Monthly Archives: July 2012

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Cue: The Rest of My Life

So, now that I have you here…

This blog, as you all know, began with the focus on my journey with my weight and there is lots more to say about that  – from the past and whatever is out there for me in the  future.  In huge times like this, it would be logical to hope that life clears a little space and only throws you one doozy at a time.  But life doesn’t always comply (in fact, I wonder if it EVER does) and it certainly is not a nice, linear progression.  So, I find, that if I’m going to write plainly about my life and have this blog as my way of thinking out loud and putting things out to the world, it’s time to start bringing in the rest of the picture.  Without it, I would have to start parsing what and how I talk about things and that is precisely not the point here!

For those that know me – you know that there is a LOT that I could (and will, over time!) talk about.  My career in music is multi-faceted – conducting, teaching, performing.  It’s a constant juggle and also a constant source of inspiration, aspiration and little microcosms of life!  I’ve often thought that there’s material there for at least a couple books.  There’s the hobby business that I have with my partner, Nelson, that has stuff in it that you just can’t make up.  The world of gamers is a fascinating and broad spectrum of humanity.  We’ll get to all of that – later.

Anyone reading this blog also knows that this has been mammoth year for me.  I’ve talked about some of that directly and some less directly, but I think you know that it’s been a time of both emotional and physical revelation – excruciatingly hard at times and also a time that will change my life and my perspective on life permanently and, I very much believe, for the good.  And I have not been alone in this.  Yes, in the sense that I have not been going through this alone , but to the point of this blog post – I also mean that my journey is not the only revelatory event at center stage in my life.

[Ready, honey?  Here we go…]

My partner is undergoing a transformation of his own.  It, too, is about coming into who he really is.  It, too, is an enormous physical and emotional transition.  It, too, will be excruciatingly hard at times and will change his life, our life and our perspectives permanently.  And it is here, now, and happening alongside my own huge time of life.  My partner…my husband…will become my wife!  He has identified as transgender and is in the first months of a male to female transition.

[For those of you who didn’t know…deep breaths]

There are questions that I would guess start springing to mind and let me attempt to answer some of the broadest ones:

What does this mean for your marriage?  It’s something that is going to happen within our marriage.  The safe space for him to explore this need has developed over the course of our marriage and we are in this together.

Where is this coming from?  Well, for him, it’s coming from as far back as he can remember.  Up until now, he didn’t feel that it was something he could explore/pursue without too high a price…or even at all.  For us, it’s been a very gradual discovery that we didn’t know would lead to this reality until fairly recently.  I’ve known since before we were married that Nelson had thoughts about being female and, together, we have a trust and a communication in our marriage that made it possible for him to say more about that and what his true feelings are.  In this year, yes, we’ve had a crisis that was driven by my crisis, and through it we’ve learned so much about the capacity that we really have in our relationship and we’ve recommitted ourselves to doing the things that we truly want to do and doing them together.  Well, you can’t talk about realizing your true self or your dreams without this one coming in for him.

When is this happening?  It’s happening now.  He is starting his third month of hormone replacement therapy.  Since he has not been outward in any feminine presentation, we can’t really say when the milestones will be, but the whole transition will take some time.  Milestones include – when to switch names (from Nelson to Nicole) and, along with that, those pesky pronouns; when she’ll be out at work; when she’ll feel ready to be out in public as a female (or any of the steps leading up to that)…and many more.  We’ve told our families and a good number of friends.  The response has been mostly just incredible and we’re very, very grateful.

And there are a ton of other questions, details, thoughts and feelings all wrapped up in this.  We know that there will be hard things about this decision and it is my very great hope that we will come through whatever hard the world (and ourselves) has to throw at us with our tremendous community around us.  We are not out to put this in anyone’s face (though there isn’t any way that it’s not a visible, physical process) and, in the end, Nicole simply wants to live as the gender that she feels she truly is, not have her life be defined by the transgender label.  But it is a complex, awkward (and, I say, why not wonderful as well!?!) road between here and that state of being.  This blog will be a part of the way that we choose to walk that road.  We also are documenting the process through a video blog together.  You can find that on YouTube.com.  Our channel is Two2Transform and here’s the introductory video.  If you choose to walk with us, you are very welcome and we are, again, very grateful!

See what I mean about life not complying?  It just doesn’t work that way!

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The Day The Mall Almost Ate Me

There is SO much shopping to do – I know, go ahead, feel sorry for me!  With the exception of 2 or 3 tops and bottoms, I had to get rid of everything in my closet.  I’ve been wearing the same 2 shorts and 2 t-shirts that we bought after the drains came out for 3 weeks now.  And I’ve been waiting for this 6-ish week mark when the swelling has largely gone away (supposedly).  AND…thanks to my UU Choir in Rockville for their so generous gift…I’m sitting on nice wardrobe budget to get me started!!

So…it’s pretty much time!  You’d think that I would be skipping in glee to the nearest mall (if I could skip – which I cannot just yet!)

And…I ALMOST am…but there has been a sense of hesitation and a feeling that I should go a little slow.  I even tried to say that this is part of my attempt to be less impulsive sometimes and take my time with things – which I would like do occasionally, but in this case, I think that’s a cover!  It’s kind of hard to say why, but I think I’m figuring it out.

So, on Thursday, I decide that I will go to a mall, on my own, for a limited period of time before my first hair cut in 2 months.  I have two goals – find a real bra  (non-underwire, but anything that will give me two distinct breasts rather than the sports bra uni-boob) and discover what my size range is.

I walk in and I’m pretty sure that you would have laughed at my face or started in with the reassurances.  I just felt totally swallowed!  Almost to the point that I didn’t know what to do there!  And I’m thinking, “This is silly.  Of course you know what to do here.”  And I’m telling myself that there is no specific expected outcome, no rush, just experiment, just enjoy it.  I’m walking by these stores and realizing that I could go into any of them when before, 90% of the stores were just automatically off-limits.  AND I’m realizing that I know nothing about them.  Which ones I’ll be drawn too, which ones are out of my price range.  A clerk at Talbots welcomed me warmly as I passed their door and hesitated and I wandered in, but immediately knew that I wasn’t ready either to put myself in someone’s hands or to shop for “real clothes” without some good undergarments and with slightly less wide eyes.

So…I made my way to Penney’s, focused on the bra section, and let my comforting research mentality take over!  I choose one style and getting every permeation of size between 36C and 40D.  Dressing room visit one – I found the most likely bra size and went back and got an armful of other bra styles in that size and close to it.  Plus, grabbed a couple dresses that caught my eye on my way back to my lab (a.k.a dressing room).  Dressing room visit two – success!  Found a bra that worked and happened to try it on at the same time as a beautiful striped maxi dress (which I assumed would swallow me in length) and turned to the mirror and was…well…delighted!!  I was VERY tempted to get another dress that looked good – get this, a purple polka-dotta flirty number!!!  But it was full price ($60) and I talked myself out of it.

With 3 bras and the maxi dress in tow, I went off to my hair appointment.  My wonderful hairdresser chastised me for denying myself the dress – especially at this first stage in the shopping experience and her words stuck as I drove home…so I kept going to another mall near me with another Penneys!!  They didn’t’ have the dress, but apparently my hesitancy about shopping had been banished and I had myself a small whirlwind and a grand time!!

So…the mall did NOT eat me – just almost!  And I’m ready to shop!  Shopping companions beware, I’m coming for you!

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Eschewing the Norm

Today, before it got too stinkin’ hot, I got the dogs together and went out on a walk.  Both of them nosing around and pulling this way and that, taking a usual path for us through the neighborhood woods and trails.

I’ve been wrestling with the concept of “normal” in a lot of ways and this walk was no different.  In some ways, it was “back to normal” – moving at a normal pace, walking for a normal length of time, the usual dog shenanigans.  And, of course, in many other ways it wasn’t normal at all.  I haven’t walked the dogs on my own since surgery.  Moving at a “normal pace” was a first, but it felt fine so I went with it…being aware of every moment and every move to keep two leashes untangled and keep me in control, not them!

I’ve been talking and thinking about how I’ll be ready to “jump back in” to my “normal life” and how this body will “become normal” to me and how this past many months of intensity will somehow settle into a normal life again.  And I think that today, I’ve come to a good conclusion that I’d much rather explore.

“Bullshit.”  That’s my conclusion.

I think that the whole concept of normal is bullshit.

I do understand the draw of it – the comfort of routine schedules and known surroundings, the feeling of fitting in with the world, having things that are predictable and easy.  Why do we try to force those into a norm?  Aren’t we also surrounded every day by new things, ideas and people that cross our path?  Aren’t we (hopefully) growing and learning and changing – even if in little ways on most days?  Don’t we struggle with fears of complacency, taking things for granted and getting stuck?  Why would we want a norm when it would dull out the first two lists of things and make the last more likely?  Why would we want for a day to pass “without incident” or to lose sight of the wonder of an ever-changing reality?

I don’t even want to go into some of the “normal” statistics about our society…I found out this year that, apparently, it’s “normal” for women to have a crisis at age 40.  It’s normal for marriages (and careers) to go through crisis at the 7 year mark.  It’s even now normal for couples to divorce.    And let’s not send me into a research frenzy about other things that I suspect may be normal – Ritalin for children, education levels…oh, let’s just stop.

I know I’m on the high brow here, but really.  I feel that my life – especially given all that’s happened this year, has been yanked out of normal and I find that, in many ways, I’d like it to stay there.  Of course I don’t mean that I’d like to keep high, hard emotion all around me…but I *would* like to keep my emotions around me (as opposed to shoved away from me) and I *would* like to have a mindful sense of living with them in the present.  I’d like to have a renewed sense of my body and my journey with it every day and not let that settle into something less appreciative.  I’d like to look at my partner every day and have a fresh sense of why we’re together and all that we want to do.

I’m pretty positive that I’ll have my “normal hodgepodge” of a schedule come the fall.  (See, now, how can normal and hodgepodge even go together in the first place!!!)  But if I think of it that way, it could easily be stressful.  I’d much rather choose that hodgepodge – on a daily basis! – and then also plan to revel in both what it gives me and in the spaces in between – no matter if they are spent doing everyday things or unique things.  And, as my friend Tim wisely said, who says I have to “jump in” anyway.  Can’t I just walk in from where I am?

I’d like to keep this sense of calm/relax that I’m beginning to have at my core and look through that lens when a day gets crazy or when I borrow trouble.  I don’t mean this in a rose-colored-glasses kind of way.  It’s just about recognizing the fluidity of life and people.  Fluid is moving.  Norm (in my mind) is rigid.  If I can embrace the ups and downs, the fast and slow, the *process* and course of life…wouldn’t I flow better with it and wouldn’t I enjoy it more, or at least get stuck less often?

In the bigger picture, I have never aspired to be normal.  I used to mean that in a creative way.  I also now think that I may have meant it in an elusive way (part of the weight demon) and maybe even an elitist way (part of my success/failure demon).  But now, I just mean it in an everyday way.  Every day, any day would be less if it’s consigned to a “normal day.”

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Recovery Stage Three

Hello!  I know it’s been awhile since the last blog.  I’m not sure how I can claim that I got too busy…this relaxing business is very time consuming!  Plus, there have been a swirl of half-topics in my head that have refused to clarify into any write-off-the-cuff full topics.  I probably should just start writing with the halves and trust that I’ll have plenty to say from there.  I usually do.  No, please…no need to agree with me!

I do believe that it’s time to declare Stage Three – though what that means is less distinct than the “on my own” switch into Phase Two (which actually didn’t entail much on my own time…but it did feel different!)  We are just over 4 weeks into the 8 week period of time that I cleared.

I have some interesting things to report from my last visit with the surgeon (this past Monday), but recovery-wise, everything is fine and dandy.  I don’t need to see her again for at least a month and she would even be comfortable with two, though I’m not sure I would!  I’m driving and the incisions all continue to heal nicely…a couple slow spots, but nothing to worry about.  Still a variety of compression garments that I switch around depending on if I’m going out or staying in and how tightly wrapped I can handle being.  No real shopping yet, but a couple brief experiments – enough to know that the world will be my oyster!  Or, at least, the Outlet stores will be my oyster…or something!

And, some funny (both ha-ha and interesting) changes and discoveries about this new body.  As things settle in and the swelling goes down, things move around more (breasts, mostly) and that can be uncomfortable.  Remember that there is a TON of internal stitching that can pull and shift probably even more than the external!  There are places that feel like things just got wired wrong in terms of nerves. Running a finger down the mid-line incision causes sharp tingles all the way out to the sides.  And, funny but too personal…the breasts (really the nipples) are hilarious!  One feels double wired so that it almost hurts and one we thought got no wiring, but then discovered that it’s just somewhere close by…we’ve decided that it’s like the north pole versus true magnetic north!  I’m deciding that this, along with the little foothills between my breasts are just fun new quirks that make me even more unique!

The other set of interesting things from the surgeon is the looking to the future.  I know I’ll talk more about this down the road.  Suffice to say that she’s known from the beginning (and tried to tell me, but I haven’t wanted to look at it this way) that this large a surgery can only result in the best possible initial result  and there is more to consider once we know how things settle out.  Don’t jump in with me on this, please.  I need time to have opinions about THIS body and time to really enjoy it – to dress it and move it and all kinds of things.  If there is more work that is needed, that will be a decision backed by a TON of questions and a TON of personal inquiry about what would be important and impactful to me.  For now, it’s definitely just something for my percolator.

The other part of Stage Three is how I spend my time and what I hope to come out of this period of time having done.  Relaxing/refreshing is certainly a big part of that (as is the recovery, of course).  And the hobby business that Nelson and I have (Cheese Weasel Logistics) has it’s big annual event that is right at the 8 week mark – the Gen Con convention in Indianapolis.  We’re on top of the work for this, but there is a load of work for this and that will pick up here.  I think I’ll write a small series of blogs to start explaining the pieces of my life (like this one) as the blog transitions from my health/weight to my life as a whole.  So more about Cheese Weasel then.  The blog writing is happening and I think it will be easy to continue that, though I can’t promise any certain frequency of posts.  The other focus is my music and that’s got a few big areas to it.  The song-writing.  The start-up work for the band that I’m forming with a friend.  And Plunge! – my nonprofit cabaret theater that I have with my friend and collaborator, Tim, that is ready to work again and we want to find the venue for that.

I want a balance of picking up work on these things, spending time that is usually harder to clear, and feeling only the pressure that I want around accomplishment.  That’s a tricky thing.  And that’s the debate as Recovery Stage Three gets underway.  To acknowledge that half of the time has passed and “only half” is left, but also relax that it’s still time and really a different stage since the first part was so taken over by the physical recovery.  This is where I need to bring back my thinking on making things “munchable” – choosing the accessible first pieces and doing them (and enjoying them) and trusting that they will lead to the bigger picture.

And so…Stage Three…ready or not!

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Turning the Monitors Down

I’ve talked about the constant monitoring that I believe has been a part of my brain activity for many, many years now – way more layers deep than I was conscious of.  From the physical (see the whole list here in my 321 lb Girl Part Two post) straight on through every reaction to and from me, and the emotional impact of every word out of my mouth.  And I know every word as it comes out of my mouth.  Even though I speak extemporaneously (in both personal and professional settings), I am weighing and adjusting every word.  I thought everyone did this, by the way, with the speaking.  Nelson says he doesn’t – he doesn’t think about what he’s saying as he actually says it.  I guess that means there are more out there who do the same thing?

We do all monitor – or at least most everybody, I think.  And self-monitoring is a good and healthy thing.  Here, finally, we can talk about equipoise.  Equipoise is a word/concept that my father came upon last year.  It was used in Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” with the following definition:  the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.  I leapt on this with such enthusiasm – thinking this is EXACTLY what I do!!!  This is why I walk around with a constant in-my-face opinion of myself.  In the end, it was often a positive opinion – having negotiated a relationship or conversation or rehearsal well, showed patience or chose kindness instead of criticism.  The net positive would be because I felt that in any interaction, there were plenty of places where it could go another way – the person I was talking to could have thought less of me or I could have been insensitive – and I had the presence of mind to correct that possibility on the spot.

No.  What I was doing was hypervigilance.  Let’s define that one.  Wikipedia says that hypervigilance is “an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats.”  It’s accompanied by anxiety and another definition I found says that hypervigilance is “when an anxiety sufferer is excessively aware of certain things that are anxiety-provoking to that particular sufferer.”

Well, damn if that doesn’t make more sense now I am looking back at it.  I had projected my personality as a mask to my weight and that gradually developed into uber-control of my personality.  Trying to make it flawless.  And that’s linked to my feelings of being loved because of all those personality traits (that I was in control of) – all my responses – all of my ways of being helpful.  And of course I walked away with a net positive opinion because I wouldn’t accept leaving a situation in any other state.  One way or another it would end with everybody being okay and happy.  And so, I assumed, thinking only of my wonderful role in that and therefore not anything negative about me or my body.  That’s the threat I was protecting against – my “certain thing that would have been anxiety-provoking.”

But then, as things started to fall apart last fall and all the way up to now, I lost control of many things.  I didn’t have control of my physical well-being and as the more I began to realize these emotional walls, the more they started to break down and the more vulnerable I became.  And what I’m tempted to say is that I lost control of my emotional hold on the people around me, but what I know to be true is that I never did controlthe people around me – emotionally or otherwise!  I may have been able to impact them significantly, but I never controlled them.  That’s just the read that I got from my monitors.  All clear on the emotional front!

So…now…in this place of relative stillness that comes partly from everything that I’ve been through in the last many months and largely from this forced slowness and isolation of surgery recovery…I find that I need to adjust to some new feelings that I think come from my monitors trying to change.  I will get little bursts of anxiety – how am I doing?  How is Nelson?  How are my friends?  What’s it going to be like when I jump back in?  Was it really okay to leave my lists for this long?  Is anyone sad?  Is anyone going through a rough time and I’m not there?  On and on and on…  And with the simplest tiny application of rational thought, I know that everything is okay.  I am doing well – physically and emotionally.  Nelson and I are doing well.  The path ahead is exciting – not because I’m making it exciting, because it is exciting.  My friends are living their lives and I’m in the loop.  I’m not worried about jumping back in or what’s ahead in the recovery and the new body…I’m just not to that point yet and need to wait a little longer.

Stillness needs to be a good thing in my life.  These little flashes of anxiety feel like part of the process of adjusting things down a little bit.  They’ve been so present for so long that they were constant.  The fact that they are coming in flashes now is probably a good thing.  It’s a little like trying to empty your head before being able to rest, or what I imagine would happen if I tried to meditate.  Let the flashes come up and then let them go by and eventually you’ll just be able to sit in stillness.

I would like to live with equipoise and not hypervigilance and that’s a big learning curve for my monitors.  I think they are beginning their adjustment and I just need to let them!