Comments (0) I miss my daddy. I haven’t called him that in twenty years, but that’s who I miss: The man who lifted me on his shoulders, explored forests and streams with me, played shark in the lake. The man for whom I had no doubt of his love.
Oh Daffy. He gets so close to understanding where he goes wrong. And then, inevitably, he ends up getting shot in the face.
Just about ten years ago, I came out to my parents. For a long time, that didn’t really mean anything: no changes, no transitioning, just them having the knowledge that I’m trans.
About three years ago, I started on hormones and mark that as the general beginning of my actual transition. While I spent about a year presenting as male some of the time and female some of the time, both of my parents knew I was transitioning and (at some point during that “in between” year) I had a chat with both of them about wanting to be called Rebecca, and referred to with feminine pronouns.
Last night, my dad – who is attempting to help me with some insurance stuff from having my gallbladder removed – called to ask my about my social security number. “It’s still under [male name], right?”
I paused, surprised he would even ask such a question. “No, I went to the social security office and had it changed.”
“Oh. But do you have a new card?”
Frustrated, I told him, “Yes. A new card. With Rebecca on it. Sitting on my desk at home. Same social security number, different name.”
“Oh, OK.”
It wasn’t until reflecting on the conversation that I realized how upset it made me. After ten years of being out to him, does he not understand how important this is to me? It wasn’t that he wanted to double-check about the name associated social security number. I could understand if he said, “I just wanted to double check that your social security number is under Rebecca now.” Or even, “Hey, what name is on your social security card these days?” I might be a little annoyed, but not really upset or hurt. But the way he did phrase it, assuming it wasn’t important enough to have gotten changed, really made me feel like he still, after all these years, is just as clueless as he was when I came out to him.
Am I allowed to read this?
While I was in the hospital, my mom brought me a little care package. It had a stuffed bear, a silly coloring book, and a copy of Glamour.
The stuffed bear lived next to me on my bed. The coloring book was, well, colored in. And the Glamour was put into my bag of things, hidden away from sight.
It’s not because I didn’t want to know about “25 Times I’m Irresistible to Him (And Don’t Even Know It).” Or “My Top 10 Tricks for Sexy Hair!” Or even “59 Cute, Casual Outfits That Look Good On Everyone.” I mean, who wouldn’t want to know all those things?
It was because I wasn’t sure if I would be looked down upon for reading it.
Would the nurses think I was immature? Would my friends think I was silly? Would my visitors think I was….girlie?
Pretend you can see my dad!
My father marched at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He went to Washington to see Dr. King speak. His work as a defense attorney has helped demonstrate the unjustness of the death penalty and his was one of the cases referenced by Gov. Ryan when he issued a moratorium against capital punishment. In my mind, I still sometimes imagine my dad like I did when I was ten: the Good Lawyer protecting the innocent from Evil Cops, fighting for Civil Rights and Other Important Issues Warranting Capitalization.
Life rarely that simple. Family certainly isn’t.
There was a slowly dawning sense of discomfort during my teenage years, as I started to notice the times my dad would talk about clients he knew were guilty but would receive reduced sentences based on police misconduct. Now, to be perfectly clear, I think police misconduct is almost always a greater societal problem than the guilty person getting a break. Better ten guilty men go free, and all that. I still believe my dad is one of the Good Guys, and that even the guiltiest among us deserves fair and competent counsel. But my dad is also a more nuanced and complicated individual than I as able to acknowledge as a child.
Still, I sometimes expect him to see all civil rights and justice issues the way I do. Which made speaking with him tonight something like banging my head against a wall. The discussion began, as so many do, with talk of breasts.
This post was prompted by an article in Yoga Journal, given to me by my mom, called “Forgiveness Heals.” There will be a companion post, a writing exercise about forgiving myself, sometime soon.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.
My kindergarten classroom stretched along an endless hallway. There was a finger-painting station, a corner with cardboard building blocks, a book nook, a playhouse with a kitchen. Trim along the ceiling had numbers, one for each day of the school year, and we would hold a little classroom celebration every time we hit a number ending in zero. We sang, and drew, and played tag at recess. Once a week, I would leave the class and go down the hall to talk with the school psychologist. Even then, my parents knew something was wrong.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell her – in her office with reassuring colors and a calm far removed from the kindergarten class – that there had been some mistake, that my bowl-cut should have been reserved for a boy, could I trade in my button-down shirts for pigtails, please?
(Trigger warning – this post discusses rape, albeit in fiction.)
I saw Trust at Lookingglass Theatre tonight. It’s a play about a 14 year old girl, Annie, who is befriended online by someone who is eventually revealed to be (at least) 35. They end up meeting, and he rapes her. The rest of the play deals with the aftermath, particularly when Annie’s family finds out.
To be totally honest, I was really expecting to dislike this play. I walked in ready for a sensationalist movie-of-the-week about the dangers of newfangled technology, and of writers who were my age when the Internet became mainstream preaching about how things should be for kids who have grown up with and around this technology.
Instead, I saw a piece about bad things happening to good people, of parents doing all the right things and nevertheless seeing their daughter get hurt, of a teenager who made poor – but not unrealistic or unbelievable – choices. It was well-done, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in the use of projection in live theatre, or of dealing with sexual assault, particularly directed at minors. One thing I thought Trust demonstrated particularly well was how cruel it is to label something as not “really” rape, or to dismiss someone’s experiences as “not as bad as it could have been.”
For all that, I can’t say I enjoyed seeing the play.
I went to the ER last night. About once a month for the last few months, I’ve been having really crippling stomach cramps and pains, between my belly button and my rib cage. They’ve been pretty clearly linked in my mind with eating lots of rich food – deep dish pizza, really thick soup, etc – and even though they hurt and suck, I’ve been able to take antacids and make them go away. The antacids took maybe 20 or 30 minutes to kick in, but when they did it was like turning off a light switch: the pain was gone.
Last night, though, I took antacids and Pepto-Bismol, and the pain just kept getting worse. Finally, at 3AM, after having been pacing and panting and rolling on my bed since midnight, trying to find a comfortable spot, I asked my roommate to drive me to the ER.
I had another doctor’s appointment today, as a followup to the one I had a few weeks ago. He said I should stick with the Lexapro (now on week two) and he opened my chakras again.
We also talked for a while about regret and how to look forward.
I explained to him how I’ve been feeling like I’m wallowing in regret. That I’m consciously aware of how good I do have it, but still can’t get over this fantasy that things would be better had I transitioned earlier or not had to transition at all. (By which I meant ‘had been born female.’ Don’t worry.) I know it’s futile, and I know it’s harmful, but I can’t get out out of it. He responded that I need to find a way to look forward, not backward; regret over what’s passed can consume you. (Tell me something I don’t know…)
On the train ride home, I was rereading some essays from Yes Means Yes and one in particular struck home. From Sex Worth Fighting For:
I remained preoccupied by fears that something “truly” bad would happen, and often imagined gang rape and murder that would finish me off for good. It would probably be committed by boys who didn’t plan to go that far but felt like trying out their power on somebody who seemed like an easy target. This scenario felt so possible to me as to be the likely next step in my life.
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.
Friday afternoon, I went to my doctor to talk about my hormone levels and the possibility of antidepressants.
I like my doctor, a lot. I didn’t have to jump through hoops to get my hormones (only in retrospect do I realize how rare that is), he has a good sense of humor, and he remembers the important goings-on in my life, even with months separating visits. I will say he is consistently running late, something that drives me up a wall. I operate on ‘stage manager time’: early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. (This is why I show up fifteen minutes early to most places in my life…) The flip-side of his timeliness, though, is that he spends a lot of time with his patients; I don’t like sitting around in his waiting room, but I very much feel taken care of while seeing him.
At my appointment on Friday, I explained how I’d been feeling, i.e. not too hot. We talked about what’s been going on in my life, and what things have been positive or negative. He was very observant in that most actors and artists have some sort of post-show blues, but I described how this felt really different than other post-show blues I’ve experienced; that this was about feeling an utter lack of excitement about anything, not simply being sad a show was done.
He said that made sense, and gave me a 2-week trial of Lexapro. Then he asked if I would be comfortable with having my Chakras opened.
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