![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Churn, wine, discontent: status check
Sep. 26th, 2017 08:00 pmI don't write much anymore. I interpret that as negative, if not actually a warning sign.
I don't think I'm dealing well with aging. My vanity assures me I don't look my age (50), but I am aware of time, past, passing, and limited, in ways I wasn't before. Even when I thought J might die, three years back, I wasn't aware of time like this (it was probably an extended version of hyperpresent now, looking back on it).
My gender/sexual characteristic issues haven't gone away; if anything, they've deepened. I realize now I've been on some version of medically supervised hormone treatment for about ten years now. If I'm not careful, I think it's some degree of obvious that I have small breasts (I also suspect hormones play a part in me not looking my age, but that could be internalization of conventional trans wisdom. My family may tend to age prematurely, but they also live and eat terribly, so comparisons might not be terribly useful. Also, xenogenesis remains a possibility.)
I don't leave my house much except to go to work, and to provide the basics. It's not that I'm afraid of people, not in an agoraphobic way, but I am always aware of the gaze of others, and the (often unconscious) weight of judgment, sorting, assigning. I've made hypervigilance a way of life, and it feeds/feeds from my always cycling intellect/intellectualization. I *can* extrapolate myriad meanings from a gesture, a word, a glance, sure, but what good does it do me? Would I be better without it? Might as well ask if rain would be better if it wasn't wet, maybe. I know myself because I think about everything, all the time.
There are moments when I'm not paying full attention to myself, lost in thought about something else, and I feel the way my body shifts and moves, or maybe catch a glimpse of myself in reflection before all the defensive modeling apparati kick in, and I actually like that instant. I never know what to do with those moments; I rarely do anything that might lead me to greater happiness (have I given up on that, or have I decided the cost is simply too high?). I used to dream of a body shaped similar to mine; now that I have it, I'm afraid to do anything other than hide and disguise it. I certainly don't celebrate it, and at times think about (metaphorically) cutting out a portion of myself to feel more comfortable, but not happy.
I do not dress to celebrate my form, or my ideas of self. I tell myself it's because I've lost context, lost venues, lost supporting staff. I could do it at home, but that summons ghosts of both hiding from friends/parents/neighbors as a kid, and feeling like I'm living a trans/tv stereotype. Ironically but not perhaps unexpectedly, the increasing of trans(sexuality) in media lead me to feel trapped in new, binary ways that I didn't but didn't realize earlier. Much love and (genuine) support for my binary trans family, but I wish the masses would embrace complexity and shifting categories rather than use them to reinforce binary ideas to suit themselves (cis majority).
And then there's brain stuff. And spirituality/afraid it would be interpreted as clinically crazy if I spoke about it, stuff. It all feels connected, but I'm not clever enough to see how (and if I'm not clever enough, who is? Who else is as clever, or cleverer, and invested enough to worry at it?)
I don't think I'm dealing well with aging. My vanity assures me I don't look my age (50), but I am aware of time, past, passing, and limited, in ways I wasn't before. Even when I thought J might die, three years back, I wasn't aware of time like this (it was probably an extended version of hyperpresent now, looking back on it).
My gender/sexual characteristic issues haven't gone away; if anything, they've deepened. I realize now I've been on some version of medically supervised hormone treatment for about ten years now. If I'm not careful, I think it's some degree of obvious that I have small breasts (I also suspect hormones play a part in me not looking my age, but that could be internalization of conventional trans wisdom. My family may tend to age prematurely, but they also live and eat terribly, so comparisons might not be terribly useful. Also, xenogenesis remains a possibility.)
I don't leave my house much except to go to work, and to provide the basics. It's not that I'm afraid of people, not in an agoraphobic way, but I am always aware of the gaze of others, and the (often unconscious) weight of judgment, sorting, assigning. I've made hypervigilance a way of life, and it feeds/feeds from my always cycling intellect/intellectualization. I *can* extrapolate myriad meanings from a gesture, a word, a glance, sure, but what good does it do me? Would I be better without it? Might as well ask if rain would be better if it wasn't wet, maybe. I know myself because I think about everything, all the time.
There are moments when I'm not paying full attention to myself, lost in thought about something else, and I feel the way my body shifts and moves, or maybe catch a glimpse of myself in reflection before all the defensive modeling apparati kick in, and I actually like that instant. I never know what to do with those moments; I rarely do anything that might lead me to greater happiness (have I given up on that, or have I decided the cost is simply too high?). I used to dream of a body shaped similar to mine; now that I have it, I'm afraid to do anything other than hide and disguise it. I certainly don't celebrate it, and at times think about (metaphorically) cutting out a portion of myself to feel more comfortable, but not happy.
I do not dress to celebrate my form, or my ideas of self. I tell myself it's because I've lost context, lost venues, lost supporting staff. I could do it at home, but that summons ghosts of both hiding from friends/parents/neighbors as a kid, and feeling like I'm living a trans/tv stereotype. Ironically but not perhaps unexpectedly, the increasing of trans(sexuality) in media lead me to feel trapped in new, binary ways that I didn't but didn't realize earlier. Much love and (genuine) support for my binary trans family, but I wish the masses would embrace complexity and shifting categories rather than use them to reinforce binary ideas to suit themselves (cis majority).
And then there's brain stuff. And spirituality/afraid it would be interpreted as clinically crazy if I spoke about it, stuff. It all feels connected, but I'm not clever enough to see how (and if I'm not clever enough, who is? Who else is as clever, or cleverer, and invested enough to worry at it?)
