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!