(no subject)
Oct. 26th, 2008 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_foxI need to remember to tell people:
before we go do mushrooms, you should know that for me this is less about entertainment, and more about psycho-spiritual intensity.
Today it was JP and I at Burnaby Mountain. It was intense. And it was good.
------------------------------------
Him.
That old, male, part of me is like a ghost. At first he forgets that he is dead, but is glad to vaguely remember his demise. He is a spirit waiting around to move on. He's confused as to what he's doing here. Wanting to go; wanting to make space for me. He does not want to be integrated, or to find peaceful synthesis in me. He just wants to go. And despite the Samhain and autumnal character of the day, he can't. There is nowhere to go; no-one to take him
Although ready, if not eager, to die, he is stuck on this plane until his work is resolved. That means two months and a half. Then Montreal. Then surgery.
He is glad that he can finally cease to exist in a way that means "life" rather than "suicide." He'd thought of the latter now and then, not understanding what pained him. But he decided against it long ago. It was partially the fear of damnation, even though he didn't really believe in such a thing. Mostly he did not want to wind up like his father, not for himself (because he did not understand what it meant "to live") but because a second suicide would hurt his mother.
I need you to understand who this man is. Like a robot, he is useful because he cannot exist for himself, only for others. He is the Christian; the monk: his messiah, his paragon of leadership, came to earth to wander around in the desert, live in poverty and be crucified.
This man would stay up until 8am (without caffeine or any other drug) completing a fictitious map that he could have just done the next day, and which perhaps three other pepole would even glance at. That piece of paper and those other eyes were more important than he. He could sort databases until his eyes and back hurt. He could debug a computer long after everyone else had gone to bed.
He could ignore feeling pained long enough to get the job done. Of course, he did not exactly want to exist.
If that is what he is willing to do for a map, a spreadsheet, or a computer, think of what he is willing to do for the thing he wants most in the world: my (his?) ability to actually live. By extension, this means his death.
Self-sacrifice? Is he leaving his family without a child? No. Okay then, so be it. No questions. No reservations.
In this, he is free of his great sadness. His one painful desire is sated. He wants nothing, only to be here as needed.
And why is he still here? Because I still need that other-loving strength that is so relentless that he would let every other part of him wear away first. I need him to take me through this. This is his final project; in the dim twilight of anesthesia, we go opposite ways.
-----------------------------
Me
He likes to think that he is saving the life of a younger woman; an innocent? A... civillian? Someone who is somehow innocent or not as capable as he. I correct him. I am older and more seasoned and rounded and agile than he gives me credit. And I think I am ultimately more capable than he could ever be, if not in the self-ablative short term, then in the holistic long run. I think it's because I'm maturing fast. The first time we were distinct entities, he was nearing 27, and I was at most 16. A yearish later he was just 28 and me 21. Another month and I'm 23 or 24 or so.
Why am I so angry, so often?
I'm sleepless at 4am having arguments with non-present and/or non-existant people because I have not accepted myself.
I am angry at myself for not being normal; for breaking all the rules. I am angry that, given the material circumstances to achieve it, I seem to be unable to be a normal girl. Or a normal-ish transsexual girl. Or at least a person who isn't looking forward to a lifetime of feeling uneasy in washrooms and other nominally (straight/cis) "female" spaces and dyke spaces.
Because I act like there is something wrong about being a butch dyke in a decreasingly male body, be it some, or all of the time. Because I see who I could have been as a cisgendered woman, and I seem to have no appetite to be her, because that hypothetical (and relatively normal) "she" is not the real me.
And I am angry because I think there is something wrong with being assertive with my own needs. Angry for being unwilling to speak my truth. To have to other place to talk.
And, y'know, because people are still stupid. Voluntarily, and about a lot of things. Because I need a better way of dealing with this.
before we go do mushrooms, you should know that for me this is less about entertainment, and more about psycho-spiritual intensity.
Today it was JP and I at Burnaby Mountain. It was intense. And it was good.
------------------------------------
Him.
That old, male, part of me is like a ghost. At first he forgets that he is dead, but is glad to vaguely remember his demise. He is a spirit waiting around to move on. He's confused as to what he's doing here. Wanting to go; wanting to make space for me. He does not want to be integrated, or to find peaceful synthesis in me. He just wants to go. And despite the Samhain and autumnal character of the day, he can't. There is nowhere to go; no-one to take him
Although ready, if not eager, to die, he is stuck on this plane until his work is resolved. That means two months and a half. Then Montreal. Then surgery.
He is glad that he can finally cease to exist in a way that means "life" rather than "suicide." He'd thought of the latter now and then, not understanding what pained him. But he decided against it long ago. It was partially the fear of damnation, even though he didn't really believe in such a thing. Mostly he did not want to wind up like his father, not for himself (because he did not understand what it meant "to live") but because a second suicide would hurt his mother.
I need you to understand who this man is. Like a robot, he is useful because he cannot exist for himself, only for others. He is the Christian; the monk: his messiah, his paragon of leadership, came to earth to wander around in the desert, live in poverty and be crucified.
This man would stay up until 8am (without caffeine or any other drug) completing a fictitious map that he could have just done the next day, and which perhaps three other pepole would even glance at. That piece of paper and those other eyes were more important than he. He could sort databases until his eyes and back hurt. He could debug a computer long after everyone else had gone to bed.
He could ignore feeling pained long enough to get the job done. Of course, he did not exactly want to exist.
If that is what he is willing to do for a map, a spreadsheet, or a computer, think of what he is willing to do for the thing he wants most in the world: my (his?) ability to actually live. By extension, this means his death.
Self-sacrifice? Is he leaving his family without a child? No. Okay then, so be it. No questions. No reservations.
In this, he is free of his great sadness. His one painful desire is sated. He wants nothing, only to be here as needed.
And why is he still here? Because I still need that other-loving strength that is so relentless that he would let every other part of him wear away first. I need him to take me through this. This is his final project; in the dim twilight of anesthesia, we go opposite ways.
-----------------------------
Me
He likes to think that he is saving the life of a younger woman; an innocent? A... civillian? Someone who is somehow innocent or not as capable as he. I correct him. I am older and more seasoned and rounded and agile than he gives me credit. And I think I am ultimately more capable than he could ever be, if not in the self-ablative short term, then in the holistic long run. I think it's because I'm maturing fast. The first time we were distinct entities, he was nearing 27, and I was at most 16. A yearish later he was just 28 and me 21. Another month and I'm 23 or 24 or so.
Why am I so angry, so often?
I'm sleepless at 4am having arguments with non-present and/or non-existant people because I have not accepted myself.
I am angry at myself for not being normal; for breaking all the rules. I am angry that, given the material circumstances to achieve it, I seem to be unable to be a normal girl. Or a normal-ish transsexual girl. Or at least a person who isn't looking forward to a lifetime of feeling uneasy in washrooms and other nominally (straight/cis) "female" spaces and dyke spaces.
Because I act like there is something wrong about being a butch dyke in a decreasingly male body, be it some, or all of the time. Because I see who I could have been as a cisgendered woman, and I seem to have no appetite to be her, because that hypothetical (and relatively normal) "she" is not the real me.
And I am angry because I think there is something wrong with being assertive with my own needs. Angry for being unwilling to speak my truth. To have to other place to talk.
And, y'know, because people are still stupid. Voluntarily, and about a lot of things. Because I need a better way of dealing with this.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-28 03:38 am (UTC)You were waiting near the baguettes in the bakery, at the back of the store, in what used to be the flower shop. Together we climbed up the pale orange staircase into the central enclosure, up three storeys, to a corridor and a staircase down again. I spied a lounge to the right, and stepped inside to see windows down onto a brand new Olympic swimming pool, divers training in smaller pools to either side. So that's what replaced the stream...
"Come on," you urged, and led me out of the lounge and down the front staircase and into the women's changeroom, joined now by your other friends. (Anonymous shadows all; I have no images; but there were certainly two or three of them.) A sauna and a smaller pool, both women-only, opened off the lockers. The rest of you stripped down and leapt naked into the water, joining the women already there. I just leapt in, not even removing my shoes or sweater or bike helmet.
After a while I began to realize that all the other women were looking at me uncomfortably. It never entered my mind, in the dream, that they might just be weirded out by the helmet: no, I knew they thought I must be hiding something. I knew they thought I might be a guy. Nobody said anything to me, but edged away to talk to you instead, and seemed grudgingly satisfied by someone so clearly & obviously female. Finally you swam over and suggested that removing my helmet might be a good idea: and so I did, and immediately I woke up.
Goodness only knows what this says about me, but apparently I have no doubts that you're female-bodied, and expect you to be every bit as adept a guide after the renovations are complete.