It's been a while since I've posted an
update. I know. I have about 60 pages left in my second draft of my
first novel, though I've put that down for the past few weeks. I'm in
a really difficult section to write but a very important section to
the overall story.
Not difficult as in emotionally
draining, (as you would expect with a novel that is basically a
memoir of my life before transitioning) but difficult as in not much
actually happened in this section that I'm writing about right now,
but it's very important to the process that allowed me to transition.
I've also held a TG Prom at the Gay
Community Center, which was a huge success and a great thing for a
lot of people but didn't raise the revenue I had hoped for. That was
one week ago now, and I've been digging myself out of the worst
depressions I've had since transitioning.
Okay, I realistically didn't expect
that much more revenue than I brought in. Or at least not towards the
end. I had a pretty good idea of how many people were showing up. I
started planning this prom almost immediately after I found out I
wasn't selected for the Jim Collins Foundation grant for the second
year in a row because quite honestly the thought of one more year
without my surgery is rather undbearable.
It still is.
Actually it's the thought that day
after day year after year I am going to have to live with the anatomy
that I have. It's knowing that every day this gender dysphoria
becomes more intense. It's knowing that I am quickly approaching a
time when it is just flat out too intense for me to bear any longer.
I'm pulling though though. And this is
my attitude. I may very well reach a point where without having had
the surgery I'm just going to have to end it, but I'm not going to
get there without a fight and if I do get there I will have made one
hell of an impact.
I thought I'd write today about Gender
Dysphoria, not so much definitions for cis people, or an argument
that I really am the gender I say I am, just the experience.
I don't know how to explain it. I
don't have a “why?” Why do I “want” to be female? I have no
idea. Honestly the only thing I can think of to explain it is that I
want to be female because I am female. I hate this thing that is
between my legs because it is not supposed to be there.
There's this attitude that these
surgeries that many of us trans people need are optional. That's why
I can't get health insurance that will cover this surgery. And how do
I really explain myself.
I say “I am female” and so many
people just can't understand. They say be paitient you'll get your
surgery, or they say how courageous I am. And all of this is valid,
but at the same time, for me it is this driving urge. Like there is
no way to ignore it and I just feel it louder and louder.
Like before I transitioned I thought
that maybe there was someway to live around it, to somehow carve out
an identity for myself without transitioning but this urge to
transition was so intense and became so much more intense that not
satisfying it basically caused me to cease functioning.
I mean here I am. I've come a long
way. I was able to experience life in my twenties as a woman. To say
I live as a woman is inaccurate because I think I can truly say that
I am a woman. There are the Kathy Brennens of the world who insist
that I am and can never be anything other than a man, but understand
that for me it is impossible for me to experience myself as anything
other than female. I just am not capable that.
I cannot experience myself as
cis-gendered. I can understand the concept that most people accept
and are satisfied with the sex they were assigned at birth but I do
not know what that feels like. I cannot imagine being male and being
satisfied with it. I can't imagine why anyone would want to be male.
It is something that is absolutely beyond my experience.
I guess to compare it to something
else, I cannot imagine myself in a relationship with someone male.
I'm not going to say that there haven't been times when I've been
attracted to certain men, because I have, but try as I might I cannot
know what it is like to sexually prefer men. I've never experienced
it. It's something that I contemplate sometimes. I'll be out
somewhere and see a group of straight girls and I just wonder to
myself “what is that like?” It is just something completely
foreign to me. Just something I can understand on an intellectual
level and accept as a state of being but it just isn't something I
can relate to.
This gender dysphoria thing...hurts.
That's the only way I can really describe it. I have no more ability
to imagine myself as man than any other woman. Even when I lived it I
couldn't imagine it. It is a state of being that is beyond what I
have experienced. It isn't desire. I need to be female. I don't know
how to explain it except that it has to be biologically driven
because there is nothing I can do or that can be done that has ever
“cured” a transsexual other than gender confirmation.
And of course people who haven't
experienced it don't know. I've gotten “well it isn't like you have
a tumor or something, it isn't life threatening.” And I don't know
how to respond. Gender dysphoria is this ever increasing discord that
just builds and builds until it becomes intollerable. I mean, it's
this discord that I have to stop, and that drove me to transition and
drives me to have this Gender Confirmation Surgery.
Not my best entry I think, but it'll
do.All
