I've been posting for awhile, and am just now putting up an introduction, so.... here goes:
Maybe the best way to properly introduce myself is with the story up to now. I knew I wanted to be a girl starting around age 4. Those were some of my earliest memories, identifying with other women I saw in daily life or characters in TV shows or movies. Much of my life was really sad and painful. I asked for help with this as a child a few times, but the family therapist said it was a "phase," which I guess my parents really preferred to believe. I started having puberty around age 9, and while I didn't know much about all this, I really hoped being earlier than others would be a medical reason to require a sex change or hormones. Of course, I prayed every day for god to change me into a girl. Once I stepped on a nail and contracted tetanus. As my jaw started swelling, it made my lips bigger and I thought God was finally answering my prayers! Basically, I had a severe case of "this boy is actually a girl." It's the kind of thing that I now know doesn't go away.
My family was really strongly Christian, mom was the church pianist, dad was studying to be a Baptist pastor. So, I got it in my head that I needed to repent or get over it or submit to God somehow and just be a man. Even when I was really young, my family would make a big deal out of gender deviance as well as differing from their own narrative. I guess I don't need to unpack that in too much narrative detail. You can probably imagine when I say that a lot of DRAMA ensued as a child from even things as simple as wanting slightly girly shoes or care-bears dolls. Much of that, I didn't even feel had to do with wanting to be a girl, I just liked stuffed animals. Because I didn't want to deal with obvious parental and familial discomfort and pressure, I spent my life repressing all this to 'go along to get along.'
But inside, it never took. Ministers and pastors always found a way to dismiss it when I brought up wanting to be a girl in my teenage years but I was literally in my 20s before I even comprehended that some people actually identified as and liked being men. Eventually I left the church and gradually learned Qi Kung and got involved in Buddhism and Taoism. I still felt that somehow I needed to 'transcend' this 'desire.' Basically, after everything, I spent most of my life feeling convinced it was a sin, or my own fault, and I just needed to get past it somehow in my own psyche. However, no matter how much "victory" I ever had over this block, sin, or issue I had in my own mind, when I was alone, usually in a kind of peak experience, then as a casual fact it always seemed obvious deep inside me that I happened to be a woman.
When I did try to work with being myself during my twenties, I ran into a lot of problems (I am very sensitive to chemicals and I haven't had a lot of luck with taking hormones so far, just doing it for a few six-month stints)... It ended up costing me most all of my romantic relationships in some way or another. I had harassment due to appearing outwardly queer, and lost one job since moving to Taiwan. So, I moved out to the countryside, a middle of nowhere village on a tropical island, where I've lived for the past 5 years, putting on an outwardly masculine and outdoorsy personality around this small town, only dressing femme when I go into a city to see my friends. I spent most of my spare time riding a bike, hiking, swimming in the rivers, and mostly alone, so it suited me fine. During those peak experiences, it wouldn't matter which gender I was, since I was on the mountaintops alone anyways. So, it was kind of a tenuous balance.
The only humans I have been around during this time are my girlfriend, a couple of coworkers at a small school, and my ESL students. Children are easy-going enough that I can be pretty openly feminine much of the time, and if I don't specifically make a big deal out of it, then it's fine. They sometimes call me, "Ms." in a making-fun of way, and when they sometimes say, "Teacher is a woman" I just smile and agree and say thanks, there's no problem with that because it's not an insult. Some of these kids I've been teaching for four or five continuous years, four days a week. I've practiced my voice a lot, and occasionally I go a few weeks with full-on femme voice, and I bounce between masculine and feminine voice a lot. Even that, after so long, it has ceased to be interesting and I'm just the English teacher. I can't wear a dress to work, and I use a man's name there, but otherwise, it's often comfortable.
Well, something started happening in 2014, which gave a shock to my 'holding pattern' which I was getting by in that outdoorsy Shangri-La. Just before and during my third pilgrimage to India, I started having some really strong mystical experiences. The only way I can do justice to this is to describe them on their own terms, thought I've wrestled with this for the year since, and I try to remain as objective about all this as possible.
But the experiences involved communication with all manner of astral entities and Gods. In a few key points, they said things that were definitely beyond what I would have known, even debating with a couple of Hindu sages and revealing things they could not see for themselves. I could talk more about what was said sometime, but I am trying to keep this short (LOL, I am, dangit!). The main detail that is important here is that those beings always referred to me as "Huntress." And finally, "Lyra Huntress." But also, in the process of spending hours and hours in deep meditation and peak experience, I began to see and feel myself more and more definitely AS THIS BEING.
And the longer time passes since then, this truth of WHO I AM seems more apparent. I have come to see that people aren't all that different. In reality, there is some quality that is the EMANATION of each person, a true soul within that person. Something they are dissonant with because there is a knowing inside that they are greater than what they haven't allowed to emerge yet.
I once met a man from Israel who had joined the French foreign legion, he had a tattoo around his neck that said, "cut here" and some perforation lines. That guy clearly always WANTED to be a warrior. He was calm, sane, and he seemed like he would probably live forever. For him, there was no conflict, there was a social place for him to express the soul he was as well as he knew how. For him, it never became an issue, so would he ever think, "I am so much more than just this body?" Probably not.
So, maybe it's a gift to be transgendered because for me the contrast between my body and soul through all these years has made me more sensitive to that truth. But as I am where I am with it, I feel it's not that different to anyone else.
In terms of personal goals. Well, I plan to try taking hormones again this summer, and I definitely would love to have facial surgery in the next couple of years. I'm going to start doing body hair removal ASAP. I got a big dose of testosterone, and am totally bald, so I'm not sure I can ever "pass." I am quite proud of the work I've done on my voice throughout the years though, and have been doing interviews for my next job with my female-sounding voice. I think just having the freedom to use that all the time will feel very good. Also, if everyone assumes I'm femme gay, that opens the door to pushing boundaries with clothing. Plus, I'm probably moving back into the city, so maybe I can separate my work life and outside work life.
But outside of work, I'm also getting more and more to a place of "I'm not sure if I care if people know what I am or not. I cannot afford to invest too much in what others perceive or fail to perceive." Anyways, I'm attractive, tall, confident, and friendly. That works for men, women, androgynous, and hard-to-define. Kind of like, if I roll in happily, competently, and confidently, I don't have to bother what pronouns people are using or whatever. But then, I'm in a society that is mostly friendly and non-violent, even if they are a bit prejudiced against queer people. What I'm saying is, I have confidence in my social ability to save the day at this point in my life.
I really REALLY want genital surgery as well, but that's a trickier topic in a lot of ways I think. If the surgery is good, then it's definitely a yes, but also I feel that all has to be considered really carefully.
Preliminary tests with my last prescription of hormones seems that I'm reacting much better to it. I have been experimenting with dividing the estrogen into many many smaller dosages, or dissolving it in water and sipping the water more slowly. Also, god my body takes to it so quickly, and I wear it well. Having done this for six months at a time, several times in my life from 22 onwards, it's shaped how I've developed more than I realized. And within a few days of taking it I was like, "Oh yeah, this is how my body is supposed to be filled out and where."
------But before I really give the hormones another go, or have any surgery on my face, I want to make sure I have a strong sense that I have solidity in my identity and I can live as who I am whether I have external confirmation of it or not. I don't know if that makes sense, but I feel intuitively that's why I even went through all this in my life in the first place. I want to get to the place of experiencing myself clearly enough that it doesn't matter how I look externally. THEN, I'll do all the rest of it as I see fit. To have that, to know I would always have that in any circumstances, would make me feel like all this difficulty and pain has been worth it.
--Lyra
PS: Long story, went a lot of strange directions, I know. But I think it captures most of where I am right now pretty well without writing an entire book.
PPS: And goodness, life is so much more than sexuality and gender. I also build synthesizers, and have been trying to shift my source of income over to my own business instead of teaching, though I still like teaching enough I think I might stay doing it part time. And then there is travel and hiking, swimming, biking, and the like. I've been to much of East Asia and all of South India. Life is big -- all this gender identity just ends up being one aspect of it, right?
