Fatigue, At The Beginning And The End

I'm so tired now.  I've been tired for so long, I want to close a door and cry.  Mother used to do that sometimes.  But there's no door here for me to go behind and close.  And the tears won't come now, anyway, because I don't have the emotional energy, or even a space inside me, to allow anyone else to see them.  For crying in the presence of others is always an involuntary form of sharing, or at least diverting one's attentions.  Those activities require energies I just don't have right now.

Maybe it's the day, and my hope that it will be my last on this block , that's so drained me.  But taking hormones does that to you, too.

The first time you take them, you're expecting something to happen, even though the doctor or whoever prescribes them tells you nothing will, at least not for a while.  Two pills:  One, the anti-androgen, is white and has the texture but not the taste of an aspirin tablet.  The other--the estrogen--is small, with a hard shell in a shade of candy-coated cow piss, which is pretty much what it tastes like.  Not that I've ever tasted cow piss, candy-coated or otherwise.

After I took those pills every day for a couple of months, I couldn't notice any difference.  But Vivian did.  She called me that day, ostensibly because she wanted to return something I couldn't recall leaving at her place.  It'd been a few months since she pronounced me "too much of a woman" for her tastes and broke up our relationship.  She'd found a watch with a woven black leather band when she was cleaning, she said.  And indeed she gave it to me when we met for supper that night, in a restaurant a few blocks from where I was staying.  

But there had to be another reason for her wanting to see me; I could hear it in her voice when she called.  I couldn't imagine her wanting sex with me again.  So what, I wondered, did she want?

As I cut into the piece of chicken I ordered, I got my answer.  She called my name--my old one.  I looked up at her.  "Something's different about you," she intoned. 

"What?"

She reached across the table and dabbed my cheek, where she used to stroke with her fingertips.  "It feels different."

"How so?"

"It's...softer."

"Huh?"

"It really feels softer."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"All right," I said.  "I'll confess something:  I am taking hormones."  Her face grew longer.  "The doctor said my skin would get softer.  But not this quickly."

Then she asked me to stand up.  "Wow!  Your body's changing."

"How so?"

"None of your clothes fit you right."

"I think I've gained some weight."

"Maybe you have.  But it's in your rear.  And you're growing boobs!"

I couldn't notice those changes yet, I said.  And I felt like I needed more sleep.  "But," she cut me off, "you don't seem depressed.  Or angry.  You always were one or both, especially near the end of our relationship."

"To tell you the truth, I'm not.  I don't even feel sad very much.  Maybe..."

She cut me off again. "Maybe you accept things, or are resigned to them."

"You could say that."

She could. None of it surprised her.  Before that night, I hadn't told her I was taking hormones.  In fact, I hardly told anybody.  I don't know who could' or would've told her.  But I knew, then, that she'd asked me to supper so she could find out what I was like on hormones.  Why else would she want to see me again?

The old lady whose name I never knew is looking my way again. Who could' or  would've told her?

Make it tomorrow, please. I'm so tired.  All I want is to have my operation, then to get some rest.

To Continue or Renew--Or Leave?

The Classical Transgender Narrative (Is that pretentious, or what?) says, among other things, that a transsexual is supposed to, not only forget his or her past, but to create, in essence, a fiction about him or her self.  You are supposed to move away from the gender in which you had been living, and all of its trappings and everything you associated with your life in it, and become something new.

The whole idea seems pretty creepy to me, especially now. I mean, why would someone want to induce amnesia in him or her self.  Ever since I undertook it, the journey from the gender that was imposed on me  to the one I truly am has seemed to be, or at least should be, one toward greater balance rather than the creation of a new imbalance. 


While I am not looking to deny the fact that I lived as male for more than four decades, and did many things that are completely congruent with life as a male,  I am moving away from many aspects of that life.  I have come to realize this because of two people who have seen this blog, and other places online where I'm present, and have contacted me.  Both say they want to be in touch.  One was a classmate (more or less) at Rutgers; the other is a woman with whom I had a relationship.


While there is much about both of those times in my life that I'd just as soon forget--and, in fact, have forgotten--I realize now that those two people are not necessarily embodiments of what I'd like to forget (or, for that matter, remember) about those times.  The classmate was, in fact, a good friend to me at that time in my life.  Perhaps she could be one again.  As for the former paramour, I have no desire to have the kind of relationship we once had.  So, I am asking myself what, if anything, I want to renew, or can be renewed, about our relationship--or whether it's possible to build some sort of new relationship.


And somehow I suspect that my old classmate doesn't have the sort of lurid curiosity others from my past have shown when they found out about my transition.