Author Information
IT
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PSYCHOLOGY I.
I've personally managed my life,
Self assured in my value as a quality "PERSON"...
Articulate, Intelligent, perhaps Profound even--
BUT NONE OF THIS...HAS REGULATED MY IDENTITY
OF....."JUST BEING"....TO GENDER.
As a child...
Exploited as a child...
I understood as a child...
That being a "woman" meant being a "SEXUAL TARGET".
From those tender years...
I have hidden in boys clothes,
I have taken delight in darts, football and bodybuilding,
I have shaved my facial hair.
BECAUSE of the sexual abuse...
BECAUSE of a defective estrogen making enzyme...
My overmasculinized body,
Did not have to deal with "typical"---
Women's cycles...Thirty years worth...
I can count...ON ONE HAND!
You see,
If being a woman, made me a target...
I DIDN'T WANT IT....
If being a man, made me an abuser...
I DIDN'T WANT THAT EITHER!
So, I've been a "PERSON",
Straddling this fence between gender...
An identity starting around age five, most likely.
Twenty-five years of hiding...
Sixteen years of shaving my face daily--
To the point it has no...
Baring as a "GENDER IDENTIFYING FUNCTION", for me.
Because I still called myself, "PERSON"...
"HUMAN".
Not male, Not female..."just me".
II.
I have loved women...
In that I have not only wanted to love,
But be loved.
I have made loving as a means of "Healing"...
Not realizing until this very moment...
I have craved this "Healing Heart of Love".
My position is in...
Knowing that...I AM A LESBIAN.
That it has been too easy...TO DON MALE ATTIRE...
And I am 100% comfortable...IN BOTH POSITIONS--
Until society called me "SIR".
Or lovers wanted me "MORE MALE"...
The kind of sex-reassignment-surgury kind of "MALE".
A chaotic dismantlement of my mind...so plagued...
My physician had to run tests.
Was I supposed to be born female?
Could God make such a mistake?
Why couldn't I stay a non-functioning "FEMALE"?
Why couldn't I reside in my male identified "PERSONAE"?
Why do people demand that I---
Have to have "the right equipment for the occasion"?
Just because I enjoy my "maleness".
Why must I try to be dainty, and proper?
Just because I was born in a female body?
WHY DO PEOPLE SORT THINGS OUT INTO BLACK & WHITE?
III.
I sat for hours...alone...on THAT DAY.
Mortified...because this world I made for myself...
Did not prepare me for THIS.
I, realizing for the first time,
That no matter how I found saftey in
Straddling the gender issue...
"IT" walked into my life, happy as a lark...
And slammed into my reality,
Like the planes that rammed into the TWIN TOWERS.
My mantle, once afixed in confidence of my own being...
That I had made...
That I had worked and finally reached a plateau...
"SAT IN RUINS..."
I could no longer look into the mirror and see
Who I was,
What I made myself to be,
What I overcame just to be comfortable in my own skin.
THAT HEINOUS DAY...
When I saw "IT"...
Placed my fingers upon "IT"...
Percieved "IT" to be thumbing it's nose up at me...
While looking into the mirror...I was engulfed with rage.
THAT THING!
Pulled me from that comfort zone...
From off my fence...
And victimized me again.
"IT", was a lump in my breast...
A typical "woman's" issue.
But my mother didn't ever have "IT".
Her mother before her never had "IT".
My father's mother didn't ever have "IT".
No aunt on either side ever tested positive for "IT".
And in my family, no male ever had "IT".
Why did I have to have "IT".
Why now, when I just got comfortable...
Living in my nitch...
Living for those who believed in me--
And not for those that didn't.
Living in peace,
EVEN KNOWING I WOULD NEVER FIT IN...
Perfect alignment in straight society--
This female-identified-male thing was perverse...
"God made you a woman! Now be that way..."
Nor perfect alignment in the Queer Nation--
Lesbians loved "Women".
They desired the typical "soft" woman...
Easy on the eyes, slim...
NOT THE KIND THAT HAD A LOVER WHOSE MERE PRESENCE
EXPOSED HER OWN IDENTITY.
Why...
Why after my struggles gave way to a life of FREEDOM?
Why after I found a way to "LOVE" myself to break free of
Society's virtual shackles.
Why after I even found a bit of joy, in my "DIFFERENTNESS".
Why did it come after me?
IV.
It matters not,
If this "lump" is or isn't cancerous.
I will deal with it...
No matter how unpleasant...
Invading my life taking my mind places..
"I do not want to go!"
Yet, I will survive,
And learn to "LIVE" again.
The point is...."THE ISSUE IS HERE."
Sexuality may be fluid...
Identity may not be cast in stone...
But birth gender,no matter if it's altered..no one escapes.
No matter how one can straddle the fence.
