Now Is Not The Time For Psychobabble

Oh, but it is!  And here’s why:

1) Everybody’s doing it. Get on board or be left behind.

2) For me, it’s just pre-sense. It may not mean anything right now, but it will next year, or next century. You just wait!

3) Instead of calling it psychobabble, let’s just call it poetry & see where it takes us…

FRIENSKIS,

How are you? I am doing better & better. I had a couple of rough months. Somehow I managed to be jolly & positive through Dec/Jan, but Feb/Mar were a little aftershocky.

Don’t worry. That is going to happen here. It’s okay to have feelings. Even BIG ones. Even irrational ones. Irrational feelings are often intuitive timebombs going off prematurely, kind of like psychobabble may just be memories from the future.

I’ve been googling Sen. Duckworth (D-IL) regularly, and I fact check everything that comes out of the great American blowhole. And as soon as I can walk again, I start my “chosen activity” on the frontlines…

…oh did I tell you I broke my foot about 3 weeks ago? I’m so bummed because I had my mile down to 8 minutes, and had wanted to do a 5K in Apr/May. I’m trying to enjoy this convalescence, but …I feel like now’s not the time to be side-lined.

But maybe it is. And here’s why:

1) I did all the hard work already

2) Now is the time to gather strength

3) I’m still in a “period of transition”

*************** A PERIOD OF TRANSITION**********

So, VT, how is your transition going? I hear everyone ask me all the time.

Not. 

No one asks. No one wants to know about it. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway, because that’s how generous I am w/ my experiences on this planet.

Toy Village 2003

The truth is—I haven’t changed much. If you had told me on 12/7/15, the day of my first shot, that I would still look pretty much the same 16 months later…

I would’ve been really disappointed. Once I made the decision to start T, and waited 5 months to get in to see the Endo, and imagined myself as a guy for the first time since I was 19 & almost died because i was really a girl in the world’s eyes…

I was so looking forward to this wonderful transformative journey (which I expected would take about a year). I was anticipating (& fearing) being unrecognizable in the mirror. I was anticipating (& fearing) the loss of my mezzo-soprano singing range. But the excitement was definitely greater than the fear.

Being an older trans guy (46 at time of 1st shot), I’m on a lower dose of T than the average 18 year-old would be. I was in that hormone range where i wasn’t making much estrogen anymore so I was okay w/ the lower dose. Plus I had to think of Moonchild’s comfort level too…

Even though he understood gender dysphoria from living w/ me for years, he was not looking forward to having a husband instead of a wife. I was okay with transitioning slowly if it would help him acclimatize.

Of course, I told you all that from the moment I made my appointment up until the start of this year the “Ma’am bombs” began—

the world called me ma’am so many times, just so I’d never forget : ))

Baby Eloise—she's sitting in the windowsill chattering at birds now 14 yrs old

But I do want to forget. And the world doesn’t call me ma’am so much anymore, but I don’t exactly pass as male either. I think since I had top surgery I’m read first as “teenage boy” but people figure out pretty quickly that I’m older & that means I must be female…

My moustache is trying so hard to be more than a soup shadow. But it just hasn’t progressed much. Even on my lower dose, the doctor thought I should have more facial hair by now.

My voice also hasn’t really changed all the way. Sometimes it is deeper, sometimes it’s just scratchy, and sometimes I feel like I sound just like my old lady-self…

I don’t think people even remember that I’m trans & some of my friends who were so good at trying to use my name and pronouns have just gone back to she-ing and I feel like I might have to come out all over again…

I had been waiting on the changes that would make it easier for my friends to switch pronouns. I know it feels delusional to call someone ‘he’ when they still look like ‘she.’

So...in Feb/Mar I was lamenting my slower paced changes (I’m used to being around younger guys who have goatees & Jim Morrison vocal ranges in like 6 months) and feeling left out, and wondering what should I do about this??

But now I’m feeling a lot better about my failure-to-trans. I feel so much better on T than I did my whole life as an estrogen monster. That alone makes the leg-stabbing worth it. Plus the changes that may not be so noticeable to a casual observer—muscle mass, “downstairs growth”—are enough to ease dysphoria to functional levels.

I have some of the changes I wanted, and none of the ones Moonchild didn’t want—so it’s a win-win! I just have to keep it in perspective, and stay on my own path. Any time I dare to compare myself to the younger guys I come away feeling quite hopeless.

I don't know what this is—2015

And yes, it’s true that I pee in a cup in the car. It’s actually a coffee thermos. I am not a fired-up trans activist, and I don’t want any bathroom drama.** So I practice avoidance. I know some people would say this makes me “not a trans ally.” 

But to me it just means I’m used to being self-protective over confrontational. I recognize that the world has trans compassion fatigue and I’m trying not to push any buttons.

Just reading the room as they say…

*******************READING ROOM: AS THEY SAY************

I read a book a few months ago that I want to delve into in one of my serious Octopus Diary entries. It was the biography of Sci Fi author James Tiptree (who was really a woman named Alice Sheldon). I had never heard of Tiptree before reading the book, but a friend thought I needed to read about him and sent the book to my mailbox.

This was way more than a story about a sci-fi author with a pseudonym. It was very misogynist-feminist/trans-masculine. Not to mention Alice Sheldon, the person, lived a jaw-droppingly privileged & introspective life***, in which she managed to do great things before ending it all in a murder-suicide. 

Unfortunately I finished the book right around the time of the election and it got shoved aside in the sideshowery that ensued. But I’ll write more about Tiptree when I have some art to go with it! Yes! I want to do some Tiptree-inspired watercolors to go with the article. 

Today, you’ll have to recycle this used art with your purple irises.

************   ** & *** ********************

**although I almost had car drama when we were up in Ybor City—I was peeing in my coffee cup & some guy banged on the window. He was the paid parking attendant and I don’t think he saw what I was doing but it was a close call.

***speaking of introspective lives, in response to my FB post about “utopian societies of the future” someone asked, VT, what do you think a utopian society IS? 

And I said, A society that’s more introverted. 

More on that serious topic

Later

In the Octopus Diary

I don't know what this is either but I made it during my nervous breakdown 2014