This seemed like the best place for this, ponderings of a me with a fever.
I was (once again) trying to explain to someone today what my experience of dysphoria is like. In the process of trying to write about it, I discovered two things that made more sense of my feelings, so I thought I'd write them down here too.
The first is this. Like most people (I imagine) I've sometimes played the "what would you do with the traditional three wishes?" game with myself. For some reason, although I was born with a number of muscles missing, I've never found myself coming down on the side of wishing for them to all be there. It's as though I just can't imagine what it would be like, and even though I've had some suffering as a consequence, I'm content with what I have. But it's different with my gender. I have a friend who was born without one forearm, and he wears a plastic forearm. I found myself thinking about his situation, and comparing it to mine (which might sound crazy, but there you go). I feel like I was born with a vital missing body part, and I can't ever get the real one I ought to have had, but I can have the closest thing I can get to it, and that will make a real difference to me. I don't know why I feel so strongly about it (when I don't about the muscles), but I do. More than anything else, for me it's about having a vagina rather than what I've got at the moment.
And that leads me to my other discovery - trying to explain what my dysphoria feels like now that I've awakened to it, I've realised there's an experience I've already had which it really closely resembles, and that's homesickness. It's like I've woken up in the wrong country, and I really miss it, long to get back to where things make more sense and I feel more normal. There's an amazing wordless "graphic novel" I recently read, called
The Arrival by Sean Tan. It's actually an extraordinary work of art, and a beautiful story about journeys, and being an immigrant, and how to arrive. That's how I feel - I've spent my life living on the wrong side of an ocean, and I want to sail one day soon back into the harbour of my proper body, to see those long-lost familiar landmarks again.
That's all, really. On a journey, not on a journey. All at once. I want to be made whole again - I'm content to be asymmetrical, but I want my pussy back!!
