I am smart.
I am funny, and witty and people appreciate that about me.
I am a beautiful person.
I am going to transition.
I am strong.
I am changing my life for the better.
I am strong enough to get help fixing my life.
I am a good person.
I am scared so often.
I am loved.
I am trying to love myself.
I am a nerd and proud of that fact.
We live in a society where networking, both for our personal and work lives, is extremely important. Information needs to be passed on from one person to another or to a group of people. We need to stay in touch with one another. Throughout history we have been creating, developing and enhancing our methods of communication. First it was grunts and hand gestures, then languages were developed. Once we had language we needed to develop ways to communicate over large distances, so we developed postal services and eventually the telephone. In our modern day we have a wonderful communication technology in the form of the internet, limitless amounts of information can be shared almost instantaneously to millions of people.
Email has become, in my opinion, the epitome of convenient communication. I do not find it to be a substitute for talking to a person, but for just getting information to another person, it is quite effective. Unfortunately, there are new types of communication evolving. Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, et al. These sites focus around the sharing of information, messages, photos and games.
Most of my friends know that I detest Facebook, I hate the other social networking sites as well, but I tend to focus my dislike on Facebook because it’s become so dominant in our culture. I do, however, have an account that I check semi-regularly, and I do find a few of their games to be fun, and it is interesting to see what some of your old acquaintances are up to. While there are some good qualities to Facebook, I’ve come to the conclusion that its fundamental flaws outweigh its flare. I’m not going to nitpick the details of how Facebook works, I will, however, talk about a few of the major qualms I have about this networking site.
We need to communicate in our modern world, it’s both a necessity to function and for many of us, a desire to feel connected with our friends and family. The creators of Facebook and other social networking sites understand this and base their programs/sites around our this concept. For Facebook to be successful, it needs a large user base and all other social networking services to have a small user base.
The only way to accomplish this is to limit its features to users only. There can be no communication (aside from invitations to join Facebook) between members and non-members. And as more people begin to use Facebook, they begin to communicate only on Facebook. Of course this means that if you are not a member of Facebook, you’re no longer in communication with your friends, family and in some cases your co-workers and employers.
I have friends in the English department who have official Facebook groups for their university classes where they hold discussions regarding their readings. A close friend of mine is a member of a work related Facebook group where he gets messages regarding his work. Many of my friends use Facebook to organize events and birthday parties which you can only be invited to if you use Facebook.
This may sound absurd, but you can actually become socially isolated if you choose to not use these social networking sites if your friends/family/co-workers rely on them.
As more and more people continue to use Facebook, they use other means of communication less and less. Email gets replaced by wall messages. Birthday cards (or e-cards from Hallmark for use poor grad students) are replaced with something from the Free Gift Application. Event invitations are replaced with Facebook event invitations. I actually received a Facebook Wedding invitation the other month.
Instead of having in-depth conversations with people, we’re having more and more shallow conversations with people. For the most part, Facebook is open to all your friends to view. Most conversations you have with someone will be shared with all that can see your page. You don’t want to be too personal so you keep your messages short. In addition, for many people, typing takes time, and we want quick and fast communication.
So the result is short messages (usually written with bad grammar, spelling and punctuation).
“Happy Birthday”
“U R CUTE!!!11″
“funny hat!!! luv that pic”
I’m a bit of a personal person. I don’t want everyone to know everything about my life. But at the same time, there are people that I like to share with more than others. I also have different groups of friends, I have friends from highschool, and I have friends from university. I don’t always want my friends from highschool to know that I’m frustrated with my scholarship applications, nor do I want my family to know that some of my friends went drinking last night.
Also, and this may be a more unique situation to me than to a general audience, but there are a few close friends that know I’m transsexual. I’m glad I can confide in them, however I have to limit what and how I talk to them because there are other people (like my very catholic godmother who might possibly have a heart attack if she learned about my transsexuality in an untimely fashion) for whom I need to keep some information private.
Yes I know there are privacy settings I can use for individual users. Yes I could go through and fix it so that certain people can only see certain aspects of my profile, but with 200+ friends¹ that would be quite a complex task, especially with the enormous number of applications and ways to share information.
I could go on, but I think that anything else I write would just be specific little rants I have about Facebook. Instead, I think I’ll be somewhat hypocritical and go post about this entry on Twitter².
-Floating
1. When I say friends here I’m meaning the friends on Facebook. These people are not necessarily my friends, most are just people I’ve met in life at some point who found my profile and wanted to ‘add me’ as their friend.
2. Just another social networking site of a different kind. ^_^
I’ve been starting to be able to see more an more examples of just what this gift really is. And it really is quite amazing. I’d say fuzzy heart warmingly amazing. It’s not some big epiffany either; rather I’ve been noticing small things that have been working together to enhance this mosaic-like gift. The pattern is starting to emerge and it’s beauty is beginning to show.
Yes yes, I still complain and whine about how horrible this situation is. If I had the chance, Id’ rather not have been born at all so that I’d never have had to have suffered through this. But there are those small beautiful aspects where I have to stop and wonder about this whole thing.
Sometimes I find myself wishing I could categorize, record, enumerate, qauntify and score all these things and realizations that I’ve been going through. I can’t however so I’m afraid it will all have to remain anecdotal without any objectivity. I can only relay how it’s affected me and how I’m dealing with these unique little situations.
The other day, my significant other and I were walking home from the grocery store. The walk takes about 25 minutes one way and while we didn’t buy a lot of groceries, the bags did end up weight quite a bit. Physically I’m bigger than my partner, I’m taller and I have stronger muscles than her. So I took all three of the bags and was carrying them. About halfway through the trip, my partner started to reach for the bags so that she could carry them as well. I told her it was ok and that I didn’t mind. She then told me that she felt bad because she felt like she was reinforcing the stereotypical role of men carrying bags for women and that she didn’t want me to feel like she was pushing me back into a masculine role.
I was taken aback at what she said. I was completely not expecting her to be worrying about things like that. This is a person who’s just learned that the person she fell in love with seven years ago is not the gender she had assumed. She’s in a position where she has to learn to change her orientation if she chooses to stay with me. She is wonderful. We don’t know what the future will hold. We don’t know if we’ll still be together in a years time. Yet here she is, trying to help me and make me feel comfortable. This wasn’t even an isolated event either, she’s been surprising me with little amazements all week long.
This gift. I just was given the wonderful experiencing of learning a new facet about the person I love. I just learned how great of a person she is, and how strong and compationate she can be. I would never have known this if we were not thrown into this situation.
I truly hope that everyone who reads this post can find someone like this in their lives. Even if it’s just for a short period of time. ^_^
-Floating
Ok, I admit it. I’m a dork1. It’s one of the things I’ve come to accept in my life. Being myself is an important aspect of growing through the transitions I’m going through in my life. I have now being given the gift of strength to tell some of my friends about [i]who[/i] I really am. Yet when I tell them, I find that the most important thing is to tell them that I’m still me. I haven’t changed. There will be changes of course, but I’m still the same person they’ve gotten to know over the years. My core personality is still the same. I still want to spend time with my friends, doing the same things we’ve always done. I love to watch my movies with my friends. We love to make jokes at each other and to tease each other (in a playful loving way). None of that will change. Admittedly, my friends will have a new myriad of material to poke fun at me about.
So I made a pie yesterday evening. It took a while, but I was having a really good day after a long long week of frustrations. Baking always calms me down. Eating the baked goods also really helps calm me down as well.
This time I tried my hands at a Lemon Meringue pie. It turned out pretty well, and when my partner and I had finished our slices I had a quick look at the pie. For the first time with any pie I’ve made at home, it cut really well. The slices remained in really clean shapes.
It was at that moment that one of those dorky thoughts popped into my head. And I’m proud to say that I’m still a dork.
- Floating
1. I use the term ‘dork’ interchangeably with ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’. I know some people have different definitions for each, but I choose to use the terms more loosely. ^_^
Every once and a while I buy myself a copy of the magazine called Vegetarian Times, this specific issue has had a lot of really good recipes I’ve tried and liked very much. I was so impressed that I even ordered a subscription to the magazine. Unfortunately the newest issue hasn’t come yet and I’m worried that I ordered too late and the issue on the shelf now won’t come. I suppose I could go out and buy it.
Anyway. I was really impressed with their recipe for vegan Thumbprint Jam cookies. I don’t have the recipe with me at the moment, and I’m not 100% if I’m allowed to post it because of copyright laws (not that I’d expect them to care). I might decide later to post the recipe if anyone is interested.
I made them with two types of jam. All natural, no sugar added, raspberry jam (front right of picture) and gooseberry jam (on the left). Overall I was really impressed with them. They didn’t brown as nicely as I would have liked though. I think the recipe suggested that I roll them in chopped nuts but I chose to mix the nuts in the dough instead. It turned out well, but I think the nuts would have given them a nice finish if they browned.
Overall verdict is that I really liked them. They were firm but still chewy. The jam fit well with the flavour of the cookie, and they were very easy to make. I will definitely make them again.
Edit: I’ll figure out the image size stuff later. ^_^
It is our challenges, disabilities and burdens in life that can be our greatest source of strength and personal growth; or so I’ve heard. Without hardship or strife, we would never be given the opportunity to observe the world with a critical eye nor would we have the ability to compare our lives with the rest of the world. I myself often dwell on the negative aspects of my life; I’m too tall, I have an ugly nose, I wasn’t born the right gender, or a whole host of other maladies. Now I’m starting to realize that there is a positive aspect to what I’m experiencing. It is still hard for me to see and sometimes even harder for me to accept. But I’ve decided to keep faith and believe that what I’m going through is, indeed, a gift.
My physical sex is male. I was born with male reproductive organs. Naturally my body creates testosterone. I have gone through puberty, my voice cracked and dropped many years ago. I’m losing my hair due to male pattern baldness. I have facial hair. I’m average height for a man, but I feel I’m too tall. I have large hands and feet. If you were to meet me on the street, you would have no reason to suspect that I am anything other than a man. However I am telling you, without a hint of a doubt, I am a woman¹. It is who I am that matters, not what I am.
Unless you feel the same way², you might not understand how horrible an existence like this can be. I’m now 28 years old and throughout my life I have been dealing with this. Sometimes I’ve been coping in unhealthy ways (denial, self-harm, etc). Yet now, though I could not pinpoint a time when or reason why things have changed, I am starting to fully accept who I am.
In addition to this, I am starting to (with the aide of my therapist) understand that while it’s undeniably a painful and unfair situation, it is in some ways a blessing. It’s a gift.
When I was first introduced to this ‘gift’ concept I superficially understood what it implied. Then upon further contemplation I came to a counter-realization based around the idea that ‘this gift’ is just a tool that’s being used to placate me into making myself feel good about a bad situation. In truth, I still could not tell you my final opinion on the matter. I do not know whether it is a gift or not. Yet I think I’m starting to understand what it really means, what this gift really is.
It’s intangible, only partially definable, unique to everyone who it’s bestowed upon, yet ubiquitous (although not always acknowledged) to all people suffering. It’s akin to breaking your hand, you never appreciate how valuable your hand is until it’s gone. It is also the most forgotten and neglected gift of all time. It has many facets, many different ways to interpret it, and it manifests in a myriad of different ways. It may be painful, but I’m hoping its benefits outweigh its downfalls.
So just how can being transsexual be considered a gift? The average person leads a life, mundane in it’s non-uniqueness. The average person is in fact, average. They fulfill the statistical roles imposed upon society by the great number of people who live lives similar to them. The average person is a zombie, somnambulating through life, never questioning themselves. It’s not a fault of their own, it’s because they never have a reason to question themselves – they can live their lives happily and contently without ever having to question anything. There are a few rare people in the world who can break free from this zombification (I don’t think that’s a real word. O.o) on their own, they can question reality, they can comprehend that there are different ways of doing things, different ways of being, different ways of understanding. I am not one of those people. I was forced to question my existence; and I have found a great deal of answers.
I have learned that I am a determined person. I have a strong will. I am bravely stepping forward into a scary world where I will face mockery, discrimination, hatred and possibly even physical harm. I am doing this because I was forced to question who I am. I was forced to realize that I am not what society expects me to be. I may physically be male, but I I learned that I’m not. And I learned that I am now brave enough to change this.
I’ve learned that I was given the opportunity to experience both genders. I have an understanding of both sexes that most people are never exposed to. I spent my life trying to ‘fit in’ with guys. I consciously studied how they acted, how they felt, how the responded to things. I emulated them to fit in. I have experienced in my own way life as a man. Yet, in my mind, I am female. How many non-transsexual people can say that they have a first hand experience at understanding both sexes?
I may be at the beginning of my physical transition, but I know that being transsexual is difficult. I have been given the gift of knowing that I can get through this. Perhaps this gift was given to me because I was strong enough to handle it? I would not wish this existence on anyone, no matter how horrible a person they are. There are times you will here me say that I would give anything to not have been born this way. But I promise you that I would not want someone else to go through this instead of me. At least I know that I can handle it (or at least I’m hoping I can).
Hopefully that helps you understand what This Gift is. It’s helped me deal with it, even though for the most part I consider it a curse. I suppose what I need to understand is that it’s both.
-Floating
P.S. Yes, I have footnotes in my blog. I’m a dork. ^_^
1. Oddly enough, I don’t actually feel like a woman, I more feel like a girl. I suppose I just need to grow up. ^_^
2. By ’same way’ I mean gender X stuck in the body of gender Y (I don’t want to leave out any female to male TS that happen to read this post).
