I have this loose internal checklist about when I’m going to be an adult. Honestly I forget most of the things I’ve decided made me an adult. The things I can remember include: being able to keep an internal map and navigate based on it, buy and cook meals without help, and maybe something involving bubble tea but that could be tied to groceries (inside thing, I get a bubble tea when I go to Trader Joe’s because I hate TJ’s so I need a reward). I just thought of something else tonight though that should probably be on the adult list: navigating parental visits.
I saw my parents recently because my sister and I were graduating. It was okay, my parents have dealt with my coming out unbelievably well but I’m really not used to be open or close to my parents so I feel really weird. I’ve noticed that I’ve been pushing my family away, sister, parents, everyone, probably because being close to them freaks me out. A lot. I’ve never been close and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be that close to them. On the flip side I’m so happy they are doing well with accepting my trans-ness and I would be really hurt if they didn’t. The pile of contradictions is me. My dad is retiring from the military after 28-ish years very soon, I’ve already been asked not to come to the retirement to avoid ‘confusion’. Still, while my parents were in town they kept telling me that if I wanted to visit them they’d be around all summer. I’m not offended that they’ve asked me not to come to the retirement, I’m not close to my extended family and I’ve told my parents that it’s their choice when we tell the rest of the fam about my ‘changes’. But I don’t know about visiting them. It’s weird. I’ve been fine the past couple of times but I worry that sometime they’re going to start asking questions that I don’t feel comfortable answering. And that is most questions.
When I was in therapy my therapist told me that I shouldn’t feel obligated to spend more time with my parents. I’ve had times in the past where I spent more time than I really wanted at my parents’ house and I left fairly depressed. For various reasons, not them specifically. I feel like I could ignore they’re invitations and probably be okay but then maybe if I took them up on it I might have fun and they would be off my case for awhile. Suck it up, be a man! Tonight was the first time I thought about just telling them that I’d come for a couple of days. Would it be enough? A couple days longer than a long weekend, enough for some hikes, some one-on-one time, I could handle that right? I guess we’ll see…
Six months on the stuff, I’m going to spend today admiring the hair on my thighs
Unpacking my cap and gown just made me break out into a cold sweat. My gown has weird pointy wizard sleeves. Whatthefuck. Yay.
Laundry was found! One crisis averted! Of course in the last month of grad school problems are kind of like hydras: as soon as one is solved at least two more have come up. Wonk-wonk. My sister and brother-in-law have decided that I should be the one to come out to his family. This is a thing that I feel weird complaining about because this is my ‘responsibility’ I guess. But, fuck, coming out has nuances and there are some many things making this more difficult. I will talk about my feelings on extended family right now, its a can of worms that I don’t feel like dealing with now.
An amazing thing happened to me this week though. I was asked to submit to quote for textile conservation services. Translation: I was given the chance to apply for a job at a museum I love and respect in the field I’ve been studying for the past two years. I want this so. bad. sososososo bad. This is a museum that I thought was only a fantasy to work for even before I started grad school. I found out that the head of my department recommended me for it, not gonna lie knowing that gets me a little misty. She’s helping me prepare my application (it’s complicated) and so I’m battling with wanting this with every part of my body, finishing up reports that I should have done months ago, trying not to take her criticism of my written pieces personally and not being able to tell my classmates so I don’t feel like I’m bragging. I’m honestly afraid to tell anyone, I so don’t want to jinx this.
On top of those two things I decided to do presentations in two classes the week before the last class. That means: I have to come up with a presentation and fact sheet over the weekend for next Wednesday, write a ten-ish page paper and make a presentation for the Monday after next, I have to get treatment reports, time sheets, etc. etc. done soon after. And I’m going out of town this weekend. Hello, I am a dumb m-f’er.
The lesson(s) here are: Grad school is hard dude! I’m bad at time management! Other people are noticing my propensity to procrastinate (enjoy the alliteration, please) but not understanding that it has everything to do with my anxiety. Procrastinating to manage anxiety is a terrible idea!
Finally, Holy shit what if I get a job doing something I love at a museum I respect? It would be like I was an adult or something!
ugghhhh. I don’t like doing this because I feel like complaining about shit doesn’t do anything to change it. Unfortunately in some situations I have no way of actually controlling the outcome and the only thing that will make me feel less shitty is whining. To the internet. That achieves something, right? So this weekend has been equal parts of horrifically stress inducing and really pleasant. Horrifically stress inducing: Got the electricity bill and for some reason it is three times the amount that it was previously. My roommates and I have not changed our energy usage, we don’t leave lights on when we’re not around and it’s not warm enough for air conditioners yet. So I have to call of the elec. company and have an anxiety attack. It will probably be fun for the both of us! I don’t even know what to ask them other than, “What the fuck guys?” Maybe that’s what I’ll do, just ask “what the fuck.” Part deux: Because I am somewhat lazy but also very busy I drop my laundry off at the laundromat and let them wash it. I feel like it’s worth it, especially because the instant that I walk into a laundromat I get bored and petulant. If I ever went with someone to wash clothes at a laundromat I’m pretty sure that I would stomp around in a circle saying “I don’t wanna!” over and over until it was done. I hate them, man. I’ve been using this one laundromat for about two years and they’ve always done a good job, they’re relatively prompt in getting my clothes done and most of the people there are nice. I went to pick up my laundry yesterday, got it and brought it home. Somebody else’s laundry was in my bag. Like not even close to my stuff. And this “Oh fuuuuucckkk” weight just settled on my shoulders. I brought my bag back, explained to the person on duty and she was very apologetic. I kept my cool because getting angry at people who can’t fix a problem and are being nice never solves anything. She told me to come back the next day (today). Went back today, the two people working know me well enough and were upset that this had happened to me. I like them so I continued to not flip out on them and they went through a bunch of bags looking for my stuff. No dice. They told me that they thought someone had gotten my stuff in their bag and had taken it home and they were going to call this person. I should go home and they would call me later. It’s at least three hours later at this point and all I can think is that someone got my stuff and either liked it enough to decide just to keep it or sell it. Which is a big leap, I will accept that. But fuck man… I was just thinking this week that I was pretty happy with the state of my wardrobe. I have a good mixture of casual and slightly less casual and I’ve been getting the ‘casual weekend guy’ look down pretty solid (it’s an important look, I was going to start working on others). Its about $500+ worth of clothes there and I’m not sure if the laundromat would reimburse me the full amount. I can’t do anything about this. All I can do is wait and I can’t even distract myself. I’ve tried watching back episodes of the Chris Gethard Show and they’re funny and I’m happy I’m watching them but I can’t pay attention fully. I can’t work on my paper that’s due soon, I’m stress eating and feeling bad about stress eating. Why am I so attached to fucking clothes? Clothing and wifi are probably going to give me a heart attack soon. At least my gums aren’t contributing to any potential heart problems I could have…
Anyways. Good things have happened this weekend as well: I was able to find crewel yarn that will probably work well for a rug reweaving project I need to do. In the process of finding the crewel yarn I also found a great yarn store that has a weight of yarn I usually have a hard time finding and want to use frequently so that’s definitely a good thing. Yesterday I went over to an old friend’s apartment for a dinner party and hung out with my under grad friends that I don’t get to see frequently enough. They all noticed my voice and were blown away by how deep it was. My friend’s new boyfriend is nice, personable and makes a killer salad so that’s nice. I might watch ‘Alien’ for the first time tonight and get to see some of my other friends’ cats that I haven’t seen since they were baby kittens. And I think that a rift that I had with one of the cat owning friends has basically been mended. That’s a very good thing!
Now I think I’m going to work on a repetitive art project I started last week and try to convince myself that it isn’t too pretentious or dumb or something. I feel mildly better but that could be Xanax. Man, I need to be less hard on myself…
I am an avid karaokier. In the past year this has kind of become an integral part of my social life and personality. I’ve always wanted to be a performer but laziness and other interests have always taken precidence. I’m now a regular at a karaoke bar, I’ve got a whole group of friends that have come from being a regular there, it’s my Cheers. The first person I came out to as trans was one of my karaoke friends and he was there for me when I was doing all the grieving stages. He was great with all of my whininess and really went out of his way to make me feel supported. And, as my mom hilariously put it when I told her that I was a regular, “At least you can sing, I guess.” (Thanks for the vote of confidence Mom!) Anyways what my original intention with this post was to talk about how my voice change has affected my singing range. I’ve been a mid-range alto/high tenor since I was about 14, so not the deepest female voice but still not able to pull of Bieber (not that that stopped me, even though the chorus of ‘Baby’ always shot my voice I kind of killed with that song). Before I started T I had finally started figuring out what songs were really in my range: ‘One Way or Another’ by Blondie, ‘Spice Up Your Life’ by The Spice Girls, ‘Everybody’ by The Backstreet Boys, ‘Lady’ by Styx, ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga, and ‘Heaven on Their Mind’ from Jesus Christ Superstar were all go-to’s. Now of those songs I can sometimes do Backstreet Boys and I have yet to attempt Jesus Christ (but I will soon dammit, I’ve always wanted to play Judas in JCS). So now my range is severely limited, I’ve got no falsetto so that precludes most of the power ballads that are dear to my heart (except ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ thank god). Every once and a while I try some of those songs and it’s pretty hilarious, my voice is cracking like crazy. I’m seriously considering recording myself singing one of those songs just to hear it outside of my head and share my humiliation with the intarwubs. It could happen! So now I’ve working on new songs for karaoke. I was stoked to find out that I do a mean Neil Diamond and none of my hip-hop songs have suffered (oh yeah, I am awesome at Snoop and Coolio). It’s honestly been a really fun process and it feels like a tangible measure of how much my voice is changing.
Another funny (and at times troubling) thing that I’ve noticed about my transition: I’m growing more hair on the right side of my body than the left. I’ve got more of a ‘stache, more hair on my thigh, more chest hair all on my right side. What does this even mean? I’m now only injecting the T on my left side to see if that makes a difference. If not it’ll probably be time to contact the doc but after my last visit it seemed like my T levels were at where they should be. I’m getting read as male a lot more frequently now. I think my face has changed subtly, it’s hard for me to tell just because I see it every day but several people have mentioned it. My voice, of course, helps and I feel so so much more confident in my body. It’s a good thing and I’m looking forward to seeing what changes will happen in the next four months.
Next week will be three months on T. Before I started T I was told that usually you start noticing changes around the three month mark and I would say that in my case that’s pretty true. My voice has started to drop, something I’m particularly psyched about. For a long time I’ve been really self-conscious about my voice, I think I remember first realizing it around 13. Way before I was aware of any gender dysphoria I hated how high my voice sounded in recordings. Thing is my voice has never been that high, when I sang in choirs I always sang low alto-high tenor. Still I hated it, my whole day would be thrown off if I heard my voice on tape. Last year in a class we had to give a brief presentation that would be recorded and played back. I was out as trans but I hadn’t started hormones so watching that video was kind of excruciating. This past week we had a similar assignment but this time when I heard myself on tape I thought “That’s more like it!” I wouldn’t mind if my voice got deeper but I can’t complain about this change. I’ve started growing a small amount of chest hair. We’ll see what happens with that but I’m on board with chest hair. I have very fine facial hair coming in at the corners of my mouth. It’s very 14-yr old boy but I guess that’s kind of the point my body is at. Tentatively I’m saying that my period has stopped. At the beginning of the month I wasn’t sure if I was going to have it or not and for the first two weeks I would get random hot flashes. I have dubbed is manopause. However hot flashes have ceased and thus far no period so fingers crossed. I have to say between unhealthy dieting, birth control and hormones, hormones are my favorite way to stop my period. My acne got a little worse but it isn’t terrible and I’m hoping it continues that path. But beyond these changes self perception is really the biggest. In one of my earliest posts I wrote about how I didn’t like taking showers as much. I’m back to loving my showers. They can even be exciting; I’m not much of a nudist so it’s one of the few times during the day that I can see if anything new is happening. I’m also not really hating on my chest. True, it’s not for me and I think that at some point in the future I will pursue top surgery but this is just how I’m built. When I look in the mirror I see a guy, 100% of the time. Its a little funny seeing myself topless but feels more like a whatever thing for me. I am a small chested guy though and I still feel super uncomfortable going outside without my binder but its a start. I’ve started packing less. I’ve just noticed that I don’t worry so much about how strangers on the street see me. It of course rankles when I’m ma’amed or miss-ed at stores but for the people I’m never going to talk to I just don’t really care. I’m happy to have my packer and I still wear it occasionally but it doesn’t feel necessary. I went back to school three weeks ago and in one of my first classes while catching up with my classmates they told me that I looked and sounded more masculine. They thought that my shoulders looked broader or that something in my face had changed, things that I’m pretty sure haven’t happened. I credit it more to being comfortable with how I move, dress, etc. I’m more relaxed in my body, I’ve stopped questioning everything I do. There have been a few less positive aspects, some not that new. I’ve known for awhile that my anxiety and depression weren’t really connected to my gender identity. I had kind of hoped that being on testosterone would change some of that but it hasn’t really. Right now my life is filled with stressful things: I’m in my last semester of grad school with some very demanding classes, I have to propose then write my thesis hopefully before May, in a few short months I will be out of school for the first time in my life and I’m pretty convinced that I’m just going to fail at being a real adult. Just writing that has caused my brain to go spiraling out of control and my heart is beating harder. For the first time in about five years I’m not seeing my therapist (she’s on maternity leave) and while I haven’t always been truthful with her about all of my feelings its so weird to be dealing with them entirely on my own. I joke about how many feelings I have but damn! I have a lot of feelings! I’m trying to implement better coping mechanisms but it feels weird. That kind of leads in to my last thing. I’ve decided that I should probably start drinking less. I don’t think that I’m the most out of control drinker but in the past couple of months I think I’ve used alcohol as a coping mechanism and I feel like the way I act when I’m drunk is less predictable. I was telling a friend last week how in January I had received more bodily harm when drinking than I pretty much ever had since I’ve started drinking regularly. It was supposed to be funny but when you’re telling a story about how you’ve bashed up your legs and busted your face all while steadily drinking free prosecco it gets kind of sad. I do think that T has caused me to be more unpredictable when I drink, I get these huge bursts of energy and I end up doing stupid things. Still that’s even more of a reason to limit myself. I think T and I are going to be in this for the long haul and honestly T is more important than booze. I’m not sure how easy or hard this is going to be, going to bars is one of the main things I do with my friends but I think its a good decision and I’m hoping I stick with it. So there. State of the transition, over and out.
-J
I had a really nice call from my mom last night. She was telling that some people from my parent’s church were coming over for dinner soon and that it was going to be a good opportunity for my parents to practice telling people that they had a son and a daughter. It was the first time she’s referred to me as her son. I was pretty surprised, my parents have been dealing really well but I thought it would take them longer to consider referring to me as their son. It’s true they don’t use male pronouns and my mom did say that she still sees me as female but they have reasons that I accept and I’m not offended (anymore). It took me a while to understand how profound a switch this is for my parents and family; by the time I was coming out I had dealt with most of my stuff and this process has generally been positive for me. At Christmas I finally got to spend time with my parents and I really got to see what it was like for them but also how little the way they feel for me has changed. I’m always going to be their child. I think it was also good for them because they could see how I was still me except maybe more relaxed. And I am more relaxed. I’ve realized recently that when I look in the mirror I see a guy, whether I’m binding or not. It’s taken awhile but I feel more comfortable in my body. When I’m out I’m not worrying if I’m walking like a girl or if people are sizing me up. I feel like a lot of things have fallen in place or are continuing to fall in place regarding my transition and all I can say is that it’s really nice. Next step is getting my name and gender marker changed and I feel like it’s not insurmountable. Tentatively I’m going to say that everything’s coming up Jamie.
As a thus far perpetual student I love my breaks. While I admit at preferring summer break to the winter they both have their merits. Unfortunately there are equal downsides. I am terrible at not having a set schedule, I become completely unmoored losing track of time and purpose. If I keep busy and go out with people fairly frequently things are generally okay. This break has been going… less well. I was thrown off initially by spending a week with my parents for Christmas, returning home for three days and then going away for another week on a family vacation. I was able to have a good time with my parents or at least relatively; my mom didn’t get on my nerves as much as she can and I started to understand how my transition has affected them which made me appreciate how generally great they’ve been about this. Still, nearly three weeks of being around them was a bit much and during the family vacation I started to get contemplative, rarely a good state for me to be in for too long. I also miss being home, my home, when I’m gone for too long so I was excited to get back. But so much time had elapsed that I felt like I had missed out on so much. Right now a majority of my friends have full time employment or are interning full time whereas I’m in this part time limbo, working two days for one job and trying to have days open in case my other job ever decides to schedule me. I get stuck in myself, I stay inside for several days on end browsing the internet even though I’m bored out of my mind. I can’t get the motivation to do anything which is the most frustrating thing. Right now I have so many things I need to do, really need to do, but I can’t work up the energy. I feel like I’m not fun and I’m pretty sure that when I go out I am less fun mostly because I’m not confidant in my ability to be enjoyable. And the frustrating part of that is that I really want to be with my friends but I don’t want to seem needy. But honestly I am, I really need to be around people even though I refuse to tell people. I just get convinced that they don’t actually like me that much so should I really bother them? It’s all so dumb. I know that I’m an incredibly lucky person, if I didn’t know that already these past nearly six months should really prove it. And I’m grateful, I’m so fucking grateful. I don’t know, these feelings will pass because they always have and this is no where close to the worst I’ve felt. Though I hate the term this is just a “funk”. I’m looking forward to school starting up in a week and I’m going try to fill this next week better, maybe even do some of my much neglected research and reports. I’m hoping that one day these breaks with myself go away, I’ve heard that testosterone can help some guys with their moods and I’d fucking love if I were one of those guys but we’ll see.
