Andie’s Place observations of gender dysphoria and beyond

It’s different because it’s from a different place.

It’s a different place, because this is where I am from when I am not just being here.

Everything has a beginning. Everything has an end. In between all is change.

But that doesn’t mean anything is destroyed, or loses its identity.

I wonder. I wonder what our souls would say to each other today, if they could speak without our voices and ears. I wonder how confused our souls are, how bemused, when all they have, to join with others, is voices and ears.

I have no belief in a god. I feel no need. I did once, and my belief in a god who was loving, if corrective, made me hate myself. I believed I was a good person, liked by almost everyone I came into contact with. I also believed that something in me was wicked, sinful and wrong. I believed that if anyone else knew this about me, I would become unloved, untouchable, even hated.

I have a very different philosophy of life now. I am connected through love and life with all other living things. I belong in a wider, larger place than just this body-life, and it will be to there that I shall be reabsorbed again when this journey ends. I belong and I am safe; and so long as I know my place here and have acceptance, I am happy to stay and be involved. At my deepest, darkest point last year, I came to believe that I was unloved, untouchable, even hated. That meant there was no longer any reason to stay here, and I was very prepared to take a shortcut home.

I wonder what our souls would say to each other today?

I tried desperately for ages, in some kind of belief in thought transference, telepathy, rerouting my heart through spirit friends or guardians, hoping angels may be messengers–to say that love is love and souls are souls and connection is the meaning in life. I failed. I still believe deeply that I am part of something greater, something whole. And yet I feel that love has completely failed me. I have become untouchable.

It seems a long time ago, but I used to live in the belief that I was a man. I did as best as I could to do and be what that meant. I was acceptable empathic: people told me that in my 20s. I had a strong feminine side. People saw that. I was different, but I was one of the ‘nice men’. I was the man who understood the wives who had husbands who didn’t understand them. I was a lover because I believed in love. I was not god’s gift, I have no god. I was nothing special in terms of the big exotic Lover. But I knew how to give, and keep giving, when it came to making another feel special, valuable, wanted, loved. I don’t say outstanding, I don’t say perfect. I just say that inside of me there has always been an ability to connect, be devoted and committed, and express love. Not just desire, not lust, not wanting to possess, just to give and to share, beyond romance, but not excluding it. It doesn’t set me apart, but it does mean I still believe I have a lot to give and to share with another, with a lover, with a partner..

Today I laughed and laughed. Lying face down on tender breasts, having my back massaged, my therapist said how unusual I had always been. No, not for my gender, but because I was so conventional! I did ‘man’ well. I did as I was told, too much as expected, perhaps. I hid the self-hate even better. I was afraid I would not be loved. I was afraid I would become untouchable. And here I was laughing at the absurdity of it all. And realising that the only caring touch I now receive is this, at the hands of my massage therapist.

I understand completely that on the outside I have changed almost beyond recognition. In some ways I hope I have; I too see photographs of myself looking very like a man. I look at those images of myself, with the hatred locked and secret inside, and recall how my family, and my wife, loved me. At a human level they were loving the man; the father, husband, lover. But were they loving me? I can’t answer that anymore, because they don’t now.

I wonder what our souls would say today if they could speak without our voices and ears.

So I really do appreciate that the bits that were loved were in many ways the pretended bits. But the parts of me that loved in return were soul bits. I am not saying anything superior about myself, I just know that for me it was different. These parts of me, were those that lay inside all the time. Inside that ‘man’ was me, self-hated, not understood, but making me the different kind of man. There are men who are like I learned to be, who are not like me at all, who are kind, gentle, loving and don’t watch football with passion, or feel that women are there just for them. I know. But I was different, and if I was liked or loved for those nicer, understanding aspects, it was because I was never really a man at all. I just learned to behave more like one.

If your soul knew mine, it would understand that a woman had in fact loved a woman.

Spiritually, I feel I know myself and my place better than in the days when what I am, was a sinful secret. Those were the days when my eyes were blinkered by beliefs, or rather by dogma or doctrine about how we all ‘should’ be. And those beliefs, even when the religion faded away, stuck fast. Now, I need no religion and no god to love, to be kind, to work for better equality, fairness and to understand the acid of greed. I never was unlovable, untouchable and wicked for being a woman with a male habitation. But I was loved and touchable for hiding it and for hating myself enough to keep it secret.

But I also know that through the experience of wrestling with gender, I can no longer see as most people do. I can no longer wear the spectacles of the gender binary. I can see every day how the majority of men presume priority and superiority, and aren’t even aware of it. I can see male stupidity and emotional immaturity a mile off. I can see women taken in by sexual attraction above personal trustworthiness and real caring. I can see protective bitching. I can see how people judge each other for playing the roles they were taught. I can no longer see why two people who love each other should not find some physical expression of that love, whatever their gender or sexuality. I simply cannot see as most people do any more. I am not alone; this is no special gift as such, but I can never wear the same blinkers again.

I wonder, if our souls could speak to each other, what they would say about love, about bodies, about touching, and whether they would agree with our minds about what can and cannot feel, or be, good.

I can see better than ever that, for all the wonderful feelings of romance and being in love, truly loving another person is actually something quite different. I believe we are more than these bodies, and our feelings about loveableness and touchableness are badly skewed. If another’s body ‘isn’t right’ we turn away from touch. Disfigurement? Disability? Ageing? Impotence? Mental health? There are lots of reasons for disowning previously-loved people who no longer match our reasons for originally loving them. We reject their touch like infection. We fear being tainted by association. We fear losing the opportunity for something better, more like the original.

Don’t we all do it? Don’t we do it when dementia strikes? Don’t we do it when someone is struggling with life? Don’t we do it when we walk on by, past the homeless person we can’t possibly help, who doesn’t want to be helped, just wants to eat? Don’t we do it when someone is attacked, verbally or physically, in case being involved hurts us, in case we have to share in another’s hurts? And don’t we do it with the transsexual partner who finally finds their authenticity? Does expression of love need the same attraction as in the mating game? Can nothing new be learned? Is this really a different kind of love?

I wonder what our souls would say, if one said, ‘oh my goodness; I have the wrong body for this soul’. Would the other say, ‘oh yuk. I can’t commune with you any more, I thought you were a man soul.’

Somehow, because of where I believe I fit in the broader span of existence, I think real love comes from somewhere else than the recognition of bodies. I know as well as anyone that sexual attraction happens through eyes, and pheromones. But frankly unattractive people do love each other, people do endure together through disfigurement, illness, impotence and age. People of all kinds find ways to touch and to express love to each other, and overcome disappointments, changes and challenges.

I don’t know whether it is my spiritual appreciations, or through the struggles and changes I had (and still have), to go through in being transsexual in a world of preconceptions, but I just don’t see the barriers that bodies make between people who want to share love.

***

And this is what I wish I could communicate. I cannot, because to say it would invite the reply that I just don’t accept the impact of my diagnosis.

So here I am. It’s too late, and I know I see differently. My soul does not meet with you, and cannot simply say ‘I love you’ any more. I am not loved enough to be touched; it gives you the wrong kinds of feelings to touch me now. It has become unlovely and wrong. I wonder if we shall meet as souls in some other place, touch once more, and agree finally what love is? I do hope so.