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 ..