing people getting up and talking about things I am still terrified of saying each time giving me more and more hope and more and more courage to take another shuffle down this road. I'm not moving fast some would say I'm hardly moving at all but that's just the kind of person I am I guess. Inside there is a battle going on, the part of me that doesn't want to mess things up with change and is afraid of where this will take me vs the part of me that says life is too short and I'll be damned if I'm going to look back and wonder why I didn't have the guts to do it. I think I know which side has won already but still I've not found the strength to move into the next step.

I guess I'm afraid of being hurt, which at the end of the day is silly, I'm hurting now, people hurt people that is just life. It cannot be avoided and what defines me is not the hurting but how I respond to it, do I have the strength to pick myself up and find a way to be a better me or do I lie down and cry about it? I want to be the one who pick myself up and shows a bit of courage but right now I just feel like a coward.

I met an old school friend a while ago now, we hadn't seen each other since we were children together and he told me that what he remembered about me most clearly was one assembly the teachers were ripping us out for water balloon fights that had gotten out of hand and they were going to punish the whole year if the offenders didn't confess right there and I stood up and admitted to the water play and defended our actions as being the way we as teenagers released our aggression and that is was in the grand scheme of things pretty harmless and they should show some understanding.

I had forgotten that incident, but I want to have the courage of that young me back then, the me that said to hell with the world and I'm going to do what I think is right, and I'll take the consequences. Oh to have that courage again, I weep for it, in the darkness of night when I lie alone I search myself for it and find I am wanting. I know I must make my choices I cannot lie in this darkness forever hoping someone else will switch on the light for me, consequences be damned I must find a way to do what is right.

Hump Day

Hey world, it's been a tough week, I'm feeling lonely and frustrated and in need of some wild abandon on the dance floor to melt away the weeks stresses and strains. I've been a lone girl in a room with no windows full of men and they haven't let me forget it for a second I am a little demoralized by it all and long for Friday when I won't have to see them anymore.

I don't know if I am feeling a little bit more fragile than I usually do because I don't often let stuff like this bother me. Most days I just play the one of the boys card but I can't seem to bring myself to do it here. Their comments are testing I can feel them probing with their wife jokes and eye candy comments to see just how far they can push me, will I snap, will I run away and cry no I just pretend it doesn't happen even though it does wear me out day after day. What is it they are trying to achieve with this? I am intimidating them that is obvious but I don't really understand why and I am too tired to care right now.

Roll on Friday, Friday night of music and drink and dancing till my legs and hips feel like they will fall off. It is one of the few times I enjoy the femaleness of my body when I dance the rolling curves and curls of back and hip that I never really see men do. It is one of the few places I enjoy feeling female though this too comes at a price what does it mean for me in terms of my gender identity. I feel more and more that I cannot choose one or the other when it comes to gender that for me choosing one is to reject the other and I am not sure that is the right thing for me to do with myself I am learning and finding parts of myself that I am enjoying like this dancing me. Maybe it is selfish but I don't believe I should ave to choose one or the other I think it is a limitation on society to not be able to find space for me as both and that I am all kinds of people in the world who would enjoy being both instead of one or the other suffer a little and sometimes alot for it.

A Quick Note

I know I need to find some time to sit down and write something here, right now I am being distracted away by the allure of exercising and getting a body that looks and feels more like the me I imagine myself to be I don't know why I have wasted so much time ignoring my body and abusing it when all I had to do was work it until I at least had something closer to the lean mean body I imagine myself to have. Funny how something so blindingly obvious has taken me so long to work out for myself. I am relishing every change as the fat melts away I can see myself becoming more and more the masculine body I have always believed was there I am excited by it and want to just keep on going. Running, cycling and weights are my new friends and they make me very happy. I really am very excited by this discovering of a new me under my fat and I can't wait till I get a binder and packer and truly transform into something I had always dreamed I was, obviously the adrenaline from the nights bike ride hasn't worn off yet.

The Pronoun

So I have been thinking about this alot the last few days, in fact it has strangely dominated my train of thought making any other kind of posting on other musings quite impossible. Usually in the day to day I don't really think much about what pronoun is used in connection with me it all seems much of a muchness and quite pointless I guess because I mainly feel a bit of both one day this one day that sometimes both at the same time and I don't really know what that means at the end of the day, but then something kind of strange happened.

I was at one of the shows I have been going to see and someone asked which gender preferred to be referred to as and I gave my usual oh it doesn't matter thing and they then used the she pronoun. I was instantly irked by such a thing and I am not sure why, I had just given my permission to use either yet when 'she' was chosen I was upset by it and since then I have had to think very carefully about this, I've tossed it over and over in my mind and still could not work out why it bothered me. Then a few days later it happened again this time in a different place, same circumstance I gave my consent to use either and they chose 'she' again I felt my gut twist with something akin to but not quite pain as the sound touched me. It sounded alien and as if it didn't belong to me and yet everyday I am referred to in this manner why does it bother me now?

I have to ask myself am I afraid to be called he? Is that why I give my permission to use either? Do I secretly wish that people will see the inner male and choose that pronoun? And why an earth does the pronoun even matter to me so bloody much, I must admit I am angry with myself for what feels like childish behaviour. I suppose on some level it is just that, the people I have been mixing with they accept trans identities and I want to be recognized for that I suppose I am secretly hoping that they will see the inner boy or man or whatever it is and say 'he' instead so that I can for a moment be somewhere where I am not a freak or have people embarrassed because they have mistaken me for a man and see how it feels for me to be 'he'. Of course it is completely silly of me to think that anyone would be able to know this and me begin in the positions of those people would do exactly the same and use 'she' so this is about me again.

I am very seriously looking into some binding and packing options, still a little bit scared to buy them but I keep getting on the web and looking at the websites and I have asked a few people on the TF board about it and they totally recommend it so I think I must try and find the courage to get on with it and give it a try and then see if the pronoun I secretly wish for is used, I hope it is and this way it means I really can be both male and female in this body and I think that could be quite beautiful and I think maybe I could live with that or at least I hope I can. We shall have to see, it's funny though that the thing that is the scariest and the hardest is this, to become more me.