Angel’s Tears Fall

 

Angel’s Tears Fall

By Kira A. Moore

 

 

Silent, 

Angel’s tears fall,

White,

As innocence,

Each,

Unique and pristine.

 

Expected and Dreaded: New Year Resolutions

Calvin and Hobbes is one of my all time favorites….

 

Since this post is going to be dated for New Year’s Eve I think it’s time to list my resolutions for the new year. My first is to get my act together and get rid of all the clutter in my life. For far too long I have been a pack rat, holding on to all sorts of things thinking I would discover I needed whatever as soon as I threw it away. I know this is due to my having lost everything once and not wanting to go through such a traumatic event again, but I have reached a point where I see this is nothing more than another way to cling to past I have no claim to any more. So much of the stuff which seems to fill every bit of available space are just reminders of a life I am in the process of leaving behind, both mentally and physically. Simply put, it is time for it to go.

My second and most important is to stop smoking. It is an expensive, pointless, nasty habit I picked up so long ago I forgot why I even started in the first place, but I’m sure it was stupid. I have picked up some of the electronic cigarettes and I am going to use them to break this and be free.

My third is pretty cliche, but I am going to try anyway, which is to get back into shape and loose some weight. I have already lost five pounds and I want to loose about thirty more before Summer. This means walking more and even climbing the stairs at work. I have been wanting to get into Yoga and Tai Chi as well and a new year is as good a time as any.

And my final resolution? To continue becoming the person I was meant to be no matter who that is in the end.

Thoughts From A Day Out

 

Sorry it took so long for me to get this post written and up, it’s been a long day and things have settled to the point where I could take the time to think about something to write. Most of the day was spent out shopping for shoes and boots for the boys who, it seems, wear through them at an incredible rate. Then after returning home my oldest had an accident which resulted in a storm window being broken and me having to clean up large shards of glass… which was accompanied by me having to reassure him accidents happen and he wasn’t in any trouble. Not very conductive to writing, but well, life does these things from time to time.

While out in the stores, I made a point of avoiding drooling over things I would have loved to buy, though I did see some things I wouldn’t mind having in my own closet. The problem was it made me realize something about myself… I have very expensive taste. Everything I saw induced sticker shock even when something was on sale.  A pair of cute boots marked half off and the tag still said it was over $200… are you kidding me? I just can’t see spending that kind of change on a single pair of boots, I don’t care how cute they are…. then again, if I had the money burning a hole in my pocket, I just might…. and live in regret for weeks. I saw other things, a darling button down top which was as soft as down, a pair of pants I just knew would look great on me… but again, I can’t see spending almost $60 on a single pair, 30% off or no 30% off…. I thought the after Christmas sales were suppose to be awesome… maybe if you don’t mind maxing out a credit card or two… This is the reason I decided a long time ago to shop thrift stores during the winter and garage sales during the summer. I can find great things I really love for pennies on the dollar. I wonder though, does this mean I have to turn in my girl card? 

I did have one small setback though, turns out my one ear piercing has closed, so now I am going to need to have it redone… which sort of sucks. 

Another little minor glitch was my feelings as we were out and about… I was pretty much in guy mode and watching all the people around me just living their lives, free to be themselves got to me a little. Here I was having to act like something I’m not because so many of them wouldn’t be able to accept who I really am… I found it not so much depressing as I did sad. I know the thought of it not being fair crossed my mind, but I also know life isn’t fair and I just had to suck it up and deal with it. After all, it isn’t as if they did anything to me personally. 

I do want to end this on a positive note so I’ll mention the none thing I did get today, something A bought for me… 

These are Joe Boxer Women’s Eden Plush Bootie Slippers and they are divine! Plush on the outside and cushy on the inside. They keep my feet nice and toasty without being too hot. I am planning on wearing these all winter  and I’ll be smiling the whole time. 🙂

Just A Thought…

 

I had to take a second and add something to todays thoughts.

I know it seems as if much of what I share is dark, full of doubt and self recrimination. That I live under a perpetual cloud… Sometimes I think so myself. The truth is, Much of my thoughts through out the day have little or nothing to do with gender or being Trans*, it is only when I sit down to write a post that I really take the time to consider all of the thoughts and emotions which so often sit below the surface. That isn’t to say I don’t have my times… the days when something really bothers me and I just can’t shake free. I really do have way too many of those and they drive A crazy, especially when I get into a real snit and refuse to talk about what is bothering me for hours on end. She tells me I’m being ‘moody’. 

The point I want to make here is, more often than not, once I have written something, a post here or to my journal, then I am able to move beyond it. For me this is a way to deal with issues, big or small. A way for me to get them out of my head when I can’t sit down and talk with someone. Often, once they have been written down I all but forget what it was which was bothering so much and if I want to remember why it was so darned important, I have to go back and read it again. It doesn’t mean all of them just disappear, just that much of the emotion attached to them is blunted and I can deal with it in the background of my thoughts without them dragging me into a downward spiral of ever darker thoughts. 

Of course, this makes things look rather bad to those who read all of this and I understand how you must wonder how I keep from putting a gun in my mouth. Well now you know. I talk… and talk and talk some more… or in this case, write. The effect is the same.

The Darker Side Of Me

 

I made a point to keep busy today, not giving myself time to do more than think of the next thing I needed to do. It’s funny in a sad way, but the truth is, I have spent so much time living in my own head and now there are times I’m afraid to go there. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprised, I have been told so many time I over think things when I should just let them go and try to live in the moment. It isn’t easy though, when you have been pretty much alone, afraid to tell anyone your true thoughts and feelings, been afraid to let anyone really get close out of fear of being rejected, mocked, abandoned…

The problem is when there is nothing left to do, nothing to keep your mind occupied. What do you do when you are left with nothing but your thoughts? I suppose you do what I have done so many times, you try and find something, anything to fill the quiet; music, a movie or the television. You read a book or go online and find things to read because your terrified of what awaits you in the depths of your own thoughts. When the understanding your alone is a tidal wave rushing in, an unstoppable force which is going to crush you.

I have another week before I see my therapist again, the first session of a new year. Thinking on it, I wish I hadn’t waited as long as I did to start seeing someone… I wish she could have seen me in those first insane days when I thought I was going crazy. I wish she could have seen… could know what it was like. I have spoken of it, even gave her the address of this blog and asked her to read those early posts, even though they begin about a month after I first came out, still, they reflect so much of what I had already been dealing with… I don’t know if she has visited or not, she has never said… I know, despite everything i have already spoken to her about, there is a barrier to fully opening up and letting her, or anyone, see the depths… I am not just afraid of the reaction I might get, I am afraid of myself.

Fear… this is what awaits me in the depths of my thoughts. I am afraid of who I was, of who I had become. I am afraid of who I will become. I am afraid of what this new year is going to bring. So much has happened already, what more do I face in the days and weeks to come? The very thought of it makes me sick to my stomach… I understand when people tell me there is a time when I may have to let everything go in order to find myself, to find a way to live a full life as myself. That in the end, everything I have fought so hard to keep might slip through my fingers anyway. That everything I have done to this point might, in the end, prove to have been pointless, like trying to stop the sands of time even as they slip through my fingers…. Something I have not discussed before is that I lost everything once… my friends, my home, every possession…. at the end, I had nothing left but the clothes on my back… It was when I was in the military, when my life fell apart and I collapsed into a depression I can’t fully describe even all these years later. Life meant nothing, I meant nothing, I could see no future, no way out. So many things were happening at once I just couldn’t deal with them. Someone I thought was a friend totaled my car and left me holding the bag. Two room mates robbed me and left me with nothing but the bills. My job performance had fallen to the point where I was facing loosing rank. I had no one to help me, no where to turn. In the end I went AWOL and ended up living on the streets, living from moment to moment, sleeping where I could, eating from the trash just to keep from starving, though more than once I wondered why the hell I was trying to survive at all. Before it was over, I would take the last of the money I managed to scrape together from one last check which I got because it came out before my pay was frozen, and tried to not only drink myself to death but overdosing on sleeping pills just to make sure I never woke up again…. Yet here i am, all these years later, having somehow survived only to find myself once again facing loosing everything that has ever really mattered to me, and I will not lie, it is a thousand times worse than anything I could have imagined. I risk loosing everything again.

For the moment I can hold things together. For how long? That is the question isn’t it? Is it better to continue to work at maintaining things as they are or should I give up, even knowing it will tear me apart? 

But this isn’t just about me…

A and the kids will see their lives torn apart as well and I have to live with the knowledge it is happing because of me. I have been told by A and T as well as others that it would be better if this happened because then at least I would have a chance at happiness, that they might have a rough time at first, but they would recover and rebuild their lives and this would some how be the best solution, yet I can’t see it being possible. How could I ever be happy knowing what I had done? How could I live with the knowledge that the decisions I made had done so much damage? No, I can’t do it. Yet what choices do I have left to me? I don’t know…

I just don’t know…

The Sleepwalker

image found at: iglimpseandsparkle.tumblr.com

 

 

Before we know it the new year will be upon us and it seems this is the traditional time when everyone and their sister is doing a “Year In Review”. You see them every where, online, on the television, magazines and even news papers if you still read one of those. They cover everything you can imagine, some informative, some funny, and some somber. From new gadgets, news stories, important people, and of course list after list of those who we lost over the past 356 days.]

I’m not going to do such a post, there are so many already and I’m sure they cover anything and everything I might want to list myself. But I am taking a few moments to think back and, taking a breath, seeing just how much things have changed. I spoke of this yesterday, how difficult it is to see personal changes, and that is an issue. However, it doesn’t take much to realize the fact that at the time I couldn’t see past all the things raging through my mind, to the point I often couldn’t see more than an hour at a time. I don’t know how many times I was surprised by the time that had past, not just at home but at work a well. There is a song by Photek called “Sleepwalking” which when I first listened seemed to speak to how i had been living for so many years… 

Three months is a long time,

If you don’t like where you are…

Three months is forever,

When the sun don’t shine at all…

You might be alive or you just

Breathe to pass the time…

But your so lucky,

So lucky to have it all…

Someday your gonna realize,

You’ve been sleepwalkin’ through it all,

You’ve been sleepwalkin’…

To get back home…

Someday your gonna realize,

You’ve been sleepwalkin’ through it all,

You’ve been sleepwalkin’ through it all,

To get back home…

 

Many things have happened this past year, some good, some bad, some unexpected, yet the the one thing I will always take with me is the understanding that more than anything, I have a awoken from a long period in which I was sleepwalking. Just going through the motions of living without having lived at all. 

I find I am awake now, so much more aware of what it means to be truly alive. 

A Year Now Behind Me

I have been avoiding posting anything too personal for some time. It has been partly out of fear, partly because some of the things are just too personal. Some of the reason is because this is the anniversary of my coming out. I say this week because I cannot remember what day it happened, just that it took place between Christmas and New Years. Everything was such a chaotic mess I don’t think I even knew what day it was from one to the next. What happened really isn’t important any more, but I have been facing this time with more than a little trepidation.

Something which has been bothering me more often than I care to admit is the feeling as if, when all is said and done, nothing has changed. That I am still the same as I have been last year… ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. I know this is impossible of course, we all change, still it often doesn’t feel that way. It is like those times when we still feel as we did as teenagers, then one day you look in the mirror and realize you’ve gotten old and wonder when it happened. The same is true of personal change. Take a minute and listen to a group of teens talking, and after you scoop up your brain and pour it back into your head, realize you use to talk the same way. We all change, like it or not, for better or worse. Nothing stays the same, though too often, when we think of ourselves, how we view ourselves, how we see our own actions, our way of seeing the world, too often we find that we seem to have not changed at all.

These are the kind of thoughts I have been struggling with. I know in my mind I am not the same person I was even a few months ago, but my heart doesn’t believe it.

For several weeks now these things have been going through my mind and I have been fighting against an ever increasing weight of hopelessness. It seemed as though this past year was nothing more than a fever dream, just a product of my imagination. I just couldn’t see for myself what, if anything, had changed. I know part of it has been the fact there has been such a small outward change, my nails, my hair, the clothing I wear. Knowing the way others interact with me hasn’t changed. Only one person who knows me in the real world has used my real name… I know these things are meaningless, they do not affect who I truly am, who I know myself to be. I don’t require the validation of another to know who I am… Yet I crave that validation, that recognition. I desperately want to be seen for who I am and not finding that hurts more than I want to admit even to myself. So many times I have fought back tears of frustration and anger… and yes, sorrow and pain. To hear the old name, the name of an illusion, of a falsehood, being spoken by lips that have professed their love for me, tears something deep inside.

It makes everything feel as if it isn’t real… a dream dreamed in the night and forgotten in the morning. As if it is nothing at all, as if I am nothing. My identity meaningless.

It had lead to me doubting myself, my thoughts and feelings. My very understanding of myself.

As I said, this week marks an important turning point in my life, one which forever changed the course I follow and yet, it also marks a time of loss… That old life is forever beyond my grasp. I will never be that person who existed before one decisive, shattering moment when I finally admitted a truth about myself which is beyond anything i could have ever thought possible.

….

I am about to turn this into a long post and for that I apologize, now that I have started to talk about this, I can’t stop… not yet.

….

For the last year I have been struggling with myself… No, not just struggling, I have been at war with myself. Fighting against a lifetime of tying myself into knots trying to be what everyone told I was suppose to be, of ripping myself to pieces fighting against the thoughts and feelings which went against everything I have ever been taught,… had beaten into me mentally, physically, and emotionally by those around me, friends, family, the whole damn world. I was raised to believe everything I have known in my heart to be true was a lie, a sin, that I was an abomination destined for the fires of hell. I was taught that because of my reproductive system I was to be one thing and one thing only and to go against that was one of the worst things I could ever do. I was wrong, I was deceived, I was sick and twisted and warped. This is what I have had to stand against. This is what has reduced me to tears more times that I could ever count. This is what has broken my heart.

I know over this past year I have been seen to be going in circles, to be repeating the same things ever and over again. So many of the things I have posted seem to be saying the same things with different words and I am sorry it has been this way. I am sorry I haven’t been able to show everyone this wonderful, breathtaking journey of self discovery and understanding. I wish with all my heart things could have been different. I wish I could stand here today and show you with pictures and words how I have blossomed into this wonderful, happy woman who stands before the world in a all her glory, proud of who and what she is, walking in the light of day, self assured.

But I can’t.

Even if there weren’t others who would be impacted by such a decision on my part, I cannot say with certainty I would be in such a place. I still have too far to go, still have too many wounds to heal. There are so many years of self deception and lies yet to be overcome. I have walked in the real world as myself. Yes, once, but I have done it. I will do it again. I don’t known when, but I will.

I spoke in the beginning of this post of not seeing how I have changed. On Christmas eve I was fighting with this issue as much as with feeling house bound, so when there was reason to go out to get some things we were low on before all the stores closed, A and I went for a drive. It was a chance for us to talk without the children being within ear shot and it gave me a chance to get these thoughts out. A told me she has seem a difference in me, that despite what I might think, I have changed and it is noticeable. I didn’t ask for any examples, it wasn’t something I really wanted or needed to know… it was enough to know that I have changed, for the better I hope, though I am sure if it wasn’t, she would have told me long before now.

One thing which came out of this was that she still can’t call me Kira… doesn’t know if she ever can… I can’t say this came as a surprise. I have known for a long time now that this was the case…. but I am not going to lie, it hurts me deeply. She is the only person in the world I wish could accept me for who I am and she can’t…. I don’t know where this is going to leave us in the long run and I simply cannot think about it without loosing control of my emotions….

In the end, this may be my greatest fear, that in gaining myself I am going to loose everything which has any meaning in my life. That I will end up alone, with nothing but regrets… I suppose it doesn’t matter, I can’t put the genie back into the bottle. I was set on this course on one fateful night a year ago and nothing I can say or do now can change that.

Tonight

 

Tonight

By Kira A. Moore

 

Darkness falls,

As stars rise,

An ethereal connection,

Between your heart,

And mine.

The Night After Christmas

 

I hope everyone had a great holiday with many memories to carry you through the coming year.

 

This is going to be rather short as I am tired… happy, but tired. It was a good day fro the kids and I think they are happy with their gifts, which is really what is important to me. For me, this was a time I will be able to look back at with a smile.

Happy Holidays!

 

Wishing you and yours a Very Happy Holiday!

Kira