Ms. Lee Etscovitz, Ed.D.The TestSome personal experiences are so significant in our lives that they become etched into the very fabric of our being. One such experience occurred in my own life quite a few years ago. I found myself in a panic late one night during the first week in my new apartment. I was petrified with loneliness, for I felt I had no human connection in the world. I was legally separated and was in the middle of divorce proceedings. The pending divorce was my choice, but I still had to face myself and my feeling of desperation. Instead of celebrating my freedom, I was fearing it. Somehow my aloneness felt more like a burden than a liberation. It was as if I had been condemned to a long prison term rather than having been pardoned from a previous life of error and bad judgment. I was so upset, so frightened, that I felt as if the world were about to end, as if the sun would never shine again. I was alive but also dead, dead to the joy I was really seeking. I felt as if I were attending my own funeral, so deep into the hole of misery and self-pity had I descended. At that point, more out of desperation than inspiration, I did the only positive thing I knew how to do when facing something akin to madness: I began to write. I started to talk to the paper on my desk and then, through my pen, to the forces that seemed so much greater than me but from which I did not really want to run. I realized that I was facing some type of test, a test of life in one of its most elemental and soul-wrenching forms. I was deathly afraid to face myself, afraid for reasons which the years since then have revealed to me. But at that moment in time I needed to give some shape and form to my inner confusion, if only to feel some immediate sense of control in the midst of my inner turmoil. I managed to calm myself with the writing of a poem, entitled MOVE OVER MOSES:
Move over Moses Move over Moses, Move over Moses, If there be wisdom Yes, I was facing a test, a test of my very existence, for underlying my struggle to find immediate peace of mind in the middle of that night was a long-standing disquietude about my identity as a person. I am not claiming to be another Moses, but it is interesting to note that he also had an identity problem, though not concerning gender. And he also sacrificed a great deal for what he discovered to be the truth about himself. In my case, I was confused about my gender, though I did not realize that fact at the time. I only knew I was confused about who I was, and consequently I did not have the security of my own being with which to face life. I had always relied on other people to make me feel better about myself. This is not to say there is anything wrong with support from others and with receiving love and hugs, but I was fundamentally dependent on others to give me a sense of well-being in the world. I did not have that sense of healthy self-love which I find has accompanied my transgendered identity many years later, a self-love which allows me to be alone without feeling lonely, and which allows me to reach out to others, almost as if my inner love bucket is at last filled and wants to overflow onto the rest of the world. To be part of the world, to be a positive and contributing factor in life, is a far cry from that lonely and painful night many years ago. I will always have tests to face in life, but it was that early test which paved the way for the biggest test of all: facing my gender confusion and thus facing myself. The result has been a gender journey that has led me at last to the discovery of my human birthright: a gender identity which I feel entitles me to leave the desert of my existence and to enter the promised land of everyday life as the person I was meant to be. Want to comment? Send email to Dr. Etscovitz at hmdm@voicenet.com. |
© 1997 by Human Dimensions & Transgender Forum