Based On a Conversation Two: A Place for Us

by

shalimar

Again an essay from the heart about what it is like to be transgendered.

In many respects I am a lucky woman. In the net I have a number of virtual sisters, daughters and nieces that I love and love me. I give them my love and feel their love in return. They are in the center of my heart and I hope others will join them. In this environment I am my alter ego, The Evil Witch.

But in other respects I am not that lucky. Hugging my net sister when she is fifteen hundred miles away is not the same as hugging her in real life. Talking to her on the net is not the same as just walking to her home and being with her. Rocking a thirty-year-old that needs to be my five-year-old daughter on the net is not the same as her crying and fighting sleep in my arms. I need to put her to bed with her stuffed dolls around her so she won’t feel alone and kiss her. I need to read her a Dr. Susse, watch her play on the swings, help her with a puzzle, or have her help me make some cookies. Of course she could lick the bowl.

There are other issues as well. It is the fact that even with HRT and SRS it is only the best that modern medicine can do. Even then I am still not genetically female. There is no way I will ever give birth, to know that child is MY baby. The view in the mirror is still too masculine. I don’t know if I could ever get rid of my beard or the rug that covers my body. I am too tall. My voice is too deep. The hair where I need it is missing.

I need to put makeup and look pretty, not like someone who is trying to pass, but as a normal woman. And there are times I think that if I try to pass I might get beat up by someone who believes he is a “real” man, or I might just be lucky enough just to get a snide remark. I need to be with women as a woman, not a freak. And if I need to go to the restroom in a public place it is with a sister or a girlfriend. I need to be with a man as his woman and know that he is or will be the father of my babies.

I feel that hurt and anger. It is because I was born with that genetic defect that said I should be playing with guns and trucks instead of dolls and jewelry. Part of me needed to rebel and wear that dress but part of me said not to hurt anyone else so be what I appear to be even though that genetic defect eventually changed me in ways that was different from what I would have liked my body to change.

I also feel the hurt and anger of others. Some of us constantly lash out way out of proportion to the situation. Some of us want to do violence because of our pain. Their pain is my pain. I feel my sisters’ pain because my daughter lashed out at her inappropriately.

And most of society won’t let us get the peace that HRT and SRS would give us. We didn’t choose this way. Our bodies did. And when we do try for that peace others will insist that we do what they say. They may even go to court to enforce it. In reality we need the outer peace as much as we need the inner peace.

But I will love and continue the be the woman I’m becoming and will continue to share myself with others and I will continue to pray for that miracle that will allow me to heal myself and others. As my “five-year-old” told me a few days ago the song, “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” which prayed for the end of the stupid prejudices of that generation, is really a theme for us:

Somewhere there’s a place for us,

A time and a place for us,

Hold my hand and we’re half way there,

Hold my hand and I’ll take you there,

Someday,

Somehow,

Someway.