Monday, February 6, 2017

Getting Around Mobility Issues

An individual’s time in school can be quit rough depending on his or her circumstances.  The people in charge of the public school system as well as secondary education are not fit to run institutions in general.  This is especially true when mobility is involved in regards to people with disabilities. 

During my high school and college years, I had quite a difficult time with trying to get around.  I went to high school in Reisterstown Maryland.  The school was all one level, but it had a few sets of stairs that separated each wing of the school.  In order for me to get down a set of stairs, I had to use a lift that required a key every day that school was in session.  The principal of the school would not allow me to have my own key to the lift in order to operate traverse the school of my own free will.  One of technicians at the school had to ride down with me every day so that I could get to my fourth period class during my junior year.  This solution to my issue was a terrible one. 

I had a similar issue when I went to Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland.  I had to visit the library in order to find information for papers that I had to write for all of my different classes.  The school was built in the 1800s, and so there was only so much the school could do to accommodate people with disabilities.  I had to call the librarian every time I wanted to visit the library.  He or she would then let me in through some sort of basement entrance.  The elevator that went up to the main floor could barely hold the wheelchair that I used to get around.  The people who ran the library would not let me have my own key.  I had to call the person on duty up quite often just so I could search for books. 

It is kind of sad that there were not any alternative options for people such as myself.  Everyone has the right to get a good education.  I guess I was lucky that the library also had an online database to look for information as well, but that is not a solution to the problem I faced.  I do not see why places cannot just have some electronic lock with a secret code by an entrance that is accessible to everyone.  There would be no more issues with mobility if this kind of measure was put into place.  Everyone could come and go wherever without having to call someone else to let him or her inside.  Maybe this idea will be implemented in every type of education facility one day.  We will just have wait and see. 

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Dealing with Inflammation

Inflammation has been an issue that I have dealt with for the past twelve years.  This is due to the hypersensitivity of nerves located in a specific set of muscles on the body.  The burning sensation that inflammation brings can be quite hard at times.  It pulls individuals away from what they love and forces them to focus their attention on something that is rather undesirable.  I started having issues with inflammation when I developed a condition known as Pelvic Floor Disorder. 

I was first diagnosed with Pelvic Floor disorder in January of 2009.  The issues with my pelvis started four years earlier when I obtained a urinary tract infection.  It burned when I went to the bathroom.  I went to the hospital, and the doctors there gave me pills to clear everything up after they catheterized in order to extract the waste from my bladder.  I was fine for about a year and a half afterwards, and then I got infected in the same area once more.  Pills cleared the infection up, and I went on with my life.  During Christmas of 2008, I began having difficulty urinating.  There was a little bit of a burning sensation this time as well, but not as bad as when I had the other infections.  My urologist told me that I my problems with relieving waste might be more than just a simple infection.  The nerves in my pelvic floor that control the involuntary sphincters have become hypersensitive most likely due to age.  I saw another doctor for a second opinion, and he agreed that I had Pelvic Floor Disorder.  This guy told me that it was a progression of my Cerebral Palsy.  After the doctor gave me his two cents regarding my problem, I decided to stop seeing him altogether.  Cerebral Palsy does not get progressively worse through time.  It is a birth defect.  A person will remain affected by Cerebral Palsy to the same degree throughout his or her lifetime.  There are different degrees of this birth defect, but the degree does not change depending on time or age. 

My pelvic floor condition does not allow me to empty my waste properly.  Sometimes I will have to go to the bathroom twice in one hour just to relieve myself completely.  I also become constipated rather often.  I sometimes sit on the toilet for about an hour and a half trying to have a bowel movement.  My involuntary sphincters will flip out for what seems like no reason.  I have come to realize that the sphincters spaz out when my nerves become inflamed.  My fecal matter will remain at the bottom of the toilet instead of floating to the top like everyone else’s.  Cleaning out the toilet bowl becomes a nightmare because of this fact.  My condition can make it difficult to enjoy any activity in life.  I do not know when I will have the urge to go to the bathroom.  I also will have to sit in pain due to the inflammation that can arise even when I do not have to use the bathroom. 

The main thing I learned when dealing with the pelvic floor as well as inflammation in general is to keep the area clean.  One should go to the bathroom when the urge is first felt.  An individual would be wise to start eating smaller portions during every meal of the day.  This will ensure that the stomach and bowels do not become extremely irritated at a later time.  Pills have never really helped my nerves that much, so I would not suggest trying to relieve pain in this manner..  As long as one is active aware of his or her body, then inflammation of any type can be manageable without too much intervention. 

Friday, February 3, 2017

Gender Confusion: Retold

Being transgender is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome in today’s society.  The transformation that one goes through is no small feat by any means.  One puts everything at risk when he or she decides that transition is for him or her.  The individual’s inner world will have to be expressed.  This information will be judge by someone in the medical field.  The key to a successful transition is to take things one step at a time.

The feeling that I was transgender did not start until I was around fifteen years of age.  Before this, I identified as a gender congruent male.  For whatever reason, my brain decided it would be a cool idea to try on opaque hosiery sometime during puberty.  I never actually accomplished this goal until much later.  The idea remained a fantasy for quite some time.  I never actually told anyone in person about my desires until the summer of 2002.  While I was in the shower, this individual put a skirt and top on my bed as a joke.  The only thing that this person did not realize was that she was the one being fooled.  When I got out of the shower, I saw the clothes and tried them on to see if they would fit.  Once I told the individual that brought out the clothes for me to find, she let me keep them. 

Around the spring of 2003, my desires went beyond just wearing women’s clothes.  I actually wanted to be seen as a girl in everyday life.  I had no idea where this thought came from.  I did not know what to do with this new found idea.  I developed a sense of jealousy towards the girls in my school.  I wanted to be as they were, but I knew that I could not achieve this goal no matter how hard that I tried. 

During the winter of 2004, I decided that it was time to start developing my voice.  I did not practice very often.  I only practiced for about an hour every night.  I eventually gave up after three weeks of practice because I still was not one hundred percent sure that I was indeed a transsexual.

I then decided that even if I were a woman at birth, I probably would not have been that different anyway.  That is when I started identifying as genderless individual.  This only lasted for a little over a year.  It was probably just an effort to reduce to my dysphoria.  I did not realize that my gender issues would be back stronger than ever when they surfaced once again.    

During the spring of 2007, my dysphoria returned to the forefront of my mind.  I became upset about being a guy.  I then went searching for information on the Internet regarding transsexualism.  I eventually found the huge trans community that existed on Youtube.  I ended up receiving a private message from someone in regards to a comment I had left on a video.  She and I became great friends.  This individual also became my twenty four hour therapist. 

For the next four years, I kept going back and forth on whether I was truly trans or not.  This was a very dark period in my life.  I could not find any logical reason as to why I felt fine as a male for fifteen years of my life, and then suddenly feel negative about my gender for the second half of my life.  I got so depressed about not being able to figure this out that I once said that I wanted to suck all the sin out of the world and then die.  I never had a strong Christian upbringing, so it is interesting that I used the word “sin” instead of “evil.” 

During the spring of 2011 is when I finally decided that I was going to transition.  I figured out that I would never know one hundred percent if transition was right for me until I decided to go for it.  I did not have that much to lose in the first place.  I was not close to anyone in my family outside of the immediate members.  I did not have a whole lot of close friends left.  They had all moved to another state at this point in their lives.  I did not have a job at this point, so it would have been impossible to any type of employment.  The only thing holding me back was my own doubt. 

The first step I took in my transition was to develop a female voice.  I did not have any money to do anything else.  You do not need money in order to work on a voice.  Voice surgery is just expensive garbage that does not yield positive results the majority of the time.  Why pay for something that you can achieve yourself? 

The first thing I did in regards to developing a female voice was talk to my friend from Youtube.  I also downloaded a spectrogram as well as virtual voice tuner.  I learned that the female voice is between 200-230 hertz while voices are between 100-120 hertz.  Raising the pitch up to the female range was not super difficult.  Finding the correct resonance for the female voice is the challenging part.  Females have less of a bass in their voices, but the trick is not getting rid of the bass completely.  The female voice is just less of the male voice.  In order to achieve the female resonance, one needs to tighten up the base of her through and then relax enough in order to project her voice loud enough to be heard.  It is easier to show how this is done than the written word can do to explain the process.  There was a content creator on Youtube that showed the breathing exercises that she used.  I learned where the female resonance was located by breathing in through my mouth and nose at the same time.  By doing this, one will hear the breath inside her own head.  Everyone has heard her voice inside her own head before.  If one has ever been to the mountains or inside of a pool, then chances are that her ears have popped while she was in the middle of a conversation.  This can also occur after an individual yawns.  Immediately after she starts to speak, the voice will be in her head and then the ears pop.  Hearing the breath inside of one’s head is similar to those instances.  When words are spoken, the throat needs to remain someone tightened but loose enough to be projected.  When I first learned how to speak in a more feminine voice, I fell victim to the same issue that every other transsexual does when developing her voice.  I was too scared to relax my throat enough to allow my full voice to be heard.  This made things sound off.  I did not like the sound of my voice at all.  After I practiced for several months, I realized that I no longer needed to breathe through my nose in order to help tighten up throat.  I learned how to tighten my throat and just breathe in through my mouth.  Melodic intonation is the final step in achieving a female voice.  I used the Harvard Sentences in order to learn how to speak like the majority of women in today’s society.  I just downloaded a few sample files from the Internet.  The first sentence is the one I practiced the most.  This sentence read, “The birch canoe slid under the smooth planks.”  I must have recorded this sentence at least fifty times or more. 

During April of 2012, I scheduled a voice consultation with the legendary Andrea James.   I was shocked to learn that I was rather advanced in my voice progression.  I still did not like the sound of my voice, but I would have to learn to accept it as time pushed forward. 

In May of 2013, I finally obtained a job out in the work force.  I was a call center representative at my local electric utility company.  I had to go back to using my male voice for the majority of each day.  I still kept up with my voice practices at night.  Throughout the next year and a half, I noticed that my male voice had changed somehow.  While trying to speak with more melodic intonation to customers in my male voice, I realized that I was going up into the female register without even trying.  The customers never said a word about the change in pitch and resonance.  They were too busy complaining about how I sounded like a foreigner.  I was born and raised in the Baltimore area, so I have no idea why others thought I was Chinese or Jamaican.

During April of 2015, I decided to come out to my supervisor at work.  She found out from the human resources department that I would need to have my name legally changed in order to present as female.  I still had to use the men’s bathroom until my name was officially changed by a judge.  The people I would run into within the bathroom were starting to ask me if I belonged in there.  I told my supervisor as well as my human resources representative about the issue, but there was nothing anyone could do until my name change was finalized. 

The name change process is not that difficult in the state of Maryland.  Only three sheets of paperwork are required to change one’s name.  I had to fill out the petition for a name change in the most princess like handwriting possible.  I then had to fill out the paper to publish my name change in a local paper.  I then filled out part of the order for a name change that the judge would approve.  The total cost for everything came to about seventy two dollars.  The judge denied the order the first time due to my bad handwriting.  I went up to the courthouse the following week and got everything resolved.  I had someone assist me on how I could make my handwriting more legible. 

My name was legally changed as of July 31, 2015.  I was finally able to present as female at work two weeks later.  My human resources representative held mini meetings within the call center.  I did not particularly care for the presentation regarding the overview of transgenderism, but the meetings were not God awful by any stretch of the imagination.  I should have been the one to give my own presentation.  None of my co-workers showed any ill will towards me after I transitioned.  One girl hugged in the bathroom because she had an uncle that went through a gender transition as well 

Living as a transsexual has not been too horrible.  I still get misgendered from time to time, but that does not bother me as much anymore.  I know what I have been through to get where I am today, and that is all that matters.  I no longer need anyone else’s approval to be who I am.  My thoughts are what brought me to the choices that I have made over the course of my life.  Just because someone else has a different idea about how another individual should live does not make his or her perception more accurate by any means.  Everyone makes correct choices most of the time, but the consequences do not always look how he or she thinks it should.  The only poor choice that one can make is to think about negative situations that have not arisen or to choose to be so afraid of making the wrong choice that he or she does nothing at all.  I chose to do something about the discomfort that I had with my gender.  I ended up smelling like a rose in the end.  Anyone can come up on the positive side of a situation as long as he or she keeps pushing forward.  As long as a person remains active towards some end, then it will be impossible for the individual to lose.