A perspective on transition

While idling in a trans-related irc channel, a conversation struck up relating to a specific problem that someone was having. Out of this came some advice that I wish I had been given years ago, and, I believe, something that many people deserve to know sooner rather than later:

It's a false choice; you don't "try to transition".

You "decide to take HRT", you "decide to dress androgynously", you "decide to get electro/laser", etc.

The "decide to transition" paradigm died out in the 50's, but the establishment and popular literature just hasn't yet caught up to that reality.

You need to learn to listen to yourself, and put that in its place on your hierarchy of needs. So you can make decisions like:

• Electro is a good idea. I am going to get electrolysis because no matter what I decide, I am never going to enjoy facial hair.
• It is ok for me to dress androgynously. The consequences are relatively small, and it makes all the difference in the world when I see myself.
• It is ok for me to take HRT, because the changes are relatively small over months and I can always change my mind.

In the grand scope of things, the only *big* decisions are the irrevocable ones. Sharing this with your family, with your employer, with your friends.

> SecondWind, I feel like the fool on the short bus all the other kids make fun of, but I do not know how to dress androgynously

Hah, good point. God, I hate fashion. I just shopped entirely in the women's clothing section for that which I would wear anyways.

Sweaters, jeans, sneakers, etc.

Also grow out your hair and get it styled in a way you like, fuck gender norms.

I'm not saying androgyny is a comfortable place to end up, but it's sure as hell better than where you started.

Anyhow, if you were truly ready to fully transition *right now*, it would be a horrible experience, because it takes a _long_ time.

-- SecondWind

Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic

So, here's what I've learned so far about the 'process' with regard to starting on the path to transitioning. Italic text is my advice, which has been gleaned from getting as far as the first appointment. Bold text is what they want you to keep believing.

• If you have gender dysphoria, and desire to transition from one physical gender to another, you must first talk to your G.P., who will refer you to a local Psychiatrist, who will then refer you to the GIC (in this case, and many others, Charing Cross).
• If you have gender dysphoria, and desire to transition from one physical gender to another, go talk to your G.P., and then start your transition - transition at home, get your deed poll done, transition at work.
  At some point down the line (4-6 months), you'll receive an appointment with a Psychiatrist, who will tell you that you need a referral and then put you on the waiting list. Your first appointment at CHX-GIC will be roughly 1 year after you've seen your psych for the first time.
  
  
• During your 60 minute initial assessment, we'll discuss with you your history, and then discuss with you how we can aid you with your transition - hormones, speech therapy, hair removal (not covered by all PCTs).
• During your 60 minute initial assessment, you will re-tell your entire life story - the unabridged version -, in great detail. This will take approximately 80% of the appointment.
  
  You will then be told whether or not you're a suitable candidate for transition. You will be told that you should get a deed poll done and bring it to your next appointment, as they consider this to be "not required, but, a definite line in the sand that shows you are serious".
  ***Even if you have been on hormones before (self prescribed or otherwise), this is not a valid case for proving you're serious***
  
  You will be told that they require blood to be taken, and given a blood test sheet, which you must then take to CHX-Hospital.
  
  You will be given a follow-up appointment, with a colleague of the psych's choosing. During this follow-up, you will be expected to re-tell your life story, in depth.
  
  You will probably at this point ask about when hormones can be prescribed, even if just anti-androgens.
  The answer will be "After your next session, if we're satisfied"
  You will ask "what is the criteria to satisfy you?"
  The answer will be "Well, you need to prove that you're serious; so, deed poll, and transition."
  To which you'll probably reply "waaaait... I have to transition *without* hormones, and *without* speech therapy?"
  To which the answer will be "yes... we don't like to give out hormones pre-transition, as people can wait for themselves to become more confident, and maybe even never transition, even though their bodies have physically changed. As to speech-therapy, we believe it shows that you're more serious if you transition without it. We'll happily refer you after you've transitioned though, and proven this at your 2nd appointment, or 5th, or 10th, or however many it takes you until we're satisfied."
  They'll also throw in some bullshit about speech-therapist preferring people to be in one role, just to fuck with you.
  
  At the end of the session (especially if you've moved house), expect the uptight bitch in the reception to tell you "You must stand there, and then she'll be with you in a second", followed by her moving 2' to the left when you stand where she tells you, and asking "How can I help?". This will promptly be followed up with something along the lines of (if you moved) "Because you moved I can't give you an appointment now as we have to check funding."

Had I known all of these things *before* starting this path of bullshit, I'd have transitioned already, and wouldn't have wasted another 1.5 years. Thanks charing cross, thanks Dr Davies, and fuck you and the horses you both rode in on.

P.S. Their idea of a hormone regimen is fucking archaic. No wonder it takes years for people to even begin to show sign of their bodies changing.

I wrote poetry

Untitled

Everyday is the same day,

The feelings never change.

Each day is no different,

This shit has to stop.

Why Can't I Be Happy?

I feel oh so sad.

People don't see me.

I don't see myself.

There is no escaping,

from your own living hell.

Untitled 1

The only person who cares is me.

I don't know what I'm caring for.

I tell myself things will get better.

I believe my own deception.

My whole life a fantasy of nothing that's right,

Why won't they let me just extinguish the light?

They say it would hurt them,

They claim that they care.

Lies of indifference leading me to despair.

Nothing gets better, the end just draws near...

Staying alive just brings me to tears.

Untitled 2

My world is desaturated,

Not grey but not color either.

Nothing is vivid.

No smiling here.

I look all around me,

it's all the same.

I'll never be one of them, no matter how I try

I feel like such a horrible person. I look around, see happy people, and wish that they'd all have something horrible happen to them to take away that happiness. Right now, my emotions are operating on a 'if I can't be happy, you can't be happy' wavelength.

I'm incapable of being happy with myself, and this adversely affects everything else. I went to see Tegan & Sara live, and while I loved the music, and it definitely goes down as one of the best shows I have ever been to; I ended up looking at all the beautiful lesbians and becoming depressed that I'll never be like that, not unless I spend hundreds of thousands on extensive plastic surgery.

Friends suggest we go out together, and as much as I'd love to... as much as I really want to, I know I won't fit in, can't fit in. I feel so powerless to my circumstance. So unattractive. So worthless. There are so many social boundaries that feel like an iron curtain, my happiness being on the other side, unattainable.

I think the only way I'll ever attain peace in this life is by dying... and that just makes me even more sad.

Maybe they're right

When I started this little journey of mine, I wasn't quite prepared for just how much self-doubt, angst, depression, general unhappiness and all the other things I've been dealing with. I figured that since I was finally doing something, then I'd be happy. How wrong was I?

Very, apparently.

Now, I assume that a lot of what I'm feeling right now has to do with being off my meds - I can't afford more until next week, and so, no doubt the current hormone imbalance is doing plenty of its own unique and special things to fuck with my mood.

This week has been especially interesting; I've been feeling both happy and sad at the same time; I've been having flashbacks and nightmares; and, I've been wondering whether I should just give up on it all. That's not to say I'm contemplating suicide, or indeed want to attempt suicide, I've just been thinking a lot that this life really sucks and is working out to be very pointless indeed.
Never underestimate the power other people - complete strangers - have to screw with your self-confidence either. Getting called 'sir' all the time really hurts. Now, admittedly, I still go to work as a guy, but, I often put a lot of effort into looking androgynous, and so, It Hurts, Damnit.

I'm just so afraid that nothing will turn out right.

I am not depressed, I am not depressed, I am not ...

As a kid, my mom always tried to drum into me the idea of "The Power of Positive Thinking". She isn't a religious person, but, if she was, I'm fairly certain that her religion would be self-motivation; and to a degree, I suspect it is.
I'm incredibly lucky to have a mom like her, she's an incredibly strong, independent, free-thinking woman; and definitely the greatest role-model in my life - she is likely why I ended up a feminist after all... though she never consciously pushed me in that direction.

It's things like that which get to me though... I never really got into the whole positive thinking thing - moreover, I never really figured out how to cope with the bouts of incredible depression that hit me from time to time... now brought more regular by hormones that aim to approximate the monthly cycle of womanhood. Sadly, it's always something I least expect that pushes me into it, and leaves me blindsided by sadness, confusion, depression.

Today, it was this: Hunter Valentine (a band I love) posted about a gig they're doing today, in West Hollywood, LA, at a place called Girlbar; which got me thinking... I wonder if there are any lesbian bars in London of that ilk - by that, I mean, similar to how they are in the US.
I managed to find a list, which is by now at least a couple of years out of date - many of the bars have closed, or changed, or a multitude of other things; websites left without updates for over a year and all that good stuff.

Then it hit me... the depression, revolving around the thoughts "And how, prey, do you intend to go to a bar for gay girls?" coupled with "Yes, you consider yourself to be a gay girl, but, no-one else does... so, you're basically... Fucked."
I'm sure this would be easier if I had a bunch of female friends who were gay too, but, I don't, so it isn't... and all the positive thinking in the world isn't going to change that for me.

I do find it interesting however, the way that the majority of my depressive thoughts circle around things relating to me not getting to be me. I guess it makes sense in a way though.

That downward spiral

It's been over a month since I last posted... I should really do this more often, I know that it helps me to get it all out instead of dwelling on it; but, writing requires motivation, and to a degree, confidence - neither of which I've had much of this past month or so. My biggest news, is that I finally found a psychiatrist who seems to actually a) care, b) not be completely jaded; and, he was willing to prescribe. I'm on Quetiapine now... it's an anti-psychotic, which is also indicated for bipolar people, and it has an amazing sedative effect - I'm out cold an hour after taking it.

I don't know if it's helping though; the past two weeks have been a slow descent into depression; while a bad thing, I guess at least I'm not rapid-cycling from mania to depression and back again at will, but, now all the old feelings of being worthless are coming back.
I guess that when you're not in a state of depression for more than a day or two, without bouncing into happiness and mania for another day or two, it becomes hard to really focus on how much your life sucks. You're almost brainwashed by the fact that you have several insane moments during the week, where everything feels like it's covered in gold leaf.

That facade has fallen. The grip of self-deprecation is taking hold. For the first time in at least a year, I found myself wishing to die. Not to the point of wanting to take my own life; I mean, there are extenuating circumstances as to why I probably won't ever try that again, but, if I was diagnosed with a terminal condition and given a week to live? Yeah. I wouldn't be unhappy.

Sometimes, it's just the same shit, different day syndrome that is existence in the 21st century. "Existence"... if you could even call it that. I'm sure it's my own fault, I've spent years isolating myself from society, so now, my life consists of a monotonous continuum, never once changing for the better. The lack of social interaction usually doesn't bother me too much unless I expose myself to vast swathes of society all at once... then it becomes too much and I run away, clutching at my solitude.

Alas, times like this... the run-up to the clock ticking on one more year... one more year crossed off the calendar of life. I hate the feeling of getting older; I may have said this before. Aging is one of the things I fear the most. That, and my reflection. Sometimes, I think of neither, and see myself as I wish to be. Other times, it's a sinister menace waiting to pounce out from the shadows and crush my self-confidence into dust; my brain playing a chorus of Baz Luhrmann's Sunscreen, morbidly changing the words in my head.

You are as fat as you imagine.

I often find myself wondering, whether it's normal to feel this way; indeed, whether I'll ever truly be happy with my life, with who I am, with how I look; I wonder whether I'll ever be loved. At times, I find someone who's interesting and who I'm attracted to... yet doesn't feel the same way, and never will. Then I remember that old saying and resign myself to another year of loneliness.

You have to love yourself before others can love you.

In which she mused on everything, and settled upon nothing.

There are definite pros to having a life full of excitement; always having something to do, someone to see, some place to be. That's certainly how it looks from the outside, anyway.

I'm currently laying in bed, wide awake, laptop resting on my knees, with the lights out. I should by rights be sleeping; I've been awake for... at least 48 hours now without any sleep. Before that, I'd managed a couple of stretches of maybe 12 hours in total, spread over 3 days. The majority of that was down to popping a bunch of sleeping tablets; however, the OTC stuff and me don't always get along, especially when I can't research all the side-effects of the random chemical they make it from. You see, for me to actually see an effect from OTC sleeping drugs, I have to take 2-3 times the recommended dosage. If I don't, then without fail, I end up crashing hard, and waking up around 15-20 minutes later, feeling like someone just beat me around the head with a sledge-hammer until I lost consciousness. It's a horribly unpleasant experience.
This past week, I've been ill, and probably in part due to that, my tenuous grip on a sleeping pattern has devolved into full scale insomnia - if I'm lucky, I'll get an hour of uninterrupted sleep, then be wide awake again, but feeling oh so very beautiful on the inside.

The one interesting side effect to my insomnia, is I find writing incredibly easy. It's almost as if some sort of creativity-faucet is inversely proportional to the amount of rest I've been getting.

This kinda brings me back to my opening paragraph. Life looks, to an outsider, like it could be quite interesting. Lots of little nuances, interactions, experiences.
I've been thinking a fair bit over the past few hours about what I actually do with my days, and it's frighteningly withdrawn.

My average day generally goes like this:

Wake up at some point in the morning. I feel I should point out, when my insomnia isn't fucking with me like this - very brief sleep, if any at all -, it usually takes the form of a fight to get to sleep, and then, upon eventually passing out, it being completely impossible to wake me.
I suppose I could claim, that it is my body's way of making up for all the time that it's awake, and sure, this would fly at certain times; like now for instance. The rest of the time I really don't have an excuse for why my body is so out of whack.

So yes, I wake up - usually between 9 and 10am.
Spend 10 minutes dragging myself out of bed - I'm not at all a waking person. It matters not if it's morning or afternoon, evening or night. If I'm just waking up, I will fight to stay under the covers where it's safe and warm.
Stumble into the bathroom, wash, and stare for a while at the mess that has bestowed itself upon my head. Attempt to run my fingers through it and wince at the knots.
Get dressed, wet my hair, put product in, blow dry and style it. I obsess over my hair.
Take my meds, check the train time-table, depending on what time of day it happens to be, and whether I'm intending to drag myself into work.
Get in the car and drive to the station.
Grab a coffee if there's time from the shop on the station platform
Sit on the train for 30 minutes, then the tube.
Run up the escalators and down the stairs for cardio, and also because I hate it when people stand on the left of the escalators. Principle demands I excuse them.
Get into the office around 1 hour 45 after waking up.
Leave the office around 6pm and take the reverse journey home.
Get to my car, get in, make this whole big thing in my head about there being things to do aside from driving straight home.
It's more of a momentary delusion.

"There's someplace you're supposed to be going tonight."
'Yeah? Where?'
"Oh. Perhaps not then."

Arrive back at my house around 7pm.
Spend an hour "checking e-mail".

This is the horribly pathetic, socially withdrawn aspect of my day. Between leaving the office, and arriving home, there's usually a couple of pieces of e-mail that arrive.
Seeing the little red dot with an unreadable white number imprinted upon it (unreadable because I have dock magnification disabled, and my dock quite small; not because I require glasses) makes my heart jump at the possibility that there might be a message, for ME, from someone ELSE. Maybe, hope of hopes, someone messaged me on that stupid dating website, which I should definitely purge my profile from.
Sometimes, it is just that. E-mails from people who care about me. Usually in that case, it's e-mails from people who care about me but need my help with something. The rest of the time, it's the same "Spam" that arrives on the same day and the same time each week.
New shoes, hair styles, books, etc etc etc. Online stores demanding my attention. A distraction for a few seconds, but nothing in comparison to interaction with someone.
Check twitter to see if anyone replied to any of the inane things I said today. Nope. Look at the two new people who followed me. Both spam bots, block and mark as spam.
Wonder if there's anyone online who'd want to talk to me. Browse my friend-list for 5 or 10 minutes, mentally contemplating what I could say to each person, beyond the obvious

Me: "hi"
Them: "hi"
Me: "how are you?"
Them: "fine thanks, you?"
Me: "yeah, I'm ok =]"
*silence as the conversation ends*

Generally figure that I don't particularly have anything interesting to say to anyone, and watch a downloaded TV show for a while.

At this point, I'll either convince myself that I should probably eat, and that eating should involve going to the supermarket (I *hate* supermarkets - too many people), or, that I'm not hungry, toast will do, and then I'll go to bed, and repeat the cycle.

Weekends are mostly the same, except they involve me finding arbitrary tasks, things to spend money on, that generally involve my transporting myself over some distance; usually an hour or two each way, to waste the time during which I'd be at work, if it was a weekday.


All of that saddens me to no end.

Fuck self pity, I *know* I have a problem, we're waaaaaaay the hell beyond admitting that something needs to change. I just seem complexly incapable of enacting this change.
The past few times I've tried - going out to do social things with people, for instance - it has been a complete disaster. I even joined a gym, and went. Being trans, let alone trans with OCD, anxiety, zero self-esteem and zero confidence; the whole going aspect was a Huge Thing™. That lasted oh, two weeks. I'll go back at some point; I just don't feel at all comfortable there, mainly due to the whole gym-gender-role-reinforcement thing.

I've found, that if I know a person very well, then I can quite happily spend time in their company, doing stuff. I'll have a really good time too.
I even found out, that I could extend this to one person I know really well, and one person I've never met before. It was quite awkward for the first 15 minutes or so, but, we all clicked, and became friends. I think it helped that these two instances were with girls (except the boyfriend of one of the girls, who is an exception to this incredibly convoluted rule).
The few times I've attempted this social interaction thing at work - when colleagues have invited me to go for a drink, or go bowling -; I've felt like a complete outsider, even though I work with these people all day long.
Groups bigger than 3-4, in an environment where there are other people, and where I can't hide in a corner, or hide behind my friends and use them as a human shield, leave me having panic attacks.
I've never been particularly social; I was never a complete fuckin' recluse though. Not until a year or two ago, and I can't really put my finger on any one thing that changed. Perhaps it had just been some repressed thing that surfaced at an expedient moment, to bring forth this shy, withdrawn personality.

One suspicion that I've been having, is that it's something to do with my male persona - I used to have a finely crafted veil of lies to tell to anyone who asked, to make them believe I was manly, and all that other bullshit. I was *good* at lying; really really good. Then one day, I believe I made the conscious decision to stop pretending to be something that I derided and disliked so much. After that, I found myself accidentally alienating myself from conversations, because where before I'd have laughed at the chauvinistic arguments and jokes going around a pub table between my friends, while the women there visibly swallowed their anger and pride, I started calling people out on their bullshit, and arguing things from the perspective of me, instead of my lie. Don't get me wrong, it's rather hilarious, the look on a true chauvinist's face, when you change from feigning support for him, to ripping him apart like you honestly couldn't care whether he died that very second. However, the overall effect of this, seems to have been a sort of suicide of that side of me. All that's left is a gay, feministic girl, trapped inside an incredibly worthless body.
I'm sure that any sensible person would have maintained their mask, until a time that they could transition from it, to their new life.
I never claimed to be sensible. I'm strong-willed.
There are some interesting things to note though; after alienating everyone and tearing that life-long mask asunder, I switched jobs, and went into the new one as me, in everything but physical form. I refused to bend my beliefs to the prevailing wind. As such, none of the guys at work particularly want to know me - they talk to me, since, they need to to be able to get things done.
The polar opposite is true for the women at work. My office tends to be the place where confabs take place. It's an interesting dynamic, from the perspective that besides my body-language and the way that I talk and treat them, I've given no indication that I'm female. That said, they probably think I'm just a really camp man or something.

I should probably give this sleep thing another go -- I've been writing for an hour now.

A New Beginning

I've tried to do this a bunch of times. Never really got very far, beyond setting up a blog, and then feeling contemplative for a while, before eventually giving up.

I suffer from pretty bad insomnia; it waxes and wanes, and right now, it's waxing pretty good, so I have a chance to lay down with my laptop and think about writing things that will help me figure out my own head. After all, that's my goal with this.
Equally, I expect these entries to begin and end abruptly, I'm not attempting to directly tell a story to anyone, and even though it is directed towards the third person; that's mostly for ease of self-analysis and just plain how I write. Mostly, I believe the entries will be free-typed, as a stream of consciousness, and I don't intend to go back and prettify them after they're written.

I was inspired while reading a friend's blog, where she mentioned self-analysis, and archived everything that had come before so she could start over.

I guess this is my new start, my chance to get it all out there and analyze; to try to figure out what needs to change, and how I can change it.

I don't want this to turn into one of those self-piteous blogs. I already have one of those, and I badly need to fix things, instead of dwelling on them. That said, no doubt, one has to dwell before one can fix, and so, I won't apologize if I do dredge the very depths of my self-hatred and self-pity, in search of some specific answer. I'm not asking you to read this, after all.

There was a relatively famous person once, who said something. For one reason or other, I'd never really consciously seen/heard it. That was, until Mom & Dad decided to go off on a big adventure, and home-made a load of notification cards telling everyone of their plans. I received one like everyone else, and on the back, it said:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -- Mark Twain

In her case, it's a blatant reference to the fact that they plan to sail around the world; on reading those few words, it struck a chord, and I realized that I'd been in denial for far too long.

Denial is the wrong word. It was more like repression, entirely due to fear. I've known since as far back as I remember that my body is the wrong gender; what was holding me back, was some sort of societal instilled reaction to being different. Even that doesn't exactly sum it up correctly.

I came out to my Mom when I was 13. She asked me "So, do you want to change sex then?", and for some reason, I blurted out "No.", then immediately regretted it for the next 11 years. I think that I was afraid to let her down. I'm still afraid of letting her down somehow, but, only about the serious, life-ruining things like getting thrown in jail; which is incredibly unlikely to happen.
I'm a fucking nun. Except for the drugs. And the alcohol.

Those 11 years were some of the most fucked up years of my life. I admit, some very fucked up things took place before I was 13, and probably set me up for all of the mental issues I have, exacerbated by the disparity between (and I hate to put it like this) brain and body. I say I hate to put it like that, because, well, I feel that there's more to someone than just a bunch of electricity in a computer. If that's all we are, then we're just programs. I'm an athiest to a degree or other (and a pretty big feminist), however, I can't help but think that the word "soul" sums it up so much better. The brain is a part of the body, after all.
To put it in other terms, the body is very much an avatar for a personality; in the same way that the internet gives people avatars to attach to their personality, the body is merely a predefined one that we get issued. Being unable to choose our avatar, and placing that in the context of societal demands and expectations aimed directly at our avatar for being too fat, spotty, ginger-haired, asian, black, sexually deviant, etc., puts an undue strain on our soul and changes its personality.
Everyone displays varying degrees of mental illness, the broken, bruised and distorted aspects of our personalities showing through; some more than others of course.

It took me 24 years to become blasé about coming out to people. (Admittedly, the one group of people who I am uncool about knowing right now, is work. It's a choice thing: right now, I'm not prepared (mentally or otherwise) to go down that path of life-fucking.) It's matter of fact now; I'm past caring what their reaction is going to be, if my getting something I need from them hinges on them knowing, the conversation usually goes along the lines of:

"XYZ? Why do you need that?"
'Oh, I'm transgendered; so, can you do that for me?'

Without skipping a beat. Hell, I don't even go red anymore. It's part of who I am to the degree that if you're not cool with it, then I'll find someone else who is, because while everything else about me might change, how I might never have another suicidal thought again, might never self injure again, might never abuse pharmaceuticals again, I will always be this, and I need help to deal with this.

I sounded strong then, surprisingly. Why a surprise? Well... to talk to me, you'd quickly figure out that I hate being different. Besides all of the other stuff, the drugs and fucking myself up, the only thing that I truly hate about myself (everything else I hate about myself, except for some of the very early childhood fuckery, can be traced back directly to this), is being transgendered. That's not to say I'd rather be back how I was before I recognized it - a relatively unassuming male -; because that's so far from the truth you wouldn't believe.
No, if I could actually choose, then I'd choose female, 100%. Not semi-half-way-almost. Give me fucking bleeding from my cunt every month and the pain that goes with it, give me being trodden on by patriarchal society, give me pregnancy, give me a chance to actually be me, give me womanhood. Not a half-way approximation. In many ways (and I've heard a few other people, both transmen and transwomen say similar), I feel that if it turned out I had XX chromosomes, but physically male, I think I could probably accept it and cope better.

Genetic validation. Totally fucked up.