Addict Ted

Hiding is hard work -

My name is Ted – I’ve never been Edward or Eddy, I was born with the label Theodore. I don’t want to be a Theodore any more. Nor a Ted.

I need to be Thea; I don’t like Theodore, but I do like Theodora – even if in my head I now use the shorter version. All the way to T, partly because I’ve been discovering that I am T – as well as having the nickname T. I snigger to myself – am I addicTED to being T.

Do I thank God in any way for the place I’m in. [In case you’ve forgotten, ‘Theodore means God’s Gift.] Huh. I’m not immensely grateful.

Oh, golly, I’ve gone through the analysis (mostly for myself to myself) because I want some answers as to WHY do I have this thing inside me that needs to show, in public, that I am different. I don’t WANT to be different – but I do want to wear pretty dresses, bright colours, flowing, floaty pretties. And by golly doesn’t that make me DIFFERENT and the object of definite and determined hate, nastiness, abuse and all the rest.

I read so much about my situation. And a lot of it feels like RUBBISH. And some of it hits the spot – or gives at least some help.

I was web-wandering and started reading about Addiction. I found I really really disliked the AA approach. The people who started it in the 1930s were, by later review by non-AA people, not kind, not nice and addicted to power in their bullying and abuse of their fellow-travellers. And they drank. And they smoked. But, like I say, their real intentional deliberate chosen addiction was abuse. BUT I won’t throw the whole baby out with their dirty bathwater …. quite a lot of people have been helped with their quasi-religious self-help formulae.

The huge emphasis by AA then and now is that God can look after all your troubles. That the god of a Middle Eastern, nomadic, pre-industrial herd is ‘The God’. Wow. That the angry, retaliating, violent, aggressive ‘god’ of the Old Testament became, simply by the ?generosity of !!sacrificing his only son, a Loving and lovely god. Double Wow.

That the Omni-present, omni-scient, all-powerful god is actually interested above all other things in the wailings (sorry - prayers) of a self-described intelligent primate on a tiny planet at the outer edge of a small galaxy somewhere in the universe.

Well …… who would have guessed that that was the answer to everything? Multi-Wow. By the way - I don’t say I KNOW better. I don’t KNOW. Certainly not with the certainty that those adherents of many religions claim. They ‘know’ based on their certainty. I just see their argument as circular …. There is a god because I believe in his existence therefore there is a god ….

As regards this jewish / christian’s god having such interest in us … why don’t the praying people find some proof!

Setting such deep and unprovable assertions to one side in favour of looking just at the actions of the AA. The tool-using ‘sapient’ primates who run AA have discerned that all will be well with every possible addict if they do the following
1 admit [to the group, their mentor and themselves] we are powerless over our addiction – that our lives have become unmanageable and we have hurt ourselves and others;
2 believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity;
3 and we have therefore decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.
Even if it does help some sufferers [and it definitely does] for me, this is, er, let’s be polite, not really helpful

AA do not require their client to look at the causes of their addiction; it is hugely blamed on the client’s mistakes in earlier life. Such mistakes are, implicitly, BY them or as a result of situations beyond their control.

Perhaps, a ‘step’ towards some truth is to look at the CAUSE of the addictive behaviour. Since the 1930s. there has been an immense improvement in the knowledge of how the human body, brain and behaviour interlink.

For me – and I am amazingly willing to accept comment and critique – there are TWO previous stages to becoming addicted before you have real problems that are sufficiently damaging to even look at the AA methods.

Step00 - you have significant lack of self-worth, self-assurance and at times you feel that some sort of behaviour will ‘fill the hole’.

The brain moves towards addictive acceptance by virtue of chemicals building up from ‘pleasing’ behaviours. And some of these are socially described as ‘addictive’. Satisfactory Serotonin ‘hits’ can too easily be obtained from some addiction or other. I believe that working on your self-belief and self-worth CAN be a root to avoiding much of the ‘look at your defects’ Anon-Group-type system.

Rather than the AA approach, perhaps real efforts to assess deep problems with self-worth and self-esteem can be addressed separately.

The structure of a Twelve Step routine is prescriptive, if not proscriptive; for some people this may be is over- or under-sufficient for their particular combination of issues. Attendance at a few AA meetings will reveal many who suffer from Alcohol, Drugs, Nicotine, Gambling, Sex and other issues such as Food. Oh, nearly forgot to mention ‘Willingness to Abuse’ and ‘Being a Victim’ as two extra options. AA-victims are really not in good control of several aspects of their daily life.

Step0 – you have developed an addictive style of life – and you and your family or friends are telling you there is a problem. Bluntly, you are screwed up by something you are doing as a habit.

Do I see ANY similarities with being T. Sliding answer – it depends.

For the AA client, and there are some for whom attendance at AA meetings becomes a replacement addiction. I’ve expressed my concern about the early steps of AA and what I feel is their determination to BLAME YOU for your problem. The next two steps do help some people, I accept that. But I am not happy with the strong implication that EVERYTHING can be fixed by this process.

4 We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
5 We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I know that there will be fellow T’s who have been told that they are addicted. There has to be SOME truth in that label. We dress because we love it, we need to, we want to. And some of the outcomes will be chemicals flowing to the brain to give potentially addictive benefit. But, I guess most of the BC readers don’t need to be told they’re addicted to anything. Being T is just part of our life.

I had to put this on paper. It needs more work. That’s why I’ve saved it with the name Rant-Addict-T1.

Let’s get back to my real life.

I’ve been dressing regularly for some 7 years now, 10 years if you count college where I aimed more for the andro-look. It seemed more sensible . By hindsight, I could have been bolder, braver. After all, nobody there knew me or was likely to keep in touch afterwards unless they became lifetime friends. And if you cross-dress, opening up about it to others is a risk. However ‘friendly’ your friends might seem. Do you have a clue what goes on inside their heads?? Do you have very many clues that you admit to about what goes on in the back of your own head??

But, as some of you will know, I didn’t dare be that brave or bold or open at college. At the beginning, I should have started as I wanted to finish – but who has the guts (nearly said ‘balls’) to do that. And perhaps by being so scared and closed-off I didn’t make many friends.

I began to dress more often once I was in London, living in flatland.

And I began to take an interest in what the other minority groups were doing. Especially the LGB brigade. T barely existed then, as far as I knew. It seemed pretty certain back then that LGB had little or nothing to do with the Ts. Except for the minority-minorities who drag or use costume as part of their LGB-ness.

And I just have this feeling that the LGB use of T is more of a manouevre than a genuine empathy or willingness to help.

Yes – L & G & B & T & I & Q & A & A & Q & Q & X & Y & Z – they ALL have people who are genuinely certain that they fit the listed characteristics – but do they really have much in common apart from being TARGETS because they are DIFFERENT.

If being a target made people have things in common – then the Jews and the Moslems-outside moslem-land and the Christians in moslem-land and the Republicans-in-democrat-land etc etc would see sufficient similarities to do something to correct the situation.

Oh – wishful thinking. Ha.

But the LGB group have had phenomenal success. Despite being very much a minority. Perhaps in part, being a minority has given them focus and power against the amorphous but huge group known as the Silent Majority. And aren’t they silent. Wow. Usually until it’s too late. Then there’s an ugly chorus of ‘why, how, we didn’t know …’ Ugly in some ways.

That’s what seems to have happened in so many of the changes that the LGBs have pushed through so that it has the legal justification of being ‘mainstream’. To a point where the taxable allowance for Married Couples has been removed. Ha. Mind you, a couple of hundred quid is just not likely to be an actual encouragement to getting married.
I really do think that minorities should have a voice – but when and how should this be enough to make the majority give in. What is the point of so-called democracy if the small-but-loud can out-manouevre the larger?

I know it is actually much easier and safer to be LGB yet than a few decades ago – but nevertheless the ‘norm’ (like it or not) is heterosexual male-female and generally monogamous couples producing children and behaving within the acceptable limits of family (dys)functionality.

There is NO doubt that SOME people and some couples should NOT have children; nor indeed that some who are childless might have produced excellent outcomes. But there are some very obvious statistics demonstrating ‘the norm’.

And how did it happen that without being in any UK Party political manifesto … ‘suddenly’ there was this immense pressure for pro-homosexual marriage. Despite my personal proclivities, I know of not one of my (I think) LGB friends who was DEMANDING this. But ‘somehow’ there was astonishing political pressure for it to happen … with astonishing success. It’s not quite compulsory in certain government departments to be hugely pro-LGB but ….
One highly prominent civil servant in a very significant department announced with vim and vigour ‘my primary aim is to make this department the most pro-LGB and pro-woke department in Whitehall.’ Was that actually part of the job description for Ms Romero?

But there’s a lot of disapproval or maybe just discomfort at those who go ‘too far’ (there’s a subjective statement) from the norm.

Tangent from a few nights ago :

I had been drinking. So had she. I really have no idea what made us gradually separate from the Friday evening after-work drinkies. I sort of guessed she had some ulterior motive. She was known to like to have leverage over people. Not blackmail as such – just accumulated knowledge sufficient to be able to press people. I’d not spoken that often one-to-one with her before – so drink somewhat whelmed our mutual reserve.

Renee said – ‘it’s never the majority however you look at it – even amongst the LGBs there’s only some who are active, some who are active and aggressive, some who are demanding ….. most want to get on with their lives with minimum disruption.

To which I answered ‘Bit like most of us, really.’

Quick as a serpent, she licked her lips and pressed ‘So which minority do you belong to that doesn’t get a fair crack, eh? What particular disruption do you need to avoid.”

“Oh, Renee, honey. Like most of us I’m the accumulation of so many groups, gangs, clubs, cliques and herds that I could never identify which make me a ‘minority’ all of my own. Do I have things I keep tidily compartmentalized so that one group such as the trainspotters doesn’t learn that I’m also a gin-fanatic. Of course I do.”

“Okay, so you’re not opening up about your big secret then. Fine, I can wait.” There was a pause and she blurted , “Are you gay, or LGB or whatever is the current proper wording – and I apologise for asking the question and, likely, not phrasing it correctly.”

“Well, there’s a poser! As it happens I’m not L or G or B. Mind you some of those options are beyond me. One certainly can’t both L and G for example. ……… Is it my turn to be equally outrageous?”

……………. “Um, maybe?”

“Is it, for example, true that you deliberately have a go at newcomers – to an extent that MIGHT be called abusive, or bullying or just improper. Is that, to be as blunt as you, why one of your nicknames is ‘The Sledgehammer’. “

“Oh. Perhaps I was being too inquisitive. Sorry.”

“Huh, ‘perhaps’. “ I snorted as politely as I could. “Wow, I have never heard you apologise to anybody for anything. Are you ill?”

“It’s just …… “

“What?”

“It’s just that you puzzle me – and I don’t like knowing all the answers.”

“So it’s true then – it’s all about you knowing as much as possible about people – so that you can squeeze them, huh. So kind.”

“That’s a twist! Who is analysing who? And definitely, who is making judgments based on little more than rumour.”

Sorry, Renee, I’m going to veer slightly. I’ve watched you for a while and you bug me. Greatly. For me, there’s an immense difference between nastiness and deliberate nastiness. I’m not labelling you immediately but setting up a hypothetical puzzle. This ‘Sledgehammer’ routine – is there a reason for it?”

“The question I’m going to ask you is ‘what should I do about this friend. They stir things up too often to make me comfortable. What would YOU do?’

“There are some people who for whatever reason are abusive, unkind, bullying and a whole lot of other words. Much of their nastiness is an overflow of their nature. Much of what they do isn’t planned at all. They just enjoy their power to hurt, main, damage, destroy. And I’d really like it if you could persuade me that what you hand out is not actually deliberately nasty. I can tell you I’ve watched some of your victims, targets or whatever you see them as … and they look hurt. Rather too often.

“I think, I repeat I think or guess that most of what you do is in order to make a fuss – to be the centre of reaction. Not quite the same as those I really dislike. They’re separate. Them who for a specific reason deliberately plan a nasty, unkind, abusive event with the specific intent of causing pain, distress and genuine hurt with little or no remorse on their part – them I hate.

“Some, no doubt, are the high-level psychopath who has no empathy and who has no concept of guilt or remorse – I have to put them into a separate box (hopefully very far away). And I think that’s not you.

Her expression was somehow taut, tense, even shocked.

“Those who feel remorse, I’m not sure I have great sympathy for unless they change their ways and don’t do it again to anybody ever – and they do their utmost to repair the damage they caused. So – do you care about your targets? What do you do FOR them once they’ve opened up on their small secret?

“I’m not blaming my parents – but they didn’t encourage anyone to show kindness or niceness. Mum was a lawyer, Dad was a scientist. Their skill was investigating, digging for ‘truth’. That’s what they taught. Perhaps I learnt too well. You’re not the first to point out that this approach isn’t necessarily kind. But you’ve done it more bluntly than Karen did.

“I have started to watch what I do – and I’ve managed to stop a few times before … before what I’m doing feels … wrong.

“Have I hurt some people. Over the years, I have definitely hurt people – some of whom were friends until … You can’t turn the page back.
= = = =

I held up my glass. “I think this liquid tonight is delivering too much truth. I’m stopping. And I’m going to try to drink less and certainly to avoid asking deep questions of a Friday evening. Partly because while I may be making sense to me now – I won’t remember any of these excellent steps of logic and, in cold light, there may be some logical slips.
Thus passed another mildly alcoholic evening – and still I managed to hide my minoriT.