“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” - Henry Van Dyke, Poet

One year in and it seems at once a lifetime and an instant. I suppose this must be what Buddhists reference, when they speak of the eternal  that is inherent in the 'now' ... no past, no future, just the infinite moment you inhabit. I get to share this brief eternal moment with a love I never imagined. How can I use words to detail this feeling. They are wholly inadequate.

One year and everything is still new: every day I discover something more about lovies, something unexpected, something small or large - in either case, something that fits, another corner of them full of wonder and bright.

For all our marvelous differences, we hold so many things in common between us ... it would take a library of notes to cover them all. However, there is one that speaks louder to me of late: a love of trees with twisted limbs. Not the perfectly strong specimens that many marvel at. Not for us the tall, powerful,straight paragons of  perfect form. There is more strength, truly, in limbs that array themselves haphazardly, flowing to suit the environment they occupy. I always recall a Margaret Atwood poem when I see such. The poem is Georgia Beach and the lines that I recall follow:

"Near the water there are skinless
trees, fluid, grayed by weather,
in shapes of agony, or you could say
grace or passion as easily.
In any case twisted."

Which is the point of life ... everything is a perspective. When I ponder how my own has shifted since knowing lovies, I am left staggered. One year and I find them as familiar as they are new - like the smell of rain on warm soil, vivid in mind ... but brand new each time, a familiar first time experience. The apparent contradiction is not there, not if you understand shifting perspectives.

In poetry and art there is a term that explains finding the rarer view in a common experience - 'Breaking an Eye' - it means exactly what is says: you break your view, see things from a new direction. In so doing you discover something profound.

Happy Anniversary lovies ... thank you for breaking my eye.

Love you beyond all this

Mwah ...

A few days beyond the latest anniversary and I'm still besotted. I don't frequent my usual online haunts with as much regularity, given I'm working hard toward funds. The visit to Hungary is getting closer - yay - and after that we'll seriously start sorting their moving here.

Given our respective embedded issues, we both often pause and wonder how we'll make this work. These are only brief moments and, in the end, it's obvious how it will all work out: because we talk about everything. If either of us has a darker moment, we don't keep it to ourselves. Instead, we get it out there between us and, soon after, we're all happy and relaxed again, having talked everything through, soothed away fears and, most of all, held each other in love.

10 months in and it's still wonderful. We fit so well. This is my first real relationship as 'me' - where I'm not hiding in fear or confusion or shame. It makes such a difference. Hindsight really is 20/20 - if I'd known how good this could feel, I'd have never stayed hidden and afraid as I did. I wouldn't have hurt someone I cared for as much as I did.

I never really apologised to the ex, or maybe I got close once, but I never quite made it. It's only recently that I figured out why. It's rather pathetic really. If one manages a sincere apology, then the other might forgive and ... back then, I hated myself too much to allow that. Like I said, it's completely stupid and self-absorbed.

I'm just happy she got a life, a good one, with someone that cares for her ... someone to care for. Not for my sake, because it isn't about me - shock horror. I'm just honestly glad that she made herself a new life. A good life.

And that's all we can really hope for, isn't it? A good life. Seems I have found mine too. If anyone had asked me a year ago - I'd never have seen this coming. It's washed the last, faded, stains of shame from me ... the way she accepts me as I am, for exactly who I am. The fact that I can be myself, without fear or shame or self-loathing, prolly helps some. I guess, after the ex, I decided to strive toward the honest life. To stop hiding and to push into my true self, regardless how difficult, how frightening. So any potential interest, would see all of me and make their decision based on that.

So here I am, and such a someone has come - and they see all of me and want all of me. I know I want all of them.

It's a good feeling, the honest life thing. If only sooner ... but then, if wishes were horses eh? You can't change the past. It's an empty mirror - you'll never find yourself looking into it. I can't fix what has gone before. I can only do better in the time to come.


Which should be quite the enterprise, given who I'll have beside me, sharing that time.

I love you babes. Life is full of possibility again. Possibility and wonder.

Kate Out

This is a happy post. It holds a sting in the tail but that's okay because it is a sting I choose. If presented with several bad choices, you choose the least bad one and, in doing so, you still have a choice.

I have not posted for some time. I've been busy in love and working myself ragged to get extra funds. Mainly to visit my love in Sept/Oct but also to replace two computers that died in wondrous synchronicity. Without them I could not work - and work is funds hence the need.

I got there, computers are sorted and I have the funds for the travels. All good.

However, circumstance intervened on my loves end and now she will find staying there for too long quite difficult. Once here, expenses will be a lot lower due to us sharing them and all will be good again.

So we decided to bring forward the big move. We'd discussed it before and were planning to have her emigrate early to mid next year. Due to her changed situation - and the fact that we decided it was silly to wait more than necessary - we thought it'd be easier for her to come back with me after my visit.

So we've thoroughly investigated visa requirements and the process etc. Good grief - how naive I was. The process is very involved and lengthy and expensive. It seems, we need to start proceedings now, in order to be able to have her move toward the end of the year or the start of next.

We have to coordinate the movement of her cats and egads, the travel is expensive but the quarantine is way beyond that.

So now I have to settle in and work even harder to sort the dollars. The total will likely be between 5 and 10 grand. It's going to be a hard slog but we're determined to get there. Or, rather, we're determined to get her here. *bounces*

If we were a 'regular' gay couple - as in, I was post-transition, with my legal gender change, we'd have to apply for an interdependency visa. This would mean I'd have to travel to Hungary and live with her for a minimum of 12 months before we'd be eligible.

I can't do that at the moment, with transition ongoing (and I get public health care access here) and my work/clients all being here . I also have a lot more furniture and more cats, so, basically, it'd cost me a vast sum more to move to her.

We're both okay with this - and, because I am pre-transition, we have another option. It is called the "Prospective Marriage" Visa. Since I am still, legally, male - we have this option. There is, of course, a catch: It means we have to get married (which I have no issue with) but that means, once I have completed transitioning, I will be denied my "Gender Recognition" certificate. As far as the country is concerned, I will still be male - despite my anatomy and appearance. I'm willing to do this, however. To be with the love of my life ... there is no question.

Of course - the bureaucratic idiocy of it all is - if I was post-transition and got married where gay marriage was recognised, we could migrate and my gender would remain recognised as female. Why? Simply because Australia, while not allowing gay marriage within its borders, recognises it if another country/state does. So if a gay couple, for example, get married in Norway, it is recognised as marriage in Australia.

Circumstance does not allow us to wait the years for that possibility - so here we are.

For now, we will sort the immediate concerns - get her here and get married. Later, some years down the track after my transition, we might look at other options: such as getting an annulment, grabbing my gender recognition cert, travel to a state in the US of A where gay marriage is recognised, and then remarrying and getting a new visa. Then I'll, apparently, be allowed my gender recognition certificate and a married status all at once.

This is a ludicrous state of affairs. I have never felt more discriminated against in my life. I should not complain too much I suppose. A 'regular' gay couple can't marry in Oz at all. I can and that opens another visa option for me.

There is a saying I hold close - love it dearly - that goes "It's a good thing life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all the bad things that happen to us in life."

All up though, this is mostly a good thing. I just wish it didn't come with such a sacrifice, but then what would love be without, at least, a little.

I'm not sad. I'm angry at a system that is so messed up for all but straight people. I'm also terribly ashamed of my country. I've never felt that as strongly as I do right now.

We just have to figure out how to sort the funds in a smaller window than we expected. That, combined with how much more expensive it all is than anticipated, well ... just another challenge is all.

But, at the end of the day, they won't defeat us. We'll be married/together for the rest of our lives and that's the important bit.

Love wins today.
Kate Out.

Please ignore our previous wailings - it's been a bleh few days and has leaked into things it should not have. :)

We shall soon resume our irregular schedule.

Kate Out

Okay ... so fine! - the world known as my readers are not big French and Saunders fans! Media Illiterates! :P

So moving on, to something that struck me a week or so back, with the inadvertent help of a housemate. Hehe - or entirely advertent perhaps - I'm not, despite some rumours, a mind reader.

Anywho. I was explaining the recent depression stuff and how it felt as though they'd pulled back. How we all got along so well and then it seemed to stall. I did make sure to add that I knew it was perception more than reality, but a very real perception - warped by my trust issues - all the same.

So, without recounting the entire conversation, which went for some time - which was good in itself, putting many paranoid issues to sleep again - well something else came out of the talk.

Not so much directly and the irony is it was something I already knew; something I've told others before. I'd forgotten it - becoming too settled in my issue to notice. Which is the heart of the whole point here really: I needed to take an honest view of myself and I did for a very long time. Recently it moved into facing things I'd previously been unable, or unwilling or both, to face. Most of you, having read for a while, will know about all that now.

In this, my view of honesty is simply acknowledging things. If I'm depressed or traumatised or whatever ... to admit it to myself. After all, one can only deal with an issue after it is known. You have to gather that awareness before progress can begin.

The problem though is ... once that is done ... the awareness is there. It isn't going anywhere - it won't fade or cease to be. That being the case, what point is there in continuing to focus too narrowly on it.

I suppose - the easiest way to explain it is - you have to look back to find the issues and so on .. but you then have to look forward in order to deal with them. Not in a 'glance-away' denial kind of thing; it is more ... avoiding being too embedded in the problem that you cease looking at the answers.

Quite an obvious and simple thing really. Took me some time to re-gather it though and now that I have ... things are turning well, if slowly. It is all about where and how you focus your mind. Keep that eye on the problem and the messages you send to the undermind are only going to reinforce that view. So you have to avoid that - instead ... know the problem but focus attention on solutions ... then, the messages being sent to the undermind will be ones that put apart the embedded views, allowing new growth to finally arrive.

I know I'm not there yet ... but I can see it now.

Kate Out

This article is interesting and the reactions/ratings on the comments, as to which are positively scored and which not - well that is encouraging. Some of the comments themselves are well reasoned and the whole got me thinking. This was a good thing at the time, given I was in a bit of a funk ... or sliding toward one.

So here I'll add a few of my own thoughts on the matter, given it's an issue that has always interested me and one that seems to be constantly revisited.

----------------------------
( The messy stuff ... )

Kate Out

Today is exactly 18 months since I started Hormones - yay boobies! :P

That is all .. other than to note, with hindsight, things happen faster than you expect - so when looking ahead, waiting, one should always remember that and make sure the message hits the patience gene :)

Kate Out

Mowahahaha!

Today I received the official letter from the Office of the Registrar General. I am now officially "Kate Sylvia Elizabeth <lastname>"

Weeeeeee.

That is all atm.

Kate Out

Well. In my last post I said I wasn't going to get ahead of myself. Good thinking that: last night - when I was still feeling better, calmer - in the smallest moment, an instant so small I cannot place it, everything fell again. I'm tired. Tired of being such a messed up, broken remnant of someone I once knew. THEY brought me this and I hate them so much. After two sleeps without nightmares they also returned, after I spent hours in a hole so deep I couldn't see out. I feel somewhere in between now. Mostly, I feel embarrassed and tired of showing the world fragile views of me. Tired of seeing them myself.

I'm just glad someone was there to reach for. In truth I was trying to distract myself, so I jump them in MSN, all cheerful. It didn't work and it wasn't long until they knew something was seriously out of sync. So they stayed and talked and listened and that's what a friend does. In my head I know that. I know I have friends but, in that deep place, cold and empty, it can be difficult to believe the things you know.

This person also passed bits to another - thoughts on where I was and how and why. I didn't mind - though on another day I might have. I didn't much care about anything at the time. It was a good thing in the end, because the other and myself then talked and I finally managed to put into words where the problem sits (beyond the obvious) and they 'got it.'

So I am taking that and using it here - to try to explain. Hopefully, this time it will make more sense.

At the heart of it is my trust issues - unfair of me really: I have to fight to trust anyone and, it is so hard, I can't get there alone. I need people to meet me half-way. I know a few get that - and they're just busy and things at times ... but I also know many stand back, because they fear putting more weight on me. They see this fragile Kate and don't want to push. Which is the opposite of what I need.

Fucked up eh? - a demented emotional recluse, with serious trust issues, expecting people to trust her - heh. You see, I know any real friendship takes trust from both sides - yet all I can offer is a best effort, and still I expect others to offer the same, without regard to what I have or haven't managed to give.

This other person, last night, also mentioned how, when I 'hide' it makes me seem more fragile. So they thought I wanted to have time to myself. No. A case of opposite land once again.

When I was here last time I fled, because I started to feel close to people and wasn't yet ready - my trust wasn't developed enough. I knew if I had stayed, I would likely have pushed people away, subconsciously or otherwise. So to avoid that and to find space to address this trust problem I had (still have, though not as profoundly). I left.

Now, however, I'm ready for friends - but some who knew me before treat me as the frail person I was then. I am not that old Kate anymore - the bad moments I have now are different. Generally due to feeling isolated - not, as they used to be, from getting too close and being unable to deal. Rather, these come from my desire to connect and my own inability to reach the whole distance, while too few realise I'm even reaching.

Twisted irony eh?

And new folk? - I have no idea. Some probably don't know how to approach, given things I've revealed. Others - probably just have lives: their own concerns and trials and distractions. It's okay - just not when I slip and everything seems deliberate. I KNOW it isn't. But knowing and getting the thorns inside to believe aren't the same thing.

Sometimes - main chat is worse that sitting outside - being in a crowd - I can't go there when I'm really in the bad place. Perceptions outweigh realities - all messed and tangled. So I avoid it for two reason. I am NOT hiding. Merely mitigating the twisted feelings I have at the time - not feeding them. That and avoiding hurting others. You get close to an edge and there is always the chance you'll collapse and just unload at people - people who don't deserve that.

So I'm not hiding because I am frail, I'm withdrawing because my view is wrong - and I know that. People can talk to me, PM, MSN, Priv - whatever. IF they want to. I'm not trying to find isolation. The fact I hang around should reveal that. I need contact. Want it even. I just can't get there myself - though I have tried repeatedly.

So I withdrew for a while - willing to have one on ones - to still talk. I assumed everyone understood that. I wasn't looking for alone - just ... not too much noise in one place - makes sense?

Then - to be honest - sometimes the pain is so much (legacy of the attack - not due to isolation) I want distraction but find it hard to reach out for it, because of the trust issues - they take so much effort to fight . I find myself unable to do that by myself. It's so difficult for me to reach out that way, to initiate any contact, discussion and so on. For one person I admire very much, this has added difficulties. Simply because they rarely initiate privs and such with anyone. They have that right. I'm not annoyed, more puzzled as to how to bridge a gap between one with trust issues and another happy to stand back. Almost amusing. Heh.

The simple fact that even my closest friends are difficult to reach for, that is a point of shame. It feels like saying "Oh, you are my friend but I just can't trust you" - and expecting them to go "Oh, Okay - sure thing." *sigh*

So,  in summary, trust issues hold me back from reaching for others when I need to most - and they hold back, thinking I want alone. Quite a self-made cell I have for myself.

I used to naively trust everyone - and the naivety is still there - but I can't follow through like I used to. Possibly a good thing, given where it led me in 2004. That was when they stole that ability. I used to not care, just wanting to move forward, but lately I find myself in a place from which I can easily HATE THEM.

So yeah - there it is the post that reveals how messed up and fragile I am - and asks for people to stop treating me as such. Yay for contradictions.

Kate Out

Just a note to the chat channels I frequent and those who cross-over from those to reading this: when you see me in a chatroom I will have "Silent" attached to my name.  I won't be talking in main. Period. I won't be priving anyone either but will will try to reply to any priv contact initiated away from my end. I don't know how long this will be. Could end tomorrow; could end months from now. It's nothing to do with anyone and everything to do with everyone. My nightmare induced lack of sleep; my slip back into the wrong hours, away from daylight and my apparent inability to deal with my perceptions rationally - all these are central. You might think I am retreating. Maybe I am; maybe I am folding in upon myself for a time. Maybe I need to. Maybe I don't and this is the wrong action. I just feel - if I don't interact in ground  group contexts then I can't cross signals and spin into stupidland. Next to leaving again, it's the best solution I can think of. Think of my presence as a sign of life - so you can relax. Or think of it as as a sign that I'm fighting the embedded trust thing in the best way I can think of atm.

Kate Out