Entries from 2021

The concept of gender, in its entirety, has been on my mind a lot lately.

This probably isn't surprising, given the entire name of this blog and the nature of my life; but in all honesty, the notion wasn't quite as centered in my awareness and thoughts for a while. I needed to work on other things.

Now, though... now it's back. And it's time to explore some more.

I started writing the document that became the beginning of this blog late on the night of April 28th, 2019.

2019 was a hard year, for me; that document started as a desperate dumping ground for words I dared not utter anyplace else, and over the course of the next three months, it expanded beyond what I ever dreamed it might contain.

I wrote the final entry in that document on July 20th, 2019 - a Saturday. Those three months felt like three eternities. I still can hardly fathom how much happened in such a blindingly short time - and that was just the beginning.

Today has been ... intense.

This blog is filled with mentions and allusions to the things I endured as a child, growing up in a horrific environment, bouncing from one hellish landscape of neglect and abuse to another. I spent part of this morning doing trauma therapy exercises, writing freehand with a purple pen on printer paper, about those chunks of experience.

There is something vividly heart-breaking about seeing the neat lettering of a 35 year old woman devolve into the half-inch-high, barely-legible scrawl of a terrified little girl.

I've been a big fan of writing down my thoughts for many, many years. I started writing stuff that (eventually) wound up becoming this blog nearly two and a half years ago.

Life doesn't stop, and neither has the discovery, the growth, and the change. It seems like every time I pause to catch my breath, I look up and realize I know myself better than I did the last time I took stock.

I'm honestly kind of surprised that I haven't burned out, after all this. After just over two years of hormone therapy, after an incalculable number of harrowing, lonely hours struggling with grief and trauma and three decades' worth of unresolved pain, and after losing track of the number of times I've caught myself saying stuff like, "wow, I had no idea something that good was even possible."

There are some things that are hard to believe, even as we live through them.

I never really bought into the line that "truth is stranger than fiction." But there are parts of my life I couldn't invent, no matter how much I tried.

There is a story - part of my story - that was over twenty-four years in the making. And after it was over, it was another two years before I even realized what had happened.

I have nothing against being wrong - not in general, not in principle. Being wrong is part of guessing, and guessing is part of trying something new; and, after all, one of the biggest reliefs of my entire life was discovering just how wrong I was about who I am, a couple of years ago.

But there are times when it's harder than others. Times when I have to just admit that I was wrong, and if there's any usefulness to be had from the mistake, it's lost in the sheer pain of how awful the mistake was.

I made the mistake of thinking things were OK with my relatives.

This is the only way forward now.

Yes, I am trans.

No, I didn't "transition."

Not the way you want to think of it.

You could say I transformed, perhaps.

One year and one day in quarantine.

I didn't ask for this pandemic. It's not like anyone did, really, but that's also not the point; it's just one more thing in a long line of shit I never asked for.

I didn't ask to grow up without money but with a father who relentlessly criticized every minute aspect of everything he encountered - the words, spat with such derision and such heartless frequency, are still deeply burned in my brain: "cheap, worthless piece of junk" - as if every imperfection of the world, however subjective or imaginary, was to be loathed and despised.

Nothing was ever good enough.

How could I have been?