Hanging Out With the Nieceling

So yesterday I hung out with my new "nieceling".  That is my adopted big sister's daughter.

My family is awesome.

So anyway, yesterday I totally hung out with "The Nieceling". We played Monopoly City, where she almost beat me, but I ended up winning in the end (Yay for Vic!).  Say what you will.  She's 12 and she beat me in UNO the night before...twice.

So after we played Monopoly City we watched Nanny McPhee returns and cooked together.

It was super fun.

I gave her a recipe for steak and then supervised her as she cooked them.  Then she made salad to go with it.

The steak was so good that her mom and I couldn't stop gushing over how good it was.

It totally made her day.

By the time we all went to bed, or at least headed off in that direction, she was beaming and felt so proud of herself and we both were very proud of her.

And before she went to bed she looks at me and said, "Thank you Uncle Vic."

I almost cried.

So this morning we're having waffles and hanging out again and all I can keep thinking is how thankful I am for my new family.  Because to them I am "Little Brother Vic" or "Big Brother Vic" or "Son Vic" or (most touching of all) "Uncle Vic" and that makes MY day.

Seeing Vic

Every morning I meditate.

I wake up, wipe my face, and if I've had a really good dream, I wipe the drool from my chin, and then I sit up.  I usually take a few breaths and try to place myself.

Where am I?  Who is with me?

After I've placed myself I get up and open the blinds so that I can meditate.

Meditating is something that my therapists and doctors suggested that I do in order to center and ground myself, to calm my mind and to prepare myself for the day.  Usually I play some music.  Enya or something.  The past two days I haven't played any music and this morning I am so happy that I didn't.  It would have ruined the amazing thing that happened.

When I meditate I'm pushing out all of the bad thoughts, the echoes of my "biological connections" that are telling me that I'm ugly or that I'm an abomination, that "the devil" is going to "tear me apart," and any other bad words or things that happened to me.  When I meditate I'm thinking about all the good things about me, I think about the positive things that have been said to me, I think about the people who love me and support me.

Towards the end of my meditation my therapist, Dr. Z, told me to picture myself.  He said as I grow more comfortable with myself, as I accept myself more then my image will become clearer and less hazy and disjointed and warped.

Yesterday, I was a hazy mixture of Veronica and Vicktor.  I felt like the Phantom or Two-Face from the Batman comics.  And while yesterday was a good day, I still felt...off.

Today, however, as I finished my meditation I saw my hair as it is now, cut to just below my chin, dyed black, I saw my eyebrows a little bushier, but still sculpted (b/c I'm not a fucking animal people-LOL), I saw my eyes, behind my stylish glasses.  I saw my nose, then I saw my lips, surrounded by a very nicely sculpted black goatee.  I saw my masculine chin, I saw my chest, muscled, my arms muscled, I saw my firm pecs, I saw my abs and as I pulled away from the image of myself, I saw me.  I saw Vic.  In all of my masculine glory, in my meditation pose.

I saw a man, clear and smiling.

I felt at peace, I felt support and love surrounding me.  And it made me want to cry.  And it made me feel amazing and I thought of all of you who are always supporting me and encouraging me.  And I wanted to let you know that this morning?  I saw Vic.  I embraced him and realized that that is who I am.  I exalted in that image of me.  I now know what I should have looked like had biology and gender synced up properly.  I celebrated myself.  And I shared it with my adopted big sister who so graciously took me in and she cheered with me.

Today is a mahvelous day, because today I saw myself and myself is gorgeous.

Something You'd Never Know Part Two

So yesterday I spent a while on a thread on GR speaking about coming to terms with being transgender.  Now I know that the people questioning me were not attacking me, but I didn't realize this at first, it took me venting and shaking and crying to a friend of mine before I realized that these people were probably just trying to understand me.

See unless you email me you'd never know how I agonized over coming out.  You'd never know the conversations I had with Sidney and Thorny and K Ray and Luci and Kate.  You wouldn't have read the emails where I tried to rationalize how I felt, tried to explain it away, tried to ignore it, laugh it off, the way I had a panic attack when I realized the truth about who I really am.

It's not something I shared here on my blog.

And maybe that was wrong.  I mean I have always prided myself on being open with you all, but I don't share everything, some things are just for me.  Just as you're entitled to your privacy, I am entitled to mine.  So I didn't share that.

I didn't share that I tried to commit suicide about two months ago.  That I picked up a knife and tried to slice my wrists because I was so freaked out about everything, that it took my friend Keesha and an email from Thorny to save my life.

It's not something I wanted to share.

I also didn't share that when I was growing up I never wanted to wear skirts or dresses.  I hated the stupid purses my mother used to always buy me and that every Easter when my mother and aunt would go out and buy our Easter clothes I always pitched a fit because I wanted to wear a suit and not a "stupid dress with lace and flowers."  I didn't mention that when I was 10 and I had that tantrum that my mother pulled out this thin leather belt and whipped me in the dressing room and then told me that if I cried too loudly she was going to get my father to deal with me when we got home.  That was the last time I tried to fight about wearing a suit.

It's not something I wanted to share.

I didn't tell you all about the day that I realized that I didn't actually love my tits and being a woman, but I loved my family and I knew that if I didn't have those things, if I didn't live as a woman, wearing heels, wearing makeup, wearing flattering outfits that I wouldn't have my family anymore.  And it may be wrong, but I loved my family enough to be the woman who merely wanted a dick and prostate that could be hidden from plain sight in order to keep my family.

It's not something I thought I had to share.

Many of you read the post when I talked about my mother finding the pamphlets and brochures about reassignment surgery.  Many of you read the post where I talked about the exorcism I endured.  You all saw the way I stopped talking about my desire to be both and my need to be what I'd been fighting my whole life, being a man.

It's not something I thought I had to share.

There are times when I still think of myself as "bi-gender" or what others are calling gender queer, is it because that's a more accurate description of who I am?  No.  It's because at this point I'm still filled with glass sticking out from skin, still so emotionally fragile and hurt and sensitive that I am still fighting my need to dress up in women's clothes (what to me would be considered "drag") and go to my parents's house and beg them to let me come back, to turn my back on everything and just continue living as I have been.  Hiding my books, ignoring my need, my desires, my dreams, my wants, my truth, in order to have my family, in order to not be homeless in order to know who I am, even if who I am is a lie.  This whole feeling like a man but seeing a woman is horrific for me.  I avoid the mirrors.  I don't brush my hair or my teeth in front of the mirror, because I don't like seeing a woman looking back at me.  That's not something I've ever told you.

It's not something I wanted to share.

But reading the comments and the questions on this thread I had to ask myself if I was remiss in not doing so. Can I let you in 75% and then hide 25% from you?  But is it fair to offer up all of me to people who are offering me nothing?  Not necessarily you all, but people on the thread.

My life is, for the most part, an open book.  I don't mind answering questions for those who are trying to get a general understanding of my life and the process I am undertaking, the transition I am going through.  I want people to understand, but at the same time I want them to understand that on here, in this blog on GR, on twitter and tumblr, I'm not going to give you 100% of me.  It's not fair to ask that of me and especially if you're not going to give me the same thing in return.  Realize that of the millions of thoughts that run through my head, the emotions I've dealt with, the memories I have, the interactions I've experienced, the childhood I grew up with, I may only share with you 2 of them and that's fine.  Don't ask me for something that you're not going to give and don't instantly go on the defensive if I feel as if you're attacking me because of you asking me something that most people already know.

There are different facets to me.  There are parts of me that I'm realizing are just reflections of my parents, my family.  There are echoes in my brain and my heart that aren't my voice, but their voices of condemnation and judgement.  There are things that I will share and things that you will never, ever know.  If there's ever a time when you want to ask me a question, however: "Vic you said this five months ago and now you're saying this, what gives?"  Realize that I'll answer, but also understand that I'm like Julia Roberts in "The Runaway Bride" after she met Richard Gere, except Richard Gere was my true self and in order to be "with" my true self I have to figure out how I really think about some things, what I really like and what I really don't, who I really am and how I really feel about that.  I'm growing and learning and living my truth and even though I've pretty much invited you all to go on this journey with me by having this blog, there are still some things that you will never know.

You can accept it or hit the unfollow button, it's that simple.  Not saying that I won't miss seeing your comments, but at this stage in my life I've had about all I can handle of people only supporting me if I fit into their idea of how I should live, of people who say: this is who you are and you can never change, or people who say: everyone who says they are like you have felt like this, you don't so you're not one of them.  Realize that b/c I didn't share it doesn't mean that I didn't feel it or think it.  It's just something that I didn't share with you.

And that's perfectly fine.

{HUGZ AND SQUEEZES AND FIST BUMPS}
-Vic