stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
Status: offline
|
I can relate to this a lot as I am going through the entire process of gender reassignment. Here we're talking about processes within processes, one process started when I was four years old, and it can be argued as to whether my actual 'transition' started at my realization at the age of 17 that I was somehow different from most people, or when I first started to seek out gender reassignment treatment out of the collapse of my marriage back in 1998, which is when most people take to be the start of my transition.
My journey has been characterized by contrasts and conflicts all the way through. Being the visionary that I am, my journey contains a lot of foresight, inasmuch that I am living now at the age of 42 exactly as I visualized I would be living now back when I was 17. But life is in itself completely unpredictable and that same foresight and vision has also handicapped me in ways which I have struggled to deal with and which at times have almost caused me to give up. This is a journey of discovery not just of me myself as a person, but also humanity as a whole. I realised early on that this wasn't only a cross I have had to bear throughout my life, but also a wonderful opportunity experienced by only a few people.
Ten years in transition, so why hasn't the journey been completed? This is a question some people have asked. I had gone to Poland to find that completely different territory in which I would be a foreigner and would have to assimilate, and my success in Polish theatre went way beyond my own expectations. I just wanted to write plays for an audience, in Poland I also became a director, I learned the language, the culture and the history and I became popular, known and accepted in my former male gender as a part of Polish culture. At the time when I first started my transition I was well known, popular and had a strong influence on Polish theatre which was just as strong, if not more so than Jerzy Grotowski. I felt trapped, stifled, and it started a decline whilst I was in Warsaw, which led to the 'angry years' of 2003 and 2004 when I became controversial in my work, and I was expressing my anger and resentment towards society through my work.
However at the same time I was finding myself as a female and as a submissive and this part of me brought inner peace and a sense of inner harmony that I had never found in my life. My service to dommes became my inner sanctum, it kept me sane, and in 2004 it probably prevented my suicide when I felt that there was no better conclusion to my transition than to be dead. It was my discovery of my submissive nature and how much it could influence me which led to events in 2005. This is where I learned that submission was a way of transcending myself from one state to another.
I remember 2005 very well. I had signed up to Collarme shortly before Hurricane Katrina and was starting to look for contacts which would help bring me west and away from Poland. I had witnessed the rise to power of the far right in Poland and the Kaczynski brothers, the death of Pope John Paul II, and the subsequent struggle of the Polish LGBT community for equal rights. This is where I saw my opportunity. My success and lifestyle was no longer important, I didn't gain any sense of happiness or satisfaction from my male gender, which had now been reduced to public appearanaces and my work in the theatre, I didn't feel anything as love or fulfillment, I was living a lie. This was a lifestyle which could easily be sacrificed, and I knew it would be sacrificed, and as I prepared for confrontation with the authorities and Church in support of the Polish LGBT community I knew I would lose. Winning just seemed too unlikely, and then part of me wanted to lose because of the wonderful opportunity it gave me to transition. It was my way out. This was my thinking behind my whole gambit of coming out, and I came out publicly.
I lost, and I lost everything, everything that anyone could lose, and ended up destitute on the streets. This was perhaps my greatest test of my submission, learning to let go, give up, walk away from things, not to fight, but to just let everything collapse, let people walk away, and move on. Even the effect that I had wanted didn't happen and my name has since faded into obscurity, nothing more than a distant memory. The equality that I wanted other people to enjoy never came about, for society is much bigger and much stronger and mine is nothing more than a token gesture, a lone voice of protest. Then silence.
That was three years ago and hindsight has proven that it was a price worth paying. What I lost materially, emotionally and physically has been more than adequately compensated by my learning, knowledge, understanding, compassion, and insight. These are things I cannot lose. My whole self was stripped away to the bare bones, to a skeleton, a shell, Together with what was stripped away was the anger and resentment, the victim mentality, and other issues.
Some of the issues remain, and these are larger issues, from my childhood, from my past when I accepted my male gender role and tried to make a go of it, playing along and slowly killing myself and bringing pain, anguish and hurt to those close to me. I cannot erase or wipe out my memory, those things happened, and no matter how much I try I know I cannot disassociate myself from my past, nor can I be anyone other than who I am today. But there again, it is that past which is an integral part of me and who I am.
Three years have passed and these years have been difficult, stressful, but also productive. Three years ago for a while I became suicidal, distressed and almost had a breakdown, two years ago I was merely depressed, subdued, melancholic, and in the past year I am holding my own and learning to respond in better ways to my circumstances.
I am still not the finished product, but a work in progress, many questions in my life remain unanswered, but instead of fear there is faith and hope in tomorrow, and an ever growing sense of hope and faith in myself. Yes there are rough edges, but I already have the basis, I have my work in theatre and in society which continues, just as it did before, and despite the deja vu I keep feeling from the events in my life in knowing I have gone this way before I am feeling the sense of happiness and fulfillment which I never felt in Poland.
Rather than being just a small element of me my submissive nature is an integral part of the source of me, a central element of my core which in some way - just like my creativity - needs to be expressed for my own emotional wellbeing and stability. I'm someone who thrives on hard work and occupation, and even if it is menial domestic work (which centres me emotionally) it also enhances my creativity and adds that 'spark', the energy, inner strength and vitality.
I am not in a stable relationship, which would concentrate my need to be submissive and bring it to focus on one person, and so it is something which today is somewhat more diffuse and has a different focus. That focus is humanity, and through my submissiveness I find I am able to internalize emotional pain, stress, anxiety which is expressed through service to other people, for example through my work with the homeless and with the LGBT community.
The diffuse nature of that part of my nature, my submissive nature, also manifests itself in far less tangible ways. Some of it spills over into my creativity and work in theatre, especially in my writing, and especially in my later plays there are elements of dominance and submission, and various situations expressed through drama where a character must let go of something or submit in order to progress, achieve something, or arrive at the conclusion of the play. I write predominantly on social issues and problems, and this submission has become almost as signature as references to class struggle, alternative sexuality, and discrepancies relating to gender. It also lies behind my cause, which is furthering the cause of freedom with regard to gender roles and sexual orientation in society as a whole.
There is a reason for this which can be expressed in the phrase for the greater good. I already know that I face marginalization by wider society through being transgendered, but I am also in a wonderful position and have a wonderful opportunity to provoke, stimulate or bring about social changes not just for myself but for others.
This is part of the reconstructive nature of the whole transition, that I have sought to peel away the layers from me and lay my soul bare like the season of winter freezes out the flora and transforms a field into mere barren earth to support new life. In a way I have died, there are still visible traces of my masculine past but these are little more than scars which are healing, these are perhaps still my 'chrysalis years' and more and more I am emerging as the whole and complete me, with new layers added through my experience and living.
_____________________________
CM's Resident Lyricist
also Facebook
http://stella.baker.tripod.com/
50NZpoints
Q2
Simply Q
|
RE: Peeling the layers away from me - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread