On Keeping It Secret
Jun. 29th, 2023 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaks[CW for brief references to self-harm and dieting.]
As we sat in Friday afternoon traffic on the northbound 101, I looked out the window and choked on all the words I wasn't saying. It was the middle of May, not yet unbearably hot for a long car ride, and the car, for once this year, hadn't had any kind of catastrophic meltdown on the trip. More importantly, I had just gotten out of my first appointment with a new doctor and had a prescription for blood pressure medication. After years of having doctors tell me to "just lose weight" rather than actually treating my (substantially genetic) high blood pressure, someone had finally agreed that treating the body I actually have might be more worth everyone's time. I was riding high on that victory.
I was also two weeks away from my first appointment to get HRT. As the wait between making the appointment and the actual date of it wore on, I found my idle thoughts defaulting to that more than anything else. Whenever I did, my stomach would swoop and my heart would pound. It felt like I was moments away from stepping onto a stage to give a speech.
Sitting in that car, sweating and stabbing at the radio in search of a channel playing something my mother and I could stand to listen to, my throat went tight. It felt like that speech was a fistful of gravel caught in my throat.
I wonder what it will feel like when my voice starts to change--
I wonder if I'll have to relearn how to sing--
I wonder how I'll explain to my coworkers why my voice sounds like--
Yanking my thoughts back out of that spiral, I still couldn't stop thinking about the appointment. I took a deep breath. I watched my mouth open in the reflection of the window. KRTH Los Angeles started playing the Eurythmics yet again.
I didn't say anything.
I had told my mother I had an appointment coming up. I had also told her that, with regard to the car's recent misbehavior and the possibility of having no transportation, I would "start wars and burn down cities" to get to it. (She is accustomed to my particular modes of expression.) But I hadn't told her what it was for. This was unusual and noteworthy, considering she sometimes accompanies me to appointments to mitigate the general fuckery I am often subjected to by doctors. I was being cagey. She knew something was up.
And still, I didn't tell her. Not in the car that Friday, bones rattling in my body from the mix of accomplishment and anxiety. Not on the day of the appointment, when I told her I was headed downtown after work, and I didn't know how long I would be, and I would let her know when I was headed home. Not even after the appointment, when I begged her to tell me if the pharmacy had called the landline to say a new prescription had been filled so I would know if I should stop there on my way home.
I didn't tell my mother that I was seeking HRT until two days after the appointment, when I had spent every break at work calling the pharmacy, trying to find out why they weren't filling the prescription. As I was telling her, I got a call from the clinic, explaining why and telling me exactly what to say when I called my insurance to get them to stop jerking me around. Which sort of cut off the explanation of what HRT is and why I wanted it. But if there's one thing my mother can relate to, as a chronically ill person, it's the process of arguing with the insurance company that yes, really, I want medical care and I am prepared to make them miserable over the phone until they stop withholding it.
Despite deciding from the outset to tell no one about my choice, I spent the whole intervening time agonizing over it. (And I do mean no one--not family, not friends, not the vague ether of the internet.) It's not that I can't keep a secret. It's just that I process my emotions best by being allowed to verbally dump out the whole tangled, junk drawer mess of them on the floor between myself and another person and let them help me sort through it.
Keeping this a secret meant it all felt vaguely unreal to me. How could I be sure I was really doing this if I didn't gush about it to someone in advance? How could I know if I was making the right choice if I didn't give an hour-long monologue about my reasons? How could I manage the gut-twisting anticipation if I couldn't even tell anyone I was feeling nervous?
So why did I elect to do this terrible thing to myself?
I have always struggled to feel like my body belongs to me. That's probably a whole separate post of its own. I'm trans, yes. I'm also chronically ill. I'm also someone who was encouraged to start dieting, or at least tracking my food and calories, from an absurdly young age. My life has not been rich in opportunities to feel ownership of my body. There have been times when I did mean, destructive things to it just to feel like I had a little power. I don't often know how to relate to my body at all.
Is my body me? Is it a vessel I inhabit? Is it a creature entrusted to my care? Is it a meat prison? Is anything about it under my control?
Also, my hypersensitivity to any hint of rejection meant that other's doubts might send me into a tailspin. Did they think it was a bad idea? Would they reject me for it? Did they--I'll be brutally honest here--take a split second too long to respond and cause my brain chemistry to pinwheel off into outer space? I knew I would hold true to myself if I got as far as having the hormones in hand, but I also knew how easily discouraged and shamed I could be by a whiff of disapproval ahead of time.
I read this post at a critical moment in my research into HRT. It wasn't that I had been considering running the idea of medical transition past all my family and friends. The very idea appalled me. Even so, part of me felt like I was obligated to do just that, like it was a requisite step in the process. If I didn't want hormones badly enough to subject myself to that ordeal, it must mean I didn't really want them.
But here was someone giving me permission to consider only my own needs, only my own desires, only my own well-being. I didn't have to tell anybody shit. That freed something in me that I hadn't known was trapped.
Here, then, was a chance to make this process my own. I would change my body, and I wouldn't ask anyone's permission. I wouldn't let them know until it was already happening. It would be a secret. Just for me.
At no point would my decision be audited by well-meaning loved ones. It wouldn't be debated, and I wouldn't have to argue my case. I would answer to no one. No one else has to live in here with me, whatever it may be: temple or prison or dependent.
As we sat in Friday afternoon traffic on the northbound 101, I looked out the window and choked on all the words I wasn't saying. It was the middle of May, not yet unbearably hot for a long car ride, and the car, for once this year, hadn't had any kind of catastrophic meltdown on the trip. More importantly, I had just gotten out of my first appointment with a new doctor and had a prescription for blood pressure medication. After years of having doctors tell me to "just lose weight" rather than actually treating my (substantially genetic) high blood pressure, someone had finally agreed that treating the body I actually have might be more worth everyone's time. I was riding high on that victory.
I was also two weeks away from my first appointment to get HRT. As the wait between making the appointment and the actual date of it wore on, I found my idle thoughts defaulting to that more than anything else. Whenever I did, my stomach would swoop and my heart would pound. It felt like I was moments away from stepping onto a stage to give a speech.
Sitting in that car, sweating and stabbing at the radio in search of a channel playing something my mother and I could stand to listen to, my throat went tight. It felt like that speech was a fistful of gravel caught in my throat.
I wonder what it will feel like when my voice starts to change--
I wonder if I'll have to relearn how to sing--
I wonder how I'll explain to my coworkers why my voice sounds like--
Yanking my thoughts back out of that spiral, I still couldn't stop thinking about the appointment. I took a deep breath. I watched my mouth open in the reflection of the window. KRTH Los Angeles started playing the Eurythmics yet again.
I didn't say anything.
I had told my mother I had an appointment coming up. I had also told her that, with regard to the car's recent misbehavior and the possibility of having no transportation, I would "start wars and burn down cities" to get to it. (She is accustomed to my particular modes of expression.) But I hadn't told her what it was for. This was unusual and noteworthy, considering she sometimes accompanies me to appointments to mitigate the general fuckery I am often subjected to by doctors. I was being cagey. She knew something was up.
And still, I didn't tell her. Not in the car that Friday, bones rattling in my body from the mix of accomplishment and anxiety. Not on the day of the appointment, when I told her I was headed downtown after work, and I didn't know how long I would be, and I would let her know when I was headed home. Not even after the appointment, when I begged her to tell me if the pharmacy had called the landline to say a new prescription had been filled so I would know if I should stop there on my way home.
I didn't tell my mother that I was seeking HRT until two days after the appointment, when I had spent every break at work calling the pharmacy, trying to find out why they weren't filling the prescription. As I was telling her, I got a call from the clinic, explaining why and telling me exactly what to say when I called my insurance to get them to stop jerking me around. Which sort of cut off the explanation of what HRT is and why I wanted it. But if there's one thing my mother can relate to, as a chronically ill person, it's the process of arguing with the insurance company that yes, really, I want medical care and I am prepared to make them miserable over the phone until they stop withholding it.
Despite deciding from the outset to tell no one about my choice, I spent the whole intervening time agonizing over it. (And I do mean no one--not family, not friends, not the vague ether of the internet.) It's not that I can't keep a secret. It's just that I process my emotions best by being allowed to verbally dump out the whole tangled, junk drawer mess of them on the floor between myself and another person and let them help me sort through it.
Keeping this a secret meant it all felt vaguely unreal to me. How could I be sure I was really doing this if I didn't gush about it to someone in advance? How could I know if I was making the right choice if I didn't give an hour-long monologue about my reasons? How could I manage the gut-twisting anticipation if I couldn't even tell anyone I was feeling nervous?
So why did I elect to do this terrible thing to myself?
I have always struggled to feel like my body belongs to me. That's probably a whole separate post of its own. I'm trans, yes. I'm also chronically ill. I'm also someone who was encouraged to start dieting, or at least tracking my food and calories, from an absurdly young age. My life has not been rich in opportunities to feel ownership of my body. There have been times when I did mean, destructive things to it just to feel like I had a little power. I don't often know how to relate to my body at all.
Is my body me? Is it a vessel I inhabit? Is it a creature entrusted to my care? Is it a meat prison? Is anything about it under my control?
Also, my hypersensitivity to any hint of rejection meant that other's doubts might send me into a tailspin. Did they think it was a bad idea? Would they reject me for it? Did they--I'll be brutally honest here--take a split second too long to respond and cause my brain chemistry to pinwheel off into outer space? I knew I would hold true to myself if I got as far as having the hormones in hand, but I also knew how easily discouraged and shamed I could be by a whiff of disapproval ahead of time.
I read this post at a critical moment in my research into HRT. It wasn't that I had been considering running the idea of medical transition past all my family and friends. The very idea appalled me. Even so, part of me felt like I was obligated to do just that, like it was a requisite step in the process. If I didn't want hormones badly enough to subject myself to that ordeal, it must mean I didn't really want them.
But here was someone giving me permission to consider only my own needs, only my own desires, only my own well-being. I didn't have to tell anybody shit. That freed something in me that I hadn't known was trapped.
Here, then, was a chance to make this process my own. I would change my body, and I wouldn't ask anyone's permission. I wouldn't let them know until it was already happening. It would be a secret. Just for me.
At no point would my decision be audited by well-meaning loved ones. It wouldn't be debated, and I wouldn't have to argue my case. I would answer to no one. No one else has to live in here with me, whatever it may be: temple or prison or dependent.
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