cactusrabbit:

My kingdom for a film/show/book where the main character wants to live up to his/her mother’s legend and not their dad’s.

Love,

Tired-Of-Daddy-Issues

Fable (the video game), in the 1st one you’re living up to the fact that your mom is a badass and your sister is a badass who can see the future.

At what point do I lose the right to call myself a “Regent’s Scholar”? I’m on dropout number… 4(?) and I didn’t even finish a full semester at UNM.

The thing I remember most is the pit of terror and panic I felt when our Gender Studies professor introduced our class to Kate Bornstein’s “My Gender Workbook”. I read it and something inside me clicked and I panicked. 

It didn’t help that I was away from home for the first time, drinking regularly and smoking the marijuanas and getting my heart absolutely smashed-into-bits broken for the first time. I could have easily gotten myself kicked out without any help from my genderpanic but it certainly didn’t make it any easier. 

I like to think I did make an effort to find a safe space on campus; a group or activity within which I could belong.  I joined up with the Queer Straight Alliance but I’ve never done well with LGB(T) groups primarily because I’m not really LGB. I feel like more of an outsider than ever.

I had a therapist who didn’t know what to do with me because what do you do with someone who is refusing to emotionally mature beyond 15?

I’m Transgender. I always have been. It took knowing that and admitting it and talking about it and acting on it to really start to let go of the fact that ages 10 to 23 were a special kind of hell for me. I was only 13 the first time I seriously considered and had a plan to carry out suicide. I rarely shook those feelings for more than a few days at a time. I had good months or semesters but there was always something in the back of my head that said “I wouldn’t mind it if I died today” and on the worst days it was a feeling that it couldn’t end soon enough so I should just save everyone the time and do it myself.

I went through 4 or 5 therapists in that time and none of them really knew how depressed I was because I didn’t know how depressed I was. I didn’t know that happy was an option. There were glimpses of pride or satisfaction but never a sense that I was okay in my own skin, that I was happy to be who I was; on the contrary, I was annoyed or devastated to be who I was. I literally couldn’t stand to look at myself in a mirror for years. I would be surprised when I caught my reflection to remember that’s what I look like. I didn’t know what it was like to be happy with any part of my own body until I was 21 and my sister convinced me to cut all my hair off and get a fauxhawk. 

At UNM I enjoyed an anonymity I was longing for. I didn’t have to think about who I was or what I looked until I read that chapter in “My Gender Workbook” and then I did everything I could to think about anything else.

I used to spend a lot of time wondering if I could have made it through that semester. I probably could have. A lot of things would have been different. Or maybe they wouldn’t have. It’s hard to know. 

I’m in a stable place now. I have bad days and good days but I can finally look at my own reflection and smile. I have a name that belongs to me and fits me better than any other I’ve been given. And I’m finally not-okay with the thought of dying at any moment or helping it along. I have things I want to do and accomplish and I’m not done yet. I haven’t even started.

Division of Vocational Rehabilitation has me looking at going back to school again come Jan 2013. The obvious answer is NMSU but part of me still wonders about UNM. I’ve never identified with NMSU. It’s just been a means to an end. UNM was never that for me; I always felt like I really was part of that campus and that school… for those 3 months I was there. 

Maybe I should give it another try. Or maybe I missed that boat and that part of my life is over. I’ve never been good at giving up hope on something even when it’s been over for a long time.

lackadaisycats:

More responses to things from the Ask…thing.  In case there aren’t enough words here already, there are more of them after the break.

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I weep with laughter every time I see the Mrs. Bapka potato. It all feels very much like something that would be invented while enjoying some pancakes in the middle of the night.

fuckyeahftms:

Hi, my names Hayden, 21 and currently living in New Mexico via The United States Air Force ( Arent they just nice) Im just looking to see if there is anyone else around me in this state. I live close to the border of Texas.

Hey, I pre-everything but I live in the LC area. 

I’ve begun thinking about going back to school and finishing my degree. I’ve been in and out of school since 2006 but spent most of that time in spells of horrible depression and near-or-attempted suicide. It’s been 6 months since I came out with my intention to transition and begun to live as male and I’ve been more emotionally stable than I have since I hit puberty at the ripe age of 9. 

I’m scared to go back to school but part of me still has things I want to learn and concepts I want to be able to explore. I want to learn GIS and study patterns of poverty and job growth and learn about the allocation of water rights and ask how can you commodify something that is absolutely necessary for human life? 

I also want to start over. I want to get it right this time. Or at least get it less-wrong. 

Maybe I should go back to UNM.