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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment