I've talked about being sad before. I've talked about having a Caitlyn side and how that affects me before. I don't think I've ever talked about my Caitlyn side effecting or being affected by my sadness before. Now, before I get to far into this I need to clear up how I think of myself. I now accept that my feminine 'side' is a journey. From 10 years ago when I started my Caitlyn's Masks blog and was an avowed heterosexual man with a fetish fantasy to now where I consider myself queer with a masculine side and a feminine side. It's not static. I don't think I'll consider myself in the same way 10 years from now. But I no longer consider 'Caitlyn' a side or separate part of my conciousness... its just me under this skin. Sometimes I'm feminine. Sometimes I'm masculine. Sometimes I'm both, sometimes I'm neither. Language just doesn't quite cover how I feel and know I am, so forgive me if I stumble over words.
Okay, so sadness. I thought sadness was a big part of my life until I got my first nursing job. At that point sadness was reduced to brief moments and didn't last for long stretches. A couple years ago I became a nurse manager and I learned that sadness can become a companion again. Sadness rejoined me after its own vacation.
There's plenty of reasons to be sad.
- My aloneness from romance.
- I do not have a romantic person in my life and feel that I'll never have one. It's not that I don't want to have someone in that role, its just that I'm incredibly particular about what I want in a companion (picky) and certain aspects swing to and fro with my sexual leanings. I don't think I'll find someone that's masculine when I'm feminine and is feminine when I'm masculine. I might find someone that swings to and fro like I do, but the thought that we'd share the same random cycle is just folly.
- My health
- I'm not a healthy person. Some of it is choices I make, some of it is a matter of willpower, some of it is genetics, and some of it is environment. Diabetes (now on insulin), migraines (just ate two days worth of sick time), high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, bad back... I'm just not healthy.
- My aloneness from those that love me
- Yeah, I have family. Yeah, I have a few good friends. But they all know the masculine me and think of me as 'normal'. They don't know the feminine me and don't know how extreme I consider myself 'not normal'. And even though I want to tell them, I can think of dozens of reasons to NOT tell them as it will just change their thoughts about me and not really change anything. It's not like I'm going to bring a boyfriend home to 'come out of the closet'. If they knew of the real me... nothing would change except their knowledge.
- Covid
- If you don't know, then you haven't been reading this blog at all.
- My work
- I want to excel at my job but feel that there are roadblocks everywhere, stopping me from getting better. And when I ask for help... well I can sumarize all of the help, mentoring, and training I'm given in two words. "Get Good". <sigh> I need a supervisor that can help me be a good manager so that one day I can take on their role and learn about the next rung up, but I work for people that I don't have the best professional respect for. I don't think they're good managers, so I can't learn from them.
There are dozens of little things that can make me sad, but those are the big ones. You'll notice that being me... being queer... being masculine and feminine... being attracted to masculinity and femininity... isn't listed. That doesn't make me sad.
That is until I heard a song that I've had for awhile in a new light. I've talked about the song here. Halsey's 'You should be sad'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p01Pe8KAz0g
I love this song. It just makes me feel feminine and happy. As I wrote in my previous post "I just picture myself being a strong, sexually confident woman like her."
Yeah, the lyrics don't exactly work for that series of feelings. It's not happy. It's not confidence inspiring beyond it being about a woman strong enough to leave a bad relationship. It's not particularly sexy. So, while I was aware of the lyrics, I never associated them with my sense of femininity. It was just a good song that inspired those good feelings.
But while driving to work the other day it came on and I listened to the lyrics. I wasn't feeling sad. I wasn't feeling happy. I was just kind of feeling blah. What i heard with the lyrics was my feminine nature talking to my masculine nature. Almost talking about all that time I wasted trying to deny I felt and was feminine. All the effort I wasted in putting up a wall, brick by brick, that said I was a man and not a woman. That I was straight even as I fantasized about being forcibly feminized. That new side of my nature was telling the combined whole me that I should be sad.
So, I know that's a long preamble, but I wanted to go over the lyrics and the thoughts they inspired. I'll list out the full lyrics first, then bring up each section and how/what I felt.
I wanna start this out and say
I gotta get it off my chest
Got no anger, got no malice
Just a little bit of regret
Know nobody else will tell you
So there's some things I gotta say
Gonna jot it down and then get it out
And then I'll be on my way
No, you're not half the man you think that you are
And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs and cars
I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you
'Cause you can't love nothin' unless there's somethin' in it for you
Oh, I feel so sorry
I feel so sad
I tried to help you
It just made you mad
And I had no warnin'
About who you are
I'm just glad I made it out without breakin' down
And then ran so fuckin' far
That you would never ever touch me again
Won't see your alligator tears
'Cause, no, I've had enough of them
Let me start this off by sayin'
I really meant well from the start
Take a broken man right in my hands
And then put back all his parts
But you're not half the man you think that you are
And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, girls and cars
I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you
'Cause you can't love nothin' unless there's somethin' in it for you
Oh, I feel so sorry (I feel so sorry)
I feel so sad (I feel so sad)
I tried to help you (I tried to help you)
It just made you mad
And I had no warnin' (I had no warnin')
About who you are ('bout who you)
Just glad I made it out without breakin' down
Oh, I feel so sorry (I feel so sorry)
I feel so sad (I feel so sad)
I tried to help you (I tried to help you)
It just made you mad
And I had no warnin' (I had no)
About who you are ('bout who you)
'Bout who you are
Hey
Hey
Hey
Hey
'Cause you're not half the man you think that you are
And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs and cars
I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you
'Cause you can't love nothin' unless there's somethin' in it for you
I feel so sad
You should be sad
You should be
You should be sad
You should be
You should be
You should be
Now onto how I recieved these lyrics:
I wanna start this out and say
I gotta get it off my chest
Got no anger, got no malice
Just a little bit of regret
I've been feeling that I have to tell someone about my full self for so long. And that's ultimately and extension of me denying my own nature, my own self, for so long. Part of me thinks that what does it matter how I think of myself if no one else knows. I just gotta get it off my chest and regret NOT doing that.
Know nobody else will tell you
So there's some things I gotta say
Gonna jot it down and then get it out
And then I'll be on my way
Who else could tell anybody about this side of me. It's something that I have to say. Me. And maybe doing a quick and dirty telling will be best... doing it with friends just before we part ways for months. "Hey, its been a fun few days man and I can't wait until we do it again. Oh by the way, I'm queer and consider myself as feminine as I do masculine and there are plenty of times that I'm attracted to men although I don't consider myself homosexual or bisexual, its just that I like men when I'm feeling feminine. So... bye!" <insert video clip of Nina quickly driving off into the sunset>
No, you're not half the man you think that you are
A man owns his feelings. A man owns who he is. Not to say that women don't do this, but its that patriarchal world that says men do this. Well, even while I was calling myself a man, this fell a part because I couldn't own up to what/who I really was. I wasn't even half the man I thought I was.
And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs and cars
To this day, I try to fill up those sadness holes inside of myself with money, cars, and toys. I don't use drugs other than the ones my doctor prescribes, but... yeah, I try to fill a hole that can't be filled.
I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you
'Cause you can't love nothin' unless there's somethin' in it for you
This one hurts, but I have to own up to it. I AM glad that the man I thought I was back then never had a baby. What kind of child can grow up like that with a dad that halfway through its life finally accepts himself as herself. No... I wasn't ready for a child, and even though that means I'll likely never be a father/mother, its better off for the children that I didn't have.
Oh, I feel so sorry
I feel so sad
I tried to help you
It just made you mad
Yup, my feminine side trying to find a way out of me, trying to find a way to make me whole and happy and true to myself made me mad. It made me upset. It made me question my own sexuality. Just read this and try to think that I was doing well with it.
Take a broken man right in my hands
And then put back all his parts
That's how I feel sometimes. That I was broken and going through this, this feminizing and accepting process, put back all my parts.
And then, like many modern songs, it just repeats. But I think you get the idea. Listening to this made me sad. It made me look back on years and years of denial and wonder how happy I could have been if I'd just accepted it earlier. Now, I like to think of myself as a realist. It's far more likely that I wasn't ready to make that leap, but at the same time I can't say that I didn't actively and forcibly turn my back on the idea of being anything other than a heterosexual man with a kinky fetish. Anything else was bad and I couldn't accept myself as bad.
Now I just have a lost decade. And that makes me sad.
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