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From permatemp of gender to full-time.
Nov. 27th, 2010 02:38 pmAround two years ago a dear friend told me, "you're the permatemp of gender" as a fantastic way of describing a position I found frustrating. I found it quite appropriate and remembered it, repeating it to her in a recent conversation. She didn't recall it but admitted it was the sort of thing she would say.
I've realized this fact has been the source of much frustration. Not long ago I wondered, "is transition to be my reward for a life well lived." It's a phrase borrowed from my previous employer (a Jesuit institution of higher education and about ordination in the Jesuit order) modified by my frustration with how my transition has progressed. Back story for the new(er) followers is at the bottom, but a quick summary is: dealing with gatekeepers who insist they aren't. I don't think it too much an over-reaction on my part that when (supposed/so-called) professionals claim to me that "gatekeepers don't exist" I immediately expect them to be some form of gatekeeper. That claim has been stated by both my therapist and endo, both of whom went on to demonstrate that they have gatekeeper natures.
Late this summer I began taking a voice and communication class/group that's offered by UNC-Greensboro (it had some recent press.) I don't want to sell it short; it's a wonderful program with incredible people and I have learned a great deal. However, the single greatest thing I've learned is my own confidence in my ability to do this - to accomplish my transition.
And so I'm now at the point where I feel the need to make progress on social transition. I want to be full-time within a year. $SO and I have discussed this and are working on how to deal many matters. Perhaps the most difficult for each of us is informing with our respective families. It is perhaps easier for her family as they're all 500 miles away. I have some immediately family (parents) living in the region. Our paths are unlikely to cross as they don't come to my side of the triangle and, although I do have to go to Raleigh periodically, it's never so far over as the area where they live. I used to worry about it with my endo as that office was a couple doors down from where my mother worked, but mom retired before the second appointment and the endo moved.
Still, I need to work out how to tell them. I've intentionally waited due to history - that my immediately family always felt they had the right to argue and debate my life (not to mention demanding that I yield to their preferences for my own life) so I've wanted to limit the time available for them to attempt that. It won't change my path, but it's simply aggravation I don't need.
I think the thought of losing them is also a hard one for me in a way I hadn't expected. Although I have significant issues with how my mother did (didn't, more like) deal with things in my youth, she is why I have my career and still someone I professionally admire. The position she retired from was that of Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest public schools in the US (it has about as many school buildings as there were students in my HS class.)
When talking to the permatemp quote friend later in the day she asked how I felt about the impending social transition. "Hopeful, excited, anxious, nervous, scared...probably a bunch more feelings. Mostly in that order." She noted that I listed the positive ones first. It really is how I feel, and I realize that's exactly why I need to make the move now. Delaying will only give time for more of the negative emotions to forment, possibly leading to me going back into denial again as I did fifteen years ago, and the result of that would merely be a repeat of what happened in the years following that first, failed attempt to transition. I sometimes have to try hard to not think of what could have been...where I could be today if only... Thinking that accomplishes nothing, but that fact makes it no less seductive. Channeling that into something useful: I don't want to find myself emerging from a depressed fog at 50 and feeling that way about 30 years of my life.
Part of me feels like I'm about to take the step off a cliff. Part of me sees it as walking away from the ledge. "Can't sleep, future will eat me" really gets at how I feel.
Back story: I had my first therapy appointment in the later part of the summer of 2008. It would be ten months before I was finally able to darken the door of my endo (time taken to finally get the referral [what my therapist does rather than giving me my HRT letter] plus lead-time for the next available appointment at the endo,) the first actual steps of HRT would be 3-4 months later, and summer 2010 arrived before I was finally able to get onto a reasonable course of HRT - that is, a reasonable amount of estrogen and anti-androgen. The AA profoundly changed things for me, and the most significant changes weren't physical. That I'm still on it should tell you the nature of those changes - I could not have imagined how much better of a place I'd find myself in, e.g. I'm now able to have a healthy relationship with negative emotions such as annoyance and anger - not to say I don't feel them (I would consider that bad as they do have a valuable function and place) but that I'm able to deal well with them, something I was largely unable to do before.
The late summer of 2010 was a tough time for me. One night found me broken-down and absolutely sobbing in $SO's arms. Two years had passed since the first step of transition and I felt like I'd had no progress.
I've realized this fact has been the source of much frustration. Not long ago I wondered, "is transition to be my reward for a life well lived." It's a phrase borrowed from my previous employer (a Jesuit institution of higher education and about ordination in the Jesuit order) modified by my frustration with how my transition has progressed. Back story for the new(er) followers is at the bottom, but a quick summary is: dealing with gatekeepers who insist they aren't. I don't think it too much an over-reaction on my part that when (supposed/so-called) professionals claim to me that "gatekeepers don't exist" I immediately expect them to be some form of gatekeeper. That claim has been stated by both my therapist and endo, both of whom went on to demonstrate that they have gatekeeper natures.
Late this summer I began taking a voice and communication class/group that's offered by UNC-Greensboro (it had some recent press.) I don't want to sell it short; it's a wonderful program with incredible people and I have learned a great deal. However, the single greatest thing I've learned is my own confidence in my ability to do this - to accomplish my transition.
And so I'm now at the point where I feel the need to make progress on social transition. I want to be full-time within a year. $SO and I have discussed this and are working on how to deal many matters. Perhaps the most difficult for each of us is informing with our respective families. It is perhaps easier for her family as they're all 500 miles away. I have some immediately family (parents) living in the region. Our paths are unlikely to cross as they don't come to my side of the triangle and, although I do have to go to Raleigh periodically, it's never so far over as the area where they live. I used to worry about it with my endo as that office was a couple doors down from where my mother worked, but mom retired before the second appointment and the endo moved.
Still, I need to work out how to tell them. I've intentionally waited due to history - that my immediately family always felt they had the right to argue and debate my life (not to mention demanding that I yield to their preferences for my own life) so I've wanted to limit the time available for them to attempt that. It won't change my path, but it's simply aggravation I don't need.
I think the thought of losing them is also a hard one for me in a way I hadn't expected. Although I have significant issues with how my mother did (didn't, more like) deal with things in my youth, she is why I have my career and still someone I professionally admire. The position she retired from was that of Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest public schools in the US (it has about as many school buildings as there were students in my HS class.)
When talking to the permatemp quote friend later in the day she asked how I felt about the impending social transition. "Hopeful, excited, anxious, nervous, scared...probably a bunch more feelings. Mostly in that order." She noted that I listed the positive ones first. It really is how I feel, and I realize that's exactly why I need to make the move now. Delaying will only give time for more of the negative emotions to forment, possibly leading to me going back into denial again as I did fifteen years ago, and the result of that would merely be a repeat of what happened in the years following that first, failed attempt to transition. I sometimes have to try hard to not think of what could have been...where I could be today if only... Thinking that accomplishes nothing, but that fact makes it no less seductive. Channeling that into something useful: I don't want to find myself emerging from a depressed fog at 50 and feeling that way about 30 years of my life.
Part of me feels like I'm about to take the step off a cliff. Part of me sees it as walking away from the ledge. "Can't sleep, future will eat me" really gets at how I feel.
Back story: I had my first therapy appointment in the later part of the summer of 2008. It would be ten months before I was finally able to darken the door of my endo (time taken to finally get the referral [what my therapist does rather than giving me my HRT letter] plus lead-time for the next available appointment at the endo,) the first actual steps of HRT would be 3-4 months later, and summer 2010 arrived before I was finally able to get onto a reasonable course of HRT - that is, a reasonable amount of estrogen and anti-androgen. The AA profoundly changed things for me, and the most significant changes weren't physical. That I'm still on it should tell you the nature of those changes - I could not have imagined how much better of a place I'd find myself in, e.g. I'm now able to have a healthy relationship with negative emotions such as annoyance and anger - not to say I don't feel them (I would consider that bad as they do have a valuable function and place) but that I'm able to deal well with them, something I was largely unable to do before.
The late summer of 2010 was a tough time for me. One night found me broken-down and absolutely sobbing in $SO's arms. Two years had passed since the first step of transition and I felt like I'd had no progress.
