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.