In Other's Words, Chapter 1: Melissa

EDITOR'S NOTE: I have not been hacked. At least, I don't think I've been hacked. I do not feel hacked. Therefore, I have not been hacked.

And now for something completely (maybe just somewhat) different....

"Shannyn Comes Alive" will not be presented this evening.

Hi, I'm Melissa [Melissa_1964 to some of you]. Shannyn asked me to contribute a guest blog. And this is it. She regretted the decision immediately but decided to go with it anyway out of stubbornness, a quality she possesses in abundance. I admire her for this along with a number of other things for which she seems to want to deflect, either out of modesty or because the way I keep asking for autographs is awkward and she hopes I don't turn out to be a stalker.

When I asked her about a topic for this post, Shannyn told me I know what she's about, and that's certainly true. She writes moving and honest essays about her journey with gender issues. I understand her at a basic level because I have also been on that journey since I was in middle school. Sometimes, though, it seems more like a wrestling match. 

And by wrestling match, I don't mean those things where two well-muscled guys in onesies put their arms around each other and try to flip the other guy onto his back - as beautiful a homoerotic metaphor that might be - I mean the type of wrestling match where people ambush each other with chairs to the back of the head and leap off the corner buckle to drop an Atomic Pile Driver on an opponent who is writhing in apparent crippling pain. I mean cage matches. Dramatic. Entertaining, Violence.

Mind you, I'm not sure you want to read about how often it sucks to be me. After all, it probably sucks to be you, too, and if it doesn't maybe you don't want me bringing you down with my negative waves. Of course, it probably sucks to be most people. Life can just suck.

However, if the Three Stooges taught me anything, besides the fact that the human body is remarkably resilient when struck repeatedly with a two-by-four, it's that pain is funny. Don't let anyone tell you anything different. Well, you probably can't stop them from telling you anything different, but don't listen to them. Okay, maybe you have to listen to them to know what they're saying,, but my point is that It is it's okay to laugh. 

I think if I couldn't laugh at myself, I would be a casualty. I don't want to be a casualty. I think the other main options, for me at least, are either self-pity or simmering anger at the injustice of it all. I don't want those things, either. So, I laugh.

Anyway, there was a time when I devoured any writing I could find by trans women, especially "transition" blogs, eager to read about someone who felt the same way I do who emerged from the other side as a confident attractive woman, accepted by the world no differently than any other. Sometimes these stories had happy endings. Sometimes they had ambiguous endings. But more often than not, they never ended because life is the journey and all that. 

For me, though, like the Masked Assassin sneaking up on Mr. Wrestling II with a chair, life had other plans..

Okay, I know it's all well and good to put it off on "life," like on Chopped where they say, "for these reasons we had to chop you." No, don't try to dodge responsibility. You didn't have to chop me. You wanted to because you thought all three other appetizers made of Mountain Dew, raw oysters, banana peppers and Twinkies were better than mine. I'm last and I have to thank you for saying I sucked and do the walk of shame. 

And like Alex Guarnaschelli finding a croquette sadly lacking in some kind of sauce, I realize I have made a decision. ("If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" - Thank you, Neil Peart.) Perhaps not as abrupt a decision as Alex's, but a slow ongoing multi-decade one made up of many little decisions. I have always known that my friends and family would never accept it if I came out and transitioned and their opinions matter. Yes, there are all sorts of people in the trans community insisting that they don't, but they do matter -- to me. For me, there is more to life than gender.

And here's the stinger. As I thought about myself, I realized that I am truly transgendered, by which I mean I think of myself is as a woman, not as a man with a female side or a "non-binary" gender. While I think it might be easier if that were so, I realize I can't really know that. But to fully embrace who I am, it means to transition. To become on the outside what I am on the inside. And that hasn't happened. 

I dress at home (now I am separated) and live my life as a woman on the internet. The tension has almost certainly led to the dissolution of my marriage and my difficulties in relationships. I continually live within a tug-of-war between my inner self and my outer self. I know that I am not alone.

Every decision has a downside, including the non-decision decisions I have made up to now. Like many closeted trans, I have "purged", as in getting rid of all of my female things more than once. Twice actually. Currently, my things are sealed in a plastic tub stored in a friend's spare room. (This is the only friend who knows, or has ever known, as far I know. If anyone else has figured it out they have respected my privacy). So I guess that's kind of a semi-purge. Maybe two and a half purges. I miss my things. 

I might change my mind, although I realize the clock is ticking. There was a point twenty years ago when I came close. There was another a couple of years when I came even closer. Who knows?

Anyway, that's me in 2019. Thank you for reading, whether or not you got this far and read me thanking you. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming, after this important message.