#Woke

I wake surrounded by sensations. A mild painlike sensation aches in my groin area. I become aware of white and lighting. A pressure in my arm, my finger. I'm not alone. Someone is leaning on my bed, others are close. I hear a muffled conversation. I can't quite understand what they are saying.

My senses gradually make sense. The white, the lighting, the pressure, the people around me. It's my mom leaning on the bed and the pressure in my arm is the UV, and I have a finger monitor. I hear odd bits of words, "school," "changes," "work," "what do we call," "big change." The bits make more and more sense, but I'm uncomfortable.

That aching in my groin is the only thing I haven't understood. I remember when my dad was in the hospital. It wasn't long ago and I can still remember his waking up complaining. He needed to go to the bathroom. He wanted the tubes out. They hurt, he said. The nurses and my mother told him to just relax and pee in bed. He tried to get out of bed multiple times (unsuccessfully- the drugs really did a number on him). He mumbled over and over how he was uncomfortable and how he needed to go to the bathroom. It was all he said and all he could think of.

"You're awake!" My mom looks funny. She's been crying and looks stretched. The rest of the family surround me. Dad says something I can't quite get. He's dad, so it was funny, and I smile. There's my sister. She's angry at something. I'm too tired to want to know what it is she says. I can't care when I'm like this. My brother's not there. I wonder if he couldn't make it. It must have been an emergency, this procedure. I can't remember there being anything wrong with me.

I try to speak, try to ask them what's going on, but my mouth doesn't cooperate. My lips barely seem to move and I croak instead of talk. Mom looks around her.

"Do you want an ice cube?"

I want water, but I'm not sure if water would choke me. I'm not sure I can control myself enough right now. I hate feeling so weak. I nod. She feeds me the ice cube, dropping freezing cold water on my chin by accident. I shiver. It's so cold. Freezing.

I do my best to ask with my face what's going on. Why am I in a hospital? Why do I feel so strange? My family exchanged glances that only fed the fuel. What was going on here?

My mom clears her throat. "We had to do it to save your life. That's the reason."

Did what? I couldn't understand. Why hadn't she just told me. I hate suspense. In my passion, I forget that I have ice in my throat and it flies out of my mouth as my jaw tightens in anger. I try to shoo the helpful hands away and push the hand away that was trying to give me another piece of ice.

"What?" I croak. "Do what?"

She sighs, but she's the indicated one to tell me. The others support her, but they don't speak up. "You're a boy now."

I shake my head. No! There are plenty of explanations for the ache in my groin. Sure, I suddenly realized that the ache seemed to be outside of my body, or what used to have been the limits of my body. I could feel blood pumping in a place that before nothing had occupied. But that was a catheter. It was a ghost sensation. It wasn't...

I don't want to be a guy. I don't want to be a guy. The thought resounded. In fact, it didn't seem like any thought I'd ever had before. It was like an impulse or instinct. I squeezed my eyes shut as tears continued to flow. I don't want to be a guy.

My eyes open. A light from the window shines warmth onto me and I see, not a hospital like I thought, but my dorm room. I don't want to be a guy. I saw my minion poster, my wardrobe, my desk. No family, no surgery; I was alone and as I always was. I threw the blankets from my body and saw my usual Eeyore pajamas. I don't want to be a guy.

Tears ran down my cheeks and I was startled by the horror and disgust and betrayal I felt from a dream! It was a bizarrely strong sensation that I'd never experienced before. It brought up memories. One of my best friends from elementary to high school disappeared after graduation and next I knew, she was he. He'd communicated with other friends, but not me. I still don't know why, but I don't have his information to talk to him. I've never interacted with him as a man, so he remains a girl to me. It's hard to rewrite memory. I'm still sorry the relationship didn't continue.

My relationship with the trans movement is complicated. My objection to the movement is its part in a larger message that we should define ourselves and our relationships by our sex, (not meaning by being male or female, but by sexy sex). The changes a trans person makes are to sexual organs (asides from breasts, which is a topic for another time). We talk about relationships and persons as if we are all about sex. In media and self-help and pretty much every thing I read and see, suggestions abound about sex lives.

It seems that if a partner isn't into the other partner's kink, that's it for the relationship. If things are "boring in the bedroom," that's the relationship over and done. You have to make sure that the sex is good. Kisses need to be fireworks or you've never been kissed. I could name genres of movies, books, TV shows, and countless other means that the message has been transmitted that love is sex and sex is love. I vehemently disagree. I am not defined by the kind of sex I am or am not having!

Looking specifically at the trans movement, the literature seems to equate their identity with their sexed body. I personally don't see how changing their appearance, their breasts, and/or sexual organs changes anything fundamentally about themselves. I don't always conform to my gender and I certainly didn't growing up. It took many years for me to accept my body as part of who I was. My identity is always in flux as I continue to change, so I don't understand arguments that say that matching the body to one's identity is necessary.

Objections stated, I believe in the right to choose. I believe that if someone wants to change themselves, they have the right to do so despite any objections. I also believe that we do not have a right to be cruel to other people when they disagree or however they identify themselves. Cruelty is never warranted. I am especially disappointed at cruelty in the name of religion, which seems the greatest hypocrisy of them all.

When I woke up in tears, I realized that I do identify myself as a woman. I always thought that I'm me, and I am more than body or gender, although I inhabit my body and "woman" describes me in the way that "polygon" describes several geometric shapes. I had complained about the nuisance of having boobs, a menstrual cycle, no pockets on pants, and all that girl stuff. But now... now I realized that for all the nuisance, I didn't want it to be any other way. I don't want to be a guy. That truth still echoes somewhere in my head and it helps me understand a little bit better.

#trans #transgender #identity #nonfiction #dream #SocialCommentary