Category: Personal

Dear Editors: I Am Not My Transition!

I’ve heard back from more than one editor, and a couple of agents as well, that a story about my childhood that I’ve been sending around is “just a chapter” because it includes a scene of me directly trying to deal with my gender issues: they all seem to want to make the whole 6,000 word story I’ve submitted about that one page-long scene. I don’t have the opportunity to explain that the story I’ve sent them doesn’t really have anything to do with “transition” per sé, because cover letters need to be brief and professional. If I did take the space to try to explain this, it would feel like I’m apologizing for my work if I were to drill down into aspects of my story in a preface that only the editor will ever see. A story needs to stand on its own.

So I’m writing this post.

I’ve been told to just leave that part of the story out, but that seems just as unreasonable. Physically, it would be possible to do that, and while that would certainly bypass the issue of my “problematic” identity, to leave that important part of myself out of my story would feel like I’m retreating into the closet that I’ve fought so hard not to be trapped in. From my point of view, the choice I’m being presented with is either to leave out this important aspect of who I am or focus my story on the expected trope of transition.

Imagine requiring a story about a black kid to include some kind of resolution to the “problem” of their blackness, or else leave that out of the story entirely. Such an expectation from an editor would immediately brand them as racist. And yet, any time I have heard an actual critique of the piece I’m discussing, this is what I hear back.

I’m trans every day. Getting my hormone prescription was only one day, one story. There have been so many stories in my life: I was trans in all of them. My being trans is just a trait, not my whole identity. I am not my transition. That’s not the only story I have to tell. Surprisingly, the vast majority of what’s happened in the time I’ve been walking the Earth has nothing to do with a particular course of medical treatment.

I refuse to accept that any memoir I write needs to either deny who I am or be about the gatekeepers who OK’ed my medical transition. I am grateful to them, but at least one of these people has had me sign an NDA. They don’t want the publicity, and I’m OK with that.

This particular memoir piece is a story about a kid who is being bullied. The fact that the main character is trans is important, but not central, and the resolution to the story is not going to come from waiting the thirty seven years it took me to get my medical transition started: the situation is much more immediate than that, so the resolution must be, too. That resolution must be about being bullied and how the central character, who happens to be trans, deals with it.

By the logic of these literary gatekeepers, no story can be self-contained, because there is always some central issue in a person’s life that won’t resolve into a nice little package with a ribbon and a bow on it. Requiring a self-contained solution to such a global problem as gender incongruence is unreasonable. Conversely, you can live with such an unresolved issue for a very long time, while many other things happen. I can tell you that this is so from personal experience.

Unfortunately, it’s been a major obstacle to getting my work published. It’s quite frustrating.

Winter Blues

You may have noticed that last week’s winter haikus were downers, for the most part. It’s not surprising, if you know me. The sadness that comes with the lack of light and heat, the bunker-hunkered-down-ness of this time of year spills over into every aspect of my life. I avoid leaving the house while at the same time feeling trapped inside. I wake up in the dark, and by the time I’m done with work for the day, it’s already dark out again. I work in an office with no natural light, so I see daylight generally for an hour on my commute on weekdays. Such is life in the north.

I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about things I can’t do anything about. I brood during the day. I tend to do this anyway, but especially in the dark months, I subject myself to scorchingly hateful self-talk. I’ve had therapists tell me I do this as a means of protection: if I say these things to myself first, I pre-empt anyone else hurting me by saying them.

I don’t know why I do this more at this time of year. But this year is almost as bad as two years ago, which was a very hard year for me, and has the potential to be worse. But it could also be better. There is a faint glimmer of promise, but the gloom in the world, the gloom in my soul, the gloom outside my window… they are weighing me down.

–

My mom had a health scare yesterday. She’s 84 and has Alzheimer’s disease. Her physical health is actually pretty good for someone her age. She has sciatica and her skin is brittle. But she still has all of her teeth, is mobile and she’s up for adventures. My brother Michael is her caretaker. They own a house together in a small southwestern city.

Today she was vomiting and she fell twice. My brother took her to the emergency room. It was busy and it took them a while to get to her. In the meantime, she vomited some more. They did some diagnostic tests and found that she was super-dehydrated. I think that the treatment she is having to undergo is probably not the most pleasant thing she’s ever had to deal with, but I think she’s going to be OK for now.

But I need to understand that in the not-too-distant future, it won’t be. My brother is with her, witnessing her precipitous decline, but I can’t be. My life is 2500 miles away. And damn right, I feel guilty.

–

I’ve been having these short bouts of crushing depression. They feel sort of… chemical. I’m down, I mean really down, for a predictable three or four hours, and then gradually I come out of it. I had one of my anvil-around-neck phases earlier this week .When I came out of it, it was sudden, like snapping my fingers and suddenly my mood was about 50% better. It was weird. But these down times are intense. I don’t know what causes them.

I wear these estradiol patches — they’re always a pain, these frigging things. They don’t breathe, so my sweat gets trapped under them and my skin prunes up and the itching drives me crazy. I’ve been experimenting with trying different spots and today when I applied new patches, I think I may have found a better spot than the others I’ve tried. My mood was really good in some ways, and I’ve felt connected to what’s going on around me in a way that I haven’t for a while. I attribute this to fresh patches. I still hate the constant demanding itching, but at least I know I’m getting some value out of them. I am going to ask my doc if there’s some other form of estradiol I can take.

–

From a larger perspective, I am watching the world struggle with authoritarianism and delusion, nationalism and race hatred. It feels like we’ve all gone crazy. Everybody is ideologically aligned, and they don’t trust anyone who doesn’t agree with them, and people are trying to force their will on each other concerning what’s “right.” I feel like I’m watching humanity try to throw itself off a cliff.

All of this… stuff, and other things too that I haven’t gone into here hover in and around my head all of the time. Worry and self-hatred, trapped in darkness… that’s what my emotional state is right now. I can’t wait for the long days and warm weather to return. I feel so much better when it’s nice out.