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=== euphoria isnt everything
i cant promise you any fun here, though i suppose it could be oddly affirming in a way.
ive had several opportunities to say more here, though ive been waiting for the right time to talk about anything.
i put my new skirt on and my cutest top to write this, because theyre nice for me, though i havent bothered putting my wig on since yesterday. i dont wear it all the time, i love it a lot, but though its more than just for special occasions i only wear it when i feel like it.
i think its safe to say that lately there have been plenty of things to challenge the way im feeling. i was having fun exploring my identity, but right now the fun just isnt the same. if youre expecting me to go into big doubts here, youll sort of find the opposite of that, and maybe thats the affirming part of this. maybe the most important lesson here is that affirmation does not equal euphoria.
im not too surprised by this, it really makes perfect sense, but its a part of this journey i havent experienced enough first-hand to say much if anything about it until now. i still have some people who are supportive, but i feel a little like the partys ended, and everyone (myself included) has gone home.
its not that i think this will be my last taste of gender euphoria. its more like when you get married and sex somehow falls by the wayside-- maybe marriage is not literally the end of sex (at least, i hope thats not what youre going through if youre married) though its fair to say that it changes.
it seems easier to pinpoint the emotions before i try to articulate them. am i depressed, or just bored? am i restless? sad? im pretty sure it felt worse before i tried to say something. maybe im such a ham that im happy just to have something to write about. hey, im allowed to feel cynical.
maybe ive just been too distracted lately to fully appreciate myself. i doubt thats it really, but i honestly cant tell if im trying harder to make this not so bad, or if im being too hard on myself and need to try to lighten up. i think if i did a survey (that is, if more people knew me on a day-to-day basis) i would get plenty of people telling me to lighten up (i hate that phrase too, thats why im using it to amuse myself here) and plenty of others telling me to admit that im unhappy. maybe im projecting. i can honestly say, that doesnt make it any easier to tell what i really think.
i have doubts about happiness, maybe thats what i really think of it, and a lot of people with doubts about happiness will find that leads to doubts about identity-- or least concerns about doubts about identity. i guess i can relate to that, but maybe not the way you might think.
if i pin my identity onto my euphoria-- which even sounds like a really bad idea, but i think its the sort of bad idea that comes naturally-- then the absence of euphoria can only lead to doubts about identity.
i think i have pinned my identity to that, so it would make perfect sense if doubts about identity were to immediately follow.
the "funny" thing about doubt is that even the tinest, most insignificant, ridiculous cause for doubt can be nourished and crafted unlovingly into a crisis. if that was happening now, i wouldnt have to guess if i were depressed or not-- i would be completely miserable. and im pretty sure that im not that. im not saying its the same for everyone-- but usually when im completely miserable, one of the biggest signs is i actually feel that way. ive never had too many doubts about this when it happens.
if you manage to pin your identity to euphoria, and the euphoria wanes (as any high, natural or otherwise, is inevitably going to do) it will certainly lead you to entertaining doubts.
the only thing is, ive had bigger doubts at earlier stages on the way. i was incredibly sceptical for years, if not decades. i didnt just fight to accept this, but i fought myself to keep from accepting this.
so if theres no euphoria right now, i think some idiot who assumes that a cis point of view is the final authority on whats real, naturally expects these doubts to reassert "the natural order of things". which is to say, his assumptions will finally be vindicated.
that isnt where i was going with this, but it sort of explains how we get there.
if you pin your identity to euphoria and the euphoria wanes, leaving your identity to slip from its position, you might assume it would simply fall to the floor. what you may realise instead, is that euphoria wasnt the only thing actually holding your identity up.
i guess if we want to wear the metaphor thin, we could say that something could have two (or more) pins in it-- one (or more) at the bottom, and one closer to the top. if the higher pin fails, whatever is pinned will drop in height, but not fall down. im sorry, this sounds terrible and im not planning to fix it.
but anyway, the false dichotomy weve been working with is that either youre a happy trans or you must by cis, because if you were really trans youd be happy. and thats as silly and ridiculous as it sounds.
my vantage, though higher (feeling) than now, let me take a broad look at my past, at my life so far. it let me see my childhood, growing up, even my first marriage in a way id never seen it before. it gave me insight into many confusing and occasionally socially awkward events in my life. its certainly not a theory of everything, but its definitely a useful theory of something. to say the least, its a pretty big deal.
but since when does any revelation mean that youre going to be happy all the time? i dont even want to be happy ALL THE TIME, probably at most id like to have a little more say in when i am and when im not. i dont really want to chase euphoria every moment of every day, but i would probably be content with it being a little easier to accomplish at the times when it otherwise isnt.
and this is probably obvious to lots of people, only it wasnt as obvious as it should have been to me.
i wanted this to be about nitty-gritty emotions, which ive absolutely felt along the way, and its been a rougher time than im letting on. im sure you can find plenty of descriptions of such emotions, and im sure i could talk about those, but what im trying to do is figure out what to do with them-- or what i did with them-- and thats what i seem to be talking about here.
if you ever narrowly averted a crisis, or made it through an actual crisis and when you try to explain how you did it, it sounds kind of stupid-- maybe then you can relate to not only this, but how i feel as im writing it.
any optimism you find in this, i swear it wasnt something i felt until i started writing it. i didnt add it deliberately, i dont know if im imagining it or not, but i promise you that it wasnt deliberate. maybe i feel obligated to be more optimistic here. maybe it helps that much to tell you (whoever you are) about it, and if so, thank you. either way, if you werent expecting it, im as surprised as you are.
i absolutely feel like im telling myself that "its not so bad"-- and its not that i believe that so strongly, more like i dont have a counterargument to what im telling myself. i dont feel like arguing, so okay, whatever i guess.
do i feel like a dude though? no, i really never did and thats the thing. i dont feel very girly today either, and its nice (as always) to know that i could simply take on "enbie" again, because thats what i was "sure" i was, if i was anything other than cis, you know.
and i would be perfectly happy (maybe not the best choice of word right now, but it will do) with that. its just that when i stopped really questioning trans, i didnt personally identify as enbie or genderfluid as i thought i would. i more strongly identify as female. i dont really feel like "moving around" or identifying with neither side, but i definitely expected to. enbie had the most appeal by far on a philosophical level. i was surprised to find myself identifying differently than that.
looking back at the beginnings of a trans identity, there are two things i can say very clearly about my gender: one is that i never had any strong gender identity while playing the role of a cis male. the other is that for any weaknesses or doubts, my gender identity has felt much stronger and more affirming since i stopped fighting against the idea that "maybe" im trans.
and when euphoria takes its holidays and leaves me at home, feeling a little bored (maybe even abandoned) and sometimes lonely about all this (maybe id feel different if i knew loads of trans women-- with the way the community sometimes rips its own people to pieces, i cant pretend im sure about this-- even so, it is tempting to find sisters) at least i feel im closer to knowing the real me than i felt years ago. theres some affirmation in that, even when theres not much in the way of euphoria.
as to who the worlds bestest allies are, i think if i really knew that i would have more people in my corner. i dont want to diss any side of this really, but i wont let that stop me from talking about my misgivings. i do feel a certain level of gratitude, but i doubt it will be very obvious while i talk about the negative.
i feel more accepted by cis women than trans women. i dont put too much stock in this, and im afraid its not because i have a very polished feminine look going on. i think it has more to do with the fact that im so selective about cis women already (ive surrounded myself with lesbians and bisexuals pretty much forever) than it is about any representative cross section. funnily enough, straight women are as boring as ever. i dont mean this as harshly as it sounds, a lot of it is in a romantic sense-- but any straight woman who wants to have a nice conversation with me is more than welcome to do so. we probably have more in common than i do (ever did) with guys.
i dont know many trans women. i wish i knew more of them and ive enjoyed the time ive spent with trans women personally and socially, most of it has been pleasant. a lot of it has been fairly superficial too, and i approach the community with all the trepidation of someone who has both read "trashing" by jo freeman and watched it play out. i wont go so far as to say that the biggest enemy the trans community has is the trans community itself. i think the threat from the outside is still much larger. but in terms of what i find intimidating? ive seen how ugly this can get.
i have to think that doesnt respresent the trans community in general, but i cant figure out how i can avoid it as a hazard. the whole idea is that if youre a good person and do what good people are supposed to do, youll be safe. yeah, i dont believe that. i grew up with that sort of hell and i know it when i see it. this is a catch-22. but that doesnt change that its probably a catch-22 that only applies to the worst third (or fifth, or tenth, or whatever) of the community. enough to make life hell, but its not like there isnt a cis version of this too (jo freeman was writing about the cis version of this!)
as for men, i dont hate them (in my formative years i was a female supremacist, until i met enough decent guys to offset any support i could give to gender-based chauvinism-- i literally do not hate, reject and rejected the idea of hating men) though i feel like we (generally) have nothing to talk about. we used to talk about girls we liked, and one of my favourite things about dating bisexual women was we got to have that in common, but now the only people who talk with me about hot girls are-- other girls. which is great actually, but i dunno, you would think it was common ground with most guys and somehow its not.
its not like there arent countless things i could talk about with guys, because there are plenty of things we technically have in common. but while i always felt there were wavelength issues, theyre only more pronounced now, and even if-- i dont give a shit about cars, lets do tech instead:
even if a guy is into computers, and i can talk about computers, theres typically not much common ground in our interests and approach regarding them anyway. so even if its something we have in common, we kind of dont. theyve been an area of interest for me forever, i can hold my own, but we dont live in the same world really. we just arent talking about the same things, even when we are talking about the same thing.
im probably making too much of it. or im not, but either way i feel like this isnt the whole story even if i try to figure it out.
but while we are (sort of) on the subject-- a little euphoria would be nice right about now, you know? im not going to pretend it will ever be as simple as that again. but for just a little while, it almost nearly was, sort of...
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<3 zara