Sunday Thinking

This is a hard one to compose, and when you read it, you'll understand why I haven't written in a while.

I can't do it.

After 54 years on this planet, I can't wrap my head around changing my body now -- risking what's left of my good health with hormones and surgery. Or changing my gender at work, going through the fear and the turmoil of being conspicuous and exposed in that way. Or being misgendered, attacked, or humiliated in public. Does that make me a chickenshit? Maybe. I certainly have the utmost respect for people in my age group who have transitioned. For them, the danger (of suicide) in staying the same was greater than the danger of transitioning.

Ultimately each of must decide what path to take. No one person has made this any harder than the other for me, but there have definitely been bumps in the road. The closeness I've enjoyed with some people in my life has vanished. But you can't let another person decide for you. You just have to take those baby steps and see. For me, it was the baby steps that showed me I can't go forward with transitioning. But I will likely still change my name. I've never liked my birthname, and I love the name Jude. So there you go. That's my nod to the process.

If I were 20? Yes, I would transition. I think. I would have to actually be 20 again and decide then. If I were 30? Probably not, unless my life were very different. By age 30, my youngest child was in kindergarten, and none of us every want to make life harder for our children. My concern for my son has factored into this a little, although he has been nothing but supportive. It was a harder pill to swallow for my ex-husband.

I think I was inspired by so many older people coming out. I thought it was finally the right time for me. You see, inside nothing has changed. I am more male than female. I wish I had been born into a male's body. I don't like how people treat me when they look at the outside. While I don't think I'm particularly attractive, other people have found me so, and they try to put me in a "femme" box. I let them get away with it for awhile if I'm falling for them. And then something in me wakes up from the fantasy of a perfect little nest and says, "What the hell is this?" I couldn't be femme in a marriage to a man, and I refuse to be so in a marriage with a woman. But I've had three relationships with women in a row in which they tried to put me in that box.

Lesson learned - know thyself and be thyself.

My ex-wife really put me into that femme box, and that was probably one of our biggest problems. I wanted to be myself, do things for myself, and wear the pants in the family, but she wanted to take care of me and never let me do anything around the house. As soon as she moved in with me, she began taking over all the things I had done for myself (like mowing the lawn). That proved more damaging, as when you're chronically ill you need to keep moving and keep pushing your limits. If you sit still all the time, you'll suffer much more. Soon, I was in a bad migraine cycle, my fibromyalgia was worse than it had been in years, and my medications were increased by 4 new prescriptions. Of course I chafed against her solicitations, but as I got sicker, it was a downward spiral and actually needed her help.

She probably made way too many excuses for me with her friends, because they took a dislike to me. I didn't want to be coddled or pitied or have excuses made for me, but I didn't realize the extent to which that was happening. When I was well, I went to gatherings. When I wasn't, I didn't. To find out that these folks had taken an unfair opinion of me - when they didn't really know me - hurt so much, and it made me angry. I was angry with my wife for doing that to me. When you're already feeling like an impostor (looking too femme when you don't feel that way), the last thing you want is to have anyone pitying you or making judgments about you that paint you as a malingering, frail woman because you don't choose to go to their every event -- such as trapeze school with the group. Ai-ai-ai....Imagine my brains being insulted that way when they're already fighting migraines that - no shit! - lasted for a week or more.

Here's who I am in a nutshell:

I'm a homebody, an introvert, and an intellectual. My time is best spent reading, writing, learning something new (that doesn't involve acrobatics), having good conversation with intelligent people, and thinking! That mostly takes a good deal of solitude. I like my solitude unless I plan ahead for an outing that I really want to attend. If I plan to do something fun, I enjoy it thoroughly. I can't be forced.

The writer in me has been quiet. I'm trying to get that person back to the forefront.

Somewhere I have a photo of me at 10 years old, seated at the desk in my brothers' old bedroom in front of a manual typewriter, my left arm in a sling. Because a teacher had encouraged my writing the previous school year, I got a typewriter from my dad and started writing a rather juvenile novel about teleportation of a band and some of the concertgoers to an Earth-like planet. Tapping out the words one-handed, I dreamed of being as far away from my life as I could get, starting over on another planet with no parents, no angry authority figures, just my friends and I, and the band. Yes, it was a silly thought, and I was a silly girl trying to figure life out. I had posters of all these musicians all over my walls. Like Amy Ray once said in an interview, I thought I had a crush on David Cassidy. I grew up to realize that I wanted to be David Cassidy.

No matter how silly it sounds, I finished that novel. Never did anything with it, but it was my accomplishment that summer. Later in my school years, I wrote screenplays, poems, and essays. I even produced a satirical newspaper that was available to my schoolmates for a dollar. I sold those, as well as little dolls I made of yarn and sequins, and hand-drawn pictures (in ink) of astrological signs or people's names ("Ricky + Nancy 4-Ever!"). Would that I could finish a novel now. Or publish satire. Or even draw the way I once could. Life has a way of taking the stuffing out of you, but you can find it again.

This is all to say that although I feel myself to be one of the guys, and always have, I am going to have to be content with what God gave me to work with. I need to focus on the things I can control and not on the things I wish were different. I will put my energy (and money) into enjoying the years I have left and will continue to live in my truth - that I have a strong male energy and do not want to be put into some ridiculous "female" role of someone else's design. I will focus on my path in life, as a person who is meant to write. You don't have to be a certain gender for that - or for most any other thing in life.

But I could always change my mind someday. We'll see how it goes, shall we?

Peace, Jude