Sunday, March 30, 2008

Jenny Boylan asked;

"What Would You Tell Your Younger Self, If You Could?"

I liked my answer so much, I decided to share it here;

Oddly enough over the years I've given this question so much more thought than
most people. Then again, I've had to, and everytime come to the same conclusion.
Not a blessed thing. I've studied way too much about way too many things.
Metaphysics being numbered amoung them.

Back when I was eight, and the pain was so bad I wanted to die, this woman showed up and held me all night and let me cry. She didn't say a word, but the intensce love, peace, and air of life she had snapped me out of my funk when I looked in her eyes and saw pain and knowing there. To my eight year old self, she seemed amazingly old, and amazingly beautiful. She looked a bit like my Mom, but wasn't here.

I took with me then some of her strength, which she gave to me freely. I fell
asleep there and a woke the next day with a renewed interest in living, and
strength I'd not had the night before. She touched me, my heart, soul and spirit
with a gift of love, life, strength and tenderness, and I often think back to
that day.

Four years ago, shortly after I had lost the last of reasons and started transition a few months before in 2003, I was lying there in my room crying and in pain once again. This woman showed up again, but I knew her eyes this time, she was older and yet the same, and she seemed even stronger, and happier than last I'd seen her thirty eight years before. Again she touched my life with tenderness and strength, love and more without saying a word.

But I knew. Who, how, why she was and was there. She's the woman I see now everyday in the mirror. Nothing major in terms of words where exchanged when
she sowed up four years ago... I simply looked into her eyes, my own eyes and
thanked her for my life, our life. She said "What? No questions now that you
know?" and in stereo I replied "Temporal paradox" and we both laughed.

Some might consider this some kind of twisted narsisstic fantasy, but I know the truth.

What have I said? Not a word.

What is, was, and ever shall be, world without end...
I'd love to say I made this all up on the spur of the moment, but I can't. So instead I'll say thank you for letting me share...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Every girl can use some hobbies...

One of my favorites is Geocaching!


Profile for Colonel Carter


Signing up for a free account is easy, and while a GPS unit makes the sport SO MUCH easier, it is not a MUST have toy. When I first started, I used USGS Survey maps to go caching. I was hooked! So I found an inexpensive but decent GPS and have been having great fun!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Abuse, patterns and growth.

As should be obvious from previous entries, I have something greater than garden variety knowledge when it comes to domestic violence. Having spent the better part of my life as a victim of domestic violence, it's painfully easy for me to see these patterns in the people and world around me, and how it impacts growth. Quite often, there is no growth, or worse, only sickness and eventual death. It falls to me then to determine what is healthy for me to deal with, and as needed put some space between myself and unhealthy situations.

Abusive, co-dependent relationships are terribly hard to deal with, to see in action, and try to mitigate the emotional toll on my own life. Emotional blackmail comes OEM with these kinds of relationships and even standing on the sidelines, one cannot help but be dragged into the fray. People who live long term in these kinds of relationships know, no other way of dealing with life or the people around them. Often the only relationship skills they know are manipulative, emotionally abusive tactics, and use them simply as a matter of course. They don't actually know any better, because as Pat Benetar sings;

"Love and pain become one and the same in the eyes of a wounded child."

Wounded children have no choice but to grow up into wounded adults. It's the only thing they have ever known. When growth occurs, as it rarely ever does, the costs are frightening. More often than not however there is no growth, only sickness and death. When you pile on other conditions, like bi-polar disorder, the entire process become that much more a mess. No-one is 100% sure what causes bi-polar disorder, and any of a number of other mental health issues that people suffer from, but there are two commonly accepted paths to severe and disabling mental illness. One is genetics, if a parent has one or a number of mental health issues, children have a fifty percent chance of being touched by some form of mental illness. When both parents are suffering, it's almost a certainty. Trauma is another pathway to mental illness.

Regardless of how one winds up touched by mental illness, it can, and often does have a profound and quite often devastating effect on ones life. Combine this with a history of domestic-violence, and the patterns inherent in such relationships, and life quickly becomes more than rough. It often becomes impossible.

Now maybe I'm turning into the mental health version of an ex-smoker, but I really don't think so. Too many years I spent living so many lies, thinking and allowing the world to believe everything was okay. When reality finally hit me, well it nearly took me from this world. Overly dramatic? Regrettably, no, not so much. The sheer enormity of it all was very nearly more than I could stand.

So I'm in recovery. Working hard to move forward and establish new and healthy patterns and behavior, isn't the most pleasant thing one should need to have to deal with. Having people around me in various stages of their own journey, or lack of it, toward heling and growth is hard. I want very much to be supportive and compassionate, even, considering my background empathetic, but by the same token when do I have to step back. When can or do I step back?

This is where things get even more complex. When I'm dealing with other people, I need to remain sensitive to their history and background hopefully not make things worse. At the same time, I have to know when it is all way too much for me to deal with. I'm working hard at not repeating the mistakes of the past, making changes to my thinking and behavior, and finding ways to mitigate the long term damage while I heal. I have come to realize that in so many ways I am terribly sensitive to others problems, and these same issues harm me.

It's also terribly hard to see people in so much pain and watch them not do anything to help themselves. To have to stand by and see them not take what control of their own lives they do have, and try to make positive changes. So I have been forced to consider, and begin implementing, a policy of controlled access. Other people want to wallow in their own pain and misery, rock on, but don't bring it to my door because I'm not going to open it anymore. Toxic people who refuse to take any serious steps to improve their own lives are just that, toxic.

I cannot, and will not, keep actively exposing myself to poison.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

T-Mobile Rocks!

Okay, I know that previously I've had some less than favorable things to say about T-Mobile. So, to be fair, I have some really positive things to say and share.

First, I spent most of the day at my local starbucks, with my laptop, surfing the net. Through a T-Mobile WiFi Hotspot, of which there are thousands all over the country, I am able to connect my laptop up effortlessly and have highspeed connection to the internet. Pretty much anywhere in the country. All the fun and power of cable or dsl lines at home, but in my pocket (via my phone) or at a hotspot. Best part of it all is that I'm paying less for it than most people pay for AOL and I have ultimate freedom. As I travel across the country I'll have full internet access anywhere I go!

The funny part is that I've had the service I have now since I got the phone, and I've been using it for internet at home and that kind of stuff thinking I'd gotten lucky. My phone is the dash, it has Windows, and of course IE for web browsing. I ran into a minor snafu and had to call tech support.

While I was on the phone with them, the rep suggested I try what I wanted to do from a hotspot. I said "I thought that was another, extra monthly charge?" She said no, it's part of the smartphone service I already have. I didn't know I could even do that. She also pointed out I could use my laptop directly at a hotspot instead of tethered to my phone. Wow!!! So totally awesome!!!

So I could spend 14.95 at home for DSL, which would give me service, AT HOME, or... ...service at home and everywhere and anywhere else my phone works for 19.95? Oh, yeah, that's a hard choice to make! So I went I had myself a field day today, comfy and relaxed, chatting on the phone AND having full highspeed broad anywhere.

T-Mobile so totally rocks!

Sam

Terms, Labels, Delusions and Blokes in Frocks

Yeah, I've gone and done it now. Hate mail should start pouring in momentarily. I can almost feel the tidal wave of angry, stupid, hateful men in dresses coming after me with pitch forks and torches.

I'm part of so few groups these days, and the number is becoming fewer all the time, because the whole "T" community is in a uproar. Well you know, if they want to set about klinging to their delusions about labels, terms, and who they REALLY ARE, fine. I doesn't mean I have to agree with them, or share my bathroom with them

Get over it guys. If you're wearing a ball gown, stomping around like a trucker, shoving people out of the way, and bellowing to your buddy across the mall, YOU ARE A MAN. Period. End of story. At best, you might be "Transgender" which is an insulting, pejorative term, so why you'd want to Kling onto the term is beyond me. Trying to convinve me, or anyone you're "Transsexual" well I'm sorry, but that should give a beer swilling, basement hidding, joker in a frock a one way ticket to a happy place, where they give you all sorts of happy pills, and keep you safe and out of harms reach.

As in out of the reach of HARMING others!

So you don't like how pejorative the term "Trangender" has become? Well, you can thank yourself for that. Trying to claim you're a "Transsexual" because somehow, that makes things better? Yeah, right. Put down the beer, and step away from labels before someone comes along, pumps you full of estrogen and cuts off you precious, beloved power stick of doom! Just because some ignoramus at websters has chosen definitions for words they know nothing about, and codified them into reality by publishing them in a book, doesn't make it right.

You there, beer swilling, basment dressing bloke in frock, yeah the joker with the deep voice, beer belly, and chain smokers cough, with the tree trunks sticking out of your face. Yeah, you! YOU ARE NOT A TRANSSEXUAL. Get over it, move on, bugger off. You're a guy in a dress hiding out in the basement because your obsessed with "presenting" AS A women, not living.

Being a woman has nothing to do with clothes. Yeah, we wear them, you wear them, and sometimes you like to wear ours. Bully for you. Enjoy... It doesn't make you a woman, or a transsexual one at that. Get over it and move on...

A big difference between trangender and transsexual;

Transgender folks can't wait to get to their safe and happy place and put on a bra and panties,

Transsexual woman can't wait to get to her safe and happy place and TAKE OFF her bra and panties...

So there you go...

Friday, March 14, 2008

Something from January...

1/28 So I left TSMenace because they are, or at least some of them are indeed a menace to society. So I guess they are living up to the menace part of things. I posted an uncharcteristically short note, as much a test to see while bit as much a positive statement, it was met with insanity. One Woman carried on for pages and pages pulling apart a single sentence because aparently I'm not allowed to have my own feelings. (more to follow)

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Spring? Feels near today!

So the temps are up, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. It's a loverly day! Made myself a hot turkey and cheese on a bagel for lunch and took it to the park! Gives me some sun, fresh air, healthy lunch, and a spot of walking! I'm listening to "The Collection" as I walk and things are pretty good. Car is packed with all the stuff I want to take with me to Colorado and I'm ready. Saturday I point Jumper One west and head home. Kinda cool that I get to spend a little time in the park before I leave this part of Jersey...