adulting

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).

 

Adventures in Self-Advocacy

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been an interesting week.

On Tuesday, as I was waiting outside my office for the bus, one of my coworkers called a goodbye to me as she crossed the street: “See you later, Alexis!”*

There was a pause, then: “Alyx! Alyx.”

Thankfully, at that point traffic picked up, and I didn’t feel like I needed to respond with more than a casual wave. But as her words slowly sunk in, I found myself more and more upset. This was not the first time I’d been misgendered by this coworker. She routinely refers to me as “she,” and while she usually corrects herself, it’s still immensely frustrating. Had I seen another trans person in the same situation, I would have spoken up a long time ago. But self-advocacy is hard, and I have, historically, been extraordinarily bad at it.

Being called the wrong name, though, crossed a line. Something in my head snapped, and I realized that I had to do something. My inner drive to avoid drama was finally overtaken by my desire to be treated with respect.

So I emailed my manager and direct supervisor, and told them what had happened, and asked them what they thought I should do. They were both extremely supportive and handled the whole situation better than I could have hoped for: they encouraged me to contact the individual in question directly about the problem behavior, offered their support in any way, and pointed out that HR needed to be alerted to the issue, even if I was able to resolve it with direct communication.

I asked if they thought it would be okay to address the issue in an email to this coworker, since I express myself best in writing. My manager responded that he thought she would be least intimidated by a face-to-face conversation, slightly more by an email, and more still by a moderated conversation, but that my comfort was the primary concern. Her comfort was secondary, and he thought I should proceed in whatever way made the most sense to me.

So before I left work yesterday, I sent an email to my coworker, gently but firmly explaining that her behavior was hurtful and inappropriate and requesting that she henceforth put a concerted effort into using the correct name and pronouns.

And then I went and had coffee and debriefed with a former coworker, and chose to ignore my phone every time it buzzed to tell me I had a new text or email.

When I got home, I found a response waiting for me.

It wasn’t a great apology – it contained a lot of excuses. But it was still an apology, and I am going to try to take it in good faith as sincere. It’s a start, at least, and now I have a written record I can bring back to HR if the behavior continues.

Self-advocacy is hard. But my supervisor pointed out a very important aspect of it that I tend to forget: if I am being mistreated, it’s entirely possible someone else is being mistreated as well. I tend to have this twisted perspective that advocating for myself is a sign of selfishness on my part (though I wouldn’t say that about anyone else’s self-advocacy). But it’s not. By speaking up, I’m not just speaking up for myself; I’m speaking up for anyone else who might find themselves in the same situation in at present or in the future but who might not have a voice. I have an incredible support network and a host of resources at my disposal. If someone has to be the sacrificial lamb for the sake of transgender sensitivity education at my workplace, it might as well be me.

I don’t know what, if anything will come of all of this. I hope that my coworker will truly make an effort to change her behavior. I hope that HR will be open to the possibility of providing some sort of transgender sensitivity training (we’re a big Jewish organization, and while the vast majority of people have taken having a more-or-less-openly trans person on staff, I think it wouldn’t hurt). I hope that if my coworker’s behavior doesn’t change, HR will have my back as firmly as my manager and supervisor do. If I am placing myself in a position where I will find myself needing to educate people along the way, then I hope I can serve as a catalyst for positive change. I hope that, whatever happens, things are easier for the next trans person that comes along in the agency after me.

I may not feel brave, but I am choosing to be bold.

 

* This was problematic for multiple reasons: chiefly that I have only gone by Alyx at this job, and any names I may or may not have had prior to this job are irrelevant to my relationships with my coworkers, but also because I have never, at any time in my life, been an “Alexis.” This was a major assumption on her part, that she could deduce from my current name what name I may have gone by prior to transition.

Bah, Humbug

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

The holiday season is in full swing. And I just want it to be over.

Usually, I really enjoy this time of year. I like the colder weather, and the lights. I’ve bought or made pretty much all the presents I’ll be giving. (Considering that there is still a whole week to go, I’m ahead of my usual game.)

But I just can’t seem to get into the holiday spirit this year.

It seems like everyone I know is having “one of those weeks.”

I have several friends dealing with some really awful things right now, and no matter how much I want or try to help, I know that there’s nothing I can really do to make it better for them.

I’ve spent the whole week feeling angry and bitter about my own family’s dysfunction (and consistent refusal to deal with that dysfunction). Because, let’s face it, there’s no time like a holiday to bring out family dysfunction.

Like many people I know and love, I’m in a rather tender place right now. I desperately need some time to decompress and process and deal with a whole slew of emotions that have surfaced in the past few weeks, and I have no idea when that time is going to happen.

But because it seems like a rough week for everyone, I hate to end this blog post on a disconsolate note. So here are a couple of happy things from this week that are not at all holiday related:

  1. One of my coworkers brought her Great Pyrenees (who happens to be a therapy dog) with her to work on Monday. This meant that I got to take a few minutes out of my day to pet an enormous dog who wanted nothing more than to flop on the floor and be loved. Puppy therapy is, to me, just about the best kind of therapy there is. It didn’t make everything better, but it definitely brightened what was otherwise a very Mondayish Monday.
  2. I got to work from home yesterday. I answered emails and worked on other work-related things, but I did not open my mouth to utter a single sound from the time my partner left in the morning to the time I met him at the train station to help him carry home groceries when he got off work. I still really need a day to just sit and wrestle with things – I still had to work, after all – but it was wonderful to have some quiet space to myself.
  3. I’ve been unusually excited about my knitting this week. It’s kind of a problem, in that I want to start all the projects and not finish anything, but it’s nice to feel excited about something amidst everything else.

Happy Anyway

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’m sick. I tried for a while to convince myself it was just fall allergies, and maybe it started that way. But it’s become evident in the last few days that I do, in fact, have a cold (which may turn into something even less fun today, since I got my flu shot yesterday).

On top of that, it’s been pretty overcast the past few days. Yesterday’s dreariness in particular made me acutely aware of how much my mood and general ability to be an adult are influenced by the weather. When it’s cloudy for more than about 24 hours, all I want to do is hide in a giant blanket nest and not come out again until it’s sunny.

But you know what?

I’m still pretty happy.

Because, really, life is pretty good. I might be feeling under the weather, but there are still reasons to smile:

Tomorrow is Halloween. It also marks three years since I first tried on the name Alyx and found that it fit. It fit so well that it was briefly terrifying, because I knew exactly what sort of precipice I was stepping over. But the terror quickly gave way, because it felt so…easy. Comfortable. Right. Pronouns may still be a weird thing for me to navigate, and I’m not always sure exactly what is going on with my relationship to my body, but my name? That’s mine. There are no questions there.

In a few weeks, I will legally become Alyxander. I will have an ID card that matches my actual identity. And HR now knows and has told me what they need from me to change things over in their systems. I have all of the prerequisite paperwork together; it’s just a matter of waiting, now. I’m nervous, but mostly, I’m excited.

And, though it’s an exceedingly silly thing, I bought aftershave for the first time this week. It smells kind of like it belongs to a curmudgeonly old man, and I love it. This may be the thing that pushes me into shaving more than once a week. (Not that I don’t like shaving, because I actually do: I have a wonderful double-edged safety razor that I bought myself as a “yay, I started testosterone” present, and a brush and some great soap that I got from my partner as a Christmas gift last year, and I find the whole ritual kind of soothing. I’m just lazy. Not so lazy that I won’t link to all of my shaving gear in a blog post, apparently, but lazy enough that I only end up shaving when I look really scruffy, which takes about a week these days.)

Adulting

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been quite the week.

I successfully filed my name change paperwork last Friday and was assigned a court date that’s now a little over seven weeks away. So now I’m working on pulling together everything I need to bring to court (and to the DMV, where I’ll be headed directly after the hearing).

Adulting is hard. And scary. I’ve done way more of it in the past week than I’ve made myself do in a while. And I’m proud of myself for doing the hard and scary things.

But then yesterday at work was just one of those days, and I ended up leaving a little early and skipping my weekly volunteer commitment because I felt like shit, choosing to hide at home where I could curl up under blankets and read and pretend the rest of the world wasn’t there.

Adulting is hard. And scary. And it’s a process that often feels a lot like two steps forward, one step back.

But still, progress is progress. I’ll get there in the end.

My Life in a Monday

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s not often that a single day provides a snapshot of the kind of life I have, but this Monday sort of did just that:

  1. Monday morning, I took the last pills in my existing bottles of psych meds. I had placed a refill order last week, and knew that both my prescriptions were ready for pickup, and I knew I needed to collect them on my way home from work. Unfortunately, my pharmacy is in no way, shape, or form on the way home: in fact, I have to pass home to get there, and go twice as far in the opposite direction. I spent the entire day at work trying to talk myself into going. Finally, as I walked the half mile to the bus (which would take me to the train, which would get me within a block of the pharmacy), I realized the solution: I would allow myself a silly indulgence if I otherwise behaved like a responsible adult and picked up my meds (more on that in #2). Long story short, for the first time in many, many months, I picked up my prescriptions on time and didn’t miss a single dose of anything.
  2. The silly indulgence? While I was out running my post-work errands, I swung up to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of the newest Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. I had been kicking around the idea anyway, because starting the end of this month I’ll be joining a D&D game run by someone my partner met in college (who happens to be a minister and is doing this game as part of an independent study for a class he’s taking at Loyola), and we were planning to meet Monday night to work on creating a character for me to play. The more I researched the newest edition of the game online over the weekend, the more excited I got, and so I went for it. It was very helpful to have a copy of the book for each of us to look at while we rolled up my character (a dwarf sorcerer – this would probably prove to my family that I am a godless heathen) that evening, and now I’m all set for the future games I’m sure I’ll be playing. Nerdery abounds!
  3. And then Monday night happened, and I laid down to go to sleep…and waited…and waited…and waited…and my brain just wouldn’t shut down. I wasn’t even perseverating over anything in particular; the gears just wouldn’t stop turning. Thanks to the insomnia and the fact that I needed to go in to work early, I ended up running through my Tuesday on approximately 3.5 hours of sleep and two shots of espresso and crashing by 8pm.

This is my life: learning to be a (sort of) responsible adult, discovering new and exciting depths to my capacity for nerdiness (and probably disappointing my relatives in the process), and never knowing exactly what to expect from my brain. It’s an adventure, and not always grand…but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.