A Giant Lie Called Gender

The concept of gender, in its entirety, has been on my mind a lot lately.

This probably isn't surprising, given the entire name of this blog and the nature of my life; but in all honesty, the notion wasn't quite as centered in my awareness and thoughts for a while. I needed to work on other things.

Now, though... now it's back. And it's time to explore some more.

The following paragraph mentions various forms of violence and child abuse as I experienced them; please feel free to skip it if needed.

I've had a contentious experience of the construct of gender for as long as I can remember. As a young child, gender was the justification for much of the physical and emotional violence done to me. Most of this violence came from relatives and caregivers, in the form of gendered assumptions, based entirely on (in essence) the shape of my crotch. The superficial reasoning was usually expressed in some fashion resembling "that's not OK for a boy to do." The response for years was usually a severe beating, or later on, verbal abuse and threats of violence to accent the hateful words. I spent several of my formative years having difficulty walking without pain because of the savage bodily harm that was done to me for trying to be myself.

Needless to say, I learned fairly quickly not to be myself. At some point I buried all awareness of my reality for safekeeping and began to slowly believe the lies I was being told.

Lies about myself, about what was acceptable to do, about who was acceptable in general. Lies about people and what we "can" or "can't" do.

I was lied to, as a child, about a heart-breakingly long list of things - but the one that still stings the worst was the lie of gender.

I'm not sure I have a conclusion to any of this that I can express, not just yet. What I do have is a swirling mass of unorganized thoughts and ideas, all orbiting this central conceptual construct, all telling me that the way forward for my life as a person is to push even harder to reject that lie and find the truth hiding underneath it.

I've mused before about feminism and its inherent expansion of what "gender" is considered to entail, but lately, I've found a bit more clarity around my feelings on the subject. I think I've tended to default to self-describing as "girl" (notably not "woman" but we'll get back to that) because, in the current landscape of feminist and queer liberation efforts, it feels much less restrictive as a starting point. Toxic masculinity is still such a rampant reality that starting from "male but X/Y/Z" seems to create a massively long list of caveats, exceptions, and ideas that I can only imagine drawing weird looks from people if I tried to explain myself that way.

By contrast... girl musician? Girl with a career as an engineer? Girl who likes using power tools? Girl who likes driving fast cars? None of those are problematic, in the eyes of society at large, and are unlikely to draw the same amount of confusion.

Digging further, though, the only reason for picking a starting point in the first place is the deeply entrenched misconception that anatomical sex has a meaningful correspondence with personality traits.

I find myself wondering... if nobody thought about people in terms of physical bodies, how would I explain who I am?

Musician... career engineer... gleeful power-tool-user and fast-car-driver... deeply contemplative, concerned about others, invested in continual growth and exploration and self-improvement...

None of these things need "gender." To a large extent, I think we'd live in a much better world if we all rejected the notion that "gender" even exists in a way that's meaningfully relevant to those kinds of facts about specific people.

I understand that there is a value in the idea, to many people - a sort of shorthand way to express identity without diving into long-winded details. I'm sensitive to the sort of comforting, security-blanket-like fuzziness that accompanies gender-certainty for people who have it. I've personally felt tinges of that over the past few years, and even leaned into it occasionally to help guide my own self-exploration.

I also wonder, deep down, if gender isn't just another one of those things that we as humans cling to desperately and invest in deeply despite the fact that it's doing nothing but hurting us.

All I know for sure is my own experience, and that trying to generalize from that into anyone else's world is a mistake at best.

So returning exclusively to my own experiences... I've played with the concept of "non-binary" for quite some time now (the very first post of this blog mentions the term) but never really felt it fitting, for reasons that until recently I couldn't quite articulate. I think, at this point, my quibble is not with the idea denoted by the term but rather with the etymological construction of the term itself - after all, despite many protestations to the contrary by various groups of people, words do matter. A lot.

I'm reminded of a quintessential conundrum from within the lesbian community (another place I feel at home) - the desire to define ourselves in a way that is not simply in reference to men somehow. This is heightened by the additional layer of "Sapphic" attractions which aren't exclusively aimed at "women" either, but rather a sort of vague cloud of possibility-space within which one occasionally finds various amplitudes of femininity.

I don't want to express myself in reference to binary gender, so "non-binary" inherently feels unfitting. Hell, I don't want to express myself in reference to the lie of gender at all.

Where do we go from here? I have no idea. I have no words. I have no clarity for how to establish a commonly-useful expression that captures the essence of what I'm struggling to convey. But I'll keep looking. There's plenty of us on the hunt, all over the world. We'll find something.

For now? I feel like, if someone were to ask me what my gender identity is, I really only have one remotely satisfying answer:

"I don't interact with gender. I'm magic incarnate."

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-10-09, with minor redactions for privacy.]

Need to just get some stuff out and try and fight my obsession with sounding fancy. Been working through a list of one-on-one conversations with coworkers who I think deserve to know first-hand before I come out completely via company-wide email notice. A few of us were planning on playing some board games last night and hanging out. I am out to everyone in that circle. Two people couldn’t make it which was a real blow because I was really looking forward to seeing them (meeting one of them, really).

I chose to go to the thing anyways, and honestly it went really well. I guess. Everyone was super chill and respectful and handled everything really well. Even the one I forgot to actually tell my name beforehand. Fuck.

It was right after work so total boy-mode and on the heels of a rough day. I think. I don’t remember much of yesterday. Going to work is getting scary hard. It’s like I just start losing sight of myself under the constant bombardment of people interacting with someone else while thinking it’s me. I can’t even blame anyone because they cannot fucking know.

Of course some people do know by now which makes it incredibly fucking frustrating on its own. Simple meeting, three of us. Everyone knows about me but the other two don’t know if anyone else knows (including each other). I can’t just say “ok it’s fine everyone’s on the same page” because there’s no “plausible” explanation for why this individual would know already when so many others don’t; I can’t talk about the real reason in there because it risks outing other people.

So we all just sit in the room and try to talk about work and I’m just drowning in panic and awkwardness about how much this sucks and I feel like shit for putting people around me through it and FUCK.

So I leave work feeling like shit all the time. More and more often I leave early. Like, super not-ok fucking early. It’s good I don’t have a timecard. I don’t want to know how little I’m actually doing there.

Probably going to burn every scrap of time off I can gather together and just get the fuck away for a bit. Need to disengage from some responsibilities. But I keep putting off that conversation because I want to do it responsibly but it’s so fucking draining and painful so I never really feel “up to” it. Which of course just means that things get worse and languish and I feel less ready than ever and it’s just going to end up being a fucking garbage fire.

I think my plan is to file for time off, write a short list of things that “someone else” needs to take care of while I’m out, apologize for the whole fucking shit show but I can’t say more right now, and just fucking unplug.

I feel kind of sick because it’s the same sort of backed-into-a-corner shit that [reminds me of so much other trauma]. I guess maybe I’m glad I can see the parallels and I know that just removing that huge mass of stress is absolutely the right thing to do. Everything is so fucked.

I keep seeing these indicators, like warning signs that I’m in a shitty spot. Darker or angrier moods a lot. Getting shitty and derisive about people. Getting shitty and derisive about myself. Intrusive thoughts. The first early flickers of I Really Do Not Want To Have Heard That Go Through My Head.

I was telling myself it was alright, that I was paying attention and if it got to be a genuine concern I’d do something about it. It’s a genuine concern now.

I have a prescription to pick up for an anxiolytic which I think will be really useful. I also have my psych on alert in case shit gets messy and I need to do something more significant treatment-wise. Started thinking of this in terms of constructing some reassurance and peace of mind for myself, instead of just trying to find it pre-existing someplace. Meds are a good ingredient in that.

I also need people. I don’t have many friends, really. Almost exclusively cis. I know other trans people and I know they are absolutely willing to help. But I fucking suck at reaching out and always manage to choose to just hurt alone. Trying really hard to get a foothold on that. Actually said something about it to a few people earlier. Someone suggested I need to have others actively poke. And that’s really what I want, what I fucking need, because I’m just so fucked up about saying anything. So of course I left a totally useless response and the conversation died there and I’m just scared and pissed at myself because maybe I just blew a really good chance to change this shit.

I just get hopelessly stuck in this shitty mental scene, where I’m watching everything get fucked up and I hate it and I’m in hell and then for no apparent reason some people decide to surprise me out of the blue and show up and just do all kinds of affirming and supportive and compassionate stuff that I can’t even think of because I’m way past the point where I have any goddamn clue how to help myself. And I can tell how fucking good that would feel and how much I want it and need it. And I know that it can’t happen as long as literally nobody knows that I’m in this place and that’s what I need. But I can’t fucking ask.

It doesn’t feel out of control. Not yet. I’ve been doing ok on the persistent self-assurance that I have fire alarms to pull if it does get out of control. I know I will use them. I know I still have a really good shot at stabilizing this and getting through it without a bunch of fucking drama. But I can’t pretend like it isn’t fucking scary. It’s hard to control, for now, but it very well could just break loose and I need to have safety in place if it does.

I left early last night and felt really fucked up. Everything went well from one angle but it felt so dead. I was dissociating really badly by the end of the night. It’s like all of the classic moment-of-truth second guessing shit that everyone talks about. I know it happens, I knew it was a possibility, and it still just totally hit me like a truck.

Is this me? Is this right? It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like anything. Nothing makes sense. My name doesn’t register quite correctly yet, but being called the other shit is still intensely distressing. Pronouns are fucking weird no matter what. I can’t even find clothes that aren’t somehow a constant and torturous reminder that everything is fucking wrong.

I can still get the chills, from thinking about the day when this is over and Amelia is really actualized. I still fight every way I can find to protect the hope that started to seem possible lately. I still want to help people with this and just fucking make it less hell in any way at all. I still have to remind myself to put my own oxygen mask on first.

I know it’s ok. I know it’s alright and I know I am not going to let go.

It’s just so fucking hard.

 

 

Rested for a few hours or so, hard to remember times but anyways. I feel a lot better now. It’s still new and fascinating to me that I can experience any kind of non-zero emotional state and then come back to calm afterwards. I’d become so accustomed to “feelings mean shit’s going to blow up” in life that it really feels genuinely surprising when I can, you know… cope.

I spent so long using sleep, medications, substance abuse, and various blends of all three (and more) to “cope.” So little time feeling able to trust myself or care about myself or even want to care or trust at all. It makes such an incredible difference to approach difficulty from a position of what I can only describe as growing inner strength.

I want to start tracking some of the coping mechanisms I’ve been learning these days. Some are tiny little things – gently correcting my internal monologue on pronouns, names, gendered language, stereotypes, and all kinds of stuff; being gentle with my internal monologue at all; gestures or flourishes or barely perceptible mannerisms; the insistent but playful way I lilt through reciting my full name to myself and inevitably giggle a bit afterwards.

And there are big things. Like the fact that I am just choosing to reinforce the tiny things without exception as much as I can. If it’s actually hurting in any way, that’s ok – I don’t feel obligated to force it and I don’t dwell on guilt or anything about it. But other than that, I try to just do all of the things I can. It doesn’t matter if they are independently huge game-changers, or even if they cumulatively move the needle at all – because ultimately the dedication behind that consistent reinforcement is immensely valuable on its own. So I flow with the little proto-song of my name, and I laugh a tiny bit after, and I don’t question it or resist it. It’s a growing bond of trust. I see me, and I see the loveliness and value and beauty and I know that I am not going to let go.

Past a point, I’m just relinquishing the fixation on explaining and justifying everything in minute and irrefutable specificity, both to myself and to everyone else. Sometimes things are just good and that’s the word I need; constructing a thesis around “why” is not useful, nor is trying to cram a ton of nuance into word selection. Sometimes I’m just going to do things because I want to.

There are so many fascinating pieces of my mental landscape that have begun connecting in amazing ways lately. The Zen koan fixation from years ago that turned into a pathological need to transmit incredibly large volumes of information and understanding in just a tiny cryptic phrase. The realization that koans, by design, omit the actual interesting part of the story – the entire history of the characters leading up until the moment of enlightenment. A good koan is a fun distillation of that inflection point, but it loses the power – the area under the curve. Enlightenment isn’t a moment, it’s a journey.

Treating conversations like they should be resolved with a single silly act or utterance is a disservice to everyone. Trying to condense massive amounts of context into a tiny space, trying to predict and out-maneuver every single possible point of confusion, or contention, or ambiguity in advance – this places the emphasis on ending the conversation. Maybe it’s better to place emphasis on furthering the conversation.

Sharing experience as though it were expected to directly be received by the listener and acknowledged as immediately actionable wisdom. Approaching relationships with the mentality of trying to anticipate everything and control for “best results.” Keeping secrets because maybe if I think about it alone for long enough I can sort it out before it hurts us.

Art – the relationship between creator, creation, and appreciator. Making music. Improvisation – musically, comedically, dramatically, tactically, in life. Tao. Harmony, balance, interplay, tension. Seeing new ideas not as something to wholesale adopt and pursue with relentless fervor until something better comes along – but as ways to illuminate more of a whole that we do not already see. Projection. Shadowplay. Looking through a keyhole.

Elegance, not as a measure of information-theoretic compression, but as an intuitive emotional concept of how much can be evoked. It’s not merely about cramming a ton of semantic interestingness into a small space, it’s about inspiration. The muse isn’t a database from which brilliance is withdrawn, she’s a spark, a way to ignite creation.

All of these things happen best as aspects of a larger phenomenon. They are not isolated or atomic. Loveliness is intrinsically relational by nature. There is always a sense of intricate and significant movement between multiple subsets of the larger whole. Not purely “good”, not purely “bad” – a swirl of differently colored paints. Shake it too much and all of the beauty disappears. Nothing is simple. Stop trying to force things to be simple.

What if a person isn’t an “individual” in an etymologically literalistic way? Plurality. Fractional dimension of experience. Identity and stability are born of learning to value the swirl of our own selves. “Integration” is a repugnant notion in some circles for good reason; it implies a biased preconception that simplistic, reductionist stubbornness is somehow superior to learning to thrive in the complexity.

Fractals. Endlessly infinite loveliness evoked from an astonishingly compact seed. You don’t paint a fractal onto a canvas, much like you cannot impart virtue to an auditorium or a team. A lasting garden isn’t delivered prepackaged via truck. You create a space and an infrastructure in which things can bloom. And then you tend.

I don’t see life as a thing to plan. Planning is notoriously useless, although even the most poignant critics of plans recognize the intrinsic but elusive utility in the process of trying to create them. Plans go wrong. Eventually something will happen that is different enough that it shatters the illusion of control. In a sense, the more “successful” we feel our plan has been until that point, the harder it is to recover.

So many have wrestled with this. Just in the tiny slice of human experience that I’m most familiar with, it’s generated a huge and decades-long saga of drama about how to make computer software. “Agility” has come and gone as a useful notion. Anti-fragility had an interesting shine but doesn’t seem to have stuck. Rapid iteration. Continuous deployment. Glimpses of a bigger idea through a keyhole.

The flow-chart is a troublesome tool for trying to handle life. We can’t make one big enough to cover all the possible cases. Can we get rid of it altogether? Don’t teach students knowledge, stoke their curiosity and teach them how to learn. Re-derive theorems from axiomatic first principles. Make an infrastructure and let things bloom. Don’t make decisions with a flow chart, just remember what’s important, and how to adjust your estimation of importance.

Life is beyond unpredictable. Control is a toxic illusion. Loveliness is relational; it’s a product of an active exchange between separate (but perhaps not strictly distinct) parts. The universe isn’t a clockwork.

It’s a dance.

All of this vastly disparate constellation of thoughts, but all hinting at an amazing shape that doesn’t fit into view. Glimpses through a keyhole. Seeing higher spatial dimensions through the shadows they cast down into 3D. It’s the kind of thing that would have frustrated a younger me. There’s so much there but I can’t see it!

The glorious thing is that the elusive grander image doesn’t feel like a taunt anymore. “Seeing the image” isn’t some kind of goal-state to race towards. The power is in the process of seeing the glimpses. Catch new ideas. Adapt (not adopt) what is suitable and be informed by the remainder. Synthesis. Enjoy the journey. Area under the curve.

Full circle, or so it may seem at first; but this isn’t a completion or a futile closed loop. It’s a tonic note, a touchstone of familiarity to remind us of where things are centered. Not an orbit – a strange attractor. Meta-stability. Traversing an infinity of states without losing sight of what’s important.

Non-writing-focused cultures that rely on spoken tradition. Telling stories isn’t a way to relay factual information, it’s a way to weave relationships. So of course there is meandering, and cyclical revisiting of ideas and characters and moments. Stories aren’t for communicating data points, they’re for communicating what’s important, and how we relate within that space.

All this musing and no punchline? I don’t have the koan. I just have all the parts that nobody bothered to write down. I can’t zap enlightenment into anyone with a cheeky rap on the knuckles. All I can do is build a space for things to bloom, and then tend. You will see different glimpses through the keyhole than I have, even if I show you where to stand. And that is lovely.

Enlightenment might be down the road, who knows, that’s predicting the future. Who wants to predict the future? You’re always wrong and there’s no fun in it anyways. If you want that you have to talk to the woman with the crystal balls. I just have the regular balls.

Fuck living in the future. All you really need is to be here. And then dance.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Editorial note: published November 23, 2019, with minor edits from the original draft for purposes of privacy, and in recognition of the fact that many of the mental-health facets of this tale were, in hindsight, wildly inaccurate misdiagnoses.

Watched a short film earlier about a soldier returning home to meet his daughter for the first time - his AMAB daughter. Incredibly powerful, to the point that I don’t think I can really talk about it much without needing to spend another hour crying again.

Poking around on the internets. Inspired to dig up some old writing of mine from the web graveyard.

I wrote this in 2007, shortly after being [mis-]diagnosed with some serious mental health problems. Very much before I even knew that trans was something I could be, and certainly before I had any idea what the dreams meant.

To the Woman Who Lives on the Edge of My Mind

We just can't go on like this, you and I.

Too many nights I lie down next to you, draw near to your warmth and softness with a happy, tired sigh.

Too many mornings I awaken with your head on my chest, the onyx rivers of your hair leaping over and between us, dancing rapids in a joyful mountain stream.

Too many days find my mind's occupations interrupted by visions of you.

Mischievous smiles.

Hot breath and tantalizing fingers grazing across my neck.

Eyes of misted emerald, glinting with the thousand facets of magical gemstone light, secret signs and mirrored glimpses into your soul... secrets which are my deepest delight to slowly unravel, as the courses of our lives are woven ever tighter.

Or should I cast my gaze instead across the gentle, elegant form, perfect specimen of that captivating feminine beauty that has the defied the explanation of so many artists and orators greater than myself?

Please, dearest one, do not misunderstand me - there is nothing of you that I find growing stale, no part of our time together that is anything less than perfect pleasure.

I do not wish to part our ways; if anything, exactly the opposite. My eyes probe for hints of your graceful movement around every corner, search every face in the crowd for the features I have come to know so well. My ears, in the quiet of the night, imagine they detect your hushed but urgent gasp and moan. Every inch of my skin craves the caress of your lips.

You know enough of my past now to understand. It doesn't come easily to me to care about anyone. There's always some excuse, some reason, some doubt, some misgiving. No matter how hard I try, though, I can't think of any reason to stop caring about you.

I live in mortal fear that something - anything - might befall you. I can only imagine that, regardless of circumstances, I would drop everything to be at your side.

I believe there is only one truly important thing for a person to do with their life, and that is to live it as fully and happily as they can.

It would be my deepest honor to stand with you as you pursue that goal for your own time on this earth.

So why, then, this letter? Why insist that things must change? Why damage what we have already done?

I'm afraid it's a matter of practicality, sweet one.

I'm afraid you'll either need to walk into my physical life, or walk out of my tormented mind.

We just can't keep on this way, you and I.

...and then it was now

There's a lot to unpack there. So many things that feel prescient, and so many things that I'm startled to look back on and realize just how far I have come in the time between then and now.

I didn't know, then, what the dreams meant. I didn't know why I kept waking up in the middle of the night in a delirium, crying and trying to find "her."

Where is she?

...who?

I don’t know... she's... the girl that’s supposed to be in my life, somehow.

There is an agonizingly beautiful symbiosis here. It plays with so many ideas that have become important to me... philosophy of mind, mathematics, the priceless but fragile wonder of complexity that we so mercilessly rush to obliterate in the quest for simple answers and final words.

Reality is a chaotic system - you don’t "control" a chaotic system. There is no hope of control. Perhaps, if you dare - and you are deemed worthy of the immensity of the challenge - you may be permitted to dance.

You were right, you know. We couldn't keep on that way. It took a while... but I stepped into your physical life. And I am so glad to feel that it has eased your tormented mind.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-09-03, with only trivial edits for privacy and typos.]

Was reminded of an old [social media] post of mine from the end of February this year. (Coincidentally, there’s probably a decent bit of other stuff in that account that would be fun to stash in here too.)

Meeting with HR yesterday went very well. My homework for the next few days is to start sketching up a plan for who I want to tell and when, culminating in a general company-wide memo. Basically the idea is that people who should get more detail and personal time to talk about things will be first, and as the audience widens outwards the level of specifics and such can taper off. So people I work with all the time can actually talk to me about what’s up, while on the other extreme, the vast majority basically get a note that says “send your emails to this address instead and don’t shit your pants when she steps out of the ladies room.”

It’s still tough to get through an entire day at work. Even with long lunches (which I suppose I’m being rather irresponsible about) and leaving a little sooner than maybe is strictly proper, I just… I can’t help but feel like the need to spend many hours a day being excruciatingly aware of my gender expression, and all the attendant dysphoria and dissonance, is really damaging me. I come home and feel like it’s so hard to hold on to me – like I’m still Amelia but somehow losing opacity and fading into some kind of indistinct blur. It’s been so disorienting that I didn’t even really connect the dots until I started writing this paragraph. I’m fighting to solidify my identity, but for “some mysterious reason” every time I burn a day lying to everyone around me (and partially to myself) I just magically start feeling like I’m losing ground. I mean, yeah, maybe I’m the dumbass, but… it’s literally hitting me so hard and so deeply that I’m having constant trouble thinking clearly at all.

I think it’s sort of like having a really strong physical need and trying to concentrate while ignoring it. Sure, you have fun playing grandmaster competitive chess, but would you like to play a match while you have to pee extremely bad the entire time?

That sounds miserable, of course. My life right now is like all of my mental capacity is reserved for just not falling apart entirely every time someone (unknowingly) calls me that deadname. I have a very cognitively demanding job and I feel like I have to be conspicuously failing at it because there’s no way I can do that job while I’m burning all my energy feeling awful and trying to hide it.

So it’s kind of like competitive chess with a full bladder. Except I can’t just go hit the restroom real quick because that actually makes me feel intensely dysphoric.

I think I fucked up the metaphor.

Which goes nicely back to the quote that prompted me down this trail in the first place!

 

Ya see, gender euphoria is like any other drug. First few hits? Amazing, maybe best times of your life.

But sooner or later… you need more. And more. Chasing the high. You start with some low grade stealthy cross dressing and the next thing you know you’re in prep for SRS. Last thing through your mind before the anesthesia takes hold is a profound and deep sense of peace – like you are exactly where you belong, and everything is alright.

Shit, I think I lost control of the metaphor somewhere. Oh well.

Monday, July 1, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-09-03, unedited.]

Working up the will to actually start getting ready for bed. I have a meeting scheduled with HR for 11AM tomorrow. Going to let them know I am transitioning and see what needs to happen next.

fuck

Saturday, June 29, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-09-03, unedited.]

Dance like no one is watching… until the day when you are ready to dance like everyone is watching.

 

I’m quibbling with myself over the date on this entry, because it’s 0115 and I haven’t really slept so maybe it’s more of a Friday entry, and Friday had some good stuff to talk about, but… bleh. Whatever.

 

Earlier tonight I gathered the courage to email HR. Super preliminary; I just privately contacted someone I trust from the department and asked to talk in person next week. But it’s a huge step and I am trying to permit myself some pride and comfort in having done it.

Things continue to inch forward on the transition path. I am maintaining my resolve to see it through, and… I’m happy about that. I’m proud of that. I find a ton of reassurance and confidence in that. Somehow, though, it is still hard to own.

Dysphoria has been a real battle this week. I’ve said that I’m not unsure of who I am anymore, and that what I am feeling is a pained reaction to the discrepancy between my certainty in myself, and the world at large. And that is true, but incomplete. There are times when the pain is overwhelming enough that it really does become hard to see me anymore.

I haven’t disappeared, and that gives me hope and encouragement to a depth that I’m not sure I can really describe. It’s true that I am learning so very, very much about how to love myself. But something I said a while ago in these pages still rings true – I don’t want to have to do this alone. I know that I can, and I swear in the most sacred and binding ways I can reach that I fucking will – if that is what I must do. I just hope I don’t have to.

 

My memory is foggy, mainly because I think I was in the middle of trying to fall asleep at the time, but frankly the circumstances are irrelevant. Earlier tonight I found more name.

I am eternally worried about absolutely everything and therefore obviously not sure yet; but the same warmth and belonging is there, and the same chills when I think of hearing it from someone else. It’s so… pretty, and poetically suited to me, and just… right.

Hi! I’m Amelia Joy.

 

Saturday, June 22, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-09-03, unedited.]

Something I’ve been enjoying a lot in the past couple of months is the feeling of freedom in how I move. It’s incredible to me… not just that certain physical motions are intensely gendered, but how utterly invisible that is to most people. I mean – they can probably spot something “wrong” but that’s probably the extent. I don’t think it’s typical for people to be low-key conscious of every muscle contraction in their body because they feel compelled to make sure it’s gendered “correctly.”

I like moving around, when I can, in a fashion that feels more natural to me. Maybe it’s feminine? Hard to tell at this point. It’s definitely not straight-guy.

The dancing is definitely the distilled, refined, pure form of this. There is something amazing about just dancing like a girl.

I thought about this a bit ago, and realized that I have wanted to move, freely, for a very long time. I remember a moment in I think 5^th grade or so. For a while I would spend time alone in one room in the house, carefully isolated away from everyone else, and just dance. I think there was probably music involved but I honestly can’t be sure.

I remember feeling so right – moving, unfettered, just expressing myself by flowing around the room. It was like a direct tap into a spring of some kind of primal, beautiful joy.

I am much less certain about why that ended. Maybe someone saw and said something, maybe not; maybe I just thought too much and got myself scared. I think I remember a rush of the shame and fear. Whatever happened, I left the experience with a very loud and clear lesson, which is that proper boys do not do “that” and I better not do it ever again if I knew what was good for me.

It still churns in my soul… that I can’t remember much of anything, that the pervasive abuse even happened in the first place that led to all that memory loss, that it’s taken so long to re-emerge, that I still have incredibly conflicted feelings about the people who hurt and abused me in the first place. It hurts to know that an ecstatic, happy little girl once got told she wasn’t allowed to dance, and she had to carry that lashing in her heart for so many years.

But now… now it is 2019. It may have taken a while for her to heal, to find the smuggled memories from so long ago and lovingly dust them off again, but they’re intact.

I still love dancing like a girl.

And for the first time in my life, I really understand why.

Friday, June 21, 2019

[Published retroactively on 2021-09-03, with only trivial edits for privacy.]

Slowly putting things into place. Skipped work today. Going to take the weekend to square away as much as I can. Setting up a definite plan of action for starting HRT. Researching name and gender marker change laws; at the moment it’s looking like I’m going to want a lawyer. Working out who I need to talk to and in what order so I can come out completely at work. Planting the first seeds for my eventual exit from [the industry I work in], into whatever lies beyond.

I didn’t expect to be 33 years old and having to learn how to get dressed all over again.

I observed today that I don’t really feel any kind of response to the idea of HRT being, essentially, a medical ritual I have to do every day for the rest of my life (effectively). I don’t even think of that as a meaningful thing, because I made peace with taking pills every day, like a fucking decade-plus ago.

I had a brief moment of excitement earlier, thinking about vocal training. I grew up speaking a tonal language – and, if I may permit myself a rare moment of utterly self-absorbed gloating, I frequently impressed native speakers. I should have phenomenal control over my voice frequency, right? Oh, yeah, dumbass, you haven’t spoken that language at all since before you finished puberty. What a weird and oddly exciting little scene in my head… how totally unusual is all this?

I’ve unquestionably crossed some kind of threshold. My dysphoric thoughts and general discomfort from gendered things have changed in texture; I don’t wonder who I am or what I should be doing anymore. There’s a clarity and intensity of purpose now. When I feel bad, it’s specifically because something “tangible” doesn’t properly reflect that I’m a girl.

But it isn’t totally a foregone conclusion. I can still lapse back into the paralyzed uncertainty, or even the decades of socialized habits that are coded male. I still have to fight, internally, to keep sight of me. I know the truth, and I’m starting to really invest heavily in manifesting that truth, but it isn’t… automatic I suppose?

It’s the difference between “knowing” in the sense of “information that I can call to mind and easily regard as true” and “knowing” in the sense that people get gravity. Push someone over a small ledge and they will react very specifically – not because they “know” that there is some sort of downward-trending blah blah whatever the fuck. You shove someone off a curb and they will react to catch themselves. Automatically. Reflexively. They’re not suspended there in midair for a moment thinking about Newton and whether or not those inches of height differential will be meaningful. They fucking know gravity.

Anyways, I’m still learning to know that I am Amelia.

For now, at least, I have to be careful. If I let off the gas too much I will slow down, and this week has proven that I can slow down too much. Fortunately, no real serious consequences, just a lot of inner turmoil and soul-searching and a few hours of PTO from work.

And I’m getting a lot better, at… most of life, really. It’s easier to find motivation to do things. Easier to gently untangle from the snarls of over-analysis and injured thought that have come to overrun my mind over the years. Easier to maintain that momentum and stay excited by the ongoing revelation of who I am – not just to me, but to everyone.

Easier to be kind to myself when things don’t quite line up the way I want.

Easier to remember that I just want to care about people, even me, and start dismantling the accumulated habits of my life before. Easier to resist the judgment and psychoanalyzing I would have subjected myself to over those habits, and just… move on. I want to grow the kind, considerate, and helpful girl. I don’t need to dissect the other stuff. I just need to love her and take care of her.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

[Editorial note: published retroactively 2021-09-03, with some minor edits for privacy. In hindsight, I find this a fascinating look at the way my psyche was struggling to resolve some seriously complicated things. As I sit here and think about my current self-described genderflux identity, of wavering between "girl" and some kind of agender non-binary person, it's amazing to realize what has - and hasn't - stayed with me from this experience.]

This is actually overdue by just more than a week; at the time I managed to scribble some hasty notes in my phone before ultimately falling asleep, and then I subsequently failed to find the energy to actually type up the full account between then and now.

Despite having spent a lot of time in the last week trying to articulate exactly what happened, I still find it incredibly hard to capture, for some reason. So I’m going to stop procrastinating and just try and relate the events without exposition or backstory.

Monday the 27^th was Memorial Day. I didn’t work that day, obviously, and had been nervous about having the time with no plans or real structure. That weekend I spent a lot of conscious effort trying to keep myself from just disintegrating emotionally; trying to at least have a moderately decent time.

I succeeded and was feeling fairly good about life, and went to bed. As I lay there trying to fall asleep, I started thinking, as I tend to do. I can’t remember what started it or even really much of what I thought about over the next several hours; partly because, as usual, my memory is in very poor shape – but mainly because of what ended up happening near the end.

I was wrestling with the feeling that gender fluidity was periodically “taking away” parts of me. Honestly… I’d had several boy days in a row at that point, and it was hard to take. I kept thinking about Amelia. What she would do in various little daily situations. What she would say in response to something. How she would feel about an idea or an experience or a tiny vignette from the day. I missed her, badly.

More than that, I just felt like she would do such a better job of being me. She’s nicer, kinder, more… pure and incorruptible… funnier, braver, more real in some strange sense. She’s the person I want to be, and the boy-mode husk is… not. I trust her to live a good life, and it seems so brutally unfair that she can’t just drive all the time.

I have to get over my inhibitions about the next part. If I could explain it better, I would.

I was laying there, boy mode me, lamenting that I couldn’t just step aside forever and let her live instead. And unbidden, unmistakably, she simply said, “I trust you.”

The next hour or so was a fascinating exploration of my identity and how it is built out of various components, particularly gendered ones. It still drives me fucking nuts that I can’t even describe this properly. Amelia talked to me. In the background was an enby, making quiet, unobtrusive, yet profoundly impactful interjections now and then. (It took a while to learn this, and I’m still not 100% certain, but she seems to go by Sarah. Definitely the enigmatic but unarguably wise and insightful type.)

For having a week to contemplate, I still don’t think I can do any better than my original notes.

Mulling over stuff while trying to sleep. Trying to keep up the exercise of staying in a good mood (was successful).

I can engage my gendered aspects (?) somewhat at will right now. Can’t quite select a gender overall, but there is a lasting connection to me in there somehow.

Been in boy mode much of the evening. Wasn’t thrilled about it most of the time. But as I toyed with seeing me as a whole, something cool happened.

Amelia found her voice, and told boy-me that she trusts him.

Of course he thinks Amelia walks on water and can do no wrong, so he’s super encouraged by this trust and approval.

Enby-self sort of hung out but we don’t yet know their pronouns or name. They seem very content to be quiet and unobtrusive. They are officially invited to make contact if/when they feel safe and interested in doing so.

Amelia gets first dibs on the body representation, for the record. Unanimously agreed.

Boy-mode got this mess through three decades of life, and achieved considerable success in the process. He also managed to find Amelia and wages an epic battle for her rescue. We all love him and trust him even if he doubts his qualities.

The scribe dutifully notes that all parties present have digressed into an enthusiastic discussion on the many superlative merits of “boobs.”

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with minor edits for accuracy.

I don’t really know if there is a point I want to make tonight, even subconsciously. I think I mainly just want to explore some thoughts and see where things go – but it’s going to be a dark and rough trip I suspect.

This year has been hard. It opened up with a horrific series of weeks that culminated in me giving up my dog for re-adoption – a loose end I still have not had the heart to follow up on, meaning I have no idea what happened to him.

And then there was a terrifying sequence of emotional crises. I don’t even remember a fraction of what happened. But I know I had flashback issues and tons of repressed trauma and pain just came surging back, over and over.

Then I went through the moment of wondering if my career was about to be altered permanently – and, worse, the pain of watching that sudden and horrific change inflict its misery on dozens of people I cared about. And then the process, still ongoing months later, of trying to rebuild for those who were left.

Under that strain, I nearly broke entirely, and made a frail plea to my [abusive partner] to help me get better psychiatric care. He succeeded; and as I confronted the unraveling knot of lies and stupidity he had been building in our relationship, I wound up breaking up with him the day after he helped me schedule a new intake appointment.

In the aftermath I have gained a lot of clarity on those months. I’ve found a degree of explanation for what I did and even a measure of ability to forgive myself for much of it.

[Editoral interjection: none of it was actually my fault, but that's a separate story.]

I knew I was trans, before we broke up. He was the first person I actually told. He acted so supportive and even excited… it just feels important for me to make sure people know that we didn’t split up over my gender. Far from it.

And I think that’s kind of the theme of my mood tonight. None of this shit had anything to do with my gender.

The wrestling match with ADHD and the process of stabilizing my treatment have deeply marked the past couple of months, for sure. I’ve had to face a set of goodbyes – an experience I have found painful for a long time, and one that always stirs up a lot of old baggage. I’ve coached my best friend through some struggles and family turbulence. I’ve struggled with my own feelings about my family and how to handle those relationships.

I’ve watched with terror as a very dear friend ran headlong into some very difficult times and made multiple attempts on her own life. I’m still struggling to come to terms with how to handle that situation. For as much as I want to be able to do something – fucking anything – there is an emerging pattern here, one that echoes back to the earlier days of our relationship. At some point I will put myself in considerable danger trying to help her. And I can’t risk that. It’s an infuriating conflict in my heart – I want to help, I’m prepared to do something genuinely stupid to try to help, and somewhere at the root of it all I know that I simply can’t take that risk. I can’t get myself killed. Put your own mask on first. Can’t save anyone when you’re dead.

I’ve lost feeling in parts of my left hand and down my left foot. Presumably some kind of nerve injury or some shit. I have persistent sinus irritation and eyes that are so raw there are angry, floppy bags under them. Seems allergy-related but the repeated use of antihistamines has worse effects so I don’t bother. My sleep oscillates between brief, restful, and refreshing – and then practically meaningless, where I don’t even wake up or dream about the alarms going off anymore, just drift to a grumpy and profanity-laden awakening around noon.

It’s all tough, and trying, and exhausting, and somehow I just can’t manage to feel like it’s that much of a deal. I’ve been through far worse emotional pain. Far longer episodes of despair and emptiness. It’s like my scale is totally broken. I know shit could be so much worse, so I just can’t really acknowledge that this is even that bad.

Even still… even when I can grant myself the compassion to admit this is a hard thing to do… it isn’t because of my gender.

I don’t really know why that is sticking in my mind. I vaguely worry that it might seem, from the outside, like I’m having a tough time because I’m trans, or something. But… if anything, it’s the opposite.

The things I have learned and realized in the process of understanding who I am… there’s a feedback cycle. I’ve survived 2019 because of those skills and that understanding and that strength. And 2019 has, in turn, pushed me to learn and realize and appreciate even more. It’s all just a giant spiral.

I look at the things I’ve had to face in the past five months, and all I can see is that I’m doing better than I ever could have before. It’s still hard. It’s still painful, and scary, and exhausting. But I keep catching myself, in the middle of a complaint or a lament, and realize that most of what I’m saying is habit. I don’t actually feel that tired, that hurt, that scared, that uncertain.

My reaction is usually guilt – some strange, reflexive instinct to scramble for a reason for why I’m wrong and should feel bad. But I’m getting better at intercepting those, too.

I don’t know. I want it to be OK that I hurt and I’m tired. And I want to be proud that I’m strong.

Friday, May 24, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited. See the recap post of 2019 for crucial spoilers on how this ended up turning out.

I’m resisting the urge to write on a really weirdly primal level, which is probably a strong indicator that I should write something.

I’ve been reflecting a bit today; not entirely sure what prompted any of it anymore, or how I wound up in this particular thought-region, but here we are. I usually try to be really disciplined about distinguishing between relatives and actual family, but I feel pretty raw at the moment and probably need to just get things on the page instead of crafting my wording too much, so for the next little while, I may be imprecise in that particular set of language.

I fucking hate my family.

I mean… I have a bunch of people related to me who I don’t even really know and barely even remember exist. They’re… indifferent, I suppose. I have one sister who is actually pretty cool but still at a place where interaction with her is a net negative for me in terms of energy and such. One nibling I actually really want to connect with better. One brother-in-law who is a metric fuckton of human shit and deserves a category of rage and ire all for himself.

So I guess what I really mean is I hate my parents.

I… wish I didn’t, in a way. I wish I could still care about them and trust them and want to have any kind of a relationship with them. Deep down in my heart I am still really sad that they did what they did. And deep down I wish there was some path through the future where I could tell them who I really am. Before they’re gone.

But for all the ache and tears that well up when I think of that, I just keep coming back to all the harm.

I come back to the beatings. Never enough to leave discernible marks; that would arouse suspicion and maybe even make them think twice about what they were doing to their own goddamn child. But beatings. The sweet spot is to leave the kid unable to walk comfortably but provide no observable evidence that they were repeatedly struck to create that situation.

There is a certain tier of fucked up depravity that drives a person to violently beat their own child on a frequent basis. There is another, worse tier where someone will have “funny” conversations with other like-minded parents about whether or not it counts as “child abuse” with the clear implication that they’re simply looking to justify and rationalize their behavior.

And it gets worse; there’s a tier where people will systematically combine psychological and emotional abuse with the beatings, to the point where simply making a particular facial expression, or using a specific tone of voice, or alluding to a particular word – any of these things can instantly produce terror and helpless submissiveness in the child. I don’t need to hit you anymore, because all I need to do is give you that shitty head-tilt and stare, and you know that if you don’t fall the fuck in line immediately I will end up wailing on you with some random fucking object until you do what I want.

Bonus points: tell your child to contemplate how it’s actually all your fault as they convalesce from their contusions. It’s all for your own good. It hurts me more than it hurts you. This is what love looks like.

If you ever, in any situation in life whatsoever, find yourself about to rationalize non-consensual violence by claiming it is acceptable as an act of love – and especially if you’re talking about smacking your own child around – please press pause, step away from things for a second, and ask yourself what the fucking hell is wrong with you that you have become such a degenerate and vile sack of fucking shit. Do not return to existence until you can provide reasonable assurances to the human realm that you have thought better of your idiocy and will, as appropriate, go fuck yourself in an act of humility and contrition.

Mom didn’t hit me much. I suppose I sort of appreciate that. But she also never did anything to stop it, or any of the myriad other forms of blatant abuse I had to live through.

I remember a moment when I was 17 and nearly ready to move the fuck out of the house. I don’t recall exactly what my misdeed was, but I do remember my dad grabbing me roughly, and essentially saying, “You’re not 18 yet; I can still hit you.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a terrible threat. Maybe I should have responded differently, or something, I don’t know. What I do know is that 17+ years of being hit, and hundreds of times as many threats, added up to a lot; there was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to freeze and panic and drop directly into subservience mode.

For fuck’s sake, he could probably still make certain gestures now and I’d reflexively panic. Train up a child? Nah, fuck that. Beat the shit out of your kid, and they’ll definitely never get over it.

 

A small handful of times, at a certain window in my life, it made sense for me to babysit one of my nephews. For a portion of those events, I had “disciplinary rights” – idiot euphemism for “you can spank the kid if you want.”

I only remember even trying to do it maybe two or three times, ever. I vividly remember being confused by the results. Even at that phase of my life I had a vicious (but carefully concealed) habit of punching inanimate objects. I generally had to be careful about hitting things because I knew I could easily break my hands. I had technique and a moderate amount of strength to draw on. And yet when I went to hit my nephew I simply couldn’t. I ordered a sickening smack and delivered a negligible tap.

It bothered me, for a few years. What did it mean? Why couldn’t I do this simple act? And then I put it out of my head and ignored it for ages.

Tonight, earlier, I finally realized the blindingly obvious truth. I couldn’t hit a child because I can’t hit a child. This isn’t some indicator of my deficiency as a parent or some shit. I just fundamentally can’t bring myself to violently strike a kid.

I’m a little proud of this, now. Certainly, I’m very relieved that, even after all the fucked up nonsense I had to crawl through in life, I didn’t really internalize the barbaric poison idea that it’s a good thing to beat a kid.

 

I go back to the image, of one or both of my parents passing on, and me just sitting there trying to comprehend the reality that they died not knowing who I am.

Maybe it would be better that way. I have no way to know. I never did manage to make a committed decision about any of this; sometimes it’s really just as simple as you lost your rights to your daughter somewhere around the time you started beating her.

And sometimes I just can’t quite let go of that lonely, desperate ache, of a scared girl, lost and helpless, who just wants her parents to come and make everything OK again.

Did you ever actually love me? Or are you the reason why it’s easier for me to believe that I don’t deserve to be loved? Because I just can’t handle the idea that you’re so fucked up you would do all of that shit to your own child?

 

On a significantly happier wavelength… I love my name. Amelia is just… so fucking yes. I need a word for perfect, right, snug-fitting, warm and comfy and comforting, worn in but an eternity from being worn out.

I’ve written about the feelings I had the day I discovered my name. I still love the moments when whatever layer of my brain refreshes the linkage… “Amelia? Oh, shit, that’s me!” Chills.

I hope that never fades. I don’t know if that’s a silly thing to hope for, but then I’ve never actually known my name before, so I have no idea what to expect. In any case, I kind of hope that someday, locked in the maddening confines of the nursing home or whatever, I still have those moments – where I do some horrendous elderly maladaptation of flirty shit with a nurse or whatever, and she just gives me a coy smile, and she quietly says, “shut up and take your pills, Amelia.”

Fucking. Chills.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I dragged out of bed sometime slightly before noon today, and put together a long checklist of assorted responsibilities and obligations and whatever that I should be taking care of this weekend.

And then I procrastinated a tiny bit, and then I decided fuck that shit, and finally shaved for the first time in a week, and cobbled together the most blatantly girly outfit I could with the clean laundry I have left.

And now I’m sitting here with my hair as tousled and vaguely feminine as I can make it at this length, sporting the super cute black lacy dress thing I got a little while ago, and my comfy leggings. I don’t have many reasons to say anything out loud, but I’m trying to remember to shift my pitch a bit whenever I do.

I’m taking over now. I’m not the third person entity that gets referenced all the time. I’m not an alter ego that has to be “activated” or something. This is me now.

Hi. I’m Amelia!

Friday, May 17, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

It’s 03:40. I woke up because my dumbass laptop started playing videos and I don’t really understand why.

But what I actually thought was noteworthy was the fact that, as I slowly clawed my way out of sleep, I remember some dim impression of another girl – cute, fascinating, sassy, I dunno what all else. She was interesting and compelling in that undefinable way that imaginary people you conjure while semi-conscious tend to be. And I remember waking with a smile and the thought, “I am so damn gay for her.”

Apparently it isn’t uncommon for gender fluid people to feel like they lack certainty about their gender. Well, OK, no fucking shit I guess. I mean… it’s one thing to shift around and feel different over time, but it seems like a common question to wonder if we’re “supposed” to settle into a specific identity. Like, sure, maybe I have some changes now, but if I have a streak of several boy days in a row, does that mean I’m just stuck there? Or that I should be stuck there? Maybe it means I’m not girling hard enough, whatever the fuck that means? If I really wish I was a girl all the time, does that mean I’m supposed to be a trans woman and not gender fluid?

Where is the line between gender fluidity and “locked in” trans identity that isn’t quite stable or “committed” enough? Some people seem to feel like this is an issue because they aren’t as sure as they feel like they need to be. I feel like this is an issue because I secretly hope that the fluidity can be hatchet-murdered and left to rot in a fucking swamp. If there’s a way to just girl and nothing else, I want that shit.

 

 

 

I struggle, at times like this, to feel like it’s OK for me to need shit. I’ve written a lot recently about how much I feel an intense need to be loved and accepted and cared for. And then I read over the early entries in this and feel like I’ve lost sight of the selfless, generous woman who was so wildly passionate about loving other people. She’s still… somewhere, I guess. But she’s not front and center right now, and that somehow makes me feel guilty and wrong.

Which is a tragically fucked up thing, honestly. Nothing is that simple. I should be at peace with the fact that I can need things and still be loving and caring. I am still the woman who is moved to tears by the idea of her words consoling someone else and setting them free to be who they are meant to be. I am still a good person – kind, providing, maybe wise and supportive, I don’t fucking know. There is nothing wrong with me also needing to feel loved.

I am the woman who decided to amass this journal of whatever-the-fuck-it-is because she wanted desperately for it to help someone, anyone. Ever. And I am the woman who weeps for her lost childhood, for the years of violence and neglect and disgust and for the unending bitter ache of wondering if anyone will ever fucking care. And the fact that I need to tend to that pain does not, in any possible way, detract from who I am, or the beautiful soul in me that just wants to salve that hurt for anyone else she can reach.

In a way, really, the time I’ve spent with that hurt is integral to my ability to touch someone else who is in that kind of pain. Struggling with the shit I have to carry does not make me self-obsessed, or narcissistic, or arrogant, or anything of the kind. The struggle makes me capable of turning around and providing the love and compassion and support that I so desperately want everyone else to have.

Put on your own oxygen mask first. You can’t save anyone if you’re dead.

 

 

God… I can fucking see her, almost, just clearly enough to know that she is me and that she is fucking incredible, but not quite in enough detail to really portray properly. I couldn’t describe her hair, her smile, her little ephemeral but exquisitely feminine mannerisms; I couldn’t put into words why she is so alluring, so inescapably powerful, so gorgeous and captivating and impossible not to fall madly in love with; I couldn’t say what, exactly, makes her so her. But she’s there all the same, flitting in and out of the periphery of my mind, enticing me to keep fighting and moving forward. Keep pushing towards the future. Her future.

I dream of the day when she is all anyone sees when they look at me. I imagine tossing that cascade of hair, flashing that devilishly cute smile, soaking up the knowledge that everyone else is as certain as I am that she is me, and that’s it. I get tingles up my spine just picturing silly pointless moments that really don’t have any specific notion behind them, aside from me existing as I always should have.

I remember the day I found my name. It was a total accident. In the middle of some random unimportant thought, I suddenly found myself looking for a way to address myself in my head. I had already begun distancing myself from my assigned name and variants, but I had no idea what else to say. In that split-second of panic I just trusted something and let myself fall backwards.

And almost effortlessly, there it was, like I had known all along and was just waiting for the chance to do something about it. I wasn’t sure for a while – maybe it was just a random brain short-circuit or whatever. Give it time, see how it feels in a few days, etc.

I didn’t need a few days. I was trying it on, here and there, just to see if it would stick, when it happened – and I knew for sure. I think I described the moment elsewhere as just imagining someone saying my name – just to get my attention, or a semi-unexpected greeting in a store, or whatever – and they say it like it could never occur to them that my name could possibly be anything else.

I want that day. I want the world to look at me and simply know, with all the certainty that I do, who I am. That nobody else could be there – who else would it even be? I mean, shit, have you met her?

I want everything else to just evaporate into irrelevance and obscurity. I want to completely, totally, and unquestionably exist, in physical reality just as certainly as I do in my mind now.

I want to be fucking around in some stupid grocery store or something, and hear that call-out, with that conviction that’s as deep as everyone’s confidence in fucking gravity. I want to be seen, and I want them to know who I am so fundamentally that it isn’t even a conscious observation. I want them to say my name like it could never occur to them that it could possibly be anything else.

Hey Amelia!

I got chills the day I learned my name. And I still do.

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with only minor edits.

Feel this fire deep inside
Burning strong where you can’t hide
Join the elements tonight
You can see the light
When the darkness comes too strong
Don’t forget you’re not alone
Join the elements tonight
And feel the light
                                - Neo Cortex, Elements

I can’t tell what I am today. I can feel the resistance inside against being boy, and the almost-panicked yearning to go back to being girl. I am not who I want to be and I cannot find a name. This is being enby, and it is a conflicted familiarity. I know this turf well and it mostly seems like it is supposed to be home – but it isn’t where I want to be home. Enby days just stir up a terrified worry that maybe I’ll never actually know, never figure anything out, never get to just be someone I actually like. Or love.

It feels like going back to not understanding. It feels like losing ground.

On some super abstract level I know this is ludicrous. I know what’s going on now vastly more so than I ever did before. It isn’t actually losing progress – it’s just coming back to a familiar place with a new and ever-expanding set of tools and skills. It is sort of like Groundhog Day – but the good part, where I have begun to learn and adapt and modify the cycle to suit my own purposes.

But that’s painfully hard to remember sometimes.

I know that somehow, there is a woman named Amelia, and she is beautiful and lovely and magnetic and everyone loves her. I know her, and I know she somehow overlaps with my presence in reality, just not right now. I know she will be back – which is a damn good thing, because I miss her a lot and I really don’t like whatever mess I am right now.

Some important part of my personal journey will probably involve making peace with the variants on me that aren’t Amelia. I get that it’s going to be important to be able to live as me in other setups. I don’t know if I’m entirely ready to try to start that yet. Too much resentment and distrust. Amelia I love. The rest of this shit is just distressing.

But I really ought to start moving that direction. No matter how much of my future belongs to Amelia, I can’t just shut down and disintegrate when she’s not around.

I just read a set of Reddit posts from a woman named Stephanie. She told her simple but relatable story of her 58-ish year life: childhood, young love, family, and – tragically – sudden brain cancer. It wasn’t much, and that was exactly her point. At the very end, faced by an unexpected and unchangeable death sentence, she had one overwhelming purpose: to warn a community of internet strangers of the costs of living safely and regretting all of it. As near as I can tell, Stephanie passed about a year ago, and hundreds of posts have honored the memory of what she wanted us to learn.

Stephanie was [designated male at birth]. She never came out and never made any steps to transition until after she learned of her terminal condition.

Fuck.

I started thinking about mainstream perception of gender again. It’s really impressive how much simply goes unasked or unnoticed by most people, because they have the privilege to never have to care. I think we’ve actually hit a point as a species where “men can raise children” and “women can earn paychecks” are genuinely default ideas now; we owe a huge amount to feminism for pushing us that far, and I’m frankly really grateful that challenging those ideas is now more or less universally seen as regressive and undesirable.

A slightly less universally accepted notion is that toxic masculinity is real and actually a problem. The whole MRA idiocy aside, at least there’s a conversation of sorts happening there. So to some extent there is at least a general awareness that gender normativity isn’t exactly “okay” yet.

But then we get into toxic femininity and shit gets unstable. I’m not even convinced there is a usable consensus on what that term even means. So it is very hard to use as a basis for exploratory discussion.

And this hits on some of the interesting idea-snags that [my abusive ex] and I used to talk about. What does it even really mean to “be a woman” at all? Is it a thing that we can genuinely separate from societal expectation and the demands of some sort of gender roles? What would the “objective” component of femininity look like?

Of course from my current vantage it seems painfully obvious that gender and expression are orthogonal. I can “be” very much a man and express in a way that would be categorized as feminine, and so on. But it feels like the more scrutiny we apply to the ideas, the faster they vanish entirely.

The only usable definition I have for gender is that “if someone identifies as a woman, then that person is a woman.” That’s what we get. And while it is a very important conceptual line in the sand, it just doesn’t seem robust enough yet. How do I know if I identify as a woman? I mean, I absolutely do, sometimes, but I couldn’t actually tell you why, and there is a frustrating resistance to concrete and practical definition here.

On a girl day, I find a lot of “feminine” things more accessible and appealing – things that would generally be coded as stuff a girl does/likes/etc. But I also find a fierce personal adherence to a more liberated feminist ideal; maybe I’m a girl but I can still blast death metal at unhygienic volume from the car stereo. I find it easier to feel comfortable and confident on both ends of the range: I can be as girly as I can get and love every second of it, and I can proudly insist that no, fuck you, girls can also do things that aren’t girly.

I have contemplated a bumper sticker that says something to the effect of “you’re getting out-driven by a girl.” I’ve had the fantasy conversation where someone says “well you don’t do thing like a girl” to which I’d like to think I would respond with, “oh, I definitely thing like a girl, that’s why I’m better than you.” I really like the pure, unmitigated Fuck You of yes, I am a girl, and that’s why I’m a billion times more fucking awesome than you. There is something about being competitive or aggressive – at all – as a boy, that just makes me feel sick. Girl-me will kick your goddamn ass into your hat. Boy-me isn’t going to make a fuss.

Actually… I think that I feel the worst oppressive bullshit (in terms of gender roles) when I am a boy. Maybe it’s just because I have more practice with feeling the implied judgment of people when I am non-conformant. But I think that one way or another I have carved a mental rut for myself; I am deeply familiar with failing to boy correctly, and that shame carries an unreasonable gravity, because it is so easy to recognize and therefore fall deeper into.

For future use: Schiller – Tired feat. Jaël, esp. the performance with Symphonia (orchestral arrangement)

Things are going to be melancholy for a while. There will be ache, and struggle, and it will be hard and uncertain.

But it will be so very fucking worth it all, in the end, to have done it.

I see you, Amelia. I know you are there, now, and always have been. I have seen who you are – your beauty, your excellence, your sheer unequalled loveliness – and I know without any doubt that you deserve every effort I can possibly expend to set you free.

I would trade my life to see you thriving in the open. Absolutely no hesitation. You are every bit the incredible person I should be. I know it isn’t as simple as throwing a switch. If It were, I’d have done it a thousand times by now. I know it will take pain, and work, and fear.

And I will gladly and bravely face all of it, even for just the shred of a chance for you to be free.

Amelia – I swear this to you, here and now, in the most sacred ways I could: I will get you into the world, or I will fucking die trying.

It fucking sucks. It isn’t fair. It’s so fucked up and it’s destroying me and I’m going to just break my self-imposed stupid moratorium on self-indulgent bitching because I feel some shit and I’m sick of reinforcing that fucked up stupid habit of just burying everything again and acting like it isn’t real.

Life is just a series of sadistic fucking cheap shots. Everything is just a buildup to ultimately remind me, in the most disgusting and cruel manner possible, that I am just going to be alone forever. As soon as I start feeling like I might belong someplace, something happens, and I don’t. If necessary, invent new ways to make me feel like maybe I belong someplace, and then yank that rug out at some point. Rinse, repeat, endless shitty loop of fuck you.

I know I keep trying to latch onto the idea that intersectional experiences mean I can relate to more people. But it never really totally sticks in my head. All I can do is come back to the fact that it means nobody understands me.

No matter what, no matter how good a connection I may form with somebody, someday there will be that point where they just don’t fucking get it. And maybe that’s recoverable; a lot of times, I think it is. But it never stops being painful as fuck.

Jesus fucking god. I just want to be able to curl up in some cute lesbian’s lap. I want her to gently run her fingers through my hair, and hold me close, and just squeeze a little bit harder while I cry. And maybe, whatever it is, maybe she doesn’t get it. Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter.

Maybe I don’t need her to get it. Maybe I just need her to hold her favorite woman in the world in her lap, and love her as hard as she can. Maybe I just need her to hold on for dear life because whatever the fuck is happening is alien and scary and she doesn’t feel like she really knows what to do, but even if she can’t fix anything, she can convey the thing that matters the most of all, and the thing that might actually make any kind of fucking difference.

I want so much to finally feel the tears subside, and to feel her sense that, and quietly whisper, “hey.” And I want to open my eyes and look up into hers, and almost cry again at the love and concern and sincerity – all written plainly on her face, but far beyond the reach of any words.

She squeezes a little bit more, and as we look in each other’s eyes, she proves that she gets it, even if she doesn’t really follow the specifics of whatever stupid-ass fuckery is going on in my head.

“I love you, Amelia.”

And she kisses me… the way only she ever could. The way that means I can’t run from her. Or me.

Maybe then I will finally stop being alone.

I need her to love me because I don’t ever really think I will love myself any other way.

I never believed I deserved it – to be loved. Maybe I never will. Having to be the only one who loves me is… untenable. Eventually, no matter how good my intentions may be, I will just stop believing that I should.

I wish I could. I really do. And some stubborn part of me still insists on trying. I wrote that note at the beginning because goddamn it I am going to do whatever I have to in order to get as close as I can to actually caring about myself. On the better days I think it may actually be possible. And then there’s times like tonight.

I think for the most part I could do it. Just… not alone. Eventually I just need someone there to close the gap; to poke me and say, no you silly shit, I love you. I need someone to love me if for nothing else than to remind me that someone actually thinks maybe I deserve it.

Eventually I will stop believing that I’m worth it. I’ve gone through too much life with a broken soul; I’m not going to just quit fundamentally believing that I have no value.

The only way that will change is if someone is there, consistently and persistently, to give me unarguable evidence that I should be loved.

I should go the fuck to sleep but I was dumb and took a Ritalin at like 9PM or something and now I’m all in a weird mood and don’t want to stop doing stuff and whatever blah fuck.

I generally have a strong hesitancy to write anything sexual here (not really sure why, probably some leftover brainwashing shit) but I’m sleepy and moody and really just want to stuff a cute girl’s head into my boobs.

There, I fucking said it. Nitey nite.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, with only very minor edits.

Fluidity is fucking bullshit. It sucks. It feels profoundly, terribly, hopelessly out of control. Beyond control. Beyond predictability, beyond hope of sense.

But it isn’t just arbitrary; it feels outright cruel. Gender fluidity don’t give a fuck. You wanted to feel like a girl tonight? Too bad, don’t give a fuck. Oh, now is a super inconvenient time to exhibit a massively feminine behavior? Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. Need to act like an actual operational human being for five seconds instead of being paralyzed with anxiety about what you’ll sound like if you’re dumb enough to try to speak?

DON’T. GIVE. A. FUCK.

It isn’t even the sort of cruel that simply always does the worst possible thing. I can fight what I can see; this fucker is… just chaos.

 

I don’t actually know if I hate being a boy or if I’ve just associated it with three decades of bad experiences. Being enby I can sort of be OK with most of the time, because I think that had settled into being “normal” for a long time. There are weird, non-geometrical realms of enby space that seem somehow oddly proximate to being a boy, and those are gross and I don’t like them as much. Being an enby with really pretty long hair and some nice boobs seems pretty good, although honestly I don’t know, having never experienced that configuration first-hand.

Sometimes I do not, in fact, hate looking boyish or whatever. That tiny fraction of days, I kind of like it. But so much of my time is spent in a mode where I just don’t want it at all… and even on the rare occasion when I feel something that isn’t total hatred for being a man, I feel guilty or something. Like I shouldn’t be a guy because – even though at that exact moment I am fine with it – so much of the time I just want to not be.

* * *

I have this picture saved separately but I wanted to copy it. It’s striking and important and I want to gain that strange sort of possessive investment one gets over things that we have copied down.

 

The woman you are becoming
will cost you
people
relationships
spaces
and material things.

Choose her over everything.

* * *

Gender can’t be coerced or convinced. Even defiance is risky; go too femme on a boy day, and shit gets unpleasant real fast. Small crimes.

 

As I look back on my life, I bring back a sort of pattern-memory – not specific events in any real detail, but a recurring feeling, a sort of emotional theme that feels familiar and frequent even if the clarity of particular occurrences has faded.

I remember a sequence of emotions. First, something would happen, and draw attention to my “insufficient manliness” or whatever the fuck. There would be a requisite moment of shame, of course. But after that… something subtle, something subversive, something so defiant of the dominant brainwashing that it took many years to even realize I had been quietly burying it as soon as it appeared.

Sure, I wasn’t very masculine, and whatever stupid moment had brought that into the spotlight one more goddamn time. But like an echo, hiding behind the loudness of the shame, there was a guilty sneer: “I didn’t want to be anyhow.” And of course that was such a forbidden concept that the neural programming just unobtrusively “dealt with it” and stuffed the dead body out in whatever metaphorical swamp.

I lacked the tools for most of my life to actually understand that this was a legitimate idea – it wasn’t an unimpeachable law of the universe that I had to be a man and like it. In fact once it actually got into my skull that I might not have to be a guy that thought process became unstoppable.

I knew that “being trans” was a thing for a while; I had a really shitty half-idea about it even from childhood, and that concept slowly took on shape and significance over time. It didn’t actually quite become real until late 2018 I think, despite me personally knowing a few trans people and being sort of peripherally aware of the idea for much longer.

I think the key was [questioning if I was bisexual] in early 2018. That pushed me into a few queer and queer-friendly spaces that I probably never would have engaged with otherwise. And in those venues I started seeing things I didn’t quite understand; a chunk of terms and such were familiar because of general accretion of mental stuff, but there were new ones. At first I did some really lazy-ass web searches and decided I didn’t really know what “non-binary” meant but whatever. Not my shit to appropriate, right?

I remember running across the Non-Binary Wiki somewhere in the rat’s nest of Mastodon instances. The timeline is fuzzy but it wasn’t long after that I spent a couple of hours just poking around the wiki, and came away from the experience feeling a profoundly important sensation.

It took a while before I could articulate what I felt, but I knew it was a Big Fucking Deal. It turns out I know that particular feeling a lot better than I might like.

I felt it when I learned about Third Culture. I felt it when I de-converted and recognized my own atheism. I felt it when I learned about bipolar disorder. I felt it when I learned about Left Coast Politics and the marked contrast they bear to deep-south culture. I felt it when I learned about [queer sexuality]. I felt it when I learned about complex-PTSD, and in the wake of that, religious trauma syndrome.

Holy fuck. This shit is my life. How can someone I have never met write my experiences so perfectly?

There’s that weird moment of confusion where you have to carefully convince yourself that you aren’t somehow reading your own words. And then the real beautiful part hits:

Jesus fucking shit, I think they actually… get it? Wait. Maybe I belong here!

Going through the non-binary wiki I hit the page on gender fluidity, and everything simultaneously clicked into perfect place, and also exploded into an amazing spectacle that will never really go back into the bottle.

I have refined my understanding a lot since then, obviously, although I think a lot of that has been accelerated by me also meddling with shit a whole lot more than I ever knew I could before. I think I’ve had clearly Girl Days (Hours?) more over the past couple of months than the entirety of my life prior. I can’t tell how much of that is because I actually know what to look for, and how much is because I’m doing my damnedest to coax that out. I also don’t know if it matters, or if I even really care. (See adjacent entries waxing verbose on the matter of I WANNA BE A FUCKING GIRL FOREVER YOU MOTHER FUCKERS.)

Anyways. There was a moment of catalyzed comprehension that opened the door to an entirely new approach to reality for me. So much shit makes more sense now.

There is a particular feeling I get about certain ideas. It generally only pops up in domains where I feel a certain level of expertise and confidence. To feel it in regards to a major life discovery is unexpected; and maybe I would normally be dubious of the feeling because of that, but in this case it seems to just reinforce the certainty and conviction of it all.

This answer is right, in a way that singular English adjectives are fucking powerless to capture properly. This is correct, it is supposed to be correct, the framing of the universe almost tautologically demands that it be correct – there can be no conceived reality in which it is not correct.

It’s an incorruptible rightness that transcends even elegance or universality. It’s fucking axiomatic.

I’m a girl.