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By Rebecca, September 27, 2011 5:55 pm

Hopefully won't end up in police custody like she did, tho.

I talked with my therapist recently about ‘the rest’ of transitioning. I don’t mean The Surgery, although that’s something which is still on my mind, I mean moving from actively transitioning – changing my name, going on hormones, fretting about levels, watching my boobs grow, constant hair removal – to simply living as a woman. (As if living were ever simple, for anyone.)

More specifically, I said I’d been having trouble getting motivated lately. Sure, I could spend extra time doing my makeup, extra energy wearing a skirt, extra effort walking in heels. But I’m never going to look like Mexico’s beauty queen over on the right (using her as an example simply because she came up when I did a Google Image Search for ‘beauty’) so why not just throw on jeans and a t-shirt?

Laura, my therapist, smiled and said that’s part of what being a woman is all about.

Except I’ve become very used to the idea of transition as moving toward something: getting hair removed, growing breasts, buying a new wardrobe. The idea that I’ve arrived (or am close to arriving) at status quo, at whatever ‘normal’ is going to be for me for the foreseeable future, is battling it out with internalized transphobia and, more simply, internalized desire for the unobtainable female ideal.

On good days, I’m able to remind myself that I’m not only attractive “for a trans woman” (whatever that loaded statement means) but simply attractive as a woman. Touring this summer demonstrated that; it may not be that all the girls wanted me, but enough did to be a boost to my confidence.

On bad days, however, I feel stuck. As if I’ve reached my asymptotic height. And while convincing myself that transitioning was possible has helped keep me sane for so many years, I now need to put the breaks on that line of thinking: there is a limit to how I’ll look, determined by genetics and biology. I’m never going to be 5’6″ and 120 lbs, or have a 36-26-36 figure.

But that’s OK. I’m working on it being OK.

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By Rebecca, August 8, 2011 5:43 pm

I’ve been really bad about posting lately, going from my height of posting once every other day to not posting for weeks on end. I’m going to try and get back into the posting groove, and thought I’d start with some more thoughts about being in Kansas City and being back.

The rest of the trip was as enjoyable as the first chunk. I got to see more shows (some good, some less so, but all fun) handed out a shit ton of postcards (probably around 2,000), and was the highest selling show in my venue, Loft 122, meaning I won the coveted Kansas City Fringe Festival Hangover Award and received a bonus performance on the final Sunday of the festival. Woo! Being in Kansas City reminded me how much I like performing and how much I particularly enjoy the festival atmosphere: lots of friendly people, tons of things always going on, built-in socialization opportunities, and a very finite list of tasks to accomplish.

I’ve been thinking about that since I got back to Chicago and my stress level went back up. Being in Kansas City meant I didn’t need to worry about everything, just a very specific thing: getting people to see the show. And I really only had one tool to do that: going out and talking to people while handing out postcards. So I didn’t need to think about contacting colleges to perform, festivals to perform, researching grants, thinking about my next show, thinking about Kickstarter fundraising, and on and on and on.

I’m trying to recapture that while back home, to give myself a finite list of tasks. Say, contact ten colleges by the end of the week, three festivals, find one grant, and so on. Make things I can reasonably check off my list, instead of just feeling like I need to do everything all at once.

Being in Kansas City (and DC back in March) has also awakened some wanderlust in me. And I’ve begun researching grad school. Eeek!

Continue reading 'She lives!'»

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By Rebecca, July 5, 2011 11:21 pm

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Two weeks from tomorrow, I leave Chicago for Kansas City and the Kansas City Fringe Festival. I’ll be driving, most likely by myself. My mom is attempting to talk me into taking her car, a Subaru Forester station wagon/SUV type thing. She wants me to drive her 2007 or 2008 Forester instead of my 1998 Toyota Corolla. The Corolla I like. The Corolla I’ve had since graduating from college. The Corolla covered in LGBT, leftist, and radical bumper stickers.

Continue reading 'A tale of two cities'»

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By Rebecca, June 27, 2011 4:58 pm

Happy (post) Pride! I hope everyone had a fun weekend, whether you were Pride-ing or not. I had lots of ridiculousness this weekend (in a good way) and thought I’d share what I did.

Friday night I went to Backlot Bash, a mini music fest in my neighborhood behind a local gym. (Hence the ‘backlot’ part.) My neighborhood, Andersonville, is pretty lesbian-y, and Backlot Bash is specifically women-focused. A friend of mine was very excited about the Friday musicians, as they were all acoustic, so we had dinner together and went over. She made yummy vegan pad thai, which was a new culinary experience for me, but much fun.

Backlot Bash was pretty perfect for a Friday night. Saturday and Sunday are usually pretty crazy, but Friday was lots of folks in lawn chairs, good lesbian acoustic rock and folk, and really excellent people watching. It also ended around 10, which was good since I wanted to get as much sleep as possible to prep for Pride. But I definitely want to look up the musicians who played – Katie Quick, Katie Todd, Edie Carey, and Catie Curtis – as they were all excellent.

Continue reading 'A Weekend of Pride Festivities'»

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By Rebecca, June 21, 2011 5:42 pm

I had another meeting with my doctor today, Dr Cook. It was the first since he gave me my assignments last week. The appointment was tough, but ultimately productive. (I hope!)

One of the things I’ve said, which I’ve discussed here before, was my frustration at still feeling lousy. That is, I’m doing what I want to be doing: transition(ing/ed), performing, writing, freelancing, dating. In another way, I’m doing all the right adult things: getting my teeth cleaned, paying my bills, shopping for groceries, and so on. So if I’m doing everything ‘right,’ why do I still feel like shit? Why do I still want to hurt myself?

In response, my doc talked a lot about how we ingrain our behaviors and – ultimately – write certain paths in our brain. When I was younger, wanting to hurt myself as an escape was entirely legit. (Wow, it was awesome to have a medical professional validate that.) I couldn’t transition, felt like I couldn’t come out, was developing in ways that were absolutely wrong for me, and felt very trapped in many ways. In that situation, the escape of self-harm (which I fortunately did avoid) is a release valve when everything else is stuck.

But now, everything else isn’t stuck. But my brain is still trained to go straight for that release valve.

Continue reading 'Getting off the dirt path'»

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By Rebecca, June 12, 2011 1:31 pm

My last post discussed some of the hard emotions I’ve been dealing with, but not as much how I’m trying to get away from ‘em or move past ‘em. After talking with my therapist and my doctor this past week, we came up with some tactics for getting to a better place.

One of the things my (awesome) doctor mentioned was the fact I’m really hard on myself. (No shocker there.) And that I don’t easily accept compliments. (Also, something I knew.) But he extracted some history from those ideas in a way that hadn’t occurred to me. One of the big things he said, which I’ve thought about before but never quite this explicit way, is I’ve trained myself to dismiss compliments because for so long they were at least partially false: “Oh, you’re handsome,” “You’re such a strong boy,” whatever. But I’ve trained myself to not only to dismiss compliments, but to feel that they were lies because the person giving the compliment couldn’t possibly see the ‘real’ me. Well, now that I’ve transitioned, that’s no longer true. So I need to unlearn that. Most of the tactics we discussed deal, at their core, with being nicer to myself and more open to accepting positive energy both from myself and from others.

Continue reading 'Assignments for mental health'»

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By Rebecca, June 11, 2011 10:36 pm

Trigger warning for discussion of self injury

I’m always hesitant to post here when I’m having a hard time. It’s a few things. First, this is (obviously) a public forum. I don’t hide my ‘real’ identity. So there’s some reluctance to have friends I maybe haven’t talked to in a while say “Why am I hearing about this from your blog and not directly from you?” That hasn’t happened often, but once burnt twice shy. I also keep bumping into this weird public/private persona. I don’t make a conscious effort to distinguish between the two, but there is a distinction: there’s stuff about sex and relationships and emotions that I haven’t posted on this blog, or that won’t make it into shows I do. But I also feel this awkward need to justify my hard times, to say “I’m feeling shitty….but I know there are people worse off, so I can’t allow myself to feel shitty.” I think this is particularly tricky in minority communities (at least, it feels that way in the trans community) because if I say “I feel ugly” or “I feel masculine” or “I feel alone” there are lots of folks able to say “You’re not as ______ as me!”

But I still have those feelings.

This post is an effort to not justify or explain or couch my emotions. This post is simply an expression of them. Comments like “Well, you don’t have it that bad, look at XYZ” will not be appreciated, and may be deleted. I think I’m a damn generous moderator, but right now I just need some expression of self pitty and hardship.

With all that friggin discilaimering out of the way, lets get to it.

Being trans is hard.

Continue reading 'The hard stuff'»

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By Rebecca, May 30, 2011 3:12 pm

Self Loving: Biking along Chicago’s incomparable lakefront, knowing the journey is the point, not worrying about speed or distance or time. Enjoying the air, the view, the sensation of flying next to the water.

Self Loathing: Biking along Chicago’s lakefront, comparing myself to every beautiful woman I see, never feeling slim enough, curvy enough, busty enough, pretty enough.

Self Loving: Switching to a new (closer, more responsive) doctor to try and adjust my antidepressants to something more effective.

Self Loathing: Rushing into the switch (through my own laziness, not the doctor’s fault) and dropping hormone and antidepressant dosages way to fast. Panic attacks. Anxiety. Dizziness. Thoughts of self-harm.

Self Loving: Going to bed at midnight instead of two, three, four AM.

Self Loathing: Tossing and turning in bed, checking email, reading websites, IMing with friends until two, three, four AM.

Self Loving: Getting off my butt to apply for jobs, work on my show, apply for grants.

Self Loathing: Starting to apply for jobs, work on my show, apply for grants and then get overwhelmed and dizzy and lie on the couch until it goes away. Except it doesn’t, because the stress is still there.

Continue reading 'Self Lo______'»

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By Rebecca, May 26, 2011 10:26 pm

I just finished Nineteen Minutes, a book by Jodi Picoult about a high school shooting, what leads up to it, the aftermath, and the trial of the shooter. I’ve only read one other Picoult book (My Sister’s Keeper, about a younger sister who was specifically created through artificial insemination to provide her very sick older sister organ and tissue donations) and I enjoyed both of them quite a lot, even if they were also both sort of emotional rollercoasters with some similar narrative structures.

What made Nineteen Minutes such a hard read for me, though, was the portrayal and discussion of bullying. Peter Houghton, the shooter, was bullied since his first day of school. Was a sensitive and not particularly athletic child. Was a gamer and a computer programmer, dabbling in making his own videogames. A loner. Unpopular and massively teased as a result. Suicidal. And, ultimately, homicidal. Was, as I’ve thought about a lot, someone I could see myself having become in different circumstances. Someone I still sometimes – unreasonably, I admit – worry I am. Continue reading 'Jodi Picoult’s ‘Nineteen Minutes’ and being part of the ‘in’ crowd'»

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By Rebecca, April 17, 2011 11:59 pm

O, Canada...

I had a conversation tonight with my dad about the TSA, and it got me thinking about these United States: About discrimination, harassment, violence, brutality. Specifically, at what point are things ‘bad enough’ to leave?

I’m going to admit my understanding of any other country (particularly, say, the one directly north of the United States) comes from popular culture and a one-week trip I made to Vancouver a few years ago. I’m not seriously thinking about leaving the US for more northerly climes.

But what would it take?

My country is telling me I don’t deserve health care, my tax dollars should spent on war, my identity isn’t worth respecting, my rights aren’t worth respecting… What would it take?

There’s a big part of me that feels sad even considering this question. That thinks, “Hey, America is my country and – if there are things I don’t like – I should fight to change it for the better.” But there’s another party that can’t help wondering whether I should just pick up and go…