Femmephobia - Part 4

I'm not going to spend a lot of time digging into the past to completely understand how I got to the point of locking away my inner child / inner femme for the better part of 20 years. Certainly not my valuable (both in money and in energy) therapy time, which will be more forward looking. But the subject certainly warrants a bit of naval gazing and a transition post-mortem of sorts, as I emerge from nearly two decades of living a life that essentially turned its back on what seems, today, to be the root of my passion, vitality, and joie de vivre.

Just how did I get here? I have a few ideas . . . 

The State of the Art I: Back in the late 80's, when I first encountered what came to be called the transgender community online (via Compu$erve, this was pre-AOL) one would tag oneself in the CB Chat area or the HSX-200 (Human Sexuality) forums. Initially it was pretty simple. Mary<TV> was a Transvestite. Mary<TS> was a Transsexual. Mary<GG> was a Genetic or Genuine Girl. The queer cisgender women policed gender through VV (Voice Verification, a phone call) so as to keep the icky transwomen out of women-only space.  For a transwoman to pass a VV inspection was passing indeed....

Later, came Mary<CD>, Cross-Dresser which was a bit less fetishistically loaded equivalent to TV. Later still, some pioneers adopted Mary<TG>, no doubt sowing the seeds that came to be the Transgender Identity and Transgender Community. At the time, TG was an intermediate stage, a bit like gender queer or nonbinary today, roughly defined as someone who was more or less full time or living their gender queerly but was not on an established medical transition path. It took years for it to become more of an umbrella term.

And though not stated, please remember that this sample was highly filtered by ability to access online services (having the tech and the funds to do so) as well as the technical savvy - this was long before AOL was spamming the planet with disks, so those of us online were in many ways the tech elite. Suffice it to say things skewed white, assigned male, nerdy / geeky, and economically well off. I paid $4.95 an hour to access online services, back in the day. 

And there was definitely a bit of a pecking order, with TS sitting atop the pyramid, TG slightly lower, CD/TV next, fetish dressers below that. Drag was not even on the radar at that point.

As AOL, Prodigy, and other services came along, they brought their unique spin to things, but the root of online trans community was Compu$erve (and before that, BBS), I think.

The State of the Art II: In the mid 90s, I took my first steps into the real world, first at a book reading / signing by Kate Bornstein. September 29, 1994, if I recall correctly. I was terrified to be among the tribe, terrified to be in the big city of Hartford, unambiguously male in jeans, loafers, and a wool sport coat.  

Soon thereafter, I ended up at one of the two trans support groups in town - CT Outreach Society or COS. I am sure I was a gender blurry sight - with polyester pants, flats, a woman's top, but no wig or makeup. The leader of the group made it clear that the cross-dressers wore heels, the transsexuals wore flats (as I sheepishly gazed down at my shoes). Again, no transgender option - choose column A or column B. I eventually figured out full femme, buying a wig at a friendly shop, learning to do makeup. There are a few photos from that era, I suspect, although probably and thankfully not digitized.

At that time COS and the XX Club (the transsexual support group) kind of ignored each other. Not out of any personal enmity, but because the transsexuals looked down their noses at the cross-dressers. The transition curious cross-dressers wandered over to XX Club surreptitiously, and rumors would fly if an individual were spotted there.

I eventually ended up as executive director of COS for several years - stepping down only when it became clear that I was headed toward transition. I also probably did more to tear down the wall between the groups, welcoming the transsexuals to COS and promoting XX Club to those looking to transition. And personally, I started my long slide toward androgyny and gender neutrality - starting to use my own hair in girl mode, feminizing my eyebrows, starting facial electrolysis "just in case", and choosing to wear things that cisgender (also a word that did not exist back then) women wore rather than the more clearly gendered outfits of the cross-dresser tribe. I also began to move through the Hartford area queer community in both genders, and when that got complicated, I dropped male name / femme name conventions, and began to go by Jude, my middle name from birth, a name that worked across and between genders. 

This gender blur had a number of side effects. First, the wives of CDs started to see me as an ally / resource, someone who would shoot straight with them about their husbands. On more than one occasion, I'd inadvertently out some "on the D/L" cross-dresser by running into their spouse in the grocery store (I was pretty easily identified regardless of gender presentation) and innocently say "we miss Becky, how is she doing?" Becky was doing very well, going out to bars and dating men, and using the non-sexual support group as cover. Probably the start of my taking up the role of "The Good Transwoman", currying favor with women, feminists, lesbians as I turned my back on the less savory aspects of trans community.

Throughout this time, being femme was equated with cross-dressers and fetishists. Transitioners were a lot more low key, if not downright butch. So the less of a femme one was, the more seriously one was taken when it came to transition.

At the same time, access to transition related medical services was through the Gender Identity Clinic of New England (GICNE) - a board that included an Episcopal priest, psychiatrist, psychologist, and endocrinologist. I went before the board twice - once to access hormones, once to access surgery. In both cases, I tiptoed along a line of being femme enough, but not too femme. I damn well could not be seen to be enjoying my time as a woman. "Transition or Die" was the tacit mantra, and you had to convince the board that you were at that point before they green lit your transition. 

Androgyny: I was adamantly not on a transition path (so I said). Instead, taking advantage of my natural hair, my innate femininity, my increasingly hairless face, I began living between genders. I was staking out ground in the mid to late 90s that today is claimed by nonbinary, gender fluid, etc. I was for the most part alone in that world. 

It was a time of mischief and mayhem. I knew where all the non-gendered bathrooms were along the paths I traveled frequently, and when forced to gender myself to pee, it was often a game time decision - which restroom seemed less busy, less likely to create a problem. I started to learn and reinforce the art of invisibility. 

When I traveled for work (as M) I would often have to declare gender (by voice) to the service staff, lest they ask "Something for you, miss?" - picking up gender from the back of my head or my vibe or something. Before the 9-11 attacks, I'd check in for my flight as a male, and then between the ticket counter and the gate, slip into a bathroom, change my top, primp my hair, and complete the trip as a woman. At a trans conference I once overheard someone asking if Jude was MTF (transfeminine) or FTM (transmasculine). I was in gender fluid heaven.

As I snuck up on 40, my stylist (an older drag queen who I adored and who abetted my gender fluidity through creative hair styling) innocently commented that I was starting to thin on top. The whole puckish androgyne thing kind of falls apart with male pattern baldness. I got on track for hormones and testosterone blockers. That pretty much lit the fuse on transition, somewhere down the road.

Shedding My Skin: As I moved towards transition, I pulled back from my many contacts in the trans community. My CD friends were often weekend warriors, looking for any excuse to go out (drinks, dining) at often higher end restaurants where they were less likely to get clocked / hassled. I was much lower on the socio-economic ladder, and tired of either spending so much for lunch, or having to be treated. I was also self employed, and at times it felt like I was the default "hey, I feel like getting some girl time in, let's call Jude and do lunch" wing-woman. I had deadlines and needed to keep the money coming in.

I also found that my leadership role at COS was an issue - as a transitioner, I was not the best public face of an organization that often was the gateway for CDs and spouses, needing desperately to believe that hubby was not transitioning. And after two failed successors (the organization simply looked past them to me for advice, opinion, thoughts) I realized I needed to step back completely to give someone a chance to succeed.

Similarly, the XX Club, which at one time was vibrant and healthy, fell on hard times - a schism related to relationships, the creeping influence of the internet making in person support groups passe. By the time I sought support, the XX Club was 4-5 people clinging onto the life raft of a sinking ship. 

So I kind of ended up adrift, with many friends and contacts but sans a real community or any sort of formal support.

The 9-11 Attacks: I was in Chicago for a trade show (as a M) the week of the 9-11 attacks, and got stuck there. I ended up hanging out at a local queer bar en femme that week, watching the news. I finally ended up driving my rental car back to CT. Years later after I transitioned, a peer recalled being asked on several occasions that week why that woman (me) was wearing a men's suit. Clearly my gender blur was starting to cross lines, to be a distraction.

When the business travel and corporate production gigs that I was freelancing at shut down after the attacks, I began to live more or less full time as a woman. And when clients started looking to hire me a year later, I began turning down work because I was too damn feminine and was unwilling to butch up. The end of my androgynous period was in sight, and I announced my transition effective January 1, 2003. 

I won't go too much into the transition, but suffice it to say I fell in with a relatively new surgeon (Dr. Marci Bowers), became her web-mistress for a time, and was one of her first patients as she took over Dr. Biber's practice in Trinidad, CO. As someone who never envisioned being able to afford such surgery, the opportunity (Dr. Bowers was using Dr. Biber's pricing initially, and I was able to trade some web design work for services) - it felt like the universe was sending me a gift. My one year RLT (Real Life Test), required at that time by the Standards of Care, in reality lasted slightly less than 365 days. Nobody cared; I was too far down the road for any of the gatekeepers to see me as anything but F.

Lesbian and Coupled: During my androgyny phase and transition years, I was coupled with a woman I can only describe as an "angry lesbian". We split in the 2008-2009 timeframe, but we're still close friends. He's become a slightly less angry transmasculine person. However coming off transition, I was hanging with the lesbians - and I guess sought to fit in - eschewing feminine clothes, makeup, etc. I could get away with it (by dint of my many years moving through androgyny and gender fluidity). There was also a sense of perverse pride involved - I did not need to resort to clothing, to makeup, to accessories to signify myself as a woman - I simply was one. 

Over time I came to realize that the lesbian community was a somewhat fraught place for transwomen, and gave up trying to find a home there. I retained the vibe though, finding that being read as a queer, lesbianish woman was easier than trying to be a conventionally gendered woman. So I ended up living as a somewhat soft butch. 

It has turned out to be an ideal place to hide - as I have been evolving and femming it up recently, I've had several friends (familiar with the trans, who I was sure knew my story) confess they did not realize I was trans (probably looking for makeup and heels and wigs and dresses), and just assumed I was a queer woman.

My Inner Child is Pissed (and with good reason) - Part III

When I first started down this road, as a male gendered person trying to come to grips with my cross-dressing, and working with a therapist looking to heal what he saw as a wounded masculinity, I did some inner child work. Little M like Legos (I bought some) and dinosaurs and a bunch of other fairly simple things. He was also unambiguously male. 

Well, my inner child is back (with a vengeance) and she is pissed. She's been locked in a closet for 15-20 years, by someone striving to fit in, to become invisible, to be a well behaved transgender woman, to maybe find a home among the lesbians. I suspect there's another blog post coming (about how and why I ended up turning my back on gender)

M's flip charts were useful here - assigning or identifying an "age of onset" to various traumas and their resulting symptoms, coping skills, dysfunction. It's pretty clear that my inner child is a young girl, realizing she was not happy as a boy, and unable to do anything about that. There are childhood pictures where I am smiling, happy, bright. But by the age of 5 or 6, that bright happy kid looked worried, scared, unhappy. 

My friend B has an alter ego, Lenetta Baby, who she wrote of in college, that became the avatar for her eating disorders, addictions, mental illness, dysfunction. Sidebar, you'll be able to meet Lenetta Baby soon, as Barbara publishes her book Bad Hair Day on Planet Earth this fall. My inner child does not have a name, perhaps I will inquire if she needs or wants one. If nothing else, having a word for this entity or self (like M's use of the word "unicorn" as a shorthand for relationship) would be useful. 

Having had some experience with the sort of work in the past, well, no wonder I have been struggling. Locked away, this sad and angry little girl grabbed everything she could reach within my psyche and began to weaponize it. My passion, my health, my spark, my light, my joy. If she was not allowed to exist, to move through the world, then dammit I was not going to either. 

M commented last week that when I spoke of this side of me (not having really fleshed out an actual inner child or being at the time, just conscious of a need to explore and embrace this part of me), that I spoke with such tenderness and love. And yeah, I love this little kid to death. She deserves so much better and I feel horrible for having locked her away.

As we closed out our most recent session, I pondered "so what is next" and M simply said "I think you should take a victory lap". I imagine a therapist sees a lot of clients who struggle to get to the root of their issue - she might have a pretty good idea where things are going but must wait patiently weeks or month or years for the client to get there. And similarly, once there, how many people lock up in fear and anxiety at having to explore change. So to have someone like me unlock a big piece of the puzzle so quickly and dive into the adventure with equal parts curiosity, courage, excitement and fear - I imagine it feels like a win.

At the moment, my inner child is getting EVERYTHING she wants. I've got enough resources to let her play, buying shoes and clothes and dresses and makeup. I'm not parenting in the least - no adult voice saying "that's really not a great look for you, hon" or "where will you get the chance to wear that" or "you already have a red skirt". She needs to know I'm back with her, she's safe, she's loved, she's going to have a seat at the table going forward. So yeah, things are a little crazy in Jude land.  

Thankfully, she has not expressed any interest in a wedding gown or leather-wear or 6" heels or anything too out there. But as best as I am able, I'm letting her run until she tires herself out. She's having fun. Me too.

But this is not simply a mental or academic exercise; I'm allowing my little femme inner child back into the world. I'm letting myself become more gendered in all aspects of my life, especially in my social and work relationships. Hence the social media posts. When the comfortably gender neutral woman you've been interacting with for 20 years show up in a floral dress, dangly earrings, and a touch of makeup - well, it's kind of a shock to the system. I guess I'm coming out as femme. In some ways its more scary that my actual transition. "I need to be a woman, but I don't buy into all that girly shit" was the mantra, I suppose, that tempered the social explosion of a gender transition and reassured all involved (professional peers, family members, society at large) that I'd be well-behaved, not make a scene or be an embarrassment. 

For the permanent record, here are two (well received) posts I've made on Facebook:

This morning's overnight oats were eaten right out of the mason jar, as opposed to being spooned into a bowl, and I feel like I've crossed a line that there might be no coming back from. 

Burying the lede. Guilty as charged. I continued . . .

In other news, it took about 5 sessions with a new therapist (abetted by decades of groundwork) for me to come to the tearful realization that my decision to transition ~20 years ago was the right one, that I really do need to be (and in fact, enjoy being) F, and that a lot of my churlishness of recent years has been because I have been so intent on becoming invisible, inoffensive and indispensable (and probably a couple of other "in-" words) that I forgot how much I also needed to be me.

 

#FemmeOn

And in response to overwhelming positivity and love, in the same thread I added: 

Thank you all for the lovely and kind words. I am trying to take them all in without too much filtering, both here and in person.

When I first transitioned, I was self employed, gender blurring, androgynous. There was not much of a workplace to deal with, and what contacts I had were no doubt exasperated by many years of mixed signals in terms of gender, so my picking a team, coming out as trans seemed more of a relief than a challenge. Compared to most, I got off easy.

 

This feels harder. I've spent the past 15-20 years expressing gender in a way that might be considered androgynous or gender neutral. Lot of reasons for that (which I continue to explore) but my inner child (who is most decidedly F) has been tired of being locked away and has been kicking my ass for the past few years in dozens of ways. I'm finding ways to love her and nurture her in the moment and giving her a seat at the table going forward.

 

Grateful for the opportunity to be able to make another run at this whole gender thing. A lot of transfolk don't get even one fair shot.

And yeah, it is scary. Because socially and culturally, women's clothing, fashion, and presentation do butt up against sexuality, attractiveness, patriarchy, feminism, availability, vulnerability. I'm putting myself out there - to love and to be loved, to fuck and to be fucked, to be annoyed, to be taken less seriously, to be an object of derision, to be a whipping girl for some, to be assaulted or raped.  That's where the brave / fearless part comes in, I suppose. I desperately want my unicorn to find me. But my bogeyman might find me as well. 

I'm kind of blogged out this morning, but a few final thoughts before I wander off. A handful of close friends, who I have perhaps pushed away, or kept out, have been invited back. In almost every case, hearing me tell my story, there are tears (of happiness for my joy, of sadness for my pain and struggle). There is a knowing that something was amiss, but not quite sure what it was nor how to help. 

In a note to my friend, mentor, #1 fan Barbara, I wrote: 

In some ways the past few weeks have felt like a slow motion Enlightenment Intensive / Direct Experience. My realization that this was at the root of so much of my pain and trauma seems both stupidly obvious (like the Truth, all of my Direct Experiences involve laughter because its so freaking obvious) and also caught me completely off guard. I could (and have, and will) cry for that sad, lonely, hurt little girl I carry inside of me. She gets all the ice cream (or party dresses) she wants.....

And Barbara replied: 

That the little girl will now get some of what she's longed for.  She's been your own unique version of the very unhappy, sabotaging  Lenetta Baby.  

Interesting about IE/direct experience.   After I got off the phone with you a few days ago, that's exactly what I said to Peter - holy shit, Jude had a direct experience!  My heart truly sings for you right now. I see you walking down the sidewalk with a childlike spring in your step.

The new me is just a few weeks old but she feels so very familiar. I'm coming back around to myself. 

When I first encountered West Hartford Yoga back in 2004, I picked up a flyer for a workshop called The Enlightenment Intensive. One of the quotes in this flyer was from the Gospel of Thomas

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

This inner spirit - feminine, funny, sexy, flirty, beautiful, light - has been locked away for far too long, and in struggling to be seen, to be heard, to be let out into the light and the world, was beginning to destroy me. She came close.

She is free, and at the moment I am simply getting out of the way as best I can. As I continue my work with M, we'll figure the rest out.

The Once and Future Femme - Part II of Crisis

Pre-transition, my then partner A and I had a bit of a cruel habit of making up nicknames for the various transpersons in our life. There was "Leggy" (tall and short skirts), and "Fabby" (because everything was fabulous), and Murphy (a close friend, Irish), and "Boney" (skinny, without a lot of feminizing baby / body fat, and choosing shoes / fashion that highlighter her angularity), and "Briskly" (her social style was somewhat curt), and "Moany" (always going on about something), and "Sneaky" (on the D/L about dating men while married). 

I am sure there were others, more or less cruel. My nickname was "Primpy". 

I suspect that nobody who has known me over the past 15 years could imagine me being called Primpy. While I have been blessed with a nice assortment of feminine attributes, I've been living the life of an androgynous, gender neutral, soft butch something or other for many years. There's an old trans community joke: What's the one cure for cross-dressing? Answer: Transition. I certainly stopped "dressing" in anything feminine once I transitioned.

The joke plays on several levels. First, touching on the way some folks (myself included) warmed up to the idea of gender transition by testing the waters as a cross-dresser. Another joke: What's the difference between a cross-dresser and a transsexual? Answer: Two years. 

Second, once one has transitioned, one can no longer be considered to be cross-dressing, but is rather is choosing clothes appropriate to ones gender. 

Third, back in the day, the transitioners / transsexuals, intent on proving their own authenticity (to the world, to medical professionals) generally disavowed any sort of outward display of femininity. We'll get back to this, I promise.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. M, my therapist, spent our first few sessions identifying the issues. Obviously, my pain, suffering, malaise, apparent circling the drain. Something was clearly broken in our heroine, Jude. Second, my self-imposed isolation, from friends, family, etc. Third, the way I got involved in a group, event, community, cause,  and inevitably found myself over-committed, running the place, but no longer able to enjoy, benefit, or participate, and filled with resentment as a result. And finally (scrolling off the bottom of my list, but M would not let it go) my relationships, or lack-thereof. Your correspondent has been wholly out of the world of relationship and sexuality for roughly 15 years.

At our first meeting, I gave M a heads up. I've been down this road before. I've done a lot of work (both traditional therapy, reading, and less traditional healing / spiritual growth work). As a result, I may get there before she did (so please try to keep up), my intuition is on point, and I can be pretty fearless. Once there was blood in the water (figuratively), once I got a clue of where this was going, she would not have to spend 6 months trying to get me to see what to her was crystal clear, and another 6 months screwing up the courage to make changes.

 To call me prescient was an understatement.  

So we talked, we made some charts, she got to know me a bit. She pulled out a copy of Janina Fisher's The Living Legacy of Trauma Flip Chart: A Psychoeducational In-Session Tool for Clients and Therapists. I drew some boxes, and chewed on some stuff. One of those boxes was labelled "The Good Transwoman" and that one has proven to be important. M gave me the language / visualization of having a long antenna - super sensitive to what others are feeling, thinking, etc. - which makes me highly careful as I move through the world.

And then, (maybe 3-4 weeks into our work), two things happened. 

First, my niece was planning a wedding, and I realized I'd need to find something to wear. I've gained weight in the ~20 years since I transitioned. I have a closet full of things that do not fit, are no longer fashionable, are not appropriate. I floated the idea of wearing the dress I bought / wore to my nephews wedding a few years back, but my sister, knowing there would be family pictures, would have none of that. "Go buy something new for your niece"

Meanwhile, M and I got talking about relationships and my exceptionally dour opinion that there was nobody out there for me. Transgender women are often suspect in lesbian spaces; I'm a firm believer that vocal TERFs (Trans Excluding Radical Feminists) are the tip of a much larger iceberg. And while most queer women are polite and PC enough to not be outwardly trans-excluding or trans-phobic, well, we transgender women are generally not dating material, especially among women my age.

On the other side of the gender line, whatever currency that transgender women have with men pretty much goes out the window once one is post-operative. I've been hit on a handful of times in the past few years - always men who recognize that I am trans and are looking for a lady friend with something special (a penis). It takes a simple "sorry, I'm post-operative" to send them on their way, along with pat on the head, because for whatever reason these dudes are usually 5'2" and I'm a kind of amazon queen at 5'11".

Also in the back of my mind - the fact that transgender women get killed by men, invariably men who are attracted to them, seeking them as sex or relationship partners, conflicted by their sexual desires. So yeah, nothing there.

And to be honest, I have no idea what or who I want. I'm not really attracted to a specific type or gender, but rather to how we relate. You press my buttons, you make me feel like a desired, feminine, receptive woman (maybe even leaning into subbing or bottoming) in our relationship - and I'm all yours. Stone butch, silver fox, straight but open minded, gender adventurer - I'm pretty much wide open. 

And yet... M would not let it go and we've come to use the word "unicorn" as short hand for that mythical, possibly one of a kind, person who might want to connect with me: sexually, socially, emotionally. 

M simply posed the question. "If your unicorn is out there, how would they find you?". Boom. Wake up, Judith.

Because yeah, I've spent the last 20 years mastering the art of invisibility. My present FB profile quote has been:

"...invisibility is a superpower." ~ Banksy

Recently changed in light of the current situation: 

 “Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial” ~ Ralph Ellison

And I've hidden from the world as a soft butch, androgynous, gender neutral being, My friend K noted "you're sort of blurry, muddy - blacks and greys and earth tones". So long as the world honored my gender (and the world invariably does) I was fine. But an invisible, gender-neutral person in figurative camouflage might keep me safe, but it is not going to catch the eye of a bright and sparkly unicorn, looking for a playmate or a soulmate. 

And finally, the dresses arrived for the wedding (Kohl's, don't judge) and as I pulled them out of their mailing bags and pulled them over my head (they fit and looked pretty good, all things considered), a familiar feeling, long dormant, washed over me. The same sort of happiness and excitement and endorphin rush I got 30 years ago as I dipped my toes into the world of cross-dressers. I like wearing the clothing that society and culture mainly mostly assign to women.  Boom. Wake up, Judith. 

And this is where it all comes together, where the earlier prescience pays off.  Because it become crystal clear what I had to do: I had to embrace my inner femme. 

About 12 days ago, I sat in M's office, in my usual camouflage. Pondering the need to bait the hook (so as to catch a unicorn) with the suspicion that the positive emotional experience  of putting on a dress might have something to do with it. A week later, I was in there, wearing the best femme mode I could cobble together (after decades of not giving a shit about pretty much anything I wore) and weeping. I want to be a girl; I need to be a girl; I miss being a girl. (I'm 61 and I know its not PC, but the wounded part of me that we're dealing with is still very much a young woman / girl).

Let's just say things have moved quickly. I've come to understand what's happening slightly more slowly than I havelet things unfold. Outwardly: 

• I began to purchase clothing, rebuilding a wardrobe that has lain fallow for nearly 15 years.
  
• I began to reclaim some of my gendered spaces - a dresser top where I keep earrings and jewelry, a closet filled with clothing stretching back to my cross-dressing days. 
• I took 7 bags of clothing to Savers that no longer fit, were no longer appropriate, or were remnant of the various organizations, communities, events, and career requirements I've participated in over the past 25 years. 
• I've "come out" (again) on social media, this time not a trans or a woman, but rather as a "femme", mostly so as to ease the transition with family, friends and colleagues who have not seen me in a dress (or wearing jewelry or makeup or bright colors) in years, if ever.
  
• I've started to move through the world as a clearly gendered, brighter, happier, sexually and emotionally available woman. My friend the unicorn, here I am. Come find me. 

So yeah, 20 years post-transition, and I'm primping again. 

The universe is a funny place. 

My Post-Pandemic (spoiler warning, not) Crisis - Part I

When the COVID-19 pandemic blossomed back in the spring of 2020, I was all-in. Sometime in the first weeks of the crisis, Talking Heads "Life During Wartime" crossed through my listening life and it became the mantra of the next two years. We were on a war footing and I was ready for it. 

 

 

Darkly, I suggested that my life already looked like lockdown, so welcome to my misery, the rest of you. Darkly, I suggested that I was pre-pandemic'd - that the isolation, unhappiness, struggle of my regular life provided some level of protection. Darkly, I quipped that its only PTSD if the trauma were in the past. 

 

I was, truthfully, coming off a period of death and loss. We lost mom at the tail end of 2016. My brother Tom, who I think hung in there while mom was alive,  succumbed to a life of alcoholism in June of 2019, capping two months of crisis as his body failed - lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, cancer in a series of cascading events that took us through 3 extended hospital stays, two aborted returns home, and a final trip to hospice. And finally, my little guy Elo, my beloved doggie companion, passed away at 16 in October of 2019.

I had blogged a bit about grief in March of 2020, thinking I was ripe to go down into it. A week later, the world shut down. Grief would have to wait.

 

Regardless of the hows and whys, I rose to the pandemic occasion. I (along with a few key others) stepped up to save my yoga studio - starting to livestream classes (for free, via Facebook) in the early days of the crisis. Taking advantage of the downtime to knock off some big projects (a 10'x20' storage locker that had been un-opened and paid for 10 years was emptied, 40+ bankers boxes of files were sorted and shredded). I built a live-streaming program, a stretch goal for the studio for many years that we never seemed to know how to get started, in many stage,  that continues to this day. I had enough money to live on, I had no kids or family to take care of, I was comfortable. Bring it on.

At the same time, I saw the pandemic as an opportunity to extract myself from a slew of obligations and commitments that I seemed to fall into and be unable to escape. My folk fest was a two week slog that I had long ago stopped enjoying - too busy to socialize and hang, too busy to listen / watch music. Ballooning felt like work. Playing in the band felt stagnant, and seemed to serve my band-mates more than it served me. And the levels of entangling and over-commitment in the yoga studio and with studio owner Barbara specifically felt oppressive and stifling. When it all went away suddenly - well, Deus Ex Machina. Good riddance. 

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I  was starting to go down. Blood pressure, weight, blood sugar, cholesterol - my body was struggling. I was dying, did not really see a way out, and did not really care. All at the time I was the only person left on the sinking ship of the yoga studio, bailing frantically. We recovering catholics have a Jesus aspiration - no greater love than to lay down ones life for ones friends. And dammit, I was gonna save the studio or die trying. 

Somewhere along the line I noted to Barbara, when the pandemic starts to lift, when things start to open up, that's when I am going to go down. And sure enough, as we ticked over into 2022, my struggle became outward and palpable. I was angry, I was resistant, I was a petulant ass. And, because I was still the one on the bulwarks, leading the fight to save the studio, I was beyond reproach. Fuck you and your advice. I don't see you stepping up....

In June of 2022, as part of the resurrected teacher training program (a program that I steadfastly refused to staff, but got drawn into regardless), our final sharing circle required the naming of an "unreasonable" - something that the trainees could identify as a task to stretch their limits. Things like tattoos or sky diving, or getting married, or breaking up, or getting pregnant, or changing careers, or shaving ones head. My 2022 Unreasonable: to quit teaching yoga. 

It was, in hindsight, a cry for help. And it worked. 

Within a few weeks, Barbara staged an intervention in the form of a lunch date, and I tearfully revealed my pain, my fear, my belief that I was so disconnected from my physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological health that I was close to death. She, no stranger to personal crisis and healing, got me started down the road - both towards getting health insurance (in process) and getting into therapy (well underway). 

Post-pandemic therapists were hard to find. A mutual friend (former yoga studio manager) was now a practicing therapist; she had a colleague with some availability. I'm a cash client (having more money than insurance at the moment) which I am sure did not hurt my chances. And so I was back in therapy. 

And that, friends, is the end of Part 1.