Check it out, if you get the chance....
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
My new web site for writers!
As most of you know, my "day job" for the last 20 years is as a teacher of the craft of creative writing. I just opened a new FREE writing resource web site.
Check it out, if you get the chance....
Check it out, if you get the chance....
Monday, January 25, 2010
My transition diary - part 1
Although my 1200 page transition diary (begun in 1989) is published as a series of books (available on Amazon.com) I'll be reprinting it here , chapter by chapter, in order to make the text searchable as a service to the community.
PRELUDE
The pages beneath, chronicle my journey from a life as an apparently normal husband and father to that of an apparently normal woman. In the hope of capturing the immediacy of this emotional trip into the unknown, I shunned the retrospective approach, opting instead for a daily Diary.
Each entry was made on the day the events actually happened, expect as noted. And each is filled with the raw and unpolished thoughts and feelings that held me at that moment. Of course, this leads to a somewhat meandering story, as well as contradictions in my point-of-view and personal emotional outbursts that I'm sure will make me squirm once this is published.
But anything less would be less than truthful. And if this document is to serve any purpose as either a tool for tolerance and understanding or as an inspiration to those contemplating any major life-change, then it must be completely honest.
FOREWORD
As I write these words, I am still a man. But that will soon change. The hormone therapy I began two months ago is already altering both mind and body. Soon, the person known as Dave will cease to exist and the new person of Melanie shall be born.
So it is with a strange mixture of sadness and elation, suffering and joy, that I pen these words. For in order for Melanie to live, Dave must die. No, I am not a "split" personality. But just as there are many aspects of Melanie that cannot be expressed in the role of Dave, there are many facets of Dave that can no longer be explored as Melanie.
So, my life as a man has reached an impasses. My development as a male is to be cut off, both figuratively and literally. And yet, I gladly lay my life down for her. For I have come to know Melanie intimately as a beautiful person: warm compassionate, creative, insightful. I love her. Indeed, if I were able to meet Melanie face to face, I would surely remain Dave and devote all my days to pleasing her and basking in the glow of her joyous outlook. But such can never be, and Dave must die for Melanie to live.
I do not know what the future holds; no one ever does. But I do know that the course I have charted is truly the only one open to me. Any other path leads to certain disaster, as great, gaping chunks of my personality would whither, fester, and die.
So, I close with a wish for the new woman about to be born: May your outer beauty match the inner beauty I have come to know and love. May hour days be long and fruitful. May you find happiness where I have found pain, and contentment from my frustration.
And may you have no regrets.
David
in California
October 3, 1989
*************************
SETTING:
As my first entry starts somewhat into my story, a brief background is essential to an understanding of the text.
As of August 1st, 1989, when this journal began, I was living entirely as Dave - father, husband, small business owner, and free-lance writer/director/editor in the film business. I had been married for thirteen years to Mary, with a ten-year-old son, and a six-year-old daughter. My family life was good, my career growing, my future bright, but still something was missing.
I had first felt "different" in kindergarten, where all the other little boys seemed to know instinctively how to act, but I had to struggle to learn the male role by rote: it did not come naturally. I never considered the possibility I had the instincts of a female; I simply thought I had none at all.
By age seven, I was regularly sneaking off to dress in the girls' clothes my mother brought in as part of her short-lived ironing business. This was well before puberty and was not an erotic experience, but rather a feeling of completeness and contentment.
Throughout my teenage years, the need to dress as a female came and went in waves, sometimes intense, sometimes absent for years at a time.
I was non-agressive in school, both in sports and dating, and excelled at neither. My only erotic interests were not in what I could do to or with a woman, but what it would be like to be one.
I married as a virgin in 1976, and the longings to be female vanished more than they were there. But, gradually, as I progressed through adult life, the waves became stronger and more frequent. Only twice in my life (both times in my early teen years) had I ventured out as a female, both with such tension from fear of discovery, that I did not attempt this again until three years before this journal began.
Suddenly, the need to move in society as a woman became overwhelming, and within two months, I had made nearly a dozen outings, tentative at first, then growing more bold as I gained confidence in my ability to "pass" without being "read".
Throughout this period, I was constantly "purging" myself of this "awful" desire. Full of guilt I would throw away all my pills, wigs, clothes, and any other accumulations, only to be driven to rebuild my accouterments scant days later.
Finally, I came to the decision that this secret side, if not dealt with openly, would lead to self-destruction and the loss of not only my self-respect, but the love of those I loved. So, at the end of July 1989, I mustered the courage to call a gender "hotline" and get a referral to a doctor who provided hormone therapy to transsexuals. This Diary begins with my preparations for that appointment.
Raised By Wolves
by Melanie Anne Phillips
Part One: A Spy In Their Midst
Chapter 1
Point of Departure
PRELUDE
The pages beneath, chronicle my journey from a life as an apparently normal husband and father to that of an apparently normal woman. In the hope of capturing the immediacy of this emotional trip into the unknown, I shunned the retrospective approach, opting instead for a daily Diary.
Each entry was made on the day the events actually happened, expect as noted. And each is filled with the raw and unpolished thoughts and feelings that held me at that moment. Of course, this leads to a somewhat meandering story, as well as contradictions in my point-of-view and personal emotional outbursts that I'm sure will make me squirm once this is published.
But anything less would be less than truthful. And if this document is to serve any purpose as either a tool for tolerance and understanding or as an inspiration to those contemplating any major life-change, then it must be completely honest.
FOREWORD
As I write these words, I am still a man. But that will soon change. The hormone therapy I began two months ago is already altering both mind and body. Soon, the person known as Dave will cease to exist and the new person of Melanie shall be born.
So it is with a strange mixture of sadness and elation, suffering and joy, that I pen these words. For in order for Melanie to live, Dave must die. No, I am not a "split" personality. But just as there are many aspects of Melanie that cannot be expressed in the role of Dave, there are many facets of Dave that can no longer be explored as Melanie.
So, my life as a man has reached an impasses. My development as a male is to be cut off, both figuratively and literally. And yet, I gladly lay my life down for her. For I have come to know Melanie intimately as a beautiful person: warm compassionate, creative, insightful. I love her. Indeed, if I were able to meet Melanie face to face, I would surely remain Dave and devote all my days to pleasing her and basking in the glow of her joyous outlook. But such can never be, and Dave must die for Melanie to live.
I do not know what the future holds; no one ever does. But I do know that the course I have charted is truly the only one open to me. Any other path leads to certain disaster, as great, gaping chunks of my personality would whither, fester, and die.
So, I close with a wish for the new woman about to be born: May your outer beauty match the inner beauty I have come to know and love. May hour days be long and fruitful. May you find happiness where I have found pain, and contentment from my frustration.
And may you have no regrets.
David
in California
October 3, 1989
*************************
SETTING:
As my first entry starts somewhat into my story, a brief background is essential to an understanding of the text.
As of August 1st, 1989, when this journal began, I was living entirely as Dave - father, husband, small business owner, and free-lance writer/director/editor in the film business. I had been married for thirteen years to Mary, with a ten-year-old son, and a six-year-old daughter. My family life was good, my career growing, my future bright, but still something was missing.
I had first felt "different" in kindergarten, where all the other little boys seemed to know instinctively how to act, but I had to struggle to learn the male role by rote: it did not come naturally. I never considered the possibility I had the instincts of a female; I simply thought I had none at all.
By age seven, I was regularly sneaking off to dress in the girls' clothes my mother brought in as part of her short-lived ironing business. This was well before puberty and was not an erotic experience, but rather a feeling of completeness and contentment.
Throughout my teenage years, the need to dress as a female came and went in waves, sometimes intense, sometimes absent for years at a time.
I was non-agressive in school, both in sports and dating, and excelled at neither. My only erotic interests were not in what I could do to or with a woman, but what it would be like to be one.
I married as a virgin in 1976, and the longings to be female vanished more than they were there. But, gradually, as I progressed through adult life, the waves became stronger and more frequent. Only twice in my life (both times in my early teen years) had I ventured out as a female, both with such tension from fear of discovery, that I did not attempt this again until three years before this journal began.
Suddenly, the need to move in society as a woman became overwhelming, and within two months, I had made nearly a dozen outings, tentative at first, then growing more bold as I gained confidence in my ability to "pass" without being "read".
Throughout this period, I was constantly "purging" myself of this "awful" desire. Full of guilt I would throw away all my pills, wigs, clothes, and any other accumulations, only to be driven to rebuild my accouterments scant days later.
Finally, I came to the decision that this secret side, if not dealt with openly, would lead to self-destruction and the loss of not only my self-respect, but the love of those I loved. So, at the end of July 1989, I mustered the courage to call a gender "hotline" and get a referral to a doctor who provided hormone therapy to transsexuals. This Diary begins with my preparations for that appointment.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A frustration
I'm an artist of sorts. Actually, I think of myself as a "concept artist" (a phrase of my own creation, if that isn't too recursive). That means that I'm interested in coming up with new concepts and sharing them with an audience. I'm NOT so much interested in actually turning these concepts into finished, polished works. To me, once I've got the idea or feeling documented in terms of its nature and potential, the rest is just boring work. And besides, if I take the time to do all the completion work, not ony will I be bored and frustrated to tears but I'll be wasting time I could be spending creating other new concepts, all of which will be forever lost, here and gone, just because I'm trying to look "professional" in my work. Screw that.
Still, as much as I may enjoy my own concept art, it is even more meaningful when I can share it with someone else who tunes in to the notion, grooves on the rythm, or groks the significance and expanse. That's why I put up my personal web site at http://melanieannephillips.com/
It was a lot of work, I'll tell you - I had to listen to, convert, and break apart over 40 hours of audio recordings I've made over the year of various notes about concepts that have come and gone. These range from original music to ideas on story structure, psychology and even physics, due to my work as co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story and the Dramatica software for developing novels and screenplays.
In addiition, as a photographer I've created hundreds of (what I consider) stunning photographs, not to mention the fiction I've written and on and on.
Point here is that I have two primary web sites - http://heartcorps.com/ where I put all my writings and stuff for the transgender community, including this blog. This is the world,s very first transgender web support web site, founded in 1994. I've done a lot of work for that particular audience, and I'm proud of sharing my journey with literally hundreds of thousands of folk, many of whom have written me to tell me how I've saved or changed their lives for the positive.
My other site, http://storymind.com/ is where I make my living with Dramatica and other videos, audios, books and software products like StoryWeaver which I created to help writers fashion better stories with more creative passion.
It's kind of a toss-up as to which area I'm best known in. There was a time, about ten years ago, when you could mention my name to anyone in the TG community in the world and they'd know who I was. That time has passed, and good! Back then, my materials on the web were one of the few sources of serious information and help. But with the advent of social networking and You Tube, help is just a click away and I've really become redundant, which is also good.
So, I thought, let me publish my transition diary (which literally tens of thousands of people have read here on this web site and which you can still get here for free). The diary is over 1200 pages. It spans six separate books covering twenty years. One hundred people are reading it at any given moment.
Yet, when I put it in paperback and listed it on Amazon.com and even linked to from my diary pages I've sold only two copies in two months. Fine validation of my art, eh? Oh, sure, I know if you have something available for free, even if it is just in 110 chapters on a 110 web pages, people won't cough up $19.95 to buy it in a more convenient form. Well, to be honest, you'd have to buy all six books and that would set you back about 100 bucks. Yeah, I know.... Still, as a writer who makes a living teaching writers, and since this is my most passionate of all things I"ve ever written, I have to admit it is still a little disappointing. SIX BOOKS! Do you know how much WORK that is????
Okay, so I thought I'd find a publisher. I looked on Amazon.com and found the most prolific publisher - Seal Press. I sent them a little note about myself, the historic and widely read nature of my diary, and a few samples of my work. They rejected it. The person who wrote the note apparently had no idea who I was. (Quick cut to a movie scene in which a pompus has-been shouts in irritation at some lack of recognition "Do You Have Any Idea Who I Am!!!!")
Yeah, well I'm not all full of myself. Not anymore. I'm just saying the moment has passed and my name and work really don't carry any weight or even any recognition anymore and, therefore, I don't think there's much chance of my getting the diary into standard publication. Yeah, I had dreams of it being a reall "cross-over" piece that would be a book-of-the-month selection and show up on Oprah, open minds, spread a message of tolerance and understand and change the very fabric of the foundations of society world-wide. Perhaps my expectations were a little high? No matter, I believe my time has passed.
No without going into great detail, as this next section is briefly about my work in story structure and this is, after all, a TG web site, I have the same issue there as well. I co-created the Dramatica story theory with my long-time friend Chris Huntley back in 1991. We released the software through his company in 1994 and it took the writing world by storm.
People loved it or hated it but everyone had an opinion. And it sold a lot of copies. After all, it took six engineers and one million dollars of research and development just to get the first version out the door. We advertised in all the major writing magazines - full page full color ads on the inside cover and back page. We were interviewed by CNN and the BBC and WIRED magazine. Heady time, that.
I eventually left the company by mutual agreement since Chris didn't want to continue to develop the theory (which is based on the psychology of story structure) into a more broadly based psychology for personal problem solving and life improvement. I was hoping to draw on my experience and knowledge I had gained from helping those in the TG community, add it to this revolutionary new model of story structure and to create a truly useful, immediately intuitive method for resolving angst and maximizing fulfillment - ultimately lessioning the frustrations in the world, the misunderstandings, and thereby fostering peace and communication across the globe. Again, perhaps a bit ambitious.
But, since 1994 Chris and his company have done virtually nothing to improve or expand Dramatica. They've almost stopped advertising it completely. And all the other projects they've created since then have had pretty much fallen flat after all kinds of time, expense, effort and hoopla.
Since they've let Dramatica languish, naturally my royalties have dropped eac of the last fifteen years to the point that razther than being enough to retire on it is not just a little bonus money from time to time.
I had hoped that Dramatica would also grow to help people, not just to write stories but to live with each other in harmony and to find true happiness. But, there was no support for that effort either.
I've built these two web sites single-handedly over the years - WAY too much work for the return. All I ever wanted was enough money to pay the bills and then I could devote myself to trying to help others in those two communities.
But I've grown tired of working on things that aren't my own interests but just my public service. As I mentioned at the beginning, my own loves are phtography, music, concepts, and travel, spending time with my kids and my friends, going to movies and museums and just plain sitting in Minto-Brown Park and watch the geese by the flooded pond.
Yet none of these things are my frustration - not the one I'm writing about today, anyway. My frustration is my personal web site at http://melanieannphillips.com/. I looked at the stats today and got really frustrated - not by the number of people coming there - that's fine - but by what they were looking at, the pages they visited.
This is the site that is my pressure valve - the place I pour out my creative soul so the grind of the TG and Story web sites and "life's work" doesn't sink me completely. I put up my artwork, my music, my fiction stories, my photography and more - hoping to share the OTHER parts of my life (the parts that bring me my greatest joy).
I don't link to that site from the Storymind.com site - that would interfere with business, and I can't afford that. So I link to the site from the TG site, figuring people who read my diary and my articles to help them with transition might enjoy with me some of these other endeavors.
WRONG! The stats told lthe story. Hundreds of people come by my personal site every month from links on the TG site to my home page. And what do they look at? The most popular page is "photographs" - not because they want to see my pictures of Yosemite but because they're hoping to see pictures of me or other transsexuals that they can do whatever they do with.
Next most popular? My fiction section where I have listed some of my screenplays and short stories in the tradition of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonegut. But why are so many TG folk going there? Because they think it is going to be TG fiction about guys turning into women and such.
Get the idea? By the time we get down to the stuff that's really important to me, my music for example, about twenty people show up to theh page every month and 2 or 3 might listen to one of the hundreds of songs I've written.
Just a handfull of folks care a jot about the heart of my own passion. Understandable though - back when I was in their boat I was just as self-focused. It was that or lose it completely. So I don't begrudge it to them. But as for me, I'm still frustrated in the extreme.
You know, I just can't throw myself into that kind of work - tending TG sites, building Story Structure sites, editing web pages, spell checking, designing software tools.... Hell, I can't even bring myself to send things off to publishers or cull through the mountain of writing I've done to pull together a book on a given subject, such as putting together everything I've ever written about the Main Character or Plot or Act Structure into separate books, even though they might make money and would certainly be useful to people.
Nope - I gotta get out of that game!
So, here's the plan... The last few days I've really wanted to find a way to create my Magnum Opus - to pull together all I know about psychology - the structure and the passion - and to assemble it all in an organized manner that covers the whole shebang and simultaneously guides a novice into and through the material until they have mastered his or her own heart and soul.
But I'm scrapping that project. Just can't find the gumption to grind myself up in yet one more project like that - like the TG site, the Story site, the diary, Dramatica, StoryWeaver, my monthly newsletter, courses on story I taught in college, seminars and so on.
Nope - I just can't bring myself to do it anymore.
And so here's the plan (and hopefully the path to end my frustration)....
1. I'm going to let my web sites just sit as they are. This is their high-water mark and the end of my efforts to expand or improve them.
2. I"m going to pursue whatever interests me for no longer or harder than it remains interesting, whether or not anything is accomplished by that. For example, if I want to stare at a cloud for five minutes, I'll stare at the friggin' cloud.
3. If and when I get a notion that, as an artist, I wish to share, I'll plop it into one of my blogs. No more creating web pages just to show my photographic art. If I take a cool photograph, I'll just post it to a blog - click! - and it will be done and gone.
4. Now there may be a time when I can afford an assistant to organize my work, my web sites, and to properly publish and seek publication for my material. Cool! But I'm not going to do it myself anymore. Maybe some day someone will discover some part of my work and want to use it or refurbish it. Cool! But I'm not going to spend any more time hoping for it or trying to make it happen.
In summary, I'm just plain burned out doing the 90% perspiration and want to focus on the 10% inspiration part - the part I really enjoy. I'm almost 57 and have spent all my life doing what I hate or doing what I love but for the wrong reasons (or at least for unfulfilling reasons). From here on out, my life will be for me and will be used to gently flow through the experiences and creative notions that bring me joy.
Time to put an end to this frustration and let happiness happen.
Still, as much as I may enjoy my own concept art, it is even more meaningful when I can share it with someone else who tunes in to the notion, grooves on the rythm, or groks the significance and expanse. That's why I put up my personal web site at http://melanieannephillips.com/
It was a lot of work, I'll tell you - I had to listen to, convert, and break apart over 40 hours of audio recordings I've made over the year of various notes about concepts that have come and gone. These range from original music to ideas on story structure, psychology and even physics, due to my work as co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story and the Dramatica software for developing novels and screenplays.
In addiition, as a photographer I've created hundreds of (what I consider) stunning photographs, not to mention the fiction I've written and on and on.
Point here is that I have two primary web sites - http://heartcorps.com/ where I put all my writings and stuff for the transgender community, including this blog. This is the world,s very first transgender web support web site, founded in 1994. I've done a lot of work for that particular audience, and I'm proud of sharing my journey with literally hundreds of thousands of folk, many of whom have written me to tell me how I've saved or changed their lives for the positive.
My other site, http://storymind.com/ is where I make my living with Dramatica and other videos, audios, books and software products like StoryWeaver which I created to help writers fashion better stories with more creative passion.
It's kind of a toss-up as to which area I'm best known in. There was a time, about ten years ago, when you could mention my name to anyone in the TG community in the world and they'd know who I was. That time has passed, and good! Back then, my materials on the web were one of the few sources of serious information and help. But with the advent of social networking and You Tube, help is just a click away and I've really become redundant, which is also good.
So, I thought, let me publish my transition diary (which literally tens of thousands of people have read here on this web site and which you can still get here for free). The diary is over 1200 pages. It spans six separate books covering twenty years. One hundred people are reading it at any given moment.
Yet, when I put it in paperback and listed it on Amazon.com and even linked to from my diary pages I've sold only two copies in two months. Fine validation of my art, eh? Oh, sure, I know if you have something available for free, even if it is just in 110 chapters on a 110 web pages, people won't cough up $19.95 to buy it in a more convenient form. Well, to be honest, you'd have to buy all six books and that would set you back about 100 bucks. Yeah, I know.... Still, as a writer who makes a living teaching writers, and since this is my most passionate of all things I"ve ever written, I have to admit it is still a little disappointing. SIX BOOKS! Do you know how much WORK that is????
Okay, so I thought I'd find a publisher. I looked on Amazon.com and found the most prolific publisher - Seal Press. I sent them a little note about myself, the historic and widely read nature of my diary, and a few samples of my work. They rejected it. The person who wrote the note apparently had no idea who I was. (Quick cut to a movie scene in which a pompus has-been shouts in irritation at some lack of recognition "Do You Have Any Idea Who I Am!!!!")
Yeah, well I'm not all full of myself. Not anymore. I'm just saying the moment has passed and my name and work really don't carry any weight or even any recognition anymore and, therefore, I don't think there's much chance of my getting the diary into standard publication. Yeah, I had dreams of it being a reall "cross-over" piece that would be a book-of-the-month selection and show up on Oprah, open minds, spread a message of tolerance and understand and change the very fabric of the foundations of society world-wide. Perhaps my expectations were a little high? No matter, I believe my time has passed.
No without going into great detail, as this next section is briefly about my work in story structure and this is, after all, a TG web site, I have the same issue there as well. I co-created the Dramatica story theory with my long-time friend Chris Huntley back in 1991. We released the software through his company in 1994 and it took the writing world by storm.
People loved it or hated it but everyone had an opinion. And it sold a lot of copies. After all, it took six engineers and one million dollars of research and development just to get the first version out the door. We advertised in all the major writing magazines - full page full color ads on the inside cover and back page. We were interviewed by CNN and the BBC and WIRED magazine. Heady time, that.
I eventually left the company by mutual agreement since Chris didn't want to continue to develop the theory (which is based on the psychology of story structure) into a more broadly based psychology for personal problem solving and life improvement. I was hoping to draw on my experience and knowledge I had gained from helping those in the TG community, add it to this revolutionary new model of story structure and to create a truly useful, immediately intuitive method for resolving angst and maximizing fulfillment - ultimately lessioning the frustrations in the world, the misunderstandings, and thereby fostering peace and communication across the globe. Again, perhaps a bit ambitious.
But, since 1994 Chris and his company have done virtually nothing to improve or expand Dramatica. They've almost stopped advertising it completely. And all the other projects they've created since then have had pretty much fallen flat after all kinds of time, expense, effort and hoopla.
Since they've let Dramatica languish, naturally my royalties have dropped eac of the last fifteen years to the point that razther than being enough to retire on it is not just a little bonus money from time to time.
I had hoped that Dramatica would also grow to help people, not just to write stories but to live with each other in harmony and to find true happiness. But, there was no support for that effort either.
I've built these two web sites single-handedly over the years - WAY too much work for the return. All I ever wanted was enough money to pay the bills and then I could devote myself to trying to help others in those two communities.
But I've grown tired of working on things that aren't my own interests but just my public service. As I mentioned at the beginning, my own loves are phtography, music, concepts, and travel, spending time with my kids and my friends, going to movies and museums and just plain sitting in Minto-Brown Park and watch the geese by the flooded pond.
Yet none of these things are my frustration - not the one I'm writing about today, anyway. My frustration is my personal web site at http://melanieannphillips.com/. I looked at the stats today and got really frustrated - not by the number of people coming there - that's fine - but by what they were looking at, the pages they visited.
This is the site that is my pressure valve - the place I pour out my creative soul so the grind of the TG and Story web sites and "life's work" doesn't sink me completely. I put up my artwork, my music, my fiction stories, my photography and more - hoping to share the OTHER parts of my life (the parts that bring me my greatest joy).
I don't link to that site from the Storymind.com site - that would interfere with business, and I can't afford that. So I link to the site from the TG site, figuring people who read my diary and my articles to help them with transition might enjoy with me some of these other endeavors.
WRONG! The stats told lthe story. Hundreds of people come by my personal site every month from links on the TG site to my home page. And what do they look at? The most popular page is "photographs" - not because they want to see my pictures of Yosemite but because they're hoping to see pictures of me or other transsexuals that they can do whatever they do with.
Next most popular? My fiction section where I have listed some of my screenplays and short stories in the tradition of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonegut. But why are so many TG folk going there? Because they think it is going to be TG fiction about guys turning into women and such.
Get the idea? By the time we get down to the stuff that's really important to me, my music for example, about twenty people show up to theh page every month and 2 or 3 might listen to one of the hundreds of songs I've written.
Just a handfull of folks care a jot about the heart of my own passion. Understandable though - back when I was in their boat I was just as self-focused. It was that or lose it completely. So I don't begrudge it to them. But as for me, I'm still frustrated in the extreme.
You know, I just can't throw myself into that kind of work - tending TG sites, building Story Structure sites, editing web pages, spell checking, designing software tools.... Hell, I can't even bring myself to send things off to publishers or cull through the mountain of writing I've done to pull together a book on a given subject, such as putting together everything I've ever written about the Main Character or Plot or Act Structure into separate books, even though they might make money and would certainly be useful to people.
Nope - I gotta get out of that game!
So, here's the plan... The last few days I've really wanted to find a way to create my Magnum Opus - to pull together all I know about psychology - the structure and the passion - and to assemble it all in an organized manner that covers the whole shebang and simultaneously guides a novice into and through the material until they have mastered his or her own heart and soul.
But I'm scrapping that project. Just can't find the gumption to grind myself up in yet one more project like that - like the TG site, the Story site, the diary, Dramatica, StoryWeaver, my monthly newsletter, courses on story I taught in college, seminars and so on.
Nope - I just can't bring myself to do it anymore.
And so here's the plan (and hopefully the path to end my frustration)....
1. I'm going to let my web sites just sit as they are. This is their high-water mark and the end of my efforts to expand or improve them.
2. I"m going to pursue whatever interests me for no longer or harder than it remains interesting, whether or not anything is accomplished by that. For example, if I want to stare at a cloud for five minutes, I'll stare at the friggin' cloud.
3. If and when I get a notion that, as an artist, I wish to share, I'll plop it into one of my blogs. No more creating web pages just to show my photographic art. If I take a cool photograph, I'll just post it to a blog - click! - and it will be done and gone.
4. Now there may be a time when I can afford an assistant to organize my work, my web sites, and to properly publish and seek publication for my material. Cool! But I'm not going to do it myself anymore. Maybe some day someone will discover some part of my work and want to use it or refurbish it. Cool! But I'm not going to spend any more time hoping for it or trying to make it happen.
In summary, I'm just plain burned out doing the 90% perspiration and want to focus on the 10% inspiration part - the part I really enjoy. I'm almost 57 and have spent all my life doing what I hate or doing what I love but for the wrong reasons (or at least for unfulfilling reasons). From here on out, my life will be for me and will be used to gently flow through the experiences and creative notions that bring me joy.
Time to put an end to this frustration and let happiness happen.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
What do you do after sex change?
Okay, so you've changed your sex. Now what? Most folks figure they'll just get on with a normal life. Never happens! First of all, you've got a lot of adjustments to make. And for some people, they never look good enought to pass and have to deal with that the rest of their lives, just like someone who is disfigured - no matter where you go you are recognized as different.
Some people can never get used to that. And even for the lucky ones who pass just fine, there's all those memories and "what-ifs" to deal with. You think about the life path you might have taken, you keep reconsidering whether or not this path was right for you, regardless of whether or not you really are transgendered. Even if you are, was this the best choice for happiness for yourself and those loved ones whose lives you have changed forever?
I have a theory. Based on what I've seen it takes one year of coming to terms with being a post-op for every two years you spent in the original gender role, more or less. Until you are on that side of the fence you have no idea just how many unsettled questions and speculations will be rattling around your head.
Here's the skinny - anyone you loved or who loved you before transition, you end up having at least some unavoidable regrets for how you treated them or the life you robbed them of in order to obtain the life you wanted for yourself. Children, parents, wives, friends, extended family - all of them had their lives altered by what you did.
The hardest part is finding a way to accept that. Here's the best I've come up with... You're born with the TG bug. It grows within you. There's no cure. At some point it starts affecting your ability to live an ordinary life in the original gender role. You start going a little crazy, then a lot nuts. In fact, I believe that the physiological pressures of the NON-psyhological state of being transgendered actually drives everyone who has it to mental illness as a symptom.
Just like Alzheimer's which is a pysical condition, the symptoms are primarily mental. TGism changes your thought patterns, your personality, your emotions. And then try adding massive doses of hormones into the mix (ten to 20 times higher than any woman ever had)! No wonder you go nuts.
So not only do you have to deal with the life change itself, but you have to cure yourself of mental illness at the same time. Man, what a burden! And then the guilt of how you affected those around you - even though you had no choice....
Well that's really the key, you see. You had no choice. The TG bug made you do it. And the longer you deny it, the more mentally ill you become, justifying all your self-centered actions and spending of joint resources and denying that money, time and attention to your kids, or wife, or parents or friends.
But since you can't get "cured" from being TG and since you treat those around you worse the longer you don't purue it, you can kind of let yourself off the hook, years later when clarity happens. You simply admit that "If I become female, there will be trouble. If I stay male it will be double." (To paraphrase the old song).
So you hurt for the hurt you caused, and the lost opportunities. But at least you can stop blaming yourself.
That's a lynch pin. It is a key that opens the door to a new train of thought. You carry around with you the chains of all your innocent sins, committed while you were out of your mind from TG poisoning. But when you absolve yourself of guilt, you can start asking yourself how you can make it right?
You might at first think you can't and have to suffer that hurt for what you unknowingly did. This is especially true if you think about all the things you might have done with your children while they were young, but did not, or how you may have interacted with a loved one who has since died.
While it is true you can't do those very things now, you can do different things that mean as much to everyone involved. For example, if I felt guilty about the way I treated my grandfather (and thank goodness I don't, but just as an example) I could do something for the Knights of Columbus, his favorite charity. He was Catholic and even though he is gone, I could make a donation to the group in his name.
You see, ethically, you can't undo a deed done, but you can balance out the Karma. If there is no afterlife, then the pain you have caused is gone and the current good deed just makes you feel better in regard to something the lost loved one cared about. If there IS an afterlife, then, by God, the loved one sees you and your current kindness and it bring equity between you.
And what about kids or wives and such? You can't do all those things you might have. Then again, kids lose their parents all the time, or deal with drunk ones or druggies. So maybe you weren't THAT bad - maybe....
But now, these days - the VERY day you can think of something nice to do for them. And keep all the self-serving aspects out of it. Don't grandstand at thinking of them. Just do or say or share something nice with them.
In a positive way, think of "what's done is done" - write off the past and, since it is a closed book, choose to only dwell on the good memories. It is, after all, you choice as to what you want to focus on. If you think of the good times rather than the bad, it not only makes you feel better but give you more positive energy to share with those very people you want to treat better in the here and now.
By now you should realize that at some point after sex change you find yourself concerned with how you've dealt with people in the past and the desire to interact with them more positively in the future. And suddenly it strikes you that is the same place everyone eventually ends up. It's a matter of ethics and humanity. And in the end, sex change was just your particular path to arrive at that enlightened state of mind where you think of others before you think of yourself.
Some people can never get used to that. And even for the lucky ones who pass just fine, there's all those memories and "what-ifs" to deal with. You think about the life path you might have taken, you keep reconsidering whether or not this path was right for you, regardless of whether or not you really are transgendered. Even if you are, was this the best choice for happiness for yourself and those loved ones whose lives you have changed forever?
I have a theory. Based on what I've seen it takes one year of coming to terms with being a post-op for every two years you spent in the original gender role, more or less. Until you are on that side of the fence you have no idea just how many unsettled questions and speculations will be rattling around your head.
Here's the skinny - anyone you loved or who loved you before transition, you end up having at least some unavoidable regrets for how you treated them or the life you robbed them of in order to obtain the life you wanted for yourself. Children, parents, wives, friends, extended family - all of them had their lives altered by what you did.
The hardest part is finding a way to accept that. Here's the best I've come up with... You're born with the TG bug. It grows within you. There's no cure. At some point it starts affecting your ability to live an ordinary life in the original gender role. You start going a little crazy, then a lot nuts. In fact, I believe that the physiological pressures of the NON-psyhological state of being transgendered actually drives everyone who has it to mental illness as a symptom.
Just like Alzheimer's which is a pysical condition, the symptoms are primarily mental. TGism changes your thought patterns, your personality, your emotions. And then try adding massive doses of hormones into the mix (ten to 20 times higher than any woman ever had)! No wonder you go nuts.
So not only do you have to deal with the life change itself, but you have to cure yourself of mental illness at the same time. Man, what a burden! And then the guilt of how you affected those around you - even though you had no choice....
Well that's really the key, you see. You had no choice. The TG bug made you do it. And the longer you deny it, the more mentally ill you become, justifying all your self-centered actions and spending of joint resources and denying that money, time and attention to your kids, or wife, or parents or friends.
But since you can't get "cured" from being TG and since you treat those around you worse the longer you don't purue it, you can kind of let yourself off the hook, years later when clarity happens. You simply admit that "If I become female, there will be trouble. If I stay male it will be double." (To paraphrase the old song).
So you hurt for the hurt you caused, and the lost opportunities. But at least you can stop blaming yourself.
That's a lynch pin. It is a key that opens the door to a new train of thought. You carry around with you the chains of all your innocent sins, committed while you were out of your mind from TG poisoning. But when you absolve yourself of guilt, you can start asking yourself how you can make it right?
You might at first think you can't and have to suffer that hurt for what you unknowingly did. This is especially true if you think about all the things you might have done with your children while they were young, but did not, or how you may have interacted with a loved one who has since died.
While it is true you can't do those very things now, you can do different things that mean as much to everyone involved. For example, if I felt guilty about the way I treated my grandfather (and thank goodness I don't, but just as an example) I could do something for the Knights of Columbus, his favorite charity. He was Catholic and even though he is gone, I could make a donation to the group in his name.
You see, ethically, you can't undo a deed done, but you can balance out the Karma. If there is no afterlife, then the pain you have caused is gone and the current good deed just makes you feel better in regard to something the lost loved one cared about. If there IS an afterlife, then, by God, the loved one sees you and your current kindness and it bring equity between you.
And what about kids or wives and such? You can't do all those things you might have. Then again, kids lose their parents all the time, or deal with drunk ones or druggies. So maybe you weren't THAT bad - maybe....
But now, these days - the VERY day you can think of something nice to do for them. And keep all the self-serving aspects out of it. Don't grandstand at thinking of them. Just do or say or share something nice with them.
In a positive way, think of "what's done is done" - write off the past and, since it is a closed book, choose to only dwell on the good memories. It is, after all, you choice as to what you want to focus on. If you think of the good times rather than the bad, it not only makes you feel better but give you more positive energy to share with those very people you want to treat better in the here and now.
By now you should realize that at some point after sex change you find yourself concerned with how you've dealt with people in the past and the desire to interact with them more positively in the future. And suddenly it strikes you that is the same place everyone eventually ends up. It's a matter of ethics and humanity. And in the end, sex change was just your particular path to arrive at that enlightened state of mind where you think of others before you think of yourself.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Gift of FFS (Feminizing Facial Surgery)
You know, there's a big difference in what's important to a male to female transsexual who's never gone out and passed as a woman - I mean REALLY passed on a regular basis, and those who have lived the life every day. And there's an even BIGGER difference between any m2f transsexual who's lived the new gender role for decades and a newbie who gets Feminizing Facial Surgery (FFS).
Of these three groups, the first one (who seldom goes out as a woman and never lives like that full time) what's important is not getting caught as being a man in drag. For the second group (the long-term full time transsexual, post-op or not), what's important is being sure to do everything you need to do to NOT get read. You can do it but it requires making sure all the details are attended to.
When you are first starting out, you need to watch side-lighting as it shows recent electrolysis to look like beard shadow because it is raised from the trauma to the skin. Plus, hormones have not yet fully softened your looks, so you really have to be on top of the make-up.
But, as the years pass, so do you. And perhaps for a brief while (several years) you don't much think or worry about it. Yet, it is always in the back of your mind somewhere - the fear of being read. And if you get too little sleep, put on too much weight, or are just frowning a lot from working intensely on the computer, you actually still get funny looks from time to time.
So, being long-term is not so much a given that you won't get read, but simply that you have practiced the routines to make yourself look feminine for so long that they have become a habit you don't even think about.
Now as you age, you find the old routines don't work anymore, so what has become second nature suddenly has to be thought about again. And worse, you can't think of anything to make it work under the conditions of normal aging. That's because the bone structures of the face are different in men and women, and if you lose the prettiness of youth, the game is over.
Feminizing Facial Surgery throws you once and for ALL over to the other side. Your bone structure IS now female. So, you don't have to do a damn thing to look like a woman. What I mean is, you can get fat, get old and not sleep for a week and no one would ever think (consciously or unconsciously) that you used to be a guy (or at least lived as one, discounting the inner self).
And so, what's important to a post FFS person is quite different from what's important to a newbie or a long-term lifer post-op. It takes time (about three years after FFS), but you begin to realize that you've begun to drop your old routines that were orignally designed to make you look more like a woman. Some drop off by themselves simply due to the different way men and women treat you nowadays. Other habits you catch yourself still doing and then realize that it is like some sort of tradition that doesn't have any meaning anymore. You do it without even thinking, but there's no purpose to it. So you have to consciously retrain yourself in those cases to let it go. It is never going to be needed again becasue no matter how you age, you'll never look like a man again.
In other words, what used to be second nature for the long-term gender changer is now first nature for the post FFS alumni.
And that is the gift of FFS - having been made so absolutely identical in face to the attributes common to almost all women that issues of passing or being read become as foreign to you as they would be to a natal female.
Once your mind is free of what (it turns out) were routines that took up huge chunks of your mental space to keep them all running, suddenly there's a whole world of feelings, experiences, hopes and dreams that rush in to fill the vacuum. And life becomes an adventure, rather than a trial - maybe for the first time since you were a pre-teen; maybe for the first time in your life.
Here's some videos of my FFS experience and that of Teresa, my life partner, as well...
About Video 1 below: my facial surgery results. Starts with the before pictures, then goes post-surgery for the first of the healing over a six month period. (Note that a lot of people say I look the same or didn't need it. If you don't see the differeces, look closer. The changes are in milimeters over 8 hours in surgery, slightly shaping bones, removing the forehead,reshaping and replacing, removing the chin, shortening reshaping and replacing, etc.
The fact is, it is a series of VERY SUBTLE differences between the genders. Don't look at this through the eyes of a transsexual. Transsexuals try to see themselves as women (and other tg folk as well) as a means of boosting self confidence. But once you know what to look for - things like the length of the chin compared to the overall face, whether there is any "brow bossing" or not above the eyes, how far the forehead projects out over the eyes when seen from the side, how deep the eys are set in their sockets, and so on - THEN you can see why those who have not had FFS still read subliminally as men to most everyone they meet, even though they look "like" women consciously to others.
When you see the difference, that's that you'll understand the gift of FFS. Sorry to be so zen like, but the energy signatures of male and female faces are on different frequencies, so to speak. Even if you are sending a truly and completely female program over a male frequency, part of the minds of those you encounter will still know, deep inside, that you are broadcasting on the male channel. You don't get read, exactly, but you won't experience how people treat someone who broadcasts on the female channel. In other words, after Facial Surgery, you can be a tomboy, a butch lesbianm, whatever you might want. You could put on a fake mustache and beard and you'd look just as much a woman as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy when she dons a disguise, or Katherine in Pirates of the Caribbean when she masqueredes as a cabin boy.
See for yourself and look closely:
Now, here's a series of videos from Teresa's FFS - a whole 4 hour documentary we shot, in fact, from the "before" shots as we prepared to leave for San Francisco to six months after. Again, look close, see for yourself, and you will understand.
Of these three groups, the first one (who seldom goes out as a woman and never lives like that full time) what's important is not getting caught as being a man in drag. For the second group (the long-term full time transsexual, post-op or not), what's important is being sure to do everything you need to do to NOT get read. You can do it but it requires making sure all the details are attended to.
When you are first starting out, you need to watch side-lighting as it shows recent electrolysis to look like beard shadow because it is raised from the trauma to the skin. Plus, hormones have not yet fully softened your looks, so you really have to be on top of the make-up.
But, as the years pass, so do you. And perhaps for a brief while (several years) you don't much think or worry about it. Yet, it is always in the back of your mind somewhere - the fear of being read. And if you get too little sleep, put on too much weight, or are just frowning a lot from working intensely on the computer, you actually still get funny looks from time to time.
So, being long-term is not so much a given that you won't get read, but simply that you have practiced the routines to make yourself look feminine for so long that they have become a habit you don't even think about.
Now as you age, you find the old routines don't work anymore, so what has become second nature suddenly has to be thought about again. And worse, you can't think of anything to make it work under the conditions of normal aging. That's because the bone structures of the face are different in men and women, and if you lose the prettiness of youth, the game is over.
Feminizing Facial Surgery throws you once and for ALL over to the other side. Your bone structure IS now female. So, you don't have to do a damn thing to look like a woman. What I mean is, you can get fat, get old and not sleep for a week and no one would ever think (consciously or unconsciously) that you used to be a guy (or at least lived as one, discounting the inner self).
And so, what's important to a post FFS person is quite different from what's important to a newbie or a long-term lifer post-op. It takes time (about three years after FFS), but you begin to realize that you've begun to drop your old routines that were orignally designed to make you look more like a woman. Some drop off by themselves simply due to the different way men and women treat you nowadays. Other habits you catch yourself still doing and then realize that it is like some sort of tradition that doesn't have any meaning anymore. You do it without even thinking, but there's no purpose to it. So you have to consciously retrain yourself in those cases to let it go. It is never going to be needed again becasue no matter how you age, you'll never look like a man again.
In other words, what used to be second nature for the long-term gender changer is now first nature for the post FFS alumni.
And that is the gift of FFS - having been made so absolutely identical in face to the attributes common to almost all women that issues of passing or being read become as foreign to you as they would be to a natal female.
Once your mind is free of what (it turns out) were routines that took up huge chunks of your mental space to keep them all running, suddenly there's a whole world of feelings, experiences, hopes and dreams that rush in to fill the vacuum. And life becomes an adventure, rather than a trial - maybe for the first time since you were a pre-teen; maybe for the first time in your life.
Here's some videos of my FFS experience and that of Teresa, my life partner, as well...
About Video 1 below: my facial surgery results. Starts with the before pictures, then goes post-surgery for the first of the healing over a six month period. (Note that a lot of people say I look the same or didn't need it. If you don't see the differeces, look closer. The changes are in milimeters over 8 hours in surgery, slightly shaping bones, removing the forehead,reshaping and replacing, removing the chin, shortening reshaping and replacing, etc.
The fact is, it is a series of VERY SUBTLE differences between the genders. Don't look at this through the eyes of a transsexual. Transsexuals try to see themselves as women (and other tg folk as well) as a means of boosting self confidence. But once you know what to look for - things like the length of the chin compared to the overall face, whether there is any "brow bossing" or not above the eyes, how far the forehead projects out over the eyes when seen from the side, how deep the eys are set in their sockets, and so on - THEN you can see why those who have not had FFS still read subliminally as men to most everyone they meet, even though they look "like" women consciously to others.
When you see the difference, that's that you'll understand the gift of FFS. Sorry to be so zen like, but the energy signatures of male and female faces are on different frequencies, so to speak. Even if you are sending a truly and completely female program over a male frequency, part of the minds of those you encounter will still know, deep inside, that you are broadcasting on the male channel. You don't get read, exactly, but you won't experience how people treat someone who broadcasts on the female channel. In other words, after Facial Surgery, you can be a tomboy, a butch lesbianm, whatever you might want. You could put on a fake mustache and beard and you'd look just as much a woman as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy when she dons a disguise, or Katherine in Pirates of the Caribbean when she masqueredes as a cabin boy.
See for yourself and look closely:
Now, here's a series of videos from Teresa's FFS - a whole 4 hour documentary we shot, in fact, from the "before" shots as we prepared to leave for San Francisco to six months after. Again, look close, see for yourself, and you will understand.
Part 1 - Introduction - Meet Teresa and Melanie
Part 2 - Meet The Doctor
Part 3 - Hospital Admission & Surgical Prep
Part 4 - Last Interview Before Surgery
Part 5 - The Recovery Room
Part 6 - Recovering in the Hospital
Part 7 - First Steps After Surgery
Part 8 - First Bandages Removed
Part 9 - The Recovery Half-Way House
Part 10 - Four Days Post-Op (1)
Part 11 - Four Days Post-Op (2)
Part 12 - More Bandages Removed on Day 5
Part 13 - Eight Days Post-Op
Part 14 - Final Sutures & Staples Removed
Part 15 - Final Bandages Removed
Part 16 - Eleven Days Post-Op Interview (1)
Part 17 - Eleven Days Post-Op Interview (2)
Part 18 - Eleven Days Post-Op Interview (3)
Part 19 - Three Weeks Post-Op
Part 20 - Four Weeks Post-Op Interview
Part 21 - Three Months Post-Op Interview (1)
Part 22 - Three Months Post-Op Interview (2)
Part 23 - Four Months Post-Op Interview (1)
Part 24 - Four Months Post-Op Interview (2)
Part 25 - Four Months Post-Op Interview (3)
Part 26 - Four Months Post-Op Interview (4)
Part 27 - Six Months Post-Op Interview (1)
Part 28 - Six Months Post-Op Interview (2)
Monday, December 14, 2009
Season of Peace
You know, I've written articles for the TG community for twenty years now. And all of them sprang from my own efforts to overcome angst and find some personal peace. Along the way, these writings have attracted a rather huge following of kindred souls, each seeking some solace in a frightful world.
Even now I still get at least one email per week from someone who felt compelled to write and tell me how their lives were changed by what I had written, and all because they could relate to my suffering and could embrace the hope of a better future that permeated my work, even in its darkest moments.
Earlier this year I actually found that peace. No, not the temporary fleeting feeling that things will work out okay. In fact, they have already worked out okay. And in this wonderful new state of mind I wonder - will anyone relate to writings based on the joy of living rather than tales of suffering through it?
Let's find out....
Let me tell you about my Christmas season. First of all, to set the scene:
Since 1980 I've worked for myself - mostly in the film business and as a writer and teacher of the craft of writing. The usual case has been to barely squeak by financially, punctuated by times of famine and times of plenty. But of late, even in this recession, my business has begun to build again after all these years. I am not only making enough to get by and to eat out or catch a movie from time to time, but to actually put a little money away to tide me over for after the holidays when sales traditionally drop. So, while I'm not rich by any means or even comfortably secure, things are certainly far better than they have been in many, many years.
Relationship-wise, while I'm still married to Mary, I moved out about a dozen years ago to be with Teresa, my life partner. And yet, Mary and I have the most wonderful friendship. We email all the time, talk on the phone once a week or so, and (as is the family tradition), Teresa and I will be travelling down from Oregon to California to visit Mary and my kids for Christmas. We have one big extended family get together - the feast, the exchanging of Christmas presents and loads of laughter and good cheer. And this year it's even better because everyone is doing well financially, doing well in their various relationships, and we all seem to have put any life-long angsts behind us, gathering in joy rather than longing.
Lifestyle-wise, I work for myself out of my home and support Teresa and myself, so we pretty much pursue out interests on our own time whenever we like. We live in Oregon now and often go for walks in the magnificent wild-wood in the middle of town. Snows here from time to time, and we like that. And, we're only about an hour from Portland, a city of two million, so whenever we get a little tired of our town in the midst of this spectacular farmland with snow capped mountains on the horizon, we can bundle right up to Portland and show in their magnificent mega-malls. Or we can catch an IMAX movie, a major concert, take in a museum or visit the zoo. And in the other direction is Silver Falls state park with eleven waterfalls including three you can walk behind. Plus, the beach is just an hour away. All the beaches in Oregon are state land, so you have total access and can even drive your car onto the sand at various places. Also, there's lots of restaurants both in our town and in Portland. AND the people here are so friendly and coureous. Even the teenagers are like boy scouts from the 1950s. Not at all like the mood and attitude back in California, save for friends and family of course!
I'm happy in my work. I'm rather internationally known as a story guru, and am also finally publishing my TG writings in book form for the first time, rather than just on the internet. We have a nice 42" Plasmas TV (that we got right after Teresa's FFS facial surgery four years ago) and this great reclining LazyBoy couch right in front of it. We live in a brand new all-electric apartment, so new that we are the first tennents ever of this unit. In fact, they built the second half of the complex since we've been here over the last two years. These are spacious 900 sq ft. 2 bed 2 bath units. They don't have that awful "apartment white" color on the walls. And, they are so energy efficient that we only pay $50/month in the summer and $75/month in the winter for the all-electric utilities including heat, stove, lights, and water heater. In fact, we didn't even have to put on our heater at all during the 12 degree cold snap we had a few days ago because the guy downstairs was running his heater and it heated us from the floor up. Pretty cool, huh?
Finally got rid of that old Cell phone that was costing me over $100/month since I was paying for my son as well on a family plan. Bought a cool "prepaid" phone instead. Only $10 a month, more features, newer phone, and it automatically bills my credit card.
This Christmas season, Teresa is in such good spirits that she's been taking us all over in and out of town to shop for Christmas presents, but mostly to be out amongst the people - those happy holiday crowds - giving us many enjoyable times over food in restaurants or over a hot eggnog late and a pecan Cinnabon in the mall.
When we go down for our California visit, we'll be first staying with some friends in the mountain town we moved from four years ago and doing our traditional Christmas Eve celebration in which another close friend comes up, stays the night as well, and then we enjoy Christmas morning all together. Then we drive about another hour to Mary and the kids (son 30, daughter 26 and married) to spend the day and the next as well. Finally, we leave there to go across town and stay with my wealthy college buddy and former business partner and his life partner at their elegant and huge four-story home in the Glendale hills, overlooking the better part of the San Fernando Valley. Finally, it's back home to out kitties and a New Year's prime rib buffet which we have reserved.
One thing you'll notice is that I haven't mentioned anything pertaining to gender, transgender or any of the ilk in this description of my life of peace and joy. That's because there isn't much to say. Oh, I've learned a lot about the whole process and have much to offer when specifically addressing the subject, but those issues are all behind me personally these days. Certainly if they even come up at all, it is more "Well, I'm glad THAT's over", or "Remember when this sort of thing used to be a problem?"
So you may be asking, after twenty years of angstful writings, how have I come to this place? You may wonder out of curiosity or in the hopes of following whatever magical path I discovered that led here.
I'll give you the answer:
It took twenty years! And it took many separate problems to be solved, all of which I used to lump under the single heading of "the transgender issue" and try to deal with them as if they were just one thing. I used to figure that I needed to find that one single key that would resolve all this stuff so I could put it behind me once and for all. As long as I kept that approach it could never be removed. It was only when I could see beyond that central angst to see its many components that I could tackle them.
But that's way too complex for this post. So for now, I'll give you the key points in case you might find them of use in your own life....
1. I had to realize that my fantasy of being female wasn't sexual in nature, though it had elements of that, but was my subconscious telling me it wasn't happy with the body I had.
(Note that I don't say that I was really female inside. How the hell can I possible know that? Maybe, someday, if they have some sort of conclusive MRI scan or DNA test I might be told by a professional that I have a female mind, but short of that it's really all just speculation on my part. It is all circumstantial evidence - I couldn't relate to the other boys. But then again, I couldn't relate to the girls either. I liked some of what the boys did but certainly didn't like a lot of it. Same with the girls. Hey, parts of me like the fem and parts of me like the football. So how can I possibly tell if I think like man or a woman with just some quirky gender issues? I can't. Best I've been able to allow myself, from a purely logical perspective, is that perhaps we're ALL intersexed - every person on the planet. After all, physical features range from the masculine to the feminine across both sexes, as do attitudes, interests, and approaches. But, most men seem to center around certain physical standards, as do most women. And that forms, in statistical terms, a "double bell curve" in which most people are near the center of each sex's characteristics dropping off to a much smaller number of people who are almost all "male" or almost totally "female" and that same small percentage in the middle where you find everything from crossdressers to transsexuals to hermaphrodites. It's really just a big spectrum with some parts of that spectrum more frequented than others. So, whatever I actually may think like, my fantasy of being female was just my subconscious recogizing that I was uncomfortable with anywhere in the male bell curve and would be happier in the female bell curve. Some folks find out they are happier in the middle, either as effeminate men, masculine women or permanent transgender folk with various smatterings of both anatomical sexes and the whole range of gender expressions.)
2. So that's when I started transition. And that's the second point. I had to reach the end of my rope emotionally to start transition. For me, it wasn't much of a drama. I was actually happily married, mostly - maybe a little unfulfilled but certainly not miserable or anything like it. I has a proud father of two great kids, 7 and 3. I was a film director, owned my own business, worked with lots of interesting people, was renting a really nice house with a separate office in the back, wood-burning fireplace, large yard, and so on. Had all kinds of friends in the film biz and a pretty active social life. So what drove me to feel I was at the end of my rope? Well, our landlady decided to kick us out and move in herself. So, after six years there, I went to find another house. I got over ambitious. I picked a rental place up in the hills for twice what I had been previously paying. Why? Because even with all my successes, I was feeling unfulfilled and thought perhaps a bigger, better house would finally make me happy. Well, some folks go on drugs or drink. Some opt for infedelity. Some just get weird and end up on the street. And some, like me, bite off a little bit more than they can chew. So when I couldn't keep up the rent and got six months behind in my credit card payments - when my business started to fail because I lost interest since it wasn't the road to happiness and since I now couldn't even meet my basic financial needs no matter how hard I worked, I decided to begin transition. The first steps were back at the old house where I started mail-order hormones, secretly shaved my legs and such. And then I got the new house since those gender-related shenanigans didn't bring me happiness either - just left even more of a hole in my life. Truth is, I sometimes wonder if my subconscious set me up to fail so I'd finally stop screwing around with trying to find fulfillment in a "normal" life and get on with transition which I had consciously determined was NOT for me. Fact is, I believe a lot of people who are heavily intersexed never go the transsexual route because of circumstance and chance, while some who are barely intersexed at all do the whole shebang including surgery simply because their life situations and unplanned events somehow interceed to trigger transition when other means of happiness might have worked even better. And some poor folks - probably a lot of them - end up having surgery only to find out it really wasn't for them and theat their new breed of problems is even worse than the original ones they replaced, or that the original ones still remain in addition to the new ones. Or, worst of all (though unknown to the victim) true happiness might have existed on another life course but is now permanently unachievable because of the decision to change sex. And finally, my mother died. I started full-time hormone therapy on the day of her funeral. Apparently, my feelings for my mother were enough to hold me back, even though I was slowly going nuts, and her death took away the final road block, or more appropriately, busted the dam through which my life-long fantasies now flowed.
3. I had to have the "courage?" to go public, tell friends and family, be laughed at on the streets, suffer indignities, unsurities, deep depressions, family fights and near insanity and be lucky enough to pop out the other side of surgery sane (relatively), still friends with friends, still family with family, and gainfully employed.
4. I had to learn that I was "playing" at being Melanie as much as I used to play at being Dave. I had to find the real me. I had to leave my family and move far away to find myself - who I was outside of those relationships.
5. And finally, I had to have feminizing facial surgery (FFS). Teresa had it. A year later, bummed out by the fact that she now TOTALLY felt like a woman to me and therefore I felt like a transsexual, I was either going to go into a suicidal depression spiral or take the same path she had and have the surgery myself. Which I did.
6. I had to learn, after surgery, that each of us has a subconscious reaction to others, "sexing" them as male or female based on facial bone structure markers. Kind of like sex is built into the face like architecture and make-up, hair, eyebrows and such are just the paint job. If you cover the washington monument with paint it is still going to "read" as an obelisk, even though on the surface it now looks like an ice cream cone. This is SO important to understand. No matter how well you pass, it doesn't matter. Men and women will still subconsciously treat you as they would a male, even though it never occurs to them that you weren't a natural born female. It just creeps into their emotional interactions with you. And worse, you treat yourself that way. You look in the mirror, the bones of your face tell the truth of your origins, and no amount of make-up is going to fool your own subconscious into seeing a female identity in the mirror. Conversely, after facial surgery, you can't see yourself as male subconsciously anymore. So it is more like a face transplant or a soul transplant or a change in identity. More like having your brain transplanted into a different body. But even after that the echoes of your old feelings hold on for years as do the fears of how other see you. You know, even after twenty years of passing, you still worry about being read - until you have facial surgery. Then, if it is successful and you are one of the lucky ones, that fear fades until two or three years later you suddenly realize one day that it is gone and hasn't been there for ages. After this facial surgery, I couldn't get read EMOTIONALLY by others if I talked in my old Dave voice and showed them pictures of my SRS! Sure, they'd believe it consciously, but could not help but feel about me as a woman.
7. And finally, I had to accept the truth of being a woman, by feel, to all I meet, to my children, and to myself. I always wanted to be a man - but not the way I felt back then when I was physically (mostly) that way. I wanted to be a confident man who knew himself and was comfortable in his own skin and in his life situations. I suppose that's why a lot of us identify with movie stars and successful singers - we live vicariously through them for a span because our own intersexed natures of the population as a whole make us all feel uncomfortable with the limiting roles and subconscious body images we project and we perceive in ourselves.
Which brings me to the conclusion of this whole piece... Just as we identify with celebrities, we also love to see the dirt on them - to show they still must suffer as we do - that they are only human after all. We want our characters to be immortal but our actors to have feet of clay. And in my writing for the TG community I had all kinds of successes over the years in the world at large, but still suffered an angst which oozed out of my words. Success at "being a woman" and being accepted and achieving things - human in my suffering, "just like everyone else."
But now, that suffering is gone. Three years after facial surgery, I'm no longer suffering from issues of personal worth. I not only like myself (as I always have) but now I don't worry about whether others do. I am increasingly successful in business but now I find that is sufficient. I have my family and friends, my love Teresa, my cats, recognition in several fields and most of all peace from the gender issues that plagued me for most of my previous years.
And the question is, can you relate to me now? In the midst of whatever turmoil may ravage your life, can you be inspired to know that the story doesn't have to end in sadness and loss? That even if unrecoverable losses occur, there is still the possibility that new dividends will be achieved that bring more joy into your life than the lost old things could ever possible have?
In short, are you willing to put aside the depression and accept that a Season of Peace waits for you too, if only you have the stamina to keep on keeping on, to get down but never give up, to hold out through everything.
You now know that it is at least possible to get through this, to get over it, to accept it yet not dwell on it, to embrace it even while moving beyond it. These are not contradictions. These are the pillars of the peaceful life. And since I have achieved it, it clearly can be done. And if it can be done, that path is open to you as well.
And so, as I close, I wish for you all a Season of Peace. And I am here to report that as bad as times have felt in the past, the life I have today was not only worth it all, but is more wonderful than I ever could have imagined or ever would have believed had I not experienced myself. There were no such stories, no such claims when I began my journey. Perhaps it is time for one - a true story that has led beyond hope to reality.
Even now I still get at least one email per week from someone who felt compelled to write and tell me how their lives were changed by what I had written, and all because they could relate to my suffering and could embrace the hope of a better future that permeated my work, even in its darkest moments.
Earlier this year I actually found that peace. No, not the temporary fleeting feeling that things will work out okay. In fact, they have already worked out okay. And in this wonderful new state of mind I wonder - will anyone relate to writings based on the joy of living rather than tales of suffering through it?
Let's find out....
Let me tell you about my Christmas season. First of all, to set the scene:
Since 1980 I've worked for myself - mostly in the film business and as a writer and teacher of the craft of writing. The usual case has been to barely squeak by financially, punctuated by times of famine and times of plenty. But of late, even in this recession, my business has begun to build again after all these years. I am not only making enough to get by and to eat out or catch a movie from time to time, but to actually put a little money away to tide me over for after the holidays when sales traditionally drop. So, while I'm not rich by any means or even comfortably secure, things are certainly far better than they have been in many, many years.
Relationship-wise, while I'm still married to Mary, I moved out about a dozen years ago to be with Teresa, my life partner. And yet, Mary and I have the most wonderful friendship. We email all the time, talk on the phone once a week or so, and (as is the family tradition), Teresa and I will be travelling down from Oregon to California to visit Mary and my kids for Christmas. We have one big extended family get together - the feast, the exchanging of Christmas presents and loads of laughter and good cheer. And this year it's even better because everyone is doing well financially, doing well in their various relationships, and we all seem to have put any life-long angsts behind us, gathering in joy rather than longing.
Lifestyle-wise, I work for myself out of my home and support Teresa and myself, so we pretty much pursue out interests on our own time whenever we like. We live in Oregon now and often go for walks in the magnificent wild-wood in the middle of town. Snows here from time to time, and we like that. And, we're only about an hour from Portland, a city of two million, so whenever we get a little tired of our town in the midst of this spectacular farmland with snow capped mountains on the horizon, we can bundle right up to Portland and show in their magnificent mega-malls. Or we can catch an IMAX movie, a major concert, take in a museum or visit the zoo. And in the other direction is Silver Falls state park with eleven waterfalls including three you can walk behind. Plus, the beach is just an hour away. All the beaches in Oregon are state land, so you have total access and can even drive your car onto the sand at various places. Also, there's lots of restaurants both in our town and in Portland. AND the people here are so friendly and coureous. Even the teenagers are like boy scouts from the 1950s. Not at all like the mood and attitude back in California, save for friends and family of course!
I'm happy in my work. I'm rather internationally known as a story guru, and am also finally publishing my TG writings in book form for the first time, rather than just on the internet. We have a nice 42" Plasmas TV (that we got right after Teresa's FFS facial surgery four years ago) and this great reclining LazyBoy couch right in front of it. We live in a brand new all-electric apartment, so new that we are the first tennents ever of this unit. In fact, they built the second half of the complex since we've been here over the last two years. These are spacious 900 sq ft. 2 bed 2 bath units. They don't have that awful "apartment white" color on the walls. And, they are so energy efficient that we only pay $50/month in the summer and $75/month in the winter for the all-electric utilities including heat, stove, lights, and water heater. In fact, we didn't even have to put on our heater at all during the 12 degree cold snap we had a few days ago because the guy downstairs was running his heater and it heated us from the floor up. Pretty cool, huh?
Finally got rid of that old Cell phone that was costing me over $100/month since I was paying for my son as well on a family plan. Bought a cool "prepaid" phone instead. Only $10 a month, more features, newer phone, and it automatically bills my credit card.
This Christmas season, Teresa is in such good spirits that she's been taking us all over in and out of town to shop for Christmas presents, but mostly to be out amongst the people - those happy holiday crowds - giving us many enjoyable times over food in restaurants or over a hot eggnog late and a pecan Cinnabon in the mall.
When we go down for our California visit, we'll be first staying with some friends in the mountain town we moved from four years ago and doing our traditional Christmas Eve celebration in which another close friend comes up, stays the night as well, and then we enjoy Christmas morning all together. Then we drive about another hour to Mary and the kids (son 30, daughter 26 and married) to spend the day and the next as well. Finally, we leave there to go across town and stay with my wealthy college buddy and former business partner and his life partner at their elegant and huge four-story home in the Glendale hills, overlooking the better part of the San Fernando Valley. Finally, it's back home to out kitties and a New Year's prime rib buffet which we have reserved.
One thing you'll notice is that I haven't mentioned anything pertaining to gender, transgender or any of the ilk in this description of my life of peace and joy. That's because there isn't much to say. Oh, I've learned a lot about the whole process and have much to offer when specifically addressing the subject, but those issues are all behind me personally these days. Certainly if they even come up at all, it is more "Well, I'm glad THAT's over", or "Remember when this sort of thing used to be a problem?"
So you may be asking, after twenty years of angstful writings, how have I come to this place? You may wonder out of curiosity or in the hopes of following whatever magical path I discovered that led here.
I'll give you the answer:
It took twenty years! And it took many separate problems to be solved, all of which I used to lump under the single heading of "the transgender issue" and try to deal with them as if they were just one thing. I used to figure that I needed to find that one single key that would resolve all this stuff so I could put it behind me once and for all. As long as I kept that approach it could never be removed. It was only when I could see beyond that central angst to see its many components that I could tackle them.
But that's way too complex for this post. So for now, I'll give you the key points in case you might find them of use in your own life....
1. I had to realize that my fantasy of being female wasn't sexual in nature, though it had elements of that, but was my subconscious telling me it wasn't happy with the body I had.
(Note that I don't say that I was really female inside. How the hell can I possible know that? Maybe, someday, if they have some sort of conclusive MRI scan or DNA test I might be told by a professional that I have a female mind, but short of that it's really all just speculation on my part. It is all circumstantial evidence - I couldn't relate to the other boys. But then again, I couldn't relate to the girls either. I liked some of what the boys did but certainly didn't like a lot of it. Same with the girls. Hey, parts of me like the fem and parts of me like the football. So how can I possibly tell if I think like man or a woman with just some quirky gender issues? I can't. Best I've been able to allow myself, from a purely logical perspective, is that perhaps we're ALL intersexed - every person on the planet. After all, physical features range from the masculine to the feminine across both sexes, as do attitudes, interests, and approaches. But, most men seem to center around certain physical standards, as do most women. And that forms, in statistical terms, a "double bell curve" in which most people are near the center of each sex's characteristics dropping off to a much smaller number of people who are almost all "male" or almost totally "female" and that same small percentage in the middle where you find everything from crossdressers to transsexuals to hermaphrodites. It's really just a big spectrum with some parts of that spectrum more frequented than others. So, whatever I actually may think like, my fantasy of being female was just my subconscious recogizing that I was uncomfortable with anywhere in the male bell curve and would be happier in the female bell curve. Some folks find out they are happier in the middle, either as effeminate men, masculine women or permanent transgender folk with various smatterings of both anatomical sexes and the whole range of gender expressions.)
2. So that's when I started transition. And that's the second point. I had to reach the end of my rope emotionally to start transition. For me, it wasn't much of a drama. I was actually happily married, mostly - maybe a little unfulfilled but certainly not miserable or anything like it. I has a proud father of two great kids, 7 and 3. I was a film director, owned my own business, worked with lots of interesting people, was renting a really nice house with a separate office in the back, wood-burning fireplace, large yard, and so on. Had all kinds of friends in the film biz and a pretty active social life. So what drove me to feel I was at the end of my rope? Well, our landlady decided to kick us out and move in herself. So, after six years there, I went to find another house. I got over ambitious. I picked a rental place up in the hills for twice what I had been previously paying. Why? Because even with all my successes, I was feeling unfulfilled and thought perhaps a bigger, better house would finally make me happy. Well, some folks go on drugs or drink. Some opt for infedelity. Some just get weird and end up on the street. And some, like me, bite off a little bit more than they can chew. So when I couldn't keep up the rent and got six months behind in my credit card payments - when my business started to fail because I lost interest since it wasn't the road to happiness and since I now couldn't even meet my basic financial needs no matter how hard I worked, I decided to begin transition. The first steps were back at the old house where I started mail-order hormones, secretly shaved my legs and such. And then I got the new house since those gender-related shenanigans didn't bring me happiness either - just left even more of a hole in my life. Truth is, I sometimes wonder if my subconscious set me up to fail so I'd finally stop screwing around with trying to find fulfillment in a "normal" life and get on with transition which I had consciously determined was NOT for me. Fact is, I believe a lot of people who are heavily intersexed never go the transsexual route because of circumstance and chance, while some who are barely intersexed at all do the whole shebang including surgery simply because their life situations and unplanned events somehow interceed to trigger transition when other means of happiness might have worked even better. And some poor folks - probably a lot of them - end up having surgery only to find out it really wasn't for them and theat their new breed of problems is even worse than the original ones they replaced, or that the original ones still remain in addition to the new ones. Or, worst of all (though unknown to the victim) true happiness might have existed on another life course but is now permanently unachievable because of the decision to change sex. And finally, my mother died. I started full-time hormone therapy on the day of her funeral. Apparently, my feelings for my mother were enough to hold me back, even though I was slowly going nuts, and her death took away the final road block, or more appropriately, busted the dam through which my life-long fantasies now flowed.
3. I had to have the "courage?" to go public, tell friends and family, be laughed at on the streets, suffer indignities, unsurities, deep depressions, family fights and near insanity and be lucky enough to pop out the other side of surgery sane (relatively), still friends with friends, still family with family, and gainfully employed.
4. I had to learn that I was "playing" at being Melanie as much as I used to play at being Dave. I had to find the real me. I had to leave my family and move far away to find myself - who I was outside of those relationships.
5. And finally, I had to have feminizing facial surgery (FFS). Teresa had it. A year later, bummed out by the fact that she now TOTALLY felt like a woman to me and therefore I felt like a transsexual, I was either going to go into a suicidal depression spiral or take the same path she had and have the surgery myself. Which I did.
6. I had to learn, after surgery, that each of us has a subconscious reaction to others, "sexing" them as male or female based on facial bone structure markers. Kind of like sex is built into the face like architecture and make-up, hair, eyebrows and such are just the paint job. If you cover the washington monument with paint it is still going to "read" as an obelisk, even though on the surface it now looks like an ice cream cone. This is SO important to understand. No matter how well you pass, it doesn't matter. Men and women will still subconsciously treat you as they would a male, even though it never occurs to them that you weren't a natural born female. It just creeps into their emotional interactions with you. And worse, you treat yourself that way. You look in the mirror, the bones of your face tell the truth of your origins, and no amount of make-up is going to fool your own subconscious into seeing a female identity in the mirror. Conversely, after facial surgery, you can't see yourself as male subconsciously anymore. So it is more like a face transplant or a soul transplant or a change in identity. More like having your brain transplanted into a different body. But even after that the echoes of your old feelings hold on for years as do the fears of how other see you. You know, even after twenty years of passing, you still worry about being read - until you have facial surgery. Then, if it is successful and you are one of the lucky ones, that fear fades until two or three years later you suddenly realize one day that it is gone and hasn't been there for ages. After this facial surgery, I couldn't get read EMOTIONALLY by others if I talked in my old Dave voice and showed them pictures of my SRS! Sure, they'd believe it consciously, but could not help but feel about me as a woman.
7. And finally, I had to accept the truth of being a woman, by feel, to all I meet, to my children, and to myself. I always wanted to be a man - but not the way I felt back then when I was physically (mostly) that way. I wanted to be a confident man who knew himself and was comfortable in his own skin and in his life situations. I suppose that's why a lot of us identify with movie stars and successful singers - we live vicariously through them for a span because our own intersexed natures of the population as a whole make us all feel uncomfortable with the limiting roles and subconscious body images we project and we perceive in ourselves.
Which brings me to the conclusion of this whole piece... Just as we identify with celebrities, we also love to see the dirt on them - to show they still must suffer as we do - that they are only human after all. We want our characters to be immortal but our actors to have feet of clay. And in my writing for the TG community I had all kinds of successes over the years in the world at large, but still suffered an angst which oozed out of my words. Success at "being a woman" and being accepted and achieving things - human in my suffering, "just like everyone else."
But now, that suffering is gone. Three years after facial surgery, I'm no longer suffering from issues of personal worth. I not only like myself (as I always have) but now I don't worry about whether others do. I am increasingly successful in business but now I find that is sufficient. I have my family and friends, my love Teresa, my cats, recognition in several fields and most of all peace from the gender issues that plagued me for most of my previous years.
And the question is, can you relate to me now? In the midst of whatever turmoil may ravage your life, can you be inspired to know that the story doesn't have to end in sadness and loss? That even if unrecoverable losses occur, there is still the possibility that new dividends will be achieved that bring more joy into your life than the lost old things could ever possible have?
In short, are you willing to put aside the depression and accept that a Season of Peace waits for you too, if only you have the stamina to keep on keeping on, to get down but never give up, to hold out through everything.
You now know that it is at least possible to get through this, to get over it, to accept it yet not dwell on it, to embrace it even while moving beyond it. These are not contradictions. These are the pillars of the peaceful life. And since I have achieved it, it clearly can be done. And if it can be done, that path is open to you as well.
And so, as I close, I wish for you all a Season of Peace. And I am here to report that as bad as times have felt in the past, the life I have today was not only worth it all, but is more wonderful than I ever could have imagined or ever would have believed had I not experienced myself. There were no such stories, no such claims when I began my journey. Perhaps it is time for one - a true story that has led beyond hope to reality.
My Book, "Boiled in Oil" now on Amazon.com
Check it out at http://www.amazon.com/Boiled-Oil-transgender-journey-discovery/dp/1449598862 to read the first few pages.
Also available in a Kindle ebook version.
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