Family and Vulnerability

Back in August I attended the Trans 101 training offered by Transgender Resource Center of NM. The trainer, Adrien mentioned that the Center also offers Panels where trans and non-binary folks will come and share their story and answer questions. I decided to volunteer to be a panelist (in spite of my introversion!), and this Sunday was my first panel.

I got nervous and kinda forgot the script I had in my head but it went ok anyway. But what brought me to my blog was a question that one of the audience asked: "How did your family react to you coming out as trans/non-binary, and how is your relationship now?"

My answer was as follows: "I came out as a dyke in 1995, and most of my family was like, 'uh, yeah. We know.' My mother in spite of "knowing" continued to say things to me like 'some day you'll meet the right man and you'll want to get married and have babies.' It wasn't until she saw the movie Boys Don't Cry that something finally clicked for her and she stopped, and in fact since then she has said things like 'is it ok if I call you my "girl".' But I've never come out directly to my family as non-binary; granted any of my family who is on facebook sees all of my shit posting and is aware, but I just haven't had the energy to put the emotional labor into coming out to my family."

Maybe saying "coming out to" my family would be better stated as "having a conversation with" my family. As the words were coming out of my mouth it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't being fair to my family...by not sharing all of myself with them, and by not trusting them to hold space for me to be vulnerable with them. Maybe. I mean my mom has opened the door for the conversation, but also I don't have a relationship with my mother that involves me being emotionally vulnerable with her. My mother is not someone who has ever been a person I got to with emotional vulnerability; I tried a few times as a child the the consequences were quite traumatic. 

Besides the fact that I don't have an emotionally close relationship with my mother, many of the conversations I have with her devolve into her telling me how much she loves the giant orange shit stain, or some idiotic BS about immigrants that I have to correct her about. And because of this, I basically call her for Christmas, her birthday, and mother's day. That is all I can handle. Although it was not my intention, I spent my entire therapy session today talking about this issue, and one of the things that I came to is that I have been especially hesitant to talk to my mother because I think one more conversation that goes south with her will result in me going fully no-contact with her. She's 94, and I know she won't be around that much longer, but I would like to have as civil of a relationship as possible until she passes. And I think avoidance is the only way that that can be achieved.

There's another family member who I have been working on my relationship with who I was thinking I should really have a conversation with. I texted them today, just a "hey, how's it going." I hadn't heard from them by the end of the day, and I recalled a FB comment they had made on one of my "Hey, this talking head wants me dead-if you love them you can unfriend me now" type posts that I couldn't quite get a read on. Either I had pissed them off, or they really got how hurtful the person I was posting about was being. Long story short, after a short investigation it turns out said family member has blocked me.

Pretty sad when a family member choses a famous racist, homophobic POS over their family member. But, as it turns out, I was right in not wasting my time on the emotional labor with those two. There are family members whom I'd be "safe" with having conversations about my gender journey, but they're also not members I necessarily have phone conversations with (or email, or snail mail). I've been a country away for most of the lives of my nieces and nephews, and honestly when I was still in the same state when many of them were old enough to remember me, *I* wasn't emotionally available to them. I regret that, but I know where I was, I just wasn't able to be there for them, or with them. 

The good news is that there are a lot of people who love me. There are a lot of people who will support me, who will fight for rights, who will protect me...and likewise I will do the same for them. I am lucky to have a helluva a community and support system, and I've gotten a helluva lot better and recognizing who those people are.

More on struggles with gender dsyphoria, and moments of euphoria (TW: discussion of ED)

Yesterday I wasn't in a very good  place. I thought about deleting my post, but it was where I was at and I need to honor that. Some days will be better than others on my journey with my body, with gender dysphoria,  and with trauma/trauma recovery (because although it is not the cause for my gender dysphoria, it does effect my relationship to my body, and to the world around me). 

Another layer of my angst yesterday was due to my struggles with weight/eating. As I mentioned I've been eating in a "calorie deficit", and although it's the new buzz word for "healthy" calorie restriction, for those of us who have struggled with disorded eating, it becomes a good cover for further disordered eating. And I realize what I'm doing, but because I'm getting enough protein I use that as an excuse for how much of a deficit I've been in being "ok". Yesterday was hard because after returning home from the Highland Games last week I decided I needed to be a little less neurotic about tracking and restricting my calories. And I didn't go hog wild, for the most part I stayed between 1700-2000 calories, but in the space of a week I gained 5 pounds. And although my midsection is the last place for me to lose weight, it's also the first place that I gain weight. 

Well, I hadn't really meant to go there, but I guess that's what needed to "come out." My intent when I hit the "new post" button was to talk about where I do have moments of gender EUphoria. So, here we go. As per my last post, gender affirming top surgery has made a huge difference in my comfort in being in my own skin. I've never been comfortable with having breasts. Going out in public with so much embarrassment/discomfort about that part of my body for the last 40 years was just torture. Every time I stepped out of the shower and was confronted by my reflection in the mirror just contracted my soul. Ugh, and the days of anguish leading up to mammograms and skin checks...I am SO grateful I don't have to go through that anymore. I've had several people comment since my top surgery about how I carry myself differently. I don't really notice it, but I am aware that I'm not carrying that embarrassment/shame/discomfort/dysphoria anymore, and maybe it weighed me down more than I realized I was letting on to.

I used to workout before the pandemic, but during that hellscape of a time I kinda shut down and just stopped working out even though I have a living room full of equipment. Then I went on Buspar when I was dealing with some heavy medical shit, and unfortunately the Buspar not only made me gain a bunch of weight, but it made me so apathetic I could barely get out of bed let alone work out...or really do anything I enjoyed. All that along with some orthopedic issues that made it difficult to workout without hurting myself, I had a really hard time getting back into a routine. When I finally started the ball rolling to have top surgery, I was infused with the motivation I needed to start working out and doing heavy lifting again. And the thing is, I realize as I'm typing, being strong has always been important to me. Even as a little kid, I took pride in being able to carry the heavy buckets of feed, the giant spool of wire, my heavy-ass saddle. The times I've felt the best in my body have been the times when I was the strongest. And along with actual physical strength, when I'm stronger I also have more muscle and so I like the look of my body shape way more.

As I approached my last surgery (scar revision for my top surgery, and torso masculinization) I felt inspired for the first time in decades to paint (more on that another day), specifically about being in this liminal space of feeling more at home/comfortable in my body since top surgery, as well as feeling stronger, but also about struggling with those parts of my body (hips/mid section) that were still very feminine. Painting has been a way of processing the continued dysphoria and dysmorphia, while honoring the positive changes both in my body, and in my sense of myself.

So, although I was feeling like crap about my body yesterday because I'd gained a few pound, I also had a really good workout and was aware that I was getting stronger. And I need to remember that I've gotten strong enough (and my back has gotten stable enough) that I was able to compete in the Highland Games last weekend for the first time in 8(?) years. And as I posted on fb last week, although it's been hard for me to see my muscle-growth progress, some the pictures my friend Mona got of me competing gave me an appreciation for the work I've done on my arms, and that makes me feel pretty damn good about my body.

And I have to remember that not only do I suffer from gender dysphoria, but also body dysmorphia. The struggles with gender dysphoria are stained by the inky insidiousness of body dysmorphia and body shame caused by my mother and my sister telling me how fat I was when I was a child (when I was not in fact fat), and encouraging me to diet at the ripe old age of 8. It's easy to see my imperfections, but I need to build up the "muscles" of seeing my strengths, and the things about myself and my body I can be proud of.

National Coming Out Day: Non-binary and my struggles with gender dysphoria

 I've often told the story of coming out in rural ND, and starting a GSA on my campus in the mid 90s on this auspicious day. It's a good story no doubt, but a story I've told many times. I've been out as a dyke/lesbian for 30 years now, so its kind of old news.

On the other hand, I haven't been "out" as a non-binary they/them for that long. I recently posted a couple blog posts about my gender-journey, so lets see what else I can tell you...

Coming out as NB has been more difficult than I would like to admit. I think having been unabashedly out as a lesbian for so long I thought it should be easier to come out as NB. As Shrek says, "Ogres have layers", and my story has many layers as well. 

As I mentioned in my recent posts, although I have hated being a "girl" since I was a child, I had a lot of therapists divert my gender dysphoria discussions, into discussions of trauma as it affected my relationship to my body. As a result I spent literal decades trying to unravel my hatred of my female-body by working on trauma (spoiler alert: it didn't help). Not that in most of those cases either I or the therapist had words like "gender dysphoria", but the message I got over and over again was that my relationship with my body wasn't an organic issue, but a trauma issue, so even when I had the words, I'd been talked into thinking my issue was more trauma related, even though in my head I knew that it was more than just trauma.

Secondly, the term "non-binary" is fairly new. "Gender Queer" I did learn about around 14 years ago, and I immediately resonated with that. It would take a few years before I heard about NB, and agender, both being terms that I use for myself. Anyway, not having the right language/words for myself made "coming out" a challenge, because I didn't know what to come out as.

Thirdly, shortly after my wife and I got together (about 13 years ago?) I stopped going by my legal name, and a lot of folks had a really hard time with using my new name. As much angst as that caused, I knew getting people to use my preferred pronouns would be a super-shit show, especially since so many of us had teachers like my beloved Mrs. A who beat it into our heads that they/them is NOT singular. (Yet we have no problem asking who the "they" was who lost their keys.) And honestly, because of my beloved Mrs. A. I too had a REALLY hard time with they/them, even though both "she" and "he" made me feel gross. It was until I was in a Safe Space training with Transgender Resource Center at UNMH in 2018 that I finally said aloud that my pronouns were "they/them", and it was until a year or two ago that I started asking friends and family to call me they/them.

Now that I'm thinking about it, it was working at my current job in a senior living facility where I've had several of my patients (interestingly, mostly men) call me "he". I noticed that it actually gave me a little gender euphoria to be not called she/her, and that was the catalyst for starting to be more open about being non-binary. And for awhile, I just told people they could call me whatever pronoun they preferred..."just don't call me late for dinner". It took a bit longer to have the confidence to say, "I use they/them pronouns."

I still suck at correcting people. I don't have the energy for peoples' defensiveness, or nastiness, or their Very Big Feelings of feeling bad about misgendering me-and I never know what reaction I'm going to get, so I just engage in some old fashioned avoidance. And I am VERY appreciative of the people in my life who do make the effort to use my correct pronouns, and for the people who correct others when they don't. 

And I'm grateful AF that I've finally been able to have top surgery so I feel a whole helluva lot better in my body. Perfectly comfortable, no. I still have the distinctive "pear" shape of a menopausal woman in spite of a "torso masculanizing" surgery that was painful AF. In some ways, I feel worse after the surgery since I thought waking up on the other side of it I'd finally have the body that aligned with my gender identity (and I could finally stop eating in such a significant calorie deficit), but due to some miscommunication (?) with the surgeon I got fat sucked out of places that wound up just emphasizing the "pear" proportions. 

Maybe if I'd written this post yesterday I'd be a little bit more positive/celebratory, but unfortunately, the grief about my body hit pretty hard again today. And a lot of that grief is specific to my surgery results, but some of it is the grief of not being listened to by a man...again. I finally met with my surgeon for a postop appointment this Monday, and although he presented some options, they weren't necessarily great options for getting the results I want, and he said I would need to wait a year before doing any further surgeries (and that's assuming my insurance will pay for any further surgery, and that's assuming my brain can handle another round of anesthesia...this last one fucked me up pretty bad.) 

Anyway, I exercise a ton and eat in a calorie deficit trying to achieve a more masculine/neutral body, but there's only so much one can do to counter menopause, and a previous massive weight gain (fuck you, Buspar). And through the weight lifting I've been doing I am building more muscle and changing my silhouette to a more masculine one, and in doing so, I'm feeling, bit by bit a little more comfortable in my body. Maybe some day I'll be able to call my body, home.

 

Worrying at the knot of self-blame (TW: SA, DV)

 Sorry, this is going to be another trauma post.

Today I had a new patient visit with a primary care. I had asked about getting a bone density screen, and we needed to establish reasoning as it generally isn't covered until 65. My new doc asked if my mom had early-onset osteoporosis, and I told her that when my mom was 57 she broke her wrist and the ER had told her then that she had osteoporosis. After I left that appointment I was thinking, "oh yeah, and then she broke her arm a couple years later...". Only "she" didn't break her arm that time, her boyfriend did. 

The boyfriend who moved in with us when she and I moved back to ND at the end of my junior year. 

The boyfriend who, that summer, would rub up against me to feel my breasts. 

The boyfriend who, after I moved out would frequently tell people at the bar that I needed "to have (my) cherry popped, and (he's) the one to do it."

The boyfriend who threatened to kill all of my mother's children in a "blood bath", and save her for last so she could suffer knowing all of her children were dead.

It was a few weeks after that last one that he went from being my mother's boyfriend, to being her husband. Nice guy. But, I digress. It was number 3 on that list that hooked me today. But before I get into that, a little side note from my therapy session yesterday. We've been working on an incident for a while, and I've been really struggling with "it was my fault because I didn't stop it."  Now, cognitively, I know that I was in a situation where I was at a power-disadvantage, and that I tried to divert this individual, but that self-blame piece runs deep. So we explored that a bit, and the first time I remembered feeling like it was my responsibility and fault was when I was a kid and this couple would visit. The husband would always make a bee-line for me and tickle me, like the relentless, painful tickle where you can't breathe. I fucking hated it, but I couldn't escape this giant man. After they had left from one of their visits my mom said, "I don't like it when he tickles you. Don't let him do that." Here's the thing; I wasn't "letting him", and I sure as hell didn't want him to do it. But that message made it loud and clear that it was my responsibility to stop him, and if I didn't, it was my fault. I still tried, and still failed. He sure as hell wasn't listening to "no", and he'd just chase me down when I tried to run away.

Fast forward to my mother's boyfriend/husband. It was her who pointed out that her boyfriend was feeling up my breasts when he rubbed against me, and it was her who put the responsibility on me to not let him do it. It was my mother who informed me about his statements about popping my cherry, and again I was responsible for making sure he didn't do anything to me, while at the same time telling me that I needed to give him a hug and tell him I loved him every fucking time I visited. (Side note: Fortunately, in the fall after HE moved in, I moved in with my alcoholic father. For many reasons I'll go in to another time, it may have seemed like a bad idea to move in with my dad, but holy shit did I dodge a bullet by moving in with him, and away from HIM!)

Now, for what hit me today. I've always been grossed out by what he said, but as I watched the memories roll by today it hit me, "Why the hell did he think I needed my 'cherry popped'"? What exactly was it about me that made him think this was a  necessary thing? Why the fuck was he even thinking about my virginity? And I thought about the violence behind that particular phrase that is so flippantly thrown own. 

POP. verb
1: to strike or knock sharply: HIT
2: to push, put, or thrust suddenly or briefly
3: to cause to explode or burst open

A grown ass man, 30 years my senior, not to mention being MY MOTHER'S BOYFRIEND was going around telling other men at the bar that I needed my virginity raped out of me by HIM. (Lets not pretend it would be anything other than rape)

And my mother reminded me regularly that it was my responsibility to make sure it didn't happen. 

And I wonder why I spend so much time in therapy trying to unravel the knots of self-blame for things that were done to me without my consent by men who had more power than me.

Gender Dysphoria (part 2) (Trigger warning)

First a couple definitions' to help those new to the subject:

Gender dysphoria is a feeling of distress that can happen when a person's gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.Gender identity is having the internal sense of being male or female or being somewhere along the gender spectrum, or having an internal sense of gender that is beyond male and female. People who have gender dysphoria feel a big difference between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. Gender dysphoria is different from simply not following stereotypical gender behaviors. It involves feelings of distress due to a strong, lasting desire to be another gender. (mayoclinic.org)

non-binary: denoting, having, or relating to a gender identity that does not conform to traditional binary beliefs about gender, which indicate that all individuals are exclusively either male or female.

I am non-binary. I don't fit neatly into a box on either side of the spectrum. Please note that not all non-binary folks experience gender dysphoria, and some are quite content with their body, and their NB identity is related to gender roles. For me being non-binary is about both gender roles, and my body.  As I mentioned in my last post, I don't necessarily want to be a man, but having a more masculine body feels more "at home" to me. And just a reminder that gender roles are made-up social constructs and vary from culture to culture.

My last post included the line, "Welcome to shit soup."

That wound up in there because when I first started writing I jotted some lines about trauma, and body dysmorphia, and although a separate issues from gender dysphoria (GD), they do affect one another. How I see myself has been tainted by my early experience of being fat shamed, and trauma has exacerbated my distress of having a female body.

Firstly, the joy of being fat shamed. This memory was such an impactful moment that I remember it like it was last week. I was 7 or 8 and I was leaning against the stove, my mom was sitting on her stool in the kitchen having a cigarette and my sister was standing beside her. My sister looked at me and said to my mom, "Look at how fat (Grace) is getting. She's going to have a pot belly just like her dad." Spoiler alert: I was not in fact fat, but it took me decades to be able to look at photos of myself and really SEE the size I was. Long story short, from that moment on I learned to see the flaws with my body, particularly how I was always too big. That was the day my sister also helpfully informed me that I needed to skip meals, and started me on my disordered eating journey.

Since we're on the subject of my mother and my sister...unfortunately my observation of these two women had an impact on how I felt about what it meant to be a woman, and how I had no desire to follow in their footsteps. My mother, if you haven't read my previous posts struggled with her mental health. There would be days of being bed-ridden because of her "nerves", the trip to the mental hospital, handfuls of pills, and the meltdowns (I struggled to come up with a different word, but truly, I saw her psyche "melt" during these episodes). Then there was my sister with her own mental health issues with in contrast to my mother were quite volatile, violent, and scary AF. In addition my sister started her drug abuse with the 70's diet pills (speed), which only made her behavior more erratic and terrifying. Keeping in mind that I grew up on ranch in a very isolated area, and had very limited contact with the outside world when i was young, so these were my examples of what it meant to be a woman in my life early on. Unfortunately I believed that they were weak, and that they were weak because they were women, and I sure AF didn't want to be like them. I had to do a lot of unpacking to understand these people as products of their time and their own trauma. 

I shan't go into details, but as alluded to in my last post, for about 25 years of my therapy journey, when I spoke of hating my body it always got tucked into the category of "you hate your body because of your trauma, and we just need to resolve your trauma and then you'll be ok with your body." I wish somewhere along the way that one of my many therapists would have taken a step back and thought, "Huh, my other SA trauma survivors don't want to cut their breasts off, maybe this hate of Grace's female body isn't just about sexual trauma?"

Am I saying that the unrelenting sexual abuse/assaults I experienced as a young person didn't effect my relationship to my body? Of course not. Absolutely they poured kerosene on my already severe gender dysphoria, but those experiences weren't the cause of my dysphoria. And yes, absolutely; addressing my trauma was necessary, but not necessarily in the context of "fixing" my gender dysphoria.

***

I didn't want to be a girl, and I most certainly didn't want to be a woman. I was fortunate to have grown up on a ranch where I got to do "boy" things like fix fence, round up cattle, feed the livestock...and part of that work was dressing like a boy. I also had a dad who had wanted a boy so I didn't get treated like a little princess, and in fact I wanted to be dad's "little boy" and because we were ranchers none of my gender-role non-conformity was pathologized. 

My gender dysphoria didn't hit until I approached puberty (see my previous post), and it never got better with "resolving trauma", and in fact I think it got worse because I had more attention for that particular distress, plus I couldn't blame the trauma on my dysphoria anymore. And when I think back to when I was a young child, I wasn't putting on my mom's dresses or eye shadow, I was putting on dad's cowboy hat. I was "shaving" with his straight razor (minus the blade). The signs were there, I was just a few decades to early in our understanding of gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria (part 1?)

 Awhile back a new friend asked me about my trans journey. Where to start? Hating my body?

Welcome to shit soup.

There has never been a time that I haven't hated the secondary sex characteristics that came with puberty. I can still remember the horror, and sense of impending doom I experienced when I realized what puberty was, and the changes that would occur in my body. I can remember the sensation of blood draining from my face, my eyes dilating, my body going cold. The sense of powerlessness that went along with that revelation wasn't new, but it hit in a different way knowing that this would be a permanent thing, and not just an isolated experience with a clear beginning, and more importantly, end.

Growing up in a ranch community, being a "tomboy" wasn't that out-of-the-ordinary, but admittedly, it always perplexed me when other ranch girls weren't tomboys. Why would you NOT be a tomboy? That experience of growing up where I did meant that, for the most part, I wasn't pressured to "act/dress like a girl." Sure, my mom would occasionally try to put me in dresses, which I hated, but the pressure to be girly was minimal. Every now and then, usually a community outsider, would make a comment about "girls don't do that"...the memory that pops into my head is the time at the community picnic I had my slingshot, and the boy who had been adopted by a woman from the neighboring town boldly stated that "girls don't use slingshots." Forty-some years later, that memory still makes me bristle, and I can guarantee, my community would never say something so damn dumb! They would say a lot of other dumb shit, but not that.

Anyway, upon the revelation that puberty WOULD happen to me, I did my damnedest to will it away, but eventually it did catch up with me, but fortunately, I was a "late bloomer." Shortly after developing breasts the fantasies about how to get rid of them started. Maybe I could stop an armed robbery and get shot in the chest and the doctors would have to cut them off? What if I was in a horrible car accident and they got sliced off? Could I ever be brave enough to just do it myself? It wouldn't be until my early 20's that I learned about trans men, and that it was possible to get surgery to remove them (still I struggle to name them, those hated flaps of flesh that were the bane of my existence for so many decades).

But it would still take 30 some years before I got to have top surgery.  In large part because of financial reasons (other than the year I worked at a local hospital, I hadn't had medical insurance until I met my wife), but also because of my difficulties in naming what I was. Although reading Stone Butch Blues in my 20s opened up a whole new world of gender expression, I didn't necessarily relate to the hard-core "stone" butches who embodied hyper-masculine roles, or being a trans man. It wouldn't be until my 40's that I heard the term "non-binary" and had a better understanding of where I fit...more on that later.

Coming out as lesbian in my 20's was helpful in that I as got older I could see that my tomboy friends growing out of their tomboyishness, while I seemed to settle deeper into it, and I knew I wasn't "fitting in." It gave me a way of normalizing some of the things that I felt, that I knew my straight friends didn't experience-not wanting to be girly or feminine (in fact hating everything feminine related), not wanting to have babies/be a mother, being drawn toward "masculine" activities (shooting, martial arts, motorcycles). But, just like with my childhood observations that I couldn't understand why all ranch girls weren't tomboys, eventually I was perplexed by lesbians (especially non-femmes) who didn't hate having breasts or feminine hips, who didn't want to do "boy" things. 

And along my journey it didn't help that the therapists I worked with had no  understanding of gender dysphoria- and unfortunately, gender dysphoria and non-binary weren't a part of common vernacular until fairly recently. So what all that meant for me is that when I brought up hating my body, the conversation always would be steered toward resolving my so that I could make peace with my body. Granted the plethora of trauma didn't help my relationship to my body, but it wasn't the cause for my gender dysphoria, and no amount of trauma work was going to fix that. And it wasn't just my therapists, I too believed that I needed to figure out what was trauma based hating-my-body, and what was genuine I don't want to be a woman. For much of that time, I still believed the only choices were "woman" or "transman", and again, man wasn't resonating with me, but I knew I didn't want to be a woman.

In my mid 30's I knew a number of lesbians who then came out as transmen, and medically transitioned. Although I was clear that I didn't necessarily want to be a man, I was drowning in the abject hatred of my feminizing features, and I decided the only solution was to transition (at the time getting top surgery required being a T for a year/living as a man for a year). Upon talking with my partner of the time, she lost her mind because "what would it mean for me (as a lesbian) if you became a man?!" And unfortunately, I had no volition in that relationship, so I stuffed everything back in my emotional closet, and went on hating my body.  As shitty as that was, ultimately it bought me the time to understand what it meant to be non-binary.

Fortunately, my beloved wife and I had conversations about our relationship with our bodies, and I was able to have someone just hold space for me to speak about my gender dysphoria (and my desire to have top surgery) without pathologizing it as a result of trauma, or telling me that I just need to love my body. She supported my desire...no, NEED to get top surgery from the get-go, it just took a while for it financially to be feasible.

A few years back NM started requiring insurance to cover gender affirming care. I had contacted my insurance company about the process of getting covered, and the person I spoke to had no idea essentially, and I gave up...if my insurances customer service couldn't even guide me in the process (or my PCP) how the hell was I going to figure this out? Then there was the pandemic, and then there was my Buspar-weight-gain (I'd known transmen who had lost weight after their surgery, and they wound up needing a revision so I was determined to lose weight before surgery). 

But about a year and a half ago I met the right people who helped guide me along in the insurance process, to the right providers, and I decided that waiting around until I was at the "right weight" when I was so miserable in my body (and getting so damn old!) was going to mean I might never get surgery. Since surgery I've had a couple people as me if I had any regrets. My only regrets are not doing it sooner, and not going to a more experienced surgeon so I wouldn't have had to go through a revision surgery. What I have heard way more than "do you regret it", is "you finally look like yourself", "you carry yourself like you are finally comfortable in your body." And I am. I'm not 100%- it's not just the breasts that were a part of my gender-dysphoria, but as I sculpt my body with building muscle, I feel more and more like..."myself."

Belated Happy World Suicide Prevention Day? (TW)

 Yesterday was World Suicide Prevention Day. I meant to post something, but I just didn't have the time or the spoons, mostly the spoons. I often tell some of my story on this day, not because I need support around my suicidality history, but because I want to normalize talking about suicidal thoughts, and I want for people who suffer from suicidal thoughts to know they are not alone. 

I've been haunted by the thoughts, urges, obsessions with suicide since I was about 14. For the majority of my life there have been daily thoughts-not always driven by a true desire to exit, sometimes just habitual thought loops, sometimes First-Level responses to stressors. In other words, although the whispers are always there, they aren't always serious, sometimes just a low hum in the background that I'm aware of, but that I can function through.

But, there have been times when the volume has been turned up. Sometimes it just means that it's hard to have attention for anything else, sometimes I have been serious about planning my exit strategy. In more recent years (if you caught my entry a couple blogs back, more there) I've been working with a therapist who allows me to talk opening about where I'm at so we can work through my desire to permanently exit, rather than sending me straight to inpatient commitment. I appreciate having a therapist who gets that the only way to work through that shit is to talk about it with someone you trust. 

Today I'll tell you the story of the first time I had a plan. My mom had left my dad and we had moved to Texas. It was an awful experience, and what few resources I had back home, I no longer had. I was haunted by untreated PTSD, I had no support system, my mother was constantly telling me how we had no money (to even buy the supplies I needed for school projects) while simultaneously sending Harley Davidson T-shirts, and leather vests and jackets to her boyfriend back in ND. I was alone, with no support system, and no hope that things would ever get better.

For weeks I'd been...looking forward to hanging myself. I knew I had to find a place that would be secure enough to do the job, and secluded enough that I wouldn't get caught, and I needed a sturdy rope. I had a mission, and each night after I got home from school I would walk around the trailer court for all of the above. Unfortunately, I was having little luck with finding any of those things. One night I finally decided that it was time to consider any means to do the job. It was decided. I had a new plan, I'd just have to wait until my mother would be gone long enough while I was home from school.

But then I had a dream. No one was there, no voices, really no sights either; just a feeling, a sense that suicide would not "fix" the problem, but more importantly a sense of peace, and a sense of touching the Divine. Perhaps it was just my psyche playing a little mind game to get me to stick around, or maybe I did indeed get a visit from the Divine, either way I decided to stay. And that moment got me through many more for the next couple of years. 

All that to say, I just needed a little hope, and I needed to know I wasn't alone. If you're worried about a friend, invite them for coffee, remind them how much they mean to you. And don't be afraid to talk about suicide (just your reminder that saying the word doesn't "put it in their head"), break the stigma. When we can bring our darkness into the Light it loses it's power over us. 

I'll be honest, I'm not always happy I stuck around, but right now I am. I am grateful for my life and for all the people I love and who love me. I'm grateful I clung to hope in the darkness.

https://988lifeline.org/

It's coming up on the 35th anniversary of my dad's death

He was dying. I knew he was dying. His doctor, when I was finally able to corner him to ask for answers he made it clear that  1. my dad didn't deserve a liver transplant because he was an alcoholic, 2. that dad's organs were in the process of dying as a result of the cirrhosis, and 3. that he was not going to use any "heroic" measures when my dad's organs failed. 

For a few weeks my dad's cognitive function had been declining. He would wander the halls at the hospital, so the nurses would lock him in what amounted to an adult high chair, and asked me to be there whenever I wasn't in class to baby sit him because they were busy. An acquaintance once mentioned the cute little old man who sat in the high chair in the hallway on the floor where her mom was recovering from surgery, "yeah, that's my dad."

For weeks he hadn't been coherent. He was either unconscious, or he was conscious but essentially unaware of who he was or where he was. My last coherent conversation with him before his brain became so pickled by ammonia he had said the heart breaking words, "If I could have one wish...(in the long pause I filled in the sentence 'I'd get the ranch back', 'I'd spend more time with you', 'I never would have drank'...)...it would be that I could drink the way I used to." Grace-2025 understands the power of addiction, but writing those words still rips a little hole in my heart. 

But those weren't the very last words, and of course I didn't know his last words would be his last words. I went to visit him before my evening class. It was the first time he'd been "awake" in several days. He whimpered about needing to pee so I helped him with his urinal, then he was thirsty and I helped him drink a can of juice. "I'm scared. I don't want to die," he told me. "It's ok dad, you're not going to die." I didn't know what else to say. I was a 20 year old, emotional mess, who'd been taking care of their dad for the last year alone. I didn't have the emotional fortitude for anything else, so even though I had some time to spare, I slipped out of the room with my last words to him, "I'll be back after class." 

I really didn't think he would die that night, not after having woken up, spoken, and drank something. But half way through my class the campus security came to find me to tell me that the hospital was trying to reach me. I drove straight over to the hospital and ran up to his room to find it empty. I knew but didn't want to believe he was dead. I paced the hallway looking for someone to confirm. A few moments later a chaplain that I'd only met in passing apologized for not being in the room when I'd gotten there, and confirmed that my dad had died earlier that evening. She asked if I wanted to see him, but I wasn't ready to see his dead body, and I wasn't ready to cry in front of this stranger. After my sharp "no" to her question, she asked if I'd not been close to my father. "What a stupid fucking thing to ask" I thought to myself, "just because I'm not blubbering like a fool." I would not let myself cry. I hadn't planned on letting myself cry until the funeral, but I couldn't hold it in when I went to the viewing. And I thought that after the funeral my grieving would be over. One big cry and done- that's how cowboys did it, right? But no, here I am 35 years later and I'm still grieving. 

Grieving the loss of the dad that he was, grieving the loss of the dad that could have been, grieving for the milestones and achievements he never go to be there for, grieving for not having the right words, grieving for not just being able to say "I love you" because we both had to be 'tough cowboys.'

Our relationship was complicated, but I know my dad loved  me and was proud of me- I didn't always realize that latter part, but I can look at my memories now and see in the ways he showed up that he was proud of me. I hope he knew that in spite of my irritable nature, I too loved him very much. 

Before he went in to the hospital the last time we went to look at mules because he'd always dreamed of looking for the Dutchman's Gold. I still dream of doing the same just to honor him, although I'd be content just have the "mools". 

Sometimes I forget that my personality, and who I am as a person isn't just the sum of reactions to trauma, that I was also shaped by love, not just of my beloved grandmother, but also the love my father showed me those last few years I lived with him, even if we were never able to say the words. 

I love you dad. I wish you could have been here to see the person I became. And I wish we would have had the chance to take those pack mules on that epic adventure together.

Reclamation: Art and art

I was emailing with my friend Jane, and she mentioned "reclaiming" parts of ourselves as we were talking about me starting to paint again. There are a few layers of this reclamation. First is the part where after my last BIG concussion in 2015 my visual processing, and hand eye coordination were greatly affected, as well as my sense of color (back in my college days I could mix a color for a perfect match...once I punched a wall and had to do a color match after I patched the hole!...yeah, wasn't one of my better moments). And granted, I was rusty anyway cuz after my graduation back in 95 I had done very little art.

Which brings us to the part where I pretty much stopped doing art after I graduated. Pre-college I always had a sketch book handy. Always. If I was staying somewhere other than my house, a sketch book was just as important as a clean change of underwear. But then I went to college. And there were a couple of things that happened to rob me of the joy, and pleasure of making art...the making art because I couldn't not make art. One of those factors was that my primary instructor, Trina, insisted that all of my Art had to be "ripping your heart out and throwing it on the canvas." For her, Art always had to be a capital "A"...art wasn't for fun, it was for making a statement. After a time that becomes rather emotionally exhausting, and definitely robs one of the fun of making art. 

Ah, that reminds me of the time in one of her classes that the assignment was to "just have fun" with the linocut as the purpose was to "get used to using the medium", "don't worry about making Art". Just have fun. So, going back to my favorite style of humor I carved out an outhouse with a starry sky in the background. And she flipped out. In front of the entire class she was crying, and yelling at me, "How could you Lu!" (I still can't fucking stand it when people call me "Lu") "I can't believe this Lu!" "How could you do this TRITE bullshit, why didn't you add a WINDMILL in the background to make it even more TRITE!" On and on it went. What happened to "just have fun"? Even as I write this I feel my traps contracting, pulling my shoulders to my ears.

The other part of that experience was that my first relationship was with her (sure I'd gotten drunk and made out with boys a few times, some of them more than once, but I was never in anything one would consider a relationship), and she was the first woman I was ever with. And that relationship consisted of secrecy (think small ND town in the 90s), and a whole lot of power and control fuckery. I got in trouble if I spent any time with friends, if I wasn't at home with her, I was to be at the studio making Art. If I did happen to go with friends (because out the other side of her mouth I was supposed to hang out with my friends so people wouldn't suspect we were in a relationship), and I didn't invite her I was an asshole who didn't love her. And if I did happen to spend time with friends rather than the studio I would literally be told I was going to get a C or a D for my A work because I wasn't making Art when not with her. Then there was all the yelling and screaming, and being blamed for everything wrong in her life. 

So, anyway, art and Art became a chore. And it became a constant rehashing of trauma so I could make Art instead of art as per Trina's edict. At one point I did start therapy, but my therapist instead of helping me work through/process my trauma just shamed me for shutting down when I got overwhelmed by my trauma and couldn't speak, or would say helpful things like "I don't think you know what a flashback is" when I would bring it up. So for 5 years I dug deep into my trauma without the support I needed, thus re-traumatizing myself over and over again, and forgetting what it was like to just enjoy line work, color play, and and shapes. Forgetting the joy of creating something from a blank canvas and an assortment of colors. Forgetting how to just let the creativity flow, and let Art come out of me because it needed to, not because I had to to make the grade.

Two years ago yesterday (as per fb) I pulled my oil paints and pallet out after having had a conversation with my barber
about painting (particularly about how I had stopped after college even though oil painting was my favorite medium), and how I needed to reclaim (yes, that very word) Art/art from Trina. That bitch stole it, and it was time for me to take it back. I started by just doing some random color play on the canvas-nothing particularly...well, anything but color play. And I picked up acrylics (just cuz its less messy and toxic for indoor painting) and tried to do some (terrible) self-portraits. After those in particular, I knew I wouldn't be making any of the pieces that I actually was proud of during my college days. But then as I approached my last gender affirming surgery I started feeling true inspiration, something I hadn't experienced since the mid 90s. And then I started painting and what came out surprised me. So much of what I thought I had lost skill wise was coming back. As I reclaim (or perhaps just claim) my body, I am finding myself reclaiming my skills, and my inspiration...and my joy in making A/art.

Top to bottom: 1994, 2025, 2023

Suicide Prevention Month

 I've talked very openly about my struggles with suicidal ideation over the last several years on social media. I know there are those who feel like I'm "oversharing", or looking for attention, but my decision to speak openly about it starts in about 1995. In about 95 I came out publicly in my small college town after I heard about the suicide of an Out young gay man who had been an LGBT advocate in the more urban part of the state. I had admired this person from afar for their bravery, and it...I've sat here for several seconds trying to describe the blow to my soul when I found out. Whatever that feeling was, it lit a fire under introverted, shy, social-anxious me to do something so other people in my community wouldn't give in to the hate that was unrelentingly rained down upon them. So, I came out. I started a GSA at my campus, I spoke college classes, I unashamedly spoke up about who I was. And today I speak about my own struggles with suicidal ideation so that others, regardless of why they are struggling with finding a reason or motivation to hold on to this life know that they are not alone, and maybe, just maybe that will give them the courage to hold on one more, or to reach out for help.

For me, suicidality was never about my gayness. For me it was, and is about drug resistant major depression, and its about trauma/ptsd. I first started having obsessive thoughts after an upper classman at my HS had suicided. It simply hadn't occurred to me before this that that was an option, and I kinda felt guilty that it hadn't occurred to me sooner. Guilty, because if I had thought about it sooner, maybe I could have avoided going through some awful shit. Anyway, from that day forward it was constantly on my mind, all mixed in with the constant flashbacks that haunted me: a shit smoothie to keep my brain occupied and agitated every time I had a quiet moment.

And there were a few times that I got close. I'll save those stories for another day, but will leave it at I was blessed to find the tiniest spark of hope to cling to, or to have someone remind me at a crucial moment that there were indeed people who cared about me, and that I would be missed (and being a people pleaser I didn't want to upset anyone!).

I've been lucky enough to have been in therapy for most of my adult like. I wish I could be the person who just needs therapy intermittently, but my PTSD is such that I don't know if I'll ever get to the place where I "graduate" from therapy, but who knows? Through that therapy though, I've chipped away at the trauma, and I've gotten to a place where the flashbacks aren't a daily TARDIS trip back to the shittiest days of my life. And I'm also very lucky to have a therapist who understands that in order to work through suicidal thoughts and feelings her clients need to know that they can bring them up without having to worry about an automatic involuntary commitment. Unfortunately many therapists are so afraid of liability, or take on too much responsibility for the actions of their clients that as soon as the "S" word in brought up they wan their clients to go straight to the nearest mental health ER, do not pass go, do not collect $50. So, dear reader, if you have a therapist and you have ever struggled with suicidality, please chat with your therapist about how they deal with clients disclosing this issue with them. If you're not having suicidal thoughts now, talk to them now so when the time comes you know what kind of support you can expect. And maybe that is part of the conversation: If I have these feelings, THIS is what I need from you to get through it safely.

Most recently, during my early recovery from my Top Surgery, and torso "contouring" I was in a bad place. I was in a lot of pain, my brain chemistry was all fucked up from the anesthesia, and having gone through all that just to have results that I was not happy with...having gone to sleep excited about finally feeling comfortable in my body, and waking up and looking down to see that it was obvious that the surgeon and I had very different visions of where my dysphoria was, it was devastating. And all those things combined, I was thinking about "going hunting" which is the euphemism my wife and I came up with after my last battle. And fortunately my wife saw how fucked up I was even though I was trying to hide it from her, and we talked about it together with a therapist, and that part of me that was ready to give up, found the spark again, and I'm happy to report as we enter into Suicide Prevention month, that I am actually in a place of being grateful for my life. It isn't a perfect life, a perfect world, or a perfect body, but I am grateful for the love that surrounds me, and maybe more importantly, I am grateful for being AWARE of all the love that surrounds me.

May you be be surrounded by love, and feel it all!

Bad Enough? (TW: SA)

 There are a lot of old stories rattling around in my head these days. Things shoved into the folder labeled "not that bad". As it turns out, after working through some of the "yeah, it was that bad" folder contents, I've found that the "not that bad" scraps have exploded their way out of the filing cabinet and I find myself slipping on scraps of paper at the most inconvenient of times. 

Let me take you back in time to an evening my mom had my bus driver take me home until she and my dad got home. The bus driver sent me and her 3 sons down to the basement to play out of her way. As soon as we got down to the basement S, the oldest boy (6-7 years older than me) suggested we play strip poker. Being the naïve 7 year old that I was, I kinda knew what poker was (mom loved card games), but I didn't know what kind of poker strip-poker was. I asked multiple times and simply got "you know, STRIP poker". No, I didn't know. But they were going to show me.

Once the cards were out, S explained the rules...not how to play poker, P would help me with that, but the part about taking clothes off. I immediately stated I didn't want any part of this game, but was told that I wasn't allowed to quit because I already said I would play. It was gross, and horrible, and scary. And it could have been a lot worse-I don't say that to minimize, but really, it could have been worse. Looking back at the whole situation...knowing now what that erect penis was and meant, it could have been so much worse.

I shut my eyes, and shut down, and I got through it. Eventually I was saved further humiliation when Bus Driver hollered at us to come up stairs. At that point none of the boys had touched me, but on the way up the stairs, S behind me slammed his hand so hard into my crotch that he knocked me off of my feet. As I struggled to regain my feet, he painfully groped me, then smelled his hand. And unfortunately, that was not the last time that it happened. Fortunately, I wasn't around him particularly often, but any time he and I happened to be on the stairs at the same time he took full advantage to repeat his disgusting behavior. The last time he did it was at school 5 years later with all his buddies watching (besides a stairway full of students heading to their next class), and then he and his homies laughed at me when I yelled "DON'T TOUCH ME!" into his face. These assaults were always humiliating, but to have a crowd of witnesses, especially ones who laughed...it just...I don't know, it was a reminder of how alone I was...how no one had my back. If I couldn't stop it, no one else was going to step in...and if I couldn't stop it, it must be my fault.

I've had a lot of shitty experiences. This is one that felt like his intention WAS to hurt me. Not just that he was oblivious, or apathetic to the pain he was causing me, but that he wanted to hurt me.

Maybe it was bad enough?

vi·o·lence

/ˈvī(ə)ləns/

noun

1. behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

Freezing is not Consent (TW: discussion of SA)

It's been awhile since I've posted. TikTok has been my place to post my thoughts, and process my crap for the last few years. But I'm feeling like going old school today, especially since I only have a few followers here, as opposed to 6k on TT. 

I looked at a couple old drafts before I started writing, and not surprisingly, there was a tidbit that applied to thoughts that are currently rattling around in my head (and which will hopefully find themselves on this page in a coherent order soon enough). So, here is the tidbit in question:  I'm flipping through the rolodex of memories, I remember all the adult men I had to navigate myself out of situations with AS A TEENAGER, and it was always our shame to carry (I say our because my friend L was dealing with the same shit, sometimes the same man during the same camping trip). The camping trip incident was my introduction to "it's my job to make sure that this adult male that I don't want anywhere near me doesn't force me to have sex" as someone old enough to know what sex was.

So here's where what I pasted from my old draft meets what's in my head right now. There's an event that I have yet to process, not just in therapy; anywhere. I haven't journaled about it, I haven't talked with friends or partners about it (beyond vague hints), I haven't even really let myself think too much about the details as it tends to flood me when I do. I've avoided processing this memory not because it was the worst thing that has happened to me, but because of shame brought on by self-blame. I've had all of these ideas in my head about why it was my fault, why I shouldn't feel so traumatized by it, why it wasn't that big of a deal. And it all comes down to that sense of responsibility-it's my job to prevent adult men from (raping) me, not adult men's job to not (rape) me. I used parentheses in the previous sentence because I have believed for these many decades that if I didn't do "enough: {whatever that means} to prevent it, then it was my fault, and if it's my fault it isn't rape (or whatever flavor of sexual assault it might be). Now, if we were talking about your story, dear reader, I would have no problem identifying your experience as rape/sexual assault, but for me, unhitching myself from the burden of blame has been a doozy. 

Just to clarify, the incident in question wasn't rape. Violation maybe? Assault? I'm still working that out. But the place I keep getting stuck at is the belief *I* should have prevented it. Especially since at this point I was a whole 18 years old. 

Another place where I get bogged down is the idea of violence. I had a reminder this weekend of an incident where my sister's boyfriend was about to beat the f*** out of her right in front of me when I was a kid. It was a terrifying situation, and he had beaten her to the point of needing to go to the ER previously, so I knew the level of damage he was capable. So, if something happens and my eyes aren't swollen shut from a beating, have I tried hard enough to stop it? Was it violent enough for me to call it an assault, or was it just a misunderstanding...that happens to be my fault? My therapist has been helping me redefine my idea of what assault, violence, and force are. 

T    "So, was he just being affectionate?"

M   "Ugh, no!" 

T    "Did he block the entrance."

M    "Yes."

T    "Sounds like force to me."

T    "You tried to reason with him, and he didn't listen; you didn't consent. Freezing when he wouldn't listen to you in NOT consent."

I have a lot more work to do on this memory, but one thing I have been able to clarify is that he was not taking "no" for an answer, no matter how I phrased it. No he didn't beat me or threaten me, but he also crossed my physical boundaries, even after I gave him reason not to. He was a bull in a china shop, and was not going to be deterredunless maybe I hit him. I wish I could have hit him, but the layers of trauma from years of boundary violations shut me down. And that is hard for me- I was a little fucking scrapper...but I was too shut down, too up in my terror to move. "Freezing is not consent."