Pig

Gender dysphoria has been unusually bad today. It´s always there, but some days are worse than others, just as air pollution is never good, but on some days it can get intolerably toxic depending on traffic, weather conditions, and myriad other factors. I generally feel the least awful when either exercising or writing, or interacting with animals. But due to the fresh tattoo I can´t engage in rigorous exercise until Friday, and while walking helps, it´s just not the same as gym or swimming. I picked up the yellow fluorite pig I bought on Saturday, the stone the color of dehydrated piss or a sunlit muddy pond rather than anything resembling the sun or a dandelion, but as with most things, its beauty didn´t become evident until further inspection. The pig is translucent, and the snout and the left ear are almost transparent. The stone forms interesting swirls, bands and feathers within the trunk of the pig, and some spots reflect a rainbow when illuminated from the right angle. Holding it against light teases out all kinds of amber shades, and whoever carved it, chose well to place the head and legs onto a lighter part of the original chunk of stone, and to utilize the soft roundness of the trunk for the more saturated hues. The pig is depicted walking, swishing off flies with its tail, the expression on its chubby face difficult to pin down with certainty. It has a row of plump udders under its belly. Auspicious.

I know fully well that crystals have no magical properties. It is not the pig itself that does anything; but it stands for something, and a physical reminder of something can be beneficial in the same way that support groups, post-its, and art can be. I am very tired today, and my usual playful and experimental style can not be found. I don´t want to do anything else than sleep. But even today I did go for a walk and I wrote this text, because I feel compelled to document this time in my life when the rest of my existence is in the hands of the medical system and I can only do so much to prevent my past from eating my future. I want to be happy. There are more ways than one to be happy. But the strain I´m under is related to having the medical system make the decision about my life for me. At the end of the day, when they are saying that they are only evaluating my ability to be a parent because they want to make sure I can handle the stress of pregnancy and parenthood, the benevolence is only skin-deep. The presupposition still exists that only daysiders, folks with impeccable health and finances, ought to have children. And because they can´t regulate people fucking, they can´t regulate nightsiders and weirdos and undesirables from procreating via the natural route, but they can and do regulate medical procreation. I wish it were likely that I could find a cis man who would accept me as who I am, but I can´t afford to waste time waiting for one. The medical system is dyed-in-the-wool eugenicist. It bothers me that I have to participate in that song and dance, but there truly are no options. At least for now.

It´s funny how even at my most depressed and biggest I never got any shit about my weight from doctors, because I´ve always been physically active with an hourglass shape; not ideal for a trans guy, but arguably the healthiest way to store fat in a human body. However, the realms of trans treatment and procreation seem to both follow the logic of reducing the body of the person seeking treatment into a chunk of raw material out of which an outcome is carved, much like how the pig charm was carved out of a chunk of yellow fluorite, the original shape or site of excavation of which I will never know. I´m within the BMI limits for the fertility treatments but the brainwashing to hate my body even more is constant. There seems to be some level of cognitive dissonance involved: it has now been confirmed that every single one of my health markers is great, including my thyroid hormone levels which have improved when I´ve added iodine-rich foods to my diet and supplemented, and my reproductive organs look young for my age, so surely if my lifestyle was atrocious, this would not be the case? This is also what my psychotherapist noted, and today an autism assistance worker said that the level of health trolling I get seems weird when I do not have fertility issues. I´m not saying there aren´t things about my body I wouldn´t want to perfect, but yapping about the BMI when I´m not even over the limits seems weird. Also, I was told to not diet too intensely. What if I had just been told to stick to what I am doing? What if I would not have been stressed out and humiliated about my body, which brings me so much agony day to day anyway?

My body is a shell. My body is a tool. My body is a cage. I´m an animal contained within it. Thank God, we are now traveling towards the dark months again, and I always peak around the Equinoxes, while the Solstices are a bit too extreme in their polarities. I know the drill by now. Every Summer Solstice, I get in heat. Every Autumn Equinox I experience a peak in my spiritual attunement. Every Winter Solstice is spent in quiet introspection. And springtime is when I´m at my most physical and make the greatest progress in size and strength. The four seasons are much like the four phases of the female hormonal cycle. Can I derive some kind of value, some kind of wisdom, from the discrepancy between my brain and my body? I do think so. My body is the wrong one for me, but it´s not inferior to a male body. The suffering I experience is simply from my hardware and my software not quite harmonizing. But no matter whether my newly found desire to procreate leads to a baby or not, I am now riding that beast, and doing something with it, and openly opposing this disgusting society and the eugenicist ideology that permeates it on all levels.