Keikan

Looking up at the stars tonight, their ancient light refracting into thousands of colors by my tears made me realize something I hadn’t understood before.  Its funny, sometimes, what it takes to make us see clearly.  Today I woke up, checked email and tumblr, and realized that there is a woman whom I’d dearly like as a friend.  I’m not sure how it happened, or just what it is about her posts that draw me… but last night she told us all that she wondered whether she should continue… why not just wake up from this dream world… all we know…

Maybe if you had been positive, helpful, and clever, like so many other of your posts, I would never have realized that I’d become attached.  But the thought of your feed going silent has been echoing in my mind all day, like a monotone heart monitor, stinging my ears with what might be a permanent loss… oh won’t the beeps come back… won’t a post bear away the torture of wondering… is she gone?

Weeks ago, several more-elderly ladies on a chatboard talked about the friends they had lost to violence and suicide.  Beautiful trans* souls, lost to us because of the world… the reality of intolerance…  Today I have the inescapable feeling that, as I connect with my sisters around the world, it may only be time that separates me from the grief of losing someone I know.  It may not be a question of if, so much as when…  A callous observer might wonder if perusing such friendships is worthwhile.  It is.  Every moment that we can know each other, help each other, cry with each other is worth it.  If, in the years to come, we must bear the pain of laying one of our sisters down to rest, then I will gladly do it.  In a moment like that, we will know that the grief born on the wings of a spirit freed of her torment is only a fraction of the beauty and value we gained by walking, even for a short while, and even at a distance, with such a beautiful soul.

And in those friendships which we do pursue, we may find that life continues, and the joy of kinship, the peace of companionship; those things the world makes so costly for us, may in fact prevail over death.  Maybe not always… maybe not for everyone…  but for some of us.  

Keikan, I hope, and am trying to believe, that you will wonder what all the fuss is about. =)  That would be the best.  I hope and pray that  the monitor is just in between its regular, lively beeps; your beautiful heart borne to us through your tumblr posts (of all things).  You have made me realize that there are, besides yourself, several ladies that I would like to know…  I am timid, and shy, but it doesn’t matter.  And anyway, it’s Christmas; and Christmas is a time when we ought to tell the truth.  The truth is, I’d like to be your friend.  Paige and Gwen, I’d like to be your friends too… Nicole… how did I ever live without you?

There are probably many, many others, but it is you four that I would cry for, if your feeds disappeared.  I cried today for one of you… I’ve barely eaten… I feel like apologizing for how “silly” I am, taking one post from a girl I’ve not met so hard… but it isn’t silly, not in reality.  Your life means something to me, and a lot more to others. And if one stranger bears real grief at the thought of losing you, it is a real accolade to who you’ve tried to be, and succeeded.  I will remember you, (even if you’re freaked out by all this) because you’ve made my life better.  The light in your heart, and in your eyes, will endure in mine… all the more if you are happy and well this evening.

Merry Christmas, Keikan.

Christmas Dreams

The following is a short excerpt from the book of Hebrews (in the Bible):

¹³ All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. ¹⁴ People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵ If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

I watched Avatar again last night, for the first time in a long time.  I'd forgotten just how much the story and imagery move me... and how much dysphoria is the inevitable result.  How well I relate to living in a body not my own... of wanting my love to finally hold me in her arms and say, "I see you."  Of wandering through the dream, yearning for the world as it should have been, yet is not.

The author of Hebrews probably didn't have much notion of aliens, and certainly would never have dreamed of such a thing as cinema, but the thought in the passage above is the same heart of both dreams.  There has to be something better than this...  We yearn for it... feel it... need it... some of us breath it... Our deepest dreams and longings are wrapped in cords of beauty, wonder, flight, and kinship.  To be free of these fleshly bodies, our minds loosed to live the dreams we have always had, no longer bound by the flesh which so often is mistaken for our definition.

And yet... here I am...  This is not my body, and this is not my home...  I know that I am designed for something different, for something far more perfect.  My humanity makes me want to order and construct.. to design and engineer, to break the world into pieces I can understand and control... but that is not who I really am.  But even this creation, marred as it is by our ingenuity, need, and greed, is an amazing place... it just can't be all.

It is Christmas in a few days.  For me, a Christian (one who takes it seriously), the season brings nearer a sense of wonder, fear, and immense hope which is present in Jesus' coming.  I don't know how I could survive myself, in this half-truth of a body, without the hope Christ has brought to us.  "Those who wander in darkness have seen a great light."  God with us, dreaming with us, and drawing us on, through this dream (more often a nightmare for so many) to the day when we finally awake, in the country we WERE designed for... His country... floating mountains and beautiful creatures on whose backs we soar through the clouds will be forgotten in the far-surpassing wonder of that place... and I will be free.  Free of this schism of my soul.. of the tears and aching.. of waiting, thirsting, and starving for real life, real water, and real kinship.

So this Christmas, awkwardly sitting amongst by beloved relations, still not talking about what they know about me, making merry for the superficial things, and some, for the real things Christmas is about, I will lift my eyes to something greater than my dark clouds of dysphoria, of the real pain caused by this lifelong inundation of testosterone, and dream of what may yet be...  This Christmas I will remember that Christ, too, endured a body not His own, and was killed for telling the world who He truly was, and that He did that precisely because He means yet to free us, to free me, His sister, His daughter, from the nightmare.  He entered our dream so that one day, we might finally awake, and hear, and say, "I see you."

A poem for my friend

So I have a friend now, as I mentioned, and she's already meant the world to me.  For all the emotion I normally have to bury for other people's sake, I now have a "secret" tunnel.  So when I saw the season's first snowflakes, falling, hidden, amidst the rain, today, I was inspired, doubly.  We two will always have to weather some storms... its what being made trans* means, in this world, at this time.  But in all storms, there are rays of hope, and help to be found.

To my friend, a woman who has been hope, and help, to me, though the storm rages on.

For My Friend

The night our life in darkness shrouds
  hiding hopes and tainting dreams.
  When dark fogs snuff the starlit gleam,
You’re the shimmer in the clouds

Troubles ours, many sorrows shared
   but burdens lessened by the sound
   of loving songs; kind words, profound.
For hope, it seems, our souls are paired.

So cold the wind may blow again,
  pouring down a grey sky’s tears.
  When life stings cold; aching cares,
You’re the snowflakes in the rain.

How it should be:

4 Month Ultrasound Appointment:

Technician: “Well, the ultrasound came out great. Do you want to know your baby’s gender?”

Excited Parents: “Yes, what are we having?”

Technician: “A baby ____, congratulations!  Of course, these things aren’t 100% accurate, so you’ll have to wait a few more months to know for sure.”

Excited Parents: “Oh, we understand!  A little surprise in life never hurt anyone!”


5 Months Later:

Doctor: “Congratulations, its a ____!  Of course, these things aren’t 100% accurate, so you’ll have to wait a few more years to know for sure.”

Exhausted Parents: “Oh, we understand!  A little surprise in life never hurt anyone!”

Because sometimes... it just hurts too much...

Feeling pretty down today... thinking about the future and wondering, "will it always be this hard?"  Probably it will.. or at least, maybe it will...  I never wanted to be such a painful person for people to know.  It's not my fault that they find me painful, and its not really their fault (at least very much) that they've been so trained and hard-wired to understand gender in binary.  Even I am wired that way.  I want to be cis- so much that it hurts... actually hurts...  I've never been able to square the trans- part of me either, to just happily exist as female + male... so it's not hard to understand that the majority can't square it either...  they've never even experienced it.

Still... it means that for the small number of people who know me (and aren't trans themselves...), I am at best, a conundrum to hopefully be glossed over, and at worse, an abominable warping of what could have been a healthy male.  In all cases, their emotional lives are hurt by my existence.

If I were a more assertive girl, maybe I'd stick it to them and say, "the world is not how you want it to be, and that isn't my fault."   What I really want is to ask, "won't you please love me?... no, not the boy..."  Today I feel like I'm dying on the inside.  I'm trying so hard to help my wife and kids, and after that, maybe family, by not overturning their world, intolerant though that world may be.  That overturning has real consequences, even if the pillars that need to be thrown down are based on the gender-binary lie.  I need my family... and they don't want me...  I can insist on being me, and lose them, or I can keep them and continue in this half life... invisible and more alone than anyone can really understand.

Even my wife has a hard time seeing the turmoil.  She complained, last night, at how good I am at bottling all the emotions... hiding them away so nobody but me can see the lightning flash, and the power of the waves...  I break down sometimes, more now than ever before, but it always comes as a surprise.  How many whips of hurtful words have cracked over my aching heart... stripes that I've silently borne, since my assailants can't understand the problem... How many time the duplicitous arguments of selfishness, vanity, and unlovingness have been applied to me, and I've not had the heart to show how equally those qualities apply to my accusers.

Shall I always just bear this? Maybe I should... my accounting is with God alone.  I don't have to be lauded as selfless, I need only actually be selfless.  I need not be lauded as loving, but only actually be loving.

So I'm a sap today, and I know that... just a girl trying to cry on her friends' shoulders.  She doesn't know what's going to happen next, and is trying to wait on God, who has always heard her cries and sobs.  I'm his handmaiden, even with these genetics... and one day, transition or no, I'll finally wake back up from this terrible dream...

New Difficulties of Being Non-op

Some of you may know that I'm avoiding an outward transition...  Plainly, I'm trying my best to do what's best for the hearts and lives of my wife and children, even if that's hard on me.

Last week I came out to my parents (-in-law) and my wife's brother.  Someone on tumblr compared the emotional side of coming-out to riding a roller-coaster during an earthquake.  Yeah... something like that...

It's not been too bad, as I said in my last post... but a lot of that is due to my family's relief that I'm not rushing into some change that they're not ready for (or accepting of, as of yet).  They're still very much in the beginning of the process.  What is transgenderism?  What does this mean?  Is he crazy?  Why does he think he's a girl?  Maybe it was his parents' fault?  We all know he had a rough childhood...  Does this mean he's made a homosexual out of our daughter?  Is their marriage valid in God's eyes?

You know, the works.  They're at the beginning, and I have much faith that they will move past some of the sillier questions soon.  They really are good people; honest, and serious about their faith, but loving more than most other things. 

But there is an emerging problem that is worrying me.  Having told them that I am, metaphorically, locked in a strange sort of tower, but for the world's sake, staying inside for the time being, they are more than willing to say, "no problem, we'll help you keep the door shut!  Just tell us how we can help.  We love you and will stand by you through this... just stay in there and hang in there!"  It's more than a little invalidating, but also, by the nature of my choice, something like inevitable.

I'm worried that having suffered through life as an unknown girl, that now I may have to suffer as a known, but invisible girl.  Its easy to ignore a unwanted person who is "happy" enough to stay invisible for you, after all.   Furthermore, if I'm willing to repress myself for their sake, it will be much easier for them to view me as repressing an affliction of some kind, rather than what I'm actually doing: masquerading as the boy version they're all so comfortable with.

Difficulties...

So I'll give them time.  I have hope that, at the very least, they'll start seeing me as an extremely feminine boy, even if my choices allow them to ignore the final bit.. (I'm not a boy...)  That will be worth something.  There will be a few of my more imaginative friends that might, someday, realize that we are all just souls, piloting these strange biomechs, and though many of us have appropriate markings on the exterior, such happy coincidental match-up isn't true for all of us.

We'll see where it goes.  Time isn't my enemy, for the moment.  The dysphoria is shockingly bad, sometimes, and I've cried a lot more than is probably healthy...  just afraid that giving them room to breath will leave me with precious little.

Much Love,

-Hailey-



PS  Anyone out there tonight?  I'm feeling a touch lonely...  love you all!