Intersexed In The Head; My Story And A Metaphysical Ramble
I've always been a mass of contradictions. Wise and foolish, cynical and trusting, frail and incredibly strong-minded. A glutton for acceptance, but all too willing to turn in disgust and rejection when that acceptance turned out to require me to edit myself for the consumption of the acceptor. Meaning that, even though I really like and accept people, I often find them a difficult challenge, and tend to be a loner. People find me a challenge too. I wrestle with depression as well as physical illness and ADD-spectrum absentmindedness. They all three play off each other. Besides that, one's mind has to be boulevard-wide to accommodate my level of weird.
I mean well.
Since depression walloped me very hard in my teens I formed personhood in a delayed fashion-what I mistook for personality was mostly depressive symptoms. I did a lot of growing up in my 20's. At first I thought I was a lesbian, then I thought I was bi, then I realized I didn't care about what bits a person had as much as I cared about the totality of their being (and sometimes, skill in the sack, let's be honest here). Meanwhile, my gender presentation evolved slowly from very butch to alterna-chick cute with a butch edge.
Still hated makeup.
I was an urban gypsy for a few years, had some relationships-one quite bad, the others okay, but not what I needed. Then I found my wife...who was born physically male. She's a brilliant, fascinating, difficult, loving, and bold-hearted woman.
When I met her, I asked myself, seriously, "Am I a man?" The answer, after a few days of contemplation was not a resounding no, but a no nonetheless. So I hit a hippie skirt phase, sometimes with unshaven legs.
Then my health went south spectacularly-chronic sinusitis (I posted that story here too...). Skip forward a few years, and due to circumstance I use the Internet as a substitute for real-life socializing.
My wife also gets roped into run'ing a Dungeons and Dragons game last year. We get our geek on.
At any rate, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons as a male character, and at roughly the same time, I pretend to be a man on an Internet discussion board-as sort of a real-life "role playing" experiment.
Or so I think. But I got obsessed with both false me's. I had to write my character out of the D&D game and get a new one, because I was actually getting angry at one of the other players. I got too upset at getting flamed on the message board. My emotions were raw and fluctuating. And I found myself intensely imagining I had ambiguous genitalia-as if a micropenis really should be there, almost must be there. It only lasted for a few days. But I still would like that. I really would.
When I realized I was truly, inside, neither male nor female, it was a giant AHA! moment. Suddenly, a lot that had never quite added up about the way I relate to things slid into a conceptual framework...and that's always an ooh shiny feeling. The way I neither wanted to relate to the world in the way women do...or the way men do. The way I believe both genders get a raw deal-are straitjacketed by expectations of what it means to be a "real" man or woman.
I have some minor body changes in mind, but they are going to be luxuries I may get myself in a wealthier future. Right now I can't even afford the herbal androgenizers in sufficient quantity to make any changes. All I do is weight lift, really.
Since at least venturing out on-line, I find that there are people who almost seem to have twin male-female personalities and I.D. as bi-gendered...I feel like there's a swirling mixture of potentiality in me. If only I can get my mental health, physical health, and finances in a precarious balance, there's all sorts of aspects inside.
Right now the one aspect I need the most of is one that I'd call the "Good Husband". By that, I mean the old-fashioned, circa-1950's ideal of the man as the quiet, dignified breadwinner, who goes out, does what has to be done, and ungrudgingly takes care of his wife because that's his job. Doesn't lose his temper, doesn't shirk, doesn't complain, does yard-work or car work on the weekends. Is creative only for utility reasons. Takes care of business. Mans up.
But I really miss my "Flaky Bohemian Artist" (gender undetermined), my "Pagan Mystic,"(slightly male-feeling these days), My "Social Butterfly" (female-feeling) my "punk rocker" (gender-queer)...
But of course it's me, it's all me...if there is anything that can be called me. It's not like these parts argue-although I hate women's clothing at the moment. I just have a face to meet a face, whatever face is needed. But survival is a stale game. I need more.
Besides that, depression comes to beat on me often these days. So I've learned to make hay while the internal sun is shining. Right now my happy pill regimen is working, I need to get out and enjoy before it sets in again.
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I sat and chanted on LSD once, back in '99, and while chanting, I tried to "ride" the waves of OM to my true self. And there was this little blue globe of light, about the color of a natural gas flame, trapped, vibrating in a crackling black-brown matrix of hardness. I was the little blue globe. And there just wasn't that much to that little blue globe. Nothing much at all.
So while there may be all these potentials, all these shadows I can cast, in the end there's just this little blue light, and whether it goes on or goes out when this body decides to quit processing things and gets processed in turn by other things...I won't be able to tell you. It will make dying easier to think it's not the end, so I choose to believe I'll go on. But I fear it isn't true.
And all that makes societal roles based on what you've got or I've got betwixt our legs incredibly silly. I want to do what works, what makes us all happy, healthy and wise, what gets us home safe at the end of the night, what makes me able to be happy looking at the person in the mirror.
I've got high moral standards for that.
Pardon the ramble.
Whoever you are and whatever your gender, I wish you well.
