Scunnered

I started my blog with the words “Last week, I pupated“. That was not true.

What I thought was pupating was realising that being transsexual is a blessing, not a curse. I still think it is a blessing, but sometimes it seems a blessing too bright and hot for me to bear.

Here am I looking at the blue sky through the net curtain-

I started this, the whine hot within me. I would go back to that realisation, and describe how the day before I had been rejected for a job after an interview, and how upset I was about that. And being unemployed, and hating that job, and that job, and the Flourish-contra-mundum with Quakers, and that– writing now, I might put the links in, might not-

I have even thought this morning of- not reverting, exactly, but going genderqueer. Take an androgynous name, Evelyn, Jocelyn, Hilary- Lyndsay, perhaps- dress in jeans and t shirt, leave the wig off, just as an experiment. I mused on that for a moment, and pictured myself talking to someone- anyone- studying their reaction in a panicked anticipation of any bad reaction to me. Any bad reaction, judgment, surprise. Of course getting on the bus outside my front door would be impossible.

Later. I have walked in the sunshine, and feel better. I had been going to go on to say how I have got so upset at not getting jobs after interviews that I have stopped looking, and that I appear to have three options-

• snap out of it
• carry on hiding away
• find some other way of proceeding

-and none of them seem to work. What do I want? I don’t know. Though in the park I saw a little boy lagging behind his parents and being nagged to keep up- that strange notion of conventional recreational activities, which are not enjoyable.

I am so attached to the thought that I am Growing, Spiritually, and I come to see that instead I am learning discrete lessons and skills, which help. And my aim has always been to stop feeling uncomfortable emotions, and I come to see that it is my fear and anger at feeling fear and anger which makes them so uncomfortable.

A facebook exchange when someone shared this link. Someone commented that lesbian trans women are “filthy perverts” who “masquerade as transgender” and make life harder for the real trans women like her. When I challenged this she wrote “Glad to see your bleeding” so I asked her if she had meant the word “bleeding” as a gerund. Her later use of the word “your” indicated she had probably not.

At first I was angry, and later I found I could work myself up into distress at how I had felt about the autogynephilia theory in 2001; but it is only the faintest echo, a ripple caused by a splash a very long way away. How am I now- the next day? A little anger, but I am no longer hurt by what Rachel said. I am not entirely proud that I drove her away by mocking her grammar: “Oh, you poor thing! Consumed by your hatred, you’re lashing out at people who could be friends!”

I have kept the title “scunnered” even though having only heard my father use it I thought it meant “frustrated”, and from googling I see it means “disgusted”. Oh well.