Scar tissue

I have witnessed my own subconscious sabotaging methods for decades. Since I was 15, I have tried to employ so many "self-help" techniques, and enlisted so many therapists to help me make the changes necessary to "get over stuff and just be happy already." I think I am starting to see that it doesn't necessarily work like that, but I'm still not sure how it does work then.

Somehow I had it programmed in my head that I was simply "depressive" or that I was permanently damaged by the experiences in my life. There might have been fleeting moments of relief, but I believed that no true peace would be possible for me. Any momentary lightening of the darkness would fill me with such billowing hope, until the darkness returned, and cast its ever-present toxic shadow over my resuscitated optimism.

Why? Why could I make no considerable progress?

After a lifetime of being told that I "can't" do whatever I thought it was that I wanted to do, I started to believe it myself. I started to talk myself out of every dream I ever had, and why it would never be possible to attain. Worse than that, I would belittle myself for actually thinking someone like me deserved such riches.

When do we stop believing that we are worth our own dreams?

How can we feel inspired by those who strive for those lofty goals, rather than despising them, or thinking that they were the "chosen ones," and we are average mortals not deserving of hope and success? How do we become conditioned to "settle" and feel resigned in our hopelessness?

I dreamed my whole life to feel whole in this body. Not necessarily to feel like a boy or a man in this body, but to feel less conflicted with the sex of this body that was prescribed before I was born. In many ways, it felt like a birth defect, but one so subtle that the outside world would not be able to identify it upon first glance. How can I say that I was born in the wrong body without sounding crazy? How can something I have known my whole life not feel like my own? I always felt so tormented by the discrepancy between my mind that envisioned my own masculinity and my body that depicted the female form. I felt so crazy and wrong to want something to fix that tortured conflict I knew in my body every day.

* * * * *

In 4th grade I saw an episode of the Oprah show about people who had been raised the wrong gender. Underdeveloped males that mistakenly been raised as girls. I remember the feeling of exuberant joy that seemed almost like a religious enlightenment: "It was NOT MY FAULT." I identified with everything those members of the panel recounted about their childhoods. They had crushes on their female friends, but didn't feel like lesbians, they wanted to participate in more traditionally boyish social settings, but didn't think of themselves as tomboys. Everything was corresponding to my experience, and so it was a sign that I was supposed to see this particular show.

For two years I found myself joyfully clutching to this self-assumed medical secret, as it felt like a countdown until the day the doctors would recognize their mistake, and rectify their miscalculations. And then the worst thing possible happened towards the end of my 6th grade year: On June 13th, 1987 I got my period. Suddenly, I knew the truth ~ it was my fault. My body was not an underdeveloped boy's body, but a fully functioning female body. So the "problem" was in my head~the way my mind internalized this decrepancy between mind and body and how gender identity/expression differed from the biological sex are programmed to be.

There weren't very many positive role models for the transcommunity at that time. The media depicted things like cross dressers as a comedic or fetishistic elements in films and on television. It was easier to find charicatures of what society deemed as "gender misfits" than it was to find any genuine depictions of trans people and their experiences within the world at large. Even fewer cases of "female to male" back then.

I felt like a freak.

Because I had so little exposure to the trans experience back then, I didn't know it was even an identity to embrace. I had no understanding that there would be ways to rectify that internal versus external discrepancy. I didn't know that I could exorcise those demons, and make decisions to eradicate the gap between how I felt and how I looked. Maybe it wasn't so much about eradicating that gap, as opposed to filling it in. It not polarized, between girl vs boy ~ it is just who I am, and where I am, somewhere more in the middle. (I am my own "middle man.")

Having felt broken my whole life, I guess I didn't get it. Scar tissue~it fuses what has been severed, bridges those gaps. I see these new scars on my chest as the symbol for this process of my healing from the breakages/break ups. This scar tissue has filled in the abyss, and made me feel whole for once in my life. I think I had the misconception that I had to break myself down more in therapy to arrive at some self-realized actualization that would bring contentment. As much as there have been moments of shattering the crystalized, yet incorrect notions of how I had to live my life ~ simply because I didn't know there were other options ~ I think it didn't have to be about beating myself up during that process. It didn't have to be about punishing myself, or seeking out other people who would punish me when we'd hit those vulnerabilities. I don't want to be punished anymore.

I don't want to succumb to the shame. I don't believe that should feel ashamed of being trans, like it will single-handedly make me unlovable. Or deny my challenging past. And I don't need to assume other people's fears as my own, if they can not love me here. I am ready to accept the sum total of facets that make me who I am, and not want to have to "excuse" any single one of them. Mostly, I am ready to seek out people who have accepted their sum totals, as well, and can meet me here ~ scars and all.