beneath my skin, the cut that never heals

I belong to several different trans sites, but my favorite one is the genderqeer user group from Yahoo.  Why?  Well, I dont really fit well within the transsexual world, even tho that IS what I am.  If I could, if I had no ties, if I knew I could keep the boy's love, and if TH could accept me as a man,  I would transition in a heart beat.  But that won't happen, I think TH has "evolved" as far as he's going to, and while it's not the best fitting way of life for me, and living this way has always caused me problems with depression, it is the life I chose to live.  But due to my dogged determination not to transition, I am not understood well within the transsexual world.

Within transsexual world, there is one and only one Holy Grail, to transition and "pass" 100% of the time, without any doubt in the other person's eye as they name you ma'am or sir.  I get that, and totally understand the desire, and need to "pass" perfectly, especially since the religious right, and Faux News has whipped up the believers into a frenzy of hate of all things LGBT.   Passing well could mean the difference of walking safely down the street at night, and being beaten or even killed.  As dangerous as it is to be gay, transwomen are murdered at a far far higher rate than gays are, when you figure in the vast difference in the percentage of transwomen to gays.  For the most part, transmen have it much easier, if people notice something "off" about them, the first thing that pops into their minds, is gay, not the fact that once upon a time they used to live in a woman's body.

The genderqueer group is one of people that dont really fit in anywhere.  We are a group of people on the way from one sex to another, gender firmly attached to the coming body.  Also counted are people whose gender is fluid, and so they dress their meat suit to fit the gender of the day.  Some of the younger people want to be androgynous, they dont want to reflect one sex more than another.  I know a few gay teens who are growing breasts, they feel that being some of both is the best fit for them.  This is a very, very loose community, so dilute that it really doesnt constitute as a community, only a small bolt hole, a touchstone really to make sure your not the only one who fits no mold, that you are not alone.

I've always felt like an outsider, a foreigner in a strange land, unsure of the rules of behavior.  My life has been full of facets that would cause me to feel untethered to my world.  Abuse and abandonment by my female parent.  Partial deafness as a child, which thankfully cleared up, an extreme allergy to calcium was the culprit.  Being the only kid without a dad, whose female parent was divorced, and who lived with a succession of men, and she beat them all, like she beat me. 

Add on the boy in a girl suit, and it's no wonder why I had/have problems fitting in.  Recently, I've been looking back on some of the more chaotic times from my childhood, and only now are some of them making more sense.  I only ever asked for trucks, race tracks, cars and erector sets for gift giving times.  What I got was an endless line of dolls, barbies, and any thing pink, frilly and uber girlish. 

Junior high arrived with an extremely unwelcome body modification, breasts.  Summer came around, and with it swim season, my normal pick for an acceptable suit was always a one piece, blue or anything in a darker color.  But this summer for a reason then I didnt understand, my female parent forced me, beat me into wearing a bikini.  I was mortified on many levels, that these horrid lumps could be seen by anyone, and that so much of me was visible making me feel naked in a way I hadn't ever felt before.  As if I could been seen, but not.  My flesh was on display, but somehow that flesh wasnt actually me.  Thinking back on that time period, she forced me into much more feminine clothing, allowed me to pierce my ears, something she had sworn I would never be allowed to do.  And then made me wear dangling earrings, not the wee studs I preferred. I think she was trying to make a "girl" out of me, because I did not act the least bit girly.  My favorite things to do was climb trees, play in the mud, play smear football, play dodge "ball" with cow pies, catch bugs, and ride my bike like a maniac.

This was the time when I really began to disconnect "me" from my body, and that I began a cycle of depression, and engaging in increasingly extremely risky behaviors, drugs, drinking, and sex with complete strangers, not teens, but adult men, 30 and 40 year old men. The year I spent drunk, not enough for others to really notice, but enough to take the edge off, to allow me to breathe, to allow me to find silence in a whirlwind of despair and confusion.  Because some time after puberty arrived, I sunk my "boyness" and just lived in a vague world of being me.  I never used gender as a descriptive word for myself.  Never thought of myself as a girl, lady, woman, and cringed inside when forced to do so.  Hating checking the box for female, hated having to line up with the girls, I had buried the why of my discomfort with being labeled female, even though the pain of having to do so, never went away.

I still dont look at all of me in a mirror, only bits and pieces of me get the once over.  My hair, my pants, is this shirt to wrinkly to leave the house....  Rarely ever do I look at me fully, totally and completely, and when I do so, it is always with a small momentary shock at what I'm seeing, what my body is - female.  I have become so adept at divorcing myself my my meat suit that looking in a mirror to try on new clothing is a challenge, I see a female looking back from the mirror, and seeing me as a female, seeing me in female clothing is a shock.  I quickly rip off the offending clothing, as if its that poor shirt/pants fault that the mirror is reflecting my actual flesh, not my imagined me. 

What the world sees, a female, and who I actually am, a guy, leaves me at some points oddly disconnected and at the same time, at war with myself.  I want to be whole.  I want to be a complete person, to match the inner and the outer.  How can I become whole, when it would mean losing most of whats important to me?  Why can so many other trans people just damn the torpedoes and straight on until morning, leaving their past life in ruins, in many ways not caring about the breaking of ties, but yet I cant?  Am I that weak?  I'm at war with my body and my gender, with societies view of who I am, and who I actually am, and seemly unable to shift myself into action.  I fear losing TH, that heart episode really showed me just how much I adore him, the thought of losing him is greater than my fear of roller coasters.  I fear losing our sons love and affection, of being cast out of their lives forever.  So, in light of not seeing any clear path to a way to transition and keep my loved ones close, I stay dogged in my determination not to, living a life of being at constant war within, with no peace in my life.