Insecurity and Friendship March 14, 2009
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, confusion, emotions, friends, happiness, learning, transgender, transition, transsexual, work.4 comments
Saturday, March 14th 6:37 am
Good morning everyone!
This morning’s instalment comes from sunny Boston! (At least I think it will be sunny, it is still a little too dark out to tell!)
I am sitting in a dark hotel room with a cup of water by my side, and although it is relatively spartan in comparison to my usual set up for inspirational writing at home (hot chocolate, scented candle, beautiful view) it seems appropriate for concentration, reflection and the type of entry that I think I’ll be writing today.
I’ve got a lot on my mind – I was thinking about what I might write about all night and for most of the last two days.
It has been a really busy and eventful week. It was my last week at work as ‘him’, I managed to somewhat repair and then screw up a friendship I really, really value (see last week’s entry) and my ex-wife and I drove to Boston for my work (the Boston Seafood Show), for my surgery (Dr. Spiegel and his scalpel awaits!) and for her meditation conference (hosted by Jon Kabat-Zinn).
The next four days will be my last ‘official’ days as ‘him’ (although I have to cross the border back to Canada at the end of the month so I guess he gets one more guest appearance then). The day after the Boston Seafood Show ends (next Wednesday), my manager and his manager will quickly spread the word that I will be returning to work in mid-April as Marybeth. I am so excited, so nervous and I feel so alone.
The loneliness part is entirely my fault. As I wrote earlier I managed to screw up a friendship that I really, really value.
I wrote last week that friendships between transsexuals going through transition can be tumultuous affairs. On my part I had too many insecurities, too many emotions and not enough understanding about how to deal with them.
In retrospect perhaps the friendship was always on shaky ground. I was just so overjoyed at finding someone who I could honestly share my transition with – someone who would be non-judgemental as I questioned everything about who I am – my appearance, my emotions, my sexuality – everything! If you read my blog entries over the past six months I think you will get some sense of my gushing about this friendship.
I valued her friendship so much that I didn’t want it to end – so I tried to be as accommodating as I could be. I wanted the friendship so badly that I didn’t object to things that I perhaps should have. I respected her and her struggles so much that I wanted to help her with no thought about what the cost was to me. It got to the point, I think, that what I wanted didn’t matter anymore – only my friendship with her mattered. I think I was literally a different person when I was around her. Like a fourteen year old girl twisting and contorting herself to ‘fit in’ and be accepted.
As an aside I should add that I am a quite introverted person. Ever since I lost my one close childhood friend, Allison, to the fact that I was a boy not a girl I have generally favoured books, school/work and solitude to a large circle of friends. I think I have only ever had two or three close friends at any one time throughout my whole life. Friendships in general are very important to me, this one specifically was so special I was willing to do anything to keep it.
My trans-friend was the one person who knew me as Marybeth, treated me as Marybeth and preferred me as Marybeth. She helped my self confidence and my transition over the past six months an incredible amount. I respected her so much that her victories were my victories and her challenges were my challenges.
Which is why I am so ashamed at my childish reaction caused by my insecurities and low self esteem.
So what happened?
The inevitable I guess.
We went out one evening, I couldn’t handle my emotions (and my newly emerging sexuality), I drank too much too fast, harsh words were exchanged and I panicked.
I panicked. I tried to pretend everything was the same as it ever was but really, neither she nor I were going to accept that.
I tried to understand the friendship from every angle, the give and take, all the time we spent together doing so many different things. My feelings ran amok. I built conspiracies out of every ebb and flow of our friendshp to the point that I couldn’t handle it anymore so I went to my counsellor and spilled out all my insecurities into her office.
After that meeting I had a better idea of how a friendship with my trans-friend would have to be if it was to work at all.
We had to have open communication and real honesty about our feelings. So, when I spoke to her next we discussed, in general terms, what my counsellor had told me and agreed to a set of ground rules that would keep our friendship solid.
But the essential damage had already been done. In my baring of my insecurities to my counsellor I had irretrievably damaged our friendship – losing the trust of both her and my counsellor.
My low self esteem led me to question everything. Things that I had given out of kindness and understanding I wondered out loud if I had been taken advantage of. Everything acquired new meaning in that context.
In retrospect I can see how my panicking was childish and how irresponsible my actions were. If I had a problem with my friend I should have shared it with her. But my insecurities cautioned me that if she was upset with my ‘complaints’ then I would lose her friendship so I didn’t.
Even after we had our discussion and agreed to communicate better I sent an e-mail to my counsellor thanking her for her advice and didn’t tell my friend I had sent it, compounding the problem even more.
My trans friend doesn’t trust me.
My counsellor doesn’t trust me.
And I don’t trust myself.
So now, before I have my surgery and before I come out at work I find myself so very alone and I only have my own insecurities and low self esteem to blame.
No one ever said that transition would be easy but then again, I never imagined that I could sabotage myself so thoroughly either.
I think I am strong enough to stand on my own and perhaps that is what I need to do to become a better more complete person.
I need to strike out alone and discover who Marybeth really is and what she wants out of life.
As ‘him’ I was always worried about the expectations of others. I made ‘him’ into what I thought they wanted ‘him’ to be – I tried to be as accommodating as possible, fearing their rejection.
Not realizing that all they wanted was for ‘me’ to be happy.
I know that I am a happy person now. Closing the door on ‘him’ will make me even happier.
Maybe I need to be alone and be selfish until I discover who I am and what I want.
Maybe then I will have the self esteem and the self confidence I need to have healthy, open and trusting friendships.
I need to trust myself before I can expect others to trust me.
I need to respect myself before I can expect others to respect me.
I can’t be afraid.
Anymore.
Love,
Marybeth
ps. I really thought long and hard about whether I should actually post this but then I thought that I really shouldn’t try to sugar coat anything about my transition. It is a tough, soul-wrenching journey of self discovery and, perhaps eventually, of enlightenment but no matter how much the emotional (see above) and physical costs (my scalp advancement and eventual SRS surgery) it is worth every penny!!
pps. I have my surgery on Thursday so the next entry(ies) might be frequent or not depending on how my recovery progresses!
Change, Emotion and Friendship March 8, 2009
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, confusion, emotions, friends, happiness, transgender, transition, transsexual, work.add a comment
Sunday, March 8th 7:30 am
Good morning everyone!
Spring has come early to the Ottawa Valley. It is just above the freezing mark and it looks like it will continue that way throughout the week with snow tonight and rain on Tuesday.
A messy time of year.
A time of change.
The impact of change can good, bad or neutral but whatever the case, the most essential thing about change is that it just is.
There is really not a lot we can do about change except to accept that it is part of life.
We can control ourselves – how we think, how we act and how we react but we cannot control how other people do those same things. They, like us, walk that tightrope between rationality and irrationality, logic and emotion, mind and heart.
One of the most glorious things about my transition is that I have found that I have a heart – I laugh and cry more freely than ever before (I turned into a blubberfest last night watching ‘The Colour Purple – wow!).
Transition is change.
Transition is emotion.
It is really difficult to separate the two.
Women learn during childhood and adolescence how to deal with their emotions, men learn how to suppress them. Transsexuals like me learn how to bury them very, very deeply (I’m no sissy!).
The toughest part of my transition so far has been learning to deal with my emotions.
I love them.
I hate them.
And, at times, I am so very, very confused by them.
Amusement parks can’t hold a candle to some of the rollercoasters I’ve been on lately!!!
Sometimes the emotions get so heavy that it gets difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality.
It gets difficult to trust your own judgement.
It gets difficult to trust others.
When two transpeople are friends you get emotion-squared and change-squared – really. I know that from first-hand experience because I have recently gone through a very difficult time with a very close transfriend.
Transition can be one of the most wonderful experiences but it can also be one of the most awful.
The only thing worse than transitioning is not transitioning.
Change and emotion can take their toll on a friendship.
The stress of events beyond our control. The impact of epiphanies and realities. Happiness multiplied. Sadness squared. Hurts real and imagined. All these served to make a strong friendship into an uncertain one for me this week.
We met and talked about it last night (had some pizza and watched ‘The Colour Purple’) and I think we may have salvaged what I had honestly thought was irretrievable. We communicated and that made all the difference.
I think our friendship will survive but it has changed.
Transition is a tough and often lonely road.
I think it is safe to say that no one else goes through quite as alienating an experience as transpeople do. The only people who really understand transpeople are transpeople.
We need each other to survive.
My transfriend has been such a strong support for me through my transition, I am horrified to think that we almost ended our friendship.
Our friendship has changed, but so have we.
Change is inevitable.
Friendship is invaluable.
With Love,
Marybeth.
ps. The updates may become a bit sporadic over the next two weeks. I am going to Boston for business (my last as ‘him’!!) and to meet Dr. Spiegel for my scalp advancement, forehead recontouring and eyebrow lift surgery!! I am so excited (but also scared to death) so wish me luck!!
Fresh Air, Light and Authenticity May 25, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, confusion, hormones, reflection, society, transgender, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, May 25th 6:03 am
Good morning everyone! It is a fresh seven degrees outside under the bug tent this morning, the sun is just peaking over the tops of the trees to the east and it looks like it will be another glorious beautiful day!
First some good news, it looks like my poison ivy is finally clearing up. It still has a ways to go in some places but in others it is almost done. In other words, I am almost ready to get back to the garden – only this time I won’t try to subdue any more poison ivy plants…(leaves of three, leave them be…leaves of three, leave them be…leaves of three, leave them be…).
On the transition front I think I am finally getting to the estrogen/anti-androgen mix that works best for me. Either that or finally after seven months on hormones, my body is happily becoming accustomed to an estrogen-centred hormonal balance rather than a testosterone-based one. It is like I was barely able to breathe for forty years (or to be fair, thirty or so given that the real testosterone blast didn’t hit until puberty) and now I have finally tasted pure oxygen and breathing has become effortless. It is almost like I was an alien living on a different planet all that time, barely able to breathe because the atmosphere was essentially poisonous to me, now that I have the right hormonal balance my body is gradually being cleansed and reinvigorated. I feel like I am finally coming home, I am no longer a foreigner in my own body!
It really does seem like a whole new world has opened up – so much to do, so much to see, so much to feel. I can finally be who I was before the world closed in on the little girl that felt she couldn’t be.
I can still remember the dark clouds that appeared on the horizon when I felt the pressures to fit in and only do boy things. Still, I thought, I could handle these hardships, after all I could still breathe and dream. When puberty hit I realized it that it wasn’t just a passing storm after all, it was getting darker and darker because the sun was going down. A bright beautiful day slowly turned into a cold, suffocating night. It happened so slowly, I thought (again) that I could cope – it was only darkness after all and even though I might bump into a few things here and there if I try really really hard, I can adapt. While real boys (and later men) worked adeptly in the brightness of their testosterone-fueled masculinity, I stumbled in the bleak darkness and utter confusion of mine. The older I got, the darker it got and the more confused I became. I began to lose hope that I would ever see sunlight again.
Then one day the little girl in me finally found the strength to stand up for herself and remind the pretend ‘man’ I had forced myself to become that I didn’t have to live in darkness and confusion. Memories of my life, of the life I lived before the clouds closed in and the long night fell, of the life I lived before I caved into society’s demands to conform to the false destiny of my physical sex and ignore what I knew to be true in both mind and soul, came back in a flood of glorious light. I knew then that I had listen to her to survive. I knew then that my long dark night was about to end.
As the hormones and the anti-androgens have worked diligently to clear the poisonous testosterone from my system and inject it with the life giving mana of estrogen, the darkness has begun to lift and the air has become fresh and clean again.
I can finally love who I am.
I don’t have to hide my feelings or mask my intuitive reactions to life anymore.
I can smile, I can giggle, I can cry.
I can see.
I can breath.
I can be…
.ME.
Love,
Marybeth Allison
Untangling the Threads March 31, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, confusion, differences, dissonance, dysphoria, family, gender, love, plans, reflection, resolve, society, transgender, work.1 comment so far
Saturday, March 31, 2007 4:06 AM
It seems I am writing in ‘chapters’ today.
In the past two entries I have come to the conclusion that living in the past is both harmful and ultimately a sacrilege. Anything that takes us too long away from the full experience of the present and planning for the future is potentially wasteful of the most precious resource we have, our own lives.
Perceptive people may point to my writing of this past hour and suggest that my actions betray my conclusions. I would agree but also hasten to suggest that my writing allows me to learn the lesson. Without writing it down I would continue down the same road and suffer the same consequences I believe I have understood in these reflections.
Which is to say that it is a balance but one that is, as all balances are, difficult to maintain. Socrates once said ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’ but at what point do you stop examining and resume living? I struggle with that question all the time, the message my subconscious seems to have been sending me suggested to me that perhaps I had the balance wrong or that I was spending my time examining the wrong things. It is a message I hope I can remain mindful of.
So where does all this examining leave me?
As my previous entries have indicated I am on the road to self acceptance after a lifetime of doubt, self hatred and running away. I have decided to accept my ‘True Self’ and am currently in the process of reconciling the seemly irreconcilable.
My greatest challenge right now is to retain the best parts of my constructed self as I more fully express my repressed self. I want to hold on to the achievements of my male existence as I transition to female. It is a simple concept but a truly monumental task. Much like ‘I want to climb a mountain’ – ‘I want to climb Mount Everest’. Well maybe not that bad but it scares that heck out of me. I had good reason to run, I assure you!
But I am not running anymore. I have slowed down, turned around and am walking back towards that which I treasure and fear most. .Me.
As we grow up most of us go through a period where we hate how we look, are uncomfortable with our ‘changes’ and are confused by new ‘feelings’. Suffice to say I had similar feelings though perhaps a bit more ‘completely’ than others. I needed to adjust my expectations in both ‘body’ and ‘mind’. Heterosexuals may feel some discomfort as the body changes but ultimately they are quite happy with it. Homosexuals are usually fine with most aspects of the body but experience dissonance between societies expectations and their desires. Transsexuals can get a double-barrelled helping of angst, they are definitely in the wrong body and, given that, cannot give and return the love of their desire in the fashion they would prefer, regardless of what their sexual preference might be.
A wise man once counselled that we must learn from the past, as we live in the present, and plan for the future.
I have spent my whole life running from a fundamental fact. Running from this fact resulted in a life that was partly based on a lie. Trying to unravel which parts of my life, what accomplishments, what friendships, what obligations, what EVERYTHING was based on either the assumption that I was male or based on the actions I took to maintain the facade of maleness and those things in my life that were based on the bits of the real me peeking from behind the mask is a huge task and one that I expect to spend the rest of my life coming to terms with. It is a bit like untangling two balls of yarn, one yellow and one blue. Yellow is female and blue is male. One is the real me the other is the manufactured me and the expectations / assumptions of society based on that. One is the feminine thread and the other is the masculine thread. The only problem is that given that most people aren’t usually 100% feminine or 100% masculine, the threads merge so I also have a greenish looking thread to decipher and part of that thread is the real me too.
If that last bit sounds confusing to you then you can imagine how confused and conflicted I feel. I am living it everyday.
To make it a bit more concrete for you, I will demonstrate the conundrum with something I am struggling with right now. Did my wife fall in love with me because the ‘real me’ shone through (my hope) or did she fall in love with me because of my masculine body and the fact that I was male or was it a combination? My feeling is that it was a combination and the balance (there is that word again!) is what will determine if we stay together through this or not. My hope is that we will at least remain friends, though I could totally understand her hating me intensely for this imposition to her life.
Everything else in my life is the same story – what is the balance? Does my employer value more the quality of my work, my integrity or my good nature or is the evidence of my gender more important than that? What about the network of contacts in my job? I suppose I can always get a new job but what about my close family? My extended family? My close friends? People that I pass on the street that ‘clock’ me? People I just meet? What a minefield!
And yet I must transition. I must rebalance my self, honestly.
I have learned that running either through repression or escapism only leads to frustration, anger, focusing on small things because the big things seem insurmountable, depression, loss of hope and death.
Putting it off only means more lies and more threads to untangle.
Love,
Maura
Listening to Learn March 31, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, confusion, dreams, plans, reflection, resolve, society, work.add a comment
Saturday, March 31, 2007 3:03 AM
It is cool bright moonlight that I bathe in as I sit and write outside this morning.
Most everything is asleep right now and perhaps I should be too. Maybe I would be if I were of ‘right mind’. But I am not.
I am of troubled mind.
Of restless mind.
A mind forever basking in past disappointments as if there were some puzzle to solve, some mystery to unravel.
I am not sure how much of my dwelling on the past helps. In stressful situations in the past (recruit term at military college comes to mind…) I used these recollections in a positive way. Happy memories of teenage summers spent playing in the sun and exploring life’s mysteries became techni-color dreams, an evening retreat that was my only refuge from a harsh reality. My realities are not so unpleasant now and my dreams have turned to recrimination. Perhaps they are telling me that despite how tough life seems it is not as bad as it could be?
My subconscious is right of course. My life isn’t as bad as it has been. I have survived much worse and my dreams are right to remind me of that. No matter how bad it might seem now, I have a measure of control that I didn’t have when the military governed my every move.
I need to spend the time that I have, not in the re-evaluation of the latest frustrating events at work or at home, I need to fully live the present and, to the extent possible, plan for the future. Perhaps once I have focused on these important things my nightly recriminations will pass.
I often compare the life of a bureaucrat in the federal government to that of a courtier in Royal Palace. I know I am not the first – the BBC program ‘Yes Minister’ paid homage to that truth long before I had a chance to experience it first-hand. In that perspective, the latest slight, the most recent loss of face, the current politics, perceptions and notoriety or triumph is but sound and fury signifying nothing. You win a few and you lose a few. What matters most is your integrity.
I have found, through the observation of others, mostly, that you really don’t want to end up where you eventually do if you get there by compromising your integrity. Whatever the injury, if it was incurred through an action that didn’t take any shortcuts through hell, I should suffer it gladly. An lesson easy to realize in reflection but more difficult to recollect in the shadow of the slight.
This realization points out even more the importance of not wallowing in self pity and putting my energy instead in charting out a course. All of the people who I feel have slighted me are not dwelling on their ‘victory’ over me. They have moved on and are occupied with matters three and four moves ahead whilst I dwell on those three or four moves behind.
The subtlety of the light of a nearly-full moon illuminates that which is most difficult to accept in the blinding light of day. My nightly lessons seem to have culminated in this sleepless one. My hope is that I have the presence and will to remember it else I will continue to have dreams that point out the futility and harm that comes from making mountains out of molehills and living in the past.
Assumptions and Expectations March 26, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, confusion, differences, dissonance, dysphoria, family, gender, reflection, society, transgender, transsexual.1 comment so far
Monday, March 26, 2007 4:29 AM
I wrote quite a bit yesterday but it was really disjointed – a bunch of thoughts with no real point – other than to reflect the confused and frustrated state I find myself now I guess.
What is at the root of the confusion and frustration? If you’ve read very much at all of this journal you could come to a number of conclusions. I will list off a few.
Possibility One:
Maura is a frustrated idealist upset that her idea of the world and the way people might live together and don’t out of selfishness and greed sets her to be critical of everyone else but not critical enough of her reaction to it.
Possibility Two:
Maura is not really Maura at all she is actually a frustrated he looking for solace in the ‘softer’ sex. His rantings about his transgender nature are just that a sissy boy looking for the easy way out – being selfish and caring only about his perceived injury.
Possibility Three:
Maura is an intelligent, kind and observant soul that only wants to know and understand others and be known and understood in return. These writing represent her attempts to ‘deprogram’ herself from all the assumptions and expectations that she makes about others and others make about her.
I could go on – there are many different possible motivations that lead to a pouring of the soul out into the digital sea. Some noble, some crass but given that I enjoy some privileges as the author of this missive into the darkness I will choose one of the possibilities and explain why it perhaps is the explanation that I would most like to believe it to be most true.
Transsexuality is something that is so fundamental and so mysterious at the same time. It should be obvious – a sapling will grow up to be a tree, a piglet into a pig and so one. We gather the information we have available, make reasonable assumptions based on the data and then our expectations are formed both from those assumptions and our own individual desires.
This legitimate process when applied to a transsexual child leads to so many problems. The baby has physical characteristics that lead you to assume it is a boy. The baby can’t disagree with you so all you have to go on are appearances. You are the proud father so you expect that the boy will grow up big and strong / slight and smart / as manly and virile as yourself. You invest your most precious child with your own hopes and dreams. The baby grows up and tries to understand the world and adapt to the world. It sees its parents and recognizes that these are beings much like itself. It experiments and learns and grows. The parents allow the child to experience everything it wants to but protect it from falling off a cliff or burning their fingers or ….
And this is the nub of it.
My parents ultimately protected me from being myself. As if expressing my feminine nature would be dangerous. They saw a baby, assumed I was a boy and expected that I would grow up into a man. I have to believe that they were indeed looking out for my best interest. I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to be ‘different’. But expecting an orange tree to produce apples is ultimately going to be a frustrating experience for both those who want an apple and for the orange tree desperately trying to grow apples.
I may have been saved from early pain and suffering by my parents insistence that I act like I looked but I was going through pain anyways. In the school yard I wanted to play hopscotch and jacks but I wasn’t allowed (some girls were O.K. with it but others wouldn’t let me – boys don’t play hopscotch!). My best friend in kindergarten and grade one was a girl whose mother noticed that we were best friends and informed her that I couldn’t come over and play anymore because girls shouldn’t have boyfriends when they were six.
Perhaps if this was a more accepting world and others wanted to understand and know me for who I really am and not solely on their assumptions and expectations then I wouldn’t have had to lie to so many people about my gender. I would have been free as a child to express my true self and perhaps attended to the physical inconsistencies in the same way that you might attend to a sliver of wood that gets imbedded in the skin. If you remove right away the pain goes away and you can live without discomfort. If you just ignore it, it just works its way further under your skin until you find that you are getting mad without any reason, frustrated at others and confused.
In short the way I am right now.
This is why I need to remove the sliver – to address the root of my dysphoria and then I will be able to resume my life from where I left it when I was six years old and was forced to live according to someone else’s assumptions and expectations.
Love,
Maura
Maureen is…Pensive December 16, 2006
Posted by Marybeth in confusion, family, gender, plans, solstice, transgender.add a comment
Saturday, December 16, 2006 4:11 PM
Wow, I can’t believe it! I am sitting outside on the back deck in the middle of December! December 16th to be exact. It is around 2 degrees centigrade and the sun has already set and the day is getting darker. Subtly, subtly dimmer and dimmer as we get closer and closer to winter solstice.
Solstice. What a wonderful word – the shortest and the longest days of the year are the solstices. Opposite ends of the pole. Reason for celebration and hope. The shortest day of the year brings the promise of longer days to come – but the cruelest days of winter are still looming. The longest day of the year brings the recognition of the winter to come but the warmest days of summer are just beginning. A promise and a price. A warning and a prize. A wondrous symmetry in the glory of creation.
My in-laws arrive on Monday. The following Tuesday is when my sister and brother in law and their two daughters get in.
I struggle everyday with what I want. To fit in, to find peace, to do I don’t know what! I don’t know. I have never really thought about it – or maybe I have thought about it too much. I am confused, excited and apprehensive about my impending transition. To think that next year at this time (if things go according to plan) I will have been on hormones for six months! I am really looking forward to the emotional relief that it promises and the greater openness that I will have with the world. Neither male nor female – in between but happy.
I can’t even begin to know where I want to go with my life, with my career, with my hobbies, with my, with my…..
It seems this entry has dribbled off into confusion.
I can’t express what I want to say because maybe I don’t really know what it is I want. In some ways I have always been a construct of other people’s imagined expectations. I am rebelling against those expectations now because I need to, in some way, break out on my own and get to know myself a little better. Once I have inhabited my own skin for a little while I might be able to clarify the confusion that is swirling non-stop in my head.
I have always run away from myself and now I am slowly turning around and running back. I started running away when I was six … it might take me a while to get home again.
