I am just agonizing a lot lately about church.

I miss being in worship, and I miss being part of that community.

At the same time, I don’t know where I could fit in easily, or where to go, or if I’d even feel at home anymore.

One issue is simply that the churches I feel more comfortable in (ones with some sort of substantial theology) are the same ones who tend to be more judgmental or more inclined to treat me like a curiosity or second-class citizen, restricting my public ministry. People have suggested very open churches like the Unitarians or the B’hai faith, but I simply do not really identify with that sort of Christian schema.

So I’ve been examining Emerging Church – style groups and wondering what to do… and now just feel more befuddled than ever. Reading people’s blogs just in Central PA just bring back a lot of bad memories about why i did not like the church environment.

The one church I was considering attending… in Lancaster… just had its pastor driven out by the BIC board, partly because he was talking openly about his disagreement on “violent salvific” theology but partly because his openness towards homosexuality — he basically suggests that the Good Samaritan philosophy should be the applicable mentality instead of the debates over Bible interpretation and relevance that usually accompany that topic.

Reading the comments on his blog and the arguments people were having just really wore me out and wore me down — I was quickly reminded of how tedious it can be to live within a body of people who adhere to some particular reading of Scripture and tediously will go through argument after argument explaining why they are right and other positions wrong. Regardless of what cases can be made, it seems like a complete waste of energy and resources that could be used to really impact people where they need to be helped.

And also having to live with people are genuinely good-natured but are extremely earnest and solemn about their specific beliefs and can become very dogged and intense in the pursuit of them. I remember feeling like I just wanted to enjoy being around people I liked, enjoying each other’s company, but every conversation, dialog, and action would result in some sort of tedious scrutiny of the actions and conversation to make sure it was perfectly aligned with one’s doctrinal statement. Such relationships ceased being fun, free, or engaging; isn’t life supposed to be more intuitive? I had just wanted to shake people and ask them to lighten up, laugh, and relax… but since I am a non-imposing person, the stronger feeling I had was just to leave so they could practice their way of life in peace but so that I could be free of it.

So now I’m reminded why I left the first time… aside from feeling like I would be condemned by some and otherwise the centerpiece of a rift in my family’s congregation. I love interacting with other believers one-on-one, but as soon as people get in a group, things get weird, and everyone puts on the “Christian” costume, and makes sure they are saying and doing the right stuff and conforming to checklist rather than letting any ambiguity exist, to give off the right religious cues.

I wish my beliefs were different. I wish I was more conventional. I wish I could just fit in and I did not struggle so much. I wish I didn’t have so much ambiguity in my thinking and perceptions. I wish I didn’t have to be so exacting about declaring exactly how ambiguous I feel everything is. I wish I hadn’t been trans so I didn’t have to feel shame or rejection or different from everyone else.

I’m a woman who is not yet physically complete, who was socialized in religious circles as a man, and yet I’m forty, so I should already know “the script.” And frankly I often do not like the script for women in the church, the script that is forced on them and the script they buy into. Not the gist of it necessarily (I think women in general have an accommodating nature, a supportive nature, and this naturally leads to casting themselves in a supportive and nurturing role), but just the rigidity of it and how it’s been set in stone about how you have to be, and if you don’t, you stick out.

I’m just rambling now… but I’m just sad.
I thought I could go back and fit into this world, I’ve been away from it for so long, but you just can’t do that — as soon as you go back, there is someone always looking to undermine you, differentiate you from them and explain why their beliefs are correct and yours aren’t, criticize your own values and choices in life.

They don’t even necessarily due this to be mean and selfish, it is just inherent in a mindset where people think they have a handle on spiritual truth and they want to defend it against those who might “muddy” their beliefs or tarnish the values they prize so highly.

I don’t know whether I want to subject myself to that sort of needless torture. Maybe it is better to just let it all be between me and God, and involve myself with people one on one, and serve however I can on the individual level, and just not put myself out there to be targeted, publicly shamed/rejected, and hurt.

Why can’t you just get together, love God, and take care of each other — instead of complaining about specific theological doctrines all the time? What matters is the Word embodies in our actions. It’s what we do that reveals our hearts, and the heart is where the Word is written and what makes one person a child of God and the other a child of the devil.

On Sunday, Faramir and I went to the PA Renaissance Faire together. We spent eight hours together — the longest time yet — and he’s totally cool with stuff. We had a great time together. I am glad we went, and glad he wanted to go, considering how sick he’s been… yet if anyone was putting the drag on things, it was Rose… he was raring to go to this thing with me. It was very encouraging.

The day ended up being beautiful. We had postponed from Saturday due to his sickness and the lousy rain.  On Sunday he went to church (since he had missed the last three Sundays)… alone; his siblings were both sick now, and Rose was catching it too.

The trip took about 30-35 minutes and we talked the whole time. He apologized early, saying he felt bad that he wasn’t talking since he didn’t get to spend a lot of time with me, he just wasn’t sure what to say, and I told him it was no big deal, people don’t talk all the time we’re together, we were just going to enjoy the day being with each other.

Right before we got off the Turnpike, I interrupted our conversation to ask him if he had yet figured out what to call me if we bumped into anyone he knew.

“I doooonnnn’t knoooooow,” he droned in that oh-so-typical teenage-boy monotone (partly for laughs, he knows how lame it sounds and now he plays into it).

I told him if he needed to, he could just call me Aunt Jenny, I’d be okay.

After the Chess game in late afternoon, two friends of his came up… and in the middle of the conversation I overhead him call me Aunt Jenny, lol! Later he told me he felt bad about, and he was afraid it hurts my feelings, and he doesn’t want to sell me out; at the same time, he’s just not sure how to talk about it with his friends yet. I told him it was okay, I knew he was trying his best, and I was letting him do this to give him some breather; these guys aren’t close to him (although he sits with the one on his bus and the other lives right up the street, doh! Did I ever meet them as a guy? Don’t recall!), and it’s okay to have boundaries on what personal items you share with mere acquaintances. (I think the fact that he is always thinking about my feelings is reassurance enough that I can trust him to do right by me… so… no big deal.)

We didn’t get to see a ton, we just walked around a lot and looked at things. We did see the sword swallower act, the guy picked people out of the audience to help him in the funny drama he was telling while he incorporated some of this stunts into the storyline (including swallowing a large screwdriver, swallowing a kris blade, walking across piles of broken glass, and laying on a bed of rusty nails while the royal torture’s daughter both stood on his chest and then smashed a cinder block on him with a hammer). We saw the daily human chess game, archers, horse tricks, jousting, and then the final joust event in the evening.

My friend Lia was there all day and she sat with us for that act, for the chess, and for the evening joust. So he finally got to meet SOMEONE from my current life, at least. (Later he asked me if she wore a hairpiece. I told him no. he was kind of shocked when I said she had looked like that for a few months now, going to work like that… and she was still being seen as a guy until recently at work and her family had not figured everything out.)

We just had a good time being together, even if we weren’t saying much. It got cold later, I tried to sit as close to him as I could to keep him warm, and he toughed it out. It was still so funny to be walking around with my son — my little son — who is a few inches taller than me.

He said parts of today were a little weird… one being we no longer use the same bathroom. he’s still getting used to the fact that he sees an amalgam of his dad and a woman when he sees me, but everyone else just sees a woman. During the one act, he was simultaneously amused and put off by the possibility I would have been selected from the audience to be the damsel in distress. It’s a big change for him… but he’s got a good sense of humor and can laugh at it.

He asked me a lot of great questions on the way home, and I try to write them down to keep track of where things have gone with him.

He asked me what it felt like to “want to be a girl.” He knows what it feels like to be attracted to girls, so he can flip that around in order to understand gay men being attracted to guys, but he has no framework to understand the transsexual thing.

So I explained about the body thing, where everything is just wrong and I felt grotesque, like Quasimodo, and had trouble even looking at myself in a mirror most of my life. “That sounds pretty horrible,” he commented. Then about the social aspects, where people treat you as how they perceive you, and so if you are perceived as a male, you are allowed into places where you don’t identify and meanwhile excluded from women spaces where you do identify; and women will treat you like a guy rather than like a girlfriend (the level of disclosure is different), and vice versa with me. So you never fit in, in the places where you’re allowed to go; and you fit into places you’re not accepted… and how this was pretty devastating to me by the time I was in sixth grade. Also talked about my typical coping mechanisms (which he gets, because he is similar to me and would respond in the same basic ways), and also how at first you aren’t sure what you are feeling and think maybe it will just go away if you try lots of different things; it takes a long time to realize the depth of what one is experiencing and how it isn’t changing and how life is becoming harder and harder.

We discussed his siblings. He said when he came back home after our first meeting, my daughter said she might be interested in seeing me if Pip went along. Faramir said she might be cool with just coming with him sometime, just so she isn’t alone. I’m thinking that is likely how things will progress… she’ll come along with him sometime.

He asked me if I was mad at Grammy and Grandpa for not talking to me anymore, so i told him how I felt about all that… and wanted to compare that to him not wanting to see me a bit and wondering also if I was mad at him for calling me Dad… so I explained how I felt about all of those things.

(Basically, they’re grownups but he is a kid, and the truth is I did play the role of “father” in his life and will always be his parent in the fatherly role regardless, so I’m much more flexible with him. I admitted I felt less like a dad and more a mom, but he already has a mom, and I still play the dad role, and whatever he decides to call me we’ll figure out together. I talked too about my relationship with my in-laws, in general — stuff I could safely tell him — just to give him context for why I felt the way I did. )

In the process, I had to mention religious beliefs and Grammy’s perceptions there since she’s pretty much dye-in-the-wool evangelical and went to authorities there for information, and when I mentioned that there’s basically a case made from drawing together a small number of verses in the Bible, he said, “I didn’t know the Bible said anything at all about this,” so I shared with him the few verses that people usually bring up to support the conservative side and about how there are other verses (like David being “knit in his mother’s room”) and how they are then worked into the case of not changing one’s physical gender and why I looked at them more ambiguously/differently. (I try to be very fair when I present POVs other than my own, and i think this is why he trusts me and listens to what I have to say.) But I was definitely seeing his mind develop; I remember 2-3 years ago, he had problems understanding what an allegory was and why some people thought some of the stories (such as some in Genesis) might have been allegorical rather than literal, but now he seems to totally get it.

I talked about the holidays with him too, asking him where they were going (he has no idea, how typical, lol!) and how I had to find a place to go myself. I walk a very careful line between sparing him the emotional vibes of pain I might experience but being honest with him about what I deal with; I want him to understand so he has the opportunity to piece things together as well as empathize with me if he desires, but I don’t want to ever emotionally manipulate him. I told him I had gotten pretty depressed over July 4 because I forgot to plan somewhere to go (since usually I already had my plans made for me in the past) and how I didn’t want to make that mistake this time with T-giving and Xmas.

He is just really good at asking honest questions, and he’s very sensitive to other people’s feelings; he might not know what to say, but he can empathize deeply, and he’s always concerned about my feelings. I value this and it blows me away, so I try to encourage him to keep doing this while trying to “free” him as much as possible to do what he needs and to keep his own emotional health, by letting him know that he’s always treated me okay and doesn’t have to worry about protecting me.\

With him, at least, it’s easy: It is like I am parenting myself. My other two children are a different matter, but he and I are so much alike.

… so that was it. Eight hours with my kid, and it was as normal as if we had never been apart. it was a wonderful feeling.

 

 

 

 

 

Mannechor Fun

I should have worked out last night, but Pam called right as I was leaving Gabe’s and Salvation Army last evening to see if I wanted to go to Mannechor for live blues and since I hadn’t seen her for awhile, I said, “Sure.”

I hadn’t eaten so I stopped at Mickey D’s. The corner after the menu order was sharp, and I was one-handing it so I went wide, then had to swing in sharp to get close to the window. Then I couldn’t find my wallet in time; it was on the floor. I felt like a real mess. The money guy was pretty cool, he handed me back my card and said, “Have a good night, sweetie.” He was younger than me so in the back of my mind I wondered if I should be offended, but consciously I was tickled pink by it.

I finally found “blingy” jeans in my size — for $20 at Gabe’s nonetheless! — so I changed when I got to Pam’s and we walked over to Mannechor. It’s must like the VFW or American Legion, she has a membership card she has to scan to get into the club, and we sat in a darkened hall with a bar in the corner while three big guys played jazz… pretty good for a non-touring group.

The bartender was awesome, I overheard her talking later about how she used to be a martini bartender and how everything has to be in proportion. I got two whiskey sours and not only were they consistent, but they were the best sours I have ever had, ever — the perfect mix of sour and whiskey, where you could taste both but not too much of either. (Normally they taste just like sour, which I hate.) I got a buzz on the first one… that’s another first, for a whiskey sour.

Better yet, I didn’t pay. I think I can get really used to being a woman. One of Pam’s friends, a guy named Mike who I met a few months back the other time I was there, was sitting alone, so we spent the evening with him, and he told us just to put stuff on his tab.

Mike is pretty amazing, he seems to know something about everything, and he just doesn’t shut up… which I actually like, because I’m a listener and I like to learn and absorb. it was just hard because the conversations were all very much about facts and things, and I’m a conceptual conversationalist, I talk in more general terms and usually more about ideas or trends. But I love hearing people like this talk, there’s so much detail and it’s presented pretty coherently rather than just one long ramble.

Sadly, he reminded me of my dad — not sad for him but for me. He almost immediately brought up Gene Shepherd and started quoting lines not just from A Christmas Story but from a different narrative I’d never heard… and my dad just goes on and on about Gene Shepherd, he loves him. Mike also started discussing opera at one point (apparently they simulcast it here at Regal on Saturdays and he goes regularly), so I brought up my dad (opera is one of the few big loves of his life, and he knows a LOT and has scores of LPs), our trip to the Met to see Die Walkyrie… but then Mike told me at some point something that I could tell my dad the next time I saw him…

… and inside, I’m just like, “Sigh, sorry, honey, you don’t understand. I can’t tell my dad. My dad won’t talk to me anymore.” I’ve accepted this but it just made me sad, although I didn’t show it outwardly.

At one point, Pam said what she pays to get in, and Mike said, “That’s just because you’re part of the fairer sex.”

“Oh really?”

“Yup, men pay more. Then again, we also get to vote. “

Pam cocked her eyebrow good-naturedly over this one. Since I don’t care about the group and it gets me in for free, with free drinks and snacks, I’m cool.

We hung out for over two hours. Most of the guys there were with spouses or just not guys I’d have much in common with… but there were a few cute ones who came in, and one or two who I noticed eyeing me up every time they walked by. That still weirds me out too, not in a bad way; I just don’t know how to respond and how to install boundaries yet, not much experience yet.

Pam was very much accepted by everything there, and huggie-feely with many guys despite being a lesbian. Sometimes I feel very aloof and holding myself back; I’m accepting that about me, but I do feel an air buffer between me and others, I engage but I keep personal space that people seem to pick up on.

After we left, I asked Pam if anyone there knew her background.

“None at all. They’ve only ever known me as a woman.”

“Even the bass player? His wife was there — she’s the lawyer who did the paperwork for TransCentral to become a non-profit org and get tax cuts.”

She started to laugh. It’s funny how small this city is.

“So they know me,” I said. “They’ve seen me with the TransCentral council, so they must remember I’m trans.” But I wouldn’t expect them to say anything. Frankly, they don’t care, it seems as much as being black or white, male or female, tall or short, to many people there.

So my experiences are growing: I was out with people I didn’t know, in a social setting, accepted at face value, making friendships… just as Jennifer. It was very cool.

More Sickies

Got this from Rose late last night. Sigh.

Well, my mom took Faramir to the doctor tonight because he’s still coughing, has no energy, and keeps saying he’s having trouble breathing. (Drum roll, please…) He has pneumonia, 2 ear infections, and a sinus infection! Wasn’t that worth the $25 co-pay! So he’ll be home from school the rest of the week. Although we thought of closing our doors due to lack of business, it seems the <Family> Infirmery is still up and running for a little while longer.

First of all, I feel awful for him, he’s been sick a week and a half already.

And then I’m left wondering if we’ll get to go to the Ren Faire this weekend.

Either way, I’ll go and use the ticket — Lia will go with if he can’t.

But I’m bummed.

Surreality

I still go through moments of self-disorientation. It’s weird stuff.

I’m totally me, intuitively me, for long periods. Then for no reason I just end up feeling like I’m my old self but dressed like a woman and everyone is laughing at me. I hate it when that happens at work.

Then I go look in the mirror, and the feeling goes away once I see me again.

It’s like my old mental image of me is this weird combination of what I used to look like and what I look like now, and it throws me off sometimes.

General Restlessness

I wonder sometimes if it’s partly just restlessness from having had to work SO hard for 2+ years to transition. I had a huge checklist and i had all this forward movement and goals to work toward… and now I’m in “stagnant” period — no goals except surgery, and I have no way to get money for that.

So I feel stuck and wonder where to go next and otherwise waste all my time doing aimless pointless things, frittering my time and energy away… and then not sleeping again, just like what happened to me before I decided I had to transition. I recognize that state of mind now, although I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it means for me.

Sis & the Shower

I decided with my sister that it’s arguing with her or approaching her in a more assertive fashion just isn’t going to bring the results I want, she’s too entrenched in her worldview. The only way to ever get close to her is just to act as the person I am and let her get to know me as Jennifer, and meanwhile continue with my life without rancor.

So I bought her a $25 Target gift card and today sent her a baby shower card:

Sorry I missed your baby shower.  Hard to believe there’s only one more month — are you excited yet? Love, Jennifer

Honestly, that is “who” I am and how I want to be known. I’ll leave things sit with here, if there are changes to be made to our relationship; otherwise I am going to behave as her sister and not expect anything else from her, and invest just enough to have a pleasant connection to her rather than a deep one.

It’s hard enough as-is, without expectations of mine putting more pressure on the situation.

Getting Carded

My friend L and I went shopping this weekend. She’s going full-time on Friday at work and wanted help making sure she had ‘work clothes’ vs her normal attire. Unfortunately, she seems to be far better at dressing for looking good while out and doesn’t like scaling back a lot for work and general comfort; we spent quite a while arguing over shoes, and finally I convinced her to get a rather plain pair of black, heeled mules on sale, since they’d go with anything.

(If you go plainer on shoes, you won’t need as many shoes to start with and you can accessorize to make up for the lack of bling.)

I wandered off into my area of the store, she found me a short time later… upset. She will not be legally female, name-wise, until December, so she’s stuck using her male ID and credit cards right now. She had finally gotten to the counter with her purchase, and then the male clerk asked her if her husband had given her permission to use his credit card, and in front of everyone she had to basically state that she WAS the owner of the card and show her ID… she takes that pretty hard.

But I did too, for awhile.

“I totally understand it, I feel so bad for you, and it’s rough. At the same time, you only have another month of this. One more month… and this is exactly the problem you WANT to have, if any, in terms of future success. Being perceived as female and thus as yourself isn’t a bad thing, it’s just want you want in the end, having them insist you are a woman is exactly where you want things to be; so this is more a matter of riding things out. You’re almost at the end!”

But… still hard when you’re in the middle of it.

New Disclosures, New Friends

Someone was asking questions about transsexuality and sexual orientation on the general forum, so I talked to them some behind the scenes about my experience. She had no idea I was trans but was cool with it and is very supportive of her m2f friend.

She sent me one little comment that read like this:

no I didn’t know that, but it makes no odds, it seems you are well loved by all on here with except perhaps <edited>

That always kills me when someone tells me that unexpectedly. I don’t often feel loved. when some random person says that, it hits me as new information and is pretty validating. I’m lovable after all, no matter how I feel about me.

Trans Isn’t a Drag

I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race episodes again last night and again was struck by how, although drag queens and transsexuals are lumped into the T in the LGBT umbrella, the reality is that drag queens have more in common with gay males and m2f’s have more in common with cisgen women.

The queens are very much performers and developing a female persona. They often talk about how people think they want to be women and it’s not true, they’re happy living as gay men. They’re either performing, or acting, or developing a persona that allows them to express things they normally can’t, but they never identify with it as the core self.

M2f’s are different — the female is the core and it is exclusive. There’s no desire to “hop the fence,” the desire is to be oneself… a woman… and get rid of the other part, the male part, that doesn’t feel true. There are no facets. And it’s not about a performance or overdoing the feminine; most transsexuals are pretty low-key and fit within the normal range of female appearance and behavior unless they’ve got some fetishistic behavior.

Hopkins Slop

L and I talked and it turns out she had gone to Hopkins before too. She talked to Chris Kraft while there, the guy I thought was nice, and he was useless to her. He dug in his heels, told her hormones would have no effect on someone her age, and was reluctant to give her any help. Of course, I had that jerk Schmidt who wasn’t even personable and nice, he was just a total creep and lacked perception.

To me, it’s quite clear Hopkins is anti-transsexual, ever since Money got run through the muck for the abominations he practiced in the 70’s there. McHugh came in with his Catholic anti-trans bias and ran the surgeries out of Hopkins and continues to try to debunk positive aspects of transition nowadays using data from 1980, although the demographic has changed immensely and the success rate of properly screened transitioners is in the 90-95% range if not higher… and FAR higher than success for any sort of therapeutic intervention meant to somehow change one’s self-perception.

They also insist on 1-2 years of real-life experience in the target gender before providing hormones, which is just cruel… since the RLE will be severely tainted / not indicative of one’s true outcome in transitioning, if you’re getting read as a man while trying to live as a woman. You’ll lose your job, you’ll create a stir everywhere you go, you’ll freak people out in the bathrooms, it’s just ugly.

They are behavioralists, first and foremost — since you were born male and you have at some point worn women’s clothes, they label you upfront as a crossdressers, which dumps you into the sexual fetish category. Motivation isn’t important to them, only behavior is … which is stupid, because motivation is what matters in terms of who someone is and who they should be; behavior comes from a variety of sources. It’s like treating symptoms and ignoring the cause.

The other issue with Hopkins is that they are running scared. The school is highly reputable (it won 16 top field honors in this past year’s US News survey, it places high every year), and Money really screwed their reputation, and so they are bound and determined to err on the side of extreme caution, with an empirical behavioral approach that can be quantified rather than a more instinctive psychoanalytical/therapeutic one. In the process, they do all their transsexual clients a disservice.

Which leads me to believe they don’t really want transsexuals there anyway. Too much risk for their esteemed name. It’s okay, there are far many other smaller names and orgs that have a handle on things, do proper screening, and help their patients.

L and I were both considering sending a follow-up to them, since we both got screwed by them but are both ’success stories.’ I don’t want to be snarky, but I wonder if I should challenge them just so they realize how clueless they are.

I went onto my Chase account today and saw that they had changed both my phone number AND my name back to the old information — the phone number of the house and the male name I previously had.

Needless to say, I was sort of pissed. The last thing I need is that name floating around on my account, plus having to resolve the situation when I have other things to do with my time… when it obviously a mistake on their part.

And needless to say, they jerked me around. I love how they have so many support workers that the same one doesn’t handle the messages… it’s a beautiful way to absolve someone of responsibility and also prevent the customer from having a “problem narrative” that can actually reach a viable conclusion, with each new person it’s like starting over.

I’m also not sure on how to approach it, so I’ve just been letting myself respond in accordance with how I feel. Not normally great, but I’ve always restrained myself and carried the burden myself.

Here are the exchanges.

Hi,

I logged in today and saw that the name appearing on my Account web page AND my phone number were both incorrect.

These pieces of info were correct for months, now they are wrong. I was able to change the phone number but not the name which is supposed to be Jennifer S XXXXXXXX.

Could you please fix the name on my account the way that it had been?

Thank you!
Jen

Her reply.

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for advising us that the name listed on your online profile is incorrect.

I reviewed your account and found this online profile was established with an account belonging to D* XXXXXXX as the primary account on the profile. Since D*is listed as the primary user on the account, his name will appear on the online profile.

Your name is listed as Jennifer S. XXXXXXXX on the profile, however, it is listed as the secondary name on the account. If you would like to create a profile in which your account is the primary account on the profile, please contact our Technical Services number listed below and one of my colleagues will be happy to assist you with the request.

If you have additional questions or concerns, please reply to this message and either myself, or one of my colleagues will be glad to assist you further.

Thank You,

Elizabeth Serna
E-mail Customer Service Representative

D* is not the primary account holder. This was fixed in May. D* no longer exists on the account. He no longer has a social security number. Jennifer was assigned as primary owner of the account… for four months.

Dear Elizabeth,

In May 2009 my name was legally changed. I contacted Chase and my account was modified to reflect that “D* XXXXXX” no longer legally exists.

The Social Security Number xxx-xx-xxxx is recognized by the Social Security Administration as belonging to “Jennifer S. XXXXXXXX.”

You already had made this change, as I explained in my first e-mail. You fixed it by early June 2009. I’m not sure why you changed it back a few months later, but it should be immediately corrected to what it had been the first time I contacted you and submitted the necessary paperwork — both to respect me as a customer and a person, and also to reflect the fact that your information is factually incorrect.

Thank you for your time and prompt assistance,
Jennifer XXXXXXXXX
SSN: 2xxx-xx-xxxx

Their pathetic ridiculous response. (And great, I’m being handled by the Indians, they tend to be the worst reps I deal with in customer service because they’re usually utterly untrained in my experience.)

Dear D*,

I apologize for any inconvenience caused due to the name change not reflecting correctly on account.

In order to update your name on the account we will need some additional documentation. I am sending a form via US Mail to the address listed on your account. It should arrive by October 27, 2009.

Please complete this form and fax it back with your documentation to the number provided. Once received, either myself or one of my colleagues will update your name in our records and send a replacement card.

It was my pleasure to assist you today. For any further questions, please reply using the Secure Message Center.

Thank you,

Shivangi Kumbhar
Email Customer Service Representative

1-800-436-7927

I was pretty livid with this. I already did this in May. Now it will take weeks to fix a problem THEY created… and the guy called me by the old name on my account.

To whom it may concern:

Thank you for sending the form.

Meanwhile, I am *very* upset about this, and I’m extremely upset with you using the incorrect name on the letter you just sent back to me.

I already went through your process four months ago and had to contact numerous businesses as part of changing my information, it was quite the exhaustive process. In all that time, I have had no issues with any other company. For you to force me to file all the paperwork again in this manner for your mistake and wait an entire 4-6 weeks for this mistake on your part to be remedied is entirely *inexcusable* to the point where I will be reviewing my options and potentially transferring my balance elsewhere and cancelling my card.

I’m very disappointed in your company and how you have handled this situation at my expense.

~ Jen

I am pissed.

Elizabeth used the right name, at least.

This <deleted> used the wrong name.

Yes, I’m guessing he is untrained and oblivious to how to deal with people in a situation such as mine.

No, that isn’t going to excuse him or the company for failing in appropriately training their staff; and yes, I’m going to push the issue.

EDIT: Hmm, that took a refreshingly short amount of time.

Dear Jennifer,

I sincerely apologize for addressing your name incorrectly
in my previous response.

Your satisfaction is extremely important and your comments
are critical to our efforts for continued improvement.
Thank you for letting me know that we can do better.

I appreciate your patience in this matter and apologize
for the delay in updating your name on file.

Thank you,

Shivangi Kumbhar
Email Customer Service Representative

No dice. It does not fix my problem. I really seem to be playing hardball tonight. It’s funny, I would have never taken this approach as a guy.

Dear Shivangi,

Thank you for your apology, but that does not resolve this situation for me.

Chase should already have a legal name change order on file with your company. I submitted one in May 2009, and I should not have to supply another copy. You should be able to make this change immediately, without me having to wait another month for you to correct your mistake.

Is there a number of a supervisor who could help me if I talk to them directly, if you are unable to accommodate me in this matter?

Thank you,
Jen

It’s funny how assertive I am now.
…Talk about a hardass INTP woman.

I was a negatively feminized male, now I’m a masculine female. Geez.

In some ways, that feels like healing. I was just thinking about my parent… and before, I was acting much MORE like my mother. Now I’m acting — as a woman — much more like my father.

I don’t have to think my father’s perfect in order to learn masculine strength from him. I find it ironic I really can only embrace emulating masculine-style ability to spar with others and jockey for position as a woman. That helps me know that I’m who I’m supposed to be.

EDIT: Friday, Oct 16, 2009.

Logged into today to see what the new mail was… and noticed with satisfaction that my account had been updated (yay!) I guess “Bitch Mode” worked wonders.

Here was the e-mail they sent:

Dear Jennifer *,

Thank you for contacting us with your concerns about the name that appears on your account.

I have reviewed your account and found that we were sent the appropriate documentation for your legal name change and that information was applied to your account ending 1074. However, the new name was not applied to your account ending 9653. I have corrected this matter and mailed a new card with the correct name for account ending 9653. You should receive the card within 3 to 5 business days. Please allow 7 to 10 business days for the information to update online.

Thank you for the opportunity to resolve your concerns regarding your name change.

If further questions should arise regarding the information above, you may call me at the number below. If you have concerns regarding any other issue, please contact Cardmember Services at 800-436-7927.

Thank you,

J Alexander
Account Manager

Wait, George Costanza is working for Chase? That explains a lot.

Two funny things:

• After I had done my main card, they insisted on me mailing the same form for the other account, although they are all tied on my screen. (Now I find out that yes INDEED they could have just done both accounts from the same paper, geez!) I bit the bullet and DID mail them something in June to the address they supplied… and got it back in the mail, returned to sender, even the address was right off the paper they sent me.
• Simultaneous with this first e-mail, I wrote to ask them… how to cancel the other card. *doh* lol! So I’m getting mailed a card I’m canceling. Oh well. Whatever.

Dentist

I went to the dentist this morning, second time there as Jennifer.

Everything went fine, I have the same hygienist as usual, she’s been so very cool with things and asks me about my kids. It was early in the morning, and October, and I was lying on my back, so my voice sucked unfortunately (meh)… and then I was thinking she could see the lines on my hair unit, with my hair hanging so far back from my face… but… oh well, it is what it is.

I’ve had a tooth issue when I bite down sometimes on a back molar; the dentist couldn’t find the issue but said that happens when a tooth has a hidden fracture. he can’t do much until it breaks or cracks more noticeably, and the solution is the same (probably a cap)… so no point in rushing ahead yet.

They used the digital tooth x-rays again, I love those things — instead of film they use a USB plugin device and it sends the info straight to the computer.

I looked over her shoulder and saw the notes on my account. One mentions my name being changed to Jennifer. It bothers me on some level simply because my name IS Jennifer now and they don’t need to record my old name; still, I’ve heard estrogen can impact tooth health so it’s not bad for them to know of the shift in my h0rmonal makeup that might have changed my tooth composition. Plus, they’ve been cool, and I tend to let things go rather than fighting if it’s just over some ambiguous principle. Obviously at a new dentist, they’d never know or be told.

Piercing

The navel thing is slightly red around the device. I’ve made sure I jiggle it so it doesn’t stick in the wound, shifting it up and down a bit, and I wash it with anti-bacterial soap every night and morning. The care isn’t clear, I’ll Google it later. My friend Lia who has one that has healed told me to use sea-salt water instead (definitely no iodinized salt water).

About three inches above it, an inch under my sternum, I’m sore. I’m not sure if it’s the implant or just sleeping on an air mattress over the weekend or what. I’m slightly concerned, though not a lot at this point yet.

EDIT: Researched online… found two separate spots that verified what both the store and Lia said:

Site #1:

Do not use Bactine, no matter what people say (even if they have their belly buttons pierced). Anti-bacterial lotions like Purel are just good for you when you are touching your piercing (just be cautious of where you touch).

Anti-bacterial soap is one of the true healers. Every morning after showering with your regular soap, soap your belly button to make sure you kill all the germs. Allow the soap to sit there for a while and then thoroughly rinse it out.

Buy a spray called H20cean (you can get this from the piercer). This is for the “sea salt baths” which actually really help the healing process along.

Site #2:

DO use a mild antibacterial soap (containing Triclosan), in the shower (once a day only!). Cup your hand under the piercing and soak it for 1-2 minutes, then put 1-2 drops (no more!) of the cleaning solution in your hand, lather it up and apply the lather gently to your navel. Leave the lather on for 1 minute, then soak the piercing once again and wash thoroughly to remove all the solution. Leaving the solution on your skin can cause irritation!

DO dissolve half a teaspoon of sea-salt or table-salt in a quarter of a cup of boiling water. Let this cool a little, then place in a clean glass or medicine cup and lie down with it upturned on your navel for 10-15 minutes, once or twice a day. You can also use Saline solution (available at any chemist). Rinse with fresh fresh water and dry throroughly with a clean tissue afterwards. This process is the best way to promote healing, and the more you do it the quicker your piercing will heal.

So there it is. Everyone’s right.

Changing Tides

One of the women here (from the other side) who was very skittish I recall after I transitioned has slowly warmed up to me and been very sweet in the last month or two, I felt all the tension ebb away from her.

Last week she was limping and I had asked her if she was okay.

This week I walked in for coffee into the lunch room and she told me she really liked my shoes. (I am sort of indifferent to them, but I appreciated her saying so… I try to take bits of kindness and respond to them, in order to affirm that I am open and want to connect.)

We talked about shoes for a minute or two and online ordering, then I asked her how her foot was, and she told me about a medical condition she has and what’s up with all that. It was a fairly personal discussion and i felt honored she chose to share it with me… but it was just about two women warmly sharing.

When the occasional goofball makes my day a little harder, my mind goes back to all these people, and the positives shifts towards me, and just how kind many people are, and I feel better about things.

Vote of Confidence?

In our “casual” subforum of the site I moderate, someone started a thread asking about who could be most trusted with nuclear weapons, who least, and who would be hardest to evaluate.

There have only been about 12-13 serious posts so far, but on a forum with hundreds of members, I’ve been brought up at least four times (among people I don’t talk to much or not at all) as the best one to watch things, due to my balanced nature and ability to think things through and know the ramifications of my choices.

Either they really like me… or they want me to die of radiation poisoning.
(I’m still pondering that.)

Pip

I spent four hours with Rose last night. She ended up not going to the worship thing, she got out late from work and was too tired and just wanted space from people. (I passed the church on the way over, looking at all the cars in the parking lot and wishing I could go in. It’s funny how some doors feel closed to me now.)

I’m never quite sure what to say about our conversations. First of all, four hours of dialog is impossible to capture. Second of all, some of it is personal and I know others are reading it; I’m fine with sharing my thoughts, just hesitant to put hers out. I only put some out because the blog is relatively anonymous; if her identity was clearly known, I would feel reluctant to say much about about her. But I want to record some big points so later I remember them…

She didn’t cry at all, I cried a few times. It didn’t bother me, I just felt very deeply about the things we were saying or what she was telling me. it’s just funny because she always has to ask me why I’m crying; I guess I am impenetrable in some ways, I make connections under the surface that might not be obvious, and so she needs me to articulate it… plus she is just not used to me being so openly emotional in positive ways, for some many years I was taciturn as well as depressed, and she never saw any of what was going on inside me. Now I cannot even help it…

We talked about Pip being in the hospital. It did come up that she was sort of perturbed at me because i never called Pip directly — I always called her and then she’d put him on since she happened to be with him. I did not have an answer for this, nor did I understand why i did not even think of it. I don’t really know why.

Part of it was just because I ended up calling her and she would happen to be with him, so then I’d just talk to him instead of having to call him separately, I didn’t HAVE to contact him directly nor did I have to call him back right away.

Another is that when I call him directly, I usually feel like an intrusion and I get one-word answers. He doesn’t invest much if he doesn’t feel like it, and I’m not the greatest conversationalist. I can talk to his brother and sister far easier because they actually participate in the discussion and do a lot of talking themselves. They seem to enjoy talking to me.

She also recalled when he was in the NICU at Hopkins when born, and how hard it was for me to be in the room, and how bored I was, and how little interaction I had with him, and how I would just sit around and read a book. I guess she did view that as “not caring about my son.” I can’t answer that either, that man was almost another person at this point to me. She’s still viewing my current behavior in connection with that, whereas I just remember feeling helpless, out of place, overwhelmed… and yes, bored. I was always bored when forced to stay around people and invest energy without any framework, guidelines, or rules to dictate what I was supposed to do next — I felt so clueless at the time, after spending the first 20 years so isolated in many ways.

My strengths at that time were very lopsided; what I was good at was intellectual interaction with people, and a baby demands a completely different set of skills, I had nothing to offer… and I was also suicidally depressed at that time period, I had almost transitioned during that time and was agonizing over what to do.

My responses nowadays are different, i actually DID want to be there… but I’m still much more a “sit nearby and be in proximity to show I care” person, if I have trouble connecting with the individual. Even now, I like hanging out with new moms with babies, but I’m not one to really feel a need to pick up the baby and coo and coddle; I’m very happy just talking about the baby and looking and playing briefly… but otherwise observing.

And Pip and I just do not connect easily. What he wants and needs is more what Rose can give, not what I can give. he operates on very different principles than me, and I was very clear with her how while I can empathize with him, I don’t know how to engage him in a meaningful way; the things that work for me do not work for him, and vice versa. It’s always been hard and I’ve been frustrated.

I started crying when she was talking about how scared and exhausted he was over the PICC line, though. He just has these strong physical emotional reactions to everything, pain really really scares him… and it broke my heart to imagining him being so afraid, I don’t want to see him have to deal with that, yet at the same time my method (’suck it up’ and use my mind to guide me, do not  cater to the fear, maintain grace and composure, do not let fear dictate my choices) is the opposite of what works for him. Sometimes he really turns my stomach when he freaks out and just cannot push through, although I never have tried to force him to do that or shame him because of it; I just don’t know what to offer him, to empower him. He can’t approach things the way I do, and vice versa, and I am absolutely clueless.

I asked Rose how she deals with it (because she “gets him” better than I can, because she’s more similar), and she says she (1) helps him accept the emotions are okay to have and then (2) tries to encourage him to rise above them and be better as a human being, hoping the positive affirmation will help. Maybe she can say things in a way he better grasps than I can, and maybe she is more patient with this; I’ve tried doing this but I cannot do it to the degree that is effective for him, he doesn’t seem to respond very well to me even when I think I’ve done well.

And here’s another sign of differences: She said Pip told her he was nervous about going to Dayton because what if he had to go to the ER and they had to do something with the PICC line? And she said that she would drive eight hours out there to be with him if anything happened.

That blows my mind. I would be concerned about him, but the logical part of my brain would also be saying, “I want to be there, but it’s really far away and by the time I get there it would already be done and over; and there are people with him who are family and who love him and can make sure he’s okay; and sometimes in life we have to face up to things alone and be strong, and it doesn’t do any good to always coddle someone, and he’s 13 now; and if it’s a routine process, then he will be okay.”

So I would be very torn over what to do. I might go anyway just because I care, but part of me would rebel against it, if it’s just a fairly routine thing. Maybe it’s just because I have always perceived Pip as immature for his age.

And I can’t tell what a healthy response would be for me. The fact it, I’m an introvert and so tend to be more independent; and I’m also a survivor who had to work through most of her life situations alone, without being able to depend on anyone to be there for me, including my parents, and so I learned how and I am very strong… but maybe that strength isn’t always healthy or positive for relationships if it isolates me. And maybe the strength I achieved because of my childhood is not a sort of strength that a “normal healthy” child should be developing, it came with terrible cost to me.

She was talking so much about her conversations with him and how they interact; and it meant a lot for me to hear about my son and who he is becoming and what he does and says… but it was breaking my heart too, because I feel like I have lost him (and told her that). He has always attached to Rose, throughout his entire life; now he doesn’t identify with me; he’s not apt to see me;l I haven’t lived with him for a year and a half; I feel like I have lost him forever, and I’ll never get him back as mine; and he’s lost me too in the process; and sometimes all I feel I can do is pray for him and wish him a good happy life because he’s not going to let me back in, if I indeed was in there in the first place.

And I don’t feel like I could have done better or chosen a different route either. I’ve always done the best I could. It just sucks to feel like everything is out of my control.

At this point, Rose and I did both agree that if my relationship with Pip is going to continue at all, it’s going to be all based on my level of investment because right now he is not going to invest in anything on his own initiative.

Sis

I always listen to Rose and her guesses/hunches on things, because I trust her, I know she tries hard to see multiple angles, and she is also most like my family… so she can give me a version of that viewpoint in a way that I can grasp.

When I told her my sister wrote me before the shower but never mentioned it, Rose told me my sister organized the shower and probably didn’t want to tell me just to avoid having a conflict about it… and maybe not realizing I even cared much about it.

Which I could guess, I suppose.

It’s more a matter of determining whether the motivations were good or bad, and how much so, that is my dilemma, since that guides me to know how to respond.

It’s funny on their end, they don’t really examine context. I realized Rose didn’t even get context well, so I’ve talked to her about it in the past and in regards to this situation, so that she understands my feelings better for future reference.

I went through hell with my sister and mother a year ago over all this, and felt like they repudiated my moral character because of my transition; it was ugly enough that I felt it damaged our relationship severely; in the same time period, I got judgmental letters from gossipers at my mother’s church, and my mom never apologized or seemed to defend me or talked to me about it. I would defend my kids; their lack of defense tells me that they figured I deserved it because I was “being bad.”

All of those things really hurt; they were never really “resolved”; and likewise with our relationship in the last year, I’ve always felt like my sister just did her best to glue things together without really coming to any level of acceptance, just like Rose was “accepting” I was a woman without ever calling me “Jennifer” or “she” or trying to view me in any way other than what I used to be, and that didn’t help our relationship in the least.

All of this could be because my sister is not sure what to do; it could be because she just wants to be expedient and deal with what only she needs to. But for me, I was experiencing personal violation in my conversations with her, so when anything happens now, I have trouble reading it as an isolated event. It is just part of the prevailing recalcitrant negative attitude she has possessed from early on.

Now, I did not need to be invited to the shower, and after seeing who went, I think it wouldn’t have been prudent for me to go; but I was hurt simply that she didn’t even mention it to me and treated me like a non-person rather than a sibling. That’s how it came across, regardless of what was meant; and I would have handled it different if our situations had been reversed. It also leaves me wondering realistically whether I will ever be able to see my niece and who they will refer to me as in regards to her.

I am really getting a full taste of how hard it has been for me living in a family of non-intuitive people, and how hard it has been for them to understand me… they just do not perceive the world in the way I do and vice versa. In the past I just did not realize the depth of that gap.

Rose said, “Why don’t you tell her then?” Part of me just wanted to avoid things, but I think that I need to mention it, as thoughtfully as I can, to her, just so she knows. I need to keep the emotion out of it and be as fair as possible with her, but at this point there is no hope to have anything with her if I don’t engage more; and if I want more, I need to engage more.

Right now apparently she’s happy with things the way they are (and Rose said, “Well, it’s not like you’ve been close to her, realistically,” and that’s right… for some reason, though, I just feel like she’s my sister, and I had positive feelings towards her, and now I feel like we are strangers, and I wanted to fix that even if we might not necessarily be “close”).

In-Laws

I mentioned to Rose I might write them a letter.

(I was thinking that I could at least leave no confusion that I was open to relating to them, so that if they were avoiding connecting because they thought I didn’t want to, then that barrier could be removed.)

I shared my idea that maybe they just weren’t talking to me because they weren’t sure how to approach things or because they didn’t want to step on Rose’s toes until it was clear what was going on.

She sort of blew me away by when she said, “I think it’s just because they no longer have a reason to have a relationship with you.”

I was sort of jaw-dropped on that one.

I’m still officially married to their daughter.
I’m still the parent of their grandkids.
We never had a falling out, none in the least.
They said they loved me, and I said that to them on numerous occasions.
In some ways, they were more “parents” to me than my own parents.

I just really never totally understood how some people really define and invest in their relationships via “roles.” I was their son-in-law. I’m still technically their son-in-law but I’m a woman… hence, I’m no longer part of their life.

I realized that while i understand role-based relationships and sometimes use that in order to determine proper boundaries, I’m far more into personal relationships. I personally cared about them as people and respected them, they’re good people in so many ways. They became part of my life. Just because a role changes doesn’t mean the feelings change… and in this case I’m not even clearly “cut,” because their daughter won’t ever divorce me.

And I’m not even the one who originally chose to leave and thus be “separated,” that was their daughter’s decision.

She asked me by way of comparison if our one friend’s parents would still want to see their ex-son-in-law. That situation was so much different: He cheated on his wife and left her and the children on his own to live with his girlfriend, and he had a two-year drag-out divorce with our friend which was just absolutely ugly, and he avoided his in-laws and didn’t like them and had a rocky relationship with them over the entire marriage. Honestly, even with me as a friend/acquaintance, I have to clearly state he was an a-hole much of the time… until after he left that marriage and ironically started being a much nicer guy. (Weird.)

I’m not even sure how Rose or my ex’s could compare the two. The only similarity is that we’ve separated, but almost everything else is the opposite.

But I’m just sort of flabbergasted. I just approach things so differently. If you care about some, then you invest in them regardless of what the relationship is called. It doesn’t matter if you are my father, brother, sister, mother, cousin, neighbor, pastor, or whatever; if we love each other, then let’s love each other.

The only time that roles come into play is determining the level of investment… but if one of my kids got divorced and they were still cool with their ex and I cared about them, I’d continue to talk to them and see them. People make their own friends, and they make their own family.

I’m not even divorced, I’m local, I’m willing, and… nothing.

I’ll have to decide how bold and proactive I would like to be, but I have been smacked between the eyes: Now it’s clear that I will never be invited to another holiday function again with people I felt were family. My level of involvement with them in the future will depend solely on simply how much hurt/direct rejection I am willing to risk.

…I just don’t understand people.

Rose

And of course it always comes down to her, as the most important relationship besides my kids.

At least I got to tell her pretty much all the main thoughts I’ve mentioned here in my journal, and now she knows my feelings. So I felt good about our conversation. Me writing all these pages is ridiculous if I never share them with her.

I don’t even remember how we started talking about it, just that at some point, I said:

“I feel like I’m losing you. You started calling me Jennifer, and that is what had to happen, and that is what needed to happen, we couldn’t avoid it, but once that started, I stopped being your husband and just started being your friend… and you don’t spend time with your friends.”

“All i wanted you to be was my husband,” she said.

More tears. “I tried,” I said. Tried to say, but I was crying. I could only whisper. “I tried so hard to do it, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.” Barely audible. I couldn’t say it louder.

I wanted to say I was sorry, but I’ve said it so many times before and it’s understood. It adds nothing new. Neither of us wanted this. But it still Is, the way it Is.

And she didn’t refute any of it.

“What do you want me to say?” she said quietly, eventually, honestly. And she’s right, there’s nothing for her to say.

“There’s nothing you could say,” I replied, and I knew it was true. “I just need to know you know how to feel. I just need to know you are listening to me, hearing me. That’s all.” What else could be said?

But.. that’s where we are.

Two and a half years ago, she raged against me and I stared numbly at the sky on the trampoline. Now I am crying in the kitchen, within eyeshot of the trampoline, and she is quiet, saying nothing, her rage gone. There is nothing to rage over. It’s over, unless I can live as a man again… and we both know it won’t happen. So it’s over.

She’s tired, she says. She has a lot to get done, she says. It’s hard to see me. And she is right, she’s so right. There’s no way for her to build and maintain a relationship with me outside the house. There’s no way.  I transitioned because that’s what I needed, I left the house because that’s what she needed, and now we don’t see each other because that’s what she needs.

It’s over… over for that and for many other reasons, but it never really had a chance. You can’t build a relationship or maintain a marriage if you don’t spend time together.

When people ask me “how it went” with her, I don’t even know what to say. It went well… and it also drove hard nails into the coffin lid. Our marriage was on the verge of dying anyway, and I feel like that was it ultimately… the choice to not spend time together, our inability to spend time together, it all adds to the congealing failure of our marriage relationship.

We love each other. But it won’t work, can’t work; it barely had a shot, and now? No. Just… done.

Some of us have made it work. Not many. But some. Gwen, for example. It’s hard, but if the family sticks together, it can work.

Our family was not suited to stick together.
The sooner I get over that, the better.
The sooner I can free her, the better… and the sooner we can all continue with our lives and build whatever is realistic rather than running after pipedreams and half-imagined whimsy.

NeverMore & Lower Berks Hospital

I took the day off Friday and drove to Philly, where I met Monica and Ally at the NeverMore hotel in New Hope. Nevermore seems to be one popular place for newly post-op transpeople to stay, since it’s very close to Christine’s New Hope offices.

Monica herself had gotten her surgery six months before, she was fortunate enough to have it covered by insurance shortly before her facility was closed as part of a downsizing maneuver (or “rightsizing” as she noted sardonically). She and I have been online friends about as long as Gwen and I have, but this was the first time we’ve met in person.

Ally and I met at the Mazzoni conference in June in Philly and I have a standing invitation to hang there on some weekend, if I ever get into town. She’s in her early 20’s but teaches me a great deal… my musical horizons always get expanded when we talk (usually into music I wouldn’t run into otherwise, including the singer Voltaire). One of our first conversations this time involved the acrylic vampire teeth she once owned that got run over by a car (luckily while not in her mouth); she found a guy at a conference of sorts who creates them on the spot over people’s normal teeth.

needless to say, the ride from New Hope down to Bristol and the Lower Bucks hospital was quite the trip. I also was considering this quite the field trip, because if I ever had enough money to get surgery, I’d be going to Christine, and this hospital is where I’d be going… in one of the four rooms that Gwen was staying in.

Gwen was quite happy to see us show up; I warned her about two hours ahead of time, so at least she had a little time to prepare. She seemed more quiet when we arrived, since she was trying to get a feel for the two people I brought, but later while others were talking, we had a semi-private moment together and I could tell it meant so much to her that I had managed to make it out while she was still in the hospital. (When she releases on Sunday, she is heading up to NeverMore.) occasionally I still have teased her about “beating me on yet one more thing” (after our going full-time and our name changes) but I can tell she feels bad knowing my situation and that I can’t move ahead right now while she can… and honestly, my heart was overflowing with joy for her, almost in lieu of me being able to take that step… and I don’t want to mar that feeling for her by joking about things.

We got there before 1pm and left sometime near 3pm. I was back at home around 6pm, having survived some nasty rush hour traffic to get from New Hope back to the Northeast Turnpike Extension. On the way down, right where I got off the NE extension, I had heard scraping and rattling under my car; a plate had been hanging off but it didn’t look much like a plate that should have been on my car. I had no choice but to keep going, and a few miles later the noise stopped. LAter I looked… no trace of any plate that should have been there, and the car ran fine; I think I just got it caught there as road debris and finally it came off. I had been adverse to crawling under the car in my good jacket or my new t-shirt, so I was happy.

Hope to see Gwen this week in New Hope, and maybe if she comes out here in 10 days before flying back to the Portland area.

Belly Bling

The first place we went in, they wanted $60 for a navel piercing, and that seemed way too expensive to Michelle, so she kept checking around on her cell for a better one and finally found one a few blocks away from the first and only charging $25. We held a spot and drove back over from the mall.

I had to sign my initials on two separate sheets on how I did not have AIDS, scarlet fever, or ebola; and how I was not high or drunk or certifiably mentally crackers or chemically imbalanced in any way; and put my sig and contact info down while the guy copied my driver’s license. I wondered what he would think if he saw the ‘M’ on it, but it didn’t much matter; I just hate having to actually slide it out of my wallet since then the marker is visible.

There were a lot of options for belly button bling but fortunately he wanted me to use a basic in order to open the hole, so that narrowed my choices down to a reasonable ten or so.

I had no idea how this all went.

He took me back, where another wide burly guy was laying forward, his shirt off, and another guy writing things into his back. He had me stand with my tummy exposed while he marked dots on it. I didn’t look. I was nervous. Then he had me lay down. It reminded me unsettlingly of the scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson gets his stomach opened by a meathook… and unfortunately didn’t feel much better. I felt a tugging and pinching on my midsection while I stared up at the lights, then the pain started… it felt literally like I was getting a fishhook shoved into my gut. (My skin is so much more sensitive on estrogen so that electrolysis is pretty horrific nowadays for me, and so I wasn’t relishing this moment for good reason.)

The worst was just not knowing how long it would last. The pain seemed to go on forever.

“Wow, you have got really tough skin, girl,” the guy said to me. “Take a deep breath, then let it out slowly.” I did that while the pain commenced. Then I took another breath and let it out again. The lights swam overhead, pain shrieked in my midsection. I had no idea what he was doing and hoped it would end soon. I felt like a Lamaze graduate — all that existed for me was the breath I was sucking in, the releasing in little staggered, metered amounts, focus on the breathing, ignore the pain. I felt my body go into a dead sweat, the lights quivered overhead, multiplied, because four, eight, but I didn’t pass out.

The pain lessened; there was a tugging and fumbling. Then, remarkably it was over. I’m sure only a minute had passed altogether, but it seemed excruciating to me. The dead was done. I was supposed to clean the bling with Dial soap — no rubbing alcohol or neurosporin or other harsh concoctions. Not long after I walked in, I was walking out.

It hurt but I was still beaming. I never tire of being called “girl.” I had planned to do this a year ago with friends but never got around to.

I picked up the soap today. The skin is not red, and the thing does slide easily around, so right now it seems to be healing nicely.

Freaky Guy

A homeless crazy guy freaked me out yesterday.

I wanted to call my cousin on the phone as planned late yesterday afternoon, and thought the day was pretty enough and i was in the city, so I parked on City Island and walked over the pedestrian bridge, to get to the other side and call her from the steps while watching the water.

There was a lot of wind yesterday, not super-strong on the island, but the bridge is always a lot worse, and my hair kept blowing in my face, so I started walking with my hands upon my cheeks to hold back my hair.

Halfway across, a black guy who was wearing ratty clothes and a cheap pull-on stocking cap said, “Hey, are you okay?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” smiled, and kept walking.

He must have been twenty feet or more behind me when I heard him start talking to me but whatever he was saying was so out of context for that situation, I just kept walking and even sped up a little. I have learned if I do not want to encourage someone, I need to keep strong boundaries up and not give openings… and right now I just wanted to call my cousin, plus the guy was nice to asking if I was okay but I had no idea how safe he was.

He didn’t follow me, so I crossed fine, went down to the river and sat for awhile. My cousin wasn’t home, I guess, so i sat and took photos and watched the swans come by (they passed within about 15 feet of me, I’m not sure how they made any headway in that wind and current, but they did somehow).

I went back up the slope, heading for the traffic bridge, and the phone rang. It was Rose. We started talking about meeting, and I was standing there talking to her, I saw this guy appear on the corner, approaching me on the path. (I was not on the path, I was about twenty feet off it near an aluminum light pole, but he was heading down the path towards me until it veered to pass me, and I was looking that way.) There was a woman on the corner.

He looked right at me (I thought) and starting screaming obscenities in my direction, which immediately raised my hackles. “STOP LOOKING AT MY F*CKING FACE, GET YOUR F*CKING FACE OUT OF HERE” and more that I cannot even remember at this point. He was smaller than me, but still scary. He came down the path, grabbed this huge piece of deadwood lying next to the path and lifted it over his head like an axe and brought it down on the macadam and pieces sprayed everywhere. Now I was really freaked out.

He picked up a bunch of pieces and then turned around, still yelling things, and started throwing these huge pieces of wood out into Front Street while traffic was whizzing by, he would have dented metal or cracked a windshield if they had actually hit one of the cars.

“Hold on a second,” I told Rose, and hurried up to the bridge so I could stand next to the road in case he was going to get weird with me. When I looked back, he was stomping off down the path. I told her about the guy and she was laughing but still freaked out too. It was obvious he was deranged, and those are the worst because you never know what they might do next, or what they might be carrying on them, nor are they deterred by threat of punishment.

I had always seen these guys in movies, where urban environments appeared, but had never really seen any in person until the last year or two.

Baby Shower Update

My sister’s baby shower was not a surprise.

She was the organizer.

Kids Update

Pip ended up going with everyone to his cousin’s.
He seems to be doing okay.

Faramir on the other hand came down with the flu (and the hot/cold shakes) Saturday night. Not really psyched to hear that; I am scheduled for a free flu shot at work … but not until November 17.

October 10, 2009, was a big day for him in another way: It was the first time he ever shaved. His cousin (a year older than him) helped him. I guess that would have been my job if I had still been living at home and had a beard.

They’re driving back today.

Support Group

Went to the group dinner on Saturday night, with Michelle. I ordered the steak, which was expensive, because I thought the food would be good. I liked the service and liked the ambiance, but the meal was not worth what I paid for it, the meat just was not that good. I should have gotten a [much cheaper] salad or pizza. Only the asparagus was worth the price.

I’ll have to remember that later.

The meeting was cool simply because new people keep coming. I like seeing new members show. We also had a starting therapist (I talked to her later, she used to fix airplanes for a living until her retirement) show, I talked to her for a few minutes and found her cogent and people-friendly, I think she’ll be good. Her biggest focus is to help transpeople reduce/prevent the extent of loss that typically occurs during transition, which I think is an extremely potent issue. Sometimes you can’t salvage stuff because of other people’s reactions but there is a lot that can be done to minimize the damage and plan upfront. She’s in Malvern and Lititz (the latter right outside Lancaster, it was the home of that shooting a few years back where a boyfriend came back and shot his girlfriend’s parents in the head because they did not approve of him… that relationship did not work out, understandably…) .. more power to her, Lancaster’s a tough community in some ways to crack, but support here is so desperately needed.

My friend G came late… in guy mode. She is the voice (in guy mode) of the local roller derby and had to drive up from a match that evening. I had to laugh, because she looks nothing like herself when in drab, and I’m one of the few people who knew her in guy mode — I waved to her goofily across the room and she waved back, knowing no one recognized her. It’s always weird hearing G’s voice come out of “his” mouth. She changed later and everyone who didn’t know her was blown away.

Looks like the meeting format is going to stay informal, with a segment for announcements. It’s too hard to create a format that appeals to all demographics and you never know who will show up anyway, it just has made far more sense to allow for self-directed discussion… and as long as newcomers are introduced to appropriate people, those who need help or want advice seek out discussion with people who meet their needs and the help is generally informal. On occasion, maybe it would be worth having a formatted group discussion, but most of the time I think it just is more organic to let talk go where it wants and needs to go, on small self-assembled clusters through which people can float.

One of the new girls who Dani brought to the meeting is 23 and young and naive. She sounded nice enough, but when I met her briefly, I had a really negative response. Another friend tells me she is constantly down on herself and insisting she needs lots of surgery to survive. (As far as that goes, she has great hair, bone structure, etc, but she’ll need lots of electro/laser and maybe some face contouring to blend.) What put me off is her presentation: She was there in feminized guy mode but she reads as flaming gay — she’s a caricature of femininity, NOT naturally female. Her voice is lilty, her body language overly female, extremely weak and delicate, and it all feels conscious, not natural. That really really bothers me, especially because she’s going to Mazzoni this upcoming weekend to get hormones. She really needs to be in therapy; going on hormones will only make her more unbalanced, NOT stabilize her, and she’s already NOT an independent person, emotionally or realistically. This is just a Bad Idea, and I’m scared for her because she has resources — her mom died in the Twin Towers collapse of 2001 and so she has access to a trust fund, AKA moolah, that she did not work to earn and that she can frivolously spend. In this case, she will try to solve her issues by throwing money at them, and this will kill her; I really have strong reservations about her rushing into this, I think she’s got lots of emotional issues and is avoiding growing up by immersing herself into a ‘feminine identity’ based on her caricature of what it means to be a woman… but she’s an adult, what can you do? Sigh. I hate this.

After the meeting, a few of us went to Stallions. We pretty much talk over the back end of the third floor, where the pool tables are, and a private bar. Drinks are only $2 until midnight, although our regular tender wasn’t there and this guy sucked… we couldn’t taste any alcohol in our drinks whatsoever, it was like drinking water. I guess we were only getting what we paid for this time. We played a few games of pool and headed out.

The weirdest moment was this person who showed up — a black guy who wore dumpster-girl clothes, spoke in a guy’s voice, wore big white dark sunglasses… and had a goatee and even a trace of sideburns running down to it from the temples. He introduced himself as Michelle, he seemed friendly enough but disorganized mentally, and claimed to have driven 2.5 hours one-way to get to Stallions in Hburg… I have no idea where he was from… and left about 12:30pm to drive home. There had to have been some place closer? Stallions is not THAT good. Philly or Pitts would have been far better for him; maybe he was scared to go out locally?

I would have been okay, but one of my friends called him “Huggiebear in drag” and I lost it. (The goatee, dude, that was really too much!) When someone puts out a presentation like that, it’s hard to know how to respond, and I really have no idea how he classes himself. All this “genderqueer” stuff — where people don’t fit into either category — sometimes throws me for a loop as to how to think of and refer to them in a unavoidably gendered language.

Boss

Janice said that my boss really adores me. Which is good, I’ve felt bad about my performance lately.

She said on Friday he just seemed to glow while talking about me and is amazed at my confidence and strength to do what I have done. He brought up to her too about a moment in a meeting when I just told the more advanced devs that something they were thinking just wasn’t going to work and “we need to do it this way.” He said that D* would have never done that, but that Jennifer just leaped right in. He seems this whole thing as a big change in my maturity and confidence level. Janice told him that his support meant a lot to me… and I almost cried as she repeated that, because it’s true — his support really really moved me and meant the world to me when I transitioned on the job and ever since.

So I guess I’m doing okay here, no matter how I feel about my work.

Pip’s back at the hospital. I just got a note from Rose early this morning (plus others on the e-mail list) saying his arm was red, swollen, and itching and so they had to go back to the med center. (IOW, the PIC line is being rejected.)

I left a voice mail for her, thanked her for taking care of our kids, told her I hoped both were okay, and asked her to call back later with an update when she could.

She called over lunch.

They took out the PIC line. Options are weird right now. They don’t want to do the permanent shunt; they aren’t having a lot of success with the PIC line right now; and they don’t want to have to keep him in hospital with an IV to med him for two weeks. They’ll figure things out today.

And of course he is supposed to go to Ohio to see his cousins, with his siblings and grandparents, from Friday to Monday. At least this happened now, while there’s time to do something and make sure he’s okay, rather than after he was out of state. (And of course, Rose is beat and really needs the time off from kids, and of course we were going to see each other Sunday night and Pip’s the one who most doesn’t WANT to see me…!)

I thanked Rose again for looking after him and said I felt bad and wished I could be there.

She said that despite how hard it is emotionally and physically, she doesn’t want to be somewhere else, she wants to be with her kids and help them and so it’s still something she feels affirmed by doing. And she also said that she was used to it anyway, she’s always been the one to do the “kid doctor” runs because I was not engaged, so it’s not a big change.

I told her I understood her feelings (and she’s right about the sort of person she is). But I wanted her to know how I was feeling, so I told her that too:
- That I felt bad because I really did not engage like I should have before All This (for many reasons, some valid and some not), and it wasn’t fair she had had to pick up the slack all those years, and
- I think she feels more extremes towards the nurturing thing than me, just because of her personality, but
- Now I actually FEEL things (unlike before), leading me to want to be there with my kids; and I also feel much more compulsion to nurture and be with my children, in the female sense, and
- it is a sacrifice and act of love on my part to give Pip his space and for me to allow Rose to handle that aspect of our parenting responsibilities, and not doing some of it myself; I’m withdrawing myself and not being involved partly so she can do something she really wants and loves to do.

I don’t know if she realized this before. I know I did not say it, and maybe I haven’t even realized it or felt so strongly about it until the last year or so.

She would be fine with me being there, if there wasn’t the issue with the kids; she would just not want me to be there in lieu of her, she would still want to be there. I understand that too.

So… hopefully he will get better. And get to go on his trip.

I’m more worried about the future, honestly. What happens in a year, or five years, or ten? The PIC line was a great tool, but now his veins are messed up. how will this inhibit his freedom OR health as he gets older in life? Sigh.

I went home early yesterday to meet this new potential housemate, the 19-year-old stripper who sounded very much like a survivor. My landlord had some reservations but wanted me to meet her.

Apparently she was actually supposed to move in… and then never showed… and then wouldn’t answer his calls. So much for the housemate. I thought it sounded intriguing, she was just crashing at her brother-in-law’s and desperately needed a place of her own.

Of course, since she just blew things off, Bill was annoyed. And he was planning to buy me a bed last night with her first month’s rent, and now we can’t do that; I’m still sleeping in the empty room. And of course I came home instead of working out.

Well, screw that. I decided to work out anyway. I tried to find some suitable workout clothes but really haven’t bought anything female-styled. All I had was old guy junk. I stopped at Dick’s on the way over and couldn’t find a workout jacket. I’ll look for some stuff today.

The workout went fine. I rode bikes on Level 14 for 30 minutes, burned 300 calories. Surrounded by other women and guys on bikes, right next to each other, everything was fine. I haven’t been there ever as a woman before. It’s been almost eight months, and it was just a bit surreal.

… and I even got free pizza because it was the first Monday of the month, yay me!

And to show you how far I have come, I went to Giant in my purple shorts, pink cami, and jacket … looking a mess… to grab some groceries. I’m pretty much getting over any anxiety I might have had for so long. It’s partly self-acceptance, partly having a more accurate physical picture of myself in my head, partly not caring what people think, and partly realizing people are fine with me regardless.

* * * *

My landlord, being the hairdresser that he is, wants to play with my hair. He knows it’s a unit. When my new one comes in, we’ll play with this one, he thinks I should have more overt bangs and has some other ideas as well. Cool, huh? He can even color things.

* * * *

I burned my finger bad enough last night, out of stupidity, and am surprised I don’t have a blister.

I was broiling some meat, and while I took great pains to avoid bumping the pan or the burners in the oven, a portion of meat was charred from being too close to the heat and I foolishly touched THAT to see how hot it is.

One second, but enough to hurt like getting branded. I ran my finger under cold water on and off, but it hurt literally for hours. Right on the tip of my index finger.

I’m very sure (along with my electrolysis issues) that I feel pain far more acutely than I used to with male skin. Women should be forgiven if they cry more when physically hurt, it’s far more painful than a guy getting the equivalent wound.

* * * *

I logged into my old male comcast account today… and there was an e-mail from my sister.

Dated Friday.

Doh. Did she actually write to tell me about the shower? Was my annoyance misplaced? I hate making mistakes like that. And I hate having people write to me in that account, it’s mostly just junk right now…. why can’t people just move on?

I read the e-mail.
No mention of the shower… just the one she had at her church the week before.
Which seems every weirder and more annoying.

Last ‘benefit of doubt’ moment, though — I’ll ask Rose if it was a surprise shower. If it wasn’t, then the prosecution will rest its case.

At least she’s doing okay, is healthy, and everything is set to have the baby. That’s good. I’m learning the needed lesson to let things go and be happy for people I care about, even if I feel schlunked. It’s a good lesson to learn.

* * * *

Talked to Gwennie last night… I knew her surgery was coming up and we just did not touch base, so I called her when out driving late last night… and she’s already here, on the East Coast. Liftoff is Wednesday for her. She’s already had her last meal, and today is Clear Liquid Day, hooray! Tonight she chugs a gallon of crap to wash and rinse her insides, and tomorrow is it.

I always tease her because I started transition before she did, and then she just plowed ahead of me. She went full-time the month before I did. Her name change came through the month before mine SHOULD have. And now she’s getting surgery while I’m nowhere close. She gets apologetic when I joke… so I do keep telling her that I’m joking… and she knows I’m joking… but it seems I’m just tongue-in-cheek by nature and she’s an apologizer by nature because she just empathizes with me… so we keep doing that dance.

I told her flat-out I’m not upset (and I’m not) nor does her happiness make me feel bad (and it doesn’t). I told her I was so very happy that she is finally getting to move ahead and I can’t wait to see her again next week sometime before she heads west again… and then I almost started crying.

It was a big positive change in my life when I could not just feel happy for someone else’s joy… but actually start crying for them because I felt so happy for them. In many ways, for the first time in my life, my heart is running clear and clean. I’ll feel the same way when my sister has her baby, even if I might not get to see her or things between us didn’t go as well as I’ve hoped; I’m just happy for the joy of people I care about.

I probably can’t get to see her before she leaves the hospital on Sunday… but I will visit her in New Hope next week, definitely.

So funny, so very funny… we haven’t even known each other for a year I realize as I think back (and we’ve only met in person twice… once out here over New Year’s and once in March in Portland) but we are like cousins or sisters at this point. her joy and pain is mine, and vice versa. It always amazes me how certain individuals bond as soon as they meet, even if they are different in some ways.

* * * *
I was driving back across the river with the Harrisburg nightline visible. Before, the city seemed like home. Now it seemed more like someone I had once dated and been intimate with, but times had changed, we’d drifted apart, and now we just had memories.

The city was no longer really ‘mine.’
But it was okay.

Because all is well with my world.
I like where I live — the house, the neighborhood, the people.
I’m happy with my job even if I need more income.
I have people in my life who love me.
My children are starting to see me.
Rose and I get along.
My family is still accessible on some level.
Gwennie is getting her surgery.
I’m starting to work out again.
My life is getting back on track.

Yes, there are things I wish were different, but I’m still happy and content with where my life finally is. A lot more beauty and peace and love and contentment than a few years ago. A lot more happiness overall on a daily basis.

Even when I think about people moving on — maybe Rose and I having to split up eventually and her remarrying — it will break my heart but only partly out of grief for myself, I’d be just very happy for her to find something positive in her life and experience joy again. I get teary thinking about it… I never wanted to end the marriage, I just needed to find “me”… but seeing her happy would bring me a lot of joy even if it means a chapter of our lives has to end.

I finally feel that I can authentically experience other people’s joy, rather than always been detached or resentful or like I’m dying all the time. It’s amazing that when you find yourself, it frees you up to love. It sounds like a cliche but it’s not; if you’re not you, if you’re not anchored as yourself, you can’t really easily love others.