Going to Ground

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’m not sure whether it’s a factor of turning another year older, or Mercury in retrograde, or wonky weather messing with the barometer, or just my brain, but it’s been a challenging week so far. I’m on my way up into another manic phase, and thanks to one, some, or all of the aforementioned factors, the mania is manifesting itself as some pretty intense and occasionally paralyzing anxiety. This is particularly frustrating in light of the fact that my ManicBrain wants to DO ALL THE THINGS, but AnxietyBrain is too overwhelmed.

Tuesday morning during my meditative time I was thinking a lot about the need to ground myself amidst the mental chaos. A friend suggested I go through one or more of my tarot decks and pull out a card or two that helped me to feel grounded that I could carry with myself during the day. The cards I have tattooed on my arm actually do a pretty good job of that, but I wanted something else. Which was about the time that I saw, in front of a pile of things my partner had set out to sort, a bag full of rocks I picked up at some point on a trip to Lake Superior…and I thought, if it’s grounding I need, why not carry a literal piece of ground with me?

I am a person of Earth. My roots wind deep into my little daily rituals and my most closely held convictions. I grow in seasons, my greatest sense of purpose comes from providing shelter and shade from life’s storms, and I contain vast capacities for both strength and vulnerability. Much as I love the convenience of living in the city, my soul sings at the sight of trees and wild spaces. Earth is an integral part of who I am.

But sometimes I need an extra little bit of Earth. And that’s when I turn inward, and go to ground, and look for tangible little reminders to stop and breathe and dig in deeply when I feel my brain trying to fly off in a hundred different directions at once – tarot card on my arm, a little river rock in my pocket.

Before you think I’ve gone totally “woo” on you, never fear – there are plenty of other things I do to manage my anxiety, from my regular medications to deep breathing to cutting back on sodium and caffeine so my heart has fewer excuses to race. I try to stick to a schedule, to get enough sleep, and to avoid situations where I know I will feel overstimulated. These are the logical steps to anxiety management.

The trouble is that anxiety so rarely has any sort of connection to logic. It’s visceral. It comes out of the most primal part of the brain.

And when all of my logical options have been exhausted and I still feel like screaming and crying and curling into a ball under my desk, it’s comforting to look down at my arm and be reminded that my body is the home that I have built for myself, or to reach into my pocket and touch that solid little bit of stone.

So when I look at the forecast and see storms predicted every. single. day, instead of caving to the impulse to break down, I’m going to stop, and breathe, and dig my roots into the Earth of my life, and know that somehow, I am going to weather the week.

Birthday Week Music Break

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Yesterday was my birthday, and while there are many things I’m reflecting on as I look back at another trip around the sun, I’m not quite ready to write about them yet. So instead of a typical post, here’s a song I wrote a couple of months ago that I just recorded this week. Enjoy!

Gratitude and Grace

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

May has been an interesting month so far. This week has been particularly full of surprises:

  • I woke up feeling pretty miserable last Thursday; when I tried to say I’d work from home the second half of the day, my boss convinced me to take it easy and actually rest so I could recover. I wound up taking Friday off, too, and by Saturday I finally felt like a human being again. I made good use of my convalescence, and got a ton of knitting done for our friends’ baby who’s due to join us in this great wide world in about a week.
  • Sunday night we wound up at a concert at a super Irish pub (by which I mean probably 80% of the patrons were from Ireland, as were the folks behind the bar).
    • Somewhere along the line my partner got to talking with a woman at the bar who informed him that her kid had just recently come out as trans. We didn’t hear much of the concert (both because it was loud in the bar and because we were distracted), but spent the whole evening talking with this woman and her friend (a rather drunk Irishman who laughed a lot), who bought us several rounds. (I think I had more to drink Sunday night than I’ve had in the past two months put together…)
    • I can be a pretty cynical person a lot of the time, but I found myself telling this woman repeatedly that her kid was going to be okay, because progress is happening everywhere. And this kid is just going off to college – just imagine how much farther along we could be by the time they’re done!
    • Rather remarkably, I woke up feeling pretty great on Monday.
  • Tuesday night after songwriting class, I was invited out for wings and drinks by some of the other guys in the class. It was the first time in my life I had the experience of just being “one of the guys” in a non-queer context. It was a little weird, and pretty wonderful.

Which is all to say that life is good, and I have a lot to think about and a lot to be grateful for. I’m a seriously lucky guy.

Rest and Recovery

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

As a meditative practice, I draw a tarot card each morning when I get up and use it as a focal point for some journalling and introspection. There’s been a major theme over the past week of rest, and healing, and struggling to let those things happen.

I am not great at rest.

Don’t get me wrong – I thoroughly enjoy being lazy a lot of the time. But as a chronic insomniac and a person whose brain never really shuts down, the concept of “rest” is one that I struggle with a lot.

I’ve needed to work around that this week. I’ve been in recovery mode since my surgery last Wednesday (which was relatively minor but still came with post-op restrictions and several stitches), and it hasn’t always been easy. I’ve been tired, both because my body is putting itself back together and because the pain medication I’ve been on tends to make me feel a little foggy. I worked from home last Thursday and Friday, but have been out and about every day since Sunday, which has helped keep me from feeling stir crazy but has also meant that I’m experiencing rather more pain and awareness of my limitations at a week post-op than I did the first day or two. As I’m writing this Wednesday evening, I haven’t managed to make it through a full day at work yet (though I’m really, really hoping that doesn’t continue to be a trend). I’m incredibly lucky that my boss is more concerned with my general well-being than anything else, because I’ve not been anywhere near as productive as I’d like.

I am definitely on the mend. And I am learning (ever so slowly) that it is okay to have limitations. This is a lesson I’m sure I’m going to keep coming back to many times in the coming months. I’m hoping it’s one that gets easier with practice.

Tilt-a-Whirl

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, my lovely readers! First and foremost: I am so sorry there was no blog last week. A lot of things about last week did not go as planned, my schedule was totally off, and I honest-to-god did not realize until Monday morning that Thursday had passed me by.

The reason last week was so out of whack was this: I have been avoiding dealing with a minor but persistent and annoying medical issue for many months now. I finally got myself to the doctor at the end of March, who wrote me a surgical referral, which got to me mid-April. I called and made the appointment for Tuesday, May 5, because that was the earliest day that my partner could get off work to come with me.

It is worth noting at this point that this is basically the first time I’ve ever been referred to a specialist – I always had a PPO when I was under my parents’ insurance, and since getting my own HMO plan, I hadn’t looked very seriously at any sort of specialist care. So I am totally new to this process and have no idea what I’m doing.

I was under the impression that this was going to be a super simple, very quick, local anesthesia, in-and-out sort of deal, but I wanted my partner with me both because I did not relish the thought of facing a strange doctor who may or may not be at all trans-competent alone, and because I wasn’t sure how much help I was going to need with aftercare stuff.

So we got to the surgeon’s office Tuesday morning, and as soon as the nurse came in and started talking to us, it became apparent that this was not the actual surgical visit, but the consultation for a rather more involved procedure than I thought I was going to be in for. This would have been really nice to know ahead of time, but in the end we just sort of rolled with it. The surgeon and nurse explained the procedure in more detail (which is still an outpatient procedure, but will require general anesthesia and something like five or six hours in the hospital, and someone to drive me home), gave me some information to take home, and told me to call them to schedule a date once I’d figured things out on my end.

I had totally cleared my schedule for Tuesday and for Wednesday evening, and I decided to keep it that way. Unfortunately, not having my usual activities to trigger my brain, I didn’t remember to post a blog about it last week.

I’m writing this on Monday afternoon, because Tuesday I won’t have time, and surgery is scheduled (for real this time) for Wednesday. I’m nervous, but not as nervous as I had been: even though my partner can’t be there, a friend offered to take the day off to keep me company, and another friend is going to take me home when it’s over. I feel so well cared-for, and so lucky to have the friends that I do.

All that to say, it’s been a couple of wild weeks emotionally. I’ll be glad when Wednesday is over (and I will try to add some sort of update before or shortly after this goes live to let you all know how it went).

Update: Surgery went well; I was very pleased with the care that I received and I had great people looking out for me. I’m feeling very loved.

And, at least as of 6:30 Thursday morning, I’m not in much pain at all. I’m going to work hard to stay on top of the pain meds (and therefore on top of the pain – once the pain kicks in, it’s hard to get it back down), but I’m feeling well enough that I’m at least planning to get some work done from home. Today (and probably tomorrow, too…I don’t know that I’ll be up for public transit yet by then).

 

Learning

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been a week full of lessons.

My grand plans to get up early and exercise didn’t see much follow-through beyond the first week (in part because I got slammed with a cold the second week and never got back into the habit, in part because I just didn’t have the energy in the long-term). I tried not to beat myself up about it too much – now that the weather is (kind of, sort of, maybe) getting nicer, I’m going to be more inclined to go for longer walks and generally be more active anyway. I did find, though, that I missed something about the way getting up early allowed me to ease into my day. I’ve often found myself rolling out of bed and running out the door in the space of about fifteen minutes. Last week, I was late to work almost every single day…only by about five minutes, but it still bothered me that I couldn’t seem to get myself going in the morning anymore.

Over the weekend, after poking around at various online resources, I signed up for The Alternative Tarot Course, because it seemed like a good way to get myself back into the business of meditation and reflection. One of the exercises for the course is to draw and meditate on a single card first thing every morning, as a way to get more familiar with the deck and the symbolism of various cards (whether intended by the artist or interpreted by you). I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it, given last week’s track record with over-sleeping, but I wanted to try, and so far…it seems to be working. (Turns out it’s a lot easier to get out of bed to go quietly meditate and breathe and mentally prepare for my day than it is to get out of bed to go force my body to do things it doesn’t want to. Imagine that.) And the timing couldn’t have been better: that return to meditative practice has definitely helped keep my overactive brain from running wild this week…

…which it was especially tempted to do on Monday, when I heard a coworker misgender me to another coworker. This was not the person who I’d had an issue with earlier this year, but it was someone who has done this pretty consistently since I started at my job a year and a half ago. Usually, I just sort of shut down, but this time…this time, I got angry.

I waited until I was able to compose myself enough to be mostly civil, and then I sent him an email, the gist of which was:

I want to be very clear on something: I have never, in the entire time I have worked here, been a “she”. Referring to a coworker by the wrong pronouns is both unprofessional and enormously disrespectful. When it occurs persistently, it can also be classified as harassment. If this continues, I will not hesitate to call in HR – not because I have any desire to “tattle” on you, but because I believe everyone, including myself, has the right to feel safe and respected in their workplace.

It was hard to hit send, but I did it (though, admittedly, I waited to send it until just before I left, because I wanted some more space before I had to deal with any further interaction with this coworker). I received a fairly prompt response insisting that there was no malice behind his actions, that it was a totally unconscious thing, and he didn’t know why he did it. I figured that was probably the best I was going to get, and resolved to continue to advocate for myself if the issue came up again.

And then Tuesday rolled around, and he swung by my office in the morning requesting a meeting for that afternoon. I didn’t want to, but I said yes. And you know what?

I went to the meeting.

I remained aware of my body language and retained an external appearance of calm.

I made eye contact, even when he didn’t.

I didn’t explode when he talked about how his behavior was annoying to him, how, “it’s like a tic, really.” (I wanted to explode. I wanted to tell him to a) not use someone else’s disability as a false defense to hide behind and b) take some goddamn responsibility for his actions. But I did not.)

I was not aggressive, but I explained that I wanted to be sure he was aware that this was problematic behavior.

I thanked him for his apology.

I did not say the words, “It’s okay.”

It was obvious that he expected me to say them. He kept looking at me like he was waiting for more. And my first, socially conditioned response would have been to say exactly that.

But it’s not okay. It’s never okay. And I’m not going to pretend that it is. I am not going to sacrifice my comfort for the comfort of someone else when that person clearly isn’t interested in doing the same kindness to me.

It was kind of a revelation.

I can thank someone for their apology without saying that the shitty behavior that necessitated the apology in the first place was okay. I can be gracious, but that doesn’t mean I have to shut up and pretend the hurt never happened.

So I’m learning.

I’m learning to center and to ground myself in the midst of mental chaos.

I am learning how to get angry on my own behalf. Defending others is a wonderful thing to do, but self-defense is equally important.

I’m learning that self-advocacy is still hard, but if I remain grounded and centered, it’s possible to do it. It is even possible to look aggressors in the eye and maintain control of the conversation, if I stay focused.

I’m learning that I don’t owe absolution of guilt to anyone who isn’t motivated to change their behavior (and that a true change in behavior eliminates the need for absolution anyway).

I’m learning. And as I learn, I grow, and evolve, and slowly (ever so slowly), I am becoming the man I want to be.

Introspection

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

The past couple of months have felt pretty chaotic – I’ve had places to be four out of five weeknights for the past eight weeks, we’ve already started plotting out our summer (which seems unreal, as it’s approximately 37°F outside as I write this), we’re in the midst of a major purge of the things that have piled up in our apartment, and last weekend we had a friend staying with us.

This is my last week of the four-weeknights-out madness (at least for a while), and as that winds down, it feels like a good time to take a step back and look inward. When life is busy and noisy and full of things to do, I sometimes forget that it’s important to let myself just be sometimes, too.

The friend who stayed with us last weekend is someone we love dearly, but by the end of the weekend, my partner and I were exhausted. It was when I took a step back after they left and realized that they are one of our few extroverted friends that we finally understood why we were so tired when they seemed like they could have kept going forever. It got me thinking about how I have always been an introvert, but how that has manifested differently at different times – and how those different manifestations are often major indicators of the rest of my mental health. I am a different sort of introvert than my partner is, at least some of the time – I need my quiet time at home, away from people in general, but I crave total solitude less frequently than he does. When I am tending toward total isolation, it is often an indication that I am not at my best – that I am trying very hard to hold it together, and it is easier for me to do that if I don’t have to fake it in front of anyone but myself. There is a point at the lower levels of mania where I am much more likely to be intentional about being social, because I actually have the energy to spare for it, but if I’m not careful and my ManicBrain hits a fever pitch, I shut myself away to avoid melting down from the overstimulation of public spaces (and to avoid spending everything in my bank account and beyond).

Because I have been recovering the energy I spent this weekend, and particularly since the weather turned a bit colder this week, I have been trying to be gentle with myself, to let myself be more of a hermit than I might otherwise be. I’m finding that I am drawn more than usual to meditation and quiet, and that has been refreshing. I’ve found myself doodling absently (or resisting the urge to do so in meetings), which is a creative outlet I haven’t explored much lately. I think, much like the rest of the world, I am in a tender place here at the changing of the seasons, and I am trying to learn as much as I can from this place of openness and vulnerability.

Thinking of Spring

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

We have once again reached that delightful time of year when I am frequently overcome by the beauty of nature (read: watery-eyed, sniffly, exhausted, and allergic to every blessed thing outdoors). As obnoxious as spring allergies are, though, I am thoroughly enjoying the warmer (but not-too-warm) weather, the sunlight we’ve had so far, the longer daylight hours…perhaps it’s just a function of the enthusiastic reproductive efforts of the local flora (and fauna, I suppose), but there seems to be a renewed sense of vitality after the drabness of winter.

I am finally getting around to dealing with some personal things that I have been avoiding for several months. I haven’t had a huge increase in energy, but some things that seem impossible during the grey and dreary times of year become possible when the sun and the green start to come through again.

This weekend, we have a friend coming to visit us from Minnesota. They are one of those friends whose company we don’t get to enjoy often enough, one of those rare souls who leaves me feeling emptied, renewed, and refueled after contact. The weekend promises to be intense and exhausting in some of the best ways, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

I’ve been thinking about relationships lately, and the defining characteristics of the various relationships I’m in with people, from my partner to my friends to my family. This season of renewal and rebirth has me contemplating a sort of social spring cleaning – not necessarily cutting people out of my life completely, but working on strengthening healthy boundaries when dealing with dysfunction, and taking stock of where I am most supported and most relied-on for support, so that I can balance the two. I think I spend too much time wondering how in the world to make new friends, and not enough time cultivating the friendships I already have.

I guess changes in weather bring out my contemplative side. There’s a lot of planning going on, and some big things coming down the pike this summer. It seems it is time to come out of hibernation so that I can enjoy the relative calm before life picks up again. If only I could do it without sniffling…

Reasons to Smile

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

On the one hand, I feel like I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all week; on the other, I feel like I have nothing to write about. Neither of those are entirely accurate assessments of how my week has gone, though. Things are pretty great. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. My tattoo turned out even better than I was hoping. Seriously, the cards look beautiful. (Well, okay, at the moment they look like a flaky mess, but under that, they’re beautiful.) I’m so pleased with how they turned out! And the appointment itself was enjoyable – a couple of friends sat with me through the bulk of the process (thanks, E & B!), and even came back when it was over to drive me home (which was super kind…I probably would’ve gotten on the wrong train or something, because after 2 hours and 20 minutes I was pretty out of it). The artist was wonderful, the space was phenomenal (if you’re in Chicago and in the market for a tattoo, totally check them out), and it was not as painful as I was afraid it would be. (Turns out pain is relative…compared to 5 weeks of constant back pain with no idea when or if it would end, a couple of hours of pain that I knew had a finish line? Not bad at all.)
  2. I actually liked what I wrote for my songwriting class this week, and my classmates all had suggestions to make it even better. It’s rare that I feel this good about something I’ve written, so that’s been fun. The next step in the writing process for this one: trying to figure out a harmonica solo.
  3. I bought some yarn at Stitches Midwest last summer with the intention of making a sweater. After I got home and took a closer look at other projects made with this particular yarn, I realized it wasn’t truly ideal for the project I’d bought it for. It’s been sitting in my stash and at the forefront of my awareness since then, and (even though I should have finished something else first) I finally settled on a pattern, made a swatch, did some math, and started knitting a different sweater with it over the weekend. I did the first sleeve in three days, and I’m still excited about it – I feel like I actually have a chance of finishing this in a reasonable amount of time. Granted, that might happen right when it warms up, but hey. I’ll have a cozy, beautiful sweater for next fall.

On Visibility and Being Seen

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

This past Tuesday, March 31, was Trans Day of Visibility. I posted this on my Facebook Tuesday evening:

I have mixed feelings about Trans Day of Visibility: mostly, I think safety should come first and no one should feel pressure to be more out than they want to/can safely be. I am a white trans man; this means that it is safer for me to be visibly trans than it is for my trans sisters, and particularly for my trans sisters of color.

I also believe that it is important for those of us who can make the choice to safely be visible to do so, though: to show the world that we exist, but more specifically to show the ones who are still hiding that they’re not alone. I feel particularly driven to be visibly trans as a trans adult: trans kids need to know there’s a future out there for them. So often our stories end in tragedy. We need more examples of trans folks who are not only surviving (which is super important on its own), but also thriving.

Besides this, as a white trans man, I have found myself landing in a world of privilege. The way the world works, white male voices are heard when many others aren’t. It is my responsibility to speak up and clear the stage for those whose voices are too often shouted down, and to use my voice for good when it’s the only one someone will listen to.

I didn’t fit it into the Facebook post, but something I’ve been thinking a lot about since then is the importance, not necessarily of visibility, but of being seen.

I remember the first time a stranger read me as male. I was picking up lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings with my then-roommate. She finished relaying her order to the man behind the counter, and he turned to me and said, “And for you, sir?” I felt my chest swell involuntarily; I squared my shoulders and widened my stance.

I did not identify as a man then, or even as genderqueer. I identified as queer and as “a gentleman, just maybe not so much the man part,” but that was as far as I’d gotten in exploring my gender identity. And I’m certain that the man behind the counter was simply responding to the contrast between my femme roommate and me, in my baggy sweatshirt with the hood up. But that “sir” called out to a part of me that hadn’t yet been recognized elsewhere.

About a year later, two months into my relationship with my partner and a few months away from coming out as genderqueer, I was in Costa Rica visiting my aunt and uncle. My aunt took me along on one of her regular visits to a local nursing home. When she introduced me to one of the residents, the conversation went something like this:

Es su nieto? (Is this your grandson?)

No, es mi sobrina. (No, this is my niece.)

Ah, su sobrino! (Oh, your nephew!)

I just smiled and nodded.

Now, nearly sixteen months into testosterone therapy, I am read as male quite consistently (the sideburns are likely a major contributing factor to this). It’s not a given, though I sometimes forget this – just this week someone called me “she” out of the blue (and somehow, the less frequently it happens, the more it stings when it does) – and I still find that being called “sir” causes that unconscious squaring of shoulders. Because being seen for what we really are is empowering, particularly in a world where people (sometimes even people who are supposed to be on our side) insist that we do not exist.

As a dude who knits and wears a lot of purple, I would likely be read as queer by the world at large even if I wasn’t. And I’m out and proud in many areas of my life – I was so visibly “other” for a while that I reached a point where I could either live in constant shame or be loud and proud, and I went with the latter. But being visible so often amounts to being seen as “other,” as some sort of departure from the “acceptable” norms of society. And while it’s true that I do live outside those boundaries, and that I like it better out here anyway, being regarded by the world at large as a freak is tiring.

Being seen, on the other hand…validation is so important. It’s not that I need the validation of others to know who I am – I get to define that for myself and ultimately my validation of myself is what matters most. But where the pressure of visibility is exhausting, being seen is a relief from that pressure. It’s energizing and empowering and encouraging. And that’s something that we could all use more of, particularly those of us who belong to marginalized groups – and if this is true for me, who experiences oppression on a very small scale that is counterbalanced by a whole lot of privilege, it is even more true for those who don’t have those oft-unrecognized free passes that privilege offers.

Being told you don’t exist is an incredibly painful experience. Having your existence recognized and validated doesn’t make the pain go away, but the more frequently it happens, the easier it becomes to let go of those painful moments. If we started treating each person as the expert on their own identity, this world would be a much gentler place.