The difficulties of Success

I’ve been thinking of writing something for a few weeks now, but I’m not sure what it is I want or need to write nor how I might articulate with words, the feelings and emotions I need or hope to release by writing.

As I sit here, my fiancee is in bed in the next room, we’ve traveled up the coast for a weekend away with some friends of ours to a little coastal town where his (retired) parents are currently staying. We’ve spent the day relaxing with our friends and his parents and their friends, had afternoon drinks, a BBQ lunch and other than that, done very little other than relaxed, which is pretty rare for us and very much needed.

Yes, I called him my fiancee, we’re engaged now as of a few months ago.

This particular town has a great many memories for me, it’s become quite a popular holiday area, but that is only in the last ten or so years, before that it was more of a small fishing village. 

I spent nearly every school and christmas holidays here every year until I turned about 15-16. My great grandparents where some of the first settlers of the town back in the late 60’s, to this day their names can be found on many historic buildings and landmarks all over the town , but where once everybody would have know them, the place has grown and changed now and I suspect very few current residents would know who they where if asked.

There never used to be a McDonalds here, no Kentucky fried Chicken, there where no big supermarket chains, only small independent grocery stores. high rise apartment complexes line the main road that runs along the water front now, there’s traffic lights in the main street.

My great grandparents house still stands in the same place but it’s been nearly two years since I last had the chance to drive through here and since I last saw the house it has been brought by the tourist park next door and completely remodelled.

It’s an odd feeling.

When I come here it feels so much like home, so familiar.

But I am not the person it used to think it new me to be, and this is not the place I used to know.

And that’s sad for me.

I see the young girls wandering around in their summer clothes, going to the beach, enjoying the sun, some chase the boys and some with boys chasing them, hardly much of a care in their world (at least it seems)

I missed out on that.

I love this place so much and I want to go back to (and remember) my childhood, but all I can really feel (when I try) is melancholy. The safety and comfort of familiarity but at the same time, fear, anxiety and the feeling of being “cheated”.

I like to think that my great grandmother might be proud of the woman I am and have become, she was a strong woman herself, but I can’t be sure. I don’t know what my “Pa” would think, he died when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, sadly I don’t remember very much of him but I would hope he might be proud too. they where from a very different time though, so who would know? I know my grandparents, (their children) didn’t support me and weren’t very accepting of me, but I like to think they might have been different.

This is life though, some things we will never know, and you can live in the past but it gets you nowhere really, all you can do is make your decisions, live by them and move forward.

And that brings me back to my fiancee, our friends and his parents.

These people have known me now for a few years, they don’t question me, they speak openly on all manner of things including “transgender” people, homosexual people and so on.

My life is relatively “normal” for a woman, and in some ways that can create some personal difficulties.

As much as I’d like to pretend everything was just a “bad dream”, it wasn’t. 

It happened.

It was traumatic.

In many ways it still IS traumatic.

But who would understand that?

How can one deal with a traumatic experience, and deal with continuing hurt and heartache, if one’s only real option (if they seek/desire to maintain their current life, as I do) is keep those things and experiences bottled up?

Shared life experiences, promote “companionship” and empathy, these are things humans seek in order to evaluate our own wellbeing. These things help us be “ok”, they help us “heal”.

But I can’t find anyone.

Now, it stands to reason that I cannot find anyone in my “real” life, I don’t go around telling people about my situation or my history, so it stands to reason that anyone with the same situation and a similar history, probably isn’t out there telling people about theirs either. People can’t or don’t “pick” me so how or why would I be able to “pick” them?

At least in theory!

I’m actually pretty confident that I would “pick” someone if I did happen to run into them, but not because of appearance.

I truthfully just don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone.

So the next place a person might consider is the internet.

This…..

….is the kind of person I find on the internet. This is the kind of person “trans” people (apparently) look up too.

Who else do I find?

No-one really. I haven’t run across any blogs recently that speak of a life and outlook like mine and believe me I have looked

There’s plenty out there from guys in their mid-to-late 30’s, early 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, with wives and sometimes children, who claim to be “transitioning” but I’m sure most of whom will never loose the appendage they where “blessed” with at birth.

But their life is not mine now is it?, and it’s not likely to ever be mine either is it?

There’s even getting to be quite a few from parents of young children, who are all balled up tight and afraid for their child’s future because they read all about those guy’s in their mid-to-late 30’s early 40’s, 50’s and 60’s

These parents never connect the dots that these guys are NOT the same as their children, because they never stumble across people like me and blogs like mine.

They don’t see a future like my life, as any kind of a possibility for their child.

It is these parent’s fears that rub off on and create the same fears in their children.

And then all things become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

It doesn’t have to be that way.

They could calm down and realise the big difference which is that their children haven’t gone off and married women and fathered children. they haven’t ever been “men”.

Mean while me,

I would like someone I can talk to about becoming a foster or adoptive mother (from a situation like my own). 

Someone I can talk to about marriage and kids when the person they are married too is a genuinely heterosexual male, who would truly love to be a biological father, but is (seemingly) prepared to forgo that dream to be with you, knowing full well that you cannot have your own, that you cannot give him HIS own, and knowing the reason why.

That paragraph itself has enough in it to make almost any genetic female insecure, let-a-lone a transsexual girl, with all of our other insecurities piled on top.

Female oppression: “I hate being the Daughter”

My future niece is six years old.

She’s the oldest of two and her younger brother is three years old.

She’s an absolutely beautiful child, however the adults in her life seem to have little time for her now her brother is on the scene, and also no idea how they’re teaching her to view life and the world.

Before her baby brother was born, she was spoiled absolutely rotten, and in most ways she still is, however, she had three years of not having to share the love, attention and affection spotlight, and now she does.

She’s gone from being able to do no wrong, to being reprimanded (in most instances) when she goes up against her brother, for just about any reason.

Early on there was no limit to what she was “allowed” to have or do, but then baby “bro” came along, and as adults do, the stereotyping and enculturation began.

It is lost on her that I (who as far as she knows, is a girl, just like her) can and do do most everything. 

Why is it lost on her?

Because the other women in her life, her mother, (one of) her grandmothers, her other aunts etc etc, and yes (to an extent), also the main man in her life, her dad, use the fact that she is a “girl” as the reason she is treated differently to her brother, and use her “sex/gender” as a reason for expecting certain things from her.

It makes me cringe to watch it, I see and feel her spirit being broken, and it tears me in two.

I’ve started to invest my time with her wherever I can, we went to the movies the other day, she came home with me and didn’t want to go home so she ended up spending the afternoon with me.

I hope that I can do some good for her and her life, but fuck is it hard for me, to try and make it all comprehendible for her, I’m someone who is (apparently) not supposed to understand sexism, female oppression, misogyny, I’m not supposed to know anything about it (if you’re to listen to and believe radical feminists).

I’m supposed to be the “devil”, the modern day foundation that female oppression is built on. A “cliche”, I do nothing but reinforce stereotypes, and THAT is the very reason I’m a fake and invalid as a woman.

They hate and would deny me (if they knew), but the truth is that that natal women perpetuate female oppression far worse than I could or ever have.

And then it gets worse!

I’m trying to make life comprehendible to this beautiful child, telling her that people treat boys differently to girls, and not to listen to them, that it’s as good if not better to be a girl, because girls can do “anything” and boy’s really can’t, and then she brings up the other child I’ve mentioned a few times in this blog (The one who likes to dress up in her costumes and play with her dolls who may or may not end up being gay or “trans”) and tells me he’s jealous of her.

How the fuck am I to try and build her up for being who she is (a girl) whilst at the same time trying to stem the hate that (I can see) is growing in her (even now, at this early age) for “boys”, the same “hate” I personally feel even now, everywhere I look around the internet. 

That kid could really use a friend, someone who understands them, (I know for a fact, I was there myself) they don’t need hate, but that is what they’ll get from all angles.

And why? 

Because people are idiots!

These kids, they both need “someone”, how can I stand on both sides of the argument?

“Girls are treated different to boys, except this one child, who everyone treats like a boy, and who appears to you to be one, but who might actually be a girl (on the inside) and should be allowed to be a girl and be treated as one”

Further, they’re both too young for me to feel comfortable talking about such adult subjects, without being concerned I’ll influence them and cause them big problems later in life, not to mention the questions they’re parents would ask about me if these kids came home and mentioned any of what I could potentially say.

There is so much "gendered" bullshit everywhere I look and I hate it all so much!

I don’t know who built and is running this crazy world, but they certainly do have fetish for irony.

I’m sure they’re up there looking down at me laughing they’re ass off! 

I don't know if this is irony or not?

This  video is doing the rounds of the inter-webs at the moment.

Not sure who the person is, mainly because I can't be bothered to do my research and find out (my life is pretty busy, believe it or not I don't get all day to sit around looking at this stuff), not sure wether they are actually a biological male or female, whether they're heterosexual or homosexual, and not sure wether this is some kind of publicity stunt or not.

However, both articles I've read on this today have said that she is biological female and a lesbian, so if that IS the case, although I really don't like or support (in any way at all) any of the premises for why this occurred, I can't help but chuckle just a little bit (inside) at the irony of this all, as a girl who is cut very deeply (emotionally) by quite a bit of what she reads and badly hurt by people's assumption of what and who her "kind" is/are and as a result, what she herself would be like.

Moral of the story, carry your ID and be careful what you wish for!

The Learning Curve

Perhaps some of the things I write about here (on the seemingly very rare occasions that I add to this blog nowadays) seem pretty unremarkable to most people.

I write of my own observations on life as it (life) seems to apply to me, in the hope that maybe someday this may be found by someone to whom the same life appears to apply, and that then, that someone might not feel so lonesome as I often get to feel.

 life is often harsh and very isolating, for a multitude of reasons that are never even imagined let-alone considered or prepared for ahead of time.

I often find myself feeling a long way behind the curve and floundering without anyone or anything to grasp onto for support.

Of late it is adjusting to and learning to control my own sexuality I’ve been musing over (constantly it seems).

Being born transsexual, a mental female without the genitalia and reproductive organs to function  as your mind/instincts demand, see’s the development and maturation of your sexuality stunted. 

For most (Non-transsexual) people growing into their sexuality is a process that starts early in life and continues over decades.

For me, my instincts and desires, if I’d let people see them, would have probably made people think I was gay (most probably thought I was anyway, I don’t know).

I didn’t let people see them. 

I don’t recall knowing anyone who was (openly) gay when I was growing up, but I do remember that anything I ever heard about homosexuality had a distinct “negative” connotation associated with it.

Having said that, (for those of you who will point to the above and say/suggest it’s internalised homophobia that caused my transsexualism) being a “girl” had a mostly negative connotations as well…..

As for transsexuals, what where they?

I had SRS in my twenties, and at that point I’d never had sex or a relationship with anyone of either sex.

The girls I wanted to be friends with at school, (which would probably have helped me understand myself better), all avoided me so they didn’t get teased by others, I guess it was apparent to all the other kids that I wasn’t “normal”.

There where one or two that didn’t shun me completely.

 One was a year older and a grade higher, (I guess) she kept me around because I listened to her talk about the problems in her home life and I tried to be sympathetic (also she lived on a neighbouring farm to me so we caught the school bus together for a couple of hours most days). 

She was the second youngest of four sisters and I suspect now (although I, regrettably, didn’t fully realise at the time, because I was too busy wrestling with my own sexuality issues to recognise things other girls where going through) that their father was probably abusing them. Looking back now, I deeply regret that I couldn’t be the friend I think she probably needed, I wish I could have given her a hug, but she probable wouldn’t have received it the way it was intended.

The second, although she was  dating boys when we where at school and she was quite “popular” and very pretty, appears (from Facebook) to be a lesbian, so I guess she was wrestling with her own internal demons back then as well. 

Again, I don’t think a hug would have been received as it was intended back then but I wish me “now” could have given her a hug. (having said that, it appears that at least you can hide your homosexuality in some cases, if that’s who or what you are, and “fit in” at school which might have alleviated SOME of the pressure back then, I don’t know, I hope things weren’t as hard for her as they were for me).

I don’t have contact with either of these girls now, I’d like to think they’d look at me now and finally understand me like I try to understand them, but I suspect they probably wouldn’t, there’d likely be the usual string of “you look great!”’s and and “I’m happy for you” etc etc but no, I don’t think they’d put 2+2 together, and I suspect the second girl might even be pretty hostile towards me given how transgenders are  encroaching increasingly on lesbian lives these days.

And so, my school days where pretty lonely, spent mostly sitting in corridors and stairwells or the library at lunch times reading books on my own where no-one would notice me to try and make my life harder.

After My SRS, when I finally started looking for attention, it turns out that most guys who met me (regardless of their home situation, some had wives and children) seemed quite interested in having sex with me (things probably wouldn't have been that way admittedly, if they'd know my birth situation), and this is the start of what has been such an adjustment and really, what this post was supposed to be about.

by the time they’re in their twenties (as I now was) most girls are well and truly used to the idea that boys desire them and want to have sex with them, they adjust to it together, as it all starts to happen at similar times for most of them, I expect many probably talk to each other about it and work out together how things apply to them individually (I guess as the two above were in some ways trying to do with me, in smaller ways than I was, they where different to other girls too, and so they thought/sensed I might have some understanding). 

By the time they’re in their twenties (especially if the have good strong adult female role models or mentors, their mom perhaps) hopefully they’ve learned a little about men, and sex and how to be “selective”.

To start learning that from the very beginning in your twenties, with no-one around to bounce Ideas off of…. there’s great potential to get treated VERY poorly, and to embarrass yourself in a multitude of ways.

I could have done that, been treated poorly, embarrassed myself. Thankfully I had learned a small amount of maturity from having to survive my life in the year or two leading up to my SRS (and after having told my parents and been pretty well shunned by my family), and I was also fortunate in that my partner came into my life pretty early on after SRS.

One thing though, that I find remarkable now is, although I love J with everything I have, and although I feel he is absolutely beautiful, I’m able to look around now at other men and imagine.

It’s a double edged sword, you have a man that loves you and you love him, you feel overjoyed because you never thought growing up that that would be remotely possible for you. You learn to despise yourself and you’re taught that no-one will ever love you but then someone does, and now it seems that others might too.

And there’s so much out there to touch and taste and feel and experience, and your teen years when you should have been able to, they’re gone. People expect that exploration from a teen (these days) not from a woman in her twenties (you).

It’s an interesting position to experience and get your head around, and learn to control and overcome.