Black Heart Today – Amy Ray

“I’ve got a black heart today. No amount of kindness is going to turn it the other way.”

---

I run several times per week. It is essential to my mental and physical health. The time I spend running has replaced my commute. I rely on those miles to help me transition from work-brain to home-brain. When things are too difficult to process – I run and let all the little neurons sort themselves out. Which is not to say that “running is my therapy.” No, I have therapy for my therapy.

Sometimes, when I go for a long run, my brain stops taking in new information. As my body begins to tire it becomes selective about where to target the remaining resources. Reality reduces to the feel of the pavement, the rhythm, my breath. This state allows my body to keep going and my brain to reset. It is also the time when I am most at risk of being hit by car.

---

I have been experiencing a special brand of tired lately. I tell myself there is no reason for it. The attempted solution is to push harder, be more present, and focus more. I get more unreasonably tired. My tasks demand seemingly unending input be transformed into greater output. I lose track of where I am going with projects and just surrender to the rhythm of the task but the longer I go the more I find myself involuntarily disengaging. I keep telling myself there is no reason for it. Push harder, be more, focus.

---

It is so painfully common for transfolx to experience overwhelming rejection that the lack of it is remarkable. Family rejection is planned for. If you are lucky enough to have acceptance from your family – even if it is only surface level – even if they completely undermine you, you must be patient and you better be grateful. Having a family that is genuinely accepting, even if still learning – we don’t have instructions for that. As a community, we really don’t know what to do with that.

It is so painfully common for transfolx to lose their primary relationships that it is suspicious when it doesn’t happen. You better explain yourself but know that even if you do, your experience is so outside the norm, that we can’t really include it in the story of what being trans means.

If someone plans to medically transition they should expect there to be significant and plentiful barriers. The person will be lined up to meet with a series of people that will question their sense of self only to have the documentation these professionals generate sent off for rejection by the insurance company. The treatment not deemed “medically necessary.” Even if a person gets the process started, they should expect to lose access to treatment at some point. Maybe the only prescribing HRT doctor will close their practice and relocate. Maybe they will lose their insurance. Life is full of possibilities.

This was not my experience. Yes, there were challenges in the areas mentioned above but my experience has generally been the exception to each of these expectations. I am so very grateful.

And so very traumatized.

---

My brother-in-law and his family were among the first to learn that I wanted to transition. They have given me nothing but warmth. And…until this last weekend, they had not seen me for a year. Not even in pictures. I can’t help but feel like I must be a lot to take in. I feel them trying to process all of the changes as they observe me. I find myself volunteering more information than I typically would as an olive branch that says, “It is ok to talk about this.” Are they more distant than before? Am I being paranoid? It is perfectly reasonable if not necessary to need this time to process. It is also difficult to endure. I am both a wholly different person and who I have always been. In some aspects they experience me as a stranger. I’m not sure what to feel other than that distance and the solitude it creates.

---

Part of my professional role includes helping to shape the data elements that are central to our data collection efforts and much of the accompanying analysis. When gender was flagged for review I resisted my urge to volunteer knowing it was a loaded topic for me. But when the silence dragged on, I said I would take a first pass. But it wasn’t a first pass. As the day approached for me to present the changes I thought should be considered I was torn.

The thing about being ‘stealth’ is, you never really know if you’ve made it. I had started a new job post transition and by golly…I don’t think the majority of people knew. I could be wrong. I could also become totally fixated on trying to figure out the extent to which people knew or didn’t know. But despite this sidetrack that is a peak into its slippery-slope nature, it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter was whether I was going to present my proposed changes as if I were some totally neutral person. Or if I would own my identity. Be transparent in by bias and my experience.

I thought I knew how many people were going to attend the meeting. Of course there were twice as many as I expected. So now what? I’m not one for writing out scripts. I like to improvise. Not that day.

The real risk here was in being too open. People often react to this type of revelation as if you have just read to them from your secret and highly erotic diary. “Doesn’t anyone keep anything private anymore?”

I wrote a script and I read it verbatim. The anxiety of the moment raised the pitch of my voice by an octave or two and it quivered.

“I need to start by sharing something I wouldn’t normally share but is central to how I have approached the question of how to and whether to revise the collection of gender identity. I did not simply Google it and read a bunch of articles – though I did that too. As a man who is transgender, I have been asked this question in a lot of really uncomfortable ways and very few comfortable ways. I am committed to making the collection of this information more comfortable and inclusive.”

I rambled on for several more paragraphs. When I finished I locked eyes with a particular attendee (who is delightfully and fiercely queer). They held that space for me – what might have collapsed into a void between my desire to be authentic and people’s ability to absorb that effort – but it held. We both cried following the meeting. Separately but in solidarity. Then I immediately stopped crying because I had another meeting. Push harder, be more present, focus more.