Monday, August 15, 2011

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.

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