Blind

I am moving to my own apartment soon so I thought I'd write something now, I won't have an internet connection for a while. This is something I've spoken with my therapist about, in our last session actually. I realized several days ago something that people do and I used to do but no longer do it. It's hard for me to explain, even in person to my therapist, so I imagine I will have some trouble explaining it here.

When people interact with each other they place attributes on the other person that qualifies that person as 'them'. You see a friend, let's say Mary is her name, and she's painting her nails or something. You see Mary doing this and if she does it often, you attach something like, "Mary likes to take care of her nails." If she doesn't you may think "Hmm, why is she doing that?" because you've already decided she doesn't normally. A host of assumptions go with it, and I don't mean the bad, insulting assumptions, but you create a little part of Mary based on the fact she takes care of her nails regularly. Now I know I'm being very specific and pretty much too vague, but these attributes we place on people as we get to know them consists of everything about them that we see. How they act, what they say, how they react to things. And ultimately you give that person your version of their identity. you define them through all of these things, no differently then when you hear the word 'vanilla' you can instantly summon up the smell, taste, color, etc. When you hear the name 'Mary' you can summon up the many things that define her, according to you. It may or may not coincide with what they have identified themselves as, and they may even use what you think of them to help see who they are.

I don't do this. "Mary" is a different person every time I talk to her. Just because something was done or said yesterday doesn't mean I'll attach that to her today. Mostly I forget things shortly after they happen, certainly within a day. Negative things tend to stay with me, and that's probably another talk waiting to happen. General, 'what you do' sort of things do not stick with me, and compliments given to me don't even register. I never talk to a person another time after receiving a compliment and think to myself "Oh this person thinks I'm pretty, or funny, or whatever" That thought you had of me that brought on the compliment just as well have never happened because I have forgotten about it.

I used to do this, when I was younger. It is pretty much the default human way of interacting. I have gone all of my adult life thinking I had figured something out that others had not. My way of thinking about people does seem to lead to less judgments in general. I think it is even a part of me that people like me for, even if they don't know what it is. I get along well with people much older or younger then me because I don't 'label' them with their age, so to speak, and for example.

It was talking it out with my therapist that made it dawn on me the reality of what this comes from. I don't attach things to people to create an identity for them because I don't have one for myself. I have said several times before, usually in depression, that i don't know who I am. I said these words to my therapist this day, "I guess ultimately this all comes down to me not knowing who I am." and at that very instant I felt it for the first time. I've spent all of my life struggling with my identity, trying to learn who I am. I ended up telling my life struggle to her that day and seeing it all laid out like it was, during this talk of me trying to understand myself, I finally started to see it.

I didn't even seen what it was I was describing, most of it I have mentioned here before. My depression in grade nine and the sexual exploration that started with it, the lack of transgender vocabulary in my life at the time, seeing transgender people on talk shows like Jerry Springer, to finding a small amount of very vague information on transgender people in my late teens and early twenties. I had not looked back on these things as any way defining of who I am, they were always just something I did, its meaning and closeness to my identity totally lost to me.

I guess intellectually I seen it, but emotionally I didn't feel it, or see it as part of me. When I was done telling my therapist about this story she felt for me, seen it for what it was, and thankfully pointed it out to me. I could have cried if she didn't keep asking me questions that took my mind off of what I was feeling. There was one moment in particular in my life that I have remembered and told her about that day that should have screamed at me who I was. I had met people online, on a computer game and had been talking with one couple, the female in particular about my sexuality. I mentioned how I wanted to be a woman, but neither of them seemed to quite take it seriously. One day when I was talking to her I said something about having wide hips or that they were wider then my waist. I was bawling while typing out to her, "That means I'm a girl, right?" Her answer was meaningless, deflective, I don't even remember what it was. But the important part, the part where I'm crying, looking for some affirmation also didn't sink in.

How could I not see these things in my life, things that I had done completely on my own, as part of me? The constant exploring I have done to find myself seeming to me as something everyone did. I guess it is somewhat true, people explore to find themselves, but where I was looking should have made things obvious to me. I guess this is where the real struggle of being transgender is. So much about me was violently disagreeing with the desires I always had. How people treated me, like a boy, the names or poking fun that would come from acting, trying or doing feminine things taking a distant second to what my own mind was doing to me. Whatever the reason I forced myself to not see my budding sexuality, my wants and desires, my craving to be feminine and the constant, daily, hourly never ending inner war for what it all was pointing me to.

And that is how I created this "non-identity" for myself, and how I started placing that on others. I would want to do, or have, something feminine and I would give myself as many reasons possible on how any person would want that. The biggest reason I would give myself is, "Just because I want this, doesn't describe, or determine who I am."

That, I'm starting to slowly see, is my biggest inner lie.

Even the words on this entire blog don't feel to me as "me". Everything I write here, to me, is just what I'm feeling at the time, or what I have done in the past and what I feel about that. None of it seemed to me as describing "me" or defining who I was, how I learned about myself, and who I am,  but if there was ever any description of who I am, of how I feel, of the woman inside me and her struggle to get out, it is in this blog. I find myself wanting (and I will right after this post) to go back and read everything I have said and finally take it all in as who I am.

I can see how you, the reader, could read this and think it is something I made up. What you need to understand is how desensitized I made myself TO myself. Nothing I did carried weight to me, nothing seemed important. I made myself feel completely unjudged by myself, even though that was what I was doing on a daily basis. The result is making myself feel unjudged by the people around me, which is somewhat freeing, but ultimately, it seems, self destructive. It mattered little to me who I said what to, be it a compliment or my anger lashing out. One of those is pleasant the other is scary, as you can imagine. I didn't bother myself with worrying about how others seen me. I turned this philosophy outward as well, to the people in my life, which again, sounds close to sagely brilliant, but ultimately has made it impossible to make a connection with people.

I have no closing, definitive statement to make here. I don't know how I will overcome this. I guess time and constant practice will be what it takes because it hasn't been instant. Now that I see, intellectually, what I have done to myself, and I have had a taste of feeling it, it hasn't rushed to purge itself. I have myself trained to think this way, and I will need time to unlearn what I have done to myself. All I can really say is I hope it doesn't take me another ten years to unlearn this part of me, because I feel once I do, I'll start to really see me as who I am.