hi everyone,
i am very happy to have found you all as i have been wondering for a very long time if i would ever find a place that i could discuss these feelings and experiences with openminded people who actually understand and/or are willing to try.... from what i have read so far, there is a lot of care here and i am grateful for that.
i have seen/felt a lot of hate and fear and anger and UNwillingness to understand difference – particularly in my professional life over the past few years and this has made it more difficult for me than i ever thought it would be to remain open to people...connected... caring BACK... and advocating for myself and others.
i am a 29 year old elementary school teacher from canada. i teach in the public school system (starting kindergarten tomorrow and can't wait!). i went into this profession with the intention of being an out, queer, visible, proud and open presence in schools with kids who don't always see (and definitely don't usually KNOW people like me)... (gender indeterminate...shaved-headed...cross-dressing...sometimes some of these things + others) i knew from experience that NOT having a visible and positive queer rolemodel anywhere in the life a queer kid can be devestating.... that having one – even from across the playground – can make a HUGE difference. i promised myself that i would never lie to kids about who i am... and i havn't... that i would always answer any resonably appropriate questions asked about my identity, etc... and i have. i expected it to be hard... i get that just from walking down the street past the 20+ sports bars on my block everyday... but my first year was beyond hard...
i've had a year and a half of MUCH better experience in differnt schools since then, but i still feel voiceless when it comes to naming what those words "beyond" hard are....
i was harrassed daily – progressively worse throughout the year – from parents and then students whose parents had told them that all gay people were pedophiles... that i in particular was a pervert too because i "thought i was a boy" or "didn't know if i was a boy or a girl"... the parents wrote letters saying that i shouldn't be left alone with children... that i shouldn't have a job. kids (who were mostly bigger than me) verbally abused me, vandalized my space and possessions on a daily basis, and took way more liberties with my personal space than they did with any other adult... shoving in hallways, etc. the administration was supportive in THEORY (meaning that they didn't take the accusations seriously) but never in practice... my many incident reports were always overlooked.... other teachers told me that this was what i could expect because of the way i "chose" to look... because i chose to be"out" and, being a first year teacher who was naive in the system and scared to death of losing the only job that had ever paid my rent on time... i kept going.
i'm glad that i did because through happy chance i now teach in a very queer/difference-friendly school with a staff that i love BUT the year took a rather huge toll on me that i didn't really start processing until i was out of that situation. while i was IN it, i started having panic attacks (internal mostly...stuff i could hide from anyone around for the most part) and eventually, started reverting back to some coping mechanisms that i perfected when i was 7 or 8 ... when i started telling people that i wished i was a boyand then promptly stopped given the responses of my family. i starved myself fairly effectively from age 8 to 22 so that my body would stay as unfeminine as possible from the outside... i bruised and cut myself when this didn't work and also when i needed to keep denying to myself WHY i was doing it. i went up and down in weight over the next 6 years or so as i tried to stay healthy and also to deal with the feminine body that i apparently have when i eat reasonable amounts.... i was doing pretty well with that until the situation with my first year of teaching and started starving myself again to try and deal with all the feelings about my body and identity that i hadn't fully dealt with that all this harrassment was bringing up.
this has remained a struggle over the past couple of years as i AM in a safer workspace and have been doing a lot of work personally to work through all of that instead of under/around/beside it as is usually my want.... i have a committment to the kids who i want to be there for to take care of myself and that makes it worth it.....
fast-forward to now:
i was born female and have been identifying outwardly as lesbian for 8-10 years now. a recent break-up with my partner has helped call these labels (which i don't like at all to begin with) into further question for me... i say "helped" because despite the very painful broken-heart-style bits, i am committed to being who i am and to better figuring out who/what that is.
i have realized through my partner's lack of support of my gender-binary questioning that i DON'T love people just because they are female or because of what secondary sexual characteristics they do/do not have.... that will call into question some peoples' definition of "lesbian" and i am very fine with that.... (she was not)
i have always felt like my breasts do not belong on my body... they, among all things visibly "female" about my body have never felt real or natural or "mine" to me. i have tried to starve them off for YEARS, but, having decided that i want to remain here in this life, that is no longer working for me. i want to have my breasts removed... do not identify as female OR male... have many concerns about the gender and the sexuality binaries in general... and am really ->-bleeped-<-ing confused about where to turn and what to do next.
i have had trouble finding anyone to talk to who doesn't see my lack of willingness to choose "sides" as fence-sitting and further evidence of what is "wrong" with me.... hence the recent break-up
i have never been more certain of anything than my lack of want for my breasts, but AM having trouble deciding whether it will be more painful to keep living with them, or to work towards having them removed and then to deal with everyone else's ->-bleeped-<- around that
(including in the context of teaching kindergarten).
i keep thinking about a little kid in the grade 1 class i had for library last year though:
so, she's coming out of the girl's washroom...
for about the 100th time that year, a teacher stops her and says "hey!.... what are you doing in there"... because they think that she is a boy.
she says nothing... what else can she say this time?... just as i'm stepping out of the library because i heard a bit of what was going on.
i say to her (LOUDLY... so the teacher can hear) ...
"sheesh... that's really annoying when that happens, isn't it?"... (she nods)
it happens to me all the time and it really makes me feel bad sometimes even though it isn't my fault... people should really think before they speak, eh?"
and she beams me a humungous smile....
so yeah... i try to keep thinking about that.
i am here because that little kid reminds me everyday how great it feels to be not alone.
i am looking forward to getting to know you all.
thanks for reading,
hez
p.s (hez was my nickname when i was a kid because my name is heather and my best friend's brother couldn't pronounce "th" without the Z.... i like hez better anyhow).
