Out In 2015
And so it’s the New Year. It's not a 2015 that I ever expected to find myself in. Or maybe, more accurately, I’m not the self that I’d have previously expected to find here. (Trust me, this is NOT a complaint!)
I’m not the type of person who generally makes New Year’s resolutions. I’ve found that I’m either ready to make a change, or I’m not; the symbolism of a fresh new year doesn’t really provide me with any greater sense of push, in the long run. But I do consider the New Year to be a time for pondering, looking backward and forward, and for that matter inward and outward... taking the lay of the land, as it were.
Looking back, it’s been a year of unexpected experiences, directions, and accomplishments. (And also times of tremendous nervewracking strain... but we’ll leave that aside for the moment!) I’ve been called brave for coming out as Trans, after half a lifetime in a closet I didn’t dare even consciously recognize as a closet for many, many years. I admit, I wrestled with angels and demons - many of both - to get to this point. And I continue to do so in order to keep moving forward. But it hasn’t felt brave so much as just really, really necessary.
At any rate, I’m deeply happy to have spent the better part of 2014 wrestling with truth - and being... well, yes, brave enough... to let truth win. I suspect there’s a lot more of that sort of thing in store for me in 2015. Is it tempting Fate to say that I welcome it? That I relish the experience of being more alive, more real, than I have been in the last several decades? Yeah, I think that is probably tempting Fate. So Be It.
I know what some of the challenges of the coming year will be - though I’m sure others will surprise me. Some are specifically about gender, or about transitioning, and some are just about being me... hopefully more and more me as the year goes on!
At some point in 2015 I hope to formalize my change of name, with all of the hurdles and legal costs that such a step involves. (This is not the same as making a formal change of gender, which is far more complicated and is not something that I can even legally pursue until I am much further along this path.)
I also hope to find - or make - more opportunities to strike out on my own as a musician and a performer. Because I love the stage, and that’s a big part of who I am... and I am finally beginning to feel that it’s really, honestly okay to be who I am.
I know that I need to make certain commitments to bettering my health where I can, both in order to reclaim ownership of my poor much-neglected body, and in order to undertake the physical changes of gender transition. I suspect this is something I’ll be talking more about soon.
And I cherish the hope that at some point during this coming year, as those physical changes progress, I ~might~ actually be able to resolve the whole crazy-uncomfortable public-bathroom conundrum and just use the damn men’s room. (That’s probably an overly-optimistic hope... but optimism is good, right??)
The most immediate challenge of the new year, though, is that there’s one last, big, difficult coming-out communication to make: to the kindly, loving, exasperating, half-deaf elderly relative with whom I reside.
There are reasons why direct communication on this subject has been delayed, despite the fact that certain ill-concealable physical clues (changes in appearance, letters addressed to names other than my birth name) have been pretty obviously piling up. You see, my grandfather - a World War II vet who is nearing 100 - is about as open-minded as is possible for someone who grew up in a culture where People Did Not Talk About Things Like This... and I’ve discovered that he can accept a lot, as long as I don’t make him confront it directly, verbally, face to face, on the spot. For instance, he will get angry if you force him to talk about a subject like, say, gay people - and yet there was a gay couple in my family who were always silently accepted... the key word here being “silently.” (I never even knew they were a couple until long after both had passed away.)
And so I’ve learned to let certain kinds of communications lie quietly, simmer long and low on back burners, find their own times and ways of being made - indirectly wherever possible. (I finally “told” him I was gay by kissing my girlfriend in front of him - repeatedly - after which he often solicitously inquired about my “friend” but never said a word about what he guessed such “friendship” might involve.)
I’ve quite consciously taken this track with the whole Trans thing - just letting it be, letting evidences pile up without directly addressing them, waiting for the point at which, I hope, the discomfort of directly addressing it will be less than the discomfort of not knowing what’s going on. And now, since greater impending changes are looming on the horizon of 2015, that time is drawing near, and a direct communication must now be made, another coming-out.
I have fears associated with this, because my grandfather’s understanding of the world is not, shall we say, very up to date. I don’t know how to explain to him that I will not automatically become unhireable or lose all of my friends... that I am not in much physical danger as long as I'm careful (at least, not around here, in the ”enlightened” East, in the mostly liberal-progressive circles in which I generally move, and not at this early stage)... that I will not necessarily be forever barred from romantic relationships (that one’ll really take some explaining)... in short, that I’m not choosing to become someone who could only live in a circus sideshow. For I think, to do him and his kind heart all the justice it deserves, that these are the things he will worry about, more so than what the neighbors will think (though that will also be a concern).
Once that’s done, the final communication will be by letter, to the rest of the relatives, or at least to the heads of the main family “clans,” the great-aunts and -uncles of my grandfather’s generation. (Who can then choose, or not choose, to inform the many and scattered cousins whom I rarely if ever see.)
And that will be that - I’ll be “out” completely. No more closets. A very good goal for a new year! And I hope that those who may be skeptical of, or confused about, my choice to walk this path will eventually see the rightness of it, by the way my life progresses.
Of course, coming out didn’t make all of my problems go away, and it’s a pretty safe bet that transitioning won’t fix everything in my life that needs fixing. (Apparently there are some transfolk who do assume this; I have read some of their stories, which are generally quite sad.) My life is still chaotic in a lot of ways; still, I seem better able now to manage the chaos, most of the time, and with greater cheer. Some old fears have receded, some new hopes emerged, that significantly alter the framework on which my life is hung. And it’s clear that in time - as I keep working, keep wrestling, keep tackling problems and moving forward - more and more good changes will result.
As well as more problems to tackle, of course.
I agree with that statement in the Messiah’s Handbook (in Richard Bach's Illusions): There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems (the manual goes on to advise) because you need their gifts.
Of course you do - and so do I. When you think about it, there is a logical reciprocal arrangement between problems and gifts, in that, much of the time, a problem results from the refusal of a gift. The problem of living in a closet is a natural result of denying the gift - albeit the extremely difficult gift! - of your own truth. So when you finally accept the problem, acknowledge the closet, and throw it open - you get cool door prizes. :)
And so with that in mind, I wish us all cool door prizes in 2015. I think there are more than enough to go around! :D
I’m not the type of person who generally makes New Year’s resolutions. I’ve found that I’m either ready to make a change, or I’m not; the symbolism of a fresh new year doesn’t really provide me with any greater sense of push, in the long run. But I do consider the New Year to be a time for pondering, looking backward and forward, and for that matter inward and outward... taking the lay of the land, as it were.
Looking back, it’s been a year of unexpected experiences, directions, and accomplishments. (And also times of tremendous nervewracking strain... but we’ll leave that aside for the moment!) I’ve been called brave for coming out as Trans, after half a lifetime in a closet I didn’t dare even consciously recognize as a closet for many, many years. I admit, I wrestled with angels and demons - many of both - to get to this point. And I continue to do so in order to keep moving forward. But it hasn’t felt brave so much as just really, really necessary.
At any rate, I’m deeply happy to have spent the better part of 2014 wrestling with truth - and being... well, yes, brave enough... to let truth win. I suspect there’s a lot more of that sort of thing in store for me in 2015. Is it tempting Fate to say that I welcome it? That I relish the experience of being more alive, more real, than I have been in the last several decades? Yeah, I think that is probably tempting Fate. So Be It.
I know what some of the challenges of the coming year will be - though I’m sure others will surprise me. Some are specifically about gender, or about transitioning, and some are just about being me... hopefully more and more me as the year goes on!
At some point in 2015 I hope to formalize my change of name, with all of the hurdles and legal costs that such a step involves. (This is not the same as making a formal change of gender, which is far more complicated and is not something that I can even legally pursue until I am much further along this path.)
I also hope to find - or make - more opportunities to strike out on my own as a musician and a performer. Because I love the stage, and that’s a big part of who I am... and I am finally beginning to feel that it’s really, honestly okay to be who I am.
I know that I need to make certain commitments to bettering my health where I can, both in order to reclaim ownership of my poor much-neglected body, and in order to undertake the physical changes of gender transition. I suspect this is something I’ll be talking more about soon.
And I cherish the hope that at some point during this coming year, as those physical changes progress, I ~might~ actually be able to resolve the whole crazy-uncomfortable public-bathroom conundrum and just use the damn men’s room. (That’s probably an overly-optimistic hope... but optimism is good, right??)
The most immediate challenge of the new year, though, is that there’s one last, big, difficult coming-out communication to make: to the kindly, loving, exasperating, half-deaf elderly relative with whom I reside.
There are reasons why direct communication on this subject has been delayed, despite the fact that certain ill-concealable physical clues (changes in appearance, letters addressed to names other than my birth name) have been pretty obviously piling up. You see, my grandfather - a World War II vet who is nearing 100 - is about as open-minded as is possible for someone who grew up in a culture where People Did Not Talk About Things Like This... and I’ve discovered that he can accept a lot, as long as I don’t make him confront it directly, verbally, face to face, on the spot. For instance, he will get angry if you force him to talk about a subject like, say, gay people - and yet there was a gay couple in my family who were always silently accepted... the key word here being “silently.” (I never even knew they were a couple until long after both had passed away.)
And so I’ve learned to let certain kinds of communications lie quietly, simmer long and low on back burners, find their own times and ways of being made - indirectly wherever possible. (I finally “told” him I was gay by kissing my girlfriend in front of him - repeatedly - after which he often solicitously inquired about my “friend” but never said a word about what he guessed such “friendship” might involve.)
I’ve quite consciously taken this track with the whole Trans thing - just letting it be, letting evidences pile up without directly addressing them, waiting for the point at which, I hope, the discomfort of directly addressing it will be less than the discomfort of not knowing what’s going on. And now, since greater impending changes are looming on the horizon of 2015, that time is drawing near, and a direct communication must now be made, another coming-out.
I have fears associated with this, because my grandfather’s understanding of the world is not, shall we say, very up to date. I don’t know how to explain to him that I will not automatically become unhireable or lose all of my friends... that I am not in much physical danger as long as I'm careful (at least, not around here, in the ”enlightened” East, in the mostly liberal-progressive circles in which I generally move, and not at this early stage)... that I will not necessarily be forever barred from romantic relationships (that one’ll really take some explaining)... in short, that I’m not choosing to become someone who could only live in a circus sideshow. For I think, to do him and his kind heart all the justice it deserves, that these are the things he will worry about, more so than what the neighbors will think (though that will also be a concern).
Once that’s done, the final communication will be by letter, to the rest of the relatives, or at least to the heads of the main family “clans,” the great-aunts and -uncles of my grandfather’s generation. (Who can then choose, or not choose, to inform the many and scattered cousins whom I rarely if ever see.)
And that will be that - I’ll be “out” completely. No more closets. A very good goal for a new year! And I hope that those who may be skeptical of, or confused about, my choice to walk this path will eventually see the rightness of it, by the way my life progresses.
Of course, coming out didn’t make all of my problems go away, and it’s a pretty safe bet that transitioning won’t fix everything in my life that needs fixing. (Apparently there are some transfolk who do assume this; I have read some of their stories, which are generally quite sad.) My life is still chaotic in a lot of ways; still, I seem better able now to manage the chaos, most of the time, and with greater cheer. Some old fears have receded, some new hopes emerged, that significantly alter the framework on which my life is hung. And it’s clear that in time - as I keep working, keep wrestling, keep tackling problems and moving forward - more and more good changes will result.
As well as more problems to tackle, of course.
I agree with that statement in the Messiah’s Handbook (in Richard Bach's Illusions): There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems (the manual goes on to advise) because you need their gifts.
Of course you do - and so do I. When you think about it, there is a logical reciprocal arrangement between problems and gifts, in that, much of the time, a problem results from the refusal of a gift. The problem of living in a closet is a natural result of denying the gift - albeit the extremely difficult gift! - of your own truth. So when you finally accept the problem, acknowledge the closet, and throw it open - you get cool door prizes. :)
And so with that in mind, I wish us all cool door prizes in 2015. I think there are more than enough to go around! :D
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