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Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

As always, I am composing this in a corner of the basement, home to our Dell.  The Closer is playing on the TV, the missus is snoring intermittently in the recliner facing the TV.  I find the noise distracting, but turning off the television frequently wakes her, and I want to get this done without interruption.

Since I am silently communicating near a full chair, why not steal a cinematic trope from the Eastwood files?

The Good:  Earlier this week, we finally tied up a bunch of legal stuff.  We now have wills, advanced medical directives, and a special needs trust for my eldest.  This has been nagging at us for the twenty years that we have had heirs, and it is truly a relief to have this off the table.  All grown up, right?  Yeah, sure.

The Bad:  The basement is no longer my refuge.  Our only cable connection is down here, and the missus falls asleep here every night.  The long implied, and more recently explicit, ceding of this space to me as a private haven is gone.  My resentment is growing daily.  Last week, I snapped at her about turning the TV back on while I was attempting to listen to a podcast.  Why do you get to decide that your slumber entertainment trumps my waking pastimes?  I was chapped, for sure, but the reason was a canard. 

I was actually upset about two things.  One, my sanctuary has been taken from me.  Two, next month it will one year since we shared any real intimacy.  We haven't spoken about either issue, at all.  I don't know if she is bothered about the latter.  I think she is oblivious about the former.  I almost~~almost~~broached the subject before she left for therapy last week.  I wanted to apologize for my outburst, and calmly share the real issues that were lurking beneath it.  And I couldn't do it.  Close only counts in dancing and hand grenades, and we are doing neither.

The Ugly:  My funk, my pink fog, is deepening.  I desperately want to change into a skirt and heels as I write, and that's with her in the room.  I am reaching the point where I don't care whether she sees something that she can't unsee.  This nasty bit of passive aggression would be much easier than actually having a frank talk with her, and far more destructive.  What makes me see this as a solution?  What prompts me to lash out like this, when constructive solutions are at hand?  I think I know what I need to discuss in therapy next Tuesday.

After a couple of pretty sane years, I can feel the walls closing in on me again.  I am thinking about my gender much more in the last month than I have for a great while.  It feels like I'm going back to that awful place I was in fall 2007.  I can't imagine that it could be that bad again, but it worries me anyway.  After such a long time of not pushing the envelope with my wife, over two years, I fear that I am going to feel the need to stretch Leslie out again.  My marriage won't withstand that, I believe.  I feel powerless to do anything about it.

Memory Lane Is a Slum

Earlier, I took a trip down memory lane unexpectedly.

I got a call from the missus in the afternoon.  It seems that my boy, just turned 14, had an incident at school that could be classified as bullying.  He was being actively shunned during assigned group work in science.  Maybe that doesn't sound awful, but he was distressed, and he spoke to his teacher about it after class.  Without giving her the details, he asked her if she ever felt that it wouldn't make any difference if she wasn't there.  She didn't give an enlightened response. 

When he came out to the car minutes later, he prefaced his tale by telling his mother that "I'm not suicidal, but...".

After hearing this story, my own mind spun back to dark corridors of my time in middle and high school.  I've touched on this in my earliest posts, but this was more visceral.  I just don't want to think that my boy is going to go through the same wringer that I did.  Normally, I remember only the incidents at school, the situations.  This time, I was reintroduced to the pangs of dread, the aching loneliness, the vulnerability and isolation.  Popular kids would have nothing to do with me, literally looking down their noses at me (and that's difficult when I am 6'2").  I was a homely, mumbling, slouching shell of a person.

I knew that I was different, and I was convinced that I was transparent in my differentness.  Surely, my inner weirdness must be visible to all.  How else to explain the treatment?  I have often wondered if the gender issues made me hide from the world even as I walked through it, or if my outsider status made me long to be different.  And what could be more different than being a girl?

My boy is sweet-natured, kind to people and animals, and he has the looks that I never had.  He will be a heartbreaker.  Yet, his peers insist on othering him.  He is socially awkward, though less than I was.  In short, he is vulnerable.  He wants to belong.  He wants to be appreciated for his brains and wit.  He is, largely, like his father.  He has shown no signs of having the gender issues that I have, and I truly believe that I would recognize them.  He has less guile than I did, tending toward truth-telling even to his detriment.

So, I need to talk to him about being on the outside.  Without going into the "whys", I will tell him about my own experience.  And I will let him know that he can ask me anything, tell me anything, and be confident that I will still love him.  He needs someone that understands his situation, and I have to be that someone.

Pro(pecia)s and Cons

A new follower sent me an email last week, and included a question that I thought deserved a broader airing.  Lucky you!  She was interested in the sort of results I was getting from taking Propecia (finasteride).

I have been on the drug for a year and a half now, roughly.  I cannot see that it has produced a single new hair on my head.  Maybe it has slowed the progress of my forehead.  Maybe.  My forehead believes in manifest destiny, and won't rest until it reaches the promised land at the crown of my head.  My scalp is plainly visible through my wispy locks.  If that were my only goal in taking the drug, I would drop it.

I see positive side effects in other areas.  My half-calf barely needs maintenance anymore.  Perhaps the credit for that should go to the regular beatings by the epilator, but I think the drug may be reducing the growth there.  Hard to know, but I like having a follicle-free zone south of my neck.

Of course, finasteride is also used as part of the hormone cocktail given to transwomen.  It is an androgen blocker, which I suppose is why it is used for hair growth.  Blocking androgens was really my ulterior motive in getting the prescription to start with.  My hair was too far gone for any realistic hope of revival.  Reducing the testosterone coursing through my veins was a very attractive side effect, and I think that has been accomplished.

I have written several times that my gender dysphoria has been less of a problem over the last year or so.  I keep expecting to be gobsmacked, but it has remained quite mild.  Only recently did I realize that this emotional leveling corresponds to my intake of Propecia.  I think that reducing the toxic T in my system has allowed me a measure of feminine feeling that my body no longer recognizes as the enemy.  Two thumbs up.

(Warning: Euphemistic single-entendres ahead!)  What about the bedroom, you ask?  The Senator does not have the same spontaneity that he had previously, and for that, I am appreciative.  He has not been invited onto the dance floor by a partner since last October, so it would be difficult to say if he can still do the mystery dance all the way to the coda.  He is still called upon to perform his one-man show from time to time, and he still hits his marks and knows his lines.  This is quite enough for me to support his reelection efforts.

Elixir

The pink fog comes on little kitten heels.*

As has become the norm, it snuck up on me again.  I don't even realize that it's there until I, um, notice it.  That my thoughts have been lingering continually on a very narrow area, and how very lonely I am feeling.  It's sneaky that way.  Like cooking a lobster: start with a cold pot of water, and it doesn't even know that the end is near.

The mini-crisis worked itself out by attending my monthly meeting, just the elixir that I have come to count on.  Our guest speaker was my therapist, and she had prepared a presentation this time around.  Previous times, she had moderated Q&A sessions, which were great, but this was more engaging for the group as a whole.  She has taught Sexual Development at the university, and this played out like a good interactive lecture. 

The company of my friends broke the spell of my dysphoria.  They have problems, too, and that pulls me out of my own self-pitying habit.  My issues are different, but are certainly no worse than many others.  It's a nice little reality check.  Zen and the art of motor-psyche maintenance.

5am and off to bed.

* (apologies to Carl Sandburg)

Clever Title Eludes Veteran Blogger

Odds, ends, out-takes, mis-takes:

• I am off and running, at least a little.  I did my first walk/run a week ago.  I then twisted my ankle the next day mowing, so the follow-up was delayed a bit.  Friday night I went again, and I was pleased to find it a little easier, perhaps because I was pacing myself better.  Just last night, I went a third time, this time joined by the missus.  She is in better shape than me, but running is not something she ever ventured into, worried about her knees.  It went well.  I find myself looking forward to my next run, thinking about it often.

• Our June meeting was a Friends and Family Potluck, encouraging our members to bring along the people that support them.  I invited my sister-in-law.  She had to send her regrets a few hours before it, as she was moving, and her help was only available at that time.  I also invited the missus, but she kind of blew it off.  I didn't expect anything else, but wanted to be able to say that she had been asked, in the event that her sister did attend and mentioned it to her.  Maybe we'll actually cross that bridge in the future.

• Both my daughters attended the school prom in May.  My wife was helping my middle child with her makeup that evening.  Near the end, my wife asked for our daughter's mascara.  She said that she had none, and had never worn it.  This sent my wife on a mad scramble for a tube, as she seldom uses it either.  (She also knows that one should not share a tube.)  As my wife was searching beneath her bathroom sink, I went off to my cache of cosmetics.  As I anticipated, I had several.  I came back up to wife, handed one to her, and whispered, "Unopened, never used."  She took it from me and used it, but I think she was a bit uncomfortable that I had the ready solution.

• We have been doing a massive cleanout of our bedroom for a few weeks.  The missus has filled seven huge garbage bags with (mostly) her clothes, to be carted off to the Goodwill.  We had to deal with some of my feminine things in the closet, mostly heels and hosiery and handbags.  She questioned the immense quantity of pantyhose I had on hand, but otherwise she was able to detach emotionally and deal with things without judging.  It was very nice to be matter-of-fact about such things without reprisal.

That's all that comes to mind tonight.  Thank you for persevering.

Storm Clouds

Take cover!  Metaphor coming!

My meeting a couple Saturdays ago pulled me out of my funk very nicely, if temporarily.  I felt pretty normal for the better part of a week, and I got plaudits for my handling of Mother's Day activities.  But now it's sneaking back in around the edges.

During hurricane season, storms form along the west coast of Africa.  They travel slowly across the Atlantic, building strength, taking shape.  Some never become much of anything, losing steam, veering off into the North Atlantic to die.  Others, though, thrive in the warm waters, soaking up water and thermal energy, and then slam into nice towns like Wilmington, North Carolina, or Fort Pierce, Florida.  They wreak havoc.  The whole east coast watches the weather updates obsessively, knowing this could be the one that takes out their town.

This is my hurricane season.  I get periodic inklings, I track their progress, I hope this one will pass.  I see the ocean swells and tidal surges, and wonder if this is the one that makes landfall.  The storm a couple weeks ago came close, but only skirted the coast.  I feel another one coming now, and I am on high alert.

When I started writing this blog, gender thoughts were a constant companion.  I thought of little else, and I had to write to release the pressure.  That pressure has been absent for a couple years, and I really believed that it might be over.  Nope, I can feel it building in me again.  This post is a relative rarity now, one that I felt I needed to get out.

Honestly, I don't want to be in this situation again.  The first time around, it nearly killed me.  The unrelenting urge to change, the dysphoria, the terrible drive to take risks, all that stuff made me miserable, largely because I felt powerless to follow through fully and in a healthy way.

I want a waist.  I want curves. 
I want the pink fog to dissipate.
I want bare skin, from my cheekbones to my toes.   
I want a life that I could celebrate.

I want to write passionately about something
Without it being a complaint.

The Great Pretender

Feeling a bit lost at the moment.  No idea what I want to write, or how to organize the thoughts, but I will try to make some sense, for myself and for you, dear reader.

I'm not in a terrible way, but I do feel it building in me.  There's a melancholy prevailing that has been known to turn into something worse in days of yore.  After a very quiet winter on the depression and dysphoria front, I find myself being visited frequently by both.  Neither are extreme, as I said, but I am unaccustomed to their presence.  I suppose I have gotten spoiled over the last year or so, enough that I thought maybe I had reached a plateau that would be adequate to my needs, and those of my marriage.  Au contraire, mon cheri.

I am in half-calf mode now, epilating halfway to the knee until October rolls around again.   It barely registers as aiding my condition, but no-calf would be far worse, I guess.  My wife and I continue to go through the motions, being parents and roommates pretty successfully, really, but the lack of intimacy is wearing on me, and I don't see it changing.

I have been in denial about a lot of things, things that have been issues for as long as I have been writing on this blog.  I had myself convinced that the worst had passed, but I am no longer certain of that.  The blinders have been slipping off slowly, but the signs have been there all along.  I have been eating junk near constantly at work, in part to stay awake due to the ridiculous sleep habits I have embraced for far too long.  I sense that I am taking years off my life, but I feel powerless to change it.

My brother ran his first marathon last weekend.  I've never run further than a tenth of a mile, but the idea of running holds some appeal for me, at least until I actually try it.  I do wonder when I would have the time to run.  I cannot sacrifice any more sleep, and working less isn't an option either, so it would seem that the excessive computer time should take the hit.  I find it hard to imagine any serious reduction there, but it is really the only place that is flexible.  I dunno, my resolve to change will have to strengthen considerably, but the notion is getting batted around in the back of my head.  I hope it can survive the beating.

Hmmm...more coherent than I expected.