So doing this blog has had me processing a lot of memories and emotions that I thought I was beyond, forgot or had moved on from. But that is not the case. Mostly what I had been doing was ignoring everything.
I have found that I still harbor some resentment, particularly to my father. It’s not even sensible resentment, but it’s still there. I mentioned in a previous blog that I grew up never feeling I was boy enough for him. Nothing was ever really said about it and then when I was 18 he had to go and die on me, and there went any chance of ever resolving anything – therein lies my resentment. I resent the feelings I had growing up and I resent that nothing was resolved and that he took that chance away from me. Also seems to be quite a selfish emotion I have, which makes me resent it all the more. Emotions are certainly a lot more complex than many of us realise.
When my father died, I didn’t actually grieve for him. I convinced myself that I was dealing with it and that I had moved on. But now I am not so sure. I think perhaps that I was preventing myself from grieving because of my resentment. Now I am discovering that I never really moved on at all.
But in reality, what could have been done. I never spoke to anyone about anything, so I am resenting people for not being able to read my mind. It’s kinda crazy when you think about it, but something I need to deal with and find a way to move on in a healthy manner.
It’s not like my Dad would have had any indication about what I was going through, since I was so good at hiding it from my family. He never had reason to question my gender, nor was he in any way cruel toward me. Distant perhaps, but no more than most Fathers in Scotland. Emotion is not held in high regard in my family, and that is quite prevalent throughout Scotland. We hide our feelings behind rough banter and jokes and never really face anything deeply moving. So to be honest I cannot blame my Dad for not realizing what was wrong. I cannot blame him for wanting me to do boyish activities when for all he knew I was a boy through and through. Basically I cannot blame anyone other than myself. I and I alone knew that something was wrong and I am the only one that should bear responsibility for not saying something to my parents.
Through this blog I am finding a great many unresolved issues.
Another one would be religion, belief in God, spirituality – call it what you will. I never had any particularly profound beliefs growing up, and yet despite my doubts on the existence and caring nature of a God, I still bear resentment toward that being.
My parents did not raise us with any particular beliefs. I believe my Dad was atheist. My Mother perhaps went to church once a month. Her sister and parents were the regular church goers. Me, well my beliefs have always been complicated, perhaps because of my imagination and my interest in history and mythology and fantasy novels. All that makes me look at things in a different perspective.
I was never formally educated in biblical teachings, atleast not till High School. But even then the class was religious education and covered most of the main stream religions, which I did appreciate and found them all quite interesting. But I never felt that any particular set of beliefs was right for me. Even now I don’t know where I stand on the God issue. I think there is a being out there. I think someone must have designed all this, but I also think that after kicking it off, that being has taken a back seat. So that thought makes me wonder if a God does get involved the way people think and does that being really care about all the crap that we go through on a daily basis.
I am not one to believe in one God either. Where there is one, there can just as easily be many. And an all knowing, all powerful God – well that just doesn’t sit well with me at all. If she/he is all knowing and has a master plan and we are part of that plan then that would mean we have no free will at all. The notions of free will and an omniscient God are a paradox to my mind. I just don’t see how they can work together.
I could never get behind all the doctrine that was taught in any religion – it’s all taken too seriously in my opinion. And all those rules – sheesh, talk about taking the fun out of life. What God would create a people and design them to be miserable. Which she/he must have done if they created LGBT folks and then says its sin to accept yourself. So said God wants each of us to be miserable our entire lives. Well that is a God I could never accept and so I spent a great deal of my teenage years rebelling from those beliefs.
A lot of beliefs were taught to me, a lot of the structure of many religions, which made the class really quite interesting. I wish I had taken it further and learned more, but that class was not considered cool at the time and I was having enough difficulty trying to fit in, so I dropped it.
During those years there were classes on Greek mythology and I loved them. They were absolutely fascinating to me, particularly how every God in the pantheon represented an aspect of human behavior. It was like humans segmented their personality, behaviours and gave names and a persona to them, so they didn’t have to accept responsibility for their own actions.
When you get right down to it, that’s perhaps how I see religion. I see it as leaning against a higher being so you don’t have to accept responsibility. Who knows if that’s true and I do respect the beliefs of everyone, but that thought makes it almost impossible for me to fully embrace a God.
There is a point to all this rumination, I promise and I am coming to it right about now.
My point is that with all this lack of formal religious teachings within my family, I am having difficulty figuring out why they are not accepting me. It’s certainly not based upon religious beliefs that’s for sure. The person I was most concerned about – my Aunt (a very religious woman) has been the most accepting of my family. The least accepting is my Sister in law, which normally would not concern me at all. She has always been and will continue to be nothing to me. I have never cared for her, never thought much of her. But for some reason, right now, her verbal attacks on me have left me feeling wounded and carrying some self-doubt. This has led me to reflect upon it all, trying to find the source of her stance and to try and realise why she affected me so much. The fact that she did annoys me no end and it’s something I never want her to find out. I am a very prideful woman and would have a great deal of difficulty dealing with my feelings if she knew she had gotten to me in any way at all.
I can only put it down to her Scottish nature, which is difficult for me, since I am extremely Scottish myself, more so since I moved to the States. But I have to admit we have done and still do consider ourselves better than any other country. And therefore anything that is outside of our NORM is weird and anything that is weird must come from another country and therefore must be fought with all our strength. It’s a backward way of thinking to be honest, but only now am I beginning to realise how down we are upon other cultures. We are dismissive of countries, ideas and cultures not our own, which is a really crappy way to live. There is more to Earth than just Scotland, but we look down upon anyone outside our borders and we look down upon anyone seeking to be different.
This culture is the only thing I have come up with that can explain the strength of my Sister in Laws distaste over the path my life has taken. Ordinarily this would not be a problem, since I know that I am on the right path and that I am actually far better educated than she is. But that has led me to look down upon her too, a part of my culture that I have carried with me and one I now know that I need to get rid of. It’s not a particularly attractive aspect to my personality and now that I have been told “What I am doing is very American” I can see just how degrading we can be to other cultures.
No it’s not actually her attitude, or her arguments that bother me, it’s the fact that she woke up some doubts that I thought I had put behind me. And it’s that I got virtually no support or acceptance from my Mother, or my nieces. I had hoped that by now they might have come to terms with it, but the whole episode with my sister in law showed me that my Mother is still not facing it.
So the doubts that my sister in law woke up – well there is actually only one doubt. It’s a doubt about the end result and that was the doubt that kept me in the shadows the longest. To a certain extent I was really worried about acceptance, but it was, in actuality, the fear of the end result that kept me from becoming who I am supposed to be.
Simply put I was afraid of how it would turn out. I was concerned I would look like a freak in a frock, a dude in a dress or that I would just look downright stupid. But there was also another feeling, the feeling that I would never be entirely complete. Oh I can take hormones my entire life, I can have all the surgeries and all, but my body will never be 100% female. There are limitations to what can be done. And my bloody sister in law woke all that back up with her stupid, uneducated comments. But perhaps it can have a good outcome, since it’s something I, obviously, still need to come to terms with.
What makes it so silly to me, is that I know you cannot define yourself by your physical body. In so many aspects of life people need surgery to fix things, change things, keep things going – and that does not define who they are. I know all of that, I know that Gender is so much more than genitals, I know that there are so many combinations of chromosomes so having binary genders is stupid. And I know that Gender roles are a stupid construct for a silly society. Yes I know all this, but still, deep down, there is that nagging doubt that I will never be completely what I desire most.
Until the sister in law, I thought I had come to accept that. I was owning the label society gave me and living with the fact that I am and will always be a Trans Woman. But was I really accepting it? Or was I just hiding from it?
So now I need to find a way to truly live with it
At first I didn’t want to acknowledge or admit to these doubts and feelings, for fear they would validate the people who are against transitioning. But now I know that’s crazy. I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I am on the right path. I know that Transition is right for me. I have never been happier, or more confident with myself than I am now. I just have these little nagging doubts, but perhaps they are not actual doubts. Perhaps they are resentments.
In the end maybe all that I am feeling can be put down to useless, paralyzing resentment, and it is something I have never learned to face, or deal with. Always before I have ignored my feelings, buried them and thought I was moving on. I thought I was so strong for not letting anything get me down. But perhaps I have been too weak to really face the problems.
So how do you move on from resenting someone who is dead?
How do you move on from resenting a divine being that you are not even sure you believe in, or how much of a role they play in creation?
How do you move on from resenting the decisions you made as a young child too scared to full accept?
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