Fuck your reproduction

Sometimes people care what I think and ask me if I'm pro-life or pro-choice.  I am not fond of most children, but I believe that all children deserve the safest, happiest, most academically enriched lives possible.  What they do with their pathetic selves in adulthood is no longer my concern.  I also strongly believe that women should (MUST?!) have the right to choose what happens with their bodies, free from coercion, threats, etc.  That all said, where do I stand?  I am pro-responsibility: I am for people (both sides of the fertilization!) taking responsibility for their actions.  I am pro-accountability.

Tomorrow, I will be sterile for six weeks.  Yes, it was my willing decision.  My body has thanked me many times over for my endocrine leveling procedure.  With respect to me sticking things inside of me, I'm a virgin.  Or, at least, I was until they shoved a hand blender into my cooter and took away my ability to carry babies.  ::shrug::  I wrote a post about my pre-surgery mourning, and another one (I think?) about how surprised I was to have relatively no post-surgery mourning.  I had never planned on having children.  It doesn't mean that I didn't still consider the little potential living cells my own, er, brood.  But having never been graced with life, I really kinda consider them in the same field as ghosts.  (To be fair, the chemicals pumped through my body over the past few years have probably reduced the cells to little more than microscopic zombies, but I digress.)  Either way, they're gone.  And I'll never have children, and I love and hate this prospect equally.  I am at peace with it.

...or, at least, I was, until I found out that an ex-friend of mine is having an abortion this weekend.

Okay, let's break this down.  It's an ex-friend, so really, what right/obligation do I have to care about this person or what she does with her body?  She's the one having an abortion.  She's a girl, of course, and by virtue of my transition, I have forfeit the right to have almost ANY say in a woman's reproductive decisions.  She is able to have children, and I am not.  I had already expressed what I thought to be mourning over my inability to have children.  Do I feel like she is abusing her priviledge/right/ability?  Maybe.  Her first child was an accident that she's dealing with... her second?  Going to the hand blender.  Once is a mistake.  Twice is selfishness and carelessness.  (Really, do condoms/birth control not exist?)  How do I feel about this?  Strongly enough to mix a drink before sitting down to write a blog about it.  Do these two personal experiences change my position on abortion?  If anything, it helped me to clarify it.  And I mean this in the least misogynist/ignorant/whatever you want to call me way: I am pro-responsibility.  I AM ANTI-SELFISH, CARELESS FUCKEN WHORE.*  

There is a tiny mother inside of me that wants to adopt all the unwanted, aborted children of the world. She is, no doubt, very sad.  The rest of me just hates humanity a little more.  This ex-friend is not the only woman like this... my cousin had two babies within 12 months of each other by different dads, another a year or so earlier with another father... all between her 15th and 17th birthdays.  She's  a little older than I am with warrants for her arrest for various shady shit she's done.  Living with her as a mother is not fair to her children... and neither would be losing their lives before they even begun to live them.  And so, it's not about abortion, it's about fucking other people over.  

I'm sad.  I'm sad.  I'm sad.  I'm angry.

*No, I am not speaking about sex workers, but about people who intentionally sleep around for stupid reasons, like revenge, and don't use protection or anything.  People who would rather a few minutes of selfish pleasure and not think about the effects it has on others.

I've expressed on more than one occassion (why do I ALWAYS spell that word wrong?!) that I love blogs because it is one place where it is socially acceptable to be as self-centered as the writer can.  Sure, people can write about whatever they want, even if the topic isn't particularly related to them... but ultimately, what the author chooses to write about, and how, are greatly a reflection of themselves.  We can't all be as impartial as Fox News.

I am writing because there are a few understandings I've had in the past couple of weeks that I want to record to read when I'm reincarnated.  Remember two posts ago I expressed my fear and sadness over not being able to have children anymore?  Exactly one day after the surgery, I surprised myself by feeling the exact opposite-- knowing that I could not have children made me feel freer than I ever would have thought.  I sometimes play brain games with myself, "What if...." but come to the same conclusion.  I am by no means happy.  I never have been, I probably never will be, that's just my personality.  But learning about oneself can definitely create some feeling of peace, which is welcome.  In addition to that, I am becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of never dating (or marrying, fucking, whatever) ANYONE ever.  After a particularly stressful situation with one individual (with all the stability of sand castles before the tide), I vowed that I would never compromise my mental security like that again.  So, no children, no significant other, life is GOOD!  I can focus on work, applying to grad school, paying off my loans, and reading.  3 years from now, I should have my masters, and 5 years from now I should have everything paid off.  After that, I'll be almost 31 and ready to start my life.  Maybe even a doctorate.

Eating is getting hard again.  So is waking up.  So is going to sleep.  I have to drug myself to sleep in the evenings, and pump myself full of caffeine to wake back up. I try to force down meals, but everything seems repulsive.  I'm exactly 5 pounds above my lowest weight (CW=136, LW=131).  I'm so sick because I want to eat normal, but am relishing being able to fit in my skinny jeans again.  The few times I do try to eat something, I eat just enough to get rid of the hunger pangs, and then feel guilty for sabotaging my weight loss.  Some kids today thought I was a teenager, which would be good were it not for the fact that pedophiles probably get the same pleasure for a different reason.  I hate getting old.  My goal is to weigh 125 for my birthday, which is in 2 months.

What the fuck am I even talking about?? Whoever said that stream of consciousness writing had any value was/is full of shit.  However, I did finish a draft rewrite of a research paper that was due forever ago.  Tomorrow I have a shit ton of work to do... may have to leave the house to get it done.  I am hungry.

It occurred to me that the reason so many transgendered people commit suicide has a lot to do with the profound realization--a realization that transcends daily speech, or even thought... something deeply rooted in the subconscious mind--that no matter the number or surgeries, the longevity of hormone use, the legal name/gender changes, the acceptance by family and friends, one will never, truly, be the other gender.  In the absence of these things, of course, matters are worse.  Coping skills and counseling only blunt the tip of the truth.  Like others with dysphoric identities, a dark cloud, however big or small, follows these people.  Then factor in *life*.  One's suffering is rarely worse than another's... just different.

Reposted from another blog for your viewing displeasure

I'll begin this blog with a letter I just wrote to a friend, but then elaborate on something in it.

"Hey there.

So, I know you're not going to check this (well, hopefully!) until you come back from vacation... still, I need someone to talk to, and of course, you're number 1. (Numbers 2-4 are either unavailable, clueless, or both.) Emailing you while you're on vacation is number 5. (Calling Someone is probably number 37... but there aren't real options between 5 and 37.) Basically, a lot has happened with the scheduled surgery while you were gone: insurance won't cover it, namely. So, I've had a week to rush and find money for a down payment. Navy Fed denied me a small loan (literally, it was $1,500, which I could have easily paid back.) My sisters helped me out. <3 So, down payment made today... prescriptions also not covered--picked those up today, too. In less than 48 hours, I will rid of 90% of everything that made me female from birth.

And while I had no regrets about top surgery... some "socially awkward and inclined-to-perceive-perpetual-disappointment" part of me loves kids and regrets willingly eliminating any potential offspring. Really, I would have NEVER carried any kids, and only briefly considered surrogates (thank you $10,000 fertility preservation banks...) but even losing the cells are intentionally killing hundreds of potential politicians, artists, etc. (Wow, so, I just went a little more to the 'right' in opposing abortion.) So, while I'm not afraid of anesthesia, pain, infection, etc. (though I should be) I am feeling a little depressed about the impending 'deaths.' Does this make sense?

And, it is a little less than astounding that less than 24 hours after that, your friend, will also leave this world. I never knew your friend and decided not to write him after you gave me his address because, while I hadn't planned on writing a "sorry you're gonna die soon" letter... I really couldn't think of how to write one that didn't sound exactly like that. :( Nevertheless, I am very much saddened by his situation, and this wouldn't be the first time I've drawn parallels between capital punishment and abortion. Maybe I'm overreacting? Not appropriately reacting? I dunno, that's why I'm 'talking' about it. I just don't like the idea of killing anything/anyone, even potential anythings/anyones, and I feel like not only will a lot of bad karma come to me, but also to the people who decreed and will carry out the execution. And I'm just really sad for all of us. (I've also been teetering on the edge of another depressive episode, so it's really not taking too much to make me sad, which is also why I'm questioning whether or not my emotions are appropriate.) If you are able to be a witness, please convey not my condolences or apologies or anything... but my prayers for peace.

::sigh:: Great buzz kill to your vacation, right? (I'm gonna change the subject of this email. Done.) Well, I hope you had a fantabulous, resting vacation. Hopefully my few days away after the surgery will bring me back to some sort of peace I can share with you and the lady. Also hope you didn't forget to rub sunscreen on your girlfriend so she doesn't come back here looking like a Caribbean lobster. :)

Love ya, miss ya.

Me

Hok, so, here's the thing I wanted to elaborate on. A few years ago, I was looking at my life, trying to figure out what I wanted, what it would take for me to be successful, independent, and happy, and how I would get there. When asking myself the question about whether or not I wanted to have children, I kept concluding, "What if it has a disability? What if it has perpetual psychological problems?" Basically, the question was, what if I was, for whatever reason, unable to love it. That pushed me into special education, I confess, to learn to both confront the fear of people with disabilities, and to learn to not "accept" them, but to work for and with them, to love them, and to realize their differences from typically-developing society and to accommodate accordingly. And to move on. I love special education, I don't think I'll ever leave. I would even adopt a child who had a disability, if I was ever in a position to adopt and a particular child with a disability bonded with me for some reason. So it was never about the child or a disability or anything that made me not want to have my own biological children. It all comes down to this profound hatred I have for myself (not for any of the demographic classifiers I may belong to, but for the entire unit that exists independent of those classifiers.) Basically, it's everything people can't see: my GID, my chronic depression, my off-and-on eating disorders, my body dysphoria, my intelligence, my lack of intelligence... all these things that I never wanted a trace of to appear in another human being. Yes, there are countless others with these things, but how the combination manifest inside me and how it may manifest in my offspring... it's not the labels I hate: it's the spirit behind them. It's like, I can't hate my arm, just the force that animates it. I couldn't hate my children, but as I write, I realize that I would definitely hate the spirit that animated them: because it came from me.

You may judge as you wish. I think it's been established that I am far from sane, rational, whatever. But this is how I feel, and 25 years of life hasn't changed it. Actually, it continues to grow stronger. The most awful feeling I have about what I wrote in my letter (regretting the procedure on Wednesday) is that I regret killing any life... just not enough to outweigh killing life that might have come from me.

My Christmas Eve Eve

So, I've always been a "good" child. Whatever it is that your parents tell you makes a kid good, that was me. Anyway, in November I turned 25. Being that I'm not really a child anymore, I felt like I could start to rebel against some of the archaic notions of "good."

Thursday after work, to quote the person who introduced me to my first experience, we went to "see the Grinch about a Christmas tree." Well, I'm not really really sure when the person met with the Grinch, but the tree was in tow on Thursday when we went out. The person drove around town and we smoked the tree. The first few puffs were pretty anti-climatic because I wasn't doing it "right" (or, in other words, it wasn't actually getting into my lungs.) I didn't feel any different, either, so I figured I'd try differently. I exhaled, and deeply inhaled to fill my lungs. I held it for a couple of seconds, then coughed for the next 5 minutes like this was the 19th century and I'd just caught something from the factories. Once I could breathe again, I guess I took two more hits. Now, the person I was with was telling me to stop before I went too far, but having never done it before, I didn't really know what "too far" was. I remember, though, that things were funny as shit when the effects first set in. I mean EVERYTHING was giggle-worthy. I knew that the person I was with was cracking up at me, laughing more often and more easily than normal, which was cool. I thought in that moment that it was a great experience. We stopped and got gas, and I was still giggling when the other person got out of the car to pump. I don't really remember what happened after that. It was like all the lights went out in my mind and everything rebooted without me actually losing consciousness (which reminds me, I will probably have to ask the person what happened in that time since apparently I was still awake and talking.)

When I "woke up", we were still in the car. But it was the fact that I woke up that freaked me out. I couldn't remember how long we'd been driving, but it seemed like anywhere between 4 and 6 hours. So, I completely panicked when I woke up, and the panic only increased as I realized I couldn't talk as fast as I was thinking, the fact that I kept coming in and out of "reality" (which, apparently, I referenced MANY times in the evening and how there were just times where I "understood" it), and the fact that whenever I looked at the person talking, it seemed like everything said was being echoed by the outlines of squirrels or chipmunks spreading to infinity in every direction. I hadn't been warned about what, specifically, to expect--and even if I had, I'm not sure I would have remembered it then anyway. I was terrified and beyond hysterical. Actually, I'd been like that one other time in my life, and that was when I was on my antidepressants in the spring and had briefly experienced a psychotic episode which only lasted a few hours and wasn't nearly as bad. So, all out with the hallucinations, panic, hysteria... I heard myself on a feedback loop screaming and saying, "I just wanna go home. Take me home. I wanna get in my bed." :D The thing that freaked me out the most was that I knew I wasn't dreaming, but I knew I wasn't awake. Everything would record to my memory before I consciously perceived it, so I kept thinking that things were repeating themselves. As we passed the church by my house I was not only panicking, but felt a little pissed and betrayed because, I claimed, "We already passed this. We already passed the church. Why are we passing the church again? Let me go home!" Then I looked at the clock and saw, with horror, that it was 12:58 and that's when I pretty much snapped. I just "knew" that it had been that exact time for HOURS and the fact that the clock wasn't changing, time kept repeating itself, there were squirrels on surround sound in the car, and my brain kept "itching" meant that there was actually some kind of conspiracy against me. Someone was watching me freak out and laughing somewhere. I had to "get out". I thought that if I went to sleep, I would escape, which explained my determination to get to my bed.

When I made it to my bed, I was still all jacked up with my brain racing in a completely different dimension from my body. I kept gaining and losing awareness of my skin... where my mind ended and my body began. Sitting in bed, I got on the computer because I had to record my feelings "for posterity." This is, word for word, what I wrote:

So, I have to tell you that I’ve been experiencing some sensations lately. I keep having this feeling that I am experiencing this inside and out side of my skin. My essence, I can feel it. I am it. My essence feels disconnected from my body. I knew, but I forgot why. I need to hold myself accountable. I keep realizing that I am slipping into and out of reality. Or, into and out of the realization I have about reality. The realization being my ability to know that I’m in the situation. Like, I understand that I experience that I AM a situation. My mom hates me. And she hates me so much, that she tells my dad to hate me. And my dad hates me so much that he wants me to hate myself. I don’t care about my dad, so his hate doesn’t bother me. I keep having these memories of something that happened earlier in the evening. I won’t tell you how I got there. But I had an incredibly long night that lasted because it slipped us into and out of reality. Why am I following the word count? I understand autism. I understand what autism is. It is being aware of things happening as they’re happening, and also lucidly remember them in dreams. It’s hard to filter out what to pay attention to because you can’t pay attention to only one thing. The itch on my back, my stomach, the word count, because it’s increasing. My itching. I don’t know what to pay attention to. I thought that I had typed more than that. I can type faster than I can think right now. I love that I’m not making any mistakes in my automatically correcting brain. I feel things, but I don’t know if they’re real because I perceive they are happening, or if they’re real because I know they’re real because they are. I need to save this right now. Tomorrow will I care? Will I care that I know all these things happened?

I swear I'm not this angry all the time. Wait, yes I am.

I had been on T for almost 2 straight years before my insurance company decided to start fucking with me, creating a one month embargo to date. I'll survive in the long term, but I am concerned about my body shape and body, er, functions returning to my pre-T state. Especially since I am also fighting with said insurance company for authorization to have bottom surgery. But that's not what this post is about.

I don't actually talk about being 'trans' much. I sometimes refer to being 'gay' or 'queer', but my 'trans' identity is very minimal. Not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing. Anyway, that's not really the point either. The point is, I have been male for a while, legally so for at least a year. At work, I didn't really make a big deal about it. I said, "I'm changing my name to Ethan, I identify as male and always have, I won't respond to my old name, and yes, my last name is staying the same." All of my male co-workers, you could see it rumbling around in their brains when I told them, then they just all kinda shrugged and said, 'okay.' And since then, they have all either used male pronouns, or not use pronouns at all (which is pretty amazing) and just used my name. For some reason, the females ALL mess it up. Unless they started after the fact, they still call me 'she' and 'her'. WTF? I'm fairly sure a good number have forgotten my old name (shit, even I almost have, and I had it for 23 years!) But still, what about me is so god damned feminine that they still mess it up? No, I'm not like, lumberjack butch, but most guys aren't and people don't mess it up.

Now, here's my personal problem with the wrong pronouns. I already have some pretty good body dysphoria going on, so when I hear, someone use female pronouns to refer to me, I immediately think, "She just called me 'her' because I still look like a girl, which means I still have big hips and a girlie body." And since they remind me about what I already hate about myself, naturally, I want to hate them. I've considered just saying "him" to refer to the women who always get it wrong... but I don't want to seem petty, draw attention to myself, not sure they'd even pick up on it, and most of them are in supervisor positions. Grrrr.

So yeah, I had to vent about that.

Comida Mexicana... Tarot Cards... Drag Race... Fabulousness... Visions and Oneness (Part Three)

I'm so tired, it's ridiculous. It's 5:03 AM. Imagine, however, that I was also tired at 2:53 AM when I was approaching the exit from 66 to go home. I tell myself that I will be home in less than 10 minutes, so just stay awake, concentrate, and enjoy the soft warm bed soon enough.

Visions and Oneness

I dropped my friend off at 2:20, and the entire way home, I was so tired I had to bite my wrists and forearms to stay awake. (This works VERY well!) But, I was so tired that even staying awake, I kept hallucinating. I kept feeling my body slipping away--not trying to slip away, but fall off or into something else. It was so strange. I hate hallucinating... anyway, my hallucinations involved me seeing huge biped creatures in the distance walking in or across the street. I won't even bother trying to explain how strange and scary this is, but imagine 15 foot Sasquatch dragging a club and walking across 66 in the distance. It's almost 3 in the morning and you've been awake for almost 24 hours. This happened from the time I was still in DC until I was about a mile away from home (over 30 minutes later.) As I turned into my subdivision, the vision returned.

I saw a creature walking slowly, zombie like, in the street. It was only a few feet away, and as I slowed down my driving, I realized that it was a real person. What the hell was he doing in the street? Behind him sat a totaled car wrapped around a tree. Funny how all your self-preservation instincts go out the window when someone else is in trouble. I rolled down the window, to ask him if the guy needed help, from the safety of my car, but even as I did so, I pulled over behind him, turned on my flashers, and got out to talk. I asked if he needed someone to call 911 since there were no emergency responders around. He said he did. The guy looked scared as shit, but definitely not drunk or belligerent. I guess I subconsciously knew this because I didn't hesitate to open my phone to call as I also opened my trunk and searched for a first aid kit. I was shaking so much, I felt enclosed by an entire cloud of sleep-deprived adrenaline. The one where your consciousness has all but shut down, the physical body is being animated by competing neurotransmitters and the mental body by the subconscious mind. God knows where emotional, spiritual, social bodies went... fair-weather friends. ;)

As I was calling, I was surprised to NOT hear my voice in my head as I spoke. It was like my lips were moving and communicating information with the 911 responder, but I had no idea what they were saying. In fact, when I first held the phone to my ear, I almost panicked that no one was answering before realizing I hadn't activated the phone application and dialed 911. I did it. Fumbling through the first aid kit on the ground to find gloves, the responder actually said, "Hello" to me 3 times before I realized someone was there on the line, that they were talking to me, and that it was my cue to answer. Amazingly, I gave an incredibly accurate description of the location. I continued to fumble with the gauze pads. The poor guy was sitting on the ground talking to his dad on the phone, scared shitless. I was scared for him, though the obvious extent of his injuries was the huge gash on his right knee. Fumble, fumble fumble. Fucken gauze pads. I think I broke the disposable ice pack trying to activate it. I asked the guy if I had permission to help him, though I was already crouching on the ground next to him, opening the kit and not paying enough attention to him to wait for a response. The responder asked me to ask him if he had any stomach or chest pain. He said he did where the seat belt caught him, but other than that, no. (And, BTW, thank GOD he was wearing the seatbelt. There is no amount of first aid kit in my trunk that would have helped him had he not been!!! So kiddies and adults alike, FUCKEN BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS!)

I wipe the blood that had dripped down his leg... there wasn't a lot, but the gash was deep and will definitely require stitches. The first gauze pad was comically thin, so I added the abdominal gauze pad on top. Perfecto! I held pressure until the paramedics arrived. The second set, since the first set was on their way to another accident further down the road but stopped to make sure that the guy I was with didn't have any life-threatening injuries. I'm glad they remembered the correct questions to ask because, between him talking to his dad on the phone and me shaking and waging a holy war against the sterile gauze pad packaging (who would have though tearing a fucken PAPER packet open would be so difficult) with no conscious facilities, I sure as hell wasn't gonna notice that he was missing a limb, his heart laying next to us(talking, no less!)or that his neck was broken in half, or something else painfully obvious. Fortunately, none of these things happened. Anyway, the po-po and the paramedics arrived, and I was surrounded by a dozen 30 to 50-something year old white dudes in the middle of the night... (Deja vu?)

The car was FUCKED UP! I mean, the poor guy! As it turns out, he was returning home from dropping off a friend and he fell asleep driving. (It was, after all, 3 in the morning!) His car hit the curb and did at least a 90 degree (and possibly a 450 degree, if done twice) spin around a tree. Ack! He hadn't been drinking... he was too scared and sober to lie about what happened. But he remembered driving, then he remember waking up with horrifying pain in his right leg and his car on the opposite side of the road. (Not his words.) At some point before the responders arrived, the operator I'd been talking to on the phone hung up. I don't remember when, I just know we asked me about the seatbelt thing, asked for something and I said the address again, which was the wrong answer apparently. I think the right one was my name and phone number. Anyway, responders arrived, took over, EMTs secured his neck and back to a board on the stretcher, police looked around the scene trying to piece together what happened, and I just kinda sat there in my car since I couldn't get around any of the vehicles at this point. I picked up my phone to call my mom and let her know what happened, or to play bejeweled, or send a text to my friend whom I'd dropped off earlier... and my phone died instantly. Had it died 10 minutes earlier, or with just a few more functions like another text message or so earlier in the evening, I wouldn't have been able to call 911. Weird how things work out, huh?

Anyway, the kid's dad came (sorry, I should say that the guy was probably about 19 years old... and I'm calling him a kid, even though he's only 5 years younger. Hehe.) The dad followed the ambulance to the hospital. I don't think he saw me at all the whole time. Funny how I just disappear sometimes. The po-po got my information. Had I not been so scared when they asked for it, I'd have said something like, "Go ask Officer So-and-So in This-and-That county... or 50 other of your cop friends. I've been pulled over enough times, I'm sure ONE of them has my data!" Anyway... free to go. Me, sleepy to the point of hallucinating, had been on scene for 30 minutes.

I got home and told mom, "You'll never believe where I just spent the last half an hour: doing first aid at the scene of a car accident a mile away from the house." I guess I felt proud because I know some people will just drive past, assuming that responders have already been called, afraid that the person involved might be some sociopath, or just not wanting to be bothered with being obligated to someone for a period of time--however brief. But, the more I think about it, the less proud I feel. Feeling proud should come from doing something extraordinary, in my opinion. Helping out a fellow living creature is NOT extraordinary in most circumstances. It's something that, if done more often, would lead to a much happier, less fucked up world.

I FINALLY got home, and approaching the door I see a bug moving on the porch. I stepped over it, not wanting to look at it (because if you look at it, you have to acknowledge it's form and the fear it incites within, which I would have rather not done.) I turned around anyway, and saw a beetle on it's back, it's legs desperately waving in the air to either grab onto something with which to leverage itself up, to flip itself over, or to get my attention. Only the latter worked. I bent down and flipped it over with my house key. I left before it could walk any closer to me. Fear, yes, but even that doesn't excuse us from our duty to other living beings.

Locking the front door and walking over to my mother to tell her the story of the evening, I was reminded of a verse, "i have abused my so-called power forgive me/ you mean we actually are all one/one one one one one one one."

-One, by Alanis Morissette
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