"…but I’m a Sister too." a short poem

"…but I’m a Sister too."

I sit in silence on the pew watching those who come and go

I see the families, moms and dads, the kids all running to and fro

I watch the ladies who are talking just outside the chapel doors

I see young men in shirts and ties all looking like they’re fairly bored.

But watching them I barely see, a man comes up to talk to me.

He says my name, extends his hand, and shakes mine firmly like a man

He tells me how he’s doing and he asks what in my life is new

I just say something trite and try to keep from looking at my shoes.

He smiles and pats me on the back to show me that he really cares

But I can’t help but feel the situation I’m in isn’t fair.

It’s not his fault he only sees, the shirt and tie that define me

But I wish that he only knew, he’s talking to a Sister too.

After church I see the same two women talking in the hall.

Apparently there is a charity drive at the local mall.

I want to know more so I ask if it’s okay if I attend?

They smile politely and they say this isn’t something that’s for men.

It’s hard hold back how I feel, I just cannot believe its real

But I wish that they only knew, they’re talking to a Sister too.

Kate Marsh

My Watershed Moment

I wrote this for an LDS list I am on and thought I'd post it here.  I've had a more recent watershed moment in 2012, but I thought those who read my blog would appreciate this tale from my past.

** Warning – the following may contains triggers for some people **

I was sitting on the floor in my apartment on what I believe was a Saturday morning in August in Texas in the year 2000. I was 20 years old, and contemplating my life, what it meant, why it mattered, and if it should continue.  This was my watershed moment.

…Two years before my watershed moment, I joined the church.  I decided to postpone my plans to transition to being a female when I turned 18 and try to see if God could help me with my dysphoria through His church.  I also wanted to pursue a relationship with the only girl I ever loved.  The same girl who introduced me to the church eight months earlier.  The same girl I saw a future for an eternal family with.

…One year before my watershed moment, I saved over twelve thousand dollars toward a mission.  My relationship with the girl was still going strong and with it the hope for a future together, but my dysphoria had not gone away and it was becoming more and more distracting in my life.  I knew I had to consult with the bishop about it before I put in my papers to serve a mission.

…Six months before my watershed moment, I learned that a mission might be difficult if not impossible considering my dysphoria.  Members who knew I should have already put in my papers were wondering why I hadn’t left yet.  I’m sure they assumed I had issues with worthiness.  I bore the intense shame of trying to explain to others, without really telling them, why I couldn’t go on a mission.  During the same period, my parents lost the home they were renting on very short notice, so they had to borrow all the money I had saved for my mission to get a downpayment on another home.

…Five months before my watershed moment, I lost the girl I loved so much – the last thing holding my life together was her, and she wanted to break up.  What the tipping point was, I’m not sure, but I’m sure she felt frustration over the fact I wasn’t on a mission yet.  Added to that was a young man she met in college who had written me a letter to me previously stating the Spirit had revealed to him that he would marry the girl who meant so much to my future as a male.  He could not have known what she meant to me when he wrote that,  he couldn’t have known it when he took her from me, but she was the last thread keeping my hope alive for a future without dysphoria.

…Three months before my watershed moment, I was acting on my plan to transition.  I found a roommate from another city who was also transitioning who would move into my new apartment with me.  Just before she moved in, some well meaning friends of mine from the church staged an intervention to stop me from making what they considered a grave mistake.  On their advice I cancelled plans for my trans roommate to move in and instead, one of my church friends moved in with me to help offset bills and to help me endure to the end.

...Two months before my watershed moment, my dysphoria was so bad, I lived each day in constant escape, and depression ruled my life.  I could barely motivate myself to go to work and when I did go, I was often several hours late.  The friend who moved in with me, could no longer handle my continuous depression and had to move out.  The other friend kept in contact as a way to help prevent me from transitioning.

…Four weeks before my watershed moment, I had been fired from my most recent job, the third in a series of lost jobs.  I shut everyone out, it was all I could do to hold on.  Every day I left my home, I was triggered beyond my ability to cope so I stayed inside all day.

…Two weeks before my watershed moment, I stopped paying my electric bill because I ran out of money.  The Texas summer was raging, and temperatures in my apartment would swell to the 90s, but I was unable to help myself.  I received notice my next rent payment was due, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I lost my home too.

…The night before my watershed moment, I found myself staring at a bottle of pills.  I didn’t see any way out.  The dysphoria was just too crippling.  No one could see who I really was.  Those who I told only thought of me as going through a phase, having an addiction, a paraphillia, or worse.  There was no world that existed where I could be accepted for who I was.  I couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t keep my friendships, couldn’t serve a mission for my church, lost the best relationship I ever had, and worst of all, I couldn’t tell anyone.  The shame of it all was overwhelming, so I stared at that pill bottle for what must have been hours.  The late night passed into morning.

As I sat there that morning, on my floor, near the pill bottle, in my hot apartment, I considered all these things when I was surprised by a knock on my door.  I didn’t have the motivation to answer it – probably my landlord anyway.  But when I heard my mother’s voice calling out for me, I told her to come in.

It was there, on that floor, in a fit of tears and pain that I came out to her.  She didn’t tell me I was wrong for how I felt.  She didn’t tell me I was a sinner.  She didn’t try to convince me of what I needed or how I should handle my problems.  She didn't make me feel any shame.  She just loved me.  She just listened.  And when I was done pouring my heart out to her…

She told me she always knew.  She told me I could come home.  She named me Kate.

The Next Stage

I have some exciting news to share, but at the same time I have been Reluctant to share it, but the effect of the news has been immediate and significant on my life.

My spouse discovered a transperson in my local community who is married, is a baptist pastor, who is in their 60s and who is successfully managing their GD. This person reached a compromise with her wife to live as make at work and with family, but she coul be female the rest of the time.

I know this person because she is a big part of the local trans activism groups and champions TDOR each year in November. I've heard some trans people call her a "cross dresser" because we doesn't live full time but I disagree.

My spouse believe this compromise could work for us.

It's strange that she is actually the one who presented this idea but I'm certainly all for trying it out.  There have been some unexpected benefits though I wanted to share.

My attitude has improved dramatically. I don't feel so trapped anymore. It almost feels like I was told I can transition but just be male for my family. In other words I can be myself, but I still need to fulfill my male roles. It's actually comforting. One of the effects is that I haven't been shrinking as much from dysphoria when people call me "dad" or "father". Instead I kind of own the titles now. It's like I'm playing a role where that title is appropriate but in the end it's just a role, like a job. It doesn't define me, it's just something I do.

This ability I'm gaining to separate my male role from my female life is making me interested in gender specific things again believing they will be less triggering and has renewed my interest in attending church. I still have serious questions to have answered but at least going doesn't seem like it will be as debilitating as it once was.

Why is this working??? Is it permanent or some kind of weird high I'm on?  I'm not sure but ill take advantage of it while it does.

I haven't even presented as female yet, but just t knowledge that I can when i want is somehow very relieving.

Regret

Last night my mind wandered to a friend of mine, a very dear friend whom I loved with all my heart.  She and I were sisters and struggled through the same trials.  I met her when I was 19 when she was just 21.  She met me through an online trans message board when both of us were beginning transition.   She needed a place to stay for the night so she could attend her therapy appointment in Dallas.  She herself lived in southern Oklahoma about 3 hours north so an overnight stay would relieve her of a lot of driving.

It wasn't long before we both found ourselves in Tulsa together.  This wasn't planned and in fact happened quite accidentally, but we were delighted to find one another.  We were two peas in a pod.  We learned nearly everything together.  We both went to college and had jobs as we transitioned, both commiserated when times were tough, and both chased boys and went to clubs together.  We went through our highest highs and lowest lows together, and on the fateful night when my life was threatened, she was there to rescue me.

Of all of the trans people I ever met, she was the only one I found that was anything like me.  At first we both attended trans community meetings, but the constant looks at us like we were two pieces of meat and indirect hostility toward the two "young ones" forced her away from them.  I continued to attend, fascinated that people so different from myself and my friend, were also trans.

In time, I made my choice to de-transition despite her vehement objections while she stayed the course.  Through the years we kept in contact.  She had SRS and a BA, and I got super active in church.  We both found our careers about the same time, and both married around the same time too.  She adopted children, became a mother and had a family with her husband a few years after they married.  That is when we lost contact.

We were so similar, yet how different our lives had become.  She eventually achieved all I ever wanted while I made what I thought were the right choices for my eternity.

I was thinking of her, and the thoughts dredged up feelings, powerful feelings, and very old feelings of deep abiding regret.  Last night I wept bitterly trying to bury my face in my pillow so as not to alarm or wake my sleeping spouse.  I wept that I had lost touch with so dear a friend.  I wept because I made the choice so long ago to end my transition and thought of the life I wanted and the life I could have had.   I wept that I stopped transition so I could have a temple marriage and now would never have one.  I wept for believing GID was a beatable mental illness only to learn it never was.  I wept that I stopped my transition so I could find another path only to have that path (hormones) ripped away from me.  I wept remembering my mother’s admonition that I may be making a mistake as she believed I would have been much happier had I remained female.  I wept because, despite all the advice that had been offered to me regarding my dysphoria, I consistently made choices believing myself to be the exception, that I would somehow be saved from the pain.  I wept that I married believing I could beat this, and in doing so inadvertently trapped an unaware soul in the hell that has been my fight with my dysphoria.  I wept that I had a child, as male, and would never have my greatest dream, to be a mother.

But most of all I wept for something I could never have.  Something none of us, trans or not, can ever have.  I wept because I wanted “the past.”

I cannot have the past, nor can pining for it and feeling regret ever bring it back.  I began to think about suicide in my grief for the first time in years last night.  I realized though, that giving up my future was not worth the pain from my past.

What I can have is the future.  What will I do to make sure my future is brighter than my past?  What will I do to ensure that 10 years from now, I am not looking back at this day with regret for the choices I made or didn’t make?

I don’t know the answer, but I know regret is a powerful thing and it can motivate us to change our futures or it can mire us in bitterness about the past.  I choose to have a better future.  I will not let my lost opportunities cost me potential future happiness.

I’d be lying though if I said I’m not in pain.  My feelings are powerful, and I fear for the future and what it holds and who I might hurt along the way (myself included).

Needing prayers right now,
Kate

New Understandings and a New Start

I realize I am happiest when I am myself and I've felt like myself again for a few days for the first time in a while.  Numbing myself to the pain and shame has only numbed me from being the person I love to be.  I'm so grateful for some wonderful friends who have texted me and talked to me on the phone from a mailing list I adore.  I hope they know that I love them very much.

I used to associate my extremely caring and kind side with my female side.  I made primitive associations that I couldn't be that way and male at the same time (very sexist I know), however I've realized that it is when I am true to myself (which self happens to be associated with being female) that my true nature, the very caring and kind part, comes out.  It isn't about "being a girl" that makes me want to hug the world, it is about "being myself" and believing I am okay.

I feel like the easiest explanation and one that helps me the most is to identify myself as a person with an intersexed condition.  I have a biologically male body and I most likely have a biologically female brain (or at least female in the sexually dimorphic areas).  I say "most likely" because I've never had my brain physically checked and likely won't in this lifetime, but if the research is to be believed concerning my condition, it is very likely my brain is female.

So what do I do about it?  I'll own it.  I won't just come out to people like in the past basically saying, "By the way, before you think you like me, I need you to know this terrible problem I have."  That was a mistake, and though I've been out, I've still been treating it as a shameful part of me that made me unworthy of love.

I'm going to be me and not be ashamed of it.  I won't just "admit" that I'm trans to others so they can get their hostilities out of the way up front, I'll own it, love myself for my differences, believe that they add to my character, and be able to more fully love those around me.  This will in turn encourage them to love me back for being myself.

I had a long talk with my spouse tonight about this new understanding and she believes I am on to something with all of this.  She says I haven't been the me she loved for a long time, and I believe it is because I have been shutting myself down (numbing myself) to deal with the pain of the dysphoria.  Well no more.
I'm Kate, I was born with a male body, but there is nothing wrong with me.

Kate

My Favorite Escape

I used to think that escaping was counter productive, that if there was a problem in your life, escaping only exacerbated it.  Due to this, I stopped everything that I was using as an escape on November 12th.  Previous to that date, I was escaping constantly.  I was so afraid to confront the reality of my situation that I would try to lose myself every waking moment in a game, TV show, or excessive eating.  On November 12th, I decided I had escaped enough and faced my fears and problems.  It wasn't easy, there was a ton of emotional upheaval, and it caused (inevitable) problems in my relationship with my partner.  It has been several months since then and while I have not been perfect, I've been consistently taking steps to solve the problems posed by my creeping gender dysphoria (as I've chronicled in this blog).

So I used to think that escaping was counter productive, that if there was a problem in your life, escaping only exacerbated it.  I wasn't wholly off to be honest, but I have since refined my view.  Once you have a plan in place, once you are taking the necessary steps to actually DEAL with the problems in your life, it is okay to take the edge off with a little escape so long as it doesn't set you backwards toward your goals.

I began playing my favorite video game again, League of Legends (LoL), a few months ago once I gave myself permission to engage in escaping again.  I made rules though - in order to be allowed to play, I had to make sure I was doing everything else I needed to be doing and LoL wasn't distracting me from my ultimate goals.  I realized however that I WAS going backwards. In the game, I often play online with a team of people, a team that only knows me as male, only knows my male voice when we coordinate via VoIP   I am aware that currently I must be male in real life, but why shouldn't I be able to be myself online?  I already took steps to change my whole online presence to Just Kate, but hadn't on my favorite game?  I punish myself and potentially provoke additional dysphoria?

I created a thread on the official forums explaining that I was transgendered and was looking for team to play with on VoIP who would be accepting.  I got several negative posts, including "kill yourself" etc, but when I got home that night I had nearly 25 new friend requests who wanted to play with me for being me.  Surprisingly, only three of them were other trans people.  The rest were cis people who were supportive.  I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.

Now, when I get online to play, I get to play exclusively with accepting and supportive people.  It has become one of the most positive environments I've experienced.  I am still working on my goals, but if I need a break from the dysphoria, I have the perfect place to unwind.

Moral:  Escaping is bad if you aren't actively trying to fix the source of your problems.  If you are doing what you can, escaping can be a great relief from the stresses caused by the problems you are actively trying to fix.

Transition Back on the Table

Last night I had a very bad dream.  I dreamed that my (yet unborn) baby died as an infant.  I woke from the dream feeling very emotional about it.  I was glad it wasn't real, but it was so frightening. 

I got to work and realized that my county was under a Tornado Watch, and I thought of my fearless partner.  She would be getting off work about the same time as the storms would be forming and getting bad.  Still thinking of my future child, I imagined my partner being as worry free as she usually is, and going home only to be caught in the storm and die along with our unborn child.  It was a horrible thought.

I met her for lunch and told her I didn't want her to go home if the weather was bad, just to stay at work until it passed.  I told her it wasn't just about her anymore, that I couldn't lose her and my child together.  She said she'd be careful of the weather situation.  She then laughed and said, well if I died, at least you'd get a lot of money.

I started to tear up thinking about losing her, but my next thought surprised me.   I realized that if the worst should happen, and I should lose her in such a way, I feel like I would have lost my whole life.  I realized I would, without hesitation, sell my house, schedule my FFS and SRS, move to a new city, and start a new life.  I cannot believe I am saying this, but I realize that I truly would do it.

The implications are frightening.  Is my partner really the only thing keeping me living as male?  So what does that mean?  Being that this feeling is so strong, does it mean it will eventually take me over?  Does it mean I will end up resenting her or leaving her as so many have warned me I would?   I certainly hope not, but I wonder how much of my dreams I am sacrificing to remain with her.

For a long time I thought that even if my partner left me, I'd still never transition, that that ship had sailed.  I realized today that isn't the case anymore - that I've changed.

I feel some sense of dread about it and it has made me redouble my efforts to find a way to learn to live with this condition so it does not consume me and my family.  I love my partner, and want to grow old with her.  I just wish I could do so as my whole self.