Darkness of the Outer Limits

I can't stop thinking about the logical end of things. That's vague, but I wanted to save the word "death" for later on in this post because it feels like the sort of word you could overuse, y'know? Take out the sting. I've trampled any delicacy, so let's continue on in the neverending spirit of artlessness.

Source

So if you ever read trans message boards or infographics or get even a little near Tumblr, you've heard that 41-47% of trans people have attempted suicide. Which is a hard number to put any veracity into. Assuming that the study was conducted in a somewhat representative matter, you're only polling people who self-identify as trans, and not all the unlucky souls who threw themselves in front of a train once they realized who they were and what that meant. Can't poll the dead or those in denial. But still. 47%. Big number, right?

I always talk about this when I talk about death, but I used to do this drug called DXM. It's a dissociative anesthetic, which means it makes you talk like a robot and feel like you're 8,000 miles from your body. It was scary stuff, because every time I took it I felt like I was dying, was convinced that I'd ingested some fragment of my own nullification. I looked it up and pieced it together: due to its effects on the NMDA receptors, my best guess is DXM simulates the mental processes that accompany death from hypoxia. I felt my own death, I saw the tunnel of blue light. I feel like I spoilered myself for that last big adventure.

Even still, there's something sexy, something frighteningly irresistible about ceasing to exist.

There's this feeling that I get, when I realize that the hormones are at best glacial in doing their work and my body is perhaps too incongruous to ever get over to the other side of the river Passing. This total, what-is-the-point desire to just kinda stop trying. With it comes the fucked-up fantasy of taking my own life. And sometimes it sends me to this depressive lay-on-the-ground type of space, but a lot of times I just feel darkly exuberant. Wallowing in my death ecstasy.

Because, honestly, it feels way less than 50:50 that I'll get to a point in my life where I get accepted as a woman by anyone beyond the one person who I love. (I'm going to change the name of this blog to "Sorry, Leigh.") The grim fear of being unpassable for me isn't street harassment, isn't employment discrimination. It's having completed 90% of my transition plan and being recognized as one of those awful euphemisms, as a "genetically male person who identifies as female." To have people give lip service to who I am while in their heart of hearts thinking of me as that quirky guy they know that gets uppity about pronouns. It's not the people who spit at me that I fear, in the end. It's the polite ones.

As a teen, going into wealthy suburbs as a black (enough) kid in a black hoodie, I got followed around shops and saw the micro-purse-clutchings. I'm quite painfully aware when I'm under the microscope. I hate the scrutiny, but I can't live this dumb sham anymore either. So thanatoxic thoughts have become this big release, the lottery ticket you buy on your way home, the magical thinking that gets me through the day. A dip in the destrudo jacuzzi. Even though I'm too vain for a fake-y suicide attempt and too scared of dying for a real one. Clutch your pearls, girls. This story isn't feeling like it's heading toward a happy ending.

Addendum: I wanted to name this Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, but it seemed awful grim, more than I could justify. I'm pretty sure it won't be my hand that takes my life, so don't get up in arms about it.

The Pure Lands

I was around the age of 22. New to sobriety, I was lost and scared, feeling the magnitude of my aloneness in the universe. As I sat on my bed, legs crossed, back resting on the headboard, I thought about the whole "higher power" bit from step two of Marijuana Anonymous and got to praying. This isn't a foxhole atheist story - I didn't pray to a deity, but to an ideal, to the embodiment of all the qualities I aspired to. A message addressed to the void. And in the process I felt a little prick of what I've come to understand as a religious, the kiss of the divine.



Every Buddha has their own Pure Land. Achieve enlightenment by popping pills. How to start? Most of the time, I'm too material for spirituality. Which I state as a disclaimer for how uncomfortable I am explaining this thing that I deep down need to explain. There's a moment, when taking my estrogen after once again escaping the clutches of testosterone, where I get that feel. Like I'm tuned into the heartbeat of the world, like there is a candle burning inside of me, impossible to extinguish. Something I don't have enough words to explain away. Something too powerful to ignore. In some way, that is how I know - not surmise, but know - that I'm a woman.

I recoil to say it, but it has a tinge of holiness to it, this whole process of trans-ing your sex. Like giving birth, it is painful and gross and dangerous - but still retains the essence of the ineffable, the irresistible power of creating life. In this moment, I want to shake every person who sees transition as superficial. How could they understand? "We know our gender as a revelation."

And I'll Never Get The Devil Outside Of Me

I've been eating like ~1400 (kilo)calories a day. Look, this post isn't about to break in a pro-ana direction or something. I like fat women. Y'know, when they don't happen to be me and built like John Candy.  I've got a spare tire that wouldn't be out of place on the back of a Grand Cherokee, and aaaaaaaaaaaaall my fat is in aaaaaaaaaaaaall the wrong places. Go go gadget anti-androgen!

I lifted weights for a few years, but I never really tried to lose weight. Let's tick down the reasons: I was worried about losing strength. Plus, it's really hard for me to lose weight because I need to get into a certain mindset and stay there. Worst of all, I was afraid that committing to ditching the fat would be this public act. Like, it would just be an embarrassing admission of the fact that I weighed 300lbs when I didn't want to, that I lacked the control over my body.

Now, I eat like a stereotype. Yogurt, rice cakes, fruit, and tomato soup. Having the diet of a Sex and the City character, like many of aspects of culturally acceptable femininity, both makes me feel a bit better and a bit worse. Like, I've assimilated! But also, I've been assimilated. So, is this me, or just a ruse to make myself feel better.

Anyway.

This is a bit messed up, but it feels liberating to reject my body. I spent years trying to just be all zen about having a body I didn't like, and in retrospect that all just feels like wasted time. Fuck that. Use your unhappiness. Make it work for you. Have the courage to kill the parts of yourself that you truly hate.

Pandora's Amphora

Been kind of a bitch this week. It is the kind of liberating experience that would make for a very uplifting public service announcement. "Be a dear, give 'em a sneer!" Or something?

I never call my girlfriend on being hormonal, even when I have just licked blood from her vagina. Worst case scenario, when she'll apologize to me for going to the Angry Cry Nebula, I'll just say "I understand." But now she feels quite at liberty to blame my feelings on hormones. It's like, oh, double standard, hon, but you do not know the hell you have earned. I think I may have demolished my high ground halfway through that last sentence, but fuck. Do you know how much it sucks to finally have your feelings back and then have your partner explain to you why they're irrelevant? (She can read this or not. Whatever.)

Apparently, Pandora's whole curious little kitten act? Yeah it, was with a jug, not a box. (Side note: mentioning the Curious Little Kitten totally makes me want to cry. I know!) Which kinda makes the whole metaphor different for me. Like, a box? Of course you're going to open it. You've got incentive! Boxes are what Christmas presents and mail-order dildos come in! And, for that reason, a box is more verboten than a jug. I wouldn't keep anything in a jug which I would mind being infested by frogs. Maybe that's why they kept hope in there? My 7th grade teacher, the incomparable Mark Klein, always told us that hope was left because it was the greatest evil of all. I like that.

I ordered some black lipstick on Amazon. The question before me: cyber goth or goth hippie? Either is exciting.

Beauty Hermitage

I've cataloged the thought here before, but oft I wonder what my life would look like if I skipped back into solitude. I was never the most devoted hikikomori in my teenagedom; I had friends, left the house, and worked (at certain select points). People expend extraordinary energy - I expend extraordinary energy - trying to be social. I wonder if it's worth it.

I had a weird experience with a friend last weekend. I went over to his house post- trans reveal, only to find he hadn't talked to his girlfriend about it. I'd just had this heart-wrenching conversation with him that he just seemed to want me to ignore. The guy ... I've know him for eight years now, and I never gave serious thought to telling him about my desire to start drinking Diet Coke. But my current distress has forced my hand. He's a good guy, but I think it's only because it takes less effort and leaves less room for conflict than being an asshole.

In addition, I've had some disagreements with my partner. She's been kinda shady on me coming out to her friends, despite her repeatedly assuring me of how incredibly cool they'd be. I asked her if she wanted to go see a movie with me presenting as female, we had a big fight, I told her to just go see it with her friends sans me, and she totally did. It's like, honey, I know you are a rookie at being with women and that whole transgender thing makes this hard mode, but you do not get this having a girlfriend thing at all. Whatever. I love her, but sometimes she makes me feel so rotten. Prophetic words.

    

So right now I am considering a bout of beauty hermitage. Retire from friends and general sociability, push myself deep into my work, and just let the hormones do their work over the next nine months. Stop trying to force being with people who're reticent to buddy up with non-passing ol' me, work on my voice, and start making new friends who only know post-crisis Jessica.

I know part of this is just hormones talking. I know I've cut besties out of my life before, unfairly and in haste. But I really am sick of it. I hate the process of trying to realign others' perceptions. You, Sisyphus, here, hill. I have to do it for my mom, we'll see if I can get there with the girlfriend, but ... god, I don't know, why bother? I have so little energy to focus outward right now.

I spent the day ignoring texts, and I felt great. Maybe the liberation of being alone is one of those things that fades when you have nobody to talk to, but that's how it is right now. My struggles can't be shared with anybody who'll listen.

Except you, dearest blog.

Secret Project Deep

I totally get it. I want to cram myself back into my work so I can claim my little slice of oblivion. Having too much time to consider the future and its slow slide into the present is killing me right now. I'm sitting on a homebound one-week vacation that only serves to remind me just how much I'd rather be at work. The other lady and I are here, occasionally getting at each other's throats. Funny, work keeps encroaching on my sleepy staycation, and part of me wants to let it. I don't know. I'm getting pretty bad at compartmentalizing the different parts of my life. Is this therapy?

I take all the steps that I need to in order to get the transition ball rolling. I get shot with lasers and keep doctors' appointments and practice my voice and buy clothes &c. Y'know when you fuck up in a video game and have to restart aaaaall the way from the beginning of the level? It feels like that. No matter how gratifying it is to get my self right, I can't get past the desire to be less obviously, horridly masculine right now.

This is where things get artless and my feelings become ill-expressed. I pine for androgyny, that place between the male and female where bishounen, Bowie, and Boy George intersect. It's not where I'm heading, but it would make a decent oasis between here and there. What I have right now are feminine highlights draped on a male frame, and it's just awful. Internalized transphobia, dysphoria, or aesthetic revulsion? I am totally unqualified to make that distinction. I need to see something that would assure me I've got some chance with that bugbear, passing.

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.