Pictures!

No exciting news about my trip to Fascinations yet, or about my job hunt, or sundry other things... Just a brief picture post before I have to head out. If I can ever get my ass back in gear I'll supply you all with a decent update sometime on the near future. >.<

Not sure if I mentioned it in the blog, but recently we purchased a dining room table and chairs set which Crystal had the brilliant idea to turn into a recovery project. After all, isn't the dining table the 'center of healing' and all those other cliches? Anywho, I've been working on this project for a few weeks now and it is turning out to be a pretty fantastic deal. The other day we purchased a set of clear glass dishware which we have also been working on decorating so that our new apartment (move in on June 13th!) will be all snazzy and crazy and bohemian.

"Before" pics -

And after!

Walking around the table clockwise, starting in the front, it looks like this up close:

At left is a close-up on one of the two chairs.

Here are the cups and plates which have been made so far... (Crystal decorated the beer stein on the left; the rest are things I made.) I also have four more large plates, four small, two coffee mugs, and four bowls left to do. :-D I plan on listing some of them on Etsy to see if anyone would be interested in buying some, because they just are turning out to be so damn cool! I haven't been this proud of my art in a while.

You can't quite tell in the picture, but the left-hand plate is covered with song lyrics from a Northstar album. The center print says "I am the piano that nobody plays when everybody's home."

I'll keep posting with pics as more of the project is finished.

A dingy little window in

I'm having a Bad Day.

Yesterday was supposed to be my first appointment with my new therapist through the UCD counselling center. I've already done my intake and everything but because of spring break and some trip or other the therapist had last week yesterday was the earliest we could schedule an appointment. When the alarm went off at 8:30 I looked it over, thought about how desperately I wanted to sleep, and disabled the alarm.

Lora called me later that day and left a message since I looked at the phone, saw who it was, and ignored the call. In the gentle, unaccusatory therapist tone, she said how her schedule had me down for ten and it was now noon and she wondered where I was. She made sure to preface any sort of admonishment with an, "I know we haven't talked for a few weeks, so I'm sure you must have forgotten or something came up." Yeah, my anorexia came up. And it says it doesn't want any more therapy.

I woke up around 12:45, meaning I should have gotten my first meal around one. I finally decided to prepare something around 2:30. According to the clock on my cell phone it is now 2:51 and my two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and glass of milk are barely touched.

Every time I pick the first sandwich up for a nip (bite wouldn't be accurate today) I think about the list of "behaviors" I'm engaging in... Small bites, check. Excessive chewing, check. Eating in order, check. I've got a couple of sandwich rituals which aren't on EDC's list but those certainly fall under the behaviors category for me, too. Eat in a spiral until the crust is gone, avoiding any actual bread content if humanly possible. Once completed, eat back and forth from top to bottom. Rest sandwich on the back of the hand instead of holding it.

One of the few big annoyances I found at EDC was their list of behaviors, complimented by a thoroughly unhelpful list of ways to counteract those behaviors. Instead of taking miniscule bites, take normal bites. Instead of chewing too much, only chew necessary number of times before swallowing. Vary order of foods instead of eating safe foods first. Etc.

I feel like it's been forever that I've been doing this damn recovery thing. I'm bored with food and eating. I feel like I eat the same things over and over and even if I vary the way it's presented it's still the same basic food. Really, there are only so many choices. I don't know whether it's worse that I've been maintaining or worse that I'm supposed to be gaining weight... Every time I go in to see the nutritionist she does her little blind weigh-in with the somehow muted old scale, purses her lips and tells me that I'm not losing weight but I'm really not gaining it either. Really, though I feel like my body has exploded from its acceptable confines, I'm only about back to my pre-relapse-that-put-me-in-the-hospital weight.

As always, one of the biggest things holding me in check is the fear of financial detriment. I've got such a tenuous grasp on finances right now and if I start to hard-core relapse again my quality of work will be down, my energy and hours will be down, my medical expenses will be up. Aside from that, so much has been invested in my treatment over the last few months that it feels like a betrayal of the basest kind to just jump back in to my eating disorder.

Has it really only been two and a half months since I started up again with recovery? Crap. And I'm supposed to stick with this thing for the rest of my freaking life?

I miss the excitement of dying. That sounds ridiculous and counter-intuitive but it's true. As boring as starvation is, there is still a strong element of danger and thrill at the fact that I'm a few inches from death at any given moment. For one thing, when there's no food in my system I'm basically living off whatever adrenaline I can muster to get me on my feet. I don't know why it feels like such a testament to the will to be able to say, "I'm starving myself to death but I'm not going to actually die! Just you watch!" but it does. I guess in its own way self-imposed starvation is a David Blaine type of performance art.

3:06 and I'm almost halfway through sandwich number one.

My head hurts. I miss feeling invincible by being able to go without anything resembling food all day, for several days or weeks or whatever. Now I start to get tetchy and dizzy after maybe two hours. I feel weak, depending on food like this. I'm disgusted with myself for making this lunch in the first place and, moreover, for eating it despite all my convictions to the contrary.

Every time someone at work tells me they're proud of me I alternately want to sob or punch them in the face. I don't look "good". I don't look "better". Can't they see that I'm betraying myself to the weakness of 'health'? Why can't they understand the power and beauty of starvation? Why do they look at me like I'm crazy when I say that no, I'm really not happy with how my body is changing? The worst part of it all is that my metabolism is so revved since it's in organ repair mode that I have to eat twice as often and significantly more than normal, healthy people, so all these coworkers who knew I was going in for treatment for my anorexia now look at me eating a meal or large snack every two hours and think I must have been faking. Every time we make eye contact their expressions say, how can you possibly be anorexic if you eat so damn much?

It seems like all I do is grocery shop and eat. And then go back to work to earn more money for more groceries.

I saw Annie last week as I was leaving EDC from the nutritionist's, and she looks awful. My heart broke for her but I was insanely jealous at the same time. Erin and Crystal and I had dinner together at Red Lobster a few nights ago, the first time Erin and I have seen each other since we were in program together... It felt like all we did was watch the other one eat to see who had more and who ate faster and who showed better "self control". I desperately miss all my friends from EDC but what I'd been afraid would happen is exactly what's taking place: our biggest connection to each other was the program and now that we're out the bonds are broken.

Recovery is a bitch.

Is she alive? Or is this just an April Fool's prank...

Why has it been so hard to write? I don't know. Primarily, life lately has been work, work, work, work, AAAAH WORK WORK WORK!!! It's amazing what six weeks out of work will do to your financial stability, even with outside help. Actually, at this moment I'm having a mild freak out because our paychecks just came and they were (combined) a couple hundred less than I was expecting.

How do I begin describing life at present?

I miss the security of program, for one thing. I'd never been able to fathom Munchaussen before spending so much time under the care of others but now the appeal is pretty easy to recognize. If for no other reason than I didn't have to worry about planning, purchasing, and preparing each of my six meals a day the idea of PHP has a somewhat dream-like quality. I've probably said this a thousand times already but I had completely forgotten how damn expensive it is to eat as much as a normal person is supposed to (and then some, in my case). I honestly used to see food as a sort of guilty commodity, purchased only when my basest animal impulses could no longer be ignored. It's still hard to not look at the hundreds of dollars I spend as frivolous expenditures. I'm late on my car payment and will have to be a few days later still because I have no groceries left in the cupboard. One example among many.

Another struggle is that I'm once again facing the feeling of being absolutely bored with eating. I suppose that when one consumes as much as I do on as little a budget as I have it may be an inevitable thing... Or perhaps I'm short on recipes and ideas. (Hint, hint, dear readers! Lolz.) Or, as a third option, maybe I'm just weird. Either way, it's to the point that I open up fridge and cabinet and just stare at it all with distaste despite the hunger I'm feeling again now. My current staples are chicken, rice, potatoes, PBJ, cheese, yogurt, milk, and ritz crackers. Factor those out to six meals a day, every day, and it gets highly repetitive.

Okay, technically I probably shouldn't say six meals. It's three meals, three snacks. However, the snacks to me seem like meals... They've given me a snack list to choose from, and it'll have options like: 1 yogurt, one slice bread, two tblsp peanut butter or two servings fruit, 1 1/2 c. cottage cheese, one serving cereal. These, to me, are more than 'snacks'. When I think 'snack' I think a handful of crackers or a yogurt or a serving of fruit... Not this AND this AND this.

On the happy side of things, I am really working at this thing with an intensity and seriousness previously unseen. Crystal even admitted that I'm surprising her and surpassing the expectations she had for me and EDCD. Not that she was expecting me to fail or whatever, just that she hadn't anticipated I'd really try to get healthy and not just less sick.

Because I am who I am, artsy fartsy crap is a big part of this. We just purchased a dining room table and chairs a couple days ago (yay craigslist, fifty bucks for all!) and Crystal had the idea to turn it into a really recovery-oriented project... Since the dining room table is the main battleground for healing and all that schmaltz, she had the idea to collage over the top of it with encouraging images and words and such. I'd already stated from the get-go that I wanted to make the table all crazy and bohemian and absolutely insane looking but Crystal really gave it a direction.

Haven't started on the table yet but I started work on a couple of chairs yesterday... One I'm just painting and haven't got much direction on yet, but the other I've taken a bunch of my 'sick' jeans and cut them to pieces which I'm wrapping and gluing to the chair. It's pretty freaking awesome, much neater than the haphazard picture it suggests. Very Soho/Greenwich Village/Dupont/Eastern Market/San Fran/etc. I'll post pictures and progress pics as things come along. ^.^

Speaking of sick clothes, the things that fit are falling away slowly but surely. It's getting so that I hate going into my closet to pick something out... Much easier to keep one or two outfits readily accessible to avoid any possibility of pulling something on only to realize it fits like Spandex. I'm holding out for a while as the weather gets warmer, though, both to hopefully help stabilize moolah and wait to purchase clothes that will last me the season instead of a few remaining weeks or months. Mostly I alternate between work uniform and sweatpants.

Despite this, I'm still not gaining the way EDCD wants. I can tell my body is changing and am royally freaked out by it but whenever I go in to meet with the nutritionist she purses her lips a little and asks what I'd be willing to add to my meal plan. I'm not losing, she'll say after the blind weigh-in, but I'm really not gaining, either. Apparently I have the metabolism of a hummingbird.

The nutritionist's comments about my not gaining aren't enough to thwart mirror melt-downs on a regular basis. Any lingering BDD seems magnified now that my body actually is changing. Depending on the moment I'll be in tears because I think I've surpassed the girth of an aircraft carrier or because I see no change and think I'm a failure at recovery and shouldn't be bothering. There appears to be no win. Pulling on too-tight clothes which fit yesterday is not in the least helpful. Similarly, the day I pulled on a pair of jeans and realized they stayed up without a belt now caused one of the worst relapse-y days yet.

Well, I need to go find food for the day. I've yet to put something in... But then again I didn't get up until 1:30. (Restaurant closer schedule.) Blaaaah food. Why is something so banal such a complex, pain in the ass issue? I may never figure that one out.

Love and hope to all y'all. I'll try to be less negligent in the future!

Blather.

Sorry for the lack of posts... I'm at a constant level of baseline panic as the days until inpatient narrow to hours. It's making things really difficult at home, at work, online. My words are all stunted as my fingers freeze in anxiety and... whatever else I'm too freaked out to think to say right now. I'm treating Crystal and my friends horribly, snapping and mouthing off way more than is even usual. I can't concentrate at work for perhaps obvious reasons.

All I can think about is how scared I am to do this, how badly I want to back out, how desperate I am to be healthy. I obsess over every detail of the things I'll miss about my anorexia. This obsession makes me think I 'like' my eating disorder a lot better than I know I do... But there are still many things I'm going to miss about it. It's strange how integral grieving is to recovering from an eating disorder.

That's all I can think to say right now, guys, I'm sorry. I'm sure that once this thing actually starts I'll be so much calmer and better able to function... I know from experience that nine and a half times out of ten the dread is so much more insufferable than the event itself.

To expound upon earlier thoughts...verbosely.

Ex post facto, as is so often the case, I'm thinking yesterday's post may have been made a bit rashly. By which of course I mean that yesterday I was basically freaking the f-k out and somehow had the misfortune of getting my fingers onto a keyboard, thereby spilling a noxious pile of disjointed, jumbled, frenetic words. Contrary to popular belief the best writing is made with a level head, not one stressed and emotionally charged.

My initial shock at the Drs' assessment of my case is still pretty much the same as ever. I still fail to understand how I need inpatient care; to some extent, I'm still questioning whether or not my level of health or illness requires something so extreme as intensive outpatient. Okay, that's a bit of a lie: I know I could do with some outpatient treatment. But inpatient still does seem over the top.

However, since yesterday's phone call with Drs Roberts and ...a woman whose name I forgot... the general consensus among friends and relations seems to be that inpatient care might not be such a bad thing for me.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.

For the reasons I listed yesterday, I still believe myself to be in a fairly healthy place. Particularly when I compare myself today to myself two years ago (or even one year ago), today's self looks a world healthier than I was previously. Water and hundred calorie fasts are no longer a routine thing for me. For that matter, I haven't intentionally fasted in quite some time. My periods are regular, my fatigue has lessened; although labs haven't been run for me in well over a year my body feels like everything is working well. When I eat, I don't do well making sure my meals are healthy and ballanced and supplying all necessary nutrition, but neither are they comprised solely of high fiber vegetables and...more vegetables.

My question about what health should look like that proves I'm so far from it still stands. I'm beginning to ask myself if the main reason I think I'm healthy is that I'm comparing myself to a prior, sicker version of myself - not to a normal, healthy standard of existence. Granted, I'm much healthier than I used to be. My life is not in immediate danger from any starvation consequences. But does that mean that I'm to the standard of health that is the goal of recovery? If not, how far away am I really?

Following are my principal objections to the partial hospitalization program:

-FINANCES. Call me a jew if you will, but worries about finances are still the number one concern about this program.
-->Aside from the fact that the program itself will likely cost far more than EIOP, it will be an eleven hour a day, seven day a week commitment. This, simply and unavoidably, will not allow for me to work. Even if I were able to get my work to allow me to come in at 8 each night to help close, that would leave me with a potential for six hours sleep per night. Therapy is hard work in and of itself, even a one or two hour session once a week. Realistically, there is no way I'd be able to go from eleven hours of therapy to four hours of work to six hours of sleep to start over again.
-->Crystal and I work hard to meet the bills each month as it is. She's going to have a much tougher course load this semester, meaning she'll have to work less. If I'm completely out of work (or even on a greatly diminished schedule) there is no way we'd be able to make ends meet. (Although, as Crystal pointed out, our food budget will go down since the center'd be feeding me five times a day. Somehow this seems ironic.)

-Triggers. This may seem silly at first glance, but think about it this way... It's been a long time since I was fully immersed in my disorder, seeking out thin pics, thinking about eating and not eating constantly, obsessing about the possibility of breathing in calories or the calories contained in chapstick.
-->Visually, I'm afraid that being in an inpatient facility would present me with a whole lot of girls who are seriously ill. I'm not to a place yet where this seems unattractive to me - contrarily, it'd definitely make me extremely jealous.
-->Verbally, I know that many girls get some of their best tricks from staying inpatient for a while. I know that this does depend some on 'you get out what you put in', but that doesn't mean there won't be tons of conversation about how to tongue pills or wipe butter off on your slacks or slip food into sleeves/purse/shoes. Even if I'm seriously trying not to pay attention to this, it is probably going to be triggering to be surrounded by it.
-->PHP feels to me like I'd be re-devoting my life to my eating disorder. Crystal says this is stupid and she's probably right, but... Like I said, it's been a long time since I was thinking ED thoughts every second of the day and to jump into such a rigid, complete schedule of treatment feels like I'd be backsliding. Crystal pointed out that it'd be devoting twenty-four hours of my day to recovery thoughts, not anorexic ones, but in my head it doesn't feel that way.

-Perhaps most stupid of all my concerns, I'm terrified to go into the PHP program because I feel like I'd have absolutely no control over...anything. Myself, my time, my recovery. (When I told this to Crystal she shrieked, "EXACTLY!!!" But.. Meh.) I suppose some part of me feels like recovery is a way to teach me self control in a healthy way, and therefore I want to retain control over the recovery process. I feel like I'd be okay with three days a week because then most of my time would still be my own, like I'd have certain time devoted to therapy and the rest of the time devoted to whatever else I felt needed to be done.

Even the times I have been inpatient before, I never relinquished control. Granted, I was in a really worthless facility, but while inpatient I found ways to skip meals, self-injure, avoid any participation in group activities; hell, when I was finally fed up with inpatient I found a way to lie so completely and extensively that I got them to release me long before they should have.

I feel as though, historically speaking, every time I've let go and done as I was told by people who cared about me, it only made things worse. Why should I give up my life to total strangers?

Sigh.

So there's where things stand. I suppose nothing will really be known for certain until I talk to them again and then set up the actual intake exam. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

All I want for Christmas

The title of course is misleading: the following subject is not the only thing I want for Christmas. In fact, there are quite a few things that I'd love to get for Christmas (not the least of which is financial stability, but that's a whole different kettle of fish). However, this next item is something which I've been thinking about increasingly over the last month or two and am now trying earnestly to obtain.

If you're reading this entry chances are you've read some of those preceeding it as well. This being the assumed case, you've probably caught on to the fact that my eating has not been nearly as good as it could be lately. A big thing I've been noticing is that even though I'm eating at least a meal a day and am trying to at least eat something when I'm hungry, I may be doing the actions but mentally I'm deteriorating again. Distorted body image has been again growing more distorted, obsessive thoughts more obsessive, calorie counting once again almost an unconscious act.

And all that makes it sound like it had ever totally gone away in the first place.

I've never once willingly addressed my eating issues in therapy. This may sound surprising, considering I've been in and out of therapy since I was seventeen, but if you think about all the other issues I've got to deal with (depression, DID, etc) and then take into account that I haven't wanted to talk about my eating... Well, it's been easy enough to steer conversation into other areas that I'd rather deal with. Perhaps that's one fault with the therapy styles so far used with me: it's been way too easy to just change the subject when I don't want to talk about or address something. But now I'm really sick of it.

The therapist I've seen recently (Chris) has next to no experience treating eating disorders. Aside from that, she only sees clients once every other week. Out of all the therapy I've done, the only time that was really intensely helpful was when I saw someone twice a week. Once a week was pretty much just enough to keep me from getting worse, but I didn't see a whole lot of improvement.

All these considerations in mind, I've decided (and have talked this over with my psychiatrist, who agrees) that intensive outpatient would probably be a really good idea for me at this point. After looking into it some, I've found a treatment center in Denver which appears to have a really good program, great treatment team, and should hopefully be able to work with my insurance. It's through the Eating Disorder Center of Denver. (Fitting name?)

The program I'm most interested in is their Extended Intensive Outpatient Program. It's twelve weeks, three nights a week, four hours a night. You work with a nutritionist, psychiatrist, therapists, etc... Dinner is eaten together with group therapy immediately following. There are a lot of the things you'd pretty much expect with an outpatient program... Group, one-on-ones, body image workshops, art therapy, etc. But, from what I've read on the site, it sounds like they've got a really solid program set up.

The center offers three different levels of care: inpatient, EIOP, and a weekly group follow-up thing. I'm sure that I don't need inpatient care (for one, I'm not in a serious enough place medically) and the last sounds like it really wouldn't offer enough. Sooo I've sent an e-mail asking for more information about the program and admissions procedure. Mostly I need to know about the cost and how much my insurance would cover...

...Well, I think that's actually about all I meant to discuss. At least, I can't really think of anything else... I'll keep you informed as I find out more and if/when there's anything else major to report about this. Cross your fingers!

Mo Co Fo Sho

In this blog, I have made it a policy not to discuss my views on homosexuality, gay rights, queer theory, etc... I don't exactly hide the fact that I am a lesbian (if you've ever met me in person you'll know that I'm actually exceedingly open about the fact), but I do know that it's an extremely touchy subject for some people.

Especially considering many girls with eating disorders come from hyper-christian or otherwise strongly fundamentalist homes, I've chosen not to broadcast my gayness in this blog for their and their families' sake. Sadly, I have no doubt that if I were to discuss these subjects with prevalence, many readers would be completely turned off to everything I have to say - even though I truly believe I have some important, helpful things to say about eating disorders and recovery therefrom.

Today, however, I'm going to break with tradition.

If you're strongly homophobic, get hives and nausea from the sight of a gay person, notice your eyes start to bleed around us, etc, you may want to stop reading now.

...Well, I was going to start this with a rousing speech about how today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, but just found out it's actually next Tuesday. Nevertheless, this is transgender awareness week, so it still applies. Sorta.

If gay men and women suffer an abnormally high rate of murder and hate crimes, transgendered individuals have to face so much more. I simply cannot fathom the amount of hatred and fear these people have to deal with on just walking out their doors each morning. It is both disgusting and heartbreaking to witness suffering on such an extreme level for such a petty reason.

Hate groups like Focus on the Family's Love Won Out or PFOX (a response group to the better known PFLAG), when addressing the issue of transgenderism, love to cite the American Psychiatric Association which still classifies something called Gender Identity Disorder. According to these groups, it is evidence that even the psychiatric community agrees that transgenderism is a disorder.

GID is a disorder. However, it isn't aptly named. The poor choice of wording leads ignorant, badly informed people to believe that GID refers to transgender. In my opinion, just as Multiple Personality Disorder was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder to stifle the prevailing confusion of DID with schizophrenia and BiPolar disorder, GID needs a new name. My personal suggestion would be Gender Confusion Disorder. Particularly after having lived in Washington, DC, worked in restaurants (which for some reason get a really high rate of gay employees), and having attended one of the most gay-friendly universities in the country, I've known a lot of gay and transgendered individuals. To say that gender identity is never disordered would be just as stupid as saying it's a disorder to begin with.

Let's start by defining some terms. Sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity come to mind as good places to begin. Scientifically speaking, your sexuality is the sex you are based on genital identification. Typically, this is a simple one. Unfortunately, it isn't always... Many people are born intersexed, meaning they have either ambiguous genitals or, in rare cases, both sets. Someone who is intersexed is not transsexual. A lot of parents will arbitrarily choose a sex for children born this way hoping it will simplify things later in life. Your sexual orientation refers to the gender to which you are predominantly attracted (i.e. homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual).

Gender identity refers to the gender with which you most strongly identify. Someone who is sexually female may identify as male but not choose to actually undergo a gender transition. Same applies to male-to-female individuals. Some scholars have suggested that St Joan of Arc falls into the former category, and there are examples of Egyptian Pharaoh who were sexually female but adopted male attire and behaviors to fill their roles. Other people, like myself, prefer to label themselves as androgynes or gender queers. Basically, that means that we don't identify with one sex or the other and instead feel somewhere in between the two cultural standards of gender polarity.

For whatever reason, males who identify as female receive by far the majority of persecution for their gender identity in religious, political, and cultural settings.

Increasingly, many states are taking action to enact laws which will specifically protect transgendered individuals' rights to safety and normal life. One really touchy subject would be restrooms and public showers: should a trans female be allowed to use the womens' facilities even if she is still genitally male?

In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I grew up, a law was proposed and voted on Tuesday to allow transgendered individuals to use the facilities appropriate to their gender identity. Given that Montgomery County also houses several of the largest, most strictly fundamentalist churches in the state, this caused a HUGE stir.

National groups (like PFOX - Parents and Friends Of eX-gays) spread the word trying to get as many people as possible to protest this measure. They argue that it is a bill to allow men into women's restrooms, thereby opening the gates for a flood of pedophilia and crime.

What protesters to do not seem either to realize or just accept is that this measure is not to allow men into women's restrooms. The point of this bill is to stop forcing women to use the men's room.

A crossdresser is not necessarily someone who is gender identified with the other sex. A crossdresser may refer to a transexual, or it may just as easily refer to a heterosexual man who sometimes wears women's clothing for sexual gratification. This is not the same thing as identifying as female. A transgender female, possibly aside from her genital sexuality, is female. If someone identifies as female in the way this bill is aiming to protect, it does not mean they are pretending to be a woman to gain a better vantage point for preying on other women. They're dressing and behaving in a feminine way because they feel that they are female.

Connecting back to my earlier mention of Gender Identity Disorder, I want to explain why I feel that there is often a disordered connection when referencing questions of gender identity. The term most commonly used now is gender dysphoria. Dysphoria basically means distress, or a mental disconnect between what one wants and what is, or what one wants and one believes to be right/true/etc. Why I'm having a hard time explaining this today is beyond me, considering I'm dysphoric about other issues nine times out of ten... Dysphoria is an inner conflict which causes mental and emotional distress, is I guess the best way I can think to succinctly word it.

Gender dysphoria is listed as the main sign/symptom for GID. Basically, this means that to be classified as having GID you have to show significant distress and discomfort over your sexuality vs what you feel to be your appropriate gender. This part is often undoubtedly disordered. I've had the privilege of being good friends with several transsexuals over the last few years, and the most heartbreaking thing has been watching as they struggle with feeling like freaks and mistakes, or that they're stuck in an incorrectly sexed body, that there is no hope or remedy, that life will forever be marked by painful, awkward feelings of somehow being made wrong. This is gender dysphoria.

The reason I argue Gender Identity Disorder is the wrong term is because once the person has figured out how to fix the question of gender (be it sexual reassignment surgery, transvestism, acceptance), the dysphoria greatly diminishes. It's a matter of recognizing and accepting one's gender identity - the identity itself isn't the problem.

Here I'm going to shout out to K.T., Brandon, Rae, Ben, Jeremy, Melissa, Tammi, and all the other wonderful, awesome, ridiculously brave queer and trans people I've had the chance to know. I don't think any of them read this... But if they do, they need to know how awesome they are.

This week, I am incredibly proud to say I come from Montgomery County. When they bill was put to the vote Tuesday, it passed unanimously. Maryland may still have a long way to go when it comes to recognizing equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transexual individuals, but this bill passing is a huge step. I'm still not proud to be an American, because this country is waaay behind on so many issues, but at least I'm proud to come from Mo Co.