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Psychiatrist

  • Posted on July 27, 2014 at 3:56 pm

I wrote this long before I met my first psychiatrist for assessment at a gender clinic. In the event it was a female consultant, but apart from that, I still don’t think I’d change a word. It reflects the impossibility of one human being really knowing another, and of trans people having somehow to convey an authenticity beyond their outward appearance, and being afraid of getting it wrong. You feel perfectly sane, but an expert may well declare you delusional.

I know who I am.
He doesn’t.
He looks at me through spectacles
of iridescent doctorates
and asks me all the formal questions.

Insulated from each other –
the right answers
to his necessary enquiry
prepared for diagnosis
are in his head long before mine.

I am afraid.
Of prior knowledge.
Of dire knowledge. Gnosis.
Dire gnosis. DSM.
I am becoming disordered.

I know who I am.
He doesn’t.
He sorts me into boxes,
typecast for his report
or an exam for him to pass.

I tell it as I am.
He gazes –
the interested professional
sizing my life, or do I mean seizing,
for where he thinks I fit.

I know who I am
in my head.
In his hands I’m not certain.
He gives a lot less away than I must.
My conviction is not my sentence.

 

2012 © Andie Davidson

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I don’t have gender dysphoria

  • Posted on July 23, 2014 at 8:10 pm

I have told friends before and written it here somewhere. Years before I came to really understand the way I was, I would slip out from my office, cross the narrow street and spend a lunchtime in the Brighton (Triratna) Buddhist Centre. No religion, no doctrines, no god, just a chance to experience guided meditation and a break from a busy day.

There I would step out of my shoes, leave my role behind, grab cushions and fold my stockinged feet (no, not socks) into meditative balance. I felt the ‘wrong’ appearances may be at least understood a little. And these little hints were certainly beginning to slip out. Nobody minded, if they noticed at all.

And there I sat, deeply mindful, cultivating loving kindness, or just sitting. And in just sitting, my inner perception of my body was serenely different. I could no longer feel the presence of my bits, crammed into the ‘wrong’ underwear (since my teens – no, not ideal) but I was aware of an inner anatomy not my own, and of ‘my’ breasts. Quietly and calmly, I was not a man at all. It wasn’t distracting, or exciting. It simply was. Equally, it was unshakeable. Was it somehow ‘real’? Or was it a developing delusion to get me out of the impossible situation I was heading towards?

Somewhere in intervening years, I learned what a female orgasm was. Too much info.? Come on, these are likeable things we all do. The important thing for me was the discovery that a completely different kind of stimulus, in different and imagined (inaccessible) places could have a completely different outcome, even when my body was as it was. I ‘knew’ the parts of me that weren’t there, and I knew exactly where they were! OK, I admit that the tuition of 30 years marriage meant few secrets, and I’m a highly intuitive person … But then there was today.

Uncomfortable about genitals? Look away now. Come back next week. But I have always maintained the principle of real observation in this blog, and I feel this is important.

Today was the grand unveiling. This morning all surgical dressings were removed and for the first time I had to open (dilate) my vagina. Shiny perspex ‘stents’ are used, in various sizes, in order to stretch and maintain the channel created by surgery. It isn’t painful (or pleasurable yet). During the reconstructive surgery your own tissue is rearranged, including nerve endings. Isn’t this going to feel like a muddle? What is this opening that has never existed before? What direction? How deep? Of course you don’t know until you’ve been shown, and try it.

I saw exactly what I’d expected. You really do need to work through the surgical outcomes pictures before this moment. My outcomes included minimal or no bruising, textbook normal. Next, the first insertion. In it went, all the way and I held it there, relaxing for the required time. Weird? No. The only impression I had was of normality, as if I’d done this lots of times before. In my mind I had; and in my mind, as in the meditation, I’d somehow got it right.

This reminds me of my dance that came from nowhere. Both will continue to improve, both are intuitive. And both are, for me, a profound affirmation of what and who I am.

I used to have gender dysphoria. Now I don’t.

No, I still can’t explain it, or rationalise it. I do know for certain I wouldn’t be here now if it was a matter of preference or choice, and that this has been the only practical resolution. If you feel it is a choice, don’t do it. But if it is the only way out, I can reassure that it is not an escape but a very positive authentic act. It may also be that you too can never find sufficient explanation for those bemused friends or family who simply cannot imagine why anyone could want this. That is not our concern. I have received a gift here for which I shall be eternally grateful, but only because it was more important than anything else in being true to myself.

Good luck in your journey, or being alongside another’s.

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Lady in waiting. Proud

  • Posted on July 8, 2014 at 11:17 pm

What an incredible feeling it is to be in the last week with this body-as-born. Everything continues to fall into place, things are drawing to a close quite neatly and orderly. No spare time (except for the innate impulse to write), but time still to be ready. And time to reflect on what in the end has been a four-year journey.

How did I get here? I mean, if I had stacked the odds four years ago against the achievement, and gratitude and resolution I feel today, I would not have dared believe it.

I count the formal permissions I have sought, the doctors, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists, the administrators, the letters, the deed poll, the notifications, the regrettable divorce, and next the Gender Recognition Panel. For which again, I have to pay. How many times have I had, in this time, to persuade, convince and appeal to people who have no experience of being born transsexual, that my birth certificate was inaccurate?

Have you ever had to do that?

I shall never need to do this ever again.

I began by asserting that it was quite normal to be transgender. To keep love in my life I tried persuading myself that I could be ‘two-spirit’. I fought myself, accepting others’ needs for me to be what they wanted me to be. Bit by bit I watched it all taken away (see Through my eyes) as those nearest me failed to recognise me any more. I hit a suicidal low as I realised I may never know love and intimacy in my life ever again. And despite everything, gradually, I became fully myself, with an inner peace I had never before known.

I

I danced through the past year as I released the bonds reluctantly with my loved ones, and found a real home among people who only knew me, as the dancer-poet-musician. I worked my way through from the rather obvious trans employee among a team of men (she’ll understand, she used to be a man!), to feeling now that I can go anywhere and do anything I choose.

Am

I am proud. Not for being transsexual, but for being me. For beating the adversities, the misunderstanding, the distrust, the dis-ownership and the uncoupling. I am proud for being here, and being greater than all these things. I am proud for finally being released from doing, being, making others what they want to be – by not being authentically me.

Not

And I understand: I am not beautiful. I am not slim. I will always have attributes that make people look or think twice. I do not have a girl’s teenage experience. I was not the pregnant and breast-feeding mother. I have never been chased by unwanted men (though I have been abused in the street as a woman). I do not have the ‘right’ history to remember. And I am not male, in any sense or memory at all. I never was.

Unloved

I have yet to find anyone who finds me attractive. I have come to regard human love very differently, and that another love can exist that I value, but that is hard to find. I am not really unloved, because people have told me that they do, and in a way that I understand, accept and appreciate. I wrote the poem Realisations in 2012, even before I finally let go the old way of living, and sadly it is still true and with me today. I’ve grown to like it again though …

No, the sadness is still there as I watch so many other couples and families survive and refind their loving, when one of them goes through the unravelling of transition, and see instead ‘the wonderful unfolding of flowers’.

*

And yet in these last days before my surgery, I feel so empowered that I feel the world belongs to me. The surgery will flatten me for a while, and I expect post-natal blues as well, as all the effort comes to fruition with little more to do ahead than rebuild strength.

But my goodness, I am a woman with such a grasp on life that I am free, and I am strong. I have taken complete responsibility for my life, and I shall go wherever I like to make the utmost of it.

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Mirror, mirror …

  • Posted on June 28, 2014 at 8:05 am

Last week I told how it felt to see a photo of me from only two years ago, and not recognise myself easily. And how I look forward in the next step, to seeing myself naked in a mirror, to seeing myself as I know I should be.

Mirrors and gender dysphoria are a nasty combination for some, though never a terror for me personally. But that doesn’t mean I even liked my face before; I didn’t. I used to think of myself as ugly, but accepted that was what blokes my age had to be like. I am not beautiful, though. Just acceptable as a woman of a certain age, with slightly craggy features. I have considered a future plan for a slight tuck under the ears though: it would make a difference. We shall see.

This is not about mirrors and narcissism, but about being at peace with oneself after a lifetime disliking and living in some hate of some parts of what you are. Not all, just important parts. So what do I see differently, and why is the way I see myself so different from how others do? You may (possibly rightly) groan inwardly as I revisit yet again the idea of identity and relationships of any kind. It is just the awful irony that the more I see myself change, the more I want to be seen as the same person but more fulfilled. I mean, don’t you like me better as a happy person, with no self-hates and fears? No?

When you look at a trans* person, and reflect

You too are a mirror to a trans* friend, partner, divorcée … When they look at you from the same heart, through the same eyes, but at peace – what do they see in your face? Fear? Disgust? Coldness? Distance? In fact those things they always felt, looking at themselves as they used to appear in a mirror. I would surmise that you have also thought that we shouldn’t have had these thoughts about ourselves. After all, you liked us as we were, inauthentic and pained as it was. You wanted us to stay that way.

For us, this is about sense of self. We covered up a lot, we got by, but we knew all along that we were not living our whole lives, in full recognition of who we should, and could, be. Much of the time, we were probably doing it for you. And I wonder how you reflect about that, when the trans* person has transitioned, and stands in front of you, so different, and yet so much the same inside. What was it that ever made you close? Their commitment to being what you wanted, as a kind of devotion or loyalty? Perhaps they gave you the identity you wanted, as the normal spouse or partner or friend.

It’s such an irony isn’t it? I swap my old mirror reflection for a fresh one, and in the process, your loving smile becomes a cold and fearful one. I became authentic, and now you protect your identity by shutting me out. (This is not just about spouses, by the way.)

So why do we think our identities are at risk from each other at all? It is because we are, essentially, quite superficial? I mean, let’s actually be honest. It sounds awful, and it’s the last thing we want to think about ourselves. Superficial sounds mean, shallow, unconsidered, uncaring, and certainly unloving. It feels derogatory, but what I mean by it is layered, reaching only down a short way, rather than to the true otherness of a person. I have concluded that we tend on the whole to think that love is very deep – but practice it is something rather less. We have a belief in love as something big and beyond ourselves, a greater than, and we actually do want to belong in that place. But in practice, our real love is tipped off the scales quite easily. The things we say, the sweet nothings, the chemistry of romance and being in love, the vows and promises, are very fragile in reality. And so are many years of harmony and mutual loyalty. We love saying these things, but …

Imagine promising when you are twenty-something: ‘I promise to support and love and cherish you even when you lose your looks, or become impotent, or disabled, because I truly love you and commit myself to you.’

Yes, we say ‘in sickness and in health’ and ‘forsaking all others’ because it sounds very grand and deep. But saying it in the above terms instead, is a bit raw isn’t it? Why can we not be more honest from the start: ‘I promise to love you so long as you meet my expectations, whereupon the deal is off.’? Because it would spoil the fairytale day?

A plea for an honest mirror

That’s why so many partnerships involving one being transsexual, hit the rocks. You might have found your true, happy, fearless and blissfully happy self … but baby, you’re on your own, because that is not what I want in you. I would rather have honesty, looking back. Then maybe I would have been able to face my own identity long ago, knowing that any commitment to me was humanly fragile in any case.

Really, the trans* partnership is no different from the husband running off with ‘a younger model’. No, really: ‘I don’t want the old, unattractive one any more, I need the right stimulus to feel alive, to feel wanted, desired as I feel I deserve.’ I mean, doesn’t that make pragmatic sense?

But when I say an honest mirror, dear Queen, I mean one that says ‘Snow White is OK!’ – not because the Queen is ugly, but because Snow White’s heart is in the right place, and should not be hated and rejected for her appearance. My bedroom mirror tells me now, not that I am the fairest of them all, but that I am real and authentic as I never was. Now I want someone who, as a mirror to me, reflects what they see in me as a person, not as a ‘man gone wrong’ and therefore no longer to be desired, but who I am inside: authentic and true to self. A mirror without fear that my reflection in their eyes changes everything.

You see, the question to the mirror was wrong. I never wanted to be the fairest, and I never wanted to compare myself. I wanted to know from my mirror how on earth I could be more fair. I wanted my mirror to show me how I could be more authentic, and in its dumb response, I could not find a way.

Learning from the trans* mirror?

What I would like others to see in me, as their mirror, is that nothing is fixed. That a person can change their appearance and be even more loving and generous, even if their body-sex is unexpected. I want someone to look in me and know that their identity is unchanged by mine, that they are safe, and I am safe, and that real love lies under the skin, and outlasts the changes all our bodies experience.

Do you fear becoming unloved simply for getting older?

Are you afraid that your friend, family member, partner, will walk out of your life and find you quite untouchable, just because you are ill, or disabled?

If anything, my trans* experience these last few years has taught me to re-evaluate what we mean by ‘love’ completely. Disillusioned? Yes, I am, but I have a much clearer idea of what real love requires. I still love someone who no longer loves me, but I mustn’t let it stop me finding someone who can.

And I shall not.

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Getting there

  • Posted on June 21, 2014 at 11:32 pm

My personal motto over the past few years has been ‘I’m getting there!’

Partly, it has been recognition of slow and steady progress, partly it has been self-reassurance when another day goes by and nothing has happened. Now ‘getting there’ means just a few more weeks, and then nowhere particularly to get to. I shall re-evaluate where ‘next’ might mean, in completely different terms. First, simply healing and gaining confidence in my body again, but after that it will be things like: what work can I best do or find that will make a contribution to my pension before it’s too late. And perhaps, how might I find love and romance again? Some things will continue, such as facial electrolysis … But there’s no story in that!

‘Getting there’ also means that this blog may also change. I may not write every week, or it may be occasionally reflective but with more poetry. I think what I have liked about getting here, is that I have met other people along the way, helped a few, and learned so much. Have I said it all, with regards the male to female transition? Three years ago, information was on the Internet to be found, but social media groups were fewer than they are now. Sometimes it seems everyone who successfully transitions has an urge to set up another page, write another book, start another group. Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be more openness, and hopefully, more acceptance. Some people have suggested that I create a book out of this blog, and I might. Distilled down, perhaps I can take a different angle on the whole business of gender self-identification and the impact on other people.

Meanwhile, the next few weeks (I was advised to be busy, very busy!) will be strange. I still have a few important things to prepare, people I want to see, things to write and concerts to play. And I have refused to allow anything to interfere with dance. Mercifully, my decapeptyl (testosterone-blocker) dosage runs through to surgery. The three-monthly jab will have been almost exactly three months ago, so it means no rush of testosterone coming unwelcome at the last. (Never have I been more grateful for a drug than this.) Already, I have had to drop the oestrogen, because it holds a thrombosis risk in surgery. How my body will feel for the next six weeks without it I don’t yet know, but I will be very glad to be back on it. It will also be almost exactly a year since I was given official and full dosage, and in that time my body has significantly changed in its overall shape – not just breast growth, but waist and hips. I like what I see in the mirror (well, from that point up) and my legs are good. This is what ‘getting there’ has also meant.

And perhaps strangely, excitement lives with me. I say strangely, because this is major surgery, and as I explain my forthcoming absence to people who don’t know what is being done, they look terribly worried, and then I excitedly say not to, because it isn’t life-threatening! But I don’t explain. After all, I’m only ‘getting there’. Every time my ‘bits’ get in the way, feel awkward or painfully squished, I know it isn’t for much longer; and it simply feels good, very good. I’m so looking forward to looking in the mirror, naked, in less than one month’s time. And to simple things like my knickers fitting properly (!), and dancing in leggings, or wearing a swimsuit.

Encounters remind me of the distance travelled: people who notice my body looks different. Today I came across a photo of me and my former wife when she ran the Brighton marathon just three years ago. I wondered who the rather unattractive grey-headed bloke was, standing next to her, as I stared at the thumbnail icon on the computer. Enlarged, he was wearing an unfamiliar tee-shirt: ‘Proud husband of …’, thoughtfully procured by my since-estranged daughter. And then there was a photo of my last Christmas with wife and son. Who was the bulgy bloke with longer grey hair? And how could he have been attractive to the woman next to him? And I realise that she may find another similar to take my place. If that’s what she wanted, well, I am a long way away from that.

Other encounters are much simpler now; the poet who took the trouble to find and contact me to express appreciation – which was mutual. The dancer in tears from the emotional experience of a very shared dance with me. The busker who sang just the right song as I was passing, leaving me in deep, quiet tears in the middle of the street. The German lesbian visitor who described me to a friend as a strong woman. And all those who don’t know what ‘getting there’ means to me, as I arrange my two months’ absence. My masseuse who kneads my body back into shape each month, who has been so supportive over ten years and shares my gratitude for this journey.

If anything, I feel this week like someone who has run a marathon, who is walking the final yards because the time no longer matters, it’s not about the clock, just about getting there.

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