Fear Itself

At the end of 2014, I reflected on the past year and contemplated the near future in a blog entry called “The Year of Wendy”.  I was filled with fear at what was coming: the continuing decline and ultimate death of my wife, and transitioning to full-time female.  I was convinced that both experiences would be hellish, filled with suffering and pain.  Now I am on the other side of those experiences, and thinking about my fear versus the reality of both situations.

I am blessed (and cursed) with a very vivid imagination.  Add to that a worldview that leans toward the pessimistic, and a generous dollop of fear, and—voila!—you have a tendency to imagine nightmare scenarios for any given situation.

In the case of my wife’s illness, which included dementia, I was full of fears that she would forget me and everyone else completely, that she might become either violent or catatonic, and that I would be forced to put her in a nursing home, where she would be scared and lonely.  Ultimately, I feared she would die alone, not knowing who she was or how deeply she was loved.

Events unfolded much differently.  Although her mental capacity was much diminished, she never forgot the people around her or herself.  She retained her curiosity and humor up to near the end.  And she died at home, peacefully, with me holding her hand.  Don’t get me wrong—it was by no means easy or fun.  It was the most difficult experience I have ever had or am likely to have.  There were times when it seemed like we were both in hell.  But despite all that, my fearful imaginings were far, far worse than the reality.

Considering my gender transition, I was similarly full of doom-filled prognostications.  I feared I would lose my family, friends, and job.  Perhaps I would be unemployable and become destitute.  Maybe someone would vandalize my house or car, beat me up, or even try to kill me.  Unfortunately, these things all really do happen to transgender people, so my fears were not unjustified.

Again, the reality has so far been much different.  Yes, I have lost family—whether temporarily or permanently remains to be seen.  I currently am not welcome in the home in which I grew up, and that is very, very hard.  However, aside from that, my transition has been remarkably painless.  I have the support of many family members and friends who love me as I am.  My legal name and gender changes have been remarkably easy.  And my transition at work has gone astoundingly smoothly.  

Everyone knows the quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.  It’s almost a cliché.  But it’s true.  My worst enemy throughout my life has been my fear and my ability to imagine Armageddons everywhere.  What I have gone through in the past few years has been very, very difficult.  But the fear and associated anxiety have caused me much more suffering than was needful.  I hope that in the future I will be able to more successfully limit my fears to the probable instead of the possible.

Boundaries

As I write this, I anticipate I have less than a week to go before shedding all semblance of a male identity.  I contemplate this momentous change with a mixture of excitement, apprehension, and impatience. I am mindful of boundaries.

Boundaries are strange, invisible dividers.  It's very mysterious, in a way, how they work.  A boundary marks the point in time when two people become lovers.  On one side of the boundary, they are very careful with each other, with how they touch, how they behave.  On the other side, the rules completely change.  Boundaries separate strangers from acquaintances, good neighborhoods from bad, one country from another, day from night, waking from dreaming.

We are told that a boundary separates male from female.  A boundary that, some say, that is impossible to cross.  I know that this is not so; I have been crossing that boundary ever since I was a small child, and so have many others.  This boundary sometimes seems totally imaginary to me, but I know it has some sort of reality.  In the same way that a boundary between two countries is made real by structures, laws, languages, and custom, so too is the boundary between men and women.  Many arguments can be, and have been, made to the effect that this boundary is totally arbitrary and in no way based on reality.  One could also make the case that the boundary between England and Scotland is similarly arbitrary, though you're likely to have some angry Scots on your hands if you bring it up in the wrong place.  My point is that although these boundaries are artificial, they have a kind of reality nonetheless.

And so I prepare to cross the male-female boundary for the last time.  On one side of that boundary, I am expected to wear particular clothing, to speak, move, and look a certain way.  On the other side of that boundary, all those expectations change.  On this side, I have a particular name and gender according to various governmental and private organization; those things change when I cross the boundary.  The things I am interested in and am capable of doing are also expected to be different on each side of the boundary.  In this last, I am afraid I am going to largely disregard those expectations.  I hope that, once I cross that boundary, I never forget I spent much of my life tiptoeing back and forth across it.  It can be crossed, moved, chipped away, widened and narrowed. If I never cross it again, it will not be because it's a real barrier, but because I choose not to.

Of Pickles and Puberties

A few weeks after I started hormone replacement therapy, I developed a strong craving for dill pickles.  I found this both amusing and a little alarming.  What other unexpected changes were in store for me?  Was this just a phase?

A phase it may be, but months later, I still crave pickles; I go through about a jar a week currently.  A friend's daughter, in learning about my pickle craze, asked her mother, "Is Miss Wendy pregnant?"  That tickled me.  Though I'm not pregnant, I am hormonal, and as it turns out, it's not an uncommon craving.

I think back to another time when I craved pickles; I was hormonal then, too.  When I was in my early teens, I seemed to be ravenously hungry all the time.  Both my parents worked, so when my brother and I came home from school, we were on our own for an hour or so.  Almost first thing, I would head to the refrigerator, and get some pickles.  If there was any excess, I would pour the juice into a glass and drink it.  I would further fortify myself with dry-roasted peanuts and hope that I could make it until supper.

At the time, just at the beginning of puberty, I was very confused.  I was very clearly attracted to girls, yet I both wanted to date them and to be one of them.  Was I gay?  No, I liked girls and not boys.  But why did I want to dress and act like a girl?

At school my male and female classmates began to pair up.  Alas, I didn't appear to be much of a catch to the girls.  I was very small for my age; I didn't really catch up until I was around 16. I wore glasses and was known as being--gasp!--smart.  I had a less than movie-star-perfect smile.  And I was ashamed because of my secret crossdressing.  I began to fervently wish that puberty would hurry up and get to work on me, so that I could become a man.  I realized and regretted that I wouldn't look so nice in dresses any more, but the anticipation that women would begin to notice me seemed to make up for it.  And maybe I wouldn't even want to dress up anymore.  "When I was a child, I behaved as a girl, but when I became a man, I put away girlish things."  Or something like that.  It did not ever even cross my mind that some women might be attracted to me as a woman.

Well, as it turned out, it took more than testosterone to entice women to flock to my side.  I had to like and have confidence in myself, and that was a tall order.  By the time I got myself together enough to start dating seriously, I was beginning to have second thoughts about what puberty had done to me.

Now I'm much older, but pubescent again.  Some of what the first adolescence did to my body is not changeable, but I feel like I'm moving--albeit slowly--in the right direction.  I certainly don't expect women to flock to my side once I become a "grown-up woman"; as a widow still in mourning, I wouldn't even want them to.  But maybe, just maybe, when I'm ready, lightning will strike a second time.  If not, that's OK, too.

Meanwhile, where are those pickles?

Memoria

I recently finished reading She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan.  It's a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it; it's very well-written, poignant and funny by turns. I was struck both by the similarities and vast differences in the experiences of each transgender person.  And reading the book reminded me of a time in which I was briefly in physical proximity to Ms. Boylan.

It was 2007, at the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta.  SCC is one of the largest and longest-running transgender conferences in the world.  It was two weeks before my wedding; for my wife-to-be and I, it was our fourth straight year at SCC.  It was a strange, scary, and wonderful time; we were excited about our upcoming nuptials but worried about her health.  She had a lump in her neck that was growing rapidly; it had, in the space of a couple of months, gone from being about the size of a quarter to the size of my fist; large enough that it was about to cross her collar bone.  In about another month we would learn that she had small-cell lung cancer; the lump was a swollen lymph node, filling with cancerous cells.

This particular SCC, despite the worries, had been the most enjoyable for me so far.  I had had the opportunity to finally meet in person several online friends that I had made in the past year or so.  Also, for the first time, I was spending the whole extended weekend as a woman, from the time we left the house until we returned.  I was in love with my soulmate, a woman who loved me just as I was.

This particular morning we were sitting in the large hotel atrium, next to a Starbucks stand; my fiancée was having her morning coffee.  She had befriended the elderly barista, with whom she seemed to form an instant connection.  The barista seemed very gentle and very wise; she had had cancer, and seemed to see in my fiancée a reflection of herself.  She went so far as to give my dear a Starbucks travel mug, gratis.


A couple of tables over, an attractive woman in jeans, with long, blond hair, sat with her feet propped up on a chair, engrossed in a book.  I recognized her as Jennifer Finney Boylan; even though I had missed her presentation the conference and had not even read any of her books yet, she was (and is) a celebrity.  I was struck by how comfortable and unselfconscious she seemed; just an ordinary woman enjoying her book and coffee.  I longed to be so centered; I had spent nearly ten years oscillating between two identities, one male, one female.  Paradoxically, this kept me sane; though it could be egregious at times, I was able to be a woman at least part of the time, which I needed, and to maintain the semblance of a normal male life, which I was holding on to.  I wished that I could think of something to say to her, but really, what could I have said?  I left her in peace to her book and coffee.

The morning drew on, and all of us sitting next to the Starbucks stand went our separate ways.

A year later, my wife and I were at the same hotel for SCC 2008, our fifth and final year.  She was emaciated and bald from the radiation, but had been pronounced cancer-free.  Though we didn't quite understand it yet, she was also exhibiting some early signs of dementia; her brain was cloudy much of the time.  Leaning on my arm for support, she made her way to the Starbucks stand, only to find a different barista working there.  She asked this new person where her friend was.  "She died of cancer earlier this year", was the sad reply.  My wife, who had only known this woman for a couple of days a year before, put her head on my shoulder and cried.

Nearly eight years later, she is dead, too.  In the intervening period, we both suffered much as her health declined.  I also realized, and grudgingly accepted, that I needed to stop the oscillation between genders and become, at last, a woman solely.  I read Jennifer Finney Boylan's books and wonder why I didn't read them before.  I think it's because I was afraid that, in reading her story, I would see too much of the dream of myself I was trying not to see.  I think that my wife saw herself, and the future she dreaded, in the barista.

And so the world goes; we intersect, sometimes we travel in the same direction for a while, and then we diverge, each pulled along her own path.

A Day in the Life

Monday morning.  Fresh from a shower, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, surveying my face.  I pluck stray eyebrow hairs and then look critically at my eyes.  I make sure that all traces of mascara, eyeliner, and eyeshadow are completely removed; there are usually little particles that linger.

To shave or not to shave my face?  The amount of beard is dwindling, but still significant.  Usually I will not shave today, to give my irritated face and neck  a rest after several days of very close shaving.  If I’m having electrolysis in the next day or so, I have to refrain from shaving until then, anyway.  If I’m having laser hair removal, though, I have to make sure to shave closely again.  Am I going anywhere after work?  Do I look too scruffy?  I make the complex calculations and decide to skip shaving.

I get dressed in some of the remaining men’s clothing I have.  Fortunately, I did the laundry this weekend, because I only have enough work clothes to make it through the five-day week.  I put on a tight undershirt with a loose polo shirt over it, to help conceal my breasts.  I slip into my battered old work shoes.  I can’t bring myself to buy any more men’s shoes, so I’m hoping this pair, which I bought 18 years ago, will survive a little while longer.

Now to my hair.  I pull it back and secure it with a rubber band, then, armed with maximum hold hairspray, comb and spray it into submission, finally ending up with a  reasonable facsimile of a man’s haircut.  It looks a little messy, but presentable.

As I walk into my workplace, I settle into the old familiar habits of a lifetime.  My walk, my gestures, and voice become more masculine.  I learned by mimicry long ago to camouflage myself, to blend in with the men like I was “supposed to”.  But I can’t help but notice that my mannerisms have lately become a little more feminine and fluid.  That would have bothered me in times past, but I really don’t care now.  I have even caught myself answering the phone in my more feminine voice.

I go through my day totally focused on work and trying not to think of anything else.  It’s a good day if I don’t hear some bigoted, hateful remark from particular coworkers.  They believe I am “one of them”—i.e., a white, Christian, heterosexual cisgender male—and so don’t bother to censor their remarks.  I want to speak up and call them out, but I feel surrounded and afraid. I stew in silence, chastising myself for my lack of courage.

At times my thoughts drift toward transitioning at work—how would it be if I was myself here?  Some people, I think, may be able to make the adjustment, some, I think, will be at least covertly hostile.  Will they let me use the women’s room?  Will anyone even talk to me?  Will management be actively working to get rid of me?  Will some unhinged person decide enough is enough and bring a gun to work with them (many of my coworkers are proud of their concealed-carry permits)?  Or would someone wait for me outside to physically express their displeasure with my “lifestyle”?

I stop by the grocery store on my way home.  I’m hoping I don’t run into anyone I know; it’s become somewhat embarrassing for me to be seen in “male mode” by people who know me as I really am—kind of like walking around half-naked. I hurry home and put on my “outside clothes” to work in the garden.  I’m generally still afraid of my neighbors’ reaction to my transition, so I am still presenting as a male even here in my own yard.  Soon it’s time to wind down for the day; I put on my PJs and robe, curl up in front of the TV with my cat, and wonder how much longer it will be until I’m able to be totally me.