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.