Alien Girlybrain

Short one.

Today was pretty wretched. I do not have a diagnosis, obviously, but I think one of my mental issues is bipolar disorder. If this is bipolar disorder, it is the "ultradian" form, as I can cycle multiple times in a single day. Obviously this will be one of the first things I get checked out once the insurance is active, because while I can GUESS at this, there's no way for me to know for certain. If nothing else it can give me a starting point with a psychiatrist.

Also? As of this moment, my preferred pronouns are they/their and my name is reverting to Carla. I'd rather it were something more gender neutral, and I suppose I could go back to calling myself B or Bea, but whatever.

I would give a large sum of money to never, EVER have to deal with gender (either my own or others') ever again. I fucking hate gender, sex, sexuality and all that. It makes me nauseous.

So let's see… The last time I posted was over a month ago. What's happened in that time?

Well… mostly not a lot.

I spent a couple great weeks in Wisconsin visiting my family. We went to Washington Island for a large chunk of the time there, staying in a house owned by my uncle's college roommate/best friend for life. It's right on the water, which makes for some lovely views, depending on the weather (which was mostly cooperative). There were more mosquitoes there than I've ever encountered anywhere else in my life. They were THICK. I'm amazed I didn't inhale any.

Time with my family continues to be equal parts frustrating and fun. Frustrating because nobody seems to be able to call me Carla or she with any reliability. Fun, because they're my kind of crazy (to a certain extent) and I just like spending time with them.

The visit was marred by a couple migraines, which sucks, but I had meds and was able to deal with them reasonably easily.

After I got back home, Travis and I went out to Pono Burger—an amazing little burger place that opened last year (?) here in Santa Monica—for his birthday. Then last weekend we celebrated our 16th anniversary by…um…ordering pizza one night and Thai food the next. We know how to live it up here, oh, yes we do. :)

And I've been battling severe depression the last several days. It comes in waves. I'm ready for it to be over, because June was mostly awesome, as was the first week of July. I was afraid the depression would come back, though, and it has—sadly—failed to disappoint. One hallmark of my worst depressive episodes is the feeling I should detransition. It's not that being a guy was/is better than being female as much as it is a feeling of discomfort with being female. I've been trying to unpack these feelings and there's definitely some kind of misogyny underneath it. It's a feeling of women and "female" bodies being… bad, dirty, disgusting. Misogyny, maybe? Whatever it is, it's interfering with my ability to accept myself and I'm ready for that to stop. I plan to get back into therapy (my last foray into therapy having been with a therapist last year in Chicopee who had less focus than I do and who seemed to want to put fires out as they started rather than dealing with deeper issues, and who seemed to be more concerned with Damian's mental health than mine tho he was not her patient) just as soon as I'm able to get insurance. I'd like to be a functional human being for once in my life. That's not too much to hope for, is it? I sure hope not.

There's bit a bit of chatter on Twitter lately about how we trans women identify, and how we refer to our youthful selves. It was inspired (I think) by a tweet I made a couple nights ago in which I said, "I wish media would stop saying of trans women that we used to be men. *I* was never a man. Male assigned, yes. Male? Never.". Now in that tweet I made the mistake of generalising, saying "We". I know a couple people who say they view themselves as having once been male, and I specified later that I was only speaking for myself because I KNEW one of them had once identified as male, though she now identifies as female.

And a couple other people have spoken up recently, saying that they were boys and are now women. And that's fair enough. Only you can say what your identity has been. Me? I was never male.

I look back to my youth and see a little girl who looked like a boy. A tomboy, to be sure, but no less female for that. Just not particularly feminine. I played with my toys which were stereotypical "boy" toys: action figures, Legos, Matchbox cars, plastic dinosaurs. I remember one of my favourite toys was a scale replica of the Saturn V rocket. It had stages that came apart and everything. Even a wee lunar lander. But because I was a little girl, those were also girl toys, weren't they? And I played with my sister's dolls and "little homemaker" type toys. I played with the neighbor's EasyBake oven. I played with dollhouses, including my sister's. My sister and I both LOVED Star Wars and we both had figures and a few other toys.

And I never specifically ASKED for female clothing, but I would steal my sister's clothing and wear it when I could. In our house in Hinsdale the attic was accessed by a hidden door in my bedroom. What looked like an inset bookshelf was also a door. You pulled a latch and it would swing inward. In the attic was a little hidden room. I would take her clothes in there and wear them in secret. I would wear my mother's clothing too. I have in the past recounted the story of the time I tried to wear one of Mom's bras because hey, girls wear bras and I'm a girl so I should wear one and…that did not end well. Mom dragging me upstairs to remove the offending article of clothing with my father yelling after me, "What are you, some kind of pansy?"

I remember going shopping with Mom at Marshall Field's downtown and hanging out in the changing rooms trying on various dresses and other clothes. I remember finding a mannequin—just her torso—and looking at her breasts and hips, and thinking, "I can't wait until I look like that!"

Yes, I was aggressive and boyish. What of that? I was given a freer rein to act as I wanted than my sister was, but we were both tomboyish. We were both active children, riding bikes, playing baseball, fishing, doing all sorts of stuff, some of which might be regarded as "masculine" some of which might be regarded as "feminine".

All of that is to say this: it doesn't matter what kind of stereotyped behaviour you engaged in as a child. What MATTERS is how you saw yourself, how YOU identified.

And I? I was never a boy. I was never male. I was only ever a girl. But what about you? Tell me your story. I am keen to know. If you now identify as female, did you identify as male before? And if you now identify as male, did you identify as female before?

So today (at last) I read my essay on gender in front of the class. I think it went down pretty well. I will say this, as hard as it was to write - and it was *VERY* difficult to write - it was even harder to read. My eyes wouldn't track the words, I nearly broke down a couple times and by the end of the last paragraph I was shaking so hard I could barely stand up straight. I shook for most of the rest of the class. Not fun.

Here, then, is the original text of my essay. Bits and pieces got changed as I forgot my place, lost my pace and just generally almost broke down crying. I'd enjoy hearing from folks with criticism and suggestions on how to improve it.

( Gender Differences )