All you can really do once you've come to grips with it--once you realize, yes, you've scribbled and smeared your Sharpie doodles and maniacal ravings all over every wall in town, and now, thank odds, finally its over. All you can really do is just acknowledge it happened, and--if you're able to--take a long quiet and peaceful vacation away from work, relationships, social media, the stinking political mess that's emanating from our oh so sexy presidential candidates right now, along with the advocacy, the bigotry, the shootings, and all the rest of the melancholy that's mid-cloudburst in our cultural climate at the moment; If you're able to, you just slip yourself quietly away from it all.
It's been a relaxing summer with family; filled to the brim with love, a few road trips, and lots of photos. And it was time for me to think, adjust, and find closure from many unhappy situations that had been plaguing me since I moved to Tampa a few years ago.
Apart from the mixture of very depressing closeted trans stories and hate mail that I was receiving regularly in decent-sized, festering chunks, I also transfixed on the idea of making career out of my writing in one way or another--I've always wanted this--and I felt enormous, self-induced pressure to not stop the momentum I was gaining and just continually put out content. So I decided it was time to put a stop to that. I intended to free myself from all of it, as well as to finally put "JW T-girl" to rest, which was something I had talked about and threatened at for some time.
JW T-girl is gone. She's not returning either. Symbols are for Batman.
But Laura's still here.
It was fun. It was gratifying. I still get messages in my laura@jwtgirl.com inbox all the time (it's an easy domain name to remember, so that will probably be the only thing that sticks). Some hate mail, some very depressing stories, but also the good ones: my story changed this person's point of view. My advice really saved that person's life. I don't know who these people are. But those are experiences that give me strength and hope for tomorrow and those experiences can't ever be taken from those people, or from me.
It is now my four year anniversary since the beginning of my transition. And I finally feel like it is the beginning of a brighter era in my little life since then. I don't want to talk about the trans stuff anymore. I'll never deny it--in fact, despite what I've said in the past, I am very proud of it--but I think I've done enough cheerleading for the trans community to cover a few lifetimes. Not to say I'll never speak my piece when something substantial in the community happens, or joke about it from time to time, as being able to laugh at it is one of the things that has kept me going when it has been tough. But, one thing I don't think most people that followed me ever realized about me is that I deal with very deep depression quite a bit. I never once denied this, but I don't think I spoke enough about it until the very end, either, when it became severe due to various circumstances. I don't think I wanted to admit it to myself for a bit.
Transitioning did amazing things for me, and made coping with the depression so much more bearable than ever before. But I still have it. My anxiety is through the roof in certain situations--way worse than it ever used to be--and that, I tend to think, stems from the physically and emotionally abusive situations I found myself in during the thick of my transition, some of which severely scarred me.
So if there's one point I want to bring home--and I've said it before, but I say it again with some weight and finalization--it is that transitioning was not a cure-all, and anyone going into it should never view it that way. It's more like sewing your own dress for the first time--you take the measurements, you make a compromise between the prettiest and most comfortable fabric you can find, you sew it together as best as you can, but most likely you're going to be pulling out stitching and it's going to need some adjustments, and you might even have to grow into it--in fact, you're definitely going to have to grow into it in this case, and you're definitely going to make some really noticeable mistakes, but in the end you just fix what you can and figure out how best to wear the final resulting piece of clothing. We just hope it still resembles a dress by the end of it all.
However, transitioning is not the reason I opened my laptop and decided to type this. In fact, I don't really want it to ever come up as a topic again on this blog.
Yes. I intend to keep writing, and perhaps even do videos of some sort--my son really wants to make gaming YouTube videos, and mama's got the cameras and the sound equipment to make that happen, so if he can keep up at school, it might just happen--But yeah, things are going to be changing around here.
The most obvious change right now is the name of the blog. The Mouthful comes from the idea that (1) if you want to label me, you have to toss quite a few around--and the list just keeps getting longer--and (2) I have a tendency to be a little long-winded, I admit.
But seriously, I really do feel like sometimes I am the most unrelatable person in the world. The list is actually longer than the title list--you could also add introverted and demisexual and intersex and environmentalist to the list, and there are more than that even, for sure. The point is that it just really takes some effort sometimes to get to know me, because on the surface you're going to hit a lot of roadblocks to making any kind of ground level, small-talk inspired connection. Except perhaps with kids--I can talk about my kids all day--but even then, I clam up when people ask me about my pregnancy or breastfeeding or about the father or how a lesbian pregnancy differs (which that one, perhaps I should research because I just have no idea). I'm not embarrassed over these issues but I don't feel comfortable having to divulge very personal information while also shattering intrinsic life assumptions on a first or second meeting.
The one thing I can guarantee, from experience, is that once I let it out that I am trans, I am suddenly the most interesting person in the room--whether you're with extroverts who let the questions come freely or introverts that just keep looking back at you from time to time because they want so bad to ask more, but they are a bit more aware it might be inappropriate. Really, have you ever been made to feel like you're gender is the most interesting thing about you and trumps everything else that you are? All women understand this feeling to a point, but trans women feel this in double portions because they get it on the sexual front and on the intellectual front.
Though the toughest thing, really, is probably being a cult survivor. I was so involved in the superstitions and flat-out mind games of the Jehovah's Witnesses cult I was raised in that I missed out on quiet a few experiences in my life. I have felt, more than a few times, that 1930s America seems like it would have been more my speed. The pop culture references that I don't get often shock people, along with the movies I haven't seen and the people I don't know. I am catching up, but I just generally feel way behind in a lot of my life experiences.
When I went vegan earlier this year I realized suddenly I was making my self even more of an unrelatable person--but vegan ideals--not the devout church of vegan that seems to be developing in that community (which honestly reminds me of a fundamentalist religion itself with how judgemental some can be)--vegan ideals really do mean a lot to me and have come to truly encompass who I am and how I feel. So yeah, even though people seem to have a much more difficult time relating with me over a meal or going out to eat--I've always got to be the vegan doing something different--it was an inescapable decision. I also enjoy talking about it, but you often can get the vibe of Oh God! The vegan is preaching again! Make her stop!
Waaaaiiiit... So, I can't express the love of the earth and animals, but you can flaunt God in front of me?
So yeah, on first meeting, I definitely feel like there a so many things that make me so very unrelatable. But for those that take the time to listen and stick around for the deeper stuff, they end up enjoying my company and realize I'm entirely relatable, even with all my quirks. And that's kind of the premise I've decided to go with for the blog, from here on out. Really, it's often times ended up going that way in the past. A lot of what I've done my entire life is try to show others, who may see things as unrelateable, that these things can be completely understandable, even--yes--relatable, if they take a moment to open their minds and think about what's being expressed and feel the feelings that are involved.
In the end its empathy that makes us all human. Because as humans, we all have this amazing ability of being able to relate to each of the other beings intertwined with us in this mystery we call life, when we care to.
To those of you still reading: I'm no longer in the Midwest, or in Tampa, but just a few hours south of Seattle, Washington. I don't have my kids with me at the moment, but this time I chose it: I am working to settle a home here for my little family, and it's going well, despite a snag or two here and there. I feel at home here in the northwest and am very excited to be moving my children out here and making this happen finally.The past few years have been tough for me, even traumatic sometimes, but I finally feel like nearly all the important things in my life are headed where I want them to go, after all the struggling to get to a better mental place, a better emotional place, a better financial place--I am on a path to doing really well for the first time since the transition. And I knew I'd get there, despite all the setbacks. This was no accident. There was a lot of scrounging and hard work and planning and gumption--gotta have gumption in these sorts of stories--and not to say the world will be sunshine and rainbows from here on out, but it will be a life that's lived and worth the living. And that's what I want to share with yall from here on out, ya lovelies.