Jump to content
  • Welcome to the TransPulse Forums!

    We offer a safe, inclusive community for transgender and gender non-conforming folks, as well as their loved ones, to find support and information.  Join today!

Acolyte


Jennifer T

Recommended Posts

Wrote this a long time ago, looking at the bottle:

"Acolyte

Consider the bottle

Deceptive, ephemeral;

Enticing

Inviting redemption.

Who inhabits the chapel of the lost?

Who visits the tabernacle of the tormented?

And hears the dirge of the depraved?

In aqueous requiem I sang the psalm of the inebriated

And offered approbation at the gilded altar of Neon.

Now in corpulent solitude I contemplate

And proffer penance for the iniquity of the inane

And lifting the chalice of the profane

I seal my discipleship...

- Jennifer T, May 23, 2003

Link to comment
  • Forum Moderator

I like this poem. It is quite powerful for me.

One of the names of that which inhabits the bottle i once esteemed was "spirits". Relaxation and a feeling of spirituality often went with my surrender to the bottle. That was part of the appeal. It offered me that at first. Slowly while the promise remained the reality changed and i was a slave. The constant promise ended only with pain. Deceptive is a great descriptor. I also ended up solitary, and in my case wallowing in pain.

Hugs,

Charlize

Link to comment

Thank you Charlize and Raya. Oh yes, I recognize the deception. But it is, for me, a necessary mechanism at this time. It will not always be so.

Peace this day.

Link to comment
  • 5 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

I doubt my poem is what Croce meant in his lyrics, but I am honored, Vanna! :-)

Glad to see you here.

Link to comment

Thank you Charlize and Raya. Oh yes, I recognize the deception. But it is, for me, a necessary mechanism at this time. It will not always be so.

Peace this day.

I do not have it within me to change the world. Difficult enough for me to change myself. There may be deception in the bottle, but it is one that I can recognize and face head on. This world, on the other hand, is cruel and relentless in it's persecution of those it deems 'different'. It smiles at you one moment and punches you in the back of the head when you walk away. This is the greater deception.

Link to comment
  • Forum Moderator

Jennifer i certainly agree i can't change the world. I have plenty to in living life day to day. The bottle helped me for years to deal with problems that i couldn't face. They were my problems, not the worlds. Oblivion seemed to help but in the end even that barely touched the difficulties. Fortunately i've found support and love in the process of finding sobriety. Slowly i'm finding peace within myself. The bottle can still call but i've learned that if i handle my addiction first other difficulties can be tackled. With help nobody can get to your back to give you the punch you mentioned.

I've grown to love the statement.....I've got your back. I almost understand that now.

Hugs,

Charlize

Link to comment

Hi Charlize, I do recognize what problems are mine. This TG thing is my issue, not the world's. All my personal issues and the way I may or may not respond to them are mine. I have never blamed the world or anyone in particular for those things. I accept responsibility for everything that has happened to me in this life.

However, what I do allow the 'world' responsibility for is it's persistent inhumanity and brutality towards itself. When I see or hear about such things, it breaks me.

I 'retreated' from the world many years ago. I function within it and do what I must to exist. It, or the people in it, have in one way or another rejected me time and time again. Fine, I accept that I'm different. That's my issue, not theirs. But I cannot keep getting hurt like that. It doesn't 'have my back'. I learned at a very young age that it was up to me to protect my own back. And I've been keeping 'Jennifer' safe from all this crap for 50 years. "T" can take the punches and walk away from the world and drink the drink when he needs to. 'T' has stood face to face with many opponents in and out of the ring for years. 'T' can fight. 'T' has Jennifer's back. 'T' is the only human who has ever had 'Jennifer's' back. And no human has ever had 'T's' back.

In my sphere, Charlize, I've put my own welfare on the line for others many times throughout my life. But it's never reciprocated. If I need help, it's up to 'T'. This isn't a 'poor me' thing. I'm very thankful that God has afforded me the ability to do these things. But I cannot comprehend another 'having my back'.

I'm sorry if this is all old hat. Today, I hurt.

Peace.

Link to comment

Thank you JodyAnn. And you too Charlize. My words were not meant to be a rebuttal of what you offered; but rather an explanation of how I see a difficult concept I culled from your words. I know none of this is easy for any of us. Truly I do.

You've crossed a river

I sit on the opposite bank

Dreaming from afar

Of making that crossing

Knowing I cannot

From your shore

The way across is decipherable

From mine, completely abstruse

Therein lies my frustration

Link to comment
  • Forum Moderator

Understood Jennifer. I really like that poem by the way. It expresses beautifully the feeling i have had when faced with change. Seeing others on the opposite side helped in some ways, i knew it was possible. It gave me a goal and i started to look for a bridge. In a few cases i was desperate enough to jump in and swim across. I'm glad you are here. Perhaps it was seeing the experiences of others here that helped me make a major plunge.

Hugs,

Charlize

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Who's Online   8 Members, 0 Anonymous, 184 Guests (See full list)

    • Abigail Genevieve
    • Carolyn Marie
    • VickySGV
    • EasyE
    • Evelyn J
    • Cavetowns_fkin_awesome
    • Voyageur
    • MaeBe
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      80.6k
    • Total Posts
      768.2k
  • Member Statistics

    • Total Members
      12,021
    • Most Online
      8,356

    Tami
    Newest Member
    Tami
    Joined
  • Today's Birthdays

    1. Bebhar
      Bebhar
      (41 years old)
    2. caelensmom
      caelensmom
      (40 years old)
    3. Jani
      Jani
      (70 years old)
    4. Jessicapitts
      Jessicapitts
      (37 years old)
    5. klb046
      klb046
      (30 years old)
  • Posts

    • Abigail Genevieve
      It was hot that August day, even in Hall J.  Hall J was a freshman dormitory, and Odie had just unpacked his stuff.  He sat on the edge of his bed.  He had made it. He was here, five hundred miles away from home.  His two roommates had not arrived, and he knew no one. His whole life lay ahead of him, and he thought of the coming semester with excitement and dread.   No one knew him.  No one. Suddenly he was seized with a desire to live out the rest of his life as a woman.  With that, he realized that he had felt that way for a long time.  He had never laughed when guys made jokes about women, and often he felt shut out of certain conversations.  He was neither effeminate nor athletic, and he had graduated just fine, neither too high in his class to be considered a nerd or low enough to not get into this college, which was more selective than many. He was a regular guy.  He had dated some, he liked girls and they liked him.  He had friends, neither fewer than most nor more than most.   Drama club in high school: he had so wanted to try out for female parts but something held him back.  He remembered things from earlier in his life: this had been there, although he had suppressed it. Mom had caught him carrying his sister's clothes to his room when he was eight, shortly before the divorce, and he got thoroughly scolded.  They also made sure it never, ever happened again. He had always felt like that had contributed somehow to the divorce, but it was not discussed, either.  He was a boy and that was the end of it.   Dad was part of that.  He got Odie every other weekend from the time of the divorce and they went hunting, fishing, boating, doing manly things because Dad thought he should be a man's man. The first thing that always happened was the buzz cut.  Dad was always somewhat disappointed in Odie, it seemed, but never said why.  He was a hard man and he had contempt for sissies, although that was never directed at Odie. Mom always said she loved him no matter what, but never explained what that meant.   Odie looked through the Freshman Orientation Packed.  Campus map.  Letter from the Chancellor welcoming him.  Same from the Dean.  List of resources: health center, suicide prevention, and his heart skipped a beat: transgender support.  There was something like that here?   He tore off a small piece of paper.  With sweating hands he wrote on it "I need to be a girl." He looked at it, tore it up and put the different pieces in different trash cans, even one in a men's room toilet the men on this floor shared. He flushed it and made sure it went down.  No one had seen him; he was about the first to arrive.   He returned to his room.   He looked in the mirror.  He was five-ten, square jawed, crew cut.  Dad had seen to it that he exercised and he had muscles.  No, he said to himself, not possible. Not likely.  He had to study and he had succeeded so far by pushing this sort of thing into the back of his mind or wherever it came from.   A man was looking back at him, the hard, tough man Dad had formed him to be, and there was absolutely nothing feminine about any of it.  With that, Odie rejected all this stuff about being trans.  There had been a few of those in high school, and he had always steered clear of them.  A few minutes later he met his roommates.
    • EasyE
      yes, i agree with this ... i guess my biggest frustrations with all this are: 1) our country's insistence to legislate everything with regards to morals ... 2) the inability to have a good, thorough, honest conversation which wrestles with the nuances of these very complex issues without it denigrating to name-calling or identity politics.  agreed again... i still have a lot to learn myself ... 
    • Abigail Genevieve
      It's been bugging me that the sneakers I have been wearing are 1) men's and 2) I need canvas, because summer is coming.  WM has a blue tax on shoes, don't you know? My protocol is to go when there is no one in the ladies' area because I get looks that I don't like, and have been approached with a 'can I help you sir' in a tone than means I need to explain myself, at which point i become inarticulate.   But I found these canvas shoes.  Looking at them, to see if they would pass as male, I realized they might not, and furthermore, I don't really care.
    • Abigail Genevieve
      My wife's nurse was just here.  It is a whole lot easier to relate to her as another woman than to negotiate m/f dynamics and feel like I have to watch myself as a male around her.  It dropped a lot of the tension off, tension that I thought entirely internal to myself, but it made interactions a whole lot better.     I read your post, so I thought I would go look.   In the mirror I did not see a woman; instead I saw all these male features.  In the past that has been enough for me to flip and say 'this is all stupid ridiculous why do I do this I am never going to do this again I am going to the basement RIGHT NOW to get men's stuff and I feel like purging'.  Instead I smiled, shrugged my shoulders and came back here.  Panties fit, women's jeans fit.  My T shirt says DAD on it, something I do not want to give up, but a woman might crazily steal hubby's t-shirt and wear it.  I steal my own clothes all the time.    But she is here, this woman I liked it when I saw her yesterday. and her day will come.  I hope to see her again.
    • April Marie
      So many things become easier when you finally turn that corner and see "you" in the mirror. Shedding the guilt, the fear, the questioning becomes possible - as does self-love - when that person looking back at you, irrespective of what you're wearing, is the real you.   I am so happy for you!! Enjoy the journey and where it leads you.
    • MaeBe
      I'm sure even the most transphobic parents would, too. What does it hurt if a child socializes outside of their family in a way that allows them to understand themselves better? I have encountered a handful of kids do the binary, non-binary, back to binary route and they got to learn about themselves. In the end, there may have been some social self-harm but kids are so darned accepting these days. And really, schools aren't policing pronouns, but the laws that are coming out are making them do so--and in turn requiring a report to a parent that may cause some form of harm to the child.   If the kid wants to lie to, or keep secrets from, their parents about their gender expressions, what does it say about the parents? Perhaps a little socialization of their thoughts will give them the personal information to have those conversations with them? So when they do want to have that conversation they can do so with some self-awareness. This isn't a parent's rights issue, it's about forcing a "moral code" onto schools that they must now enforce--in a way that doesn't appreciably assist parents or provide benefit to children.   So, a child that transitioned at 5 and now in middle/high school that is by all rights female must now go into a bathroom full of dudes? What about trans men, how will the be treated in the girl's restroom? I see a lot of fantasy predator fearmongering in this kind of comment. All a trans kid wants to do in a bathroom is to handle their bodily functions in peace. Ideally there would be no gendered restrooms or, at least, a valid option for people to choose a non-gendered restroom. However, where is the actual harm happening? A trans girl in a boy's room is going experience more harm than a girl being uncomfortable about a trans girl going into and out of a stall.   How about we teach our children that trans people aren't predators who are trying to game the system to eek out some sexual deviancy via loophole? How about we treat gender in a way that doesn't enforce the idea that girls are prey and boys are  predators? How about we teach them trans kids are just kids who want to get on with their day like everyone else?
    • Adrianna Danielle
      I hope so and glad he loves and accepts me for who I am
    • EasyE
      It is sad that we can't have more open and honest dialogue on these types of topics because there is worthy debate for sure. But instead we have become a country where the only goal is to seize political power and then legislate our particular agenda and views of morality.   Remember as you read my thoughts below, that I am transgender. OK? I am pro-trans. I am trans.   But my middle school aged daughter would be extremely uncomfortable using a school bathroom also used by a biological male, as would nearly all of her friends. That side has to be considered. It's not invalidating to a trans youth's experience to take that into account and hash out what is for the common good of as many people as possible. This is reality - one person's gender expression makes others uncomfortable, in all directions. And there is disagreement on the best way to handle these types of things.   Why can't we talk about these things openly, without the inevitable name-calling that follows, and let all sides have their input and work up suitable solutions? (I bet the kids, if left alone, would work up the best solutions)... Instead, we go straight to trying to pass laws, as if we need more of those!   And why wouldn't we want parents to know if their child has decided to change their pronouns? That's a big deal and parents are right to raise that as a concern. I certainly would want to know. Not that we need to legislate this, but I would have a hard time with school administrators who try to hide this from me. They are out of line. This is my child. Whether you like my viewpoints or not, I am the parent. Not the school.    Again, I am pro-trans. I am trans. At the same point, I recognize that validating a transgender individual's gender identity doesn't trump everything else in society. And sometimes I see that creeping into these discussions. Plus, we fight a losing battle if we have to have others' validation. We are never going to get it from everybody. Ever. Not even Jesus got it and He is God himself!   This country can be very beautiful as we each exercise our freedom to be who we are and let others do the same. But my freedom ends where yours begins and vice-versa. That requires self-sacrifice. Sometimes we have to fall back out of respect for others. Sometimes we have to let the parent be the parent even if we disagree with their politics.   My cry in the wilderness is just can we please have more open, honest dialogue where both sides try take the other's views into consideration and quit automatically going the legislative route to criminalize the other side's viewpoints.   Sorry for the rant but sometimes all of this wears me out... deep sigh... 
    • RaineOnYourParade
      Bite by bite, acrobatics in abdomen
    • Abigail Genevieve
      Yesterday when I put that shirt on I saw a woman looking back out of the mirror at me.  Usually I have looked and been very frustrated because I see a man where there should be a woman.  I was expecting to see a man wearing a woman's shirt, but it was a woman wearing a woman's shirt.   On the spectrum between intersex and trans, I am more thinking I am a lot more intersex than trans, and it is only a matter of time before my wife says "you need a bra" and then "you look like a woman!" She told me whatever I want to do is fine with her, she loves me no matter what, and I am thinking that there may be a lot more for her in this than she could possibly expect. I'm not pushing it with her.
    • Petra Jane
      We have been asked to post this study.   I'm an undergraduate university student in my third year completing a BSc in Anthropology. I'm working on my dissertation, looking at languages with grammatical gender (e.g. languages like Italian and Spanish, nouns are either masculine or feminine). I'm curious if this affects/bothers people with gender identities outside the typical binary of male and female, like non-binary or transgender identities. Using this forum, I would be very grateful if anyone could answer the 5 questions I have put together in a Google form, they are open-ended questions, and you can be as brief or detailed as you want/comfortable with! All responses will also be kept anonymous. As you can probably guess, I came to online forums because finding participants in person is difficult. Talking about gender identities, I understand, can be very personal, so this online anonymised format can be safer. :) If anyone is also particularly interested in this topic, it would be awesome to message one-on-one and do the Google form survey. Having one and one interviews would also be good research! But NONE of this is compulsory, and only if anyone is interested and doesn't mind helping me out and can do so. Institution Supervising Research Study University of Kent Web Address for Study Participation https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdS9zU_dt3RR1V8-3s_0EnDl6w-jsS6-WOZO41uWeqUP0q_YQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
    • Ashley0616
    • Ashley0616
    • Ashley0616
    • Ashley0616
      @Mia MarieI found this    Here are critical resources to help transgender seniors face the challenges of growing older - LGBTQ Nation   As far as financial aid I came up empty. :( I'm sorry. I can only imagine what you are going through. 
  • Upcoming Events

Contact TransPulse

TransPulse can be contacted in the following ways:

Email: Click Here.

To report an error on this page.

Legal

Your use of this site is subject to the following rules and policies, whether you have read them or not.

Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
DMCA Policy
Community Rules

Hosting

Upstream hosting for TransPulse provided by QnEZ.

Sponsorship

Special consideration for TransPulse is kindly provided by The Breast Form Store.
×
×
  • Create New...