"Structure"

lol hay guyz remember when I used to post on this blog sometimes before I started T and became able to focus only on that?

Yeah well. HARK! A POST!

I suppose this would fit better on my unschooling blog, except it's a bit disjointed because a) I'm still figuring out how I feel on this topic, b) I have one of these really frustrating backaches I get sometimes where it feels like it would go away if I just stretched one particular muscle but I cannot for the life of me seem to get into a position that stretches it, so I spend 90% of my time contorting myself into positions that make it look like I am suffering from a serious neurological disorder, and c) I am also distracted by my cat Dot, who still looks like a kitten despite being 2 1/2 years old, because she is doing that thing cats do where they tuck all their feet up under them and puff up like a bird and make this face: ^______^. Also I just noticed one of the rocks Litsong gave me has been knocked off the top of my book cabinet and I need to go and find it.

Crisis averted. Not that any of you knew I was gone for a minute because this is a blog post. But I found the rock, in case you were concerned.

I think it is ironic that a post that was intended to be about structure has become so rambly. But then maybe that is perfect because it kind of self-demonstrates the point I was going to make.

See, I am pretty sure I have some form of ADD or suchlike, a point I have carefully avoided mentioning to my psychiatrist because I do not want to be on Ritalin or anything like Ritalin. I've been on Ritalin before, when I was in college, and I did not like it. It sort of made me feel like a robot: I was really, really focused and productive, but I became totally devoid of all personality traits other than being really really focused and productive. Now, I am not one of those people who does not believe ADD is a thing, nor am I anti-medication, because I know some people really do need ADD meds in order to function. Personally, I need antidepressants in order to function. When I was not on them, it took me massive amounts of energy to do anything, so my days didn't require much planning. I just got up and went "ugh, what thing do I have to drag myself to today?" and then spent the rest of my time doing more or less nothing.

Now that I am properly medicated, I have a lot more energy and a lot more things I want to do, but I do not have much capacity for focusing that energy on those things. So while on the outside I still appear to be dragging myself to necessary activities and spending the rest of my time refreshing Facebook, on the inside my brain is running around like an understimulated dachshund going "I want to paint abstract watercolors and study calculus and bake banana nut bread and do chin-ups and learn how to skateboard and play seven musical instruments but WHAT DO I DO FIRST OH GOD?!"

So, making lists and schedules and things is extremely helpful to me. I enjoy making these. I do not enjoy following them, because what happens is on Thursday I will make a list of things I want to do on Friday, and then it will be Friday and I will become engrossed in an entirely unrelated thing that is suddenly 1000x more interesting than the things I thought were interesting on Thursday. Then I will be sad because I didn't have time to do the things I wanted to do on Thursday. I am bad at this. It is also worth noting that I have opened a new tab to look at Facebook approximately a dozen times during the course of writing this post, even though I am not expecting any messages or comments or anything in particular right now. Um.

I think the point I was *trying* to work myself around to is that, since my life is not currently well-structured in terms of being involved in activities and such, and since my brain is currently in LEARN ALL THE THINGS mode, I'm trying to put together some kind of schedule based on things like Khan Academy and MIT Open Courseware and such. Except I haven't even picked what kind of things I want to study. I just want to be doing stuff.

I do not think this post ever actually made a point. Well done me! \o/

Facts!

Because I'm bored enough these days, here are some fun facts about me:

1. I can talk to squirrels. I make a little clicking noise and they will run right up to me and climb right up my leg. (The LaPorte/Sylvestres and Michael have seen me do this so I have witnesses!) I don't know what I'm saying in squirrel-speak that is so compelling. I hope it is not sexual.

2. The Boston Common & public garden is basically my favorite place on Earth. When I lived in Dorchester I used to stop there nearly every day on my way to work. I would basically live there if Boston ever had temperate weather for more than five minutes at a time.

3. I have enough autistic tendencies to really like the idea of routines and order, but enough ADD to hate actually following them. So I tend to obsessively make lists and schedules, follow them for about a day and a half, then throw them away.

4. I love swings more than anything in the whole world. If I owned a swingset I would never do anything else. (I do live around the corner from a park that has swings sized perfectly for a small adult, but I don't go there often because I don't want to be that creepy adult who is always hanging around the park by himself.)

5. I love slow, pretty, new-agey music like Loreena McKennitt, Secret Garden, Helen Jane Long, and George Winston. The older I get the more I listen to stuff like this instead of rock and pop music. I think I went directly from being 15 to being 75.

6. Even though I don't feel good about the way it's been appropriated by white Western middle class culture, I love doing yoga.

7. Growing up, I hated math and thought it was the cruelest form of medieval torture. Now I find it oddly therapeutic. There are no feelings involved, nothing to get upset about or be triggered by, and it takes all my concentration. Sometimes it's the only way to clear my mind.

8. When I was a little kid, I had an imaginary twin brother named Bobby. He was basically exactly like me and did everything I did, except he was a boy. Make of that what you will.

9. I basically think adults and adult culture suck. I'm pretty much an overgrown kid and most of my friends tend to be overgrown kids, or actual kids, or parents who are really devoted to their kids. I want to devote my life to making the world better for kids but I haven't figured out in what capacity I can do that and also earn a good enough wage to support my own family.

10. I've always wanted a guinea pig but I will never own one because I cannot tolerate that wheet wheet noise they make.

I Am A Boy

I feel really good this morning. I finally realized I am a boy.

But Elisha, you have been living as a boy for months.

I have been, but I got to that point from the outside in. I started dressing like a boy and using male pronouns, and decided that felt good, so I was like "huh, guess I'm a boy then." But I was apprehensive about it, always afraid that if I looked deep inside I'd realize I was actually a woman and I was just fooling everybody and I was going to look like an asshole later on.

Today I am a boy from the inside out.

Let me explain what I mean. This morning I was looking at a friend's pictures from "before", from the days when we were both living as girls. (We started transitioning at about the same time.) I just ended up there because of that thing Facebook does where it's like "hey look at these old pictures of your friend that they probably forgot are there!" And then I looked at his boy pictures, and was kind of like "ahh, that's better, that's my friend" even though I knew him as a girl for longer than I've known him as a boy. And I realized it was because he has become himself.

I then went looking through my own pictures and quickly realized I have not become myself yet.

Cue angst, etc. Long story short I end up on my old MySpace, reading through blogs from times when I felt more like a whole person. Last night one of my best friends made a comment that she just wants her friend back, like I used to be (this was a comment about the state of my mental health, not my gender!) and it made me so sad I had to go back and figure out what I used to have, emotionally, that I don't have anymore. Even if that meant looking at the days when I was identifying as a woman, even if it meant having to accept that I might still be a woman deep down.

So after skimming about three years' worth of blogs I realized that I was not reading a woman's blog. Regardless of how I may or may not have chosen to dress during that time in my life, I was not a woman. In fact, the only clue to my gender at all in three years' worth of posts was a "random fact" stating that "I was never into ponies as a child, I failed the girl test I guess." Ha.

And, I don't really know what it was in those posts that made me realize it, but I realized deep down I have always been a boy. But my upbringing caused me to bury that more deeply than maybe even most other trans guys do, because I wasn't just taught that I should be feminine; I was taught that masculinity was something to fear, something associated with mean, scary, stupid people who treat women like dirt. My only good masculine role model was my grandfather, who was my favorite person in the entire world, but he died when I was eight.

Because of my upbringing, I learned to fear the boy inside me. I knew I had a boy inside me when I was very little, but I stuffed him down. But now I know that even when I played Barbies and took ballet lessons, I was a boy.

And when I threw a tantrum in the middle of Kmart because my aunt was forcing me to buy a bra, I was a boy.

And when I played chess with my grandpa, I was a boy.

And when I was trying to become a teacher and I dressed like a woman, but all the little boys instinctively came to me with their booger jokes, I was a boy.

And when I tried to be a beautiful woman for my ex, all the while wishing we could just be buddies and ride four-wheelers together, I was a boy. And when he struggled with fears that he was gay and I was a lesbian, I was a boy.

And today I am a boy. Today I have realized that for all my joking around about being a "fag" and for all my going on about how I can be FTM and still wear nail polish, I'm really not very femme at all. I feel most myself when I'm just wearing black t-shirts and playing video games. Not that I'm gonna be all "oh that's a feminine thing, I can't do that", because fuck that shit. But I need to tell the little boy who's been hiding away inside me since I was five years old that it's okay to come out now. And I need to give him a chance to play in the mud and learn how to use tools and all the stuff I never did as a kid. Forget all my training in womanhood and just be what I am.

And then I can finally become myself.

A year and a week

I poked through some old Facebook messages and discovered that the first time I told anyone I was questioning my gender was just about one year ago as of last week. The moment *I* realized it was just a day or two before that, so my best guess is that my "anniversary" is June 8th or 9th. I don't want to recap all the stuff that's changed since then, because I already did that on my Tumblr which is a bit more private. But I do want to recap the stuff that's happened this past week alone, because that's a lot all by itself.

Thursday I started gender therapy (as in, "sit on that couch and spill your guts" therapy - a trans kid on Tumblr thought I meant hormones) and then went and met with my minister to come out to her. Not that I was not out at church, per se, but I'd also never actually said to anyone that I'm trans or that I use male pronouns. So anyway, both those things went well and I felt really good about myself after.

Friday I baked rainbow cupcakes, and I got my first real masculine haircut (where "real" is defined as "one I didn't do myself in the bathroom with an electric clipper"). I was nervous about asking for a male haircut, but it went absolutely fine. I just went in and when they asked me how I want my hair cut I said "A little more masculine, but not cut too close" and the woman was just like "Okay so we'll trim this part here and then do this and this." Didn't flinch at all. And - okay, this will confuse everyone except Michael and Kyle, but I promise this matters - she cut my sideburns straight across, so I know I was not being treated like a woman. This is good.

Saturday I went to Pride service at church, and then marched with MTPC in the Boston Pride parade! I would like to say I marched proudly, but mostly I marched wetly and coldly because it was pouring and I didn't bring an umbrella, and nervously because a certain someone was late and missed the parade so I had to be all WOO LOOK I'M TRANS all by myself, and crankily because I had to pee so bad I ended up having to step out of the parade and go use a porta-potty in the park. So, I didn't exactly march proudly. But I marched, and that's what counts.

Sunday I went to a regular church service and for whatever reason, midway through the service I realized I want my middle name to be Aster. That's a big thing because not knowing my middle name was my biggest obstacle to pursuing a legal change. Now it's just a matter of fees and paperwork.

Monday I made the actual decision to go ahead and be Elisha at work so I can pursue the legal change, but I didn't get to bring it up that day because people were fighting and things were generally chaotic.

Tuesday I had another therapy session in which I came to some decisions about what changes I want to make long-term, including eventually coming out at work. I then went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of foods which are rich in zinc and B-vitamins, which ostensibly help raise testosterone levels, although frankly I know plenty of women whose diets are probably rich in those things and so far as I know none of them has grown a beard yet. Still, I figure it can't hurt, especially since I got foods which have a good amount of protein and I'm trying to do some strength-training*.

Also on Tuesday, I finally changed my name at work! I kind of did it as I was leaving, so it was awkward - my 14-year-old laughed at me, which he later explained was because "something weird was happening" and he didn't know how to react. But all was fine, and no one suspected it had anything to do with gender.

Wednesday (today) was my first day actually being Elisha at work. It was a bit awkward because one of the kids kept calling me "Alicia" and my poor 10-year-old kept trying to learn how to spell my new name but kept switching to my old name out of habit. Like, she'd ask how to spell Elisha and I'd help her type "El" and then her fingers would automatically go to other letters that are in my birth name, which I would probably find fascinating from a neurocognitive perspective if it weren't my kid and my name.

Tomorrow I'm going to tell my 14yo that it's okay to call me Elijah if that helps him remember not to call me Alicia. He called me like every possible variant today and will likely do so tomorrow, so if he tries Elijah I plan to mention that a lot of people say my name that way and I don't mind it. I'm not ready to come out yet, but I totally don't mind them knowing I'm okay being called a masculine name.

So! That's a lot of changes in a week, eh? I think I angsted over my identity for a long time and now I've hit a point where a lot of things are coming together all at once. It feels good.


*The strength-training, I want to add, is partly for +3 to manliness stat, but also largely an effort to continue being able to lift a rapidly-growing preteen at work. Strength-training is supposed to help raise testosterone, especially in conjunction with the zinc and protein, but again I know plenty of women who are pretty ripped, so this is questionable. I raise my eyebrow at it in a Spock-like manner, but I figure it's worth doing anyway. Muscles, like B12, are good whether they put more hair on your chest or not. (The third component of "natural transition" is supposed to be supplements, but fuck that, I'm not taking advice on supplements from people who think Hydroxycut is a good idea.)

Sweetness

I go to a wonderful queer-friendly and trans-friendly church, which today was all decked out in rainbows for the annual Pride service. Let me tell you, if I ever needed proof that I am in the right church (and the right city), nothing could possibly top watching middle-aged gay men dancing to Lady Gaga between the pews.

Another reason I know I'm in the right church is that a few days ago I went to speak to my minister about being trans, and she was not only accepting, but completely unfazed. I told her I was nervous about transitioning at church (I started coming in December, when I was still "she" and only just barely Elisha) and she was like "Oh, people do that all the time here." Most of what she said was on the mark and made me feel lots better, but a couple things were off. One thing that's stuck in my head was this comment:

"I try to tell my trans guys to hang onto some of their God-given sweetness when they go on hormones."

That sentence obviously didn't sit right with me, but as I've thought more about it, I'm glad she said it, because it made me realize something about myself. See, when I was living as a girl, I was NOT sweet at all. I actively tried not to be, because I recognized that sweetness was part of the cluster of cultural expectations that are thrust on girls. "Be pretty, and be delicate, and be demure, and be graceful, and be sweet. Don't talk too much, and when you do talk, for God's sake don't actually say anything." And from a very young age - perhaps the first time someone told me little girls are supposed to like pink, perhaps even before that - I rebelled against that. Fuck being pretty, I want to play in the dirt. Fuck being demure, I want to yell. Fuck being delicate and graceful, I am not your goddamn porcelain doll. And fuck being sweet, I have things to say and if you piss me off you are going to know about it."

When I was living as a girl, being sweet made me dysphoric. I didn't know what dysphoria was at the time, but I did know it made me feel squicky and skin-crawly and it made me want to kick and scream. The idea of being anybody's sweet little girl made my stomach turn. And the more people admonished me to "be sweet" (and growing up in the South, you hear that a lot), the more I wanted to act like an obnoxious little ass. If I was an obnoxious little ass, I won. If I was sweet, the people who thought I should be having tea parties in some fucking English rose garden had their way, and that meant I lost. So I spent a lot of time being an obnoxious little ass, and stepping all over other people because that was the only way I felt I could find a place to stand.

It is only in the last few months, as I've begun to be recognized as male by most of the people in my life, that I've felt free to be anything close to "sweet". Being a sweet girl might make me feel like clawing my skin off, but I love the idea of being a sweet boy. Maybe that's the rebel in me, feeling more comfortable smashing gender stereotypes than conforming to them. Maybe that's the part of me that made me spend my teen years fascinated by guys like Freddie Mercury and Christopher Lowell, the part that never wanted to be a pretty girl but always wanted to be a fabulous drag queen. But isn't that my gender identity? Isn't that a more important fundamental part of who I am than whether or not I yearn for a dick? That whole "born in the wrong body" narrative leaves so much stuff out. If being a boy makes me want to be sweet and being a girl makes me want to fight my way through life with fists of barbed wire, isn't that reason enough to be a boy?

And if I decide to go on testosterone, so that everyone will know I'm a boy and I don't have to try so hard, and that makes me feel even freer to let the light inside me shine out, I will be able to let more of my God-given sweetness out into the world. Maybe I won't feel as much like talking about my feelings or hugging strangers or whatever, because that does happen to some guys. But it's even more likely that I won't feel the need to prove I'm male by standing in the corner with my arms folded when I really want to go dance to Lady Gaga between the pews.

It's only just now, as a boy, that I'm starting to learn the value of sweetness. One of the ways I'm healing my broken parts is by focusing on the sweetness in my life and how I can bring more. I used to focus on love, but we use the word "love" for so many emotions that it's hard to really know what another person means by it. Love can heal, but love can also drive you mad, or make you think other people belong to you. Love can make you want to abuse other people or take abuse from them. Sweetness is what it is. Genuine sweetness - not the syrupy manipulative kind - is free to give and free to receive. It doesn't ask you to give yourself away. You can give it to a stranger, even anonymously. You can be sweet just inside your own head, and that alone will make your life better and everyone else's around you, too.

But you can't do that when you're concentrating all the time on trying to prove you're not going to be what other people want you to be. You can't be sweet when it means someone else wins and you lose. And sweetness doesn't come from estrogen. It comes from the light inside your soul that shines out through the holes in your armor. And the less armor you have to wear, the more light you can show. If taking testosterone means a guy can trade in his heavy suit of armor for flexible chainmail, then testosterone will allow that guy to shine out much more of his light. And that's really what it comes down to: Give people the freedom and the tools to be comfortable being who they are, and sweetness and light will follow.

I missed it

I see my friends the LaPorte/Sylvestres every few months or so. I have never mentioned this to them, but somehow every time we get together I get a sign from my mom. I'm not a particularly religious person, in the sense that I tend to be fairly agnostic in terms of what happens when people die. But I know a sign from Mama when I see it.

At the 5th anniversary party for the Harry Potter Alliance, which happened to be on the one-year-anniversary of my mom's death, there was the memorial for Esther Earl and then Harry and the Potters sang "You Were the Best We Ever Had" for Esther, and I could absolutely feel my mother there.

At the Harry Potter Yule Ball, the background music on the PA between bands was, inexplicably, my mother's favorite Elvis Christmas album, including "Peace in the Valley", which was her funeral song. So I know she was there, too.

(Lest you get the impression that maybe my mom has just chosen to spend the afterlife following wizard rock shows around, I should stop here and point out that she was not remotely interested in Harry Potter. I tried to get her into it, but made little progress. No, she definitely comes to see me when this one family is around. I don't know why.)

So I was looking forward to seeing them this weekend, because they are lovely people, but also because I just knew my mom would be around. So what sign did she leave me this time?

I don't know. I forgot to look.

I forgot to look. I didn't even remember until this morning. I was too caught up inside my own head, worrying about other shit. Lots and lots of things happened that day, and I could comb back over my memory and try to find the sign, but it's too late now. I have to feel it when it's actually happening.

I'm sorry, Mama. I know you were there. I'll have my priorities in line next time.

Incidentally, I did on one occasion get a clear sign from my mom when the LaPortes were not around. It was a few weeks ago, while I was folding laundry at work and listening to the 60s music channel on the TV. It started playing "Baby Don't Go" and I was like "Man, I haven't heard this song since I was a kid!" I remembered my mom liking it a lot... and when I looked up and saw that it was by Sonny and Cher, a bunch of stuff hit me at once. How much my mom loved Cher and wanted to be like her, ever since childhood, and how I knew when I came out as a lesbian my mom took comfort from knowing Cher had a daughter like me.

Mama didn't live long enough to know that Cher's daughter and her own daughter are both sons. I can't explain it, but right at that moment I knew my mom was telling me it was okay. Cher has a son like me and it's okay.

And to anyone who thinks I'm silly looking for signs from my mom through wizard rock concerts and Cher songs? All I can say is, you obviously never met Mama. That is exactly how she was.

To Me, At 13

I'm trying to learn how to like myself, and I think the first step in liking who I am now is to go back to the kid I used to be and tell her (because I was "her", then, although a lot of trans guys were "him" even wrapped up in that pink blanket in the hospital) how fucking awesome she was, even when no adults in her life were willing to do that. Thirteen was an age where I felt like nobody saw me for who I was, so I figured that was a good place to start.

Dear Self,

I just wanted to tell you what a cool kid I think you are. Yes, the real you, the one you think exists only in your room. I think you are really clever and beautiful and wise. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to explore religions besides Christianity. I'd love to take you to the big library in the city and get you lots of books on Wicca and Judaism and Buddhism and all the other religions you think are interesting.

I love your sense of style. I think you are so creative with your makeup and your clothes and the way you decorate your room. Don't give in to the pressure to do "pretty" makeup like the other girls! Anybody can put on blush and pink lipstick. Not everybody can do what you do. I am amazed at the ideas you come up with - red eyeshadow, silver nails, mixing Vaseline and eyeshadow to make blue lipstick? So cool. There are people whose job it is to do cool makeup like that, you know.

I also like your taste in music. I have noticed you are really drawn to music by guys who seem like they're both male and female, like Marilyn Manson and Boy George and Michael Jackson and Pete Burns. Do you ever feel like you wanna be a guy like that? Because that's okay. Those specific guys haven't lived their lives in the best ways, but I think you know that. I know Marilyn Manson appeals to you because he's intelligent and he's honest enough to say that the stuff adults tell you is bullshit. I know Boy George makes you want to stay far the hell away from heroin, not try it to be like him. It's about the gender stuff and the fashion and fucking the rules. Can I help you find more of that stuff? You shouldn't have to hide it away in your room! Come over and let's watch Rocky Horror and dress up like drag queens. I think you loving that stuff is so cool.

You make up the most brilliant, complex stories. I know you never tell them to anyone because they're around themes of mental illness and stuff like that, but I think stories like that are interesting. Have you ever read any Edgar Allen Poe or HP Lovecraft? Let's go to the library and pick out some of that, and maybe The Shining and A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and maybe a biography of Vincent van Gogh. Some of the best literature and art in history centers around the dark side of human nature. I'd be happy to listen to you tell your stories anytime.

It's okay that you think about sex, and it's okay that you have a crush on your friend Heather. It's okay for a girl to like another girl and it's okay for a genderscrewed glam boy-girl with a vagina to like a girl. It's also okay if you're confused about the difference between a super good best friend and someone you want to go out with. Your body has a *lot of hormones* in it right now and I can pretty much guarantee everyone you know at school is confused too, even if they seem sure of themselves all the time.

If I could give you any advice, it would be to remember not to let go of who you used to be. This goth stuff is fun but I know you still love kittens and going to the beach and playing the piano and even sometimes playing with toys. That's okay! Everything you love to do is something you should do. Don't cut off any part of yourself to fit into somebody else's box.

I wish you had people in your life who you could tell all your deep thoughts to, because they're really brilliant and wise, especially for someone so young. I wish I could pull you out of school so you could spend all your time doing makeup and listening to music and reading about stuff you love. I wish I could take you to gaming stores and thrift shops and buy you a computer and take you to meet practicing Wiccans and professional makeup artists and take you to a record store. There is so much out there that you'd love. I want you to believe in who you are right now, because you are so cool, no matter what anybody says.