My Half-Sleeve

 My awesome new half-sleeve. is half-complete! We still have to do the inside of my arm... hopefully in February. 

Maybe none of it matters right now

Maybe none of it matters. Maybe I was just afraid of concentrating on the right now. Afraid of living my life. Maybe it helped me to concentrate on the what-ifs and the who knows? To philosophize everything, overanalyze every inch of my life. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to live in this moment. Look back fondly on those moments that make my heart beat more happily and attempt to learn from the mistakes I know I've made and will make. I've had a long week. I met my girlfriend's mother and sister and spent thanksgiving with them. All day Saturday I guiltily watched Grey's Anatomy... all day long.

Sunday my mother called me. She called to tell me that she really didn't want to discuss this over the phone but that her and my step-dad are separating. After being together for over fifteen years. Poof. I like my families. I was comfortable in the crazy wacky world that is my life. I was really happy knowing that we have some strange family dynamics. For the majority of my life I like to say that I had two families and we all fit together very nicely. My mom and papa (dad) they were roommates in an attic in a house full of hippies. My dad was 24, almost 25 and my mom was 30 when I was born. They got married when I was five months old and divorced before I turned three. I was never sad that they weren't together. They are, and have always been, great friends and I hope it remains that way for the rest of my life. My mom dated a couple of guys I barely remember and then when I was five she met my stepdad. They dated for four years before deciding to get married and finally got married when I was ten. I was really excited. I love my stepbrother, my stepdad took some time adjusting to, but I really do love him too. My dad dated some women I wasn't too fond of and then around the time my mom got married, my dad met the most amazing woman who I would love to call my stepmother... They were together for ten years and then broke up two years ago. They still love each other. But my father was too afraid of commitment until it was too late for her. Her daughter is fifteen now, almost sixteen. These are my families. They were all at every birthday, every important event in my life. They all have been there for me through every hell I've given them. I love my family because we're odd and disjointed and some would probably think it's a bit nuts that this year for Rosh Hashana dinner, my mom's mom had my dad, and my dad's ex girlfriend and her daughter and my mom at my grandmother's together when I was all the way across the country, nothing forcing them together. I love my family. But my family seems to be falling apart and I don't know how to hold it together. I need them to stick together. It's the only way I know how to exist in this world is with my crazy family. My stepdad lives in San Francisco now, they're on a "trial separation" I hate that phrase... What does it mean anyways? false hope? does Separation mean they'll actually try? I know in theory I won't lose my stepbrother or my stepdad, they won't disappear from my life. They won't because we all love each other. But I need them to be there. I need them to be there when I come home for my twenty-first birthday, the first time after being gone for seven months. My step-dad has always been the one to calm my mom down enough so she could calm my dad down when I'm about to go after something I want, or get a new tattoo. He's the one not just encouraging me to explore the world, but demanding it. He's the one excited for me, when I'm excited about a new tattoo. He gets it. And he gets when I'm not happy too. I need them all in my life. I need them in life as my family. My crazy-dysfunctional, functional family. I need it to work.

I'm calling it the 'SirMam'

The SirMam is when a person, usually a sales clerk of some kind does the "Sir... I mean... uh.... I'm sorry... Mam?" It happened to me again in DC a few weeks back at Starbucks, what I find funny is that an obviously straight man had done the "Hey baby... how you doin?' " not five minutes prior.

Anywho... I'm settling into East Coast life. Okay maybe not settling in quite yet. I drove up to Vassar today to visit a friend and will be in New York until Friday or Saturday. I love how close everything is on the east coast. Not so much a fan of the nothingness that is my life in rural Maryland. But I'm only an hour outside of Baltimore, 1 1/2 from DC, and three from Manhattan. Maybe two from Philli (sp?)?

Also I'm officially certified as a canoe instructor, a very small part of my new job on the state park. My house runs into the river... literally. The basement floods when it rains. But the backyard is beautiful. I think at some point this year I want to fix the dock. Yes a dock, in my backyard. I live in a beautiful three-bedroom house with a huge backyard that leads to the river for $100 per month. Maybe rural Maryland isn't so bad?

On my way to New York today I saw a rainbow sticker on the back of someone's truck parked at a house in the middle of nowhere Maryland! We exist?! Even where I live? Okay this was probably fourty-five minutes away from where I live, but still!!! Does anyone else get so happy when the see rainbows? If so, I make a lot of people happy when I drive through their states with my rainbow license plate. I've been driving through a lot this past month.

Ciao for now.

Just a little closer to me

Scared:

 I am afraid that I won’t/can’t be strong enough to defend myself, or a future lover from harm. Sometimes I am afraid I will be too strong. I am afraid that I will lose my family, that they will never understand who I am, that they won't understand that my body is still my temple, I just alter it to make all the pieces fit the way I think they should. I am afraid my family will think I am rejecting them, and rejecting Judaism. I am afraid I will regret any decision I make to go forward... or not. I am afraid that new people in my life will not understand or accept my past, or reject my present because of my past. I was a very feminine child, it took me this long to realize that who I was is ok and who I am is ok and neither changes either. I am afraid that because I couldn’t accept my past, because I had to explain it away that others will too. I am afraid that others will see my past as an excuse to not accept my present. I am afraid of lying, pretending, cheating, running, hurting the ones I love. I am afraid of the fear, violence, pain, confusion, death... that others might create for me. 

A friend reminded me last night that you have to "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those that matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss. 

And with that it gives me the strength to say I am still afraid of the outside world, of rejection, but I am no longer afraid of myself. 

 My dad's ex-girlfriend (I still consider her my stepmom) and I had a conversation about me yesterday. About whether or not I'm trans. About surgeries, about testosterone, about binding... It was scary to talk about because honestly I don't know the answers to most of the questions she asked. But it was also helpful for me. She asked me questions on how I feel, at first she couldn't see how I, being such the nurturing type could want to change my body. I tried to let her know that I didn't know to what extent I will or will not change my body but that for transgendered people it's not about the personality. Hopefully your personality stays the same. It's about matching brain with body.

She also let me know that basically everyone knows I bind... I should have known that everyone knows... but I guess I thought they were being blissfully ignorant, no such luck. I used to wear a 36C or a 34D. Now it looks like I wear a large A or a small B? Who was I fooling anyhow?

Here's my problem...

I don't want to be seen as a straight man. I can't see myself having a white-picket fence and a wife and 2 1/2 kids... Okay I am totally lying about all of that. I can picture it like it was going to happen tomorrow. Like I was already living there. It seems like a dreamworld a fantasyland. I have that daydream that Shane had on the L Word... the one where she is getting ready for her work day and she's in her suit and tie and the boys are getting ready for school and her girlfriend is making breakfast and pouring orange juice? I know you know the one I'm talking about. I have that dream all the time. 

I also hate my breasts, love everyone else's. I want a penis... but maybe I can just live with strapping one on. Can I just be me? I'm tired of searching for labels that fit me. Butch, femme, trannyboi, transman, boi, dyke, genderqueer, genderfucked, stud, I don't know what else might possibly fit who you think I am... I don't even care. The rest of the world just sees a girl, who usually looks like a guy... who talks to high... I'm just a "me." 

And sometimes I still want to be able to fit under a label... if only to feel safe for a moment. 

oh and P.S.

I was "sir'd" all throughout breakfast the other day! It was fun :)

Thanks Guthrie

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow." 

~ Woodie Guthrie

Oh and if any self-identified femmes are reading this, you should go read "Hats off to Beautiful Femmes" by Ivan E. Coyote. RIGHT NOW! mmk thanks.