When I was in the 7th grade, I beat my best friend up. I am ashamed to admit that. I would love to have the opportunity to say I am sorry. I can not imagine the harm I caused her.
High School was hard for me. Getting through the day was hard for me. I found prescription drugs belonging to my father an escape from my own pain. The drug was called Librax a form of Librium. Unbeknownst to me at the time was that these drugs were meant for depression. I took them hoping to get a buzz.

My parents never knew I stole his drugs. Hell he wasn't even taking them. He just threw the bottles into the back of one of his drawers.
I took them to zone out, escape the hell I felt I was living. It was during one of those drug hazed day that I hurt my friend. I didn't know until some time after, just how bad it was. I will never understand why they didn't press charges.
We had a field trip into the woods near by to study liken, moss and fungi. On the way to the woods I mad a switch out of small twig. I chased after my friend with sword drawn 'teasing' her with it. Hitting her on her legs and thighs. Like a towel playfully snapped at a naked butt the switch bit into her flesh. I was having 'fun'.
Later her twin sister told me of the severity of my actions. They were having supper and my friend wouldn't leave the tub she was in. Her sister went to check on her. What she found horrified her. The water wouldn't cover the welts my fun had inflicted on her. She was black and blue from her buttocks to her ankles, both in the front and in the back.
I don't remember hurting her. I remember having fun. The pills I took were not to blame, though I wanted to believe they were. I have no excuse, no reason for my actions. I honestly don't know why I did it.
Someone recently told me they remembered me as a nice girl back then. But there were times when I wasn't.
I knew there was something wrong with me. I wrote about it in my English classes, I tried talking to the guidance counselor, I shared things with my physiology teacher. No one heard me, not till years later.
I understand now that there was a lot not right. I came to understand that there had been abuse in my childhood. That I wasn't always aware of what I had done. That I had holes in my memory. That my body didn't fit me right. But that would be years later.
Dorothea, I hope some day you will read this or I can tell you how sorry I am. Friends do not treat friends like the enemy.
_____________________________________
Some of you may wonder why I am drudging up all this garbage. I'm taking out the trash. I'm cleansing my soul. I'm writing what is in my heart as it spills through my finger tips. I am trying to make amends where necessary. I am attempting to be the most honest about everything, than I have ever allowed myself.

Then / Now

40 yeas between then and now. Same person, always male gendered. If you look closely you will see a brighter smile Now and a sparkle in my eyes. Being true to your self is liberating.
Those of a religious persuasion, especially those of the christian faith, would call me an abomination but Jesus said there is neither Jew nor gentile, free nor slave, male or female. The Divine doesn't look at the shell but the god likeness within. 
 
Psalms 139 (13-18)
13
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

The Truth About High School, Who's Truth

What do you remember about high school? Can you see it through the eyes of 'truth' or your own filters of truth? As long as we are asking the question, who's truth is THE truth.

I thought I knew what happened in high school. But I only had my piece of the story. Everyone I interacted with held a part of my story where our lives intersected. Unless I am privy to their part of my story, I will never know the truth. 

Example, (back then I was a girl) I didn't feel like I fit in with anyone. In fact I didn't think anyone liked me, and to protect my self, I didn't give a damn. I hardened myself by looking in the mirror and and tell myself I was tough and nobody was gona knock me down. I carried a pocket knife in the hopes that someone would test my resolve. I would walk down the hallway of the school and it seemed as if the students moved from the left and to the right and left a pathway for me. That is how I remember it but is that how it happened.

I had a couple of friends who were more like acquaintances. A substitute teacher and a girl much like myself. We would see each other in the hallway and if one of us seemed out of sorts, the other would ask what was up and spend time listening to each other. 

I thought of myself as an ugly duckling. And because of that who would like or want to be around me. I didn't realize that to some I was attractive, even desirable. I only saw my life through my own dirt covered glasses.

Though the following is about spirituality it can can also apply to life in general.

If you study the life of past mystics you’ll find they share several things in common:
First, they all speak of an induction – or of a need to learn/realize a new level of understanding. They all speak of a fundamental shift in consciousness (be it called awakening, realization, divination, or being born again).
Second they all tell of making a journey into and through a despair process of being “undone” as the precursor to this fundamental shift in consciousness — be it through experiencing 40 days and nights in the wilderness, starving under the bodhi tree, facing the dark night of the soul, or the hero’s journey. There is a Journey of metamorphosis that all mystics have undergone in some way.

Third, it is an inner journey that must be taken up and navigated alone. This is a hallmark of the mystic’s realization: The reason the journey must be alone is because that which must be faced, seen, and surrendered in order that something new can emerge, is only possible through sustaining the fear and despair process of being alone and meeting the ultimate and fundamental fear of “non-being” and annihilation.
Fourth, they all seem to realize the frustration of being misunderstood by those who have not yet been through the awakening journey — “those who have ears to hear, let him hear.” A great deal of the mystical writings are devoted almost exclusively to the fact that fundamental spiritual truth cannot be understood by the intellect nor correctly put into words. Forever, the great spiritual teachers have tried through the insufficiency of words to point toward that which can ever and only be experienced and known on a level that is before and beyond the mind. This is something unfathomable to those who have not yet had this breakthrough revelation – and particularly so in our contemporary culture that has become so overly reliant and blinded by the limiting paradigm of the scientific method that forever reduces our understanding of intelligence to that which is sensory, measurable and linear in nature. (…Life isn’t (only or always) linear .. In fact it rarely is, except in man-made constructions and habituated uses of the mind.) – Rhonda LaRue

Present Day

This is me today.  Fifty-eight year old trans-man.  When I started this journey 10 years ago I was in a long term relationship.  That relationship changed two years ago.  We are still friends but it is not the same.  We live separate lives now.  

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about being alone.  I would like to be in a loving relationship, but I fear it wont happen again.  Maybe it is not to be.   I wouldn't change my journey, I couldn't have continued as I was.  I have a lot of lonely days and nights.  

I don't get out to meet new people.  I'm disabled and have no transportation.  I am not involved in the local LGBT tribe.   I have no friends out side of my ex and my room-mate.  My room-mate is a friend and people think she is my wife. (we let them, to much trouble to explain it)

I was going to college on-line for photography but I messed up and flunked algebra twice.  Still taking photographs but not taking classes anymore.  I wanted to use photography to help me get top surgery.  Now that is on hold again.

Tonight I am just using my journal, These Shoes are Too Tight, to write how I am feeling right now...  Lonely. 

Fifty-three Years in the Past

Remember when you were a kid, the type of games you played?  Five years old, playing in the dirt near a creek, with my best bud.  We built roads and bridges over little rivers we dug in the dirt.  We played with his trucks and cars because I didn't own any.  

 At five I had two younger sisters.  Susan was twenty-two months younger than I and Karen was just a baby.  I hadn't even started kindergarten yet.  

That same year I ran away from home.  I have no idea why I ran away.  I suspect a lot of kids runaway from home when they are very young.  Maybe it is a way of asserting our independence.  

Another way I asserted myself was to cut my own hair.  I was in my parents bedroom and there was a pare of scissors laying on the box fan.  I picked them up and created my very first master piece.  I started the spike movement.  Stiff little hills with deep valleys all over my head.  

My mother took me to a hair dresser to get my head shaved so that it would be the same length all over.  After that I never had hair below my shoulders.  

Ten Years Into the Future

I haven't written anything on here in almost five years.  Lately I have been wanting to work on my special project called These Shoes Are Too Tight.  The title comes from a TV show from many years ago, called Babylon 5.  A syfi show that was a favorite of mine.  There was a character called Lando, an ambassador from another planet.  On one episode there are two lovers who have run away from home and visit Lando to get his permission to marry.  Both of the young people have been promised to someone else.  At one point he talks to them about his own youth.  He had been married to three wives non of his choosing and all loveless marriages.  He remembers something his father had told him that at the time he hadn't understood.  He father had said that his shoes were too tight and he had forgotten how to dance.  This was a metaphor describing what responsibility can cost.  

But it is also a metaphor for living a non authentic life.  For so long I had not been living my authentic self.  Trying to be someone you are not or living your parents choices or believing a religion of your family is not living an authentic life.  In other words you are wearing shoes that are too tight.  The object is to be true to yourself in all ways.   This project is to chronicle  the process of finding the right shoes to wear.