- How did you know you wanted to be a girl? – what influenced your decision to transition?
That’s a tough one to answer. How did you know you wanted to be a girl, anonymous questioner? (Or wanted to be a boy?)
For me, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl that I knew I wasn’t a boy. I imagined being a girl was better, I hoped it was right for me, and I wished I were a girl. But I wasn’t positive that it would be until I did it. Maybe a good analogy would be the question, “How do you know you’re hungry?” Well, because you’re hungry! It’s a state of being, something you know you are or you aren’t. I didn’t know I wanted to be a girl because I liked dresses or makeup or dolls. I knew it because it was true.
- What do your family and friends think? Did anyone give you moral support in making your decision?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am spoiled, blessed, privileged, and thankful that my friends, family, and coworkers have been so supportive during my transition. I’ve had people (family, mostly) react in a confused way, but I’ve never had anyone who was important to me act in a negative or intentionally hurtful way.
My experience, however, is the exception. It’s (unfortunately) not the rule. But I’d like to work toward a world where my experience – of the people important to me being supportive and enthusiastic of my transition – is the norm.
I was at my mom’s Sunday night (see the previous post on yumminess) and she said she’d been thinking about mother-daughter things for us to do together. She felt like we’d missed out, and wanted to make up for lost time. She surprised me by saying she’d been thinking about tattoos, since I hadn’t told her about my thoughts. But I guess a friend of hers (my mom’s age) and her daughter (my age) had gotten tattoos together as a bonding exercise, and it had gotten my mom thinking.
She said she’s not really excited about getting a tattoo (although we both joked that, after the amount of hair removal we’ve done, the pain of a tattoo can’t possibly compare). But she did say she had been thinking about getting another piercing on each ear, and that we could do that together (each get a second piercing) as a bonding experience.
Continue reading 'Or maybe another piercing?'»
Made with my mom last night. Mmm!
Continue reading 'Kugel!'»
Something has been bouncing around in my head. From Picture Frames, a post from Cedar’s blog Taking Up Too Much Space, written in response to my show Trans Form :
What I realized, when I heard [in Trans Form] about the photo albums, and the pictures on the walls of her [Rebecca's] parents’ house, was that these were the memorabilia of an occupation, held onto and commemorated by its collaborators (witting or unwitting). Yes they represent a historical “truth,” a “past” one does not want to “deny”–but so do guns and chains and whips and bombs, and you don’t see them in the family photographs. Well, not if you were on the receiving end, anyway.
That concept, viewing photos or keepsakes of my past as “the memorabilia of an occupation,” finally clicked with me today.
This past weekend, my dad and I were talking about my depression. I was saying that I regretted not transitioning earlier, and he was saying he was sorry for not doing something when I was younger. Seeing something, noticing my unhappiness and its cause. And he said that, with the more tangible problems my older siblings had, it was easy to see me – with good grades, friends, a voracious apatite for books, no small skill at playing piano – as the ‘normal’ child. The child who didn’t need ‘fixing.’
And I realized, as Cedar indicated, that where we find ourselves today is not simply a result of the “truth” of history. It’s a result of how that history is viewed.
Continue reading 'Escaping an angry photograph'»
I just got off the phone with my dad. Both of my parents have been calling me pretty much every day, since last Wednesday when I told them how difficult things were for me right now. I’ve been getting a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over:
Mom or dad: How’re you feeling?
Me: The same.
Dad or mom: Are you feeling any better?
Me: No, not really.
(Yes, I know they mean well and they’re asking because they love me.)
I was expecting a repeat of this and, indeed, the conversation did start that way. But then my dad mentioned how a J – a friend of my dad’s and a reporter in Chicago – had been telling my dad about Christina Kahrl. Christina is a trans sports writer in Chicago, and I met her at a Broadway Youth Center event a few months ago. Apparently, J was saying he’d be happy to set up some sort of meeting for me with Christina; my dad was calling to ask me about this and see if I might want to talk with someone who has “been there.”
It seems like a little thing, particularly in contrast to my dad’s continued difficulty of calling me Rebecca, but I was really surprised and touched by the offer.
Continue reading 'Family can surprise you'»
I’m on my second day off, and feeling overwhelmed by the time I have. I’m also trying really hard not to think about this weekend and next week, which would have been filled with tech for my high-schoolers’ show, but now I’m not doing. That still hurts a lot, even if I think it’s the right decision.
Yesterday was nice, even if taking a mental health day felt really weird and indulgent. (I’m not allowed to think it’s indulgent, but that’s a battle in and of itself.) My mom and I went to lunch, and our conversation drifted back and for from mundane things (she and some of her girl friends are having a slumber party tonight, which I find adorable) to more serious topics (how I’m doing, how my brother is doing, and so on). We then walked back from the restaurant to my apartment, window shopping and (inevitably) stopping in the shoe store to ‘look.’
As much as I like Alamo Shoes, one of the employees there always recognizes me and I can’t decide if he’s being flirty or not. I don’t know how to react to flirty, so I get a little uncomfortable. (Particularly when I’m with my mom, and he asks where I got my jeans so he can get a pair.) Maybe I’m being oversensitive – probably am – I just don’t have any socialization patterns stored up for reacting or interacting in that situation…
Continue reading 'Taking time is hard to do'»
So all that anger I’ve been talking about? Turns out my mom has been thinking about it, too.
I went to my mom’s on Sunday night for dinner, and was trying to figure out if I wanted to bring up the anger toward her that I’ve been thinking about. I knew I wanted to bring it up eventually, but it had been a difficult weekend and I wasn’t sure I had the energy to go there.
After dinner, though, my mom said that she’d been thinking a lot about the example she and my dad set for me. See, I never saw them fight. And, in recent talks with my mom, apparently they never really did fight. Part of the reason I have trouble with anger, I’m coming to realize, is because I have no framework for it in my life. My experience has been: everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, my parents are getting divorced.
And, apparently, that wasn’t because my parents were going to great lengths to hide their anger from me. They just suppressed and repressed it to the point where they barely were able to acknowledge it themselves, let alone express it to each other or show it to my brother and I.
Which leaves me really not knowing how to deal with anger. I don’t know how to express it, and I don’t know how to handle anger directed at me.
Continue reading 'My mom is awesome'»
Saw Laura, my therapist, tonight and talked a lot about the anger issues I spoke about earlier this week. I was saying that my anger – at my mom, at my dad, at the universe – feels profoundly useless. Addressing it doesn’t seem productive, it won’t change anything about the past, and I just don’t see the point.
Laura said that the “point” of addressing anger is that is you can’t get past it unless you do. Addressing anger won’t change the past, but it can change the anger itself. (At this point, I accused her of a circular argument: Addressing anger is useful because you can’t address it unless you do. She laughed, but said rephrasing it to sound silly doesn’t make it not true.)
Continue reading 'Anger is stupid and bad and I don’t like it'»
I’ve been thinking a lot about my previous post, about the This American Life piece which discussed two eight-year-old trans girls. Because, at some point over the last few days, I realized that I’m still angry about being trans. That things I thought I’d gotten over are still bothering me.
But I’m feeling rather clueless and impotent as to where I should direct the anger; how I can diffuse it. What ceremony can I perform? What ritual can I undergo? What right of passage is there for trans people who see their transition as a slow journey, not one marked by specific milestones?
Continue reading 'Where should the anger go?'»
Trigger warning. (A link explaining what “trigger warning” means.)
Earlier this week, Little Light posted is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / or is it something worse. The post is now behind a password but I did have a chance to read it before it was password protected. The thoughts behind password protecting the post are here, and no, I don’t have the password, and don’t know how to get it. I’m going to write about the post anyway, as best as I can remember. I apologize if any of the details are wrong, but the general gist is accurate.
The post was about someone Little Light knew, a trans woman we’ll call Alice, who suffered a serious injury and was hospitalized. Alice had been on hormones for a few years, and was living full time as a woman. She had not undergone The Surgery, but was happier for living as Alice, as herself. After being injured, Alice ended up partially paralyzed, unable to care for herself, and unable to communicate without extreme effort.
Alice’s doctors decided – despite clear evidence that Alice identified and was presenting as a woman – that forcing medical staff to use ’she’ around someone with a penis would be too confusing. They instead used ‘he’ and Alice’s former, male, name.
Likewise, Alice’s family decided – despite clear evidence that Alice identified and was presenting and as a woman – to take her off her hormones.
Continue reading 'The stuff of nightmares'»
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