Thursday, December 12, 2013

Militant, belligerent, guerilla stimming!



First published elsewhere a few days ago:

I stim in public. 

I have taken it on myself to stim, in public. 

I grew up with my father holding my hands in a deathgrip at my sides, and I cannot now tell it it was to stop my stimming, or his own. I listened to my father repeat words and phrases and become more and more frustrated with himself as he did so, and listened to him scream at me when I slipped into echolalia myself. I watched others around him become impatient, and watched him hide his struggles. 

So now, at twenty-five, when I am in a restaurant and hear an older man at the pool tables five feet away performing some elaborate echolalia, clearly designed over years to sound like social interaction to an allistic person, I lean out into the table to duck my head and flutter my hands at the edges of my vision along with my laughter the next time someone at my table says something funny. 

When I hear in the comic shop, looking for stories, a mother berate her son for “being so hyper” and look up to see a child turning in circles with a book clutched to his chest, tell him to “knock it off!” I wait until the mother’s back has turned and her son has trotted away from her to pull a book off the shelf, wave my hands excitedly and spin in a circle with the book clutched to my chest. 

I see their faces change with my small acts of rebellion. I feel myself change. Small lights spark within my own mind at the sights and sounds of my brothers and sisters: You are here, and so am I. I will not hide that I am here, so that you can see me. I am a rocker, a flapper, a spinner. I walk down the sidewalk like I’m walking down a corkscrew some days. I watch people drive past me, gawking, and could care less, because I am lost in the joy of spinning, of locomotion and seeing everything. 

And I have seen faces change even in the act of driving past me. I watch them stare, recklessly, at the young man spinning down the sidewalk with a serene smile, and by the time they have passed on, a scowl has turned to a puzzled frown, a frown to a neutral wondering, and if they were simply having an alright day, the sight of someone spinning along is apparently enough to elicit a smile of their own. 
Sometimes I walk down the street as though my hands held a jumprope, windmilling my arms from the elbows at my sides with every step. Sometimes when I do this, I break into a run, and it feels like flying.

If you see me, walking down the street, one of two things: I will either be stumping along with a strange gate and a blank frown, or I will be flailing, spinning, skipping, jogging, running, twirling, or bouncing along, possibly walking on the curb or the wall that runs alongside the sidewalk, grinning or smiling or even laughing our loud.

I laugh. I laugh in public. Loudly.

I tell myself stories. I am a writer, and I write first within my own mind: I will speak my stories to myself as I walk, the words and thoughts bursting from my throat unbidden and unguided, until I see another person on the path. Then the throat-grate closes again, and the words that wish to spill forth are caged once again just below my jaw.  

But I have yet to be called names for displaying this strangeness. 

I am a creature of habit. Only now am I coming to realize that there is not only nothing wrong with being a creature of habit, it is not an uncommon trait among Auties. As a creature of habit, I am allowed certain freedoms that I do not think I could otherwise manage: It might be a bad day, but if I walk into my coffee shop and attempt to make mouth words and nothing comes out, the barista simply starts clicking buttons, and based on the time of year knows what I’m most likely to order. If my bad day continues, and all I want is something nutritious that I don’t have to cook myself, I know that I can walk up to my favourite food truck and simply by walking up to the window, the cook knows me and knows what I want. Most of the people I interact with on a semi-regular basis know that ducking my head and fluttering my hands means “Yes please thank you…” Even if I am having a bad day, I can usually croak out “Hotsauce?” 

So I take no shame in my habitual nature, and I let myself follow the behavioral impulses that come up. I let myself spin, and flail, and walk on walls and skip and hop and popopop. I purr, and meow, and hiss, in public, and it is taken as an adorable personality trait by those who love me, and the rest of the world can go suck a bag of eggs. 

Because those who take the time to get to know the flailing, spinning, purring, popping mad trans*kid find that they love me, partially because of my strangeness. 

And those who don’t? Are missing out. 

Purrrrrrrrrr…. 

            

Monday, November 18, 2013

Memory of a First Encounter

The first time I saw someone like me, I knew. I knew in the deepest pit of my stomach that that man, sitting four benches away at the bus station,  rocking quickly, deeply, back and forth, back and forth, his rocking growing in intensity as each bus pulled up, braked loudly, disgorged its passengers, a teaming, stinking, babbling mess of people, that this man was me, and I was him.

I knew as I began to rock gently in response to too much, too much, too much. I knew as I realized that our rocking was in time. I knew as he looked my direction, briefly, before looking up and away and rolling his head on his shoulders. I knew as my friend, sitting by me, grabbed my backpack and made me sit still. I knew as she looked past me, looked at this man, laughed. "God," she said, loud enough that I know he hears. "Look at the retard. Doesn't he know he shouldn't do that in public?"

I knew as I struggled to sit still. I knew as I kept looking his direction as his rocking increased to a frenetic pace as each bus arrived and departed in a havoc of noise and reek.

I knew as sirens wailed in the distance. I knew as I broke free of the constraining hand, and set to a rocking pace to match this man, covering my ears as he did, rolling my head to get the noise to leave as ambulance and firetruck screamed past.

I knew as he turned, looked at me, locked faces. I knew as I felt our simultaneous rocking slow, and his face, twisted with pain and overstim, relax. I knew as I felt my own face follow his, easing creases I hadn't known until that moment were etched there. I knew as his jaw opened wide, worked silently, closed again. I knew as our rocking became easier, slower, more musical and less frantic. I knew, but had no words for my knowing. You are me. I am you. We are us. He smiled at me, eyes locking then flitting away. I smiled back, fleeting, and my hand fluttered at my side, and I knew that he knew, as his hands flew up to flutter around his face, his rocking, still deep, now more rhythmic and gentle.

"Stop it! You'll make people stare! You're acting like the retard!" The hand on my pack was back, and now that the sirens had passed, my need to rock had slowed and I could feel the restraint again.

"Don't call him that." I muttered it, looking away from her, and I doubt she hears. "Don't call me that." I doubt she has heard yet. I wanted to get up, to walk away, to go sit next to the rocking man and begin rocking in time with him, but I did not. She had her hand on my pack again, doing her best to restrain me, to guide me into her normality, and I knew.

I knew that I wanted none of it.


Saturday, November 16, 2013

THIS is Autism.


Several days ago, I found this, and became enraged: http://www.autismspeaks.org/news/news-item/autism-speaks-washington-call-action

So I wrote something, and posted it elsewhere. Now it’s coming here, with major additions. 

I am one of your three million “missing” children.

Please read this article, then for the love of any god you choose read the comments, and listen to the only Autistics speaking…

Autism Speaks is an alarmist, ableist, fearmongering organization that seeks to silence my voice and the voices of my three million “missing” brothers and sisters, because we do not conform with the narrative that they are presenting. They support a medical ‘cure’ model for Autism, which boils down to eugenics policies against Autistic people. Autism Speaks is an Autism Advocacy firm without any Autistics in their ranks, which I hope says more than it doesn’t. They would be happier if I had never existed, and would be perfectly happy if no one like me was ever born again. 

The picture painted within this article? The repetition of “this is Autism”? This is NOT Autism. Autism can be this, yes. But it is not only this.

Autism is your nonverbal son giving the very. Best. Hugs. to everyone he loves, and learning, late, at seven or nine or ten or fifteen or twenty, to write with such passion that you are moved to tears. Autism is your gifted, brilliant, talented daughter coming home crying because she has a hard time with social interaction, and can’t get along easily with the other kids. Autism is trying to speak, and the grate at the top of your throat closing fast and keeping your words prisoner. Autism is being asked a question and only being able to respond “Auh…?” Autism is being asked the same question on paper and writing an A+, three page essay in an hour. Autism is being told that your stories are amazingly imaginative. Autism is being told you must have no imagination. Autism is not knowing what to do when your classmate, coworker, shift supervisor calls you “retard”. Autism is this insult coming more frequently than anything else. Autism is being afraid to go to HR because “Well, he’s right…” Autism is being told that you’re broken and wrong so many times you start to believe it. Autism is the deep shame that comes with wetting your bed or your pants in a coughing fit at seven, or ten, or twenty. Again. Autism is knowing exactly what your body wants and needs at every moment, and being unable to turn off the newsfeed. Autism is knowing that if you laugh and sneeze at the same time, everyone will know. 

Autism is “Books are my friends…” Autism is “Cats are my friends…” Autism is “Trees are my friends…” Autism is being afraid to ask people to be your friend, because people are cruel, and will only call you a retard. Again. Autism is learning your ABCs at three, and then being unable to progress until ten or twelve, because there is just to much else going on, and your chair hurts too much. Autism is the need to get up from your chair and spin on your toes to think of the answer to a question. Autism is the inability to stop yourself from spinning in the grocery store. Autism is being able to remember every bullet on a thirty-line shopping list — but only while I’m spinning, so please write this down. Autism is the world spinning around you. Autism is biting down on the only solid thing in the world to stop the spinning and the light and the sounds. Autism is scarring your knuckles with your teeth to keep your still point for just that moment longer, long enough to calm the rising meltdown long enough to get home.

Autism is having a bachelor’s degree and working as a janitor. Autism is locking yourself in the bathroom and sobbing several times a day at work because your supervisor is impossible. Autism is being blamed and publicly shamed when you nearly make a mistake because your supervisor failed to relay a change of instructions to you until you were about to open the now-alarmed door (that you had used earlier that day). Autism is getting home, collapsing, and screaming until you’re hoarse because you need to scream, or die. Autism is being “prone to self harm”. Autism is being clumsy. Autism is being screamed at for being a child, for being clumsy, for taking a turn around a corner too wide and knocking something off a shelf. Autism is crying for hours because you did a ‘bad thing’ and broke something. Autism is “How can you be so fucking clumsy?!” Autism is being terrified of clacking dishes together in the sink, because I am clumsy and if I break this I am worthless. Autism is struggling to control how your hands move.

Autism is seeing walls along the sides of sidewalks as elevated sidewalks made just for you. Autism is having perfect balance one moment, and tripping over air the next. Autism is living standing balanced on the balls of your feet, bouncing around your environment and jumping on and over things because it’s almost flying. Autism is being the worst in your PE class, and struggling to do your best anyway. Autism is being so, so grateful that the man who teaches it understands that you are struggling, and doing your best. Autism is wondering why certain fabric just hurts, or too much grease makes food inedible, or certain frequencies and intensities of light and sound just drive you into a panic.

Autism is “I’m having bad overstim right now, could you maybe not rustle your potato chips quite so loudly at me?” Autism is “Can you eat your rice crispies not in the kitchen? I’m trying to clean and the sound of your food hurts me…” Autism is living with someone for six months before being able to articulate these desires, because you are afraid of what they will say in return. Autism is being called blunt and rude for trying to be clear and firm in your needs. Autism is being unable to stand the sounds of your family — or yourself — chewing and clinking their utensils. Autism is being unable to just “get over it” or “grin and bear it” when things hurt like this. Autism is wanting to turn and punch the person who somehow doesn’t know how to mix things in a glass without ringing the spoon against the side of it for minutes on end. Autism is knowing that if you do, it will be your fault, and you will be punished. Autism is trying to “use your words” and failing because the grate is down again. Autism is being told you are selfish and whiney and bratty when finally, finally voicing your needs. Autism is being treated like a subhuman for needing to be away from the sound of smacking lips and clacking silverware, by a population that accuses US of being without empathy.

Autism is being struck dumb and unresponsive by a gift. Autism is staring blankly at the thing in your hands wondering why you were given it, even when you asked for it. Autism is knowing that the appropriate response for a gift is not the hollow and empty “thank you” we have been taught to imitate, but a hug and a nice meal, or a gift in return, or simply a rare, rare smile. Autism is being berated for unwillingness to conform to social niceties I find meaningless. Autism is never knowing what to say when people pay you a compliment. Autism is being told, over and over again, that you deserve no compliments. Autism is smiling blankly at the world because you were instructed to. Autism is smiling at stress because it’s what comes naturally. Autism is being screamed at for hours because “this is not an appropriate moment to be smiling!” Autism is being berated for not following a script you were never given. 

Autism is being told you’re not trying hard enough when you are hanging onto the last frayed shreds of your rope just to try not to scream in public. Autism is expressing yourself through pterodactyl noises. Autism is being told you deserve no accommodations for the way the world hurts. Autism is ‘making a scene’ in the grocery store because the music is painful and it’s too bright and OH GOD THE WHOLE STORE SMELLS OF TIDE and you are seven and simply can’t. Autism is being told to knock it off time and again when ‘doing something completely distracting’ like spinning or walking circles around your mother and her cart simply to make the bad stim go away. Autism is trying so hard to knock it off that it all comes crashing back and all you can do now is scream. Autism is being able to smell the history of the public bus you have to take every day, and the people who rode it yesterday. Autism is knowing what kind of perfume your busdriver’s wife wears. Autism is being unable to turn off that ability. Autism is always making a beeline for the back of the bus, the seat over the right rear tires. Autism is being literally felled by the smell of Axe as a man sits down six rows ahead of you. Autism is needing to get off the bus and puke up what you were forced to eat for breakfast even though you didn’t wan it, because food was bad enough but now there’s AXE too and I just can’t. Autism is being able to pick out all the ingredients in a mulling spice by scent. Autism is never needing to label your spices or cooking ingredients, because you know what they are, and if you forget, you can just smell them and know. Autism is having a hard time taking a shower because it overloads your senses. Autism is not seeing the point in taking a shower because as soon as you turn off the water, you can smell yourself again. Autism is needing a brimmed hat all the time because sunlight and fluorescents are just too much. Autism is carrying a pair of earplugs because the street hurts to listen to. Autism is hearing the music of the human soul everywhere. Autism is having to listen carefully in order to hear the words you are speaking above the sound your soul is making.

Autism is the ability to quote paragraph and page out of your favourite book, within the context of the conversation at hand, without missing a beat. Autism is struggling to form words and sentences of your own, and using your library of quotes as the crutches that help you walk through the tasks of society. Autism is slowly learning to quote yourself. Autism is being too afraid to leave the house today, because my mental library is closed for maintenance, and I am mute without it. Autism is being forced to engage in interaction you find confrontational, terrifying and dangerous every single day with every single person you encounter in the world, simply to avoid being branded a liar. Autism is developing coping mechanisms on your own because “there’s nothing wrong with you!” Autism is staring at the space between your eyebrows, after a lifetime of being screamed at about eye-contact. Autism is being passed up for another job, because questions are hard and people are scary, so you choked in your interview. Again

Autism is the willingness to accept others for their uniqueness, their oddness, their otherness, not in spite of it. Autism is a way of thinking differently about the world around you. Autism is growing up knowing no one around you sees the world like you do. Autism is knowing that there are bits about you that just don’t fit with what society wants, and not knowing what to do about it. Autism is knowing the pieces of your mind will never click into a ‘normal’ child. Autism is realizing that there are other Autistics in the world who *do* see the world the way you do. Autism is being completely, utterly alone. Autism is being millions. Autism is realizing that this is not something wrong, merely something different. Autism is all of the oddly shaped pieces finally, finally fitting together, all the little bits clicking into place. Autism is having a word for what makes you you. And me. 

Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that no two Auties will have the same level of functioning at any point, ever. Today I am typing articulately, but I’m not sure physical verbal communication is going to be easy. I have yet to actually speak today. Three days ago I was nonverbal and making to-do lists to combat executive disfunction (Finish drawing, cook dinner, brush teeth..). Tomorrow, I may be able to pass easily as Neurotypical, converse fluently with people on the street, and then come home to collapse into a pile with a stuffed octopus and some calming scents. In highschool I was just considered “weird” and “emotional”. I had breakdowns and meltdowns and every once in a while just screamed for half an hour curled in a ball because everything was just too much, and I had no words to articulate how this was so. Autism is meeting people like you for the first time, and being told that they were different from the rest of humanity. Autism is suddenly having a word for the difference you’ve lived with your whole life. Autism is the horror on your mother’s face when you joyously go to her saying “Mom! Mom! I think I’m Autistic, can we get me checked out?” knowing that suddenly things were fitting and meshing and the world was not looking quite so scary. Autism is “No, you’re perfectly normal! I was odd in highschool, too…” Autism is bowing to authority, and shutting up, because that is all you have been trained to do. Autism is being told that you’re ‘just odd’ or ‘perfectly normal’ enough times that you forget that there is a word for your oddness. Autism is remembering that wait. That. That’s a thing. That I have. Right. That’s a part of that thing I have.

Autism is so much more than all of this. 

Yes, rates of Autism diagnosis are rising, but not because Autism is becoming more common. We were here all along, you just couldn’t recognize us. The reason that there are so many more Auties walking around breathing your air today than there were in the fifties and sixties, etc, is because we have gotten better at recognizing Autism and applying the diagnosis.

Autism is articulate, and can speak for itself. Will you listen? 


Friday, November 1, 2013

A post about my PTSD.

Trigger warnings: Rape, abuse, transphobia, self-harm, depression, suicide, fuck you all. Mom, don't read this one.


***



The first time I told someone that I had been raped, she told me I was lying.  The second time, I was afraid I was. It took years to work up the nerve to tell a second person, and by that time I had blocked and rewired my memories enough that I wasn't, really, sure when I told her. I told her only after she admitted that she had been molested as a child.

I told her because she was afraid I wouldn't believe her. I believed her because she was so afraid that I wouldn't. I told her, and believed her, because it was so obvious that so many hadn't.

I had blocked and reordered much of my childhood by that point that much of what comes back still feels off. I have shadow-memories of what happened, day after day, in the barn I had to pass by every day simply to get off my parents' property. There are memories that I struggle with, unwilling and needing to touch, knowing they are there and receiving flashes of them every once in a while: A hug from my roommate yesterday pulled body-memories of the neighbor boy's mouth on my neck which took my knees out from under me and reduced me to a ball on the floor, pleading "no, no, no..."

For a while, I convinced myself that I was crazy, evil, making it all up. I remember hating my lying self in highschool, because that doesn't happen to good kids by people they know -- their peer group, even. Their mother taught us to "hide from cars at night!" She should have taught me to hide from her children. She should have taught her children not to be monsters.

From games of doctor that involved actual stitches to torturing animals to sexual things that an eight-year-old should not even know about, all wrapped up neatly under "You can't fight back or yell or tell anyone what we're doing in here, or I'll tell the police that your daddy is growing pot, and then your mommy and daddy will go to jail and you'll go to foster care." The disadvantages of living far out in the country are not lost on me, and being the youngest of the neighborhood kids was not in my favour.

The instant I started insisting that I should get to play the brother or the dad in games of house because I was a boy, too, I was doomed. The neighbor kids, a brother and sister who lived at the end of our long driveway, began very studiously attempting to "set me right" and show me how I was definitely a girl.

And that ended badly enough that I can't remember much of the next three years. Even writing this much forces me to stop and do housework and pay my rent in a flurry of motion, flushing the rising panic from my system. Even so, in the course of cleaning, I find my Big Knife and put it on my wallet, just in case, and the discovery of a Big Hammer causes me to heft it and pace about the house a bit, making defensive motions. And after doing these things, I am able to sit calmly and write again without my hands shaking, but the damage is clear.

And, in a way, their tactics worked. I stayed (mostly*) silent about my gender until someone asked me point blank in freshman year of college after I did several projects in a row for school related to trans-activism... Even then, my answer was "Er... No? Not exactly? I mean... It's complicated...." Considering the person asking the question was my beloved flamboyant translady roommate, who was at the time about a mile back in the closet, this conversation is hilarious in retrospect. I would love to have seen my face at the time.

(* I may have been preparing to come out after cutting my hair in highschool, and then when I dressed up as a boy to meet my mother at the airport, the first thing out of her mouth was a wailing, worried, "Oh, you look like a man!" Just remembering that hurts enough to almost put me in tears. Also, as my mother is so fond of pointing out every time the gender conversation comes up, I was always a very gender-balanced child. Gee. I was good at boy's roles in theatre, liked to sew, wore a kilt, insisted girls could wear kilts, too, my final project for my stage-makeup class was to turn myself into a highwayman, complete with musketeer goatee, and I hadn't worn girl's pants since ninth grade, but sometimes those boy's cargos were worn with a corset... Yes mom, I said I was a boy. I never said I wasn't a fabulous, cross-dressing one. )

This abuse and closeting lead to massive depression (and the accompanying weight gain), and in its turn lead to various bouts of cutting, years of anorexia with which I still struggle on occasion, and at least one serious consideration of suicide which was only stopped by sheer apathy and a furious bout of escapist reading (thank you JK Rowling. I think you saved my life.). And by the time I finally told that second person, I had almost convinced myself that that first person I had told was right, that I had been making it up. That it was all just some wild fantasy I cooked up in my head.

But I have scars I can't otherwise explain. I have memories that bubble up, unchanged, every time someone touches my ribcage, my knees, certain places on my neck and arms. I ran over a scar I didn't know I had while working on one of my tattoos, and had to stop work and deal with a memory of a rotary tool bit grinding on the arch of my foot. Haven't been able to go back and finish the tattoo yet, but I'll get there.  I probably explained the injury away at the time as having walked barefooted on the wrong surface. I was an injury-prone child...

I pressed everything back into the back of that dark closet of the mind, and there they mingled together and infected one another. Now, as I try to pull bits of myself that I have long since lost back to the forefront, one thing tangles in another as by necessity they must, and like a Miyazaki film there is suddenly black goo and infection spewing everywhere, but if we pull hard enough and let enough goo come out, then maybe we can pull out that infection and let the wounds begin to heal. And then we have to clean up, but that's okay because this is a bathhouse so we have the technology.

To do this, I have to admit to myself that these memories are not lies, that what I remember, what I can remember, is as authentic as any memory. These things come unasked as I walk into my new life, and I deal with them as they fester up, and it is awful, but so much better than letting them rot and infect who I am. So I won't use crayons, thank you, because they make me shake and burst into tears and remember being hurt with them. But I will be okay, because being able to identify why they do this is so much better than just blindly feeling the need to forcefully fling the box of crayons away from myself and huddle in the corner whimpering "no, no, no..."

And every time the memories come, every time these things are dredged up from the silt, there is less panic and terror. The memories are further away, less seated in my entire being. I can be more than the panic. More than the pain. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I think I'm doing it well...

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Let me tell you about how I lost half a person.

My ID from October 2011 says 260 lbs, 5'8". I have been overweight since I was eight years old. I guess I am still what is considered overweight, but the last time I stepped on a scale (two weeks ago), it read 170.

May 2012 I wore a 44-inch waist.

How the hell did I become a 32?
No, really, how? My father was a 32, and he was skeletal and creepy looking (If you knew him... don't try to deny it...).

I'm not, by the way. Skeletal and creepy looking. Attribute this to six inches less height. My 170 still has plenty of pudge on it, but I am, for the first time in a very, very long time, beginning to feel comfortable in my weight, and look at my body as though it might be my own (The testosterone is helping there...).

The pair of chesticles still don't help, but one of the benefits of the massive weightloss is that I now almost look flat when bound under a baggy shirt... That and I'm getting a killer set of cheekbones.

So how did this happen?

Start with the Warehouse Job. I got a job as a janitor in a warehouse that was just opening up. Two square miles of concrete divided among five people, sweeping, moping, buffing, sanitizing, scrubbing and polishing. The day I first went to work, the Maintenance manager joked that he had lost twenty pounds since starting work there.

I lost ten in the six weeks I was there. To start, we had no way to heat food for the first two weeks, and my job started at 7 am. I skipped breakfast the first day, found there was no way to heat my lunch, and when asked why I wasn't eating proclaimed that I was fasting. Off work at 3:30, home by 5, and then relaxing and tying to figure out what to make for dinner.

Ultimately, I never took a lunch to the warehouse. I would spend my breaks reading or drawing, and it was easy enough to say I was fasting during the day.

Which, well, yeah. I was. I sometimes grabbed a mocha or something at the Coffee shop on the way home (after that first week, once paychecks were a thing), but predominantly I wasn't eating anything substantial until well after dark for a good six weeks. Add to that that the job was a mile and a half off the beaten path (i.e. bus line), and I was fasting during the day, getting massive amounts of exercise (Job routinely left me actually sobbing because of the impact it was having on my feet), and I was not surprised when I found that I had shrunk out of my "skinny jeans" by the time the job went away.

The job went away because of the headaches (have I mentioned the headaches?), and the fact that the chemicals I was using to do by job were actively harming me. In the weeks that followed losing the job, I found a few new and interesting things:

I just wasn't hungry before about three in the afternoon. Not only that, but if I tried to force myself to eat before my body started telling me to, my stomach would quickly reject anything put into it. I am a normal person who does not enjoy vomiting, and I was not presenting any symptoms of starvation, so I have kept with this pattern since then.

I suppose here is where I should say that I have always sort of had to be coerced into eating breakfast. If you wake me up an make me food I will eat it because you made me food, but I like my breakfast foods to come at around three or four in the afternoon: Tea and pancakes with homemade syrup is bliss. But I have never felt the need to get up in the morning and shove heavy things into my body because "it needs it".

Oh. And it doesn't.

My uncle has been fasting every other 24 hours for many years now, and has never felt better. My family were skeptical of this idea for a long while, but it seemed to be doing what he needed it to do, so whatever.

As it turns out, Intermittent Fasting is totally a thing...

And for the first time in my life I actually have a metabolism.

I need to back up. I have to set the stage a little: In April 2010, while overseas for school, I ate a packaged sandwich from a corner shop because I was starving, and went into a diabetic episode.

Three and a half years later, I haven't touched wheat or corn since, mostly because I happened to have the right travel partner during that episode. I've also changed my diet in one more significant way: I was raised (rather lax) vegetarian. I was a little surprised at how readily and joyously my body took to red meat. I think feeling the immediate rush of energy and stamina after a few bites of steak was what did it. It is now not uncommon for whoever is making dinner to offer chunks of raw meat around, because raw meat.

The creepy pebbly painful volcano-skin that has clogged the hair follicles on my arms, legs, and cheeks for as long as my mother can remember are gone. I have needed an inhaler once in the interveining time, when I walked through a cloud of cigarette smoke (I was diagnosed as asthmatic in seventh grade?). Suddenly, for the first time in ever, I can run. I can run for the bus, I can run down the nature trail, I can run because I feel like running. My knees don't constantly ache when I walk long distances, I no longer have shin splints, and my feet are springier and more flexible than I can ever remember. My bones feel stronger. My teeth are treating me better. I am currently down sick, for the first time in six months, which is huge considering my immune system was hilariously crappy for a good portion of my life. "Walking distance" is now somewhere in the realm of four or five miles (out. Then there's the walk home.)... These are things I can attribute to diet change, and pretty much that.

I do not think I could have made the Intermittent Fasting thing work on wheat and corn and tofu. For one thing, I probably would have grabbed toast that first morning, taken a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and never been maneuvered into this. Beyond that, the balance of proteins vs. carbohydrates that I currently consume is vastly different than that which I consumed throughout highschool and childhood. Because while a great big veggie sandwich on sourdough might be great (I was craving subway ALL of this last Convention, thank you SO much Camie... :P ), I'm not hungry, and dinner is Greek Lamb Sausage and balsamic pearl onions over rice.

Oh, and then my Roomie came home from India and introduced me to Yerba Mate, so that might have had an effect as well...

Friday, October 25, 2013

On the Sampson Complex.

I first cut all my hair of when I was ten or eleven. I can't quite remember. We went to the local beauty salon and I got this awful bob thing with bangs and looked a lot like a pudgy medieval pageboy.

Much better rendition than what I had.

Then when it was getting caught in my belt at sixteen I had my best friend cut it into something similar, but better. 

Not a bad selfie, but I'm not sure why I decided to add the wings...

Then, again, let that grow out,
I look like my mother in gesture and expression here... 

 and out, 
Girlfriend wants Mango.... NAO >:U  

and out. Fall quarter of freshman year at College I was told I had "Hammerspace Hair" when I pulled  it out of the collar of my jacket. 

"Where did that come from?"

..... And then by spring I had cut it all off again into something radically new and shorter!
With my Roomie. Because the baristas at our coffee shop apparently thought so...

But that was again let to grow out again. 
The Donegal sky...

until I felt the need to get it off me again, and clipped it back to something resembling order by then end of that summer. 



It stayed sort of shaggy for the remainder of college, and then somewhere after the bleach job I did for my father's funeral was shorn away, I started experimenting with Even Shorter things.



 These fluctuated from short and (almost) manly



to "kind of dyke-y" in the words of my girlfriend (though that might have been the turtleneck...). Then I grew it out a little, into something longer and shaggier, and then about a year ago I just sort of stopped cutting it. It's now past my shoulders again, gets tangled if I don't brush it every day, and eats metal brushpins. Why metal, you ask? Because my hair is ridiculous enough that anything short of metal pinned hairbrushes just won't work. 

I get my hair from both sides of the family, I suppose. I have my maternal grandfather's hairline, and my father's hair, minus the bright auburn. Thick and strong (I used to pick a friend's little sister up and tote her around the house by letting her grab my braid...) and prone to unmanageability and tangling. Mine also grows stupidly quickly, as pointed out above. 

I think I have a Sampson complex. The longer my hair, the stronger I feel that I am. I know this is fallacious, that really there is no corollary, and that all I am doing is projecting an outward societal marker of "Lady", but I cannot help but feel that Long Haired Men have an important and vital place in our culture. I feel that long hair conveys a certain strength and a certain set of values, and can serve as an indicator thereof. There is a certain conviction of place and presence to be found in a man with long hair, an indicator that he is secure enough in himself to take the comments inevitably made to men with long hair. I find a man with long hair to be manlier, in fact, than a man with a buzz cut. Long hair says that a man is unafraid to embrace his own beauty and softness and vulnerability. A man with long hair is unafraid to be fabulous. Because what could be sexier than a man in a musketeer goatee and prom hair? 
With Baby's Breath!
  
Actually all of these are wonderful Here Have a Link...


Mind you, I do feel the need to cut it off when it's getting in my eyes, or in my mouth, or caught in my collar or belt. And sometimes I do. 

I've been having the urge to cut it off again for some time. I'm not quite ready to (I need to do a few things first that involve long hair) but it is tempting. 

For now, my Sampson Complex reigns. At least until I can get a few costumes together.... Then it's off to the land of Shaved Head! :D ... and then the inevitable outgrow again... 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

On Offense.

I am a practicing member of a minority religion. I have been since I was twelve years old, officially, and sort of before: This is the religion my mother raised me to, though she now no longer "really identifies with anything". I am a Witch, I chant invocations and do spells. I own a Besom, or ceremonial broom (which I also sweep the kitchen with, because a Practicing Witch is also a Practical Witch. My kitchen is Magically Clean whenever I can be arsed to clean it...). Wicca, for those who don't know, is a lot like Catholicism, only without the guilt and shame aspect, and without so much massive organization. My roommate also happens to be a practicing Witch.

So: While it is appropriate for me to jokingly say that I was late to my appointment because my broom is in the shop, it is not appropriate for you to ask if the particularly selfish and obnoxious friend of whom I have just been speaking flew away from the incident in question on her broomstick. Also, I'm sorry if I shocked you by becoming offended by the comment, and pulling out my pentagram and telling you that I am, in fact, offended, and a Witch, and have a broomstick. (Also, hearing anti-Iranian sentiment on your lips earlier in the night was just a little jarring and disconcerting to me, given the circumstance. It might have been funny had it come from your husband... Might...)

I really, really don't care that these views are simply those espoused and disseminated by Hollywood -- It's still offensive and rude to the pair of Witches sitting around your table. Intent is not magical, regardless of what so many seem to believe. (Seriously. Why have I had the "intent is not magic" conversation with so many people? What did they teach you? If something is offensive, it's not okay, regardless of what you meant by it. If someone is hurt by something you say, the appropriate response is not "Well I didn't mean for you to be offended!" or "Well that's not what I meant by that!" it is in fact "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive." There is a huge difference.)

In ninth grade, I had my pentagram grabbed from around my neck, held in my face, and was yelled at because "Do you know what this is?!" by an irate christian girl at my school, who proceeded to tell me that my religion was devil worship. While I do in fact follow a man with horns and hairy legs and hooves, he is called Cernunos, the Lord of the Hunt, and in point of fact they're called antlers... And I do not remember how I reacted. I think I just snatched it back and ran away. I know I later wrote a heated post on the internet about it, on the one place on the web I felt safe talking about my religion.

I am finding that, rather than sit back and passively take whatever is being said about me, or my friends or family, I would rather tell the person being offensive that they are doing so -- and letting them see it by getting a little offended is something I am suddenly unafraid to do. Even around their own table at dinnertime. I am unafraid to let people know that they have hurt me, made me angry or upset -- and this is a big step for me.

I strove for years to "put up with" ridiculous bullshit, insults and injuries and endless criticism for not living up to some imaginary standard. If not at home, where I was mocked for doing ritual to the point that I was mostly unable to practice my religion throughout highschool, then at school where I was constantly the butt of jokes and slurs. The classroom-appropriate word for "bitch" is "witch", after all...

I don't feel like taking gut-punches silently any more. This applies to things beyond Wicca, and people beyond myself. If you say something racist, I will call you on your racism. If you say something sexist, I will call you on your sexism. It may not be loud, it may not be something that shocks you, but I will say it. If you say something outrageous, I will be outraged. Yes, even at your own table. Especially if I love you.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

On invisible disabilities, helpful suggestions, and how tired they make us.

Disclaimer: This will come off as a bitchy rant if you are one of the sort of people this was aimed at. I'm sorry, I woke up with the headache today, and am in no mood to coddle anyone.

So, to all of you lovely, wonderful people who pop up every time I mention that I have a headache to ask if I've tried X, Y, or Z: Yes. Yes I have. No, no it didn't work. Thank you for the suggestion, but it didn't work. It didn't work the first time I tried it, or the second, or the third. Maybe in a few hundred tries it'll work, when I have new glasses and my hormones are balanced and my thyroid levels are just right, but not today.

The last CAT scan was clean, Judith Hay is not applicable to these headaches apparently, and all that the vast majority of headache cures do is give me a little extra headache over on the other side. The Valsalva Maneuver is just useless in this case. Throwing up is ditto.

I've been getting these things for two years as of August. I was in Costco with Mum when the first one hit, and have been trying every hippy-dippy pseudo-science cure I can come across since then. I've been on prescription medication that has nearly killed me, and pop supplements like candy. Unless you've come up with something you can be sure no one else has suggested in the last two years, and I haven't found it on the internet, or my mother hasn't found it on the internet, in two years of tireless research? Yes, I've done it. No, it hasn't worked. The most unique thing I've had suggested -- thusfar only one person, though I had already tried it on my own without any measurable success -- was to induce vomiting. It worked for her daughter -- sadly it does not work for me. Neither does whatever batshit thing you've just suggested. Including and up to snorting cayenne and cow dung.

Am I giving up and being miserable for life? No, but there is the possibility that these things will never go away. That just means I continue taking my herbs and vitamins and minerals and supplements and going to my doctor (Who is also baffled and stymied) and taking care of my body and trying to get enough sleep.

Telling me I "deserve" not to be in pain is insulting and belittling. I do not need your affirmation that chronic headaches are awful things that no one deserves. I know you were trying to be encouraging and helpful and supportive, and you probably didn't mean it this way, but this is just insulting. In enthusiastically informing me that I don't deserve these things, you are implying that somehow, somewhere, is the belief that I do. Or that someone, somewhere, does in fact deserve to be cursed with chronic headaches, which is a fate I would not even wish on my rapist.

As for the "reason/solution"? If you want to help my solution to my headaches? Sign petitions to prevent incandescent bulb bans and support bans on heavily perfumed products and chemicals in public spaces. If you want me to come to your home, do your best not to utilize fluorescent bulbs, and shield them well. Do not use lysol or fabreeze in your home or car if you want me in them, and do not apply perfume if you want me within a yard of you. Bathroom deodorizer cones are right out. Chlorox/bleach of any kind makes me fall down. And if you know me, you know that I go out of my way on a daily basis to avoid all of the identified headache triggers.

And yet, the headaches still come.

And then I go camping, away from flourescents and fabreeze and deodorant, and the headaches still come. Three weeks in the back of a booth in the woods, living in a tent and completely shielded from noxious chemicals, and still the headaches come. After detox, after chiropractic, after massage and new glasses, still the headaches come.

Mind you, I think the new glasses are helping. But that's just one aspect of the storm. The more things I try -- the more things work on some small level -- the greater my understanding of these headaches are. I am living in a perfect storm of pain, and any one thing you suggest? Yes, that may treat one aspect of it. The vitamins and minerals and herbs help. Just a little, but they help. The new glasses help. After each chiropractic treatment, I feel the difference.

But nothing is enough. The pain comes back. I find myself huddled in a ball on the sidewalk clutching at the side of my face making alarming noises whilst passers-by gawk. Maybe someday (Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, three years from now, ten... ) I'll have found all the keys, and the vast complex lock to "No more headaches" will finally be open.

Until that day? Yeah, I've probably tried it...

I know you just want to help, and are just trying to help, but... Gods I'm sick of it. Half of the things that make me tired about having an invisible disability can be summed up nicely with "Yes, it's real, yes, I've tried everything I can think of to make it go away, please stop." I do not feel that someone posting that today was a bad day for the chronic back pain that keeps them wheelchair bound would be getting responses about trying chinese herbs several years into the condition. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know many wheelchair bound people, but I know plenty of (young) people with invisible disabilities. While, again, I cannot speak for the whole group, the number of conversations I've had with them about people telling us to "Take an aspirin and get over it!" or that "you're in your twenties! You're the best you're going to feel in your whole life!" put me, and my sisters and brothers, on the verge of tears. (The "you're in your twenties" came from a fourty-something in a coffee-shop after a con in Seattle, while I was attempting to look up a dispensary nearby so maybe I could not think about shooting myself, and my little sister was digging for her six bottles of depression and anxiety and thyroid meds so she could take them and the same. We simply looked at each other and widened our eyes in agreement of "This guy knows not..." and "Oh gods I hope not...")

Maybe you, ever-so-helpful person suggesting today "lots of sex?" do yourself have a chronic pain condition that makes your life difficult. Would you like me to advise you to go try chinese herbs to help? Or tell you that you don't deserve to have an aching back? To tell you not to give up looking for the thing that will make the pain stop? All that you are doing in offering your encouraging advice to "not stop looking" for a way to fix my head is implying that I have stopped, that I have given up to go crawl under a rock somewhere. 

No. 

When I found that the disability was making me so depressed I could barely get out of bed in the morning, I fought as hard as I could to get out of bed every. Damn. Morning. Even if "morning" came at three in the afternoon. Even if all I could do upon getting out of bed was to stumble the three feet to my walk-in closet and lock myself in there because even the sight of my roommates walking around not having headaches made me too depressed. And when I found myself locking myself in the closet every. Damn. Day? I took my laptop with me, and my sketchpad, and my pencil, and I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and came out having done something, anything productive and creative. And all the while I took my vitamins and herbs and minerals and supplements and still the headaches came like clockwork. But the walls that had been up around my ability to write and draw since about halfway through college crumbled in that tiny enclosed space with nothing but my thoughts and the walls around me. I wrote and drew and papered the walls in art, and at the end of it had something to show for all that depression and headache. I'm now about halfway through the roughs for a several-hundred-page comic. I threw another short thing off over the course of vacation, and am going to a convention this weekend to sell this first, precious, completed thing. No, I can't hold down a job because my head hurts too much on too regular of a basis. But I can produce creative till all the bile that wells up is drained off, and all the puss is wiped away, and all that's left is raw, tired, and empty. And then all I can do is get in bed, go to sleep, and hope that tomorrow is a day in which I won't have a headache. 

Some days, it's true. Some days, some glorious days, I have no headache, and that is awesome. But every other day? Every other day, all you do when you suggest something is to suggest something I've done that hasn't worked. To remind me of one more thing that has failed to produce results. 

Who knows, maybe in a few more chiropractic visits, peppermint oil will start doing something. But the peppermint-camphor-gods-know-what-else Ayurvedic thing that my roommate brought back from india with her? It helps the other kind of headache, sure. Just not these.... 

Friday, August 2, 2013

First T shot -- Done!

And apparently jabbing a nice sharp needle into your thigh and shooting oil into your muscles hurts a lot less than I thought it would.

Well.

I can still feel the blob of oil in my muscles while walking. It stung like a son of a bitch about ten seconds after I pulled the big honking needle back out. But for serious, this is not going to be as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was having reservations, up until sticking myself with the needle, about giving myself injections every week for the rest of my life.

Now, I think I'm going to be okay.

So.

There were the days before today, and now there will be the days after today. And today, when it all changed.

So.

Second puberty GO!


Thursday, August 1, 2013

Today, the Insurance Skirmish ended.

Last friday, I had an appointment with the lovely Trans Health Specialist in Tacoma. I did not expect to walk out the door with a bag full of balls, (You can thank my friend Kat for that lovely image) until she told me I would be.

Then the pharmacist told me first that testosterone requires a hardcopy of the prescription, and then, after waiting fifteen minutes, that it requires prior authorization from my health insurance. This is the prior authorization that should have been submitted back at the end of May when I got my referral for the Trans Health centre. They said they would call them, and then call me back to let me know what the deal was. By this time it was 5:30 on a friday and there was no way I could call my health folk to bitch at them.

This morning, the hardcopy of my prescription came in the mail.

The prescription that came in the mail, billeted for Gender Dysphoria, was for ibuprofen.

Five minutes on the phone with my health insurance, and I'd gotten the "not medically necessary" rhetoric again. So I informed him that while I'm sure he has no idea what it's like to contemplate self-surgery with a twenty-two and a bottle of gin, I do, and that the whole "not medically necessary" thing was bullshit, and them being fuckheads. Then I hung up on him.

Ten minutes later, I was back on the phone, identifying myself to the nice, helpful lady on the other end, and telling her that I was too incoherent to talk right now so my roommate would be speaking for me.

Half an hour later, and my roommate had excersized her diplomacy skills, and I had a prescription waiting for me at my local clinic an hour after that. I currently have a month's worth of T in my bag, and an appointment to go and get them to teach me how to give myself an injection tomorrow.

So about that prescription for ibuprofen...

What my roommate eventually found out was that the pharmacist in Tacoma had found the "substitution permitted" box checked (Which means things like "dispense 200 mg/ml at 1/4 cc, rather than 100 mg/ml at 1/2 cc for cost and efficiency reasons") and substituted ibuprofen for testosterone.

That's not what "substitution permitted" means, mister pharmacist...

Because of course. Taking ibuprofen will cure the dysphoria...

(Beyond that. Ibuprofen was on my chart because I'd told the doctor that I was taking ibuprofen, purchased over the counter, as needed for pain. I'm still not quite sure why it was on my list of prescriptions...)

Saturday, June 8, 2013

On Money.

Very recently, I was given a somewhat-significant amount of money by my father's family. It is one-third of my father's portion of my grandparents' estate, and comes to more money than I have ever seen in my life.

Some people would call this sum insignificant. As I have said before, my family is very poor. This sum is more than my family lived on in a year while I was growing up.

I immediately put two-thirds of it into savings.

Now, I am considering taking half of that back out, putting it in a box, and putting it away until I can have surgery. One half of what I put into savings is a significant chunk of surgery -- almost all of it, in fact, from a certain doctor. I cannot conscience spending that much money on myself.

Which leads me to today's therapy session.

I have two rats. One of them has entered the "Mammary Tumours" lifestage for ladyrats, and has several large, hindering tumours, one under her right front leg and another right in front of her back left leg. I am very willing to spend some of this money on my rat to get her a little better quality of life. I am budgeting at least $500 for this.

I finished telling this to my therapist with "And I'm not sure why I'm willing to do that for my rat but not myself..."

After all, I am feeling intense reluctance to stow away some money so that I can get the lifesaving surgery to take off my massive, hindering mammary tumours. What makes me willing to spend money for surgery for my rat, but not the same surgery for myself? Other than the number of zeroes...

I think I may have let my therapist talk me into actually physically taking money and stashing it away to pay for surgery. I have also let her convince me that it's okay to buy a drafting desk, chair, and lamp. A pair of suits, some ties and shoes, since I'd be going to K&G and getting a free suit. Paying back the money I've borrowed from friends is a no-brainer. Getting my computer fixed so that I can have imaging editing software and some semblance of memory and performance again? Paying off the internet/tv bill so I can have internet at home again? I have been ordered to get new glasses and see if it fixes the migraines -- it might. Another pair of pants and some socks would be nice...

I spent most of this session talking about how freaked out it made me to be given a significant sum of money, and how terrified I was that I would waste it/spend it frivolously/end up being one of those "And he blew through his inheritance in a month and a half!" types.

My therapist informs me that she does not think that this is likely.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

No, you can't get T, but let's set you up for a pap smear...

As mentioned before, my family is very poor. My mother and I have the state run insurance, or at least I will for another couple of years until she can no longer claim me as a dependent.

And today I was finally arsed to get the ball rolling in the direction of taking T.

The first phone call to Molina Health revealed that Testosterone injections, as related to Gender Dysphoria, are not medically necessary. I could not help but to call the bullshit there. I know it wasn't her fault. I know that she was simply relaying the information given to her.

But goddamnit I wanted to reach through the phone and shake her till her teeth rattled, and tell her all about my detailed fantasies about self-surgery with a .22.

None of this was helped by the fact that the first thing the ever-so-helpful customer service representative did was inform me that there is a recommendation for a pap smear on my chart, and would I like to set that up? No, no thank you, I would like to set up an appointment to get that removed...

(On that note, actually no, no I would not: While I will be more than overjoyed when the bleeding stops, I am comfortable enough with my microphallus, and have too many reservations about surgery to consider anything more than a mastectomy at this point. Beyond that, I am young enough currently to be unsure as to my wishes to procreate: I would like to have the option of utilizing my Creation Box, should I eventually decide to. But all of this is the subject of another post.)

That phone call left me with the frustrating "It's just not a covered benefit..."

So I let myself calm down for a minute, and called them back.

"So I'm transgender and need testosterone injections, which apparently aren't covered under my plan. So how do I contest this?"

The second phone was more promising.

"It's not a covered benefit" means something more along the lines of "Well, it's not something everyone will need, so we won't cover it unless your doctor says you need it, and then it's not a guaranteed yes."

Apparently I need to get my Primary Care Provider to send an authorization form, after which they'll probably cover my T, given medical necessity. Think that recurrent self-destructive fantasies and constant body dysmorphia and dysphoria might perhaps be clues as to the medical necessity of a treatment? I do...

So. Time to call my Primary Care Provider and set up an appointment with her. My status has changed since the last time I went to the doctor, and it takes a minute to update my information. The nice lady on the phone puts me on hold to transfer me to my doctor's staff to make an appointment, and....

My phone dies.

Well, I almost got something actually done today...

PS: And my common coffee shop inexplicably has a phone charger, plugged in and abandoned at least over night, that fits my phone. I may get something done today after all.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

On Protective Equipment, and Second-Hand Things.

Today, I bought elbow and knee pads for my skateboard, because while I don't mind the falling or the getting hurt or the colourful bruises, I definitely mind the downtime. I would like to be able to get back up and keep going, not need to take three days to recover.

And when I bought the pads, I had this awful twinge of guilt: I already have elbow and knee pads. I don't really need to buy new ones. They're somewhere in a box in Spokane, and I've had them for twelve years. They're scuffed to hell, the elastic and velcro is shot, and they are in Spokane.

I don't really need to buy new pads.

Except that I really, really do.

a) Protective equipment is important, and may make my mommy less neurotic about the fact that her baby is on a skateboard.

2) The pads I have in Spokane were second hand when I got them from Goodwill twelve years ago. They are now ancient, itchy, slide around, and are in Spokane.

There is something very important to me about the fact that I went out and bought not only a new pice of sports equipment, but a set of new protective equipment to go along with.

My family is very poor. We have lived below the poverty level my entire life. We have a place to live, property and a house (in Spokane), so I cannot say that I ever really wanted for anything. I have never been homeless, I have never gone hungry.

But damn if I haven't spent my whole life in second-hand everything. Don't get me wrong, I still find myself combing Goodwill for things, and thriftstores are the very best way to get unique and interesting clothing at a price I can afford ($1.99 Grossgrain ruby silk suspenders? I think so!), but... It is very disheartening to know that the kneepads you're wearing have already been through a hundred accidents before you ever got your knees into them.

Half of what made my karate equipment so important for me was the fact that everything was new. No one else had owned my gi before, nor any of my belts, nor even the shirt that went under my top. It was mine. My first brand-new bike was a major milestone, and I paid for half of that myself. I got a new helmet and lock with that -- I bought the helmet myself, and the man who ran the bikeshop gave me the lock.

Sometimes, you need new equipment. Sometimes, you need to spend the money, go to the shop, and find the new equipment to ensure safety and security. Sometimes it just has to be new. Second-hand is fine, but I know that I will get my $47 out of these pads. I know that these will last me for several years, and probably won't feel like they're made out of fiberglass insulation. I know that no one has fallen off of anything and scuffed them up, and I know that no one has sweated sweaty knee sweat into them.

There are some things for which second-hand is a good thing. There are some things which are less so.

And sometimes, you just need to replace the old, used, second-hand, other-side-of-the-state things with something new.

And not just New-to-You, either.

Monday, May 6, 2013

On T, Therapy, Lumps, Singing, and Dysphoria.

As I mentioned last time, I started therapy, and got my letter for T. This was a month or so ago, and I have yet to call my doctor to attempt to set up a meeting to talk about it.

I am terrified. The last time I called my doctor for anything specific, I got roped into a "well woman visit". The last thing I need right now is someone staring up my cooch, talking to me about "women's medicine". I am uncomfortable enough with the concept that my anatomy is inverted and lumpy without someone reminding me pointedly of the fact.

I have been wanting this for many, many years. I eagerly await facial hair, a cracking voice, increase in muscle mass, weight redistribution, and even the goddamn acne. I am not looking forward to readjusting my emotional state (I'm just barely getting that under control as-is), or the act of getting surgery, but I am more than ready to get the lumps off my chest. I have been ready to lose my lumps since they showed up, which culminated in my second (abortive) round of therapy, when I realized that I was beginning to make, if not plans, then calculations about taking a gun to my breasts to get them off. While I quickly abandoned the therapy (it's hard when you don't click), the thoughts and calculations are still very much there. These are calculations that resurface every time I step into the shower or attempt to change clothes.

Binders are helpful, but they can only do so much, and I am still "Ma'am"ed and "Miss"ed and "She"d, etc, on a daily basis. I am hopeful, when I do manage to get arsed to call my doctor, that the T will cause breast shrinkage, as it has with some I know. I am hoping that, perhaps, a beard will go some way to stop the "Ma'am"ing. For that matter, I'm hoping I'll be able to grow a beard relatively quickly. Or, well, a bit of a beard. A few hairs to stroke in thought.

I say that I am looking forward to the change in my voice. I have fears -- several of them -- about where my voice will end up -- I do not want my father's voice -- or rather, I do not want the voice he most often used. I do not want to end up with a nasal whine and a harmonica. I do not want to lose my ability to sing.

I should go into that more: I have a degree in Ethnomusicology (sort of), and I have been singing most of my life. I have been told, on numerous occasions, that I would have a good sining voice if I trained it properly. I have been told that I am an Alto, or a Mezzo-soprano. I have never thought I had a good voice. Always, I have been either too high, or too low. I hold with me the belief that I am constantly off-key. My singing voice, as time went on, went from being a reprieve to being an integral part of my dysphoria.

I have stopped singing, almost entirely, in the past few years. Nothing has ever sounded right, and it is simply sounding more wrong the farther into myself I step. In coming back into grips with who I am, what ability to sing I had in the first place has fled and hid under a rock. I am hoping that, with testosterone, I will find my voice coming back to me -- or rather, coming to me at all.

I would love to drop to a tenor. I would love, for once, to open my mouth and have the sound that comes out be the sound I want to be making. I would love to be able to match key and pitch.

I think -- I think -- that I will start singing again -- practicing singing, pointedly -- as part of my medical transition. If I can work up the nerve, I may document the changes through recordings. I dread a hoarsening of my voice, a tightening and decrease in projection and power, and having to re-learn the making of noise with my facehole. On the other hand, I am a Pro at Projection, and learned to project with diligence and luck the first time, so that might be easier than I'm worried about. I wouldn't exactly mind a hoarse singing voice, provided it did all the things I want it to do. And, relearning singing may mean that I actually, you know, learn to sing this time.

Each fear I have about what the coming months and years will bring is cut and countered with the intangible "what if?" For each new terror of what might happen, there is also the possibility that what might happen might be wonderful.

So now I just have to work up the nerve to call my doctor and figure out what my insurance covers.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

So apparently I'm bad at this.

Winter has been hard. Winter has been very hard, and filled with depression, anxiety, dead pets, and boundless creativity. I've written a new comic (More on that later, elsewhere), lost fifty pounds, started counseling, got a letter for T, started gardening, worked around and through the dread of turning into my father, and gone mad and taken up skateboarding.

I fell into a massive depression some time mid-september, and have barely begun to rise out of it.  Winter is almost always a time of depression for me (lack of light YAY!), but this year was particularly awful. Start September with not one but two people living in my living room, in my already tiny apartment. One of the people living in my living room quickly left, and soon a coup was staged in which we (the second person living in my living room and I) took the Big Bedroom away from our third. So now I have a roommate. An actual, living in my room with me roommate.

... So about how I'm an introvert...

We have been doing fairly well at not killing each other.

In November one of my rats died, after long illness, which in no way helped the depression.

A couple days later, I started writing a new comic, upon realizing that this winter the depression was so crushing I couldn't get myself to exit my Plant Closet (Where I grow plants and write stories...). If I find myself being unable to do anything, I may as well do something creative. I'll go into that story Elsewhere. The important thing is that I wrote the story from start to finish, finished the script, went back and edited the script, and then got to work on thumbnails. I'm currently working on chapter six (of thirteen) in thumbnails, and have fourteen pages of watercolour (almost) finished. My depression this year has been productive on the creativity front, if nothing else.

As winter turned into spring, my cat got lumps, went crazy, and disappeared. We've decided that he's walked Back to Canada. I miss having a cat about the house.

And then I started gardening.

I've been growing plants in my closet for a year or so. As of right now, in concert with medicinal herbs, I have several kinds of tomatoes, two variety of eggplants, kale, chard, three kinds of lettuce, two kinds of potatoes, three kinds of beets, three kinds of carrots, several culinary herbs, ground cherries, and bok choi. I have a couple of small plastic greenhouses, to which many of my plants have been transferred, and a couple of tubs of dirt along the side of our apartment building. In doing this, I have stirred up a hundred hopes and fears and neuroses.

I have a longstanding dread of turning into my father. As of lately, I've been given the answer as to what it is that I'm terrified of, and I'm sure I'll be writing another long post about that in the future. For now, let us say this: I am in the process of working through where on the spectrum of Narcissistic Personality Disorder my father was, and where I myself currently fall.

There were several things upon which my father defined himself, and was defined by those around him.

So now that I smoke pot, garden, am unemployed, am disabled, wear my hair long, and now own a skateboard, how the hell am I supposed to not turn into the Demon Tom?

We shall see, shan't we?

Mostly, it involves reminding myself that those feelings of anxiety over how my actions make the other party involved feel are exactly the feelings that my father, apparently, never had.

So all I have to do in order to avoid turning into the subject of someone's future therapy sessions is remember that other people have feelings too? Sounds simple enough...

And to top it all off, I bought a skateboard yesterday. It's a longboard, made from bamboo, and I've probably spent about five minutes actually riding the thing. And about fifteen falling/jumping/sliding off of it, and freaking out because of the voice in my head telling me that I'm a weakling and a coward. Tomorrow, I go to spend fifty more dollars, and get the elbow and knee pads so that I won't acquire any more extraneous kneecaps than I already have. (The bruise currently riding the head of my tibia is several very impressive colours, and far less swollen than it was yesterday. The one on my ass hurts less than it did this morning...)

I remember when I was trying to learn to skateboard the first time. I was young (~9?), and my father forgot the elbow- and kneepads when we set out to go find some pavement. And, when your child is too scared to get on the skateboard because they don't want to hurt themselves... the answer is yell for an hour and call your child a weakling, and a coward. Not go back and get the protective gear that it was your job, as the parent, to remember to bring in the first place?

Not turning into that asshole is going to be easier than I thought...