Month: March 2019

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Take a Leap of Faith

Posted on by Kayleigh Doores

What am I doing? Can I really do this? Should I?

Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre – Honor Among Thieves

I have been reading a lot of magical fantasy books lately, as noted by every book I’ve written about thus far. So this week, I’m writing about a different kind of book. One with no magic in it at all. However! What it does have, is space whales!!! Literal space whales! Yes, it’s every bit as awesome as it sounds!

I read Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre, a book about young Zara Cole, who grew up a child who hated rules, and ended up staying in the slums of New Detroit, rather than go with her family to Mars. To a “better” life. She’s gritty, she’s fierce, she has amazing street smarts, and she’s a criminal. Until one day fate decides to snatch her up and take her on a journey through the stars on a living alien ship, named Nadim (he’s the space whale).

This book is fantastic! It’s fun from the get go, and there’s enough mystery to keep it interesting throughout. The unique worlds that have been crafted, are so much fun to learn about. The journey to find out why a criminal from the slums was chosen for a coveted seat to the stars is such a fun ride I couldn’t put it down.

At one point, Zara questions what she is doing, and if the right thing to do, is go on this journey. There’s very real dangers on Earth should she stay, but she doesn’t feel equipped to go to the stars either. Things are confusing for her, and nothing really seems to make sense and she can’t get any real answers from anyone. “You were chosen for a reason” is a common phrase in her life. This parallels what a lot of trans people go through. The common trope that someone who is trans should know from the time their a kid is all too commonly not accurate.

Looking back at my own life, there were absolutely signs when I was young, but I had no idea what they meant, or how to express them, in a world where you’re taught “you’re a boy, this is what boys do”. So many trans people go through long, extended periods of denial, repression, and questioning, before they can admit to themselves they are trans, let alone others. Which is why the quote I chose this week is so accurate. I wondered the same things for months as my transition started. It never stops either. I was questioning if I was doing the right thing when I came out to myself, when I went to the doctor to get a prescription for hormones, even when I had been on hormones for 3 months and I realized my breasts were big enough to be real! It’s always scary, and you always wonder if you can continue.

But that doesn’t stop me, because like Zara, who kept getting the answer “You were chosen for a reason”, I have to remember that I’m transitioning for a reason. I was unhappy with my life, even with all the good, there was a lingering feeling of emptiness, constant depression and sleepless nights. I hated “being a man”, and I was so upset that I lost the coin toss of what gender I was. Just like Zara took a leap to avoid the dangers on Earth, I took a leap to try and fix my own problems, and life has rewarded me greatly with my courage. I get to finally live a happy life, one that I enjoy, one where I’m ok being myself, and almost all of my mental health issues have practically vanished.

When you’re presented with an opportunity to take a leap of faith to make life better, even if you don’t feel equipped to handle it, you should take it anyways. You never know how strong you are until you overcome your burdens and prove to yourself what you can do.

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Always remember who you are

Posted on by Kayleigh Doores

The more masks you wear, the harder it is to remember who you really are beneath them all.

Katherine Locke – The Spy with the Red Balloon

I love this quote so much. It comes from the book The Spy with the Red Balloon by Kathrine Locke. It is the incredible sequel to The Girl with the Red Balloon, that I wrote about a few weeks ago. It is about two siblings who get recruited to the manhattan project, due to their magical blood. There’s magic, and espionage, and queer relationships!!! What’s not to love about all of that! It takes everything that was great about the first book, and makes it better. I absolutely loved it from start to finish. Absolutely go check it out and give it a read. It stands on its own because it’s not a direct sequel, but is definitely boosted by having already read the first book.

I really love the quote I pulled for this week. I think it’s something everyone can relate to on some level. Everyone ends up putting on a mask at some point. Some people put on a mask to hide their fear. If they show to the world they aren’t afraid, people will look up to them. Others put on a mask to hide from the world. As a trans woman, I put on a mask of masculinity for years and years, just to survive. I was afraid growing up to accept who I really am. I thought “men do this”, “men look like this”, “men talk like this”. So I put on the masks, and pretended to be a man.

Growing up in the 90s, and being in high school and college in the 2000s, being trans wasn’t something you heard about, at least in the midwest. Because of this, my mask of masculinity helped me make it through childhood, my teens, and young adulthood. I was able to pretend to be someone else, and people liked me because I was “normal”. But it was so limiting too. I lost sight of who I was. I played video games to escape reality. I was extremely introverted so I wouldn’t have to show the world I didn’t know who I was. I felt like I had nothing to offer the world.

The problem was the masks. I had lost myself behind them, and the only way out was to rip them off and let the world see who I was. So I came out as trans and began my journey to where I am today. In that time, I’ve learned that I have things to offer the world. I’m more than just that kid that played video games and didn’t socialize much. I’m a strong woman, I love to crochet, and I’m writing about my experiences to show other trans people that there is hope, it’s not all darkness. These are all things I wouldn’t have known, had I hid behind the masks for the rest of my life.

Not all masks are bad all the time. Someone who is introverted has to put on a mask of confidence when in a social setting, but that helps them connect with others! It helps them come out of their shell! Other times, a mask of fear is ok. If you need to spend a night hidden under the covers crying because school or work feels overwhelming, that’s ok! But remember to take the mask off at some point, so you don’t get buried in the negativity that it can bring. Don’t ever forget who you are, because you are amazing, and the world deserves to know that!

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Like seeing color for the first time

Posted on by Kayleigh Doores

In fact I feel, well, alive. Like I’ve been living my whole life blind and now I’ve opened my eyes.

Victoria Aveyard – Red Queen

It’s a common thing to hear from people who get their first pair of glasses, that they finally understand what it feels like to see with good vision. Their eyes have been opened to the world that exists around them in a clarity they never thought possible. My brother in law said “oh my gosh you can read the words!” when referencing a video game he had been playing. It makes you wonder how people can go so long and have no idea they needed something so vital and important.

This week I read the AMAZING book Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard. It is such a wonderfully crafted story about a young girl named Mare Barrow, who finds herself among a world of silver blooded elite, as she pretends to be a silver herself, while also trying to keep everyone around her from discovering that she has “lower” red blood. This story really gripped me from the moment I started reading it and never let go. I stayed up two nights in a row until about 1 am reading, just so I could finish it. If you have the opportunity to read this book, I highly recommend it!

The quote at the top comes from Red Queen, and I bring it up, because that’s the way I described my first time out in the world in women’s clothes. I was 29, it was July, and I had just come out to my parents. I was on my way to a therapist appointment to discuss my gender issues, and she encouraged me to go out and get an outfit and wear it in. She said it would help me start to feel at home in my body. Up until that point, I had spent almost 20 years dressing up in secret. 20 years hiding from the world, borrowing clothes from the women in my life without them knowing. I have since apologized to those women, but at the time, I needed an outlet for my repressed inner woman and didn’t have a better way.

The night prior to walking into the world, I went to target to go shopping. A nice saleswoman helped me pick out a dress that was way too big for me, under the guise that I was shopping for my wife. I was too scared to tell her the dress was for me. But even with the setback, I still had made progress. I had a new dress to wear. The next day, I went, to my appointment in a dress, the first time ever having stepped outside my bedroom in women’s clothes. I had a full beard, and looked mighty hilarious, but it was an important first step. People saw me like that, I interacted with 3 or 4 people at the therapists office. This was no longer something that was just myself. This was my future, who I was destined to become. When I got home, I was asked how things went, and my only response was, “It’s like seeing color for the very first time.” It was a relatively mundane drive across town, and yet, it was so important to my self esteem and who I was, that I cherish that memory.

So back to my very first question, how can someone go so long, without knowing something is wrong. I don’t have an answer, I’m not sure anyone does. But when you are transgender, something a large chunk of the world doesn’t “agree” with, it becomes hard to accept that about yourself. Who can you safely talk to when you start to feel different? Will your parents understand their 12 year old “boy”, when they goes to bed wishing they could be a woman? Will your friends shun you at the pivotal time where how you’re perceived at school is everything? Or is it easier to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, and repress for 20 years, even if it hurts to do so? It’s so easy to fall into a routine of unhappiness that it becomes normalized. It’s your daily life, you hardly notice it. It’s background noise.

But, when you finally gain the courage to come out, to accept yourself, to begin making changes in your life to get better, you become so very aware of everything that was wrong before. Immediately, I could remember things about my life I never remembered happening. Feelings of dysphoria that I didn’t understand at the time. I also saw an exit. A way to get better. To be happy. It was like seeing color for the first time.

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I am because I say I am

Posted on by Kayleigh Doores

How much “what it means to be a woman” is bound up with strength and not feeling fear or pain.

Naomi Alderman – The Power

Last week I read a very interesting book by Naomi Alderman, called The Power. This book came recommended to me by one of my friends I’ve known for years. It’s a book where women evolve almost overnight to be able to produce electricity and inflict pain against others. What happens afterwards is a quickly escalating conflict where women have all the power over men.

This book has done an incredible job of turning the power dynamics of gender and sex on its head! What starts with simple things like segregating men in school for their protection, leads to a much larger issue where women take over completely. I must warn you, this book gets VERY dark in spots. So know going in, this isn’t a children’s book.

What is brought to my attention most in this book, is this quote, about “what it means to be a woman”. This is a question asked of trans women on a constant basis when they come out. “Well how do you know you’re a woman?”, “What does being a woman mean to you?” It’s also an extremely hard, if not impossible, question to answer. The reason being, it’s different for every woman.

So many women tie their feelings about what it means to these grand ideas, like motherhood, or being a caretaker for her family. Some women want to shirk their femininity and others still want to prove to the world that women can do “male” things like fix a car or be physically strong. All of these are valid things that a woman might say to themselves, what being a woman is all about.

However, no one asks the assigned female at birth women if they really are a woman just because they are pursuing something male dominated. Or want them to prove that they are actually a woman to someone else. Yet trans people are subjected to this kind of scrutiny all the time. Like somehow our words are less real, less true, than someone who was correctly assigned at birth.

It’s an almost universal struggle for trans people, to prove to society that we are what we say we are. Often, it leads to us being very stereotypically masculine or feminine. Of course then cis people say “you’re just putting on a show, playing the part. You are actually just playing dress up!” For some people, that’s actually true. Butch lesbians exist, queen gay men exist. That holds true for trans people as well.

But if we go down that path, then we get “well you aren’t a woman, look! You’re masculine! Why don’t you just stay a man?” It’s like they’ve forgotten entirely that people can have gender nonconformity! So we get stuck in this no win situation, where if we’re too stereotypical, we get called out, and when we try to break the norms, we also get called out. It’s like us trans people have to walk a non-existent line of what it means to be our gender. That we have to conform to 7 billion unique views of that gender based on who we are talking to at the time.

This kind of thinking doesn’t help anyone. It only serves to be combative and minimize our existence and erase us. People are varied, they always have been. There will always be someone who defies expectations of what your notion of gender is. It shouldn’t be on trans people to hold all the responsibility of falling into your box. It should be you, who makes a bigger box to fit everyone in it.