Oh, Thank God!

If I’m going to learn anything it’s by doing. My first is a handsome young man. He is beautiful and I am terrified and I tell him. We scoot close to one another and we kiss and six hours pass.

I struggle to stay in the moment. There with him, I feel my body feeling him. Feeling for him naturally. I think to myself, “Thank God I was right.” This would be a bad hunch to be wrong on.

I flash back. I see moments of what we’ll just call “bad touch” and leave it there for a moment; but also good moments. Moments of freedom. Moments of painting my nails and wearing heels. Of smoking Camels in a sequin dress. Of wanting to be a bird to fly far far away.

I want to be here; with him. This is me. This life. Those other lives of mine. Who were they? Were they in this lifetime? Was I a monk? Was I a drug dealer? Was I a drunk? Was I a girl? 

I start with makeup. I order some online,  watch a tutorial video, and nearly flawlessly do my own eyes, lips, and cheeks: eyeliner and all.

I’m awesome at this. Even my own mother agrees I nailed it. She’s not psyched at first, but she’s also enough of a Bowie fan and Veteran Mother of a Veteran to let it ride and see if it’s just me losing my fucking mind again. 

She’s still coming to grips with the fact that I haven’t lost my mind, but this is me having found it. I tell her and my dad people love their daughter specifically because of all the hard work they put into raising a fine son. It is true. Even the ones who don’t like me love me. 

I struggle to stay in any moment now. My handsome stranger aside, there are new flashes. I freak out and become too much. Too clingy. Too everything. I get it. I’d be turned off too. 

I hook up from time to time still thinking I’m just bisexual and a terrific dresser. Genderbending is so fun. I mix and match new finds and old clothes from my closet. 

I buy a wig and for the first time in a very long while shave before I do my makeup. Oh hey, Girl. There you are. 

Shit. 

I call my doctor and tell them what I’m up to and thinking. I’m a patient at the VA Hospital and they’ve got a whole setup for folks like me.

I talk to my social workers, therapists, specialists, and a whole mess of others for about a year before I bring up trying Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT.)

While I’m enjoying finding these lost parts of myself there is still anger that I can’t explain. I still have so much that I can’t explain. This far in I think it might be that. That softer voice between my ears. That until-now silent voice that can no longer stay silent. The voice in my mind that can speak most to my heart. The voice in my mind that can speak to the hearts of others.

These are not traits strictly feminine or masculine, but human. It’s not about what a woman could or should do. Not about what man could or should do. It’s about what this woman does. Everything else is options. I have made my choice.

Three years into the process I start the HRT. Three weeks into that I think to myself, “Thank God I was right about this.”

I do too. Not just-in-case like some Pascalian dumbshit. Honestly and purely. In some regards I might be an honest-to-goodness Atheist. I don’t think you can shoot a cannon in any direction and shoot a god out of the sky. The idea of the world needing to be made is the most ridiculous horseshit I have ever heard. However, in the wars, I saw God. 

I saw what they meant when they wrote about gods. I saw the primal living swarm of bad ideas and good ideas and gold and blood and bone. 

I saw that if there is a god they are in all things and therefore to distinguish them outside of all things is a dumbshit idea. There is no god out there because we are inside of God; parts of the whole. Hairs on a dragon’s ass. Teeth in the mouths of Cheshire Cats.

I’ll call that thing God. The Cat. The Dragon. The whole thing. The willless sea that still impresses its will on us; countless crashing waves of time in floods of years. 

That thoughtless thing that holds all thought. That careless thing that holds all care. The set of all things. I can call that God and not sound like too much of an asshole.

You may even already agree with me in some way. If you can imagine that an electron holds some level of divine spark; well, you might just believe in the God these dopes were meant to be talking about.

The Melindapana has an interesting bit where the Buddhist Monk asks the Greek King when a cart stops being a cart. When a table no longer has tableness. So whipping that idea around, if God is in all things—can we atheists acknowledge a definition of God as the mathematical set of all things? If only to give yourself a footing in this make-believe world.

I thank God, The Set of All Things I got to be this thing. This version of its will and mess. The goopy moment of life before it all dries out in flame and age and sunlight. 

I thank you, Dear Reader, I got to be this. Aren’t I this so you can be you over there? I have carved a path for some to follow. I have demonstrated a great list of “what not to do.” I will fade away. I am thankful that I managed to find peace in that. The peace of the maple leaf falling to the forest floor. 

Didn’t I get that blend of horrible and amazing nonsense thrown my way—didn’t I learn how to explain it—didn’t I get the passion to sit here and rub my fractured brain against this keyboard until something useful comes out—didn’t all of us back here in time go through all this shit way back here in the history section of time for you up there in the future?

Guess who your suffering is for now? Sorry, Babe, not you. It’s not fair. It’s not even kind’a fair that we store our life lessons like this. It’s not fair that so many will miss these words and repeat my steps one for one. How many will hear my words and hope I’m an idiot and then themselves die of a substance problem or suicide like my best friends, and lovers, and family?

It’s not fair that so many people miss your words right now as you spill them out for others to see and to hear and to feel.

It’s not fair. That’s why we stick together. All of us. The ones you like. The ones you hate. All of them. Life is already going to be hard enough on its own.