dysphoria
So I have always been a transgender. I knew it as a child but back then the language and ideas and information simply didn't exist. The dialog hadn't started. I can say if I'd been allowed to transition at puberty or even at onset of adulthood my life would have been a damn sight better. I longed for it often enough but there was no way and I'd never heard of such a thing. When I heard of men changing to women, I was jealous of them. Sure, a man could transition, but a woman couldn't. She was a she forever. Whether it suited her nature or not. She was going to be corrected, scolded, criticized and directed, sidelined and ridiculed for not quite meeting the mark. She would find herself forced into roles that did not suit her and denied those that did. That was how the world was and there was no way to change it. This was my life. Did it bother me? Well hell yeah! Immensely. To the point of multiple attempts at suicide. If you'd ever left me alone with a loaded gun at any point in my life, even the better times, I would not have survived the event. I'd have put that thing to my head and fired. Even in my happiest times I'd have seized on that opportunity to walk away from my life.
turns out, that's what dysphoria means. It's not specific to gender issues. A disabled person with no support may have a form of dysphoria too. An addict could probably relate. for me, the feeling of always being forced to live a life I don't want and don't like seems like that's how life is. "nobody said life was fair" and when people post those ecstatic "each day is a gift" posts I want to throttle the world for making me seem ungrateful. yeah, how grateful would you be if someone promised you a green lawn and gave you cacti? Hey it's a gift, be thankful. Well you'd be stuck with that cacti and maybe you'd learn to milk them for food and water and learn to make the best of it. Maybe there's times you'd even be happy they were there. But it's no damn green lawn and every time you saw your neighbor take off his shoes and dig his toes into his golfing green patch of softness you'd get mad at your "gift." Well that's my life. It's painful. It's awkward. It's not comforting at all and not particularly nourishing either.
I leanred from magazines and scolding people the stupid shit a girl should know. I resented it. I bucked it. I refused to obey a lot of it, like those stupid bras to hide your nipples even when your chest bags stay up on their own. Damn elastic straps on your ribs all day long. Or those stupid shoes that put your toes in a vice and wrench out your back. or the idea that I should be fascinated by clothing and shoes and being sexy for strangers. Or that I should actually waste up to 3 hours of any given day painting my face and organizing my hair and keeping them perfect all day. For this, I got crap from everyone. I wasn't obeying. I wasn't conforming. I wasn't trying hard enough.
If I only tried harder, I'd succeed and then I'd be happy because I'd enjoy it!
So I'm researching the word dysphoria, and how others describe it for them. yep. I definitely suffer from gender dysphoria. My quality of life is definitely destroyed. Not merely impacted, but utterly fucked up and lost. From that night when I tried to make a little money helping tear down the carnival only to be laughed off site while a drunk got hired behind me, to this day when I still hate my genitals, still hate my fleshy bits, still refue to be obsessed with three different pairs of shoes only slightly different.
I've struggled to make sense of my dysphoria. I've couched it in terms of being disabled with autism. I've couched it in terms of being in the wrong personality for my body many times, only to be laughed at for being so imaginative. I've examined how much of it is caused by poverty or loneliness. Poverty that was caused by not being able to do the jobs that suit me for having the wrong gender. Not because I was tempermentally or physically unsuited, but because they ASSUMED I was on account of my gender. Denied, defined, described and discharged, I have been kicked out of opportunity and resources to where that alone causes extreme unhappiness. Oh, what's dysphoria the word mean? It's the opposite of euphoria. To be as unhappy as the word euphoria means to be happy. Not merely sad, but heavy with sorrow and beyond hope of joy.
I spent my life forcing joy onto myself. Oh sure, it's taught me a lot about making happy. I think I could have learned that anyway. I have to work hard and fight for every scrap of happy moments. That's what it is to be dysphoric. The transgender folks sometimes flip that term around like a fidget toy, using it against so many moments you start to wonder what they really mean. Well they just mean that it was a moment when they didn't feel okay, yet again. Whether that was deep enough to make them weak, or simply spoiled an otherwise pleasant moment, it spoiled the moment, spoiled their mood. Like having a turd in the corner of the room. Or my colostomy bag when it's leaking. You're just kind of getting lost in something, forgetting yourself and your circumstances, forgetting the things that stress or limit you, and suddenly comes up that bad fart. You look down and see your tits. Or someone says "well you're a girl" or "close your knees, you want the boys to think you're easy?" Bam, right back to reality. Like someone stopped the movie at the cinema, walked up to you, told you that you're a monster, and kicked you out of the theatre. And you weren't masturbating, talking, or kicking the seat. You were really into that movie, sitting still and quiet and proper. But maybe your hair was moving around or your head was too big and they felt like they were doing something right and approved by all. Maybe even the theatre erupted in applause at your ousting. I mean, I've been ousted from groups that way. With actual smiles and approval all around for the one who's "brave enough" to do the nasty job of kicking me out.
I figured, okay, it's me. I'm just *something*. too energetic? Too enthusiastic? Too self absorbed? Too smart? Too what? Ask everyone and get a different answer from them all, but they'll all have one. Including too masculine in my "attitude." I sit with my legs apart. I talk with firm gestures and a strong tone. I speak like I believe in myself. I don't turn up the ends of my sentences into a question to indicate that I recognize my second class nature as a girl.
I always thought of myself in gentlemanly terms. Held myself to the standard of a classic gentleman. Honor, courage, strength, certitude, authority in my step and tone. I knew it wasn't girly. I thought it was because as a child I chose the wrong personality to emulate as an autistic, having picked them from a magazine. But I knew it was a man character I was choosing. Why then didn't I want to emulate a strong woman? Why did I choose the male form? Well, I didn't understand yet that I was simply not allowed to be that way. I've been punished since.
That's all aside from physical dysphoria triggers. I can't stand to touch or look at my own genitals. I've forced myself, trying to achieve that level of comfort they say I should. It never worked, only conditioned me to stop being horrified by it. I liked the look of my girl body in the mirror or the sillouette of my shadow, but I looked at it as a male voyeur or lover, not as an emulation of who I am.
stopping to warm my hands
Okay, hands are a bit warmer. I go from chilled to hot flash so much it's insane. I've been researching the crap out of it and still haven't figure out a way to stop it.
So I guess. the upshot is I am transgender and suffer from dysphoria and always have. I'm jealous of young transmen who get to transition. I still actually wish I could.
But see, I've got these commitments and understandings. Well one. Really only one blockage, my marriage. but I'm a man of my word, a man of honor. I don't go back on my word just like that. I told him, if he can learn to behave decently with me he could stay with me. and he's learning it. He is already at a point I'd say I could stand. I'm perfectly happy to keep roommating and partnering with this man now. He's a good man and deserves to not be alone. He deserves the fun future I want to make for us. and I've been promising to share it with him.
So getting divorced is kind of a nasty thing to turn around and do anyway. Okay, so I daydream, what if I transitioned without divorce? LOL I suppose he might be okay with it, but not here and now, no way. If I just started T tomorrow (not that I can with cancer and chemo) then by the time my beard got grown in he'd leave. Just leave. Why? I mean it's not like we have sex so he wouldn't leave to go get laid. He'd leave because the world would start treating him like crap, the way they always did me. He's been bullied too. Everyone has, let's face it. Okay, so it's like I'd be asking him to enter into a gay marriage with his heterosexual transgendered "wife" with whom he doesn't have sex. Sure, maybe he would be okay with it. Maybe one day. But I am dead certain not this day or the next. I daydream about sneaking it up on him. Finding a way to start taking T without telling anyone and acting like it's nature doing it. I mean, you know, old women grow beards and develop male charactertistics, right? And if they take my tits to prevent or heal breast cancer, which I hope they do, well then it's like top surgery. I've had the bottom surgery, a bit. Not the SRS but I don't want it anyway. All that pain and healing for someone who's moved on from sexual behaviour and besides is married to a penis owner. But if I did grow a beard and didn't shave and pluck it. If my voice got deep. If the world started to see him as a member of a gay marriage. I think it would break him. Will he grow enough that it wouldn't? I dunno. will he even live another ten years? I don't know. Will I? I can't say for sure. However, as the title of this blog says, I honestly think I've as many years ahead of me as behind and I'd love to live this second life as a man. Being treated by people as a man. When I say "here, let me carry that for you" they'd say thank you instead of "no, that's okay dear, I've got it." When I opened a door and smiled at a woman she'd smile back instead of giving me a freaked out look and ducking her head because women just don't DO that. When I wanted to pay for the date I wouldn't be emasculating my date. when I charged forward in glee into something rash and risky, they'd see me as a daredevil, not a suicidal woman sure to kill herself. If I said "I want to jump out of a plane" they wouldn't tell me how careful to be and try and hold me back, they'd laugh and tell me I better learn how to use a parachute first. If I was doing something and my muscles got sore, they'd laugh and tell me to man up a little more, instead of taking it as proof that I'm substandard and a fool to try and step outside my proper place. I could say things like Yes Ma'am, or "damn straight" and not look like i'm trying to put on masculine airs, because it would be right and natural for a man. Hell, I'd even learn to shake hands and I'd do it right.
I wouldn't have to learn the right ways to fulfil my role because masculine role behaviours already come naturally to me.
Would I be happier than if I just found my goal and pursued my rubber tramp dreams in the body I have? Well that's the question I'm still chewing on. I mean, I can live with a denied longing. I have for fifty-three years, eh? yes, I used to feel like a little boy, but I corrected people who mistook me for a boy, as though they were insulting me, because I knew I was a girl. I just simply accepted the idea that one can have one gender in one's mind and another in one's body and nobody can tell and they don't care and Im' a girl with a boy's mind. I accepted it because what else was there to do? Like so many before me who did not fit the roles. I made do.
Children used to be apprenticed out around the age of five to people who's only interest was affordable labour in the crap jobs. Mining, kitchen help, stable help, someone to step and fetch and clean their feet and bring the food and take abuse when the adult was in a mood. They'd be beaten with sticks even when they didn't earn it, simply to make sure they were scared and obedient all the time. "spare the rod, spoil the child" was a thing, and it was a thing when I was growing up. Against such a brutal world, what did the dysphoria of being in the wrong body have to do with reality? Who cares if you don't like it? Nobody likes it, just adapt or fuck off. I tried to fuck off, really did. In a bunch of ways including hitch hiking across a continent to escape. I thought often of pretending to be male, as women sometimes did in stories, but it was the age of girls wearing pants and men's clothing and making it look "cute." I knew I wasn't going to be fooling anyone with my slight curvy figure, high pitched voice and soft skin. TG people don't want to pass because of the face in the mirror, you know. We need to pass in order to be treated at face value as the person we are when we interface with our world. We need to pass so we won't have some jackass coming up and saying "I can tell you aren't wearing a bra" or "hey baby, why not come home with me and ride my cock?" or "you don't belong here, go on and get out before I fuck you silly and drop you in a ditch." Or when I was making friends with men. Because men get along better with men. But I couldn't. Sexual tension. They always wanted to fuck me. Or they had a girlfriend who wasn't letting me anywhere near her man. I remember a pleasant time volunteering with computer nerds working on refurbishing computers to outfit schools with computer rooms. It was awesome. I learned so much. The guys were interesting, funny, fun to chat with, and really good people to know. They didn't mind my youth and they were doing their utmost to be modern men and let the little woman have her chance at women's lib. But see, every time I picked up a CPU someone dropped what he was doing to rush over and help me lift it. finally I just shouted in frustration and then rushed words over my tongue, telling them how absurd this was. No matter how often I said "I can lift this, it's not heavy" they kept doing it. So I said 'listen guys, I'm young and strong, you're all over retirement age. You're likely to bust your back lifting and I should be helping you but because I'm in this female body you just can't help yourself jumping to take over. We'll never get anything done this way and it's annoying, get over it and let me pick things up myself!" Well it worked, but it really does illustrate one reason we need to be able to pass.
For transwomen I'm sure there's equally illustrative stories of being forced to behave in a way contrary to their nature, beyond the tales of being bullied for having emotions or affectations. Like "oh you can't hang out with them, you'll get sexual fantasies about them" or "you can't possibly empathize or fit in because men don't feel things like that." Or "men are no good at this, let the women do it, you just sit there and be the token in the room." Can you imagine, if it hasn't happened to you, just how frustrating it is to have your abilities dropped like turds and sit in the corner doing nothing while those around you prove themselves and gain respect and skills doing something you long to learn to do? Watching someone operate a machine lathe and you're not allowed to even breathe on the chisels for fear you'll break something? Or you poke a tool into the engine, prepared to adjust the idle speed or clean the spark plugs and a hand twice the size of yours pokes in and removes the tool from your hand while a giant hairy shoulder pushes you out of the way with a "here, let me do this, you just go make me some coffee." Yep, has happened countless times. And let's face it, making coffee is an easier job and mechanics can be a painful tedious task. So you go make coffee and fend off the sexual advances yet again. Your skills don't get improved. You still don't know how to break loose a rusted bolt because he never told you what the hell he was doing, just asked you to hand him the 3/8" open boxed wrench and laughed in surprise when you knew what that was. It's like some kind of monkey trick to know what a phillips driver is.
I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know if I'll agitate for gender change eventually or ruminate till something more immediate takes my attention and then go back to accepting the dysphoria as my lot in life. I won't limit my future choices by trying to make them now. As usual, the option isn't there right now. I've got to focus on getting through chemo and getting cancer free. I'll eventually quit talking about it too, because nobody wants to talk about it and it's not going to provide any relief or solution for me. I talk about it because the daydream of being male animates me and enlivens me and gives me a sense of excitement and fun, even knowing it isn't very likely or feasible. Anything that puts my mind beyond the next four months of torturous chemo is welcome, you know?
turns out, that's what dysphoria means. It's not specific to gender issues. A disabled person with no support may have a form of dysphoria too. An addict could probably relate. for me, the feeling of always being forced to live a life I don't want and don't like seems like that's how life is. "nobody said life was fair" and when people post those ecstatic "each day is a gift" posts I want to throttle the world for making me seem ungrateful. yeah, how grateful would you be if someone promised you a green lawn and gave you cacti? Hey it's a gift, be thankful. Well you'd be stuck with that cacti and maybe you'd learn to milk them for food and water and learn to make the best of it. Maybe there's times you'd even be happy they were there. But it's no damn green lawn and every time you saw your neighbor take off his shoes and dig his toes into his golfing green patch of softness you'd get mad at your "gift." Well that's my life. It's painful. It's awkward. It's not comforting at all and not particularly nourishing either.
I leanred from magazines and scolding people the stupid shit a girl should know. I resented it. I bucked it. I refused to obey a lot of it, like those stupid bras to hide your nipples even when your chest bags stay up on their own. Damn elastic straps on your ribs all day long. Or those stupid shoes that put your toes in a vice and wrench out your back. or the idea that I should be fascinated by clothing and shoes and being sexy for strangers. Or that I should actually waste up to 3 hours of any given day painting my face and organizing my hair and keeping them perfect all day. For this, I got crap from everyone. I wasn't obeying. I wasn't conforming. I wasn't trying hard enough.
If I only tried harder, I'd succeed and then I'd be happy because I'd enjoy it!
So I'm researching the word dysphoria, and how others describe it for them. yep. I definitely suffer from gender dysphoria. My quality of life is definitely destroyed. Not merely impacted, but utterly fucked up and lost. From that night when I tried to make a little money helping tear down the carnival only to be laughed off site while a drunk got hired behind me, to this day when I still hate my genitals, still hate my fleshy bits, still refue to be obsessed with three different pairs of shoes only slightly different.
I've struggled to make sense of my dysphoria. I've couched it in terms of being disabled with autism. I've couched it in terms of being in the wrong personality for my body many times, only to be laughed at for being so imaginative. I've examined how much of it is caused by poverty or loneliness. Poverty that was caused by not being able to do the jobs that suit me for having the wrong gender. Not because I was tempermentally or physically unsuited, but because they ASSUMED I was on account of my gender. Denied, defined, described and discharged, I have been kicked out of opportunity and resources to where that alone causes extreme unhappiness. Oh, what's dysphoria the word mean? It's the opposite of euphoria. To be as unhappy as the word euphoria means to be happy. Not merely sad, but heavy with sorrow and beyond hope of joy.
I spent my life forcing joy onto myself. Oh sure, it's taught me a lot about making happy. I think I could have learned that anyway. I have to work hard and fight for every scrap of happy moments. That's what it is to be dysphoric. The transgender folks sometimes flip that term around like a fidget toy, using it against so many moments you start to wonder what they really mean. Well they just mean that it was a moment when they didn't feel okay, yet again. Whether that was deep enough to make them weak, or simply spoiled an otherwise pleasant moment, it spoiled the moment, spoiled their mood. Like having a turd in the corner of the room. Or my colostomy bag when it's leaking. You're just kind of getting lost in something, forgetting yourself and your circumstances, forgetting the things that stress or limit you, and suddenly comes up that bad fart. You look down and see your tits. Or someone says "well you're a girl" or "close your knees, you want the boys to think you're easy?" Bam, right back to reality. Like someone stopped the movie at the cinema, walked up to you, told you that you're a monster, and kicked you out of the theatre. And you weren't masturbating, talking, or kicking the seat. You were really into that movie, sitting still and quiet and proper. But maybe your hair was moving around or your head was too big and they felt like they were doing something right and approved by all. Maybe even the theatre erupted in applause at your ousting. I mean, I've been ousted from groups that way. With actual smiles and approval all around for the one who's "brave enough" to do the nasty job of kicking me out.
I figured, okay, it's me. I'm just *something*. too energetic? Too enthusiastic? Too self absorbed? Too smart? Too what? Ask everyone and get a different answer from them all, but they'll all have one. Including too masculine in my "attitude." I sit with my legs apart. I talk with firm gestures and a strong tone. I speak like I believe in myself. I don't turn up the ends of my sentences into a question to indicate that I recognize my second class nature as a girl.
I always thought of myself in gentlemanly terms. Held myself to the standard of a classic gentleman. Honor, courage, strength, certitude, authority in my step and tone. I knew it wasn't girly. I thought it was because as a child I chose the wrong personality to emulate as an autistic, having picked them from a magazine. But I knew it was a man character I was choosing. Why then didn't I want to emulate a strong woman? Why did I choose the male form? Well, I didn't understand yet that I was simply not allowed to be that way. I've been punished since.
That's all aside from physical dysphoria triggers. I can't stand to touch or look at my own genitals. I've forced myself, trying to achieve that level of comfort they say I should. It never worked, only conditioned me to stop being horrified by it. I liked the look of my girl body in the mirror or the sillouette of my shadow, but I looked at it as a male voyeur or lover, not as an emulation of who I am.
stopping to warm my hands
Okay, hands are a bit warmer. I go from chilled to hot flash so much it's insane. I've been researching the crap out of it and still haven't figure out a way to stop it.
So I guess. the upshot is I am transgender and suffer from dysphoria and always have. I'm jealous of young transmen who get to transition. I still actually wish I could.
But see, I've got these commitments and understandings. Well one. Really only one blockage, my marriage. but I'm a man of my word, a man of honor. I don't go back on my word just like that. I told him, if he can learn to behave decently with me he could stay with me. and he's learning it. He is already at a point I'd say I could stand. I'm perfectly happy to keep roommating and partnering with this man now. He's a good man and deserves to not be alone. He deserves the fun future I want to make for us. and I've been promising to share it with him.
So getting divorced is kind of a nasty thing to turn around and do anyway. Okay, so I daydream, what if I transitioned without divorce? LOL I suppose he might be okay with it, but not here and now, no way. If I just started T tomorrow (not that I can with cancer and chemo) then by the time my beard got grown in he'd leave. Just leave. Why? I mean it's not like we have sex so he wouldn't leave to go get laid. He'd leave because the world would start treating him like crap, the way they always did me. He's been bullied too. Everyone has, let's face it. Okay, so it's like I'd be asking him to enter into a gay marriage with his heterosexual transgendered "wife" with whom he doesn't have sex. Sure, maybe he would be okay with it. Maybe one day. But I am dead certain not this day or the next. I daydream about sneaking it up on him. Finding a way to start taking T without telling anyone and acting like it's nature doing it. I mean, you know, old women grow beards and develop male charactertistics, right? And if they take my tits to prevent or heal breast cancer, which I hope they do, well then it's like top surgery. I've had the bottom surgery, a bit. Not the SRS but I don't want it anyway. All that pain and healing for someone who's moved on from sexual behaviour and besides is married to a penis owner. But if I did grow a beard and didn't shave and pluck it. If my voice got deep. If the world started to see him as a member of a gay marriage. I think it would break him. Will he grow enough that it wouldn't? I dunno. will he even live another ten years? I don't know. Will I? I can't say for sure. However, as the title of this blog says, I honestly think I've as many years ahead of me as behind and I'd love to live this second life as a man. Being treated by people as a man. When I say "here, let me carry that for you" they'd say thank you instead of "no, that's okay dear, I've got it." When I opened a door and smiled at a woman she'd smile back instead of giving me a freaked out look and ducking her head because women just don't DO that. When I wanted to pay for the date I wouldn't be emasculating my date. when I charged forward in glee into something rash and risky, they'd see me as a daredevil, not a suicidal woman sure to kill herself. If I said "I want to jump out of a plane" they wouldn't tell me how careful to be and try and hold me back, they'd laugh and tell me I better learn how to use a parachute first. If I was doing something and my muscles got sore, they'd laugh and tell me to man up a little more, instead of taking it as proof that I'm substandard and a fool to try and step outside my proper place. I could say things like Yes Ma'am, or "damn straight" and not look like i'm trying to put on masculine airs, because it would be right and natural for a man. Hell, I'd even learn to shake hands and I'd do it right.
I wouldn't have to learn the right ways to fulfil my role because masculine role behaviours already come naturally to me.
Would I be happier than if I just found my goal and pursued my rubber tramp dreams in the body I have? Well that's the question I'm still chewing on. I mean, I can live with a denied longing. I have for fifty-three years, eh? yes, I used to feel like a little boy, but I corrected people who mistook me for a boy, as though they were insulting me, because I knew I was a girl. I just simply accepted the idea that one can have one gender in one's mind and another in one's body and nobody can tell and they don't care and Im' a girl with a boy's mind. I accepted it because what else was there to do? Like so many before me who did not fit the roles. I made do.
Children used to be apprenticed out around the age of five to people who's only interest was affordable labour in the crap jobs. Mining, kitchen help, stable help, someone to step and fetch and clean their feet and bring the food and take abuse when the adult was in a mood. They'd be beaten with sticks even when they didn't earn it, simply to make sure they were scared and obedient all the time. "spare the rod, spoil the child" was a thing, and it was a thing when I was growing up. Against such a brutal world, what did the dysphoria of being in the wrong body have to do with reality? Who cares if you don't like it? Nobody likes it, just adapt or fuck off. I tried to fuck off, really did. In a bunch of ways including hitch hiking across a continent to escape. I thought often of pretending to be male, as women sometimes did in stories, but it was the age of girls wearing pants and men's clothing and making it look "cute." I knew I wasn't going to be fooling anyone with my slight curvy figure, high pitched voice and soft skin. TG people don't want to pass because of the face in the mirror, you know. We need to pass in order to be treated at face value as the person we are when we interface with our world. We need to pass so we won't have some jackass coming up and saying "I can tell you aren't wearing a bra" or "hey baby, why not come home with me and ride my cock?" or "you don't belong here, go on and get out before I fuck you silly and drop you in a ditch." Or when I was making friends with men. Because men get along better with men. But I couldn't. Sexual tension. They always wanted to fuck me. Or they had a girlfriend who wasn't letting me anywhere near her man. I remember a pleasant time volunteering with computer nerds working on refurbishing computers to outfit schools with computer rooms. It was awesome. I learned so much. The guys were interesting, funny, fun to chat with, and really good people to know. They didn't mind my youth and they were doing their utmost to be modern men and let the little woman have her chance at women's lib. But see, every time I picked up a CPU someone dropped what he was doing to rush over and help me lift it. finally I just shouted in frustration and then rushed words over my tongue, telling them how absurd this was. No matter how often I said "I can lift this, it's not heavy" they kept doing it. So I said 'listen guys, I'm young and strong, you're all over retirement age. You're likely to bust your back lifting and I should be helping you but because I'm in this female body you just can't help yourself jumping to take over. We'll never get anything done this way and it's annoying, get over it and let me pick things up myself!" Well it worked, but it really does illustrate one reason we need to be able to pass.
For transwomen I'm sure there's equally illustrative stories of being forced to behave in a way contrary to their nature, beyond the tales of being bullied for having emotions or affectations. Like "oh you can't hang out with them, you'll get sexual fantasies about them" or "you can't possibly empathize or fit in because men don't feel things like that." Or "men are no good at this, let the women do it, you just sit there and be the token in the room." Can you imagine, if it hasn't happened to you, just how frustrating it is to have your abilities dropped like turds and sit in the corner doing nothing while those around you prove themselves and gain respect and skills doing something you long to learn to do? Watching someone operate a machine lathe and you're not allowed to even breathe on the chisels for fear you'll break something? Or you poke a tool into the engine, prepared to adjust the idle speed or clean the spark plugs and a hand twice the size of yours pokes in and removes the tool from your hand while a giant hairy shoulder pushes you out of the way with a "here, let me do this, you just go make me some coffee." Yep, has happened countless times. And let's face it, making coffee is an easier job and mechanics can be a painful tedious task. So you go make coffee and fend off the sexual advances yet again. Your skills don't get improved. You still don't know how to break loose a rusted bolt because he never told you what the hell he was doing, just asked you to hand him the 3/8" open boxed wrench and laughed in surprise when you knew what that was. It's like some kind of monkey trick to know what a phillips driver is.
I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know if I'll agitate for gender change eventually or ruminate till something more immediate takes my attention and then go back to accepting the dysphoria as my lot in life. I won't limit my future choices by trying to make them now. As usual, the option isn't there right now. I've got to focus on getting through chemo and getting cancer free. I'll eventually quit talking about it too, because nobody wants to talk about it and it's not going to provide any relief or solution for me. I talk about it because the daydream of being male animates me and enlivens me and gives me a sense of excitement and fun, even knowing it isn't very likely or feasible. Anything that puts my mind beyond the next four months of torturous chemo is welcome, you know?