That specific trauma is still there
Posted: November 13, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, medical treatment, mental health, psychiatric hospital, psychiatry, stress, therapy, trauma 3 CommentsAround this time (middle of the night), fifteen years ago, I started a game changing series of events by getting my mom to bring me to the hospital, from which I was admitted (voluntarily) to an adolescent psychiatric unit. Once I was actually there, I didn’t want to be there anymore, but a lot of things were changing, and I ended up having to stay for 19 days. I left with a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescriptions for Depakote (mood stabilizer), Risperdol (antipsychotic), and Wellbutrin (antidepressant). The medications changed a lot over the years… I’m happy to report I’ve been med-free for about 9 years at this point.
Last year, I wrote about how I came to finally acquire my medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist:
Continuing to work through a specific trauma
This year, I finally brought this massive document in to therapy with me, despite the fact that I was pretty unsure, er maybe more like totally ambivalent, about what I wanted to get out of talking about it (yet again) exactly.
My therapist started reading through the pages out loud, and simultaneously made comments and processed it in her own way. At first this felt tedious (the thing is 210 pages long!) But I also felt intrigued. It was much more helpful for her to tell me about the content than for me to try to go through it myself (which I hadn’t done since first receiving it, last year). I also started to feel yucky and shut-downy. I finally verbalized, “Let’s take a break.” I was worried this therapy session was really going to have a negative lasting impact on me, but, in fact, I felt fine afterward. Maybe I’m more resilient these days than I think.
I used to always think that if I do this one thing, or if I find out these missing pieces, or if I reflect back in a different way, the pain of that experience will be lifted. If I just keep grinding into it and picking away at it, I’ll one day be free. Now I know that this can’t really happen. And I can accept that it was a shitty thing that probably didn’t actually need to happen. It was traumatic. It was so long ago. I can look at it with a completely different perspective by now, but not because of anything I did – that perspective shift happened naturally, over time and with personal growth.
There is so much I could write about. But I actually really only want to write about one thing right now, as it relates to my hospital experience: while I was there, I wore this one particular hoodie constantly. And once I was released, I never wore it again. But there seems to be no way I can get rid of it. I brought the hoodie in to therapy, along with the document, and told her all about it. When the document felt too overwhelming to keep delving into, I told her she should just hold onto it and go through it on her own time. She asked if she could hold on to the hoodie too. I said, “yeah sure.”
My hoodie sported this sports logo.
The reason I loved the hoodie so much was because the LA Rams were not a team. (I just looked it up, and they were a team from 1946-1994). I worked at a thrift store and picked up this gem at some point. I liked the incongruousness of it. I do not like football.
Thoughts on getting a diagnosis
Posted: November 6, 2014 Filed under: coming out | Tags: androgyny, diagnosis, gender, gender dysphoria, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbtqia, mental health, non-binary, queer, therapy, top surgery, trans, transgender 25 CommentsLast week in therapy, I talked briefly about planning ahead for top surgery one day. I said that I might want to do this, maybe as early as this coming summer. That’s the most concrete thing I’ve ever said about the subject. She asked what some first steps would be, and I replied, “look into whether it would be covered by my insurance.” That’s kinda something that would really help frame it in my mind, the answer to that… She asked me how I’d do that, and I really floundered with the actual words I would use if I were for real making a phone call to insurance people.
It’s too sensitive and too hypothetical in my mind still, and I could barely even say, “female to male chest reconstruction surgery” out loud, just to her. She got it and said, “what you could do is find out the code for that type of surgery, and when you make the call, you can just ask about the code as opposed to using the words.” I said, ok, yes, I think I could do that. She said she would look it up for me and email me the code.
She ended up finding out a ton more info than just the code, on her own. She said certain info led to more questions and she ended up just calling. Basically, she got all the information for me, for which I am so grateful because it would have felt too emotional for me to do on my own, at this time. It is NOT covered by insurance. I’m not surprised. I told her that doesn’t change much – I’m still considering it.
We briefly talked about it again this week, and about gender identity in general. She said that some surgeons require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria for X amount of time in advance (glad she is doing the relevant research!), and should she be diagnosing me with that? This turned into a heated discussion (on my end), with the conclusion that I do not care about that, but I am OK with that, if it’s in order to help along a process. And that, again, I don’t really care to know what she is doing in that regard.
The idea of being diagnosed with a mental health label is contentious in my mind, and she knows this. She gets it. I’ll be writing about this further in my next blog post, probably next week. A teaser for what is to come: I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 17, and held onto that belief strongly for about 6 or so years. That’s a heavy duty label to be grappling with, unnecessarily.
My therapist is not a gender therapist, but she is doing right by me more than any other therapist I’ve ever had (and some have been gender therapists). There was a time where I thought – we both thought – I would need to go to a different therapist in order to progress with any medical transition steps (I did this in order to access testosterone, kinda unnecessarily in the end). I don’t think that anymore. Why can’t she be that person? I think she is getting on board with, she can be that person. We concluded recently that a big goal for therapy is to make some progress with transgender-related issues and decisions, and I said I would send her some more general information to get her started. I sent her the following resources:
Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
Trans Research Blog – a compilation of what is out there
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves – a great book to have on hand
Anyone have other essential resources?
More than once, she has said, where is the data? Where is the research that says this and this and this are best practices? And I just keep responding, There needs to be more research. And I just keep shrugging. IT DOES NOT EXIST. (Yet.) I don’t know whether she believed me initially, but she may be starting to realize it by now. It’s maddening how little is out there.
Do I think that I have gender dysphoria? Whoa. That is going to take way too long to pull apart right now. That’s probably for a future post! Do I mind being diagnosed with that for the purposes of having a wider selection of surgeons to choose from if I do decide to move forward with top surgery? Not at all! It’s close enough. (Although I do strongly, strongly wish more surgeons would get on board with the informed consent model.)
Edit: Now that I think about it, I’m sure I’ve already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by my primary care physician (for my testosterone prescription) and probably at least one other therapist. To me, it all feels so arbitrary.
Janitors in pop culture #3 / awesome film about a transwoman
Posted: November 4, 2014 Filed under: Janitorial work | Tags: film festival, gender, gender identity, getting published, janitors, lgbtqia, movie review, mtf, queer, stereotypes, therapy, trans, transgender, writing 4 CommentsI recently was at an LGBT film festival and specifically planned ahead to catch a film from Finland called Open Up To Me (Kerron Sinulle Kaiken). If you want to see it, this blog post is going to contain details you might not want to read about in advance, just a heads up!
Super highly recommend this film. It follows the life of Maarit, a transwoman, for a few months, starting at the point of her last appointment with her gender therapist – the tone of that first scene, the therapist’s farewell message, is: now spread your wings and fly. Maarit had been forced through a lot of sacrifices in the process of becoming who she is. She is separated from her wife and estranged from her teenaged daughter (we get the sense the daughter is open and figuring this out for herself; it is the mother who is standing in the way.) She has moved away from where she once lived and worked as a school social worker. She now leads a lonely existence and works as a janitor within a huge office building.
There are only two or three scenes where she is depicted at her work (and it’s just her coming and going. Loading a van, pushing a cart full of supplies). The story is not about that work, other than utilizing it as a plot device for somewhere she has landed and is unhappy about. She (understandably) yearns to get back into her chosen profession of helping people as soon as possible. She wants this so badly that she ends up posing as a therapist (through a series of misunderstandings) while on the job.
Which brings me to a reason I loved this film… It falls back on some unpleasant tropes common to trans characters in the media, but it ends up twisting them and rising above those ideas, to portray Maarit as a very human, very real, complex, well… person.
Transperson as deceitful: Although Maarit deceives someone about her profession (and she quickly comes clean), she never once is attempting to deceive anyone about her transgender status. She is proud, self-assured, and upfront with those around her (on an as-needed basis), even in the face of speculation and slander, discrimination, and violence.
Transperson as hypersexual: Maarit is not portrayed as a hypersexual person. It is clear that she is looking for intimacy, emotional connections, and a long-term partner. Instead, some of the characters around her are hypersexualizing her, and that seems more about them and their own issues, rather than who she actually is as a person. The film makes this very clear.
Transperson as dangerous and/or tragic: Maarit is in a very difficult place (there are other aspects of her life that have fallen apart. I won’t give away every detail!) and there are certainly scenes where she is in over her head, where she is compromised, where she seems desperate. It feels realistic – it very much seems that some choices she makes are due to (and only due to) being pushed so far into a corner, and she’s just trying to find her way back to where she can live her life. Those choices are not about who she is, inherently. It’s circumstantial. Some of these scenes, although hard to watch, feel triumphant at the same time. For example, at one point, she is attacked by an ex-lover. She ends up punching him in the face and ending the attack. Awesome.
I’m so glad LGBT film festivals exist – opportunities to get out there and see films I wouldn’t have heard about otherwise. This year, I saw this one, and another trans-specific one (52 Tuesdays – sadly, I didn’t enjoy this one all that much. It felt overly melodramatic, the characters didn’t feel believable.) My partner and I have gone to other films over the years, and it’s interesting that it always seems like there’s films for men and films for women. We’ve been to films before where we’re the only ones in the theater who are not cis-men (that’s an assumption, of course, but over and over again, it has been very much divided, and it is so bizarre to me.) At these two films (which were both well attended), there was a very diverse cross-section. I liked that.
Also, the film festival puts out an annual literary anthology, and this year’s theme was personal pronouns. I submitted, and my piece was accepted! I’m now officially published, in an actual book with an ISBN # and everything!!!
The piece was a re-working of these two blog posts:
While I was “out,” part 2 – partly out of the closet, fully out of the loop
While I was “out,” part 3 – coming back
Why I’ve been writing here
Posted: July 24, 2014 Filed under: Writing | Tags: anniversary, genderqueer, goals, lgbtq, non-binary, privacy, publishing, queer, therapist, therapy, trans, transgender, writing 20 CommentsToday is the day I’ve been writing on this blog for one year. And… I really don’t see an end in sight – it doesn’t feel like I’ll be running out of steam any time soon. I’m gonna hope that this is true!
There are a bunch of reasons I started and a bunch of reasons I keep going. Some of them include:
- I’m an exhibitionist, in a sense.
- I really really really enjoy writing. And ideas keep popping in my head.
- The more I put into this, the more I get out of it. That has not been the case for a lot of endeavors I’ve undertaken.
- I’ve really been enjoying reading blogs by like-minded (and different-minded) individuals on a variety of topics, but mostly blogs about being queer and/or trans* in some way or form. The blogs I read help keep me going.
- It has helped me hone my writing / find a voice. I’ve had pieces accepted for 2 anthologies this year (the process of editing and publishing is currently ongoing), and I’m working on a proposal for a 3rd piece.
- I want to continue contributing to a body of information that is pretty obscure and hard to find, at least at this time.
Before starting this blog, I was writing epic emails to my therapist, generally on a weekly basis. For over a year and a half. I’m talking really really long emails. Although she always read them – and we often talked about them – she would never reply to me. She would also sometimes downplay how important they felt to me, referring to them as “notes,” when I would have chosen the phrase, “an outpouring of my soul,” haha.
I rarely ever write to her anymore (sometimes I cut and paste from my blog in an email to her, or ask her to look at a specific post). I think I was relying on her to fulfill this really specific need (collecting and organizing thoughts through writing, knowing someone’s reading those thoughts), and I’ve shifted it all into this incredible, creative outlet. She’s probably relieved about it – I know I kinda am, haha.
Before this, I’d never had a blog in such a public way. I’d had private online “diaries” and mostly “friends only” online journals when I was younger, just about life in general. But I’d never put this much about myself out into the internet in any shape, previously (my Facebook info and involvement is super sparse, for example). Sometimes I’ve second-guessed myself. Sometimes I’ve worried if so-and-so will find this, etc. But overall, those fears are quickly drowned out by all the positives. And ultimately, the type of anonymity / level of being out there publicly feels like it’s right where I wanna be.
To many more years!
On therapy and gaining access to what we need
Posted: June 2, 2014 Filed under: Testosterone | Tags: doctors, ftm, gender identity, genderqueer, hormone replacement therapy, medical treatment, mental health, queer, standards of care, testosterone, therapy, trans, transgender, WPATH 8 CommentsDirectly from the WPATH-SOC (World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care), 7th edition, p. 19:
When I was 17 years old, I admitted myself voluntarily to a psychiatric hospital. I thought I was going to go there for a day or two, be able to finally catch my breath, and then work with those around me to make a plan for what I needed. This is not what ended up happening. I still wanted to leave after a day or two – that didn’t change – but suddenly, things were getting really confusing really fast, and lots of people had other plans for me. Since I was still a minor, I really had no say in what happened. I was there for 19 days. I was put on 3 different medications. I was told I suffered a psychotic break. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (based on how I was behaving – short-term – and things I told them, such as, “I think I am bipolar”). When I left, I spiraled into a major depressive episode that lasted about 4 months (and I felt highly unstable for years to come). This helped confirm for me that I was, in fact, bipolar. Something I believed for about 6 more years.
I am most definitely not bipolar. I did go through a psychotic break, but in retrospect, I believe this could have been prevented had I not been hospitalized. I think, ultimately, I just had an extended panic attack. And having no idea what that was or felt like, I thought going to the hospital was the only thing I could do to help myself in the moment.
For the next 6 or so years, I complied with my mental health care. I took all my medications every day, as they were prescribed (and those meds and dosages changed a lot over the years). I went to all my appointments I was supposed to go to. I talked to therapists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, psychiatrists. I didn’t seem to be improving. In a lot of ways, my mental state was getting worse. I just followed along with the treatment plan because I didn’t know what else I could do. In fact though, I couldn’t really tell you what the treatment plan was. Was there a plan? I don’t recall that being a conversation.
All of these experiences have greatly shaped who I am, and also my attitudes toward health care providers. I’ll say right now, I am definitely biased and wary. Once I decided I wasn’t going to take medications that didn’t seem to help, and I wasn’t going to listen to ideas that didn’t seem to make sense for me, there really was no going back. Pretty much dropped out completely (except for going to a dentist and a chiropractor, haha) for a very long time.
Until I decided I wanted to access testosterone. I thought I was going to need “The Letter” from a therapist, but in the end, the doctor I went to didn’t care about formalities like that. (He’s also a sketchy doctor though.)
I feel very adamant that I should be able to easily access testosterone for the rest of my life. Testosterone is doing for me what antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics never quite did. And more. I don’t want to go through hassles to be able to get it. I’d go as far as to say that being challenged about it by a health care professional is highly triggering for me. Because when I was younger, I was told what would be best for me for so long, and I followed. And it was shitty. So now the dynamic is going to be the other way around. I know that’s extreme and reactionary, but I do feel that strongly at this point in time. I hope that as I age, I will mellow out about it. I’m sure there will be times that I’ll need help and I won’t know what is going on with my body, and I will be grateful for doctors’ and specialists’ expertise. As for now though, I’m not there yet.
Although my experiences with mental health professionals have been shaky at best, I believe strongly in the therapeutic effects of… well, therapy (haha). Without having been in therapy through those toughest years, I would not be where I am today, no question. I learned how to talk and communicate from therapists. I learned how to stop being so hard on myself. I learned to let go of my past. I learned that I cannot save others from their pain. I learned what things really matter in life, and what things I am spending wasted energy on. It was the slowest imaginable process. None of these gems felt like they were working for me at the time, but in returning to therapy over these past 2 years, it all started to suddenly sink in, and I’ve made some real leaps and bounds. I feel grateful for that groundwork I started in my late teens and early twenties, through therapy, even though I could not feel the benefits whatsoever at the time.
Two years ago, I attended a workshop at the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference called, Who Needs Therapy? Some Thoughts on Mental Health and Gender Variance. It was largely an open discussion format, with a mix of mental health professionals, people with experience being in therapy, mental health survivors, and others. Toward the end I had worked up the courage to ask the group, “What if I really connect with my therapist, but it is clear she is not knowledgeable about trans* issues? Is it worth it to continue working with her if I want to explore this? Is it up to me to attempt to point her to resources if I want to keep working with her?”
Everyone who responded to me was very adamant that it was not up to me, and if she does not do the work on her own, I should find someone who is knowledgeable or who is immediately and clearly willing to do the work. It turned into a very impassioned discussion with a lot of people saying the same things. I left feeling really confused.
It had been very hard for me to find a therapist I click with. I’d gone to a few in my mid/late-twenties, and felt really dispirited. A couple of them were specifically gender therapists. In the end, I returned to the main therapist I saw through some of my toughest years. It was amazing to me she is still around and I could find her. Re-connecting with her again after 8 years was mind-boggling in the best way possible. Despite the feedback I got at that workshop, I wasn’t about to let go of her so easily. Nor did I feel like educating her myself, or even asking directly what she did know and what she did not know. I just continued to tell her how I feel, and I didn’t ever get the impression that she didn’t understand or wasn’t going to work with me on that. However, when I asked her if she’d write me a letter for HRT if need be, she said, “No. I don’t feel like I have that expertise.” And I appreciated that. It is all working incredibly well.
When going to my new doctor, I could have possibly had an easier time if I was forthcoming with the fact that I’m in therapy for gender issues (although I’m not in therapy with a gender therapist). But I didn’t feel like I should have to. So I didn’t mention it. When the doctor asked me who is in my support network, I said my partner and my parents and friends. I left out my therapist. When she told me she would like to collaborate with the gender identity youth clinic in making a plan for me, I could have saved some time and hassles by saying, “My therapist already talked with them, and they won’t see me because of my age. So the plan B is this.” But I didn’t. I just said, that’d be great and let my doctor make the phone calls and come to that same conclusion on her own.
Why? Because I think that therapy is an important part of my well-being. And I think that getting the best medical care possible, for what I need, will also be an important part of my well-being. And I don’t feel like the two necessarily need to have much to do with each other. Specifically, I don’t want to suddenly be taken more seriously and be given what I need, gender-wise, because I am in therapy. I want what I say to be enough. I want to access hormones without it being known I’m in therapy, if I can.
I am deliberately attempting to lay some of the groundwork, saying that this is perfectly acceptable. Not all of us live within access to clinics or doctors who offer the Informed Consent model. But I feel like I am in a position where I can work to change that.
While I was “out,” Part 2 – partly out of the closet, fully out of the loop
Posted: April 17, 2014 Filed under: coming out | Tags: anxiety, coming out, depression, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbt, lgbtq, mental health, non-binary, queer, testosterone, therapy, trans, transgender 1 CommentFor roughly 6 years, I was living sort of as the person I envisioned myself to be. Prior to that, I’d gone through a bunch of intense periods of introspection (or maybe one really long period of continuous introspection is more like it), trying to find myself and how I identify.
By my mid-twenties, I had just kind of given up and said, “Good enough.” Tried to move on and live my life as best I could. (That doesn’t mean I stopped being introspective. It just means I tried to have a life despite that.) That life involved disconnecting from most things that were causing me too much stress and anxiety. The LGBT community was definitely on that list, but at the time, I would have shrugged it off and told you, “it’s not that important to me.”
The LGBT community kept sending me this, and I just kept ignoring them, because the details were always left blank.
The break-up was never about interpersonal drama or ideological disagreements. (Although, I did feel some of that. I strongly feel that a facilitator / leader can really make or break a group.) I broke away because it felt too sensitive to be in touch with what was going on, and to connect with others on this identity-based level
I didn’t stop being an activist / contributor, but I did stop focusing on things that hit too close to home. I immersed myself in endeavors such as Food Not Bombs, our local Free School, and benefits to raise money for a particular community space, Indymedia, etc. I overextended myself way past the point of burn-out. I’ve taken huge steps back. I’m currently at a precipice, figuring out what to throw my energies into next, and how to do it differently.
I was not very happy, but I had resigned myself to thinking that this is just how things are for me. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. My anxiety levels were so high, on a normal day, on every normal day. I self-injured and shut-down (dissociated) regularly, just to cope with daily life. I forced myself to do so many things, all the time, out of fear of sinking into yet another depression. I was hyper-vigilant of my internal states and tried to regulate all my emotions – squish and squelch them, twist them into something else and rationalize them away. I was aware that I was capable of having a sex drive, but it was so far gone I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to coax it back. (And I really wanted it back.)
It’s not like my life was super stressful! I work as a janitor. I don’t have any dependents. I don’t have money concerns, health concerns, family drama, nothing! Haha.
I just did not want to worry any more about gender! I had a huge amount of body dysphoria. I felt totally lost a lot of the time. But it wasn’t going to be about gender. It was going to be about any number of other things. Because, bottom-line, trying to figure out if I should transition or not was stressing the hell out of me, for years and years and years. I did go through a (fortunately unsuccessful) time period where I said, OK, this is about gender. And I found a therapist to talk about that, specifically. (I was probably 28 at this point.) I thought I was headed on a neat and tidy (and difficult) path to finally sort this all out and probably start testosterone and transition into a visible man. Except, I never wanted to be a man. It’s just that I had backed myself into a corner, and this was my escape plan. But there was no way that could have worked; I knew myself too well. I never ended up connecting with the therapist, I never even convinced myself to begin with, and the whole plan just stalled out.
(This kinda ends abruptly, but part 3 will be coming soon. If you’re interested, here is part 1.)
The Soft Sell (Upping the Ante)
Posted: February 6, 2014 Filed under: Passing | Tags: coming out, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbt, lgbtq, non-binary, same-sex marriage, Soft Cell, soft sell, testosterone, therapy, trans 6 CommentsI’m thinking differently about coming out to more people, lately. Like, I’m starting to plan for it, as opposed to trying to figure out whether it’s something I want to do or not.
Mainly, I’m thinking about telling some people that I’m on testosterone (and what that means in general and what that means for me), and asking them to use male pronouns from now on, when they refer to me. I could go around doing mental gymnastics about this forever. Do I have a right to impose this on others? (yes!) Do I want to? (not sure) Will others take me seriously? (not sure), etc.
I do not generally pass as male. And I’ve been on low-dose testosterone for almost 11 months, and I still don’t pass. And I plan on being on it for the rest of my life without ever really passing as male. This is what I want; I’m right where I want to be. Except, I feel more male than female, inside, and I want that recognized with male pronouns. Also, I just want to be more visible as being non-binary, and the visual/pronoun incongruence suits me. I could go my whole life without anyone guessing I’m on T (I think). I know that I could go my whole life without being seen how I really feel. And that could be said for a lot of people.
I (sort of) came out to my parents in November. I did this at that point only because I was getting married, and pronouns were going to be used, haha. C’s family consistently uses male pronouns for me – that’s how I was introduced, and how they know me. It’s awesome!!!!! My family does not, and I’d never brought it up to them.
So, in preparation of the getting-married day, I told my parents, over dinner, that I don’t feel like I am either gender, and I avoid pronouns when I can because none of them feel right, but when I have to use them, I prefer male pronouns. I said, “So, I wanted to tell you this because other people use male pronouns for me, and I wanted you to know why, so you would know what was going on.” My mom was nodding emphatically the whole time I gave them the spiel. My dad was making eye contact with the TV rather than with me or my mom. I know he heard me, technically, but I know nothing beyond that.
Yesterday, I was talking about coming out, in therapy. And I relayed/reviewed this scene with my parents (’cause we’d already gone over it, at the time it was happening), and my therapist looked surprised and replied, “Oh, I didn’t realize you had given them the soft sell!” And when she said that, all I could do was visualize Soft Cell (see below) and stare at her, confused. It took me a while to register what she was saying. And I was all, Damn! …but, she’s totally right.
These guys know how to keep a secret.
My parents do not use male pronouns for me now that I’ve explained this to them. I didn’t ask them to. At this point, I don’t actually expect them to because I haven’t told anyone else within their circles, and even I think that would be too weird and uncomfortable for them. BUT! It has made me decide that I want to tell more family members and then start expecting that they will make the change for me. I know it will be hard and I will feel vulnerable. I know some people probably will be able to just switch with no problem, and some people may never actually do it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t ask.
As of now, here’s what I’m looking at:
Friends / Community – use male pronouns, I feel understood
C’s family – use male pronouns, I feel understood
Work – use female pronouns, about half know I’m married to a female, they probably all think I am a lesbian
My mom’s side of family – use female pronouns, all know I’m married, they probably think I am a lesbian
My dad’s side of family – use female pronouns, use my birth name, no one knows I’m married, they probably think I’m a lesbian
My mom – uses female pronouns, I feel understood (interestingly), knows I’m on testosterone and how I identify
My dad – uses female pronouns, I don’t know what he thinks
My bro – He’s been living in Turkey for 3 years and I have not had much contact. In the past though, he has used male pronouns, I feel understood.
I think that I have a lot of work to do.
This year felt different… in a good way
Posted: December 31, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anxiety, genderqueer, non-binary, recap, same-sex marriage, testosterone, therapy, trans, traveling 2 CommentsIt’s really hard to quantify these things, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that this past year was the best year of my life. A lot of great things happened, I got to travel a lot, I got married (as I’ve been mentioning in every single recent post, haha)! And all those things are awesome. But the reason this year was so good was because I felt so different. I’d been struggling with some pretty crippling anxiety for like, forever. And I’d made quite a bit of progress over the past 2 years in therapy, but basically, I had constructed much of my life in ways to insulate myself from the things that were anxiety provoking. And no amount of therapy was going to help me strip that all away if I was still experiencing such unpleasant physiological reactions. Then I started taking a low dose of testosterone on March 18th and POOF! Anxiety dissipated into thin air, and I’ve just kinda been reveling in how good everything feels for the rest of this year. I hope I get to keep reveling for years to come… We’ll see. Here’s a couple of other things that were awesome:
– C and I went on vacation to Asheville, NC. It was our first grown-up vacation ever, by which I mean we flew there, rented a car (I’d never done this before), used Airbnb to find lodging (we always go somewhere on vacation where we can stay with friends – don’t get me wrong, I love seeing friends, but this just felt so different.), and just did a lot of local things – restaurants, microbreweries, hiking, cultural arts center, etc.
– We went on a bunch of other smaller trips: to Toronto twice (we went to the Toronto Comics Arts Festival and to the Sister Spit Tour), to Philadelphia (Trans Health Conference!), to NYC (Brothers Quay exhibit at MOMA!), and I went on a solo trip to Worcester and Boston.
(Here I am at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, making a ridiculous face – I’m in line, in the middle, the short guy. I found this pic on the Fantagraphics website – er rather, a friend came across it and sent it to me, and Fantagraphics captioned it: “Then the magical Ulli Lust made her appearance. Leon Avelino of Secret Acres and The Beguiling’s Peter Birkmoe showed up but were sadly outdone by the BEST CON FACE EVER. Thank you, Toronto.” I’m highly amused by this, haha.)
– Like I mentioned, I started using a low dose of testosterone in March. Best. Thing. Ever.
– My supervisor and I started to actually get along at work. We now work really well together (so far), whereas in the past, we have had some pretty major clashes.
– I read 26 books. This number is way down from the past few years, but for prior to a few years ago, I wasn’t reading anything at all, so it’s still kinda a big deal for me!
– C and I got married and went on a fun weekend getaway!
– I met a new friend, a really introspective, really effeminate and handsome queer guy.
– I got a new bike, but did not really ride it nearly enough.
– I was in a really fun play and did a couple of drag shows.
– I started this blog!
There’s probably more, but that was pretty much what 2013 looked like for me.
Continuing to work through a specific trauma
Posted: November 12, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anniversary, communicating, coping with trauma, depression, disconnect, medical records, mental health, psychiatric hospital, psychotic break, therapy, trauma 1 CommentFourteen years ago today, I was taken to the emergency room and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for nineteen days. It was by choice – I voluntarily admitted myself, but once I got there, I realized that basically, I was stuck, and things got much much worse for me. Essentially, I went from being in a confused and vaguely depressed state to suffering a full-on paranoid psychotic break from reality, which in retrospect, I believe could have been avoided had I not been there at all. My plan in my head was to go there and sleep and restore my mind and body for a day or two, and then make a plan from there. Their plan was to do what they do, on a medical and legal basis, and this took so long, I was unsure if I was ever going to get to leave. Also, I was a month shy of 18 years old, so I was not yet a consenting adult, and my parents signed everything that needed signing. (On the other hand, I’m relieved I was not yet 18, because that month’s difference was the difference between being on the Adolescent or Adult unit. I am glad I was with people my own age and younger.) This was during my senior year of high school. I went back to school with a (mis)diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and even more of a disconnect from everyone around me. I felt even more isolated, and self-stigmatized than before. I sank into a severe depression. I dropped out of a few of my classes and took a leave of absence from my job. I tried to stay occupied with some art classes at school, but nothing at all interested me. As the summer before college started, things finally did start to lift. I got my driver’s license. I started to hang out with friends a little bit. I felt excited to be moving two hours away and starting college.
This experience has stayed with me as a lasting trauma. In college, I wrote a lengthy personal essay about it, trying to capture every tiny thing I could remember. I was in therapy for a long time after – I was actually doing a lot worse in general after being discharged. I was on a lot of pills and unsure if they were helping. Therapy, at least, was helping. Therapy has been the one thing I’ve done for myself that has made the biggest difference in my adult life. Therapists have taught me how to be a verbal person and communicate with others.
About a year ago, I worked at talking through this experience that still haunts me, in therapy. My therapist was a little hesitant to delve into it – she’s not too big on rehashing the past. But she did help me through it, and encouraged me to talk with my mom about it, in order to dis-spell some long-held beliefs that might have actually been way off. Such as, “it didn’t really affect my mom that much, that I was there.” So I did talk to my mom about it (however difficult that was), and felt myself getting to a new place through doing that.
And then this year (every year around this time, I’m thinking a lot about it again), I decided to gain access to my medical records from back then. I didn’t know how to go about that because the hospital I was at has since been closed, demolished, and rebuilt into a new multipurpose health facility. But I was told my records are somewhere, on microfilm, and I can get them at a fee of $0.75 per page. So I went through the request form and noted I’d like to be informed of the length of the document before it’s sent. Two weeks later, a heavy package arrived, with a bill for $168.10! I thought we were talking about something in the range of 40 pages! This thing is 210 pages, and this bill is much more than I want to pay. (So I did email back and forth, explaining my request was ignored, and I did get the bill knocked down to $100.88 – still way more than I was planning to pay.)
The document itself is largely made up of pages that have no interest to me. And many pages in which I can’t read the person’s handwriting. But, in the process of gleaning as much as I can from it (and skipping over quite a few things that feel triggery, for right now), I’m coming to some kind of new terms with what happened to me, way way back then. And, something is lifting.
From whimsical musings to invasive ruminations on transitioning
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Testosterone | Tags: androgynous, angst, anxiety, ftm, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbt, lgbtq, non-binary, repetition, ruminating, testosterone, therapy, top surgery, transgender, transmasculine Leave a commentFor over a decade, I had been going back and forth hundreds (thousands?) of times in my head about whether transitioning was right for me or not. Or if not every aspect of it, what about this but not that? Will I ever move forward with some aspect maybe? At some point not that long ago, I seemed to come to the conclusion that no, I wasn’t going to move forward because if I were, I would have done something about it by now. And I haven’t, so I’m not. I must be lacking some internal drive, so it must not be something that I need to do. I settled on identifying as genderqueer and trans* but not planning on medically transitioning in any way. And I seemed satisfied with that. (?) But not quite, or, no, not at all actually. Because it was still on my mind. Sometimes just as whimsical musings in the back of my brain. Other times as pervasive/invasive body-dysphoric consistent ruminations.
I guess I always thought that if I did move forward with something, it would be top surgery, and not HRT. Because I never want to consistently pass as male. I want to continue looking androgynous forever. Top surgery could help with that (although I’m fortunate in that I can get away without surgery, and without binding, in hiding what I have). Taking testosterone would be going further than I want to go. So I thought.
I thought it had to be all or nothing. I thought I had to have a case ready about how I need to transition, in order to access testosterone. And I don’t need to transiton, and I really don’t like to lie. I thought I would need a letter from a therapist, and to jump through all these hoops, to access testosterone. And I wasn’t even sure I wanted it! Eventually I reached a point where I just knew that I needed to try it, at some point, just so that I could know. So that at the very least, I could think about it differently or think about it less often, as it relates to a decision about something I should or should not do.
I have this awesome therapist. She doesn’t know much about trans* identities. I’m fairly certain she had not previously had a trans* client before, although I could be wrong. I’d been talking to her about this stuff, and she’d been following along, more or less, in stride. When I would say I need to try this out, she would say, “then why not!” I asked her if she’d write me a letter if need be, and she said she wouldn’t be comfortable doing that; she doesn’t have enough knowledge about it. Still operating under the assumption that I would need a letter, I started also seeing another therapist, basically for the purpose of getting a letter.
This second therapist gave me the name of a doctor during our first session. Turns out that, apparently, I didn’t need a letter! Turns out I didn’t need to convince anyone at any point that I wanted to transition medically. I never once had to lie to get my hands on testosterone. And once I did get my hands on it, I was given the freedom to experiment with the dosing, basically use as much or as little as I wanted. Turns out I want to use as little as possible. Turns out I might be able to stay on it for the rest of my life without looking any more masculine than I currently do (this has yet to be proven, but it’s been 6 months now, and so far, so good). And the internal effects, with this super low dose, are significant and pretty much better than I could have even hoped for.
Basically, for all those years of wondering and second-guessing and processing and feeling anxious and obsessing and daydreaming and doubting myself and ultimately sort of concluding by default that I wouldn’t take any steps forward, actually doing something about it has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
And in retrospect, it isn’t like there’s no turning back, to some extent. Testosterone is a slow-moving substance in terms of long-term changes… I’m really enjoying the internal forward momentum though.
janitorqueer 