The Light Of Day

I write this on the eve of my "mass" outing which will be on 9/20/2010. By the time you read this the deed will likely be done. I have some mixed emotions about this coming out thing. And is my habit I decided to share them with you all.  And to be truthful this is the Nth version of this post.  The first couple were kind of cynical, you know, snarky.  So they do not emerge. :)

First off let me tell you. I am pooped. And I have not even started the race yet. In the words of Desi, "Let me 'splain".

Coming out is not sometihng that happens all at once. At least in my mind it does not. I have heard tales of folks who send a company wide email at 4:59PM on a Friday afternoon. 

"Dear Coworkers,

On Monday when I come in I will no longer be Ed. I will be Amber. See ya.

Hugs,

Amber"

And then they wonder why they get fired before noon on Monday.

Now I know that most of us do not do that. Did I say most? I should say I hope that most of us do not do that. Alas there are some that do. And then wonder why that whole "I got fired thing" happened to them. Dolts.

In my case this coming out party has been going on for over a year.  And so this now brings us to the present day.  With FFS scheduled for me in October, time is up. And so as of Monday we will sit down most of my coworkers and annouce things. My company is small, about 35 of us, personal, and in many ways extended family.  Some of these folks I have known for 20 or more years.  It is going to be at a minimum a surprise.

Mind you the boat has already been leaky.  I had to tell a number of folks in advance.  Obviously family has known.  The US government has known, my clearance was renewed.  My business partners have known, and I have coordinated with the leadership of various organizations I participate in.  To date all have been personally supportive.  Some not so much professionally.  They are afraid of what "might" happen.  I myself, like making decisions on "knowns", not "mights".  But fear is a strong anti-motivator.  After all it is probably the thing that had my wait so long for this day.

Unlike the model I have seen rolled out by some of my trans peers I do not have an expert coming in to "train" my staff.  The HR department is a single person who manages some paperwork.  And of course, I am the boss.  And in many ways the spiritual leader of my company.  And that leaves me in a special place.  I have to explain myself.  One on one, person by person.  It is our corporate culture.  And so this announcement will be made by one of my partners.  I will not be present.  I have a letter that will be distributed instead.  The why of that is easy.  "My" people will be able to express their concerns and questions on the spot, without fear of offending me, or asking an awkward question.  

In that letter I offer each and every person the chance to talk with me and ask their own direct questions.  This is where the tired bit comes in.  Telling the story over and over can be exhausting.  And I have only done it for a few so far and I am already taxed.  I am not looking forward to coming weeks and repeating things over and over.  I am worried that it will become mechanical.  Like reading a script, without any emotion.  Dry, dull, boring.

In the last few days I got some interesting insights into some reactions.  One coworker told me to keep perspective.  That this was all encompassing to me, but to somebody else it was just another thing going on in their life.  He seems to be worried I am obsessed.  He's right of course, but not for the same reason.  I am obsessed becuase I want it over, not because it is happening.  

Another co-worker whom I have known for years seems to be grieving.  For the loss of the friend he had in me.  The person he would go to a ballgame with and share a beer and brat.  I told him we still could but the image in his head is is now gone.  He was irritated that I had not told him long ago.  That I had made an assumption he could not be trusted or something.  And now he is in mourning for the loss of the freindship with that person. Me, I am a stranger to him, that has "his" memory, and subtle mannerisms.  An altered facsimile.   But I am not "him" anymore.  I am hoping he comes to see that oh so much of me, that he saw before is still here.  But he will have to resolve that on his own.

I indeed was surprised at how quicky he got to this place.  Less than 24 hours after hearing about me.  I guess those stages of grief you hear about are real.  I seemed to have missed them with respect to my old self.  I have had arguments with other transfolk over this notion that the old person is dead, or gone or something.  And I guess my confusion is I never felt that way.  That person I was is right here.  It is me.  I killed off nobody, I merely shed my skin.  

I expect there will be more reactions that are similar.   And others yet to be seen.  Each will be unique.

And so I will find out.  The big disclosure will open my world up 10x what it is now.  And I expect my phone to ring, and have my inbox flooded.  That is probably bad, the expectation that is, because if it does not happen then what?  Expectations, always a difficult thing.  You need them to be motivated.  When and when not met they demotivate.  I think what I need to do is to expect nothing.  And then when something comes revel in it's appearance.  Good or bad.

I commented to a friend last night about the energy I expect to expend these coming weeks, talking, explaining, reflecting, and so on.  And that I was actually starting to look forward to FFS so I could sleep for a week.  Who would have ever thought that surgery would be a vacation.  But I do.

And after that nap, I need to dig a bit deeper and renew my energy further.  I have some folks to show what this is really about.  I have come to the conclusion I was made this way on purpose.  And that I have a purpose (please no Jerk jokes).  And that the sum of my life to date leads me to this exact place and time, and that this is the exact thing I am supposed to be doing.  Wish me luck.  Oh look the sun came up, and with no assistance from me, whaddya know...

Boxed

As I sit here on a Sunday night, my house quiet and empty I ponder my path and the eventual outcome for me.  I sat down here to make a short witty post for my peeps on Facebook. Something that might fit in a one liner.  And I found that hard to do.  So I decided to offer prose instead.  Pretty funny for me that I have turned to writing so much in the latter part of my fourth decade on the planet.  Mr. Pitcher, my 9th grade English teacher would be amused.  We never got along, I had disdain for his subject, and him really too.  He was very arrogant.  Today as I spend a lot of time writing I look back and realize that I learned from him while still not liking him.  An interesting perspective for any person or thing that offers us a lesson that we really do not want to learn at the time, but later comes to serve us well.

And so I now look upon those same things in my transition.  Recently a friend said to me, "You are not enjoying your transition".  They were right, I am not.  It is an endless agenda of criteria, lists, boxes next to each item to be ticked off like some NASA inspector doing a pre-flight.  I much more feel like I am trying to meet the requirements for a certification, or graduation or something.  As if at some point, after logging enough credit hours I will receive my diploma in transsexualism with a minor gender studies.  I know this is not the case but it feels so.

I posed a response to my friend, who from my assessment, had a relatively simple and "easy" transition.  As if such a thing were ever possible. Tell me what you parted with in your transition?  What was lost?  I did not ask what was gained.  I think I know the answers to those questions already.  They are the things that we all talk about.  The sense of correctness, oneness, well being.  The ability to be free, etc.  And not to whine about it but if you are 20 or even 30 something doing this, if you are unmarried, not a parent, have a job in a protected space then you probably are enjoying your transition.  But that is a minority of us I think.

It is more likely that you may have lost your companion (if you had one), your home, your sense of family (mind you not necessarily the love of your children), your job, your friends, your career.  All of these are possible, and in reality probable.  And in some cases you may have lost all, or many of the above.  And they call it a "choice".  Really?  And in that loss, you have learned the real price of freedom for you.  Much in the way that those who fought wars for our nation in the past are the ones who can really appreciate what sacrifice they and others like them made for the freedom we do enjoy.    Unless you have known it yourself, personally, harshly, you cannot really understand what is on the tally sheet at the end of the effort.

And despite all of that I, and others like me, trudge on.  Knee deep in the muck and mire of the fear of others, occasionally bolstered by a good event.  Like a coach yelling from the sidelines to "keep moving", or "hit 'em harder".  Once in a while a rope is cast from the edges of the quagmire and you can pull on it from time to time to relieve your weary legs.  But despite these intermittent aids, the bulk of the forward progress is due to your own tireless slog.  Inch by inch, step by step, check box by check box.

And so I sit here in month 21 of this road (I make Jan 2009 as my real start) and try and figure out why I am not jumping up and down as the last few weeks and remnants of my former self are put away.   The name will be gone, the presentation, in some cases the fellowship and the trust that was built for decades with others will be gone too, now needing a refresh.    I should be ecstatic.  But I am not.  It feels mechanical to me.

I feel like I am waiting to breathe.  Holding my breath, with an external time keeper that does not even do you the courtesy of saying, "30 seconds more".  Instead they just say, "not quite yet".  All the time you are turning blue, and the lights of the room are dimming, just for you, and you know all you really want to do is let the air in.  

And so what is the purpose of this rambling diatribe?  I am tired.  Tired of being "trans".  Tired of everybody else and their expectations.  Tired of our silly world with it's boxes and compartments.  And the stupid part is I have not even got to the start line yet.  It is almost seems like they told you it was a 5K race, and so you ran it as such.  Then when you get to the finish line, thinking you will be done soon, instead of a tape to break there is a person holding a sign that says "End of Lap #1".  You have to go around again.  Best to pace yourself from there out, there might be a 3rd or 4th lap required later.

This probably all sounds like a downer.  It is not meant to be.  I know that at the end of the road, that partly in laps 2 and beyond I will be a better person.  That I will not get a chance to rest but perhaps there is a second wind in the offering.  I hear girls say that now that they are "done" (are we ever really done?) with transition they are bored.  Bored?  What did you expect would be there when you "arrived".  I am often astounded by observations that girls who have been FT for a long time, and post-op often, offer me on things I have already noticed.  I am not amazed that I see them, I am amazed that they only just now are seeing them.  Me thinking that their observations are readily apparent.  How could they have missed that one?  And it makes me wonder what I have missed myself!

And so to wrap this attempt at reflection up, I will go back to my English teacher.  He would chastise my penmanship.  He preferred cursive and I to print my workproduct.  This in a day well before computers were available.  We were at lager-heads on the subject.  But he forced me to do a self examination of why I do what I do.  And that was his lesson.  Not English.  I was too stupid or naive to know that then.  I see it now.  And so with respect to my transition I look to find errors in my path.  I only see one, and that one is regrettable, but there is nothing to do about it now except live with the consequences.  I cannot fix it.  And fortunately for you I will not elaborate upon it other than to say that it was one of relationships and the impact thereof.  I am sorry it is that way, I would rather it was not.

My only hope is that when this is done is that my disdain for box checking has been tempered.  That I have learned patience with the processes of others.  That my list does not match theirs and that that is an ok thing.  I suspect the box checkers are are out there in force.  With a new list that needs going over. Now where did I leave my pen?

Better Living Through Chemisty

Recently a girl here local in Balmer decided that it was time for her to start her journey on chemistry.  Many of us of course choose this path.  But I sometimes wonder if we do it for the wrong reasons.  And in the case of this person, she had decided to plunge ahead even though her medical advisors had other ideas.  She charged them with "gatekeeping" but I do not agree.  More on that in a bit, first lets get out our chemistry sets.

When I was a kid I always wanted one of these. But it never happened, I think my folks were the sort that knew I might use that stuff in devilish ways.  I had some aptitude for chemistry you see, and later learned how to do things like make nylon in a beaker, distill spirits in my high school lab and discover what sodium can do if you toss it into a lab sink full of water.  Neat stuff.  BOOM!  

But I digress.  The chemistry I am talking about usually comes in pill, or patch or injection.  And for most of us on the MtF trail involves two parts.  That which kills the "T", and that which enhances the "E".  If you check the periodic table you will not find those elements on there.  Yeah, even Tungsten got silly and is named after Wolfram (W), das ist gut, ja?.  No this "T" is Testosterone.  And "T" may be the most potent compound on the planet.  The non-reversible things it does in a very short time is astonishing. Oh yeah, it also wants to make you kick the shit out of somebody, ever see "Fight Club"

I have some FtM friends.  Six months of "T" and they are mostly done.  Bam!  Facial hair, male pattern baldness, muscles, voice.  It all kicks in quick.  And to think, I was dealing with that for 47 years.  Well kind of.  You see in my case it turns out my "T" level was abnormally low.  Now not as low as a natal woman or anything, but low enough that you get one of those little warning thingies on the blood test from the doctor.  You know, an asterisk * or something.  The thing that says, hey Doc, look at me, this one is out of whack.

In my case at the time I thought "Ah ha!", this is the root cause of my problem.  Low "T".  I can fix that, and this whole thing will just go away.  Right?  I posed this to my doctor who did not know I was TS, hell I did not even know for sure what I was, as such the subject was taboo for me at the time.  But the number on the chart did not lie.  So what did we do?  Well I was searching for the cure you see.  And this had to be it!  And so, with physician's embrace, I embarked on a course of applying this "T" gel to my bod everyday to see if it would help me guy up. I did this for 4 months.  And at the end of 4 months I went in for another blood test.  Sure enough it went up! By 1 point.  No kidding, 1, one, uno.  Meaning that normal is something between 199 and 1586 ng/dL. And mine went up by 1.  Which is probably within the error on the test.  The gel had done nothing.

I took that as a sign, this is not going to solve your problem.  It was near that time that I began to really consider what that meant for me.  My body did not want "T".  It had rejected it.  I do not know how it did it but somehow it knew, this stuff is bad news for you.  I stopped taking it.  Started figuring me out, started therapy, had my episode and then accepted and embraced the fact that I was trans.  The next part was figuring out what to do about it.

I had read that there were folks who had taken Spironolactone (aka Spiro) to block the "T" and that subsequently the desire to transition went away.  For the sake of my marriage at the time I thought, ok, lets give that a try.  This may seem odd to some.  I was going to take this drug to see if I felt better, see if the desire to transition went away, and see if I could save my marriage. Note there was nothing in there about taking it to promote or start a transition.  This, in many ways was my last chance to not transition.  And that goes to my previous thoughts on why you start taking such things.

The reactions I got from the few who knew of this (my spouse included) was at first, this is ok as long as you are doing it with your doctor's support (which I was).  Later this changed to "You are taking hormones".  When in reality I was merely taking something that was in effect, purposely, NOT taking hormones.  It is kind of funny, when folks take a pill to feel better most think that is ok.  You can take a valium, or prozac and if those things make you feel better, calmer, less agitated this is just fine.  Take Spiro and they get jumpy.


Well as you can see, my plan failed, kind of...  Obviously the taking of the Spiro did not reduce my desire to transition.    Mind you before I start this next bit I always caution folks, your mileage may, and likely will, vary.  Here is what it did for me.  I felt calm.  And that is a statement in the midst of my world with an absurd amount of stress tossed on top of a transition.  But the reality is I was almost always angry before Spiro.  After now, I get more disappointed than angry.  Here is an example.


You are driving on the highway and some jerk cuts you off an a lane change...


Before Spiro:  You accelerate up to his window, honk the horn, flip him the bird, utter a slander and then wait until he wants to change lanes and you cut him off.  You know, just to get even and all.

After Spiro: You think to yourself, "You poor stupid bastard, someday you are going to die pulling a boneheaded move like that".  And then you smile at that and just keep driving on, no other action needed.


See the difference?  After Spiro, I already won, by just accepting that he was a jerk and karma would fix it.  No need for me to take action to "teach the lesson".


My friend "J" says it another way.  Imagine lying in bed at night with a humming transformer on a pole outside your bedroom window.  That incessant "Hmmmmmmmmmm" of the 60Hz.  After a while you get used to it but it is still there, grating on you.  With Spiro, the noise goes away.  Click.  Silence.


In that sense the Spiro corrected something for me that made me nuts.  It was my version of Prozac or whatever.  I think it has saved me.  So mind you I took it for one reason, the results were another.  And none of that was about the physical changes it introduced which I will allow you all to read about on Wikipedia or something.


"E" (Estrogen in many forms) is something else.  Meaning I started "E" because I was taking Spiro.  As was explained to me, you can take the Spiro for a while, but your body needs either "T" or "E".  Just to be healthy.  So if you are killing off the "T", you must take "E" to bring balance to the force...  So I started that last Summer.  But again, not because of transition as much as I liked what the Spiro did and the "E" became a necessary part of that.  Make sense?


I know some at this point are scratching their head.  But Sharon there is a playbook for this stuff.  And right here on page 243 it says you take this stuff for the physical changes.  It is how you become a woman and all.  You know what, ha!  I laugh at your page 243.  Yes there are some side effects that I am happy with, softer skin, less hair in some places, reduction of muscle mass, general softening of my contours and face.  But in my case, almost no breast enhancement.  And the truth is I took it all because of how it made me feel, not how it would make me look.


I cannot say if that is chemistry for the right reasons.  For me it is right.  And so it made me wonder about that local girl again who got pissed off when her medical pros would not write the paper for her.  They wanted to see her for a few months first, then write the paper.  There is a reason for that you see.  It is not gate keeping, it is the Hippocratic oath.  


"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone."  


And these are people that do not know you, and do not know if you are stable, and do not know if you have underlying disease or pathology.  So my take, let them do their work. And sometimes that work takes time.


The thing with this is none of these things magically lead you to the promised land on their own.  The idea that everything will be ok if I just could change/add/remove _________ [add your answer here].  There is no morning where you wake up and there are gumdrop trees, and unicorns and rainbows.  In fact, the chemistry is just one piece of the puzzle.  The rest, and larger part resides in the grey matter between your ears.  So my caution to the impatient.  Nothing that ever lasted was built in haste. Why should it be different for you?