A Letter From the Front

 I haven't posted anything here for a while.  It's been hard lately, and I have frankly been too dispirited to write much.  My wife passed in April, but it wasn't until September that I really felt myself slipping into an emotional trough.  September is the time of year that I traditionally start feeling down, due to a number of factors like bad childhood memories and seasonal changes.  It's been worse this year.

I've been tiptoeing toward transition for a while now.  Despite constant self-doubt and fear, I keep moving steadily in that direction.  I have now reached the point where the rubber begins to hit the road--making life changes that are not reversible, at least not entirely or easily.  And now I begin to understand the cautionary words "only transition if you have to".  I understand why so many trans people suicide--though I hasten to add that I'm not suicidal myself.  But this is when you start to learn how much you're going to lose, and how big the obstacles are in your way.  It is so daunting--and yet, going back doesn't seem to be an option either; at least, my mind quickly turns away from that thought.

I'm learning that I may really and truly lose my family, in part or in total.  That's incredibly sad, and I feel so bereft, especially so soon after the loss of my wife.  I go to work every day and try to imagine transitioning on the job--can imagine the hostility and isolation I'm likely to face from my coworkers.  I'm not sure I could stand that.  If I can't keep my job, I might have to move away.  But the thought of having to move away from my church community (my chosen family), and especially having to leave my house, so full of the presence of my beloved, is more than I can bear.  I truly feel caught between a rock and a hard place.

I feel isolated, and yet I hesitate to reach out to friends.  I'm so tired of being the needy one.  First I was the newlywed whose bride had serious cancer, then the caregiver to a wife in declining health, then the widow, and always the struggling transgender person.  I feel like an emotional leech.  I'm really tired of my seemingly never-ending troubles, tired of talking about myself, tired of depression.  Sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I want to be the one who says "it gets better", the one who gives support instead of always needing it.  Yet, here I am, sticking my hand in my heart and spilling it all over the page (well, I'm not so depressed that I can't throw in a musical reference).

I wrote the above late last night.  It's morning now, and things seem somewhat better and brighter, at least for a little while.  I will continue to put one foot in front of the other, because I don't know what else to do.

Darkness only stays at nighttime
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always gonna be this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away

Lifequake

How does one decide to totally upend one's life?  This is a question that has occupied my mind a lot lately.  Readers of this blog will know that I've been wrestling with the idea of transitioning to full-time womanhood for several months now.  I know this is a very big deal, most likely the biggest decision I will ever make.  And I also can see that transitioning would not be easy, or fun, and carries the risk of losing family, friends, and employment.  Given that I am big-decision-averse, I have really been struggling with this.  How does one make a decision this huge?

A curious thing has been happening for the last couple of years.  While the decision-making part of my brain is struggling with this question, the rest of me seems to be going full steam ahead.  Especially since the passing of my dear wife, the pace of change is accelerating.  I still work as a male, but most of the rest of my time is spent as Wendy.  I already have a very tentative and generalized timeline for transition forming.  I'm wrapping up hair removal and thinking about hormones.  Every plan that I make includes a consideration of how my transition would affect it.  Meanwhile, decision-making brain is still asking, "Should I or shouldn't I?"

I guess it's time for me to admit to myself that this is happening.  I want to waffle and hedge and qualify, but if I'm honest, I know that I am transitioning.  I tremble with fear at the immensity of it, but I continue to move forward.  As I stumble toward this lifequake, I'm thankful for the supportive friends and community I have.  I'm going to need all the help and support I can get.

Reality Check

Note: I recently suffered a serious loss, but I'm not going to write about that now.  The wound is still too fresh.

The past couple of weeks I have experienced an unprecedented amount of life as a woman.  Parties, lunches, Zumba, candlelight vigils, and even performing music on the stage.  I'm very out these days...but only in select company.  Specifically, among my church friends and in the local LGBT community.  Sometimes I get caught up in the euphoria of being Wendy and start to forget that my very existence is threatening to some people.  If I'm seriously thinking about living full-time as a woman, I feel like I need to bring myself back to earth by remembering times when I didn't experience such warm acceptance.

Not that I have experienced any real threats or violence so far--thank goodness--but there have been times when I knew I was clearly an alien presence to someone.  A couple of examples will suffice.

One Sunday afternoon a couple of years or so ago, I decided to go out shopping.  I was dressed very casually with the intent to blend in.  I wasn't very successful, apparently.  As I emerged from a store, I encountered two well-dressed middle-aged ladies, obviously fresh from church.  As soon as they saw me, one audibly gasped and dropped her bag in shock.  The other indignantly exclaimed, "Look at him!"  I chose to ignore them and walked to my car, but I was utterly humiliated.  I lost all heart to shop and went home soon after, my tail between my legs.

More recently, I was enjoying a potluck lunch after the service at church when a couple I'd never seen before sat down near me.  This was their first time visiting our church, and a friend introduced me to them.  I smiled and greeted them both.  The wife smiled warmly and said, "Nice to meet you!", but the husband did not speak and refused to look at me.  I could tell I made him very uncomfortable, and he in turn made me very uncomfortable.  After a few minutes he got up and left, never acknowledging my presence in any way.

As you can see, I have never really experienced anything earth-shatteringly bad (yet).  Just enough to remind me that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and that the farther I walk down this road, the more of these prickly moments I can expect to experience.

Hair

I pause in the midst of a very heartrending and stressful crisis to talk about something totally different and seemingly inconsequential--hair.  After many years of wishing and procrastination, I had my hair done professionally.  More specifically, I had it cut in a feminine style and colored.  No more wigs!

It's amazing how the right haircut can make you feel wonderful!  In a sea of personal upheaval, it is a little buoy of light.  But it's also a rather large milestone in my undeclared, not yet settled-upon, yet ongoing, transition to womanhood.  Though I can make it look masculine for work, by default it is definitely a feminine hairstyle.

I had a new feeling the other day when going from a female gender presentation to male.  Often I feel sad when I go back to guy mode, but this time I felt like I was getting into drag (or drab: DRessed As a Boy).  In other words, I felt like presenting as female was my default and that presenting as male required work and was something of a disguise.  This seems pretty significant to me.

Before this, I rarely looked at myself in the mirror when not in full-on Wendy mode; I really didn't like the guy I saw.  Now, I find I'm looking at myself and smiling.  With the new hairstyle and my beard shadow gone, I can see a woman in the mirror, even without makeup on.  That feels so right.

To Be "Real"

Well, I try my best to be just like I am
But everybody wants you to be just like them.
                                  -Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"

From my earliest days in the transgender community, I have occasionally encountered people--always male-to-female transsexuals who are living as women full-time--who have regarded anyone who is not on their path with condescension and even scorn.  To be more specific, they regard people like me--who are not actively in transition to full-time womanhood, and/or who can only outwardly manifest their inner woman part-time--are just wannabes and not real transgender people.  Some even state that those who are not full-time have no right to call themselves transgender.

I have to admit, this attitude really raises my hackles--so much so, in fact, that I am having to try very hard to make this blog entry something other than a string of profanities.  Yes, it usually takes a great deal of struggle, pain, and loss to transition.  Kudos to those who make it through.  But transition is not everyone's path.  Some simply don't need to.  They have found another way to be at peace with their gender identity.  Others can't, because of life circumstances and obligations.  Some, like me, are uncertain if transition to full-time is the answer; I personally feel very conflicted and am feeling my way through one day at a time.  I consider all of the above to be transgender people; we all feel some discomfort with our assigned gender or some pull away from that gender.

I was once informed by a transwoman on a Unitarian Universalist LGBT mailing list that I was either a woman or a man--that if I didn't go full-time and have genital reassignment surgery, then I was only a man who was pretending to be transgender.  (Oh, and that bisexuals are only gays in denial.)  Very black-and-white thinking and atypical for UUs.  Folks, life is not black-and-white--it just isn't.  The two conventional genders in our culture, man and woman, are generalizations and oversimplifications of a more complex reality.  Quite a few of us just don't fit--to me, that's the definition of transgender.  I'm a person in that gray area, and I will not be erased or minimized because I don't fit into a neat little box, or walk a particular path.  My feelings are just as real, just as valid, as anyone else's.  Life is not a contest, and there is no one correct way to get through it.  My wish is that those who wish to denigrate those who are different from them find a way to cultivate a little wisdom and a lot more empathy.

Remembrances of Nerdiness Past

Reading this article about nerds and misogyny started my memory a-stirring.  You see, I was a teenage nerd.  Well, in truth, I'm still a nerd, but anyway...I was a shy, introverted, intelligent guy; skinny, small, wore glasses, read a lot, a little socially backward--pretty much your textbook case.  As mentioned in previous entries, I also hated myself because I liked to dress as a girl, tended toward femininity, and identified to some extent with girls my age.  I was depressed a lot, though I tried not to show it, and I was always in fear that someone would discover my secret.

Despite that, I actually had quite a few friends, both male and female.  I was the guy that girls loved to talk to but were never attracted to.  All my male and female friends were busily dating and doing all the things that teenagers do--but not me.  As I grew older, I increasingly felt isolated, freakish, and resentful.  My self-loathing grew, and I erected an emotional wall around my heart.  I resented men for being able to attract women, and I resented women for not being attracted to me.  I'm afraid I veered at times into misogyny, which was probably fueled by the hatred I felt for my own feminine tendencies.

Eventually, I learned that there were others like me and started to accept my transgender nature.  At last, one cold January Friday night, I attended my first transgender support group meeting.  For the first time, I revealed myself as Wendy to other people, and was accepted.

The next day, I was walking on air.  I felt so free, so courageous, so happy, so confident--perhaps for the first time in my life.  I attended a planning meeting for my high school reunion and noticed that one of the women there seemed very interested in me--she was hanging on my every word, laughing at my jokes; in short, she seemed attracted to me.  It was a new experience, and a harbinger of the ensuing months.  I attended more support group meetings, allowing myself to more fully explore and accept my feminine aspect.  I wasn't fully free of bouts of depression, but my spirits began to lift and my self-loathing receded into the background.  And like magic, later that year I managed to meet and start a romantic relationship with a woman, really for the first time.

It may seem trite, but I really believe you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you.  Not love yourself in a narcissistic sense, but accept who you truly are--warts and all.  The problem was not other people; it was me.  Now, I'm still a nerd, but a nerd who, through much effort and painful growth, has found love.

The Year of Wendy

As another year draws to a close, I am inevitably called to look backward at what has been and forward to what may be.  2014 was certainly a year like no other in my life, and it certainly feels like a turning point or watershed or something equally portentous.

There are two main threads that are running through my life right now.  One thread is, for want of a better phrase, "the Transgender Experience".  I began the year in a rush of elation after a month of attending church services and other events as a woman (see The December of Wendy).  Yes, I felt very liberated by these experiences, but also confused.  Now that I had stepped farther out of the closet than ever before, what was I going to do next?  Was I going to go to church as a man or a woman, both, or neither?  At first I made it a point to reappear in my male guise for a few Sundays, just to show (to myself and others), that nothing had changed; I was still the same old me.  But I couldn't get back in the closet.  Now that I had gone to church as a woman several times, I wanted to do it again.  And again.  As the year went on, I made fewer appearances as a male, both at church services and other related activities,  When I did go as a male, it was generally due to some circumstances beyond my control, and I found that I felt frustrated in those instances.

There was one special fear that kept me at an impasse for a while: fear of performing music as a woman.  It's a situation where I can't hide--in front of everyone, the center of attention, an obviously trans person who looks more or less like a woman but sings more or less like a man.  Eventually I found the right way to negotiate this fear.  My first performance was in a group, where I could stay more in the background, singing backing vocals in a high register, performing two songs written by women.  My second performances was singing one of my own songs solo.  I eventually became pretty comfortable with performing as a woman, to the point that I sang two songs by myself and participated in a jam session only yesterday.

This year I also screened my rock opera, Transposition, for the first time in front of two small audiences.  Transposition has a transgender main character and is about the struggle of that character to come to terms with gender identity and spirituality.  It was received at both screenings with enthusiasm.

I spent more time as Wendy this year than ever before; I averaged about once a week.  That doesn't seem like much, but considering the previous years I averaged once every two or three months, it's a huge jump.  For the first time, I was able to explore social situations consistently as a woman.  I'm still trying to figure out what kind of woman I am or could be, but fortunately, I've got a lot of strong, intelligent, quirky, and all around fabulous women for role models.  Really, I've only just begun to integrate the long-compartmentalized sides of me into one whole person.

Finally, there was the dawning conscious realization of what I long knew in my heart of hearts: I want to be a woman.  I found (with trepidation) that I was already moving on a path that could lead to a full-time transition to social womanhood.

I mentioned two threads; the other thread is "The Caregiver Experience".  My wife's health has been deteriorating for some years now, and our relationship has gone from being equal partners and best friends to more like me being a parent and she being a child.  She is basically helpless and completely dependent on me now.  Much of the spring and summer of this year was spent in hospitals and inpatient rehab.  This fall she seemed to decline rapidly for a time; and while she has made some improvements in the past month, it's clear that the end is coming.  It could be tomorrow, or in a year or two, but it's coming.  I've prepared for it about as much as one can do, but I know I will be devastated when it comes.  Meanwhile, we exist in a limbo.  Our love is intact, but her capacity to understand what is going on around her is greatly diminished.  Consequently, I feel lonely much of the time.  My best friend is still there, yet she's not there.  My life is going on, hers is drawing to a close.

To be honest, I dread the coming year.  I don't see any path forward that doesn't lead through hell.  Maybe more than one hell.  It's clear that I want--no, need--to spend more time as a woman, perhaps even all the time, but I don't see any way of doing that that doesn't lead to great loss and pain.  Add to that the loss and pain of my soul mate's decline and eventual death, and it becomes something so big that I doubt my ability to get through it.  I'm a strong person, but this seems too much to bear.  I've been pretty depressed lately, brought to my knees by the enormity of it all.  All I can do is try to stand up and put one foot in front of the other, praying for unexpected grace, hoping for an unlooked-for path to open up.  Or barring that, the strength to keep breathing and pushing through to daylight again.