Resonance

Voice training today. Speaking in head voice for a long period of time really strains my throat. I gotta keep at it if I'm ever gonna get where I need to be. My biggest problem isn't the mechanics of it; it's the mental block of not wanting to hear my voice as a crude imitation of what I'd like it to be. Mid-puberty, I was in high school choir. I took great pride in being able to sing semi-competently with the altos. The next year, when my voice dropped far enough to put me in with the basses rather than the tenors, I wanted to cry. Any recording of my voice gets me dingy beyond belief. I hate it.

It's the space between the genders that gets to me more than presenting as male. Life as the raw burning question mark that bears panoptic interrogation. You roll down a steep grade into the uncanny valley, and it seems impossible to get back out onto the other side. I don't pass. Probably won't any time soon. It's so tiring, seeing the outside world as an unknowable cauldron burbling with ridicule and danger. I only go out dressed for doctor's appointments. It's safer, although it leaves me feeling hemmed in.


I'm convinced it's better to just accept the identity of trans girly girl and learn to be defiant and proud later. I'm 27. I don't have the energy to be a revolutionary anymore, if I ever had it at all. And, in a weird way, it would feel like forsaking that small, second shot at girlhood that seems to inevitably follow the initial stages of transition. But this is another point where the princess-urge overlaps with survival instinct. Exempli gratia, you can recognize the narcs from the burnouts because the narcs have longer hair. So with trans* and cis women, respectively. I'd never cut my hair as short as my partner, impossibly cute as she is, because I can't lose that gendered social cue.

No great ending to this train of though. It just keeps making stops.

Before and After

Who keeps on reading these things? That's a mystery whose answer simply doesn't belong to me. (But probably spambots.)

A month after going back on my titty skittles (sorry, Leigh) I find myself feeling right again. Not quite to the point where I can feel the quixotic heart of the world beating in time with my pulse, but ... right. Although one of the downsides of sublingual estradiol is that I get kinda peaky around 10pm. I'm so happy to be me again, but I hate how my neo-puberty causes me to act toward my girlfriend in moments of hormonal strife. A bit too needy and manipulative. I worry that I'm changing a bit much for her. She is a treasure, and I couldn't countenance pushing her away.

Restarting my life causes me to want to write again. The blank page is the ultimate safe space in which to explore one's identity, to expunge the effluvium into a place where you can realize it's just hot air. Let this blog serve as my testament. I don't care if it's another in a long line of transgender narratives; it's my story, dammit, and maybe someday it'll help a girl/guy who finds that they're reading their own story written in mine.

Or maybe that's me justifying my solipsism in the name of activism. We'll never know!

Unrelenting March

There is only so much ministering I can do to my sick girlfriend before I feel that I deserve a sexy nurse outfit.

Raw Nerve

I bought a mirror. I put it on my desk to help as I practice my makeup.

Wearing makeup is important because it gives you a good reason not to cry. All that work getting smeared by sadness? The hesitation gives you a good couple of seconds to get yourself together.

I tilted the mirror up and away from my face. It was taunting me.

Earlier tonight, had my first moment of suicidal ideation! Some part of me feels uncomfortably justified by it. Self-harm: the mark of a true trans* person. Or so all those psychologists say.

Now, whenever I lean forward in my chair, I'm worried I'll get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. So I try to artfully limit myself to a certain angle.

I was 19 when I first wrote about transitioning on this blog. I sit and taunt myself, thinking about how much better off I'd be right now if I'd at least been taking testosterone blockers for those three years when I tried to be a man.

It's absurd that I've crafted an arch nemesis out of a $6.99 piece from the Target collection. I lost ~20 pounds in the month since I started being myself again. My makeup no longer has the "clown-in-the-burn-ward" feel that defined my earlier looks. I've got literally the most beautiful, funny, supportive girlfriend that there is. But the reflection in the mirror is still a vicious, well-crafted insult aimed right at my heart.


I worry I'm never going to pass. My girlfriend asks me why passing is such a big deal. It's not even so much that I can't deal with the weird looks and toothless men cackling at me. My problem is that I can't deal with the thought of the people who accept me right thinking of me as a male that they deign to treat as a female.

There's no coda to be had. I try to write snappy endings that recapitulate whatever I've written. I don't have it in me today.

 I'm going to go wipe my makeup so I can cry.