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Happiness

  • Posted on September 30, 2012 at 8:09 am

Last Friday evening I spent a lovely time with Laura Newman, whose new book A Love Less Ordinary will very soon be published with Bramley Press. It was the first time we met, after numerous emails getting the book arranged, designed and processed, and was a wonderful getting-to-know. But perhaps what I shall remember most is that once more, someone who didn’t begin this journey with me, who sees it from the outside, sees someone very positive and very happy, who has turned their life around in what is really a very short time. For me, it has been intense at times, as scary as a narrow bridge over a canyon, without the other side in sight. And it seems like ages. It was very affirming to meet Laura, and I am looking forward to meeting her and Nicci before too long.

Yesterday I went for my monthly back-rescue. Deep tissue massage includes elbows! It isn’t fun exactly, and I probably undid a lot of good by playing the trumpet all afternoon and evening. I can’t remember how many years I’ve been going, but it is a special relationship when you repeatedly allow someone to do that to you – and still feel grateful! It is also the one place where I have taken my changes, to be seen and talked over, and found complete acceptance as I’ve explained myself a little more each time. Of course, as so often, I’m not the only trans person she has known, but I could also have been met with a certain distance and caution, and I wasn’t. The reason I mention yesterday is that somehow we just fell into talking as two women together, and I no longer felt ‘trans’.

It’s been like that recently – falling onto conversation as a woman with another woman, almost as if they haven’t noticed, or if they do it counts for nothing. And I realised, as I joined the orchestra later for the rest of the day, that this was another first, in playing for them as a woman. It’s an ad hoc orchestra, and many people do know me, but not all. By now, when these firsts happen, I don’t really think about it, because it is actually quite difficult to remember how I used to be. It is so far removed, that the nice man on the trumpet is like someone else I vaguely used to remember. I remember concerts I played, because it was me alright, and it was fun, but it’s the me bit, not the presentation of self, that I recall. All sorts of people I don’t know came up to me afterwards to complement my playing, so I know that being the slightly-different-looking woman simply doesn’t get in the way any more.

So in a way this is a point of arrival, like when you are on board and the ship is under way. There is a separation, an excitement, all the big efforts to get here now taken over by a vessel with a purpose and a known destination.

And all this in the same weekend as I prepared finally to leave the person I have loved most for so very long, and still do. So why have I titled this blog ‘Happiness’?

All these touches of knowing self, of being recognised at last being as I should always have been, of a sense of the deepest integrity, of falling completely into place, leave me feeling more happy with myself, in my deepest sense of self, than I have ever been my whole life. It is very hard to express, or find adequate words, because unless you have been there, it’s as if the words don’t exist. It is a happiness so powerful that nothing is strong enough to put me back anywhere else. I face years of frustration getting my body properly adjusted, and every day it feels more and more inappropriate in certain respects. As my breasts begin to develop it feels like the restoration of a missing part of me. Like when a valuable jar has stood for many years and been admired, then finally the original lid turns up and is reunited.

This is just so completely right.

Losing love simply tears me apart, but at the same time I know this happiness. Such an irony; back to the paradoxes in many of my blog posts. But how can I explain?

I wanted to write this for all those trans* people in a similar position, for whom it is so incredibly hard to arrive at self because of the associated loss. For all those people who, unlike Nicci with her Laura and their love less ordinary, must lose love, lose family, and go alone. I want to say that the happiness of finding your self, maybe finding your soul, really does outweigh all else, and that it is yours, if you want it. Nothing in this world is worth hanging onto if it keeps you from this kind of happiness, and you will find the resources to see you through the worst of the loss, the most difficult of times, the feelings of distrust or hatred from a few, and the insecurity of a place you’ve never been before. You will find true friends, you will find acceptance and understanding, and you can hope, with me, that you will find love that is as deep and as shared and as committed as you will ever need.

And in case anyone accuses you of selfishness, look back on my earlier musings: Selfish. Self(ish). Self.

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Two heads are better than one

  • Posted on September 23, 2012 at 8:37 am

I should be writing poetry. OK, I shall – but right now all I have is a box full of nice groups of words and an idea to hang onto. Anyhow, it was all running through my head after I woke up far too early as always, and I thought if I kept running it over and over (a) I would remember it without writing it down and (b) I might fall asleep again! So I shall start with the narrative instead, in my usual thinking-in-pictures way. It works for me, but I know my parables and analogies don’t work for everyone.

My last blog ‘The Column’ stayed with me, because I have been asking myself what were my illusory supports for life-as-I-thought-it-was? Did I think I needed to be a man, or just to be strong? Or was I over-dependent on a life partnership that wasn’t keeping my own dome of light in place at all? I was also thinking of my wife, and how her column is her own sexuality, that I have undermined in being transsexual, but it would be presumptuous of me to say that for her, our life partnership was not supported entirely by heterosexuality. I don’t write about her, or to her, really here at all. I am an observer of my own journey, and she is a player. My over-riding emotion throughout has been sheer frustration and profound sadness, that though I am still me, always have been, and can be nothing else, I am no longer lovable for simply being me. It isn’t resentment or bitterness, but I am going through a final anger as I pack a bit more each day to leave next week, knowing I can no longer bear the pain of rejection at every coming and going, at every rising and going to bed. And as a result simply of how I was born, that I am losing so much. I have gained my soul and lost the world in some ways, but in truth my only real loss is my family and my home. No-one else has moved away from me in the same way, and well, the rest is just ‘stuff’ isn’t it?

 

I was born with two heads.

At some point before I was born, there was a ‘foetal error’, and no-one was there to see the alert box come up to ask if the failure should be reported. I got the dreaded blue screen, but no restart. (You will understand that if you remember Windows 95 and before!)

Somewhere in the tangle of DNA – and everyone knows what can happen if you don’t keep things tidy – something didn’t go according to plan. And so I was born with two heads. A kick of maternal hormones in the wrong moment, a gene that didn’t express itself at the right time, who knows. But there I was, seen for the first time, and everyone said: ‘It’s a boy!’.

No doubt about it. The baby had a willy, so I was a boy. But I had two heads, and everyone was so busy looking downstairs, nobody noticed. And from that point on, everyone spoke to the boy head, taught it, played with it, heard it speak, and never really noticed the girl head.

As I grew up, things in the boy head switched on the whole testosterone-building process. And so it was that my maiden head was hidden under my man hood.

The outside head learned all sorts of useful things, and will always remember how to wire a house, fix a machine, roof a shed. But all the while the inner head was looking through the same eyes, hearing with the same ears, and being forbidden to speak. She would think: I like that! He would say: it’s too pretty. She would think: I love in this way. He would love in that way too, because somehow he knew it was how it should be done. She, on the inside, made him on the outside, a gentle, kind, empathic man. She would understand other people in a way he never could. And she would stand in longing, in places men don’t go. Unless they have two heads, and can’t help themselves.

And so I spent 56 years with two heads, arguing at times, in constant dialogue, in which the outer head was made more loving, more caring, more sensitive, but hobbled as a man in a man’s world. And in which the inner head was screaming, as only a woman can, to be heard, and most of all to be seen. Why should the male head be on the outside and the woman be hidden?

I still have two heads. I think I always shall. It’s just that my male head never had the right to predominate and lead. I am the woman who can wire a house and fix a machine or a roof, but most of all, who has had to live as a man among men, observing and learning how they work and relate, always knowing I was not one of them. In my work now, I think it actually helps. I understand machines, and I understand how men work together. And thank goodness I play a different game now that I am an observer. I can be colourful and pretty, my emotions and my personality match my presentation, and increasingly my body is coming into line with my head. My female head. The head that should never have been wrapped up inside another.

I may well go onto to SRS (that’s another foetal inversion to address), but I can’t cut a head off. There are ways I have learned, memories from most of a lifetime, that will always be there, and which are very useful. I have a dual perspective, which is a privilege few have. Maybe two heads are better than one. But the stolen rights have been given back, and the only head anyone will see now, though too old to be pretty, is at least in her rightful place.

Some people will always see me now as a two-headed monster, suffering a deformity or a disability. Some people will say ‘You can’t do that and still expect to be loved the same way!’ Some people will say that they could never love someone with two heads at all, at least not intimately. And the gaggle of kids across the street will always remember the woman that used to be a man and had to move away. It must be really confusing for them, but I hope one day it helps them accept someone they meet who, for no fault of their own, was born with two heads and simply needs love. And I hope they will discover that to love a transsexual person does not undermine their own sense of self.

With the greatest reluctance, I am just moving out of a partnership in which I had thought two heads were better than one. I still long for a partnership where love can be exchanged and life shared, and where complimentarities simply make life richer. I don’t know whether I shall ever find it, but at least I understand myself a whole lot better now as I head off into a new, single, life.

 

Footnote: I think in pictures, and intend no comparison or disrespect for conjoined twins, nor for people with dissociative (multiple) personality disorders. I am a single person, not dual, not split, and I have a single personality. My two heads are just a verbal image of gender identity, one inside another, in the same way that we speak of everyone’s male and female sides.

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The column

  • Posted on September 15, 2012 at 8:50 am

There was once a beautiful domed space, full of light, airy and welcoming. Everyone who visited it liked it, remembered it and found it a safe place with always-open doors. It had withstood time well, weathered, mellowed and strong. As you entered, there was a peace, but it was a working space, and alive.

One thing marked it out, that after a while became less a wonder, more a curiosity. Attractive in its own way, it nevertheless got a bit in the way, like being stuck in a church or the wrong seat of the theatre, leaning this way and that to see. It cast shadows in strong light, came between people, and in the end was protected, lest the wear and tear of time and touch constantly coming in from outside should weaken it. Circled at first with a polite rope, then with outward-facing chairs like the bench around a village tree, it was almost venerated. It was an upstanding testament to strength and endurance.

This single alabaster column was the central feature, well-polished, reaching to the top of the dome, supporting the tracery that allowed so much light to stream in. It stood alone and strong, making the whole place safe. Every day its owner and occupant would sweep carefully around the base, replace the chairs, maybe sit down a while, secure.

Then one day (as in all stories like these) a stranger arrived, looked around, tilted her eyebrows and disappeared. A short while later, the owner clattered the dustpan in the bin, downed the broom, and sat, back to the column, in a stream of sunlight.

‘Why?’

A soft voice from behind repeated the question.

‘Why?’

The owner turned, but only saw the white, shiny, beautiful, familiar column.

‘Who’s there?’

Strange voices in familiar places are unnerving. The owner turned to the left, but when they turned back, an elegant woman was already quietly seated, eyes resting on the sunlit floor.

‘The column.’ she said. ‘Why the column?’

The owner’s eyebrows knitted a moment, puzzled at such a naïve question.

‘It holds the dome up. Without it, under its own weight, or the wind, the dome might fall in. And then there would be less light, I would fear the rain at night, and it would be cold!’

The woman raised her eyes to the dome, to the slender balcony running around its widest point.

‘Have you ever been up there?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I’m an engineer, so I can’t help myself! And when I came in just now, I was really curious.

‘You see, as I stepped inside, I was in a shadow, so all I saw was the white column, and then the sound of the place made me look up and see the wonderful dome you have. The place didn’t seem to be in disrepair, so the column clearly wasn’t a later addition. It was almost as if the place was built around it.’

She paused.

‘And so I went exploring, found the little tower and spiral stairs, and went up there.’

There was silence. The woman was not about to continue. It was as if her explanation was sufficient in its incompleteness. There was more; but the importance of it was not for her. She could wait, or she could leave, because she understood, and that was all that mattered. The sun turned, the shadow followed, like the hand of an enormous sundial marked on the wall. Eventually, the woman calmly rose, hitched her bag.

‘I must be going.’

The owner, confused now, protested. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘The stairs,’ the woman replied, looking her directly but kindly in the eyes. ‘You must climb the stairs. You may understand, but you must see for yourself.’ And she was gone.

Sometimes you wish strangers wouldn’t enter. Sometimes you wish they wouldn’t leave. And sometimes you just don’t know. The owner found the stairs, just one set of footprints in the dust, going up, coming down. The steps were unworn, but dark, and it was easy to become a little dizzy. Then light, gleaming from above, from the dome – and out onto a very narrow, very scary balcony with just the dome arching majestically from behind, up and over, its stone beams wider than they ever seemed from the ground. Strong, yet light; robust and with a detail never seen against the light.

The alabaster column rose like an eternal tree to its centre. Its top, too high to see, was fuzzy around the edges with the dust of years, the one part of it not shiny in the light. The dome arched over it, around it, but not touching it. The majestic white pillar of grandeur, so protected, so central, so essential – was a monument only to itself.

The elegant woman engineer never returned. Somewhere, the owner imagined, she would be lying full out under some light-filled dome, staring up into some wonderful, inspiring and free space, worshiping the arch, the dome, the perfectly spread load, the strong appearing so fragile.

As time passed by (as it does in stories like these), the chairs were displaced and the curiosity of the column became an annoyance. Research didn’t appear to give it an importance or a protection, and without notability, it became just an obstacle. And for anyone who asked why, there was never really a convincing answer, just a faith. But it was familiar, and if the owned kept moving around, there would always be a place in the sun.

All the owner needed was someone to sit down with them; someone who would look up, and see a magnificent alabaster column supporting a fragile dome, and feel safe.

Or trust. And a demolition team for a few hours to safely take the column away.

 

The worst part of stories like these is that they have a moral. Maybe a beautiful dome won’t fall in by pulling down a central pillar. It’s about daring to wipe your finger on the top, and convincing yourself that what you thought held everything together wasn’t quite what it seemed. It all depends on which is the more important: a pillar that looks important, or the freedom to gaze upwards in wonder, freedom and light. Belief – or trust.

Just thinking …

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What am I? A riddle

  • Posted on August 25, 2012 at 7:57 am

If you were to catch me at night, between clothes, you would see a male body and short grey hair. You wouldn’t see a man’s body, because it isn’t owned by a man. Ironically, you would see a woman’s body that doesn’t look female. But if you could look inside, beneath the skin, you would see me; I would be her. Close your eyes and hold me, and what would you feel? The gentleness of a woman, or the hard reality of the body? What might you kiss, a male mouth or another woman’s kiss in return?

I am like a classic ancient riddle, where a series of intriguing statements can be made, apparently paradoxical, but true. And when you hear the punch line it all makes sense; cue applause at the cleverness of it. I know, riddles were used by jesters to tell awkward truths to monarchs. Am I the Joker, or the Riddle? (And if you’re a Batman fan, stop right there! Batman just gives me the creeps.)

Living with this paradox is no joke though. If I asked people ‘What am I?’ they would be polite, telling me I am a woman, of course. That’s lovely, but since I need the love of a woman, does that make me lesbian? In other words, does it actually change anything about me, or does it just correct that much-needed label? Last blog I wrote of labels being tickets. Where does this one let me in?

Ask another person in the shadow of the wings, offstage for a moment, and they might say ‘He’s a man who wants to be a woman.’ They would be trying to be honest about what they see. They may be kindness itself, but it wouldn’t change their label. Where would this ticket let me in?

My ticket, or label, says neither ‘Stalls’ nor ‘Grand Circle’. I am not a man; no, really. I am not really a woman, because I have a male body, albeit subtly changing. I am not hetero, because I am not a man, I am not gay, because I am not a man, and no, I am not attracted to men. I am not lesbian, because I do not have a female body, and I am not bisexual. But I still yearn for the understanding love of a woman, and to love a woman with understanding. What? Because she is a woman? No; because she is not a man. But could a woman love me because I am not a man?

Catch me at night, between clothes, and tell me: ‘What am I?’ Maybe you find out by touching me. Do I change you? If you hold me, and I am a man, does that alter what you are? If you hold me and you experience a woman’s embrace, does that change you? If I change you, and it is because of what I am, not who I am, does that help you decide: ‘What am I’? What would you say I need, if I am not to change the other person by sharing love?

The answer to what I am, is someone, just a person, in a transition that will never be perfect, that will always be a patch, a substitute, but with which I am immeasurably more comfortable. Maybe I don’t need ‘a woman’s love’ at all. I just need a person’s love, who can see the male/female paradox, but experience me as a woman, without that changing them.

This is all terribly personal, and it is about what I am feeling inside. I know plenty of other trans* people who have no paradox: they are 100 percent the gender they express, and the rest is just a biological disaster from birth. I respect that. Just as I respect those who can live and express alternately their male side and their female side, whatever the stronger preference may be. I know where I need to be; my life now is as a woman, unequivocally, while not denying that I still have male aspects, like everyone else. This is not about being definitive or setting a paradigm, nor about any particular person in relation to me. It is just my personal paradox, which I may never resolve. Unlabelled, unticketed, unaccessed …

What am I?

I am just a person who wants to be loved for who they are. Completely. For being wholly strange, yet strangely whole. I want to be riddled with love again.

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Acceptably different

  • Posted on August 4, 2012 at 7:28 pm

It’s a conversation that will never end: if society has one standard and we don’t fit, and the standard doesn’t look like changing any time soon, what should we do? The choice is varied and individual, but the opinions collide when they are too strong. Those of us with a conviction that something was horribly wrong with our bodies almost from birth, have no need of a description other than of their innately-felt gender. Only one thing matters: correction. Being trans* is transitory. It ends. At the other end of the spectrum, those who appreciate and enjoy fluidity love to occupy and even celebrate being of mixed or ambiguous gender (or none).

And everything in between. For many the saying applies that transition never ends. It does mean that our relationships with cisgender or gender-binary social attitudes can be very different. Yet the one thing that probably occupies all of us along this spectrum, is the need to live within society with freedom of expression and acceptance as we are.

Ay, there’s the rub (as Hamlet said, thinking about uncertain dreams).

When celebrants of overt diversity are taken as icons of transness, those who wish to disappear into their singular (binary) gender identity (called going stealth) can find it hard. Whilst one will dance in a club and shout ‘I’m a tranny!’, reclaiming abuse as empowerment, the other lives in fear of some slight giveaway in their otherwise complete physical transition ‘outing’ them. I am more on the border, lucky enough to blend like camouflage except under closer inspection, happy enough to explain my position, and just seeking acceptance as always a bit different.

For me, cisgenderism (ie, insistence on the binary) is simply not good enough. The sheer numbers of us who do not fit, whatever our response, are overwhelming. A proportion of us are transsexual, meaning we have a sense of the binary and a definite preference that we feel we must attain, but that doesn’t mean we don’t recognise others are most definitely non-binary. I have no idea how many trans* people of all kinds I am nominally connected to thanks to the Internet, but it must run into many thousands around the world, even if we only count friends of friends, and there is a huge diversity.

Male and Female are as meaningless as the bodily humours in mediaeval medicine. They once sort of helped describe most animals at a very broad level, but I suppose it was also long before gender-changing creatures were discovered to be so. Nonetheless, cultures developed around the world that understood and held in esteem, those who were neither male nor female in some sense. And I cannot say this loud enough, in our culture that has forgotten this: the gender binary concept is false.

For me, though, it is still firmly in place. I have to accept that for the majority of people I am different. Two things have been on my mind in the past days and weeks: who notices and who cares? Whenever we see something that stands out a bit, we want to know why, so we can get it back into order in our minds. Today I was walking in busy streets and just felt noticed a bit more than usual. I don’t think the lack of mascara was the only reason, and maybe it really was only me, but when a couple walking by simultaneously look at you and hold their gaze a tad too long, you sort of know they spotted something not quite right. Does it bother me? No, not a lot, I just wish it never happened.

The other situation was potentially a lot more tricky. A new job. Suddenly I am under close scrutiny by the same people from 9 to 5 every day. And no, the voice does not hold up too well. I don’t think husky meant sexy! As it happens I have been incredibly well received. I know they know, of course. They know I know that too, etc. And I feel … well, normal. I am just me, and all my old skills, experience and knowledge are being used again, and I am just working. I know that some questions have been asked, and they have been formally answered, and I have had no sideways glances in my presence. It is lovely just to get on and do what I do, officially female, discernibly transsexual, but at work and earning my keep, hoping I don’t get asked about family things like marital status.

I got called ‘he’ twice this week. And I haven’t even worn trousers once. I put it down to fitting in with the blokes because my experience lies in understanding technology like they do, thinking about it like they do, explaining it as they do. Who else would discuss these things that way? ‘He’ does. Maybe she is not a proper woman after all. But accepted nonetheless.

As time goes on, I will recognise that they know I know they know about me, and I will freely correct them without feeling I am outing myself and needing to explain in more detail. But I shouldn’t have to. Being trans should already be so normal, because the gender binary is so patently incorrect, that it is OK to be unequivocally trans with whatever identity I choose to live with.

And so I accept my being different, I call it normal, and I recognise that some people do not get it. And this is why I feel so let down by the UK’s wonderful NHS. By the time I am prescribed hormones I shall be well on the way to being able to apply for my gender recognition certificate (GRC) simply by virtue of having got on and lived as a woman for long enough. Thank goodness for the Internet! These protracted periods of being unsupported, delayed, forced to live with a physiology that feels all wrong, may be called ‘real life experience’ by clinicians, but believe me, once you have committed yourself in society as ‘acceptably different’ you will know if there are any doubts, and every day you are forced not to progress is not ‘real’ at all, it is damaging. If you can’t get the hormones, if you can’t afford laser or electrolysis treatment, you can be unacceptably different for much too long.

It isn’t all grouse though. I want to thank the lovely people at work who have included me, by complimenting me on my dress, or my necklace, or my nails, and by sending me emails on doing my nails a different way, or where they get their favourite cosmetics. That all means I can live with this painfully slow journey into being as little different as possible.

(Just don’t call me ‘he’!)

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