Very random...

This could be me...

Last month, my assistant principal asked the teachers in an informal poll what we would do if we weren’t teachers.  I said I would be a doula (for those who don’t know, doulas are people, usually women, who support and take care of newborn babies and their mamas.  I love babies and if I could make a living loving on babies, I’d be a pretty happy camper. 

Of course, this was sort of only half true.

I mean, I DO love babies and that would be a rockin’ job, but what I’d really love to do was be a counselor for transgendered people, specifically trans youth.  I didn’t write that down because I figured it was way too much for the 3x5 index card we were provided and because, well, I thought it was too personal and too political to share with my colleagues (even the ones I really, really like and call friends.)

My first Master’s degree is in adult education with concentrations in higher education administration, student development, and… counseling.  I know that I would be a terrible counselor though.  I would let my patient complain (I mean talk) for one session and then I’d ask what the hell they were doing (as in action) to change the problem.  Yeah, I can imagine my clients would come all of two times.  I’d be way poor…and I guess not particularly helpful either.

That being said, I still have a soft spot in my heart for trans folk… especially trans kids.  I guess I wouldn’t be so brutal with them.

I love Laverne Cox aka Sofia

The reason I bring this up is because I’ve recently started watching “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix because what the hell else am I going to do with all this freakin’ free time I have coupled with all this pain?  (About fifteen FB friends recommended it, so I figured they ALL can’t be wrong.)  One of my favorite characters is Sofia Burset, the trans inmate played by Laverne Cox.  In OitNB, Sofia is a transwoman who has to cope with the relationships with her wife and son and their struggle with her transition.  It made me think a lot about relationships… and mine.

I’m insecure.  I’ll admit it.  I’m so insecure, that I would often ask (ok, I still do) Darryl questions to test how much he loved me.  It would go something like this:

Darryl working on gaining 50 lbs himself.

“Would you love me if I gained 50 pounds?”

“Yup.”

“What about 100?”

“Yup.”

“What about if I had to be in a wheelchair?”

At this point, he’d sigh, “I would take care of you.”

“What about… if I got a sex change?”

Without skipping a beat, Darryl would respond, “I’d be gone in a minute.”

I joke often about my boy self.  He’s a redneck named Ralph who has a pickup truck with dangling balls hanging from the back.  Ralph hunts and fishes and loves to eat meat.  Basically, Ralph is everything Rebec isn’t.  Darryl would not like (and especially not date) Ralph.

Please know, Darryl is not homophobic; he just wants to be with me in a female form. I guess I’m ok with that.  I guess I have to be.  Lucky for him, I have no desire to have a sex reassignment surgery.  It makes me sad that he would leave me though…  don’t judge him.  He’s a good guy.

Me very, very fat

I like the body I was born in, even if cosmetically there are things I’d like to change.  Of course, I know that the things I don’t like about it are my fault.  In addition to being insecure, I’m also incredibly realistic and honest… especially with myself.  I realize that the reason I was overweight was the same reason that so many other people are overweight:  I ate too much of the wrong stuff and exercised too little.  I take responsibility for that and I worked (and am still working) very hard to change that.  The tummy tuck is just fixing the stuff that diet and exercise can’t fix.  But I don’t want a penis.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t been known to tell people to suck my d*ck on occasion (because I have).  When someone (usually Darryl) will tell me I don’t have one, I offer to grow one.  Yes, I know I am vulgar.  But I don’t want one.  I swear. 

I’ve never wanted to be a boy.  I’ve never had penis envy.  When I was nine or ten, I remember sitting in the car with my dad and noticing his weekend scruff and commenting how yucky it must be to be a man and have to shave your face every day.  Instead of laughing it off and saying something like, “It isn’t that bad,” or something else like that, he responded in his typical gruff fashion.  “It’s better than bleeding once a month like women do.  Did your mother tell you about that?”  Right then and there, he cemented his ideology:  being a girl was worse than being a boy. 

Still, I never wanted to be one. I still don’t. 

This is in/hanging from my body

How is any of this related to my stupid I-had-a-tummy-tuck-and-I’m-in-a-buttload-of-discomfort?  Well, it has to do with the drain.  Lately, everything has to do with the drain (I’m a one track mind kind of girl lately, aren’t I?)  Let me explain a little bit about the drain, shall I?  

As I mentioned before, I have the Jackson-Pratt drain which

involves a ¼ inch tube in my right hip (ew).  At the end of the foot-long tube is a bulb that looks like a grenade.  The purpose of the drain is, through negative pressure (yes, I Googled it), to drain blood, pus (ew), air, and other fluids (I have no idea what “other fluids” could be in there!) from the incision. 

I’m not allowed to let the grenade dangle, and so I have to pin it on my clothes.  Obviously, I don’t want it on the outside my clothes because who wants to see a blood/pus/”other fluid” filled grenade hanging at someone’s waist?  I mean, I don’t even like to look at it.  I’m sure Darryl and Tiernen don’t’ want to see it, though neither of them have said anything.

So I pin it to the bottom of my waist binder or my pajama pans and put it inside my pants.  Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

The result is a giant bulge in my crotch area.  I would win the most well endowed man contest… if I were a man.  I will be sitting on the couch (you know, my new home) and look down at my enormous crotch bulge.  It is unnerving.  I do not like it.

So yes, as much as I joke about sexual reassignment surgery, it is nothing I plan on doing.  I empathize deeply with the struggles of transgendered folk, but I am not one of their ranks.

The official name is "truck nuts."

Sorry, Ralph.