The Paige and The Pendulum

Hello bloggy, my old nemesis. At least we meet again, although this time - we fight to the death! Have at you!

Sorry, just trying to spice things up.

So for the past few months I’ve been pretty dead set on transition and I’d lost most of my male identity. Then over the course of the past couple weeks I’ve been in guy mode more and more. A lot more. My therapist told me last night that my gender “pendulum” is swinging back the other way again, but I already knew that.

In a way I’m disappointed. As I’ve mentioned in the past, when I’m in female mode I can’t imagine that I’d ever want to be a man and I get rather obsessed with the idea of transition. I really thought my gender identity had stabilized enough that I could make a flexible plan in regards to my future, but it seems that’s not going to be the case. I had already decided that I needed to put the brakes on everything and to slow down until I was in a better place mentally before I came to this realization, so it doesn’t effect anything too profoundly which is good. Still I’m a little bummed out.

A little bummed out vs. profoundly depressed, which is what’s happened to me when going into this state of mind in the past. Now that I’ve been through this a few times I think I’m getting a little better at dealing with it. Like riding a wave instead of letting it crash over my head, pulling me underwater. I can’t control my gender changes and I may never be able to. That’s something that I’m going to just have to accept. Maybe down the road something will change, but for the time being I have to learn to accept the fact that my gender may never be static.

Acceptance is the big word here. I need to accept that being bigendered is an intrinsic part of who I am, and I have to accept myself for whom and what I am, regardless of what gender I happen to be. I think I’m taking my first steps towards that, but I have a long way to go. Still, I can tell that this is getting easier over time and that’s a reassuring feeling.

Elsewhere in the news I start DBT this Thursday afternoon. Group therapy quite frankly scares the shit out of me so I’m both looking forward to it and being terrified at the same time. Perhaps if I could combine those two emotions I’d just feel indifferent about the whole thing?  Paige Abendroth - emotional alchemist.  Eh, maybe not.

Someone relatively new to the forums over at Bigender.net had made a post yesterday about how she felt like being bigender and what she's currently going through, and that same post could have been written by me maybe nine months ago.  It's amazing how we as Bigender people share this unique experience, one that the average person could never really understand.  Heck, I don't even completely understand it myself.  It made me a little happy to think about how far I've come and it made me a little sad, to see that someone else is just starting to go through it. 

Yesterday evening I was on the phone with someone and she asked me to describe how I know when I'm a woman vs. when I'm male.  I said something like, "if you took away all of your physical characteristics how would you know you're still female?  It's something that you just KNOW."  Your average cisgendered person never thinks about this stuff because they don't have too.  But if you fall somewhere under the trans-umbrella you become hyper-aware of your gender(s).  (Or of course you can have no gender at all for that matter.)  

I afraid that when I tell people I'm bigendered they're not going to understand and they'll assume I'm a cross-dresser.  (Not that there's anything wrong with being a cross dresser mind you.)  I don't "pretend" I'm a woman for fun, there's nothing sexual about it and I don't dress in frilly pink dresses and prance around the house.  (But again, not like there's anything wrong with doing that if it's your cup of tea.)  I wear the same types of cloths in both modes - a black shirt with a band logo on it and blue jeans.  Whoo-hoo.  They are of course male and female tee-shits and blue-jeans though, and that's just to make myself feel comfortable.  

I guess that part of accepting myself will be accepting that other people don't accept me.  That's something to think about.  I think that's a good spot to end this entry, have fun and take care.

Paige