Such a lazy mouse. Nothing to say? This lack of writing is not a good omen. Well, something has come up to bring me back to the keyboard. A ghost of the past has come to haunt. It's no news that my transition came with a great loss of family and friends. Besides my three children, I can count on one hand the family members who stayed supportive to me and still have fingers left. The rest let me fall off the cliff and ran off before they could hear the thud of my impact with the rock bottom. I didn't have the energy to feel betrayed or to even wonder why at the time. Transition rips you open and turns you inside out, with everything you've ever felt laying bare on the grimy sidewalk, but you know that already or you wouldn't be reading my blog. It gets ugly. Now, after ten years, one of the detached has chosen to contact via social media with no explanation as to why. Just jumping into conversation as if I'd lost the memory of the last decade. Is this a probe? . . . to see if I am amicable to this re-connection? . . . do I hold no grudge? . . . is it "water under the bridge" and all that? I'm perplexed and confounded. So far, I've been cordial in my response but I find myself becoming bothered by it. My survival of the aforementioned ugly mess was aided by my acceptance of loss. Those who let me fall made that choice in their own interest and fear of the repercussions that come with an alliance to a social outcast as I was. Done and done. I survived, eventually, with the aid of true friends and allies and I now have more good people around me than ever before in my life. and a cat. always a cat. Suitable for a Jedi-Mouse. I think that an explanation of why should precede a reaching out a decade later by someone who was willing to watch you die. Yes?, no?, maybe? . . . I'll ask the cat.

Arise from the ashes, Jedi-Mouse. It's time to talk again. My left big toe doesn't bend anymore due to having been broken twice from surfing incidents. It's only a minor pain but it's a constant reminder of a past life. I went to a transgender support event today and lasted twenty minutes before I had to leave out of boredom, frustration, disgust and a heaping pile of self-hatred. I went to support a friend who is a comedienne and was scheduled to perform but I couldn't last until her slotted set. I sat through an unbearably trivial dissertation by various tran-men prose which left me depressed beyond measure. That's too many "I"s so let's get to the matter. Walking home in the rain, realizing yes, I was tripping on a mushroom cap because I thought it would put me in a better place to endure the distaste I was about to feel but it had the opposite effect making me feel by the power of ten the self-hatred I have for being transgender. It's a hard thing to admit but long overdue. It took several snifters of bourbon and four episodes of "House" before I could even start writing. Not all of me has survived transition. The warrior mouse lives on as well as the artist, the musician, the jester . . . but the person is broken. Now "she", she is terrified, alone and self-destructive. Too many regrets, too many losses. Land locked and drying out like a beached dogfish. I can't smell the ocean anymore. I can't find the me that was suppose to be there. What a freakish thing to live a fifty year lie, to be an actor and watching life play out through false eyes. "What a world, what a world" was the cry as the life of fifty years of experience that equaled ten ordinary lives dissolved into a pool of water. "Where are my tits!" cries Myra Breckinridge waking up from surgery . . . All my references are ancient by today's trans standards. I won't be on the cover of Time. Amazon won't be showing a series of my life, however similar to today's version. My life is over. What's left is a remnant, a ghost of a life that had so much potential in it that it can carry on without the person in it. I'll play that out, whatever is left, until it too dissolves.

Another long absence.

I must be the poster child for clinical depression for skipping time in such fashion. Hibernation is not just for the bears. As much as I try to be part of the daily social routine I cannot. Why is it so important to be seen as a functioning normal human when you are anything but. Yet, my dark side is no one's problem but my own so why do I wish to relate it to anyone? Good question. I write to prove I am? Maybe but I think there is more to it. I think it is an attempt at self-healing, to expunge bad humors without having the aid of leeches. So, in fact, I'm writing to myself. A fact-check memo to a self-loathing entity. Poor mouse, courageous to the end. Fighting the good fight yet never gaining an inch. What is the limit to altruism? Everyone has unfulfilled needs. Does that mean it is my place to aid everyone I come in contact with? Hardly, I think, yet everyone affects me. Empathy is a curse. The mercenary has it right, pay up front. Self-preservation is the only raison-d'etre. There lies the real problem, that self-preservation thing. Shall we rehash the details?; I am a transsexual mouse, knowing from as long as I can remember that I was born in the wrong body. Timing for that was terrible, society was an absolute binary - man, woman,(preferably white). A boy-child expressing feminine thoughts was to be beaten or worse. I learned to adapt, becoming what they (parents) wanted to see but never bonding as a real person. Such a burden to play the role of the opposite until it became the norm. What a ruse to believe in the actor knowing all along you are insane. Until I was fifty years old I played that role and so abruptly the play ended. A few messy years sorting out the what-am-Is, losing everyone you loved and who you imagined loved you, not to mention everything you worked for, then being summarily dismissed. If there is a place below "rock-bottom" I certainly lived there for a couple of years then slowly climbed back up to street level society. I used what talents I retained from before the fall to build a new persona and found a way to maintain a poverty existence but never able to afford the changes I need to feel human again. In raw terms, no one understands a woman with a penis or even wants to, let alone fight for change in a medical system that sees no need in caring for such a person. I'm getting tired of this life. No, I don't need an intervention, I need a change of location. It's time to go back to the ocean. I need the smells and sounds of shore life. That's what I'll live for.