Protest in Oakland

A very compelling and beautifully-written narrative from amidst the protest-turned-riot in Oakland can be found here, on the blog fem.men.ist.

Oscar Grant

I join with abbykk and the larger community in mourning the loss of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African-American man. He was shot a week ago by police at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland. Grant, who was unarmed, was shot while lying face-down on the train platform.

Things you can do, from RaceWire.

Video from bystander, here.

This is horrifying.

Three months on T

This is my three-month T-iversary. I don't have much to say about it at the moment except that I have been crabby lately, and I'm finding it much more difficult to calm down and be patient when I'm upset. There is an immediacy to things like bodily feelings and desires, and now, to crabbiness.

I was a train wreck in the airport yesterday. I missed my connecting flight by about thirty-two seconds, and this pissed me off. I sulked, and then I felt guilty for sulking. I was tired and upset and I just could not talk myself out of the upset feelings. I feel like the buffer zone before anger meets the air has gone down to almost nothing.

It is unsettling.

The calculus of Crohn's

For any given food item, there is a complicated equation in my head that figures in things like, how much fiber have I eaten today? how long ago did I poop? am I having any pain right now? how about yesterday? how badly do I want it compared to the pain it might or might not cause?

I spend time asking myself questions like, how many bread and butter pickles can I eat? Two, four? How about the whole jar? Is one bite of salad too much? (Probably.) What about one bite of chocolate?

I have learned that two bowls of oatmeal in one day is disaster, while one is often perfectly fine. For beans, four or five beans can work, but not many more.

Egg whites have no fat, and I can eat vast quantities of them. Same with rice crackers and english muffins.

This is all very difficult to explain to well-meaning people who ask, "What can you eat?" My diet changes on a daily basis depending on how I'm feeling. One day, I'm sticking with liquids, and another day, I'm eating steak.

These days, I can eat almost anything in moderation, as long as it is fairly low in fat, doesn't have much dairy, isn't a raw vegetable or a nut, and doesn't have "bran" in its name. I eat a lot of white flour, I avoid the raw vegan restaurant, and I am mostly fine.

This doesn't feel like a restricted diet to me. I have come a long way since the beginning of the semester!

Bathrooms

These days, I'm all about the single-person bathroom, also known as the family bathroom. I'm okay using the men's room, but it's so much nicer to have some privacy and not to have to worry about anyone hassling me. So, I spent time in several airports today, and this is my report:

The family bathroom in Southwest's part of the Phoenix airport is amazing. By bathroom standards, it is practically a palace. When you walk in, there is a padded bench on the left that you could lie down on. The toilet is behind a little wall. And then, amazingly, there is a fully accessible shower. A shower! And also a sharps container. So I could have taken a nap, showered, and given myself my T shot all at the same time! It was great, well worth the short wait.

Other airports of the day: Oakland has the family bathrooms, but they're not everywhere. I got stuck in Amarillo for awhile and didn't see any bathrooms of any sort, not that I really looked. And kudos to the Oklahoma City airport for having the family bathrooms available in more locations than average.

Whoever came up with the idea of single-person bathroom in airports, I am grateful to them. Being in transition, and having Crohn's disease, it is such a gift to go into a little room alone and be able to shut the door.

Waiting

It is dark in my room except for a single candle and the glow of the computer screen. Rain drips from the eaves and splatters against the window. The candle fills the space with the scents of cinnamon and nutmeg while a plaintive cello sings the opening notes of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

It is Advent, and I am waiting. Advent usually gets lost for me in the hectic time at the end of the semester, or else I just skip directly from Thanksgiving to Christmas. This year, though, I am having Advent.

Last week's sermon at New Spirit helped me to think about Advent and Christmas in a new way. Jim invited us to think about Christmas as a commemoration of an event in history, but also as something more than that. I have been thinking about these questions: What miracle do we need now, in this time? What hopes and dreams do we look for and wait for in this Advent season?

One of the Christmas miracles that I hope for is that I will find that I can go home again; that I will be welcome, with my whole gender-transitioning self, at my extended family's Christmas celebration. It looks like it is going to happen. But I am somewhat anxious in my waiting for this reunion.

Another hope, in this time of incarnation, relates to my body. I'm not exactly sure what it is that I hope for; it will be a surprise to peek into the manger on Christmas morning. What I know is that I'm at an awkward stage in my transition. My body seems unfamiliar; the process doesn't make as much sense as I'd like it to. The changes are happening so fast that it's taking my mind awhile to catch up with them. And the whole thing is very public and vulnerable. For example, I had an uncomfortble exchange with the store clerk today who sold me teeny tiny swimming shorts. Which is funny in itself, but it takes a lot of energy to do this this every time I go out.

So I wait. Very impatiently. And I fidget. It is all I can do.

Turn, turn, turn

If you could open a little door and see inside my body right now, this is what you would see:

There is a little crazy guy, someone out of Dr. Seuss, sitting at a workbench. On the workbench is a contraption with levers and dials and a big crank for turning. The guy works hard all day, turning the crank, adjusting the dials, but mostly he just turns the crank. He does his job faithfully and well. And what comes out of this spectacular machine?

Hair. I am convinced that all my body does now is make hair. I'm sure that's where most of my protein intake is going at the moment. One day, there was no hair on the backs of my hands, and the next day, it's like a little forest. And don't even get me started on my chest and my stomach. It's a good thing I think bears are super sexy, or I would be totally freaking out right now. Okay, I'm freaking out a little bit anyway.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, "Who is this person?"