Month: October 2018

My Standards are Low

I had an issue with my employers over the last week, it’s why I’ve been quiet, I wanted to have some time to process things. I won’t discuss what happened but it did lead me to go back and read some earlier posts, and to re-frame myself a bit.

My standards for how people treat me are pretty low.

Given an upset that makes you question the people you work for gave me an opportunity to rethink how supportive they’ve really been.

I guess I was so desperate for any acceptance that I was willing to take “willing to accept you” as support. Support is a different beast. Support requires a degree of sacrifice, not any particularly grand sacrifice, but you might not be 100% at ease and comfortable the entire time.

I had taken the bare hint of acceptance and called it support. The constant misgendering, didn’t worry about it they’re trying. Refusal to use my preferred name, I’m sure they’ll get there someday. I was excusing all of their terrible behaviour because they hadn’t used hateful language. In some way I guess I was the frog in the pot. I didn’t notice the danger I had put myself into and was going to boil to death.

When we accept bad treatment, we forward the idea that trans people are worth treating poorly. I’ve seen that idea before and I know what it was saying. It’s incredibly hard to live up to that. It means loudly and passionately defending your own right to exist, something that is unfortunately timely given what’s going on in the United States.

It’s as hard for cis people to understand us as it is for us to understand them. I don’t mean like they’re some sort of foreign entity, but I don’t really know what it’s like to not have to figure out what gender means, and it fits together, and what i can only assume is a comfort from knowing everything is all good. The big difference is that trans people know who has the power,

So I’m going to raise my standards, I’m going to accept less poor treatment. I’m going to push back more. I never wanted to be loud about it, but the voices around me are deafening and I deserve to be heard as well.

Under pressure

I’ve been listening to a lot of Queen lately. I’m more and more feeling in a pressure cooker, as I transition from coming out to living out the tension just keeps building. I by no means can assume to know the inner workings of anyone’s mind. I do find some solace in Freddie Mercury’s voice. The twinge of pain stitched into the music is resonating with me.

I’ve talked before about how this process has been very dehumanizing. Well I’ve never felt more human, more vulnerable, more emotional, and most importantly more alive.

I just wish being alive didn’t scare the b’jesus out of me right now. I always knew this would be a difficult process. But I’ve never felt how difficult it would be. My days are wall to wall excitement, anticipation, tension, and stress.

At times I want to yell it from the mountain tops, others I want to curl into a ball and roll back into the closet. For the pain and derision its causing me I must say there’s part of me reveling in the primal vitality of it all.

Each step moves me forward, each thought entertains more possibilities. I want to talk about more about this later. But the quality and depth of relationships I’ve built because of this is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

As much as I may not appreciate the current of pain threaded throughout this journey. I’m ready to bear it for the sake of the primal vitality, living on the very bleeding edge of human experience. My heart is open, my mind is ready, my body is primed. I am living as much life as I possibly can, while I can.

Holes

New day, fresh start,

make waves, take heart,

find self, live well,

meet other, new hell

 

self description, new emotion

heart chaos, filled commotion

head tattered, thoughts skewered,

expression stilted, absent steward

 

other confuse, filled scorn

safe places, shattered shorn

bastion broken, soul flayed

never again, never played

 

broken, beaten, battered soul

blackness, endless, deepest hole

On Slurs

I’ll put a little note in here that this is going to delve into some unpleasant terms for trans people and if you’re not comfortable with that please don’t continue reading.

I don’t often experience something that I wished hadn’t happened. I was outside with a group of people and one of them, somewhat out of nowhere asked one of the other guys “Is fucking a trap gay?”

The person asking was my brother.

I’m pretty tough skinned. I try not to let the little stuff bother me. That wasn’t little stuff. That’s a big one. That a word could throw me into an emotional fit is new. I didn’t used to feel enough to get upset. So when I started shaking and yelling and almost crying I was entirely unprepared. It felt like I’d been stabbed it cut so quickly into and hurt. physically hurt.

Everyone makes a mistake and says things to someone they shouldn’t but lobbing a slur can usually be avoided. You choose to use those words knowing how dangerous they are.

Those words have consequences. My relationship with my brother has been shaken entirely by a single sentence. I don’t want him around anymore. I worry where he learned that from. I now have to try and hold back and not extend that to the rest of my family. Because in my experience people don’t hate in a vacuum, but I can’t just assume it wasn’t him being an idiot.

I wish this journey was easier sometimes. I wish my brother hadn’t of said that. But mostly I wish that I didn’t always have to be the bigger person.

Words hurt kids, don’t think they don’t.

 

The steps we take

Moving forward, step  by step

left foot, right foot

fake, smile, prep

 

Morning sunrise, sleeping moon

left foot, right foot,

be there soon

 

one by one, thousand by thousand

left foot, right foot

keet my vows and,

 

change by change, moments stick

left foot, right foot

click clack click

 

Heart heavy, feelings high

left foot, right foot,

relax and sigh.