December 7, 1994
For years - ever since I can remember, in fact - I have been obsessed
with the desire to document my thoughts in a journal. Previous to this evening, I had made
many abortive attempts. My first recorded efforts can be found in a small red diary I was
given in 1962 at the age of nine. That effort lasted only a few days, yet I knew even at
that time that chronicling my adventures held an almost mystical attraction to me.
I imagine that in my words I secure some form of immortality. I admit to
having, at the heart of my soul, a deep fear of having my point of view lost, stripped of
power, made inconsequential. This is the consideration that gives rise to the terror I
feel when I contemplate a potential future in which I have had a stroke, and lay
helplessly unmoving, unable to impact the real world ever again.
And yet, the converse is also true. With every word I write, every
thought I publish, my fear of helplessness lessens, my joy at having lived increases.
For decades, I felt confined because I could document my point of view
as much as I liked, yet I had no way of distributing my words so that they might spread
and become living, dynamic, processes of change. I struggled for fame, I worked toward
recognition so that my notoriety might lead others to seek out my musings and ensure their
public exposure.
But, alas, though I flirted with the edges of fame, the big break never
came, and I found myself having accomplished nothing and running out of time. This is when
I shifted gears, gave up on the big dream and sought instead to at least lead a life that
brought me peace. I embarked on the journey that ultimately led me to change my sex.
At the time, I had no plans beyond this. Yet in retrospect, it is clear
that this choice eliminated the internal undercurrents that had prevented my success in
earlier incarnation. I began to write of my experiences, penning the most insightful
notions I had yet entertained. In addition I began work on the story theory and saw right to the
heart of the essence of self-awareness itself.
Through this I am finding the fame I sought for the purpose of exposure.
My ideas are no longer my own. They are repeated and strengthened by scores of others who
have adopted them as their own.
My writings are now spreading across the internet, published in books
and manuals, and on audio and video tapes. Very shortly, I know I will reach a limit line
this side of which still leaves me feeling that my ideas would not continue once I was
gone, the other side of which assures me that my ideas will have a life of their own.
Ah, to know that what I feel is my truly unique view of the world, will
outlast me, continue to work in the world bringing fresh insight and understanding: that
is the essence of bliss.
December 10, 1994
What a wonderful day it has turned out to be! Tonight was Chris' annual
White Elephant party, and I went with Andy. Even in getting ready for him to arrive and
pick me up I began to feel the old feelings again. My feminine nature which I feared had
been lost in the demands of my business career turned out to be only in hibernation. My
face, which had taken on a stern and calculating look became soft and supplicant.
Of late I have felt not masculine, but neuter I suppose. And with all
the lovers I have had since Andy, I have felt my femininity fading away. I thought it was
me; but it was just me without Andy.
Somehow his influence casts a spell over my emotions. My very perception
of life itself is warped and shaded by his Svengali- like aura that reorders the essential
fabric of my being. When I am with Andy I am as much a woman as anyone can be. And when I
am separated from the warm glow of his charm, I transmute, against my will, and lose the
stuff my better self is made of. Andy defines who I am. Without him, life is meaningless.
Why should this be? I have been married for almost 19 years, and through
it all, only Andy brings me into the fullness of myself. I love my children, I love Mary,
but Andy makes me love myself.
So, tonight we went to Chris' party. Unlike the two parties of the past
that he and I had attended, THIS time I stayed by his side. I made his companionship my
first priority.
When he wanted to step outside for half an hour to clear his lungs from
his allergy to Chris' cats, I went with him, rather than staying at the party with my
friends. When he wanted to sit on the couch rather than mingle, I joined him there. And
this felt right: to place his company above the company of others.
Ever since we broke up, I had felt drained of his charm. When he asked
me to attend a clay-sculpting class a month ago, the charm started to come back. It
increased when he joined me at the company Christmas party last week. And tonight, it
raged full force again within me.
We got "friendly" again: holding hands, arms around waists,
kissing in the corner; these things are alive again - I am alive again.
When we returned home, Andy and I joined Mary in the back room to chat.
Then, as is his way, he played a game, kidding Mary and finally tickling her as he
jokingly looked for "nooks and crannies". At his urging, I followed his
instructions to "look for nooks" while he looked for crannies. We tickled Mary
and she protested playfully. What does it mean when you change your sex, arrive back home
with your boyfriend and the two of you tickle your wife? Is there any precedent
appropriate enough to give this context?
Andy and I spoke of moving in together, as the evening progressed. I
truly think we will. For years now I have harbored the desire to live with a man as his
mate. But not just any man, as I have had ample opportunity with Mr. K. and Dave [another
friend with whom I had a brief relationship]. No, I needed someone like Andy to make
the reality approach the dream.
When Andy had left, I discussed this with Mary; my feelings suddenly
clear to me for the first time in months. I explained that I wanted to move in with Andy,
but I still wanted THIS to be my home. This is not a contradiction: one CAN have two
homes. Just as one might live with a lover yet still have a room with her parents, so too
I shall have my room here in this house, even while I live with another, elsewhere.
I shall care for this house, providing money for the family's security
and attending to the necessary repairs and improvements. I shall keep my room, control its
decorations, and be welcome at any time for as long as I want. It will be MY house, along
with Mary.
But, for a time I shall live with Andy. We shall be as man and wife,
though not married. We shall share bed and board, and I will experience what it is to
belong to a man.
How have I come to be so lucky: to have my cake and eat it too; to
change my sex, keep my family, find financial success, fame, true love living with my male
lover, and STILL not lose any of what I had before. When did I sign up for total and
complete fulfillment? Why did "they" let me have it?
I don't know. And aside from a passing curiosity, I really don't care.
What is important now is that I am free completely of the bonds of the ordinary world. The
consequences others pay daily seem to have made an exception in my case. I cannot explain
the mechanism, but I can allude to the experience. What to know what it feels like to be
different, isolated yet part of it all, powerful, special, alone but not lonely and privy
to a side of life few have ever seen? Read "The Vampire, Lestat" by Anne Rice. I
am two thirds finished with the book, and it speaks to my experiences at this point in my
life as well as "Stranger in a Strange Land" spoke to the transition years.
Sleep well.
December 13, 1994
What purpose, these entries? Who might care? Yet, somehow I take my
pleasure in the writing, not the reading. My thoughts get out and I am still again.
Nevertheless, I consider who might read.
The words sound like those I read in the novels and stories I enjoy the
most. These same sounds and thoughts are read by millions of others. Do mine have such
wide appeal as well? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Those stories are fictions, set in exotic places with fantastical
events, whereas my life is ordinary except for the way in which I look at it. At least to
me it is. But then again, if I strive to capture a more objective view, my life might seem
anything but ordinary to others.
In the end, I suppose, we are all unique, but none of us can ever really
feel it for ourselves.
It is late now: I must go to bed. Tomorrow, I shall write of vampires
and how I see their life to be analogous to my own.
December 16, 1994
Well, I didn't get to the vampire stuff. Just too much going on to
concentrate. As usual, I'm going through a whole mess of emotional crud. Here's what it is
this time:
To set the scene - a Windows version of the story
development software is out, as of December 1st. Now we
are finished with what we set out to do four years ago. That kind of clears the docket in
one respect. It does, however, open a whole new can of worms.
Yes, I am about to become financially secure in just about 30 days, when
I get my first large royalty check. But I am not emotionally secure at all.
I have a lot of dreams and plans to use the money for "good".
On the other hand, as satisfying as that is, it does not fulfill me. I don't know where
I"m headed emotionally. Its all dark. I went into this sex-change thing with my eyes
absolutely closed. How I might wish to have sex; how it might change my DESIRE for
relationships, I had no idea: it never entered my mind.
Now that I'm here, I sometimes realize how much I've changed. I don't
see it all the time. Sometimes I feel like nothing has changed at all. But that comes from
the consistent environment I've managed to maintain.
My biggest fear during transition was of losing my family. I worked so
hard to keep them. And I did, but at what cost? The strain during transition was
incredible. The lack of completion when I was finished, draining. Often I feel as if I've
run in a circle, struggling against all odds to get nowhere: right where I am now.
Of course, this is just an emotional appraisal. Certainly, I can see
that I have changed considerably and my situation has altered in many way, from an
intellectual perspective. But I'm sick of intellectualizing everything. I'm especially
sick of intellectualizing emotions.
I'm always analyzing how I feel, what the feelings are, how they relate,
what causes them, how they change, where they are going. Wouldn't it be nice just once in
a while to just feel something without the "mind" kicking in at all? I truly
wonder if that's ever going to happen. I think that happens if you are truly aware. But if
you are SELF-aware, you keep looking inward, watching the mechanism of your thoughts at
work, and losing any standard by which you can simply evaluate your surroundings.
This same trait has made it possible for me to see so deeply into myself
that I could dredge up Mental Relativity and haul it all the way back to the surface. I
don't think I'll ever lose that capacity, as long as my mind is healthy, but I also don't
think I want to exercise it anymore - at least not for a while. The potential will remain,
but perhaps I need to let the skill get a little rusty. Maybe I just need a vacation from
self- analysis. But here I am, doing it again as I write these very words.
Well, that's why I decided yesterday to write a novel next year,
beginning any time now that I want. And I'm going to write it in first person. Obviously,
I have a knack for talking about myself. But if I can talk about myself when I'm not
really myself in a fictional form as a different character, perhaps that will rid me of my
fixation with myself, even while exercising the very same abilities.
It's only ten o'clock in the evening, but I have had much to little
sleep this week. So, I'll close for today and try to be more myself tomorrow.
December 23, 1994
It is six forty-two in the evening, and I am all alone in the living
room. Mary is out with her bowling league, Mindi is out with a friend to McDonalds's, and
Keith is in back on the computer. I have the sound track from "Prince of Tides"
playing on the CD. It is a somber score, full of depth and majesty, yet carrying an
undertone of something bitter; something lost.
It is two days since I have gone off my progesterone for this cycle, so
I am vulnerable emotionally as well. The deep rolling rhythms of the music undulate slowly
across my heart and make my mind turn inward toward memories of my mother, of the children
as babies, and of the dreams I used to believe in.
It is so close to Christmas - the end of another year. This year has
seen so many new directions in my life. These last six years have been nothing short of
impossible, and yet they have happened. What will the new year bring? Will it lead me to
the one thing I have not yet achieved? The one thing that is more important to me than all
the rest combined? Will I truly find love?
I'm seeing Andy more and more with each passing week now. We go to
movies together, we talk seriously, we snuggle in the reclining seats of my car for hours,
laughing, reminiscing, petting, and snuggling. But its different this time. He still makes
me feel like he always has, feminine and desirable. Yet somehow the tables have turned. No
longer am I under his spell but rather he seems to be under mine.
I can say "no" to Andy now, if he makes requests that I find
too costly. And a relationship with him is no longer worth any sacrifice to me. Still, I
want love more than I ever have; the need is even stronger now. Why then am I less
inclined to suffer a price to fill that need? Perhaps, because the need is not really
filled by Andy, but only anesthetized as he goes through the motions of something he truly
doesn't feel. Having been hurt by deceiving myself that what I felt for him was mutual, I
can no longer give myself over to the fantasy, no matter how real he makes it seem.
There is no heart in Andy for me. He sees me as a warm body to keep him
from being lonely; as a time-filler while he looks for true love. I am also a meal ticket
and a stepping stone. But he does not love me. I only love him. And love it not enough.
Love must flow in both directions to fill the need. If it does not, one can fool
themselves by doing all the work single- handedly, but only until they are forced to face
the truth. When finally the bubble bursts, the hurt, greater than any other pain the heart
can suffer, wounds so deeply that a scab forms on the soul. The trick, I suppose, is to
make that scab case-specific, so that it only affects the relationship that generated it
without making one gun-shy in any other intimacies that life may offer.
So, now I see that Andy is not for me. If he has not come to love me in
the five years I have known him, I must let him go. Yes, he might grow to love me if he
could drop his protections far enough to love anyone. But he must grow for that to happen,
and I cannot wait around for him to grow.
I may move in with him yet. But it will only happen if the costs are so
minimal that even knowing the ersatz nature of our "romance", just living the
experience would still be worth the price. We shall see. If Andy grows enough, or the
costs are low enough, we might be together for a while. If not, it is better to be lonely
than lonely and under the thumb.
December 29, 1994
Such an odd day. A turning point in the path I have begun over two
months ago when I first told Mary I wished to leave her bed and sleep alone in the living
room. Why I did this is not motivated by reason, but by emotion only. It felt the
direction I must move. So I did.
For several weeks before my decision, I had suffered in bed each night,
torn between my twenty-year habit of having Mary next to me in sleep and my growing
uneasiness of sleeping next to someone who was no longer my lover.
There we times her arm would fall against me with all the sharp agony of
an electric wire; my body would convulse but for sheer force of will. This I could not
explain, nor could I tolerate it for much longer.
I thought perhaps it was a sign that I was truly only interested in men,
and felt uncomfortable cast in the role of lesbian, though we were no longer intimate. I
supposed it might be a selfish desire for freedom made manifest in a manner my
consciousness could accept and act upon. But no reasons are behind this feeling. It is
that it is. It comes from the sum total and mean average of all the drives that might be
individually described as portions of my being. More precisely, it is a sense of direction
chosen by my holistic self.
And so it was that I told Mary I no longer wished to sleep with her.
The first week was very hard. I felt like a deserter. I felt like a
fool. I felt like something inside myself demanded that I challenge and throw away any
human meaning I might aspire to in relationship to another.
Still, my reason struggled to comprehend... Was it for appearances to
increase the chances that potential lovers would find me unentwined? Was it simply the
culmination of decades of frustration, living in the disorderly mess that Mary perpetrated
in our room?
A month ago, I realized I wanted Mary's things out of the living room:
MY room. I wanted to decorate a space that would be conducive to my own cycles, my own
resonance.
And so, I set about accomplishing just that. Daily, I would remove
something of Mary's from the living room and replace it with something of mine. I took
video tapes from the shelf, stuffed animals, books: anything that was not mine, separated
it, segregated it from what had been "ours" until hers was with her and mine was
with me. It was not unlike dividing property during a divorce, and that comparison did not
escape me. Yet, still, I did not know why I did these things.
Even with all the changes, the family stayed with me in the living room;
we spent all our evenings together, and for one reason alone: the television. From my
grandfather, I had inherited a big screen television that had dominated the living room
for the five years we have lived here and long before. We grouped about it every night,
not unlike a prehistoric clan, huddled 'round a campfire.
It was then that I knew I must eliminate this magnet that drew us
together. I took charge of my new room, turning off the television at 9pm for an early
bedtime, even though Mary and the kids wished to watch special programs much later. Mary
had a barely functioning old set in the back room, "her" room, that could only
pick up broadcast stations, unlike the cable endowed monster in "my" room. She
was vanquished to that technological slum, while the shining eye to the world lay shut and
unused in my room.
This prepared her for my suggestion that we trade televisions, as I did
not want to constrain her. Or so I said. In fact, I just wanted to be left alone in my
room.
In the meantime, Christmas was upon us. In addition to the usual gifts,
it come to me to buy each of the kids their own color television with remote control. And
so I did. One day after Christmas we could be found separated, each to their own room,
four single souls instead of a family. I had accomplished the first step of my emotional
plan that has no name and no description. I had done what poverty and sex change had not
been able to accomplish: I had split up my family.
Why? I do not know. But it was what I had to do.
The final step was tonight. I ordered cable for each of the other three
rooms and it was installed this evening. Mary and Mindi went off to a square dancing class
and I moved the big TV to the back room, along with the cable decoder.
Now I have split us up completely. There is no more reason for us to
gather together for external reasons. And that is when I realized what my heart was doing.
I am struggling between the desire to find a man and be his mate and start a new life as a
total woman, and the sense of obligation and responsibility that seals me here with Mary
and the kids.
These conflicting drives tear me apart, as they are perfectly balanced
both in reason and emotion. The inequity simply weighs more heavily upon my soul each day
as it rubs my sense of contentment raw.
So this is what I need to break the deadlock: proof that we are only
held together as a family through habit and convenience, or proof that there is real love
beneath it all.
Now, here I sit, just an hour into the grand experiment. I have weakened
the fabric of my relationship, the fabric of the family itself so that no traditions or
routines or common needs unite us. I wait to see what is left, if anything. And when I
know, then I will know what to do next.
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