GenderBendy

Man in a dress no more

Yesterday I bought a dress. So what? Yeah, you’re right, not earth-shaking, but the moment does provide an object lesson in layers of becoming.

One of the first things I did after my gender revelation in ‘08 was buy a grey knit sweater-dress with a big floppy collar, at Reny’s. Oh, my, I was in state - terrified and ecstatic. I couldn’t conceive of trying it on in the store, so I took it home, discovered it was too small, and went back in an even more heightened state to exchange it. The flat hard look the young woman behind the returns desk gave me was my first encounter with the judgemental eyes of the world.

I had fun with my new dress. I put it on along with my new garter-belt stockings and black pumps and costume-jewelry pearls from Walmart and my outrageous rolled-up-sock-with-filbert-nipples boobs and posed for the camera. It was the beginning of figuring out who I was.

As time went on I acquired more dresses, of two types: fancy ones from the evening gown racks at Goodwill, and simpler everyday ones either bought without trying on or given by friends. I continued to have fun wearing both kinds at home, but the only time I wore a dress in public was when I put on one of the fancy ones for a soirée - the USM drag show, the EQ Maine dinner, a holiday party - and it was always a big deal. I never wore the simpler ones in public, even after I was completely out and living full time as a woman, because I just didn’t like the way I looked in them.

Yesterday I met Susan for a shopping date at the mall, and on the sale rack at Banana Republic I found a light soft grey-and-white V-neck dress in stretchy cotton. I tried it on and stood looking at myself in the three-way mirror. Susan looked with me.

Me, to myself: Shoulders back, dear. Chin up. Relax the lower back more, let it curve. Is it binding or bagging under the the arms? No, seems to be just right. Wow, not bad at all.

Susan: Oh, that’s really nice.

Me: I don’t know...I just don’t wear dresses. People don’t, you know? So it’s a thing.

Susan: What do you mean?

Me: Well, I have dresses, and I put them on and look in the mirror, and I see...I don’t know, I’m so tall, my shoulders are still so broad, my hips are narrow...I still see a man in a dress.

Susan: You don’t look like a man in a dress. I’m not just saying that. I want you to feel good, but I would say if you did. You don’t look like a man in a dress.

Me: Thanks, I needed to hear someone say that.

I bought the dress (Only $18 on deep discount - score!), and in a few months, maybe on the first really warm day of spring, I’m going to wear it to work. No back-up outfit in a bag in case I chicken out. I’m going to commit to the dress for the day. And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal. Check out how far I’ve come:

12/31/2008:

1/15/2012:

Insight on the holiday gauntlet

One day as the Christmas season approached Elizabeth told her 16-year-old son that she wanted him to stop calling her “Daddio.” She told him that every time he said it it felt like being punched in the stomach. Looking uncomfortable, he reluctantly agreed. The next day, she followed up: she said she was repeating the request so he knew she was serious about it, and that she also wanted female pronouns and gender words. He listened silently and did not refuse; but as the week went on he used the same masculine gender words as before, and scowled at her when she corrected him.

A few days later, when Elizabeth picked her daughter up from college, she told her that she was asking these things of her too. Her daughter, having recently claimed Queer identity herself, was more accepting, at least to talk about it, but as the days passed she avoided pronouns rather than switching to “she,” and also still said “Daddio.”

Several days went by. Elizabeth wept often, thinking of her long-dead mother, as she often did in the weeks before Christmas each year, with grief and fury and aching need for maternal comfort all balled together in a black mass...and her will to push her children to greater acceptance faltered. She couldn't see a way to back off from having pushed them without returning to the old bad man-box, but she knew it was wrong to have turned to them in her need, so driving her son to school one morning she said, “About the gender words thing...”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, wiping at his eye.

“Wait, let me finish. I think you’re going to like what I’m going to say. You have told me you can’t deal with this right now, and I’m accepting that. I’m backing off.”

“Thank you.”

That felt right, but it didn't stop the storm of pain and sadness, which loomed just as black as ever. Elizabeth held herself together in hopes of making it to her next therapy appointment...but at the appointed hour the door did not open. She waited fifteen minutes, then knocked. There had been a scheduling snafu; her therapist was seeing another patient. “I need to see you,” Elizabeth said. Text me later, said the therapist, and Elizabeth stumbled downstairs.

In her parked car she burst into wild sobs. “I want my mother!” she screamed. And, “I deserve to exist in the world! I do! I do! I deserve to exist!”...needing to say it so vehemently because of a terrible fear that it wasn’t true. Her courage and strength had failed her, and she felt as at other times at this same nadir the crushing weight of so many years of existence with self denied, of existence only through the mask of maleness, of shadow-life. She sobbed in her car for nearly an hour, then texted and asked if she could come back in, and her therapist texted back yes.

The session was oddly strained. Even in the midst of blurting out her dilemma Elizabeth sensed her therapist groping for responses...she sensed impatience, annoyance. Her therapist defended the children’s right to process in their own time, and to be parented by Elizabeth even as she struggled with her own pain, and Elizabeth agreed. But what about her own terrible need then? With time running out, the therapist said the words which Elizabeth needed to hear: “You do deserve to exist in the world.”

In a grateful rush: “Yes, thank you...I needed to hear someone say that. Thank you so much.”

“You do. You deserve to exist as Lisa you deserve to exist as Dave...”

“What? I wish you hadn’t said that last part.”

In a vehement note-to-self whisper: “I’m never going to say that name again.”

The last few minutes of the appointment were awkward, and Elizabeth left without making another appointment.

On the way home, bumped out of her rut of self-pity by irritation, Elizabeth formulated a new thought: OK, for the past twenty years I’ve been mising the presence of a mom in my Christmases...so fuck it, I’m gonna be the mom. My children can call me what they like, but what they’re getting is mothering.

She put her thought and heart into selecting presents; she cleaned; she bought herself a mixer and baked enough not only to satisfy her household’s sweet teeth, but to take plates to neighbors too; she wrapped; she played the piano while her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend decorated the tree. In a word, for the first time in her adult life, she committed to the holiday, not as a religious nor a commercial celebration, but as the simple family gathering it had been for her when she was growing up...and the children seemed to have a good Christmas.

And, what about Elizabeth? Well, she survived. The amount of hurt she felt running the seasonal gauntlet was not less than in previous years; but in trying to make a real warm holiday happen in her own home she felt more joy in the day than ever before since her mother’s death, and she figured that counted as a victory.

Three years and a day and counting

I recorded the following audio file on my hand-held flash recorder during my commute the morning after posting the last post. It's a rebuttal of sorts, or a next step which, in retrospect, I was still working on when I wrote that last post. 

3 years and a day

 Since I made this recording it has further occurred to me that "please yourself" can mean both "strive to reach your own standards," and simply "try to get what you really want," and I have been experiencing a curious new sense of freedom from worry about what other people think and expect of me. Perhaps a major step...the changing of a lifelong mental habit of existing in a perpetual state of anxiety to please others...hmm, we'll see.

 

Three years and counting

December is my darkest month. That was true before any of this gender business surfaced, and it’s still true. I always feel sad in December because my parents are dead and gone, and this year I’ve made a quick hard start to the annual holiday blues.
     
Besides just missing them, I want to show my parents me. I want to say to each of them: all that time, you had a daughter instead of a son, and neither of us knew it. Can you love me? It would have been the hardest question I would ever have had to ask in my whole life, but I still want to ask it. I never get to do that. Never.

A dark phrase recurs in my life: “No love for you.” I find myself saying it when I miss my parents, when I review my tragicomic romantic history, after each rejection on match.com, and when I look in the mirror and fail to imagine a masculine person I could love who might be able to see past the leftover bits of my physical maleness and love me back.

Does this purported possible partner have to be a masculine person? No...but I can’t see how to love another feminine person, because I fear her wanting me to be the masculine one, which is what I did for all those years, to my enduring pain. I don’t know if I can ever go back there. But, on the other hand, why not? Wouldn’t it be better if someone loved and wanted the whole me, including the 45 years of life as a man, which will always be part of who I am?

I. DON’T. KNOW.

I’m fucking confused, because I don’t feel any different. I feel like I felt when everyone in the world including me saw me as a man. So how am I not still a man? Or is self in essence genderless, and gender a cloak we put on when we turn to face the world?

I’m in another patch of wishing this had never happened. Not doubting...there’s no doubt. But I’m fucking sick of it. I want to stop being trans now. I want to not have to work so hard at just presenting myself to the world every day. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKF CUKF CUFKUCKUF CFKUCK UCDFKU CFKU CKLFU CLKFU XCKFU DXKFU XDLFKUS  DLFKSDUFLKLkdf get the idea?

Anyway, guess what? I’ve been self-aware as trans for three years. It was at this dark time of year in 2008 I wrote “I just want to be a girl” in my journal, from which all else has followed. I was going to work up a peppy and clever summing-up post about that, but the above is what came out instead.

There *have* been some positive developments recently. After some bureaucratic hassle I got my new passport the other day, with my new legal name and an “F” for gender. That means I can keep my consultation appointment in a couple of weeks in Montreal, in preparation for SRS this coming summer.

Also, my daughter, home from college for the holiday, told me she has started calling me her mom when she’s talking to people about me. That’s so lovely...but on the other hand, she also still calls me “Daddio.” The “Daddio” issue just sucks. It’s what both my children have always called me, and it is a word full of history and love, so I can hardly blame them for hanging onto it, but every time they say it I feel shoved back into an old bad wrong box, and it makes me wretched.

Here’s my big three-years-and-counting insight: I’m not done yet. With day-to-day living going well and my surgery scheduled, I’ve been feeling like I’ve completed something, or at least arranged for the completion...but really, everything is still in process. Helping my children come to terms, the search for love, hormonal changes, the search for a voice I can stand, electrolysis, the question of whether to get facial surgery (which I’ve been aching for again)... all still incomplete, all still happening.

I’m so fucking tired...but, here I still am, surviving a day at a time, writing, working, persevering...enduring. There is joy. I know, because I remember feeling it. I can’t access it now, but I feel pretty confident that it will be back. Meanwhile, I endure. Happy fucking December.

%&@# voice

 I continue to struggle with voice. I'm not even close to where I want to be, I don't feel like I'm making any progress, and I'm frustrated and afraid that I'm never going to be able to figure this out. In internet audio files I have heard stunning results...natural, warm, expressive, *beautiful* female voices. I underestand the techniques, but I just can't seem to do it. I'm still all scratchy and creaky and falsetto-y. I still sound to my own ears like a man. Worse: like a man hurting himself to no useful end. Fuck.

I think I'm going to have to break down and seek professional voice coaching. What will it cost? Money and pride. Ha.

In the meantime, I thought it would be different and instructive to post some audio. Earlier this year I bought a little handheld digital recorder which I keep in my car so I can practice while I commute. I recorded the following yesterday while driving on the Maine Turnpike. As you will hear, it's the second of two takes. It runs a bit over seven minutes and turned out to be as good a summary of where I am now in the transition process as I could have produced had a sat down to write it.

Voice 11/11/11

 [note added 3 days later: the above explanatory text came out of feeling frustrated and needing to vent; the voice issue is both less fraught and more complicated than that. Less fraught: day to day I'm comfy most of the time regardless of how my voice sounds as long as I am accepted and treated as a woman, which I mostly am these days, at least face to face - telephone conversations are still  challenging. More complicated: the central reason, I think, I'm having trouble developing the voice I want is that I'm conflicted about what voice I want: a startlingly natural woman's voice, or a defiantly odd I'm-trans-and-I'm-proud voice. At least I don't feel compelled to press the matter. Mostly I feel content to just be and speak and change as I need to change. This involves some squirming, but it's healthy, I think.]

 

Got my surgery date

There’s a notation in my planner book now, on the monthly spread for next June, in the box for Wednesday the 27th: “SRS.” In 263 days Drs. Brassard and Bélanger in Montréal will fashion, from my present redundancies, sophisticated simulacra of a vagina and clitoris.

It has been harder coming to this decision than I thought it would be. I don’t mean fear of the knife, or anxiety about money, though I’m experiencing both. I mean emotionally. Both the need I feel to do this and the loss it turns out to entail rise out of deeper places in the psyche than I was expecting.

Need. I feel like I’m over-dramatizing when I say it, but it’s true: I can’t stand to look at myself naked in the mirror any more. I either keep my panties on, or cover with a hand. It's hard to pin down the right word for how I feel now about the original accouterments. Hate is not quite right. Disgust? No, that’s not quite right either. I don’t repulse myself. Outrage? Yes, that’s closer. Fresh, each time. What, still!? No! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! Those have GOT to go!

Another thing: I can’t conceive of being naked with another person until I get this done. I don’t want anyone to see me, and I don’t want anyone to want me for a thing from which I feel so estranged. Until my body is closer to right, the only choice which feels safe is to hold myself apart from all others. But oh, I am so fucking lonely. I have run up a 40 years’ deficit of loving and being loved as a feminine being, and I am eons beyond sick of it. Words fail. Just...fuck.

And, loss. With every big transition step - revelation, coming out, starting hormones, name change, going full time - I find myself grieving all over again for all time I have lost, and also battling through another round of anger at the random unfairness of it all. I am so weary of “If only...” and “Why me?”, but I don’t seem able to avoid them. And don’t forget, “I want my Mommy!” At each step I also seem to have to grieve all over again for my parents. Part of it is that I ache to show them who I really am...but mostly, in the defenseless way of a hurting child, I just want them, want their love. Again: fuck.

One sort of bright spot: going through this wringer so often, I'm getting better at it. I'm becoming an emotional-processing virtuosa. Tra la, hooray for me.

Then there is the loss my transition is inflicting on my children...which, after numerous attempts, I find I cannot write about right now. What I can say: That I love them, and that I always will. That I will never stop doing my best to parent them. That I’m sorry. That I’m so incredibly proud of them. That they are my life’s greatest joy.

As usual, I have questioned, challenged, second-guessed my resolve; and as usual, the proof is in action. I’ve held steadily to my purpose through all the steps so far. I’ve done my research and chosen my surgeons. I’ve paid professionals to certify that I am in my right mind. I’ve figured out how to take the money out of my retirement account. (Another truly bright spot: it appears I will avoid the penalty for early withdrawal because I’ll have allowable medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of my income in the same year...a savings of a couple thousand.) And, I’ve made a first withdrawal for a down payment. Still to come: getting a passport, arranging to exit my life for three weeks, estate planning just in case, a battery of pre-surgery tests...waiting...and then, a ride from a friend.

I’ll still be able to change my mind up until the moment the anaesthesiologist comes to sedate me. Who knows, I might; but I don’t think so.

The candle-count puzzle

Here's an intriguing question: how old am I?

Five! I’m five! See my fingers? Count them! One two three four five! Five!

That’s good, honey, but I need you to hush for a second so I can write this, OK?

(Pouts.)

OK, that’s one answer. There’s a part of me that seems to have frozen in childhood - my innermost passionate vulnerable girl-self - and at this point I don’t know if she’s ever going to change. Which is fine. I love her, and after all she is me...but it’s more complicated than that.

Transition for me has followed the course of a hyper-accelerated second life, starting with my gender revelation in November ‘08, which, with its sense of dawning glory, did feel like being born. Then for several months, while responsible adult male self trudged on through his regular days, I explored with trepidation and trembling joy what it meant to be alive...

Guess what, I’m five!

Shh, sweetheart...let me finish. C’mere so I can hold you. Better? OK, good.

As I was saying, in those early secret days every step felt huge, every risk drastic. My e-mail updates to my few long-distance confidants have the breathless “lookitme lookitme!” tone of a girl riding a bike by herself for the first time. For a little while, I did truly feel...honey?

Five?

That’s right, very good. And six and seven and eight, calendar pages flipping by...

Then came adolescence. During this stretch I became even more self-involved than usual, felt emotionally needy most of the time, and experienced a real sense of resentment about my responsibilities in life. In sum, I reminded myself (forgive me, my dears) of my own teenagers on their worst days.

That stage feels done now too, thank goodness, and these days I think of myself as being in my twenties. Elements of this phase include a (re-)growing awareness of the world and my potential role in it, a strengthening of the impulse to self-expression, a tendency to vehement opinion, a greater willingness and ability to bear my responsibilities with fortitude, and a feeling of readiness to love and be loved.

So, two and a half years post-revelation, I feel 25 or so. That comes out to ten trans-years for each year of real time; and that maps well onto what I’ve heard about other transitioning people’s complete arcs, that they feel pretty much done after four or five years. So maybe in another two and half years the age I feel and the age I actually am will match up again, and then I can just get on with the rest of my life.

What’s that? 49? Pff...that’s just the number of years I have been alive. Doesn't matter hardly at all.

Up side update

A friend e-mailed me the other day to ask if I was OK. She was feeling motherly concern based on a couple of my recent blog posts (this one and this one), which, reading  back, I can understand. I was doing hard emotional work when I wrote both of them, and they are dark. I don’t want to minimize those posts; but on the other hand, I’m doing fine overall, and it occurs to me that if I want this blog to reflect my total transition experience, then I’m overdue for an up side update. As a matter of fact, many parts of transition are going well.

Parenting: Transition is a narcissistic process, and from time to time I have become so engrossed in myself that my parenting has faltered. Most recently this took the form of pointing both my emotional neediness and my stress about money at my children in ways which were unfair to them. In effect I was asking them for the kind of support one might expect from an adult friend or partner rather than from one’s teenagers. Sensible and empowered as they are (I do have amazing offspring) they called me on it. At their request we went together to a short course of family therapy, and talked a bunch of stuff out. End results: I’m feeling better and stronger about my parenting than I have for a long time (and, I trust, doing a better job at it); I also got to say some things I think they needed to hear; and in our little household the tension-level has gone way down and the fun-level has gone way up. Yay for all three of us! :-)

Hormones: It has been about a year now since I got up to full doses in my hormone regimen, and I am totally digging the physical changes. I’m already happy with my new breasts; even if they don’t grow any more than the modest amount they have so far, I have indefinitely tabled the idea of surgical enhancement. My face also looks much more feminine, mostly perhaps because I’ve lost about twenty pounds, but there could be skin changes and fat-distribution changes too. (Likewise with my neck, shoulders, arms, legs.) Some days at least I think maybe I’ll never have to get facial surgery, and considering how desperate the need for that has sometimes felt, that’s big. I can’t quite say I’ve tabled it indefinitely, but at least for a couple of years I have, and that eases the money worry. And, one other hormone plus: back hair completely gone. That makes me smile every time I think of it. :-)

Surgery plans: I have pretty much settled on a surgeon and a date for Sexual Reassignment Surgery (Dr. Brassard in Montreal, summer of 2012), and have a working plan for how to pay for it (retirement savings, which I recently discovered I have more of than I thought). The Montreal SRS experience sounds about as wonderful as it could be: Dr. B is by all accounts as good as any other SRS surgeon working, and for a day before and several days after your procedure you stay in a residence with other patients, nursing care, full meals...and all for the same price as other surgeons who send you off on your own after a couple days in the hospital. One of the things I was dreading most about SRS was a week spent recovering in some anonymous hotel room, which seems to be the dominant model here in the States. A week of pampering and peer support for no extra dollars? Yes please!

Performance/writing: As noted in previous posts, I recently realized a lifelong ambition and performed a piece in a show. (Gushy post here.)  I want to see what it’s like to perform for a straight audience next, rather than a room full of twenty-something lesbians, so I’m going to check out the comedy open mic at the Slainte winebar here in Portland. One visit to get the vibe, and then work up a routine and step up to the mic. Oooh, butterflies. I’ve got the bug bad...performing is *such* a rush, and I turn out not to suck at it, so, onward.

Meanwhile, after several false starts, I have figured out a way to write long-form about my trans experience. Success as a writer is my earliest, most intense, and most enduring ambition in life, so when a project is going well I feel a deep sense of fulfilment and happiness which nothing else can give me. It’s going slowly, but it’s going...joy!

Feminine life: the daily experience of living as woman in the world has lost the gee-whiz factor which leads to blog posts, but it continues to be deeply satisfying. I’m not sure how, but I’ve managed to reduce my anxiety about presentation (dress, carriage, mannerisms, and especially voice) almost to zero and just focus on enjoying every moment. I still get such pleasure from such simple things; a nice new pair of earrings, walking down Congress Street in a skirt, an unforced and natural “ma’am” at the grocery store.

So, in sum, yeah, I have money troubles, and sometimes my self-esteem plummets, and sometimes I feel desperately lonely, and I have no idea at this point even what sort of partner I want, let alone might ever find...but overall things are going well. The curious burden of being trans is also the source of most of the pleasure and sense of forward motion in my life, and it is *never* boring.

Next time the rollercoaster dips down into one of those low tunnels, remind me to come back and re-read this post.

Little empress of self-castigation

I’ve been doing a lot of self-parenting recently. Most of it would be boring to read, because it’s basically just me holding myself while I cry...shh, Honey, I’m here, it’s OK, I’ve got you, and so on; but some of it is perhaps more revealing of a facet of transition.

- You don’t have to hide in the dark all the time any more, Sweetie. It’s OK, you’re allowed to live.

- (no answer)

- Honey, look at me. I’m here, and I will always be here with you. So hear me now: you are allowed to be happy. You deserve to live.

- (a tenuous whisper) Really?

- Yes, Sweetie, really.

- No I don’t.

- Yes, you do. You really truly do. You deserve to live. You deserve to be in the world, just like everyone else.

- But...

- But what, Dearest?

- (no answer)

- Honey, listen to me. I know you are afraid...and being really alive is scary...but it feels wonderful, too, and I know you can do it. You are stronger than you think you are.

- (no answer)

- (tenderly) And also, my darling Dearest, you know that you can’t live, you can’t really live in the world without hurting other people at least a little bit...

- (suddenly agitated, wailing) Oh, but I did! I hurt Mommy and I hurt Daddy and I, I, I wanted to hurt my little brother, and it was bad, it was very very bad, and I don’t deserve to live! I’m a bad girl!

- No Honey. No. Hush, my Darling, hush. Listen to me. Listen. Maybe you did hurt them a little bit...that happens, people hurt each other when they are really alive, they can’t help it...but only a little, way less than you think you did, and they loved you, and you love them, and it’s OK. You. Are. Not. A. Bad. Girl. You are a GOOD girl. You are.

- No, I’m not, I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not...

- Honey. Look at me. Look at me. You are a good girl. You are a good girl.

- (no answer)

- Sweetie, you can say it. Let me hear you say it. “I am a good girl.”

- (long silence)

- You can do it, Sweetie. I’m here, I will always be here, I love you. You can do it.

- (barely audible) I am a good girl.

- Yes. Yes, you are.

- I am a good girl. I deserve to live. Oh, really?

- Yes, really truly, my Dearest. Shh, Honey, I’m here, it’s OK, I’ve got you...

...and, I indulge in a private maternal eye-roll at the little empress of self-castigation I also turn out to be...

 

Loathing and revulsion

It turns out my trans-narrative is darker than I’ve been telling it.

My stock explanation of why it has taken me so long to express my gender-truth has been that somewhere around age five I made a fateful decision to try to please my parents and the world by being the best possible male I could be. I have also surmised that I made this choice after showing my nascent femininity to my mother and having it made clear to me that whatever I was doing was for girls and that I was a boy. Mind you, I don’t remember either such a decision or such a scene with my mother, but this story has felt psychologically and emotionally true. Things to note about this version: it rejects the idea that I was abused; and it assumes at least some self-awareness on my part.

The new version still rejects the abuse theory, but it involves less self-awareness and more emotional turmoil. My source is a packet of notebooks which I have carried around with me since college. Into these journals, during my sophomore year, at the suggestion of a counselor, I released a burden of repressed emotion unexpressed up to that time; and recently, for the first time since writing them, I have been reading them again.

I can’t go into details. It is still too raw, and besides, there’s enough material for a book. In general, the journals alternate between defensive intellectualizing and the spewing of pent up rage, grief, hatred and self-hatred, guilt...and unexpressed love. I can still feel echoes of some of these feelings - being angry at my parents for divorcing, at my father for dying; feeling like I had somehow failed the world and myself and feeling so sorry for that; and also realizing for the first time through writing it how much I loved my family. (One good thing which came out of that therapy was my telling my mother that I loved her. It took months to build up enough courage to do it. I’m so glad, now, that I did.)

There is one thread in those notebooks, though, which I had forgotten. As I wrote them I kept returning to the idea that there was something inside me which I couldn’t access or express; and this thing, whatever it was, felt so black and evil that every time I approached it I recoiled, full of loathing and revulsion. I wrote my gender truth more than once: “I’m mostly female; don’t tell a soul, nobody knows” - but I couldn’t feel the force of truth in these statements. I couldn’t connect them to the awful hidden thing.

So here is my new theory of why and how I repressed my femininity for so long. In my first few years, like all children, I was whirled along in a tornado of elemental emotions: jealousy toward my little brother; sexual attraction to my father (that Freudian chestnut); hatred of my rival for his affections, my mother (likewise); terror in the face of her anger; hunger for love; fear and guilt around these other feelings...and so on.  I was a wild passionate vulnerable girl, completely unsocialized - and so, of course, my parents did what parents do: they taught me and and corrected me, and I also taught and corrected myself, to control my deepest emotional impulses.

And here is the key part of this new theory: this teaching was gendered. I learned to survive the maelstrom specifically by being a *good boy.* Then this socialized maleness became my bulwark against the unabated storm inside me, and in later years, the harder that storm raged, the more I clung to the safety of my identity as a rational intellectual man.

All those years I hated, feared, and felt disgusted by my turbulent ungoverned girl-soul. What a wretched way to live.  Exhausting too. Fucking eternal vigilance. I’m doing OK, you know...better than OK...but sometimes I do feel so sad and bone-weary. Fuck. :-(