VANITY

It has been a while since I have needed one of these, but here we are....  trigger warning again. This post speaks about suicidal ideation. So practice self care and decide if reading this post is right for you. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts please CALL 988  or seek help. I have links to the left. 

 I think Im a witch at heart. Often times I think it would be nice to get together with other women in nature  and scream, or cry, or laugh, or whatever emote feels like it needs out. Perhaps some healing chanting or group manifesting. This needs to be a thing in my life!

These days I have noticed that everything bad connects to and becomes dysphoria. Ive had a really emotionally hard family emergency that somehow morphed into dysphoria. Trust me when I say it totally does not actually connect or relate to dysphoria. But to my brain it super spiraled there. There are also things that start out as one stressor, but inevitably leads down the rabat hole and gets me to dysphoria. Like finances for instance...  I have had lots of clients get sick and cancel on me as of late at my job, I get paid per client. So projecting my next few months of pay was stressful and also became about dysphoria as I recognized how real it is that I may need to cut hormones out of my life for a few months. Which brought back suicidal Ideation as I spiraled into self pity about not being cisgender and needing to rely so heavily on medical intervention to be seen and feel authentic. Typing this out I know how vain or dumb I must sound to someone who has never had gender dysphoria. Or how I may appear to be "fighting gods intention for me". And I really dont know how to express this feeling better yet. And perhaps there is a bit of vanity in it... The closest thing I can think to relate it to would be if you have not been able to see clearly for your entire life. As a result you are constantly bumping into things and knocking things over. You learned how to cope with this and came up with strategies to make it seem to others that you can see clearly so you dont look different or break anything. You don't even know you see any differently than anyone else. You just figure this is a thing all people learn to cope with. Then one day you learn about glasses. For the first time in your life you see clearly with your glasses! It brings you so much joy and happiness! It takes some adjusting to not do those things you trained yourself to do when you couldn't see and were trying to fit in, because those things have become 2nd nature. But you don't need to do them anymore!  Then people start to tell you that you have changed. Or that you are wrong for wearing glasses. God made your eyes that way. You are corrupting the way you were made. Using glasses to alter your vision is wrong! Or, you are so vain for wearing glasses and changing the way you look. Or others liked how you looked without glasses and just cant wrap their heads around why you need them. They don't know what it is like to not see well. Would you be willing to go back to not wearing glasses? This analogy is imperfect, But I feel it gets the point across well enough  without making any generalizations about any serious medical condition, disability, or handicap.

During my semicolon this month, I cried over a shoe. . . I was feeling very emotional already and I felt like my feet were too masculine and gross. I had a pair of shoes that I felt would help calm my dysphoria that were nowhere to be found. I spiraled into always having this struggle and suicidal ideation came back. I felt hopeless and never able to be seen as i feel without lots of extra effort. It is always so much extra work to not be misgendered. Im 41 and learning what most women learned in middle school. All while purging my masculine survival mannerisms I needed  for so long. 

So yeah. . . the month had some down moments. But let us not end there. There were also so many good things! I am also able to see my progress. There are things I thought I would never get down that I am doing 2nd nature now. In my vocal training I  have gained range and sustainability. Does vocal resonance, or learning how to do more hair styles seem impossible right now? Sometimes. . . But I have already done so many things that felt impossible! My job is also starting to look into me taking on female clients! We are meeting soon to discuss it and go over my concerns in the manner. For instance, there is a false stigma of trans women only transitioning for... shall we say... "nefarious purposes" regarding daughters. There is NO evidence to support this and in fact there are lots of easier and less expensive and less risky ways to accomplish nefarious things Im sure. But hateful people have spread this false narrative that is being supported by policy in some groups and organizations. So I worry about my safety while in public with a group of teenage girls. On the other hand, I can also use this opportunity to show people that the hate filled rhetoric is just a lie and a last ditch effort to stop equality and dignity to the newest minority group seeking a regular life in society as their authentic selves. This same rhetoric was used against Gay rights and Black rights. So I am confidant time will prove how good the majority of humanity is once more as these tired old false claims are laid to rest once more!

As always, here is an update pic. This time with no makeup and end of day hair, all ready for bed. This is for all my older trans sisters reading and looking for real representation of what 1 year into transition may look like physically...