Always On My Mind

I'm not dead.

This is just something I thought I'd point out. It does not explain why I haven't posted for the last two months, of course and I'm stating the obvious right now but whatever.

I suppose I can run through a brief list of why I've been away.

I had exams. I had days where I was too busy doing something else to even think of blogging. There were times when I wished everyone on the planet would die and I would have been quite happy if the sun extinguished itself and left us to die. Days where I didn't want to get up, where I would much sooner have crawled under my duvet and willed myself out of existence. I've also been rather scatterbrained. Couldn't remember things, couldn't organise my thoughts and just couldn't function properly. Wasn't that bothered about actually trying either so that could certainly have contributed.

So yes, the short version of why I haven't blogged in awhile is that I just haven't, okay?

Hurray and stuff, I'm back now so I can continue to be wonderfully strange through the written word and fling meaningless things out there that some people might be bothered to read.

The title of this post can apply to more than one thing. We can take the song of the same name by the Petshop Boys and say that I've had a person on my mind, which would be true but it's more than that. The brain is a wonderfully inescapable thing that likes to bombard you with unwanted thoughts and decide to follow similar lines of thought quite frequently in order to drive you up the walls. The subjects that are most often occupying my mind are gender.

Why should gender occupy so many of my waking thoughts? I don't believe I've mentioned it previously but I am in fact transgender. In other words, gender and what it is to me is a central part of my life. Central but not simple. I seem to be left in a most uncomfortable position where I have exactly zero idea of what I am on the spectrum of gender.

Maybe you're unaware of gender being a spectrum rather than a binary and aren't aware that sex and gender are not interchangeable. Male and female are considered interchangeable with man and woman respectively, except that they aren't. The former are your possible biological sex, the ones that describe what genitals you have and lead to such announcements at birth of "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl" and which adorn all manner of balloons and other crap that people bring to visit your newborn in the hospital. You've also got intersex there too, where you're born as neither because things didn't develop one way or the other and which parents feel the need to "correct". You won't find many balloons celebrating that inbetween. And then you have the latter, man and woman. Two fixed points of gender that get linked to sex along with boy and girl. Anyone who did mathematics knows that you can draw a line between two fixed points and there can be other points along that line that fall in between male and female. You also have points that aren't on that line, ones that lie outside it and right there you have a better idea of gender. You can fall somewhere on that line or you can be somewhere outside that line completely. Simple enough, right?

Wrong!

People seem to have a hard time grasping the idea of anything being outside two "traditional" genders, in the Western world at least. So instead you can be labelled as a freak, as going through a "phase" or as doing it for the attention. "Oh you're a girl that likes to dress more like a guy? Oh so you're a tomboy. Don't worry, you'll grow out of that." Except you don't grow out of this "phase" but rather you grow into it. You have to feel your way almost blindly while people tell you that you're wrong or you're being silly. It's an identity that you have to find because you need to know who you are and trampling it down and pretending it doesn't exist, solves nothing and causes plenty of problems. It's okay though because if you're the one forced to trample your identity down, you'll be the one going through the pain and the heartbreak! You don't have to worry about upsetting other people with your "silly" notions.

Minor rant/tangent aside, I am transgender. I am in that blind searching phase but I've wandered down the guy end of the spectrum. Born female (I refuse to call myself by the gendered G- and W-words because using them in relation to myself makes me physically ill), going god knows where but the it involves male pronouns (he/his/him) and a wonderful name change to Max. Technically, I've gone with a gender neutral name but it does have more masculine leanings so it suits me just fine.

Aside from being frustrated by people who can't grasp this or don't want to, I actually was getting to a point here somewhere that I'm sure I'll remember in a second if I let my brain kick into gear rather than typing on automatic.

Ah yes! Point was that my gender identity is on my mind a lot as of late. I had a wonderful time from mid-January to the end of February where everything was new to me and I was so full of optimism and revelling in my newfound freedom of being out to myself and to family and friends. I was dropping a facade for so many people that I'd kept up for so long without being fully aware why I was doing. I've created so many different facades over the years connected to my past that I hadn't even spotted the gender one for a good while. So facades were dropping, I was flinging away pieces of the part I'd played, getting rid of clothes I'd always hated wearing and replacing them with things from the men's section. I could actually look in the mirror without suffering from a feeling of unreality of my reflection not being mine because it was all wrong. Then it started crumbling away while I was building it. Depression started re-establishing roots and trying to pull me back down as a willing victim rather than kicking and screaming.

People don't seem to understand the significance of pronouns or chosen names to trans people. Those people who think it's a phase just stubbornly keep calling you what you've always been called and they don't know what damage they're doing. They don't realise that it's like you're not being accepted by them, which you aren't to be fair. They don't seem to understand that you wouldn't have changed anything at all if it wasn't significant to you. The one that frustrated me beyond measure as I tried again and again to get understanding across, as I pleaded and negotiated and cried over having my chosen name accepted was that Lynda had this idea that names weren't important. She quoted Romeo and Juliet, in fact, to get her point across and show me why I was being "silly".

"What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

That's what I was told and it's true. A name isn't important. Whatever is behind it is the same regardless of what it's called. Except that when a name has always been attached to you but you are no longer the same, it doesn't have to apply anymore. You're still you of course but a truer you. If you're trans it isn't compulsory that you change your name but you can certainly choose to do so. It's like a rebirth, a severing of a cord that was working for your benefit while you were still developing. It's an anchor before you're trans, something that you can use to wrap an identity around, something you can always go back to but it also holds it back. So you choose a new anchor to form your identity around and hold you in the place that you want to be rather than holding you back.

Not only did I have every right to a new name but if names weren't important, what was the big deal about changing it?

My rambling nonsense put to one side, I've had to grapple and put up with a lot of things. If I manage to remove an obstacle or making something a little easier then I keep finding myself running into a bigger wall that I can't find a way around or that things are getting more difficult. It is not good for your mental health, it is exhausting and so many people think that you're getting on great because you throw up a new facade that says, "I'm okay" and they don't try to look past it and you don't try to pull it down because it's easier than trying to explain. You need someone to get it, someone who can help you but those people usually have the same issues and let's face it, you don't want to be the one to add more stress to their lives or dig up their own sensitive issues.

I have gone through the despair of it many times, multiple times a week in fact. It could be triggered by something simple like someone misgendering me when I thought I was presenting as being male. Or it could be triggered by nothing more than catching sight of myself in the mirror at the wrong angle, or the sound of own voice and I go into a tug of war with myself. Do I look male? Can I pass as a guy? I can't see it so surely everyone else is the same? Everyone must see me for what I really am so why bother? That's what it boils down to really. Why bother going to the effort of trying to present the way you feel when it feels like such an obvious facade, like you stand out for what you are underneath it all, what you were to begin with? Such frustration goes with it and I really have wondered if I should revert back, just give in, put on more feminine clothing and present as what I so obviously am, a fact that can be seen by anyone with eyes.

That is where I find myself at present, in a state of frustration and confusion. That is what is always on my mind, what am I and who am I. So yes, I needed to have a wee rant about that for my own benefit. Maybe someone will bother to read this and get it and empathise or maybe someone will read it and learn something. I don't know. I mean, who even reads this nonsense that my brain vomits up? Not the pleasantest of descriptions but I'd call it accurate.

Alas, that is that and I might be able to deal with it at some stage soon and I might talk about it again but for the time being I've said my lot. That's me finished for the time being.

Ciao for now.