Out and Aboot!

So, i went out yesterday for lunch with my sister and some friends who were in town for the day. i have been trying to venture out as myself more and more. even when dressed down, I'm starting to get recognized for who i am and it's gladdening. my point is, even though I'm sure i gave some of the people some interesting dinner table conversation, everyone around were unceasingly polite and in most cases, downright friendly. This makes me feel good, however, i do feel sad for others like myself in the world who aren't as lucky as i am. to feel shame, scorn or even violence for being yourself makes me weep sometimes. I am so lucky to live in Toronto, Canada. my prayers go to those who aren't as lucky as i am.
Diana Howe

this is a difficult thing for me to talk about

I've talked before about depression before and how it effects people like myself; Transwomen, transmen, genderqueer and questioning alike. This one is different... it's a component of my depression, a big one. Self Hatred. more than just doubt, this one this hatred leads to self destructive behaviours that often cannot even be recognized.

Suicidal thoughts are easy enough to recognize, suicidal attempts as well. The quiet self hatred often shows up in self care issues... eating habits, personal environment care, self care, hygiene, isolation. All these and more can drag you deeper into depressive cycles.
When you care more about others than your self, when their comfort and happiness matters more to you than your own... this is a bad thing... you are supposed to love yourself, your ego is supposed to need this...

In my own personal case, i spent 38 some odd years loathing myself. I hid it well, i guess... funny guy and everything. I hid lots of stuff, from myself most of all. Now the dams are breaking and so much is coming home to roost. i didn't do anything wrong by the laws of the land, but i was not a good person, i was withdrawn, bitter and generally sarcastic. i had no faith in anything and any optimism i had soured into cynicism. i don't even know how much money i spent but even with several good jobs, i have very few assets to show for many years of work. i didn't substance abuse, but with the fog i lived in, i never needed too.

Now i find myself in a near constant state of anxiety and annoyance... i suppressed most of my emotions for so long that the negative ones surface frequently. and the self hatred is strong... i can see so much neglect in my life and it's all me...

Sorry for the bummer, but i had to get this down.
Diana

A poem and an essay of Fear

Longing

What i really want you to know,

is the real me.

not what's on the surface,

not just what you see.

You see my fear,

not what i fear,

you see me listen,

not what i hear,

you see me cry,

but, what brings the tear?

if you could only see me as i am.

I deal with my pain,

in different ways,

at different times,

on different days,

but never in indifference phase,

and you never see me as i am.

My truth and joy are hidden, yes,

if you would only try to guess,

who knows? it's just a little mess,

but you might like me as i am.

Longing is a short poem i wrote in 2006 to try to express my frustration at gender incongruity and gender dysphoria.  About how maddening it is to not be seen as you truly are inside.

The following essay was written for the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto's inaugural  session of it's gender education and outreach program that I was honoured to be asked to speak to. Gender 101 is being developed to help educate the church and congregation about T* people and their unique needs, spiritual and social.

Kudos to Jon and Sara for their efforts

Being Me: On fear and its effects on a life.

 

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. I have to make some assumptions because, as you may have heard already, Gender is not always readily visible on the surface.

Now I could start off with some statistics, Like “According to the DSM-IV, one in 30,000 biological males and one in 100,000 biological females are transgender (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Newer data suggests at least one in 500 persons is transgendered (Olyslager & Conway, 2007).” Or “Transgender persons have an attempted suicide rate that is somewhere in the 31% to 41% range (depending on the study).” But this is not a story of statistics; this is the story of one person. This is my story.

When I was young, before I ever discovered I was different from other children, I was nearly fearless. A lot of this has to do with the fact that there are few visible differences between boys and girls until around age ten. Any differences between sexes at that age are imposed by parents and society and although I understood that I was physically different than my sisters, I didn’t understand that I wasn’t a girl and didn’t realize that I wasn’t going to just change if I wanted it enough. I didn’t get the physical rough housing and games of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians or war… I liked my sister’s dollhouse and dolls, I liked my mother’s miniature tea set, I liked the stove toy at my grandmothers. In kindergarten, I liked playing house and school with the girls… and this apparently caused adult concern, because I was pulled away to more appropriate toys and games at which point I would retreat and read.

In my knowing that I was a girl, there was no sexuality involved, I just knew and was positive I would grow up like mommy.  When my sisters played dress up with me, there was no shame… just a feeling of rightness. Yes I was different than the other kids, isolated to an extent, but I ran with both boys and girls never seeing any difference, never afraid. I didn’t hate boys, I just wasn’t one. Though as I grew older I felt distanced from other children my age. My childhood was isolated but never a source of fear. The fear arrived when I was eleven. I had taken advantage of having a house to myself and was dressed appropriately, to my mind. I was comfortable, I felt right. I was too relaxed and didn’t hear my family come home. To them I was crossed dressed… I felt their fear and it terrified me. I didn’t understand it but I could feel it. They call it strong empathy, I called it terror.

Their fear was deep… I was the only son and I was a cross-dressing perverted freak and I needed to be cured. No one asked me what I wanted, I was told what was to be. This was early 1976, there was no easily accessed internet for information and fellowship, no television programs discussing people like myself, just rumour and innuendo. As far as I knew I was the only person in the world that felt like this … to them, I was gay, I would grow up molesting children, I was not normal… a freak to be cured.  At this time, people were still very comfortable being homophobic, making jokes and even gay bashing. Transphobia wasn’t even a word yet nor was transgender. I was quietly whisked off to a family councilor to find out how to fix me, and we made sure the neighbours knew nothing of our family’s shame. 

So, picture this if you can, I was eleven years old and scared by my mommy and daddy’s fear… I was terrified of losing their love. I only knew how I felt inside (girl) but the message I was getting from them was I was wrong, twisted, sick somehow. The psychotherapist talked at me for about 20 minutes about things I didn’t understand but would be frightening to any child my age. Then, this professional Family Councilor asked me, in front of my parents, if I wanted to be a boy or a girl. 

I Lied. I lied so my parents wouldn’t hate me. I lied to fit in. I pushed everything that I was deep down inside of me so that my parents would love me. I began to build a false face, a persona; I built him because I feared being me… I was him… I hated having to be him. I hated him.

All of a sudden I wasn’t happy; my parents couldn’t figure out where their happy little ‘boy’ had gone didn’t get that their fear had forced me to hide. All of a sudden words like anti social and depressed got thrown about. I started over eating and wouldn’t leave my room. I wasn’t doing well in school because I had given up… I couldn’t understand the role I was supposed to play… so I would read but not get involved… I was tested and moved into a gifted program. I didn’t fit there either…all I wanted was to be left alone… I couldn’t relate to the boys and the girls wanted nothing to do with me because I was a ‘boy’. But I also discovered one fact that kept me alive during all that reading… there were other people like me, people who weren’t what they appeared to be on the outside.

I’d really like to be able to tell you about my teen years, but the fact is that aside from some rage incidents (no one was physically hurt), my teen years, when I was supposed to be learning about socialization and interaction, as well as English and geography, are a near complete blank. I’m not sure whether there was any bullying involved, but I doubt it. I was fairly large and in all the pictures I’ve seen, I had a heavy lidded appearance to my eyes… I think most people took me for a drug user and left me alone. This was also a time that I would experience what I have called fugue states, where I would be one place, like a classroom, and then find myself somewhere else entirely, several hours later, without memory of the hours between. It wasn’t till about age 18 I started to have any definable memories at all.

During the years between  18 and 24, I read everything I could find on these trans people. It was mostly porn in the late 70’s and early 80’s or sordid biographies with lurid titles. ‘I changed my sex!’ or ‘Man to Maiden’, but it gave me a glimmer of hope. But with that faint hope was guilt and fear, fear of being caught with pornography or reading about weirdos.  On the brand new medium of the daytime talk show, Phil Donahue and other pioneers were interviewing cross dressers and drag queens, but I didn’t relate to them, I didn’t feel any sexual thrill about cross dressing. All I wanted was to find out how all this related to how I felt deep inside, so I would surreptitiously find psychotherapists and try to let me out of him. But if a real step forward was offered he would push me back down and retreat in fear… fear of family reaction, fear of society. So I pretended to be an over masculine chubby guy who did everything in his power to prove he was a man… I joined the armed forces, I went on the road with a carnival and I shut myself down emotionally. I would hide behind humour and sarcasm and I was lonely.

I was living, but I wasn’t alive… I was barely aware. I cross dressed occasionally, but there was always shame and fear attached. Never the comfort and relaxation and rightness that were once there and I cried inside. A lost, trapped little girl never allowed to be me because of fear. I grew older and I tried to be who my family thought I was. I tried to be a guy and have relationships, but my partners always sensed something wrong or off about me and would leave. I dated someone who was more masculine than I was, though I didn’t realize it at the time, but she sensed the ‘weakness’ in me and became abusive, both mentally and physically and I retreated further into myself.

After this I spiraled further into depression and finally had a breakdown. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t go out, and all I could do was stay in bed and try to escape my thoughts. I would have died I think, but I was responsible for more than myself. I had cats, and I was afraid of hurting my family, so I suffered. And I hated. I hated everyone and everything, especially him, especially me. But I lived.

In June 2002, I had a breakthrough… I let go of my hate and fear for a moment and saw the me I had buried. In my journal of the time I wrote “Shit! I’m a woman!” I couldn’t rebury me, he started to weaken. I told my therapist, I told my friends, I told my family…. They all seemed to already know. My fear of society, my fear of my family reactions, all that had kept me in the darkness and made me miserable… it was me…

Nothing brought this more to my attention than two phone calls last Wednesday afternoon. One was from my eldest sister who is a Pentecostal churchgoer and a bit of a fundamentalist. This sister once told me I was under some sort of demonic curse. However, on Wednesday, when I told her that I was going forward with my transition, she told me that it seemed to be doing me good and I was more emotionally present. Not what I expected. 

The second call was from my father and it was because I set a fuse alight a few months ago when I cancelled my old Facebook account. He surprised me by asking why I had cancelled it as he had only just now got the message. I was shocked into direct truth and told him everything, about being referred to CAMH (the Center for Addiction and Mental Health) for its gender clinic, about my name change and together we had a big emotional event with him starting to accept me, and me having a big ugly cry (which I needed). Fear had kept me from coming clean and maybe learning to be my fathers daughter.

At one time the fear may have been justified, but that changed while I kept myself locked away, and I lost over 30 years of my life. I still struggled over the last ten years fighting him, fighting the fears but I am starting to allow myself freedom from fear. I am allowing myself to move forward and I am allowing myself to be Diana Michelle Howe.

I've been looking forward for so long, i forgot to move forward

Greetings and happy 2012, if you follow the Gregorian calendar. Well... since my last post on the Transgendered Day of Remembrance, Stuff has been happening... I started to attend an Anxiety and Depression group, to whom i outed myself... it was odd, there is a Trans Man in the group who looked very uncomfortable, and all of a sudden, i'm introducing myself as Diana and going into who i am, but everyone has been very accepting of me and i can feel their love and concern... My sister, Mel has accepted me as her sister and it is glorious... at least i will have the support of one of my blood family as i *ahem* move forward.

I have been writing fiction also for the last six months at an online site called Big Closet and my work has been pretty well received if you would like, you can read it here. I may have also mentioned my novel The Enhanced: TRI, but enough shameless self promotion. while writing at the site i have (virtually) met and built an online 'Family' if you will, who have given me such love and support that i have finally been able to break my paralysis.

Since December, i have made Doctors appointments and printed out referral forms for the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic, The Toronto YMCA, to try to dump at least 100 pounds of excess weight, which with my diabetes could be the death of me, gotten the paperwork for an official name change and best of all...

 I came out to several co workers at the bingo hall where i volunteer... six in fact, and none of them tried to beat me senseless... in fact all were accepting and most were very happy for me.

I guess what i am trying to show is that you can move forward even in baby steps. i don't know when i will be complete, but i am sure as heck back on the road.

Blessings and loving wishes to you all,
Diana

The Day Of Remembrance

I both love and hate this day so much.

I hate it, because of the hatred and fear that has cost so many lives, I hate that the MSM* will mostly ignore the day and what it stands for because our "demographic" isn't big or rich enough to be anything more than a source of Outrage or amusement...I hate that my own fear has kept me from being who I know I am.

I love it, for it draws we survivors closer and makes us stronger. I love the fact that so many of us are growing and becoming who they are... 

I love that even dragging my feet, I am becoming who I know I am.

For those we have lost... through Hatred, Sadness and Ignorance... I remember

Diana

*main stream media

Autumn and S.A.D.

It's now three days after Daylight Savings Time ended and the days are now noticeably shorter. There was a full moon yesterday afternoon at 5 pm... not a pale moon in a blue sky, but the full on moon in a dark, indigo sky.

This brings to mind, for most people, cosy family dinners, maybe a glass of wine and a book by a fireplace or just a good evening of Dancing With The Stars.

But for many this time of year brings on Seasonal Affective Disorder, or S.A.D.
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is episodes of depression that occur at a certain time of the year, usually during winter. The disorder may begin during the teen years or in early adulthood. Like other forms of depression, it occurs more often in women than in men.People who live in places with long winter nights are at greater risk for SAD. A less common form of the disorder involves depression during the summer months.Symptoms usually build up slowly in the late autumn and winter months. Symptoms are usually the same as with depression:

• Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more common with other forms of depression)
• Increased sleep and daytime sleepiness (too little sleep is more common with other forms of depression)
• Less energy and ability to concentrate in the afternoon
• Loss of interest in work or other activities
• Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement
• Social withdrawal
• Unhappiness and irritability

I, like many of us in the gender gifted community deal with depression on a regular basis, however when you also factor S.A.D. in, it is easier to hit the tipping point into a deeper depression... i speak, of course, only from my personal experience, as always YMMV*.

How do i deal with it... well i have a full spectrum lamp that i will sit under like a big old flower *giggles* and some others seem to think this helps.
"Light therapy using a special lamp with a very bright fluorescent light (10,000 lux) that mimics light from the sun may also be helpful.

• Follow your doctor's instructions about how to use light therapy. A common practice is to sit a couple of feet away from the light box for about 30 minutes every day. This is usually done in the early morning, to mimic sunrise.
• Keep your eyes open, but do not look straight into the light source."
• other things that can help... a daylight walk, or any activity that gets you out of your usual spaces or routines. to wit...
"As with other types of depression, antidepressant medications and talk therapy can be effective.
Taking long walks during the daylight hours and getting exercise can make the symptoms better. Keep active socially, even if it involves some effort."

Remember, as always I Am Not A Doctor. If you suspect you are suffering from any form of depression, long or short term, cyclic or seasonal, contact your doctor or mental health professional, but always recognize the signs.
Remember, as i always say, the gender gifter are special people, Take care of yourselves.

Biggest, Warmest Autumn Hugs!
Diana

*your mileage may vary

Sorry i was away

I had an odd summer this year, odd because i didn't allow myself to enjoy it as i should have. odd also because right on the heels of writing about depression and T* people, i fell into a major depressive episode. Life, it seems is a witty MF sometimes.

Life BitchSlapped Me

I tended to get over focused on the mundane routine, only leaving my abode to do things that really didn't impact my life. i did my work, i came home, i shopped, i came home... too damn normal. And i didn't realize it at the time, i wasn't happy. the meds dulled me to a point that i functioned.  nothing more.

Functional Moongoddess, Less Than Fab.

I withdrew in my private time... books were losing meaning and TV... well... moments of laughter, faded quickly. it wasn't till august that i noticed how deep the pit was, AH! but... i found a grouping of stories... well yes, T* stories, but superheroes! Hooray!... i can write something for this genre, i'm a geekette and a writer... all of a sudden... i'm writing again... fiction and branching out into original fiction (yes T*) but well received...?! OK... WTF? the main thing is, i began to feel again (barf, Cliche)... mostly anger at first.

ARRRRGH... Must Smash Stupidity!

Lately i have found a slight balance, but the reason i write today, is as a warning and case study... even if you are aware of your own tendency toward depression, you must be alert to it's warnings... learn your cues and your triggers. I was lucky this time because of a lot of people talking to me and talking me down, but until you have looked at a bottle of anti depressants and wondered if you could OD on them. I was Lucky.
I hope that my blathering on can help others.

A bit wiser, a lot happier.

Love to you all, take care of yourselves!
Diana