Happy Halloween

May this day of public ritual — one of the last we have — be magical for you.

As you put on your mask, may it free that which you ususally hold deep inside, allowing it to shine.

May others see that beauty, and may you learn to trust a little more that coming from the places you can’t control allows a bit more of the magic inside of you to make the world better, more intense, more blissful.

May you step out of yourself a bit, find affirmation, and become a little bigger, a little more confident, and a little more trusting of the creativity, imagination and power you keep hidden under your street clothes.

May the rituals of Halloween be a blessing to you, and to the ones around you, the ones you reach out to affirm, and the ones who reach out to affirm you.

This we ask in her name. 

Amen.

Stigma

The New York Times says that thin experts, concerned with the health implications of obesity, have started a campaign to put pressure on the obsese by keeping up a stream of reasons why obsesity is bad and shouldn’t be tolerated.

In other words, they have decided to stigmatize obesity, by blaming it for bad things, apparently assuming that since they would be ashamed to be fat, if they can just make fat people ashamed, they will start trying not to be fat.

Reseachers at Chamaign Urbana decided to see if this would work, and asked 3000 overweight people about “their experiences of stigmatization and discrimination and how they responded.”

“Almost everyone said they ate more,” reports the Times.

You can’t change someone who is buried by sigmatization and discrimination by more stigmatization and discrimination.  We just get pushed farther away, more beyond the pale.

And we hurt more, too.

Thin Skin

Halloween is a time when the veil between this world and the under world is thinnest, at least according to the old stories.

I know that it is a time when my skin is at it’s thinnest.

I was going down the aisle in the dollar store today, between a woman looking at the shelves to my right, her back to me, and a tower of boxes displaying merchandise.

I squeezed behind her, but as I passed, she chose to back up without looking, brushing into me.

It was not pleasant, and I whipped my right arm behind my back and moved on, thinking it was no big deal.  It happens in cities all the time, even if rarely in this Republican suburbia.

Apparently she was angered though, because her older mother asked what happened.

“That person bumped right into me and didn’t even apologize!  How rude!” she exclaimed.

I heard.  She backed into me without looking, and I am to blame?

I came back to explain my view. 

She admitted that she couldn’t see me, but said it was my fault, because I should have said “Excuse me” before passing her by.

Do we really have to say excuse me when we pass next to anyone in the aisle?  Is it our responsibility to make everyone aware even when they are in their own world?  Isn’t that a problem in its own way?

Her mother wanted to tell me that it was not a big deal, implying I was making the big deal out of it.  I was the one who treated it as no big deal — it was her daughter who wanted to blame and castigate me for my incredible rudeness.

I was upset as I left, telling the mother that “I don’t like being blamed.”

Of course, it was no big deal, just something that should be sloughed off by latent inhibition. 

To me, though, on a day where I feel the tightness and pain, especially when I see the woman in the black mini, heeled boots and Halloween tights I should be wearing, it was just another example of how people want to assign blame and responsibility to others, want to be indignant for events caused by their own blindness.

My skin is thin, everything on the surface.

Boo!

And now, time to figure out how to make the casserole I just learned I have to make for my parents to take to my sister-in-law’s house, and wait while my mother decides not to go out, and then cover while they leave, and spend Halloween locked, lost and skinned.

Positively

It happens that some people assume that because I am facing challenges, I don’t really want to hear about things that are going well for them.

I assure you that’s not true.  I want to affirm their blessings, to be joyful for them as they get what they need and what they want.  I know how important it is to affirm in others what you want for yourself, know that good things do happen in the workld, know that hope needs to stay alive.

For well over a decade now I have worked hard to use positive and affirming language with others.  I always make sure to tell my sister that she is brilliant and gorgeous, and can let that be seen in the world.  When my mother makes a comment about anything, I comment on how lucky she is, hoping that the fundamental practice of gratitude will help her see light.  I have nicknamed friends Sparkle, and strive to be encouraging whenever possible.  60% of giving help is giving courage, as some Irish have said.

I need to boost the dreams of others even if they scare me, or I see holes in them.  Rachel Crosby called me a dream burster once, back in the mid-1980s when she transitioned, and I realized she was right.  All dreams start out small and shaky.  It’s only when they are allowed to grow that they go away or become powerful realities.  We gotta encourage growth.

Now, I’m aware that my pain reads to other people, and that’s not easy for them to face.  I’m also aware I will never be an absolute cheerleader — I have a different kind of vision than that.

But I’m also aware that I need to be there, be positive and be encouraging whenever I can.  I need to root for good things in the lives of others, need to be truly happy for the blessings that they — and I — get.   I need to blieve in the possibility of dreams really changing everything, changing vision, changing lives, changing world.

It’s one thing I try to give to the world, whenever and however I can.  I believe that a therapist is someone who sees in you something that you do not yet see in yourself, and helps you bring that out.

I believe that you have magic inside of you, and when you let it out, your heart will be lifted and good things will happen.

I even believe that is true for me.  I just believe that most people aren’t really comfortable with me letting it out, and I no longer have the exuberance, enthusiasm and endurance to face them down.

But you do. 

So go for it, make good things happen, and know, know absolutely, that I will be happy for you.

The worst part of having success is
to try finding someone who is happy for you.
 Bette Midler

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. 
Small people always do that,
but the really great make you feel that you, too,
can become great.
 Mark Twain

“Unique”

Did you know that the word “unique” has negative connotations, and should be avoided in a resume? 

“Unique” is a dismissive word one uses to describe people & things you don’t really feel it is polite to honestly describe, at least according to a friend of my sister.

I wondered what positive word she would use instead, but my sister told me that she just had to consider her choices and make a decision.  

Apparently, she found my tone defensive.

I wonder why. . .

Excellence

It was karaoke night at the gay bar that TBB found in Nashville this week.  She sang third, her usual Sinatra.

The reception was warm and supportive, and when others sang, she was blown away by the quality.  A group wouldn’t just yowl to something from Grease, instead they would sing intricate harmonies.

This is, of course, an example the power of a good audience. Because they know how hard it is to get up there, they can really support others who take the stage.  And because others are working to go from a good singer to an excellent singer, one feels both the desire to rehearse & do better, and the permission to achieve excellence.

If there is no audience, it’s easy not just to slide along, being just good, and easy to feel pressure not too be too good, not to show off and show up the others. 

A bad audience creates it’s own mediocrity, while a good audience creates it’s own excellence.   That’s what families of excellence have long known, that excellence can and must be developed and fostered,  lifting all by lifting expectations, lifting feedback and lifting the permission to be a as much of a virtuoso as possible.

TBB knows that she doesn’t feel this pressure or permission to be great in her little mountain town, and while that’s nice, it’s not so breathtaking and enervating. 

She is entertaining thoughts of moving to Nashville someday, because what is more uplifting than a place where we find an audience that affirms us and continues to bring out the best in us?

Would that we each find that kind of audience that understands, appreciates and encourages us to develop our own unique and powerful voice.

Those Were The Days

At a Junior High School dance in 9th grade, I begged R. Scott Moore, my reflection — he had all my classes, but was captain of the football team — to play my 45 of Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were The Days,” a new song that I loved.  He thought it was weird, but he played it.  They all thought I was weird, but they didn’t hate me.

Does it strike you as odd that a 14 year old loved a song that goes:

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.

Even that young, wistful nostalgia was more understandable to me than actually living the life I chose.

God, I was so old so young. 

And yes, I still belive that Richie Kosian is John H. Garabedian’s brother.  WMEX forever!

Fucking Frightening

It’s about 8:30 on the second and last night of adult Halloween, and instead of being nicely scented, well dressed and as pretty as possible, I am sweating like a longshoreman and in a bit of a self destructive rage.

TBB called around 4:30 on her way back from a technical training, and we talked IT, which meant Information Technology long before Ebay.  I had to talk and cook, though, and I saw my father being freaked as I did it. Even though nothing sensitive came out, he was scared it would,

I got dinner on, though the clock he cleaned last week was wrong.  I was told I should have fixed it.  I have reset it a couple of times, but not yet done everything he thinks I should have done without being told.  It’s like the celing tile hanging out of the cobbled together grid over the bed — it’s not hanging because it’s warped, it’s warped because I let it hang.  My fault.

My brother and sister in law are having a 25th Anniversary “surprise” party next Saturday, run by their children. 

My parents have drafted me as consultant, but while I have consulted long hours, everything I try is futile.  It always gets dragged down back into a big unformed party that the kids are used to. 

That’s fine, of course, their choice, but why do I need to help?

“They have ignored everything I have said,” I told my mother.

“Yes, but you have to help,” she said.

“You mean I have to clean up the messes of people who hate me?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow.

Tonights drama was that, from her drowsing chair — this week she has admited to losing hours in it — she wanted my father to parade all the silver and trays in front of her to decide what she would assign.

That means my father trying to get stuff, which means me facilitating, always,  And, of course, we can’t get what she wants.

I sleep in the basement with the garbage.  She doesn’t like clutter in her sight, so it’s all consigned to the basement, where I do my best to pack it together so there is a little room to move.  She makes decisions about what happens here without thinking or asking, and then I am stuck having to rebuild tables that my father was ordered to take apart becaise I need a table, only now it’s no longer solid but jittery.

My father understands that my packing means there is less access to crap, and that’s my fault.

Of course, with all the moving things about, this room is now drippng with crud, and I get to be in it.  Yum.

The big drama, though, was my father whining about the clutter in the garage, saying he wanted to start the snow-blower.  Yes, the snow blower that hasn’t worked in over a decade, the one we put $100 in parts into and lots of labour, with me having to take the blows.

It’s my fault there is clutter in the garage, of course, even though I have cleaned it at least six times in three years.  Last time, this summer, I did his workbench, even stringing up a work light to help sort his toolbox.  I did his tool chest three years ago, when I was told to do a brake job in the driveway.  He always wanted me to fix cars so I would be a man, and I have never been good at it, even though I know some dykes who are fabulous.

He has never had a pristine work area, outlines in pegboard and all that, but he is sure that’s someone else’s fault.  Mine.

Now there is a rusted part from my sister’s car filling the workbench, the one he made the dealership give to him, the one he has done nothing with.  Between that and his other dumpings, the workbench I cleaned is a shambles, and you know whose fault that is.

His big complaint was cardboard boxes.  I cut them all down, though I know that in three weeks people will be whining for boxes for Christmas.  Fuck me.

And then there is the scooter that my sister’s friend dumped on us, a beat up ride that had a comparable on Ebay for about $78.  That’s weighed down not only with damage, but also with a long drunken lecture about how I wasn’t doing enough for my mother, how I had to do more and more and more and more. . . .

Well, I got the boxes up and the bags bundled, the scooter moved and the snow blower dug out, all the while wanting to shred the flesh in my face, and singing about the pleasure of death.

And then it’s 8:30PM on adult Halloween, and I am sweating like a longshoreman, my nails cracked, my shoes needing re-gluing,  and in a bit of a self-destructive rage.

What do you think the odds are that the snow blower will get started, or the kids will want my mother’s junk?

Happy fucking death to you, she said, as she reached for the big mug full of rye and ginger.

Note to a 20 Year Old Tranny

To a list participant:

You see things clearly, and that is a gift. 

You see where others are holding their defenses, the twists in their thinking, the way that they self-sabotage and more,

One of the hard things about emerging later as a transperson is the amount of un-learning to be done, re-evaluating all that energy and sweat and treasure invested in denial.   That can easily make us crazy.

You have the burning light in you, that sight from the liminal spaces between that reveals.  It is a blessing, and like any blessing it is a curse.

I understand your frustration with people who don’t think about what they say, who just blurt out their own twists, so clearly cockamamie.

You have vision now, and you will have vision in thirty years from now, in ways that old people like me can’t even imagine.  Heck, I’m not sure that even you can imagine your future, because all the best things that happened to me were unimaginable before they happened.  The road curves, and around that bend lies the new.

Keep the passion, the enthusiasm, the challenge and the light. 

I just remember the best advice I got as a young, bright person, even with my trans buried deep: don’t spit into the wind.  Fight the fights that get what you need, sure, but if I just picked fights with everyone I knew had it wrong, I would have no time for me.

You are a treasure, a young and vibrant flower in a wilting garden.  I hope you have the calm to just let your presence transform the world around you, your beauty make the world new, and not have to fight all the time like I felt I needed to.

But it’s your life and you have decades to get it right.

I’m sure you will make a great job of it.

Refulgent

Woke up with the word “refulgent” swirling in my head. 

Had to Google it to find out what it meant.

It means “to shine brightly.” 

Oh, my mother in the sky.  She sure likes to plant those darn reminders, now, doesn’t she?

“so how’s that going for you? are you not trans yet?”

i’ve come to the conclusion that
the only valid disqualifier for transition is
the persistent desire to be not-trans,
or
the belief that if you transition successfully,
you will no longer be trans in any meaningful way.. . .

“so how’s that going for you? are you not trans yet?”

that gwyneth, well, she’s one smart tranny.

Going There, Going Back

I’m avoiding Halloween this year. 

It’s not because I don’t want to go there.  I do, oh yes indeed I do.

It’s because I dont want to go there and then have to come back.

One step forward, two steps back is a familar dance for trannies.  The cost of having to pull back, having used precious resources and not gotten much return is very familiar, leaving us, to merge metaphors, behind the eight ball.

Coming back has costs, like refolding a piece of newspaper to put it away one more and realizing it is beginning to crack and fray at the folds.   Opening Pandora’s Box is hard, but having to put it away again is another myth altogether.  It takes a lot of denial and discipline.

I have felt people slip away and then have had to win them back, get over their skittishness, and that’s a cost. 

If I can’t get to a freedom point, can’t get to expression that is potent, can’t get the kind of connection I need, and then still have to retreat, well, that’s shit, shit to eat.

Of all the Halloween events since I have been here, the most memorable is standing at the broken stones of the Erie Canal aqueduct torn down around 1920 and scooping up figid Mohawk river water to wash my face before returning.  The next year I carried makeup wipes, and stripped off my tights in the tiny park across the river.

The climb is one thing, but the falling back, slipping and sliding and being banged by the sharp rocks on the backslope, well, that is another thing altogether.  And that is the one thing I can’t handle.

When my parents return, the hardest thing is having to pack everything away again into the big plastic tubs and stow them under the back deck, to pack myself away again and stow myself under the back deck.  So, so, so hard.

I’m not resisting the going.   I’m resisting the seemingly inevitable going back.

And as anyone who has lived with the stigma can tell you, it’s not having your heart expand that’s hard, it’s having your heart expand and then having it crushed once more.  Only so much of that one can tolerate.

So Happy Halloween to you.  As for me, I’ll just buy a bottle of cheap whiskey for the Kiki who lives behind this beard, and try not to cry loud enough to bother anyone enough that they try to shut me up.

The promised land is there for you, I believe this for you.  Go there.

Just don’t come back, OK?

Blam, Blam, Blam, Blam, Blam

My sister showed up after her printmaking class, wanting me to dish up some food for her. 

She chatted, and what did she chat about?  She went over the trauma & drama at work, the nuances and details that got her fired and got her back and what has happened and what needs to come next and who acted well and who acted poorly, and what people might be thinking and what people might not, and why some haven’t acted and what the ripples might be and on and on and on.

In other words, she’s right back in the sickness, swirling about in the same externalized gaming.

She’s not young, and she has a pension & 401K.  I get the reasons why there are real and pragmatic benefits to continuing to play the game, and I know that’s her choice.

It’s just hard to keep choosing to support this rancid dance, to feel banged hearing it for the fifteenth time, when nothing really changes, and can’t change unless the cycle breaks. 

But me, well, me.  It’s the adoption of that child my sister-in-law chose today, a choice I don’t feel good about but know I have no standing to speak about.  It’s my sister filling the space with her drama, my father hammering me about how people don’t understand his paper & are plotting against him, my mother never making it out of her robe & sleepshirt all day.   And it’s Halloween coming and pain and the rest.

Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam.  People do what they need to do, and I engage and support, keeping my own inner life silent, both my views and my challenges because I know they do not want to hear it, do not need to hear it, cannot hear it.  The weight drags on me.

That Robyn Smith was on Oprah again yesterday, talking about people who thought surgery would fix everything, but instead it just changed the shape of problems that had gone unaddressed.  It wasn’t genital reconstruction surgery in this case, rather gastric bypass surgery, which has left many patients alcoholic.  “Don’t say you used to know who you were and that now, after surgery, you don’t know,” she counseled.  “If you don’t know who you are now, you didn’t really know who you were then.  You just knew what your identity props were then.”

She also talked to partners about the cost of enabling and participating in someone else’s disease, and how it affected them, the stress, the loss and the denial.

Yeah, I get that part too.

Carnie Wilson said that you have to share your sorrow in order to heal, that you can’t just swallow it like you have swallowed everything else. 

I am there for people sharing sorrow. 

But who heals the healers? 

Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam.

My Breakthough

Another list post from today:

I have been watching a lot of the chat on this list about the differences we have — differences in age, in origin myth, in expression, in level of outness/closetedness and so on.

For me, the big breakthough on this was when I stopped judging others choices based on my criteria.  As soon as I kept in mind that their choices were about them and not about me, well, that turned my view.

If transgender isn’t about accepting diverse unique expressions so others will accept our unique and indvidual expression, what is it about?

Look at the diversity of women born female.  Twenty year old women most often have different interests and expressions than fifty year old women.   But even while a twenty year old needs to be immersed in the stuff she needs to be immersed in, she knows that if everything goes well for her, somewhere down the line — far down the line, it seems to her — she will be fifty year old woman and be immersed in the stuff a fifty year old woman needs to be immersed in.

Transwomen, though, often don’t see that throughline.  We are who we are, and what could ever be important to us than what we are immersed in today?   I certainly know that hasn’t proved true for me,   My needs, interests and expressions have certainly changed over the years, even within my trans expression.

One of the big discussions in the women’s community is always about the right way to be a woman.  It’s so easy to look at someone and think that she is doing it wrong, that she would do better if she did it more like we do it. 

Problem with that line of thinking, though, is that it’s her life, her expression and her choices.  You might be able to offer a little different vision, letting her see herself though different eyes, but that’s it.  You can’t change anyone else, you can only change yourself. 

Of course, this is the primary frustration in life. If people would just heal on our schedule rather than on their own, everything would be easier, so much less trouble.  And that even applies to us; if we would just damn heal faster, life would be better.  I mean, I can see what they need, so let me just help them move past it, now.

We know this is crazy, of course.  As much as we want our new child to skip the “terrible twos,” well, that’s just something she needs to do to grow up, dammnit.

What I have found is that I am much better at helping people when I don’t come from the perspective of telling them what they are doing wrong, but rather tell them where I screwed up and where I found solutions.  It’s their learning, their emergence, their change, their own unique path, but sharing experiences from the road can help. 

We don’t all come from the same place in understanding class systems, the obligations of womanhood, what is attractive, or anything else.  That can make it frustrating if we believe others are missing the simple point, screwing it up and getting it wrong.

I find, though, that if I just assume they are where they are now, and they still have work and healing to do, just as I do, then I can meet them without judgement.  If our interests are too far askew, well, we may not become fast friends, but when did you ever have to like someone to stand up for their right to make their own choices?

Yeah, sometimes I wish others would heal faster, would get it and be able to be there for me, but I also know that their time is their time.   I can’t change their process any more than I can make a baby in 4.5 months, and I also know that if I try, I’ll screw it up, maybe even slow things down.

All I need to do is affirm that their choices are right for them, that they look good and express their own beauty, not judge that those are choices that I would never make for myself.  For me, that’s the essence of being queer, affirming choices that others make that you would never make, even if those choices seem scary, baffling or just plain ugly.  As long as they come from truth, their truth will be in those choices somewhere, ready for me to find it.

Now, this is just a note about what I learned, the breakthough I had to make. 

It it means something to you, great.

But whatever, you gotta make your own choices, create your own healing, and do your own path,

That much I get, and getting it has made my life much easier.

It was a breakthough.

Listener

A correspondent wanted to know who I am.

I replied:

You want to know about me?

I’ll tell you my big secret: I listen to other people. 

I listen and find commonalities, and then try to find ways to speak the truths that appear woven throughout our narratives.

It doesn’t sound like a big thing, but the saddest thing about transpeople is just an expansion of the saddest thing about most people in this world:  they work to rationalize their own choices by separation rather than understanding their choices in a wider context by connecting.  

In other words, they don’t really listen, rather they just search for ideas, beliefs and truths that they know they agree with or know they disagree with, looking for notions that support the separations they hold which defend their own choices.   They don’t want challenge to see more clearly, they want the comfort of having their own assumptions and rationalizations affirmed.

When people are in a defensive mode, they don’t want you to hear the truth contained in their words, rather they want you to hear what they mean to say, the face they paint on themselves to face the world.   After all, for most people who lie or dissemble, the person they want to fool the most is themselves.   It’s usually much more comforting to break mirrors that reflect us in unpleasant ways rather than to face that revelation and work to get more whole, more integral, more actualized, more healthy.

I listen, even when it challenged or challenges me, and I try to find what connects us.   That’s why I am the “grad course,” because newbies who still want to find a way to separate, isolate, compartmentlize or deny their messy humanity find me either challenging or crazy, saying things that they can’t believe apply to their life.

I listen and I understand, and sometimes, when asked, I share a bit of this boiled down wisdom, knowing that it may well just be dismissed as another asshole heard from.

But that’s what I do.  And what I have done for about a decade and a half, now.

Water Damage

Killed an MP3 Player today.

I realized it was in the pocket of my fleece, but too late back to the washing machine. 

I do a lot of washing here.  Continence is not a strength of the aging.

Nobody to talk about this with, nobody to understand, nobody to be compassionate.   Just suck it up and feel the pain twisting inside.

Oh, well.  Fall back to plan W.

You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You

CHEERS to John Mahoney for pulling off an impressive change-of-pace role on ER. Best known as crotchety Martin Crane on Frasier, Mahoney sparkled as a closeted cross-dresser who clashes with his critically ill partner’s family.  The episode concluded with Mahoney in full drag, crooing a heartfelt rendition of “You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You.”  Fraiser and Niles would’ve been proud.

TV Guide, October 23-29, 2006

Sounds more like a gay man who does drag. 

Of course, Mahoney was one of the more secret gays on Fraiser — everyone knew David Hyde-Pierce was gay, but few knew that macho-playing Mahoney was.

But somehow, I liked the choice of song.

Grunting

My computer is a 400 Mhz Celeron, gifted to me by someone who was a friend, but who needed to go back into the closet.

Needless to say, often times it is slow.  I need to wait for it, wait for page files and memory swaps and all that stuff.

What that does is force me to slow down, to work slower than I can think.  And the way I respond to that friction is to start tensing up, holding my muscles tighter.  I start to grunt, if only inwardly.

This is my response to so much of my life, like when one of my parents wants to natter with the TV blasting, or I have to cook with a Judge being Judgemental coming from the TV, or a wide range of other challenging tasks.

I tense and I grunt, the very slowing down causing me pain.  I tighten up and force it, causing my head to throb and my chest to ache.  And I often end up hitting myself.

My father thinks this is a good thing.  I need to slow down and think, according to him.  He believes my failure is in speed; my profound, overwhelming and dissapointing tragic failure.

Me?  I know that I am a sprinter, not a slogger, and being slowed down is what makes me fail.

My favourite poem from age four, from memory:

Christopher Robin goes
hoppity, hoppity
hoppity
hoppity
hop.

Whenever I ask him politely to stop
He says he can’t possibily stop.

If poor little Christopher ever stopped hopping
he wouldn’t go anywhere
couldn’t go anywhere.

So Christopher Robin goes
hoppity hoppity
hoppity
hoppity
hop.

I know that stopping the flight of my mind is stopping the flight of my heart, and I know it is a way I play small and self-sabotage.

I stick in the mud, grunt and sweat, all in the cause of self-destruction.

Wilderness, No Festival.

When I look in the mirror, my gray beard lengthening, my teeth giving signals of soon giving out, my age showing around my eyes, I am reminded of the hermits of old, the ones who went into the wilderness as part of their relationship with their god.

Halloween is coming,  Halloween is a milepost for transpeople, though not always a milepost of celebration.  It may be a milepost of denial, of indulgence, of nostalgia — ah, that boy in fifth grade who got to dress as a ballerina — of experimentation, of response, of so many things.  As a celebration of alter-selves, it is potent for us, even if we choose to stay away from it, because it’s filled with amateurs, because we are real and it is false, or because we can’t be that exposed.

But from the wilderness, Halloween is slipping beyond me this year, even that one brief moment society accepts being out in the light and playing with expressing something than the normative.  I miss the planning, the preparations and the bit of hope that Halloween brings.

It is true, of course, that the notion that the Halloween festival will bring what I need has never been proven true, and even in the best case scenario, it would probably not prove true this year.  What I want from other people isn’t simple,  clear & narrowly defined, and that means that I probably won’t get it.

Still, the wilderness is the wilderness, and even with a good notebook, it is still the wildreness.

All I can hold is that my mother in the sky knows what I need, and will eventually chooose to bring me in from the cold.

But until them, it’s only Hermits for Halloween, you know?

Home Dreaming

I woke up from this dream where I had found a community that was trans-supportive and moved there, happy to be somewhere positive.

I started going around town and people would tell me what I needed to to do, what I needed to change to be happy.  All this advice was about fitting in, getting more surgery, being more like everyone else.

I eventually traced all this back to a mental health practice in town where a group of women MSWs were selling this pap, and met the man at the center of it.

He tried to convince me I was wrong, but when I was strong, steadfast and smart, he started to seethe, still smiling.

I got back to my new place and found my belongings packed up, as I was being evicted.   The trannies thought it was a good thing, too, zombies all.

I just read a post about a transperson who was around medicos and disclosed and found them to be supportive.  Maybe that’s where this is from, that mixed with my life-myth, that I am just too hip for the room.

Maybe that therapist who offered me a lobotomy for the same HMO visit fee I was paying was right.  Right, in that he knew that I couldn’t really trade awareness for community.