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?