Wednesday, September 19, 2012

What's life about?

Last night when I went to bed I had a moment of clarity one might say. One of those moments when everything is put into perspective and suddenly seems rather strange. I was lying down in my bed, a construction made of wood, and covered myself with sheets of fabric in a concrete box stacked upon other boxes that we call apartments. All these human made structures, these items, objects, concepts, we made for our convenience. It's supposed to make our lives easier. But when you look at them objectively they seem rather strange. We go through so much effort to obtain these object but what do they really mean to us? Why do we desire them? Are they really important or are they just a way to support our basic needs so we can pursue other goals? We claim the later but act more like it's the first. We let objects control our lives while they actually are just silly things, inventions of our own minds with no true meaning when it comes to happiness. We used to survive in the wilderness with none of these items and were perfectly happy. So instead of making our lives easier and more fulfilling they have made our lives emptier and more burdened.


Right now I am trying to make up an inventory of my life and my needs. What do I want? What is important in my life? One thing I know for sure is that right now I am not happy. This means something has to change. I need to prioritize.

Work at the gym is far from ideal, things are not what I want eventually but those things take time and until New Year's I am set so I should shelf my worries about my fitness career for now. There is nothing I can do right now, as in today, or even the next week, to speed things along. I need to be patient.

I have been able to find a bit of time to paint again lately so that feels good but it's not much. I would like to sell my paintings, even if it's just for a small amount of money. I don't like them sitting here, gathering dust and not having anyone enjoying them. That's the most important thing. I want people to enjoy them and as long as that doesn't happen they have very little value. So if anyone is interested, just make me an offer. As long as it's reasonable I'll probably accept it (check my Facebook page). Right now, having them stack up here, it's just frustrating. It feels pointless.

What happens with gallery Noodweer is up to my companion. I can't say anything about that right now. Exhale and wait.

I went to the information evening at the VUmc about the transition process there. I didn't get a lot of new information. Hardly any. Just one confirmation of a rumor and that's pretty much it. Today I talked to my predecessor about the coordination of the Trans*-initiative here in Leiden. She explained a lot about what's what and everything. It became clear to me that everything really is just small scale and there isn't that much we can do. I keep forgetting how small our group seems to be. I still find that hard to believe. I heard numbers of close to a million people in The Netherlands having some form of transgenderism. Of course this is a huge sliding scale going from simply not fitting the standard narrative of your gender to full transsexuality. But somehow there seems to be no space for the gray scale. Somehow we are expected to focus fully on the transsexuals. I guess people need to understand the extreme before they can understand what's between the extremes but still, it makes me feel like we are missing something important.

My own transition is not moving along at all. I'm still on the waiting list. Other then that everyone knows now and mostly everyone is okay with it. That's great. Now I still need to work on accepting it myself. I can accept being masculine. What's a lot harder is accepting that something as bizarre as this has happened to me, before I was born even, and has been with me my whole life. I never wanted to be a transsexual. I just want to be me. And now suddenly I have a cause to fight for. I'm a member of a very special club that you can only be a part of if you were born with some sort of brain defect. People tell me I'm brave and they are proud of me. As if what I'm doing, trying to be myself, is a major accomplishment and as if they should have some sort of opinion on it or should validate these things. I never asked for any of this. I totally understand why a lot of transmen blend in and try to pretend they are just like all the other guys. Why they run from it. It's exhausting. And I just got started. It takes over your entire life. I wonder if it will ever end. If one day being trans will be so accepted and understood that it doesn't turn your entire life into a constant struggle. Somehow I doubt it.

There are so many things I want to do in my life, so many thing I want to learn. Right now I am stuck with reading up on gender issues and sorting out my insurance and trying to get the hospital to see me before next summer. Right now I'm going to have to pay over 500 euro's just to have a few talks with some psychiatrists so they can send me to an endocrinologist so he can prescribe me my testosterone shots that don't get covered. At least, the ones you only have to take once every 3 months don't get covered. The ones you have to take every 2-3 weeks do get covered but they usually don't prescribe those. I won't even mention surgery.  I would rather save up that money to visit my sister who now lives in Sydney. It would be nice to see her more then once or maybe twice a year. But no. I have to spend all the extra money I make on medical bills.Bills I never intended to have. And compared to some other countries I am lucky. In some countries I would get lynched. At least that's one blessing I can count.

1 comment:

  1. By the way, other meds do get presribed aswell and it depends on the person what you respond best to. It's just strange that the medication that most doctors agree works best for most people doesn't get covered.

    ReplyDelete