This week on the Ceri's Anxieties Show

[ceri]

Saturday I'm going to a party, assuming no health crisis or anything like that. First one I've been to in, hmm, must be about six years now, since I hadn't been to one for a while before descending into my long slump. I am such a bundle of nerves about it, on two different vectors.

There's my health concerns. For those of you I've only met recently, I've got a trashed immune system, and respond with sort of mega-allergic complications to all kinds of common environmental things—orris root (the base of most perfumes), dry cleaning chemicals, soil molds, you name it. So being out in a crowd means a day or more of prep work with extra immune-boosting supplements and stuff, and planning a day or more recovery time afterward, and also being prepared for an acute episode while out. Fortunately the hostess has known me for a good long while now, and is used to dealing with medical weirdos besides me. So the circumstances are about as good as they reasonably can be, with understanding hostess and people I'll be happy to visit with, many of whom also have experiencing dealing either specifically with my complications or with others like them.

It's still stressful, the waiting and wondering.

And now there's the trans matter on top of that. I'm out to a few folks who'll be there, but not to most, and I feel in such a horribly awkward limbo. Never mind passing, I couldn't even be a competent cross-dresser now. Nothing to wear, no experience wearing it, no clue about doing almost anything in my presentation. Right now trans is in my heart and not much of anywhere else. I feel like a fake going and coming, knowing I'm not what I seem, unable to seem what I am. I'm very grateful for all the friends, new and old, willing to believe me. The day when it won't have to be taken on faith seems so far off.

Comments

[demiurgent]

Three things come to mind.

First off, passing may be in your heart right now, but you've already said that there are some you're out to there. While it's a slow process, at the least you'll have the comfort of knowing some of the people you're with understand what's happening with you.

Second off, you're not a fake. I know it's hard to believe that, when your exterior doesn't match your interior and you're new to even the concept of matching the two, but if there's one thing you've learned in decades of roleplaying, it's the adoption of the inner self. You don't need the exterior change as yet to not be 'fake,' as you put it. It's legitimate to have the reactions your inner self has. And you can have fun regardless.

Thirdly, dude. You totally have a Mysa Nal icon. That's awesome.

[ceri]

Thanks for encouraging words, comrade.

And of course I have a Mysa Nal icon. You would expect as big an LSH junkie as me NOT to have one?

[eleanorjane]

You are not fake. You are, sadly, stuck in limbo at the moment - but you is who you is. How can that possibly be fake?

*hugs* I wish I had useful answers, but all I can really do is make supportive noises.

[ceri]

Supportive noises aren't bad. :)

Re: This week on the Ceri's Anxieties Show

[piranha]

*nod*. yeah. before i decided not to transition, that's how i felt a lot of the time. then i had a bit of an epiphany; that i am who i feel like i am -- i am functioning; medicine is not on my side; i am stuck with this for the most part, and so i owe it to myself to make the best of it, even though i know the best will never be truly right for me.

how you feel inside, that's what counts. i know, mainstream society doesn't see it that way, and that makes it difficult to handle, but you're SO not fake, whether or not you dress in what society considers gender-appropriate. that's just clothes.

whyever would anybody choose to fake being in the wrong body? it's not exactly a laugh a minute. you're simply a work in progress. we all are, cisgendered or trans.

i hope you have fun at the party!

Re: This week on the Ceri's Anxieties Show

[ceri]

Thanks, Piranha. As always, good advice and perspective.

I know that part of what's weighing me down is uncertainty about steps down the road. Will my body respond catastrophically badly to hormones? Assuming the money settles out, will any sort of surgery be safe for me? Stuff like that. The answers are all of course "no way to tell now, do the stuff you have at hand", because improving my overall health improves the odds on all of them. I know that, I really do. But waiting gets tiresome. I've done waiting, all my life since the systemic failures started in my teens, and darn it, I want some instant gratification.

And a pygmy mammoth, too.

[onomasticator]

I feel like a fake going and coming, knowing I'm not what I seem, unable to seem what I am.

So here's FWIW. I read this journal. I read the things you write under your birth name in various fora. By my recollection, you and I first corresponded in late 2001 or early 2002. As far as I am concerned, you sound exactly like you here. The same authorial voice animated by the same intellect and conscience. There is an unbroken integrity of presence.

I'm not going to say anything stupid like "there's a true you Beyond Gender." That's not the point. As I understand it from your writing, trans-womanhood is something you realize about yourself, not something you decide. So you're who you've always been, and you sound like you've always sounded, which is admirable, sincere, humble and concerned with being the best person possible. Entering the land of unprovable hypotheticals, I think that if I had somehow across this journal on my own, I would have, sooner or later, recognized the voice.

There's nothing fake in that. Just as, to get all Marshall Rogers on you a second, there's nothing fake about Bruce Wayne OR Batman in that interpretation. Whom you are out to is presently a work in progress because life is a work in progress. But under any name you choose to go by for however long, you're the genuine article and people are lucky to know you.

[ceri]

I feel more secure about my personality than my identity, if that distinction makes sense to someone outside my head. I don't think there's a self beyond gender, but that parts of me are besides gender in being fundamental.