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.