MeghanIsMe

I find it a little hard to keep up here because writing everything up for Facebook, and then copying it here and to Livejournal manually, takes time, and I don't always do it at the same time even though I keep wanting to. At one point, I was thinking about learning enough Javascript to write something that will automate this for me, but I didn't follow through. (Though I did end up sort of pivoting to learning enough C++ to write LED control code for my computer case lights!)

Anyway, some stuff has been happening!

Someone posted a meme that I related very strongly to and I wrote about it. The meme text said:

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In text attributed to blueberrygoth, it reads "ive known so many "cis" people who've told me they thought they might be trans or nonbinary but they don't really experience dysphoria so they felt like werent allowed to call themselves trans. how many people have had to live their lives in the closet because they were told they werent in enough pain"

Then, follow up text attributed to thatse-corvid-core-babey reads "i've said it once and i'll say it again. EUPHORIA is the greatest identifier of a trans person. not dysphoria. dysphoria is hard to define and thus it's hard to regulate what is and isn't dysphoria. but euphoria? that feeling u get when someone uses the right pronouns? that "i can't contain my smile" sort of joy? THATS what the trans experience is all about. that's what unites us"

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I wish someone had told me this 25 years ago. I was too disassociated to feel much dysphoria, but the euphoria was *always* there. I just didn't understand.

I do have dysphoria now that I understand who I am and I feel the ways my body doesn't match. But the absolute delirious happiness I've found since consciously living as the correct sex is worth it a thousand times over.

While I was out at Costco yesterday getting my prescriptions, I talked to the pharmacist about getting the two accounts I had there (from two different doctors prescribing with two different names) combined. He confirmed which name I want to use and said "I'll get that taken care of for you Meg." Literally, the whole rest of the day, I was having flashes of joy about him calling me Meg and seeing me as a woman. As I drifted off to sleep that night, I spent a little while saying to myself, out loud, "I'm Meghan. Meghan. Meghan. I'm Meghan," and I simply don't have words for the joy I feel just knowing that and seeing that other people know that.

I read the penultimate volume (number 7) of Bloom Into You last night, while lying in bed with Miriam and sharing the best parts. It's really good. One development in particular, and the writing surrounding it, was so good it made me cry. Part of that was because I feel personally connected to it as a trans person who has changed so much while my partner stood by me through all that change. I feel a little embarassed writing about it at length here, but it really meant a lot to me. So please feel free to skip on by if you're not interested in queer high-school relationship drama.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

BACKGROUND TO UNDERSTAND THE SCENE: Touko has spent her whole life trying to be a replacement for her "perfect" older sister who died in a car accident when Touko was in elementary school. She's presented a perfect façade to the world for so long that she doesn't know who she is anymore. She's scared that if someone likes her, or loves her, it's because of who she's pretending to be. She's scared that love is directed to a person as they are, and if that person changes that love might go away. She thinks she has been fooling her long-time friend Saeki with this façade. She has not: Saeki is one of two people who see through her. Saeki loves Touko anyway, but has never told her because she knew Touko would not react well. Plotful things have happened, Touko has grown as a person, and Saeki thinks this might finally be the time to talk to Touko about her feelings.

Saeki has confessed her feelings to Touko, telling her she knows exactly who she is and loves her anyway. Touko expresses fear, asking Saeki if she would still love her if Touko went through major changes in her life. Saeki concludes her response with:

"You know...love...
Doesn't mean 'I never want you to change'.
But I don't think it means 'I don't care if you change' either.
So I suppose it might mean...
'I believe that you'll always be the person I adore.'
A declaration of faith...perhaps."

That's the part that really got me. Right in my trans-girl heart.

...

Saeki has become one of my favorite characters in any yuri I've read. She's introduced maybe not quite as a villain, but as a cold person who doesn't really care about much except supporting and taking care of Touko. She's antagonistic toward Yuu, the other person who knows Touko as she really is, probabaly because she instinctively sees Yuu as a threat. But by this point, Yuu and Saeki both understand that Touko is really broken and want to help her grow as a person, and Touko's well-being becomes more important to Saeki than her unconfessed love for Touko.

And my heart breaks for Saeki because Touko gently declines her love, saying that she is already in love with someone else: Yuu. Saeki is crushed, and thinks about how long she's had these feelings and not said anything, and that because of her own choices, she lost the opportunity to be with Touko. But in reality, I don't think Touko could possibly have been prepared to hear Saeki's feelings if she hadn't developed in the ways she had because of her love for Yuu. [As a side note: this is yet another example of how cultural acceptance of open relationships might potentially make things better for everyone.]

It's the second time things have gone so poorly for Saeki through no fault of her own. In junior high (or the equivalent I guess), another girl asked her to go out and they spent the school year "dating" in whatever ways girls of that age do. Saeki was really attached, but they didn't see each other over the Summer. When the next semester started Saeki expected their relationship to continue, but the other girl basically said "We're both growing up. We're both girls: we have to stop pretending to date like this." She was crushed, and even transferred schools, from the all-girls one she was attending to a coed school, thinking that she had to find a boy. But she never did. The only other person she's had feelings for since was Touko.

There is a series of 3 "light novels" about Saeki. (Light novels are a Japanese format that originally arose from something like pulp magazines.) I've never bought anime/manga novel tie-ins before, but I have to know more about what happens to Saeki. I have to see her get a happy ending. I hurt for her.

So, things to journal about. And by things, I mostly mean gender. So many experiences, thoughts, and feelings in my life center on gender lately, even a year into HRT and several years into thinking I might be a woman instead of agender.

I WAS A TEENAGE EXOCOLONIST

I've been playing I Was a Teenage Excocolonist and the game is amazing. It's exactly the sort of media I wish there were more of for me to discover. It's also had some content that's inspired reflection about my own experiences.

My character, who I named Meghan, has turned thirteen and is starting puberty. She's sometimes tired, and sometimes moody, and has had her first period. The game isn't over the top about this, but explains what's going on and ends its narrative with "Welcome to puberty, Meghan."

I stopped playing for a little while because I was having Thoughts and Feelings.

This alternate reality Meghan experiencing puberty was meaningful to me, and it made me think about my own, real life experience of puberty. I tried to remember what it felt like and what it meant to me and the answer I found is "not much." I don't think I was horrified like some trans folks who knew themselves better were, but I don't think I was excited about it either. I don't really remember what I thought or felt about my voice changing, or my body getting hairier. It's thirty years in the past so my thoughts may not accurately reflect reality, but right now I don't remember feeling anything about it at all. I haven't taken a survey or anything, but I feel like this must not be a typical experience? Puberty probably meant a lot to most people, right?

Just as I never felt connected to being male, maybe I didn't feel connected to puberty either. Maybe this is another aspect of what I think was a kind of life-long disassociation from my body and self. Playing this game and searching for my feelings about my own puberty, the only ones I can really find are sadness that I didn't get to experience bio-female puberty as a teen and get to grow up having feminine experiences and maybe being more in touch with my life and myself. Sadness that I can never have that.
Miriam noted that HRT-puberty is pretty meaningful to me now, and it really is. But it's neither the same thing nor the same timeline, and I'll never know what that's like.

VTUBING AND MY PUPPY-GIRL AVATAR

When I realized recently that I could create a cute video puppy-girl who could synch with my movements and replace me in webcam feeds, I connected that with the idea of streaming games online as a way to try to be social in this time of isolation while also getting to be a version of me I loved and who was completely new to me. I created the avatar and synched her with me and getting to see her moving her head and blinking like an adorable mirror-image of myself was amazing. I was literally giddy with joy. As I kept alternating looking at her and seeing myself, I was bouncing in my chair and holding my hands to my face, or making quiet, fervent comments to myself about how great this was and how happy I felt.

Later in the day, I'd been feeling depressed and listless for a while. Miriam was on the couch and I joined her. She asked if I wanted to play a game, but I wanted to just lie down with my head in her lap while she played. I wasn't sure what was in my head and figured it was just another random span of down-ness. At some point though, I realized I was thinking about the vtube avatar I made and how happy I was looking at her. And that happiness was making me sad somehow. As I talked with Miriam about it, I realized I was sad because I got to pretend, for a little while, that I looked cute and pretty. I was sad because I didn't look like that and it really hurt.

Miriam reasonably pointed out that she doesn't look like a cute anime character either, and that's true. But I responded through the tears I'd started crying "but you look like a girl." People recognize her as a woman, and they do not recognize me as a woman, and it's possible that a lot of people never will.

I think I'm going to be able to integrate this experience into my thoughts and feelings, and I'm still really looking forward to playing some games online with people as an anime puppy girl. But those feelings were an unexpected gut-punch that I had trouble even recognizing for what they were. Miriam had thought that I might have that reaction, and as I frequently am, I was impressed by her insight. I keep getting blind-sided by things like this that make perfect sense to me in retrospect, but that I had been completely oblivious of prior to the experience.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

There has been so much joy, and so much pain, in this process of transition. I feel so much and so deeply about so many things. And maybe that's part of that HRT-puberty I mentioned earlier. Maybe it's just me being in touch with myself in ways I never have been before. It's been a hell of a ride. It's been completely worth it, but it's really hard sometimes.

And I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by family and a partner and other loved ones and friends who are completely supportive of me. It's hard to imagine going through this and losing people I care about at the same time just for being who I am.

If you have other trans people in your life, please: be kind to them. This is hard. Miriam is in a support group for family of trans people and was just reading about a 12 year old girl who was disowned by her family for being trans and is in foster care now. Her new foster parents were looking for help there. It breaks my heart.

Is it any wonder why trans people are at risk for mental illness and suicide? We're just trying to live. Please, be kind. You don't have to be understanding if you can't, but at least be kind.

I'll probably write more in depth about my own experience with gender euphoria and dysphoria at some point. But the more I understand and embrace being transgender, the more I also feel dysphoria in ways I hadn't before.

I need to transcribe an interview I did for school, and I think I've been putting it off because listening to my own voice gives me pretty uncomfortable dysphoria.