Storytime Sunday: Bear Country

This took place in a mystical time before Rachel had a metric buttload of medical and psychiatric problems. Back when I was in shape. When I was 5'6", 120 lbs. of pure lean muscle mass, ascended ropes for fun, ran a 5 minute mile at 7,000 feet, could carry an 80 lb. backpack 20 miles a day... I was ripped. I was also mostly sober, only smoking pot on weekends and breaks and never drinking (this was before my brief coke phase, though admittedly after I tried acid the first time). (And god, if I could have transitioned with that body...)

Anyway, it was August before my junior year of high school, i.e. the August before my life as I knew it ended. I was all into backpacking and so was my mom's boyfriend (the guy who thought he was an amoeba), so us four (me, bro, mom, mom's bf) went on a little camping trip. We went to Mammoth in California. We had a lake picked out to go to, above the treeline and near some glaciers to hike to.

It was only something like 10-15 miles to hike in, but it was also gaining over 2,000 feet in altitude, so it was a respectable hike. We got most of our gear brought in by pack mule, but I was still carrying more than 60% of my weight on my back. This included a lawn chair strapped to the pack, because priorities! Other critical provisions included Nalgenes full of vodka and blue peppermint schnapps.

It was late in the day when we finally arrived and found our delivered gear. We scoped out a campsite and moved the gear to it in 3 or 4 trips.

Something about this spot: I mentioned it was above the treeline. I don't know if you've ever been to that altitude, but real trees suddenly vanish above a certain point. All that was there was scraggly things that could just as well be shrubs. One problem with this is that you have no way to keep your food away from bears. No worries, we had bearproof containers for like half 10% of the food. Good enough.

The first few days went well enough. We ate all the MREs we brought - heavy, but tasty by camping standards. We caught some trout in the lake, which still had ice floating in it in August. They made for a nice break from the freeze-dried food. One thing we learned quickly: do not eat the chili macaroni. That shit was foul. One day me and mom's bf hiked up on one of the glaciers, so you can add "never have I ever walked on a glacier" to options you can use against me.

It was getting close to the end of the trip. Just two more nights and we'd be hiking out. We made Bisquick with schnapps in it for breakfast - green, minty pancakes. Yum!

We met a group of women hiking past our campsite. The Women's Sierra Club, or as I now call them, "Dykes on Hikes." They opted to camp a bit uphill so we wouldn't all be up in each other's shit. We did the nightly routine of piling all the food and stuff up and throwing the lawn chairs on top because, I dunno, a bear would look at it and think it was a solid wall or something.

In the middle of the night I woke up to a clanging and mom's bf shouting for me to wake up. I lept out of my sleeping bag into the freezing air and unzipped the tent. "Huh? What?" Clang.

"There's a bear."

I shrank back into the tent. "Uhm... a bear?" Clang.

"We need to chase it off."

"Chase it off? How?"

He shrugged. "Lights. Noise." Clang.

"But what if it attacks?"

"It won't attack. Come on." He strode off toward the clanging, shining his flashlight. I grabbed mine and headed after. I thought I saw something move and almost shat myself.

Then I remembered hearing somewhere that bears are scared of dogs. So I started barking. "WOOF WOOF WOOF ARF ARF WOOF!" I followed the clanging, barking the whole way. The clanging stopped, but I kept going. I seemed to reach the end of the trail of debris and finally stopped. It was too dark to try any cleanup, so we went back to bed to deal with it in the morning.

We took an inventory of what was missing. Basically all the food except the little bit in the bearproof container. Ripped bags. And one lawn chair. Who the hell took the lawn chair? Of course - the Women's Sierra Club. They must have taken it, then the bear came and ate all the food.

The trail of debris had to be a quarter mile long. Food pack after food pack ripped to shreds. Except the chili macaroni. One of those packs was partly nibbled through and the rest left completely untouched. Jesus, even the bear didn't want that shit.

And then we found the lawn chair, at the end of the trail of debris. It was slightly bent and a little dinged and scuffed, just fallen over on a rock. That's when we realized what happened: the bear stuck its head through the lawn chair to get at the food and got it stuck. The clanging was the bear trying to knock it off.

Anyway, apparently my mom chatted with a couple of the women uphill about the bear situation and they should be careful about it. They thought we had an actual dog to deal with that. Don't call me a dog - that's cold, girl.

Packing up and leaving was completely uneventful, and with the lighter packs and downhill grade it was a much faster, easier hike back. We were good about leave no trace protocols. We left only footprints and took only memories of lawn chair stealing bears.

Storytime Sunday: Road Trippin' Balls

Or: Doc Hofmann is My Co-pilot

Note to children (those under 25) reading: Don't be like me, mmkay?

Have I mentioned my days of drug experimentation? Well, this was one of those days. One spring break a bunch of us did a long multi-part road trip down the west coast. We started in Walla Walla, Washington and went west to a cabin in the woods. We spent a few days there being shitshows, then it was time to drive down to San Francisco. We rolled out and headed down.

But wait! I had an appointment at Evergreen to keep along the way. When I experiment with something, I don't fuck around. So here I picked up a small pharmacy including mescaline, mushrooms, mescaline blended with MDMA (because why not?), and of course, LSD. Unlike everything else, the acid wasn't good to go - it had to be dosed out first. That meant dropping the liquid on sugar cubes and wrapping those in foil as our doses. Transaction done, weed smoked, I was on my way.

My two passengers dosed themselves when we left and started to come up around dusk. We were crossing into Oregon a little after sunset and I kept getting startled by headlights in my rear view mirror. I'd see the lights rushing up to me, then actually look at them in the mirror and they'd be keeping their distance. I can't be that high, can I? Damn, I did not mean to get that high if I'm driving.

Bright objects started getting a bit of bloom and trailers, and the shape of the roadway was really... far out, man. Oh shit. Then I remembered handling the freshly-dosed sugar cubes, still dripping acid solution, when we bought them. See, one of the fun things about acid is that it can be absorbed through your skin. Or my skin, as was the case.

So, driving into the night of this 16 hour drive, I was coming up on an unknown number of hits of acid. This left me in a predicament. I was already tripping and I didn't know how much higher I'd be flying soon, so I had to let someone else take over. But the two other people in my car were both on two hits and riding the snake. Simply getting a motel wasn't an option because that would fuck up the road trip schedule, and that would be terrible. I considered that, though. I also considered telling my passengers what was up.

I kept considering as I chain smoked and assessed all the way to Springfield. "Hey, guys! It's Springfield. The Springfield."

"Let's find the statue of Jebediah Springfield!"

So I pulled off the freeway and on to the deserted, 2 AM streets of Springfield, Oregon. The few street lights were very pretty and glowy and it felt a bit like being on a movie set. Alas, there was no statue at what seemed to be the town center. The place was begging for one - I could see the incorporeal pedestal it belonged on right there. But along the road leading away, we spotted something. There it was, the comic book store and, right next to it, the Kwik-E-Mart. We came for Simpsons, we got the Simpsons.

We kept going and pressed on through the trip. Er, night.

Around 5:30 AM we reached Grant's Pass and stopped for gas. Oregon has this stupid law where it's illegal to pump your own gas, so we had to deal with the attendants. And we were all saucer-eyed and tripping to varying degrees. The guy in my back seat was clinging to the ceiling hand grip and rocking back and forth with a deranged grin on his face. The guy in the front seat was maintaining his composure like a pro and avoiding any interaction. Me? I was fighting against permasmile and trying not to focus on any trippy things I saw. After that stress, we continued on our way.

Down Highway 199, going straight for the coast. We'd been periodically smoking weed along the way; we smoked more once we got outside Grant's Pass. Dawn was starting to creep up and as it started to get light out here was... snow? It was snowing, and driving through that was unbelievably trippy. I was most definitely still tripping and here was this drifting star field I was floating through. There might have been the car engine, but I could still 'hear' the silence of the snow over it. We danced around corners, we rocketed up hills, we entered another world when we passed through a tunnel.

It was around 7 AM when we came down out of the snow. The snow turned to drizzle turned to nothing as we crossed into California. As we came down out of the mountains, I finally felt like I might be coming down myself. Mostly. We crested a hill near the coast and it opened up into an utterly surreal sight of fields of sunflowers catching the morning rays. Just as the world opened up into that, the shuffle on the stereo pulled up "No Rain," and I knew everything would be just fine. Good thing, too - I was spent.

Problem: who was going to take over for me? Guy in the back seat volunteers. "I've come down enough." Well, if you say so. We pull over and swap positions. I gobble 2 hits of acid and curl up in the back seat as though to sleep. And we carry on.

I spent hours in awe of the sights - the glistening ocean, the alien trees, the twisted road. For a while I had my face pressed to the window in full perma-smile mode. It was glorious going down Highway 1 with a sleep-deprived, residually-tripping madman at the wheel, but that could only go on so long. He started getting swervy and jerky, and we can't have that with blind turns and 200' cliffs.

So he pulled over. Guy in the front seat? "I can't fit in your driver's seat!" He had a point. This guy was like 6-foot-20 and not going to squeeze under my steering wheel.

So this is how it's gonna be, guys? Really? I drive us more than 12 hours from bumfuck backwoods Washington to Crescent City, California, mostly on acid, and my only replacement driver is done for before we reach Mendocino. I'm supposed to take over again? Don't you guys remember when I ate all that acid this morning? Fine! Fine, someone's gotta do it.

So I took over driving again, and let me tell you, Highway 1 is an... interesting drive when you're tripping. I fortunately learned quickly: don't get engrossed by the pretty images, if they suck you in you're dead. Cars coming the other direction were heart attack inducing when they actually passed, but for the most part, while stressful, it was also oddly zen. I was connected to the car and fully open to the magnificent natural beauty around me. The smooth g-forces of each turn, the almost rhythmic rising from and falling toward the ocean along the roller coaster roadway. The sea spray and the spring foliage enveloped me in a blanket of smells. And it was such a beautiful day, with swarms of itty bitty UFOs on the ocean surface, all flickering in the sunlight.

But I couldn't keep it up. The only thing keeping me awake at this point was the fact that I was tripping. So we pulled into a market in (I think) Stewarts Point - it was somewhere not too far north of Jenner is all I know for certain. I didn't think I could go on. Big guy was going to have to squeeze in there. He wasn't so sure about that - said he'd think about it while I bought energy drinks. So I went in, I purchased a Monster and two Red Bulls, and I walked out with the receipt... for $6.66. That was a trip. Though it was more of a trip for the big guy. He saw the 666 was was like, "alright, it's a sign. Let's do this!"

Big guy took off driving and I pounded my energy drink, again starting to come down. This situation lasted all the way to... Inverness. Maybe - probably not even that far, though my memory is kind of fuzzy (can't imagine why). His knee was killing him and someone else had to take over. Other guy was curled up like a baby in the back seat. Alright, all on me again. As always.

So I'm still tripping a little and now kept awake by energy drinks, at least, and we're in the home stretch. We just have to make it to Foster City and we can pass out. I drive us through rural Marin County and we trip out on the farms and cows. Remembering how close I used to live to the cows, I tripped out harder.

I was so strung out. Soooo strung out. I was shaky and weak and twitchy, but dammit, we were going to make it. We slipped down onto the 101 and I was almost overwhelmed by all the cars and traffic and buildings and oh my god so busy! But that was just the start. We stopped for more energy drinks (in Greenbrae, I think), and I pounded one on the drive down through Marin.

I wasn't properly tripping at this point, I don't think, but distances, proportions, and perspective were still all weird. And so it was that I got on the Golden Gate Bridge, with its 2-feet-more-narrow-than-standard lanes and no median. The lanes looked like they got narrower and narrower and all the other cars seemed huge and smothering. I was gripping the steering wheel for dear life and biting down on my cigarette.

I barely remember the rest of the drive, just floating through San Francisco and riding the current down 101. We pulled into the Residence Inn parking lot, and thus ended that leg of the journey, nearly 24 hours after leaving.

To be continued...

Storytime Sunday: Grand Theft Golf Cart

In which Rachel comes within 15 feet of being arrested as an accessory to grand theft.

Boredom and insulation from consequences breeds a certain kind of adventurous nihilism. There are no consequences, so clearly nothing matters. But that just invites pushing the boundaries, seeing how far you can go until there actually are consequences.

Getting caught smoking weed on campus 3 times and ignored smoking at least as many? No consequences. Going to work drunk, and even drinking at work? Nothing. Stealing benches from the school and proudly displaying them outside my house? Pfft. Smoking cigarettes inside the computer lab in front of the publicly-accessible webcam? Please. I don't remember if this was before or after I biked through the library naked.

Whitman was a game preserve, where we were protected from responsibility. And we were going to (incrementally) take that as far as possible.

So it was one fateful... I honestly don't know what night - Tuesday and Saturday were about the same then. Some night a bunch of us were getting drunk. Anyway, this one guy, let's call him C., proposed stealing a golf cart from the school. He said he'd stolen it before, it's really easy. He just needs to stick his Leatherman in the key slot and turn. However, he's already in trouble with the school (somehow, I don't remember how he pulled that off), so he needed someone else to take the fall if they got caught. Nothing matters, so K. volunteers as driver/fall guy.

The plan we didn't realize we made was to all go on a joyride. Or at least, I didn't realize until it was happening.

I heard a putt-putt going down the dark street, then a "heeeyyyy~~". The golf cart was ours.

Seven of us (if I'm not mistaken) piled onto that one golf cart. It was one of those maintenance golf carts, so it had a flat bed in back; four of us piled on there. Another three crammed into the front seat. And we were off.

Off where? WHO CARES? Past Hunter Conservatory, up the street, back between the buildings. "WOOOOOOOOO!" Zigging and zagging all over the damn place. Where to next? How about we buzz Prentiss (the girls' dorms)? Yeah! Not that we voted on any of it, we just rationalized it after K. drunkenly swerved in that direction.

So we swerved between the dorms, down the path, through the sprinklers - don't touch the brakes! - almost into a bench, past the music building... We were about to go back out onto the street, off to who knows where.

"Police!" Fuck. K. brought the cart to a halt just at the (far) edge of the sidewalk.

"Step out of the vehicle." 4 drunk college students proceeded to fall off the back.

"Have you all been drinking?" Eeyup. Very drinking.

"Which one of you was driving?" Okay, K., now's the time to be the fall guy.

"I'm going to ask again, which one of you was driving?" Any minute here, K.

K. was not going to be the fall guy.

Another cop arrived. A sergeant. He surveyed the scene, turned to the cop next to him and said "I was expecting a drunk Bill Murray."

K. eventually did confess in a manner so anticlimactic I don't even remember it happening. Or maybe I would have remembered if I wasn't freaking out because, oh yeah, cops.

"Are you all Whitman students?" Sighs of relief all around. Yep, yep, yep, "kinda." Goddammit, C., they don't need to get into full time vs. part time vs. no time.

We were all Whitman students, so what did that mean? "We'll call security and..." The cop could barely keep a straight face here, "see if they want to do anything."

There was one hard-ass among the cops, always going on about C.'s "weapon" (his Leatherman) and being generally annoyed and bitchy. Then there were the rest of the cops arrayed at this scene. Shaking their heads, resisting laughter, cracking jokes between each other. I guess there are worse things they could get called to.

One of the cops reminded us how lucky we were which side of the sidewalk we were on when they caught us. This side of the sidewalk, Whitman security gets us, that side of the sidewalk the po-po gets us. Po-po gets us for theft in excess of $1,000 - i.e., Grand Theft Golf Cart. (Not that Whitman would ultimately press charges, but still - they don't have beer in those jail cells.) But we were on this side so...

Finally security arrived to tell us to go home and sleep it off. Well, okay, he did ask for all our names and student ID numbers first. He was very official about it and everything. And then he sent us home, said we'd be hearing about disciplinary action later. Uh-huh. So can we go now?

We could go, and that could only mean one thing: go back home and drink and party more. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

P.S.: There never was any disciplinary action. No one even heard a peep from admin except for K., who was summoned for a Talking To. No consequences. Nothing matters.

Storytime Sunday: This Ceiling Sure Looks Inviting

Tequila has a tendency of convincing you certain things are good ideas. None of them are actually good ideas.

My last year at Whitman, I lived in a party house. Like, had a giant living room / foyer where we held bumpin' concerts regularly. Rosaacs, it was called (because it was on the corner of Rose and Isaacs streets). We had a lot of adventures. One night the guy who would become my roommate there called me up and asked "wanna go commit some federal crimes?" But that's another story.

There were four of us. There was me, obviously. There was J., a hilarious manly man astronomy major who tried (unsuccessfully) to switch to archaeology; he basically ran the house, he ran the concerts and loves Old Granddad, Pink Floyd, and dirty blues. There was S., a Swazi astronomy-math combined major who smoked whole trees of pot and drank cheap beer constantly (along with stealing my and Jake's booze); when he got deported, we found his room even messier than mine, with bottles of piss accumulated among the beer cans knee deep in places. And there was I., the diabetic sophomore who always got blacked out and lost his insulin pump; it's a miracle he survived.

We were hanging out drinking one winter night with friends mostly from the FUSH (Fucked Up Shit House). We = me and J.; I. and S. were off getting fucked up elsewhere. So all of we were hanging out in the kitchen taking bong rips and shots (except J. - he'd never touch weed). One of the FUSH people noticed a hatch in the ceiling. "What's up there," he asked.

J. shrugged. "I dunno!"

I took my shot of tequila. "Only one way to find out." See, at that point I'd been in the habit of crawling into tiny spaces for some reason. Crawling into walls, you know, like this. So I figured, fuck it, let's check this out. Tequila said it was a good idea, at least.

J. grabbed a ladder and set it up underneath. I wrestled my way to the top and pushed the square up, then slid it to the side. "Whoooaaaaa..." There were pipes in there. And a crawlspace big enough to hang out in. And... what's that against the wall there? I pulled myself up, sticking to the 2x4s and keeping my weight off the drywall ceiling.

"Hey, someone pass me the tequila," I called down. One of my friends dutifully handed it up.

Just drinking tequila in the ceiling. WCGW?

I was enjoying my ceiling tequila, but there was something missing. There's something about confined spaces that just screams "hotbox me!" So I drank a little more tequila and asked for the pipe and a lighter. You know what happened next.

I was getting comfortable up there. As I drank more tequila people started to wonder if I ever planned to come down. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I had my Hornitos and I was happy. But all good things must come to an end. Eventually I was summoned to climb down. Easy enough. Just shuffle backwards along the 2x4s same way I came in. What could possibly go wrong?

I was going along all right, laughing like an idiot the whole way, when something fell out from under me.

You see those pipes there? Yeah, they're actually important.

As you can see, I couldn't stop laughing at my fail, face-arming myself because my palms were occupied holding me up. Once I calmed down enough, I shuffled over and climbed back down through the opening that was actually supposed to be there.

Repairing it was an adventure. J. took charge - it wasn't the first time he'd had to replace drywall in that house. We went to Home Depot, got a sheet, took it home, drank some bourbon, cut it, replaced the old sheet, drank some beer, spackled, painted, good as new.

Then we drank more. The end.

Don't forget to vote in this week's special poll all about this story --->

Storytime Sunday: The Cat's Stuck in the Wall

Note: This is an abridged telling of the story on account of not getting my poop in a group to write the story in a timely manner. This is what you get.

"Mew! Mew!" Almost rhythmic mews, distant and muffled. Edie's missing, and now there's muffled kitten meowing no one can pinpoint. We listen from the basement - she's at the front of the house and somewhere above. We listen in the front room - she's near the front of the house and somewhere below. We can hear her meowing beneath us.

"Mew! Mew!"

Hours of searching have passed to no avail. She's going to die of dehydration in there, we have to get her out! I can hear where she is, under the front door. I tear up the flooring in front of the door only to find hardwood underneath. I grab a claw hammer and maniacally attack the hardwood with it, ripping up chunks.

That goes nowhere, it just spews shredded wood all over the carpet and takes a divot out of the floor. Someone eventually gets the idea to look inside the walls. We only find a couple ways in, through the upstairs balcony. The openings are tight and the roof inside looks cramped. But we can hear the cat clearly inside. Yep, the cat's definitely stuck in the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

Someone needs to climb in there and look. This looks like a job for Stuporman! (That was my inebriated alter-ego at the time. Stuporman - fighter of sobriety, defender of awesome.) I dive in head first and wriggle through the opening. I climb onto a half inch layer of soft dust and sediment and turn around, coating myself in it. With a flashlight, squeezing my head under the floor, and eventually a mirror, I solidly confirm Edie's location: at the bottom of a shaft.

So here's what we knew: Edie got into the wall through a vent opening. She wandered around exploring until she came to a shaft, like a hollow column. Then she fell down it and got trapped. This didn't get us any closer to getting her out.

I tried lowering a shoebox wrapped in a sheet, tied to another sheet, with food in it down the shaft. It just landed on her, if it even made it all the way down. We looked and looked with mirrors. I started chain smoking inside the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

Someone gave us the brilliant suggestion to call the fire department. They laughed at us. We called the humane society. They don't do that. Someone posted a frantic message to the all-campus listserv, asking for any help.

Two guys came by to help. They tried various approaches. I continued to lay in the wall, smoking. Dust was sticking to my finger and caking to my lips. Someone passed me a pipe. I hit it and resumed smoking. Still in the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

I noticed the open space between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling. The notion of rats running through there entered my head. Is there rat shit in here? Wait... oh fuck. Someone pointed out to me: the dust. I was laying in rat shit and probably eating hanta virus as I smoked. I spat gritty bits of dust out of my mouth. Then I shrugged and pulled out another cigarette.

I spent late into the night inside this wall, increasingly tired, high, and, later on, drunk. I eventually crashed and came back the next day to climb inside the wall and chain smoke for a few hours, listening to the cat's mews to make sure she was still alive.

"Mew! Mew!"

Four hours in the wall today got me through a half pack of cigarettes and not much else. Still laying in rat shit, but I don't care, this is my spot! By this point I kinda feel like just lounging inside the wall from now on.

It all just kind of runs together at this point. I spent literally all the time I was at that house inside the wall chain smoking. There was no point to being in the wall, I didn't even pretend to be there for the cat other than to 'listen to make sure it's still alive'. Why did I want to lay there in rat shit regolith and chain smoke without a view of anything or any TV/computer/whatever? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The next day, while I was gone, Clark arrived. With a jigsaw and a bottle of whiskey in hand. "Where's the cat," I imagine he asked with a cackle after kicking open the door. He cut a square out of the balcony floor directly above the shaft. As soon as it was open and the cat could see it was a way out, she climbed out on her own. Just stuck her claws out and parkoured up the sides of the shaft. Stupid cat. 

Storytime Sunday: Goddammit to Me

Have you ever really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? I have. This is the story of when I was.

It was 2003. RSD was my life at this point. It seemed to stretch back forever and it would surely continue forever. Mom had set me up in a little rented back house in a simulacrum of independence at least. The pain had gotten a little better with my spinal cord stimulator implant, and with new medications, but it was still pretty bad.

We'd fired the doctors at Stanford after being frustrated for too long with their inflexibility and purely "do as I say" authoritarian way of doing business. We found a new anesthesiologist/neurosurgeon who had RSD himself and was an all-around cool guy. And we found a pharmacologist who specialized in pain management to handle my medication.

Now, one weird thing that happens with RSD is that your opioid receptors - the ones that hydrocodone, oxycontin, morphine, etc. bind to - stop working right and those drugs are minimally effective for the pain. So you have to try other things. My new pharmacologist switched me from Neurontin to Gabitril (that's its own story), put me on methadone (it partly gets around the receptor problem) and some other things. But you have to be innovative with this. You have to think outside the box.

He had an outside the box option: ketamine. It's an anesthetic that works directly on pathways the RSD acts on (specifically, NMDA). It was a perfect option. And he had an outside the box delivery mechanism for it: a topical cream. I was a little sketched out by ketamine, but I went with it. We ordered the cream from a compounding pharmacy and I soon got it.

One tablespoon applied to the affected area once per day. Easy enough. Well, maybe a heaping tablespoon - my legs are big. Hey, this stuff works great. I want this to cover my whole legs. A couple tablespoons - it's a cream, it can't be dangerous. 

I started to get extremely sleepy. Head bobble all the time sleepy. After I fell from briefly losing consciousness mid-stride, mom took me back to her place. I slept a lot. But damn if my legs weren't feeling good.

"Moouumm..?" I shambled down the hallway to her room. "Moouumm..?" My brother was staring at me, I think. Mom walked to the front of her room and saw me, pupils blown, bruise forming on my head. "Are you okay," she demanded to know. I just continued shambling toward her bathroom. She probably asked again if I was okay, but I don't really know.

I managed to shamble past her into the shit-'n'-shower, as we called it (the closet-like room with a shower and a toilet right up against it). I saw her holding the external power supply to my SCS; it had apparently been dangling from my ass the whole time.

I reached out my hand. "Goddammit to me," I demanded.

"What?"

"Goddammit to me," a little softer this time.

"Goddamn what?"

"Goddammit to me."

She looked down at the power supply in her hand, and back at me. "Give it to you?"

I nodded. "Goddammit to me."

"No."

"Goddammit to me," I pleaded.

"You're gonna drop it in the toilet."

"Goddammit to me," more politely.

"You're gonna drop it in the toilet."

"Goddammit to me," super politely this time.

"Fine, fine." She handed it to me. I immediately dropped it in the toilet. It cost $8,000 to replace.

I don't remember what happened next, but apparently she called 911. She thought I had a head injury, but no, I just fell out of bed.

Next thing I knew, I was nowhere and formless. There was something sudden and awful, disembodied pain. I imploded, my muscles all spasming shut in an instant. My eyes flew open. I saw things, as in I got the raw sensory input, but nothing made sense. Though in hindsight I know what I saw, at the time, I couldn't identify shapes or colors, let alone objects. It was just raw, terrifying sensory overload.

What I didn't realize was that I was on the nice-living-room (not the one we normally used), on the couch, getting an IV stuck in my arm. This disorienting assault on my senses and my beings may very well have been the most terrifying experience of my life. It was like I had just been born and hadn't yet formed a concept or understanding of anything - not even my body or my senses.

I woke up in the hospital hours later to learn that I'd OD'd on ketamine. Apparently the extra I was applying had built up in my system and I was just on K the whole time until it crossed that threshold.

As a bonus, I found out from my pharmacologist that even with my stupidity, that shouldn't have been nearly enough to OD, only to have a bad time. Turned out my NMDA receptors must have been shot - likely excitotoxicity damage from so much continuous pain for so long literally killing the receptors. Joy.

I tried ketamine in another form after that. Pills. It became my only "as needed" pain relief other than pot. I was scared shitless of it, but when I needed it, it was a godsend. When I was really hurting, goddammit to me.

The Nuthouse

Gather 'round, boys and girls, and listen to the story of Rachel's trip to the nuthouse. The loony bin. The insane asylum. Whatever derogatory name you prefer for "psychiatric inpatient." 

It was 2001: not a space odyssey. The previous year, I'd been diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD, also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type I), first in one leg but rapidly spreading to both. It's a shitty disease. Really shitty. The pain - burning, crushing agony - never stops. The nerves get crossed, so normal sensations like a light touch can feel like a red-hot belt sander. I was still in Stage I of the disease, though rapidly on my way to Stage II, so fortunately it wasn't that bad. It was just miserable. The best parts are that the doctors gave me about a 5-10% chance of total remission (you're never "cured" of CRPS), it spreads in more than 90% of cases, and more than a third of patients eventually have symptoms throughout their whole body. So it was utterly hopeless.

I was depressed, naturally. In pain, can't do anything, dreams shattered, no hope, miserable side effects from the medications. But I went through the motions. I let myself be carried along by the currents because I didn't know what else to do. Some parts of the ride were even pleasant - the weekly spinal anesthetic injections I got in the OR felt sooo good. It was also, strangely, a respite from my bouts of intense emotional hurt and rage shortly before. In hindsight I was (hypo)manic for much of high school, and even younger (I first experienced psychosis in elementary school), but at the time I was just "impossible." (That description has a lot of meaning rolled into it that I don't feel like unpacking. I'll just say that if someone calls me "impossible," they will generally trigger either a flashback or an intense fight-or-flight - usually flight - response.) And now that I was depressed, that had settled down.

But my depression needed treatment, the doctors decided. To their credit, they first tried an antidepressant with proven efficacy for alleviating nerve pain. But that made me completely dissociated, so no go on that one. They tried a couple others with minimal effect. Then they tried Paxil.

Now, normally if a story involves putting a 18 year old on Paxil, it's not going to end well. When it's a 18 year old with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and miscoded 5-HT-2A receptors, it ends like this.

My energy started to come back. I was more alert. I also got even more grumpy than usual, but that didn't register until it was too late - I had reason to be grumpy after all. I was snippy and implacable. And I started to realize some things. I started to really grasp how hopeless and miserable things were. I started to realize there really was something I could do about it. I could force them to make me better. They didn't want me to die, but that was my ultimate way out. So I could force them to make me better or watch me die, and I'd win either way.

Now, this wasn't arrived at by any kind of rational thought process, or even coherent chain of thinking. It was more a subconscious emotional realization that came into the conscious when the time was right.

I wanted more Norco (hydrocodone). I'd taken the max dose, but I was in pain and I wanted more. I got very, very angry that mom wouldn't give me more. I don't remember things all too well, but at some point while screaming at her, I picked up a nearby pair of scissors and slashed at my arm with them. I think I was wrestled to the ground, but trying to cut my arm open with the scissors is the last thing I remember.

I don't know how I was transported to Stanford University Hospital, but I was taken there under a 5150 order: "danger to self." Basically, I was involuntarily committed by the State of California.

My memory picks up again inside the psych ward doors. I was assigned a room near the entrance on the lockdown side of the ward. At least one of my parents walked me in, I don't remember who, of if it was maybe both. All I could do was cry and scream. The more I did, the more they disregarded me. I gathered enough control to stop and be silent. They left me alone. This was what I needed.

They clearly weren't going to help me, they just wanted to keep me from escaping my misery. Well, if they weren't going to make things better, I still had a way out.

I pulled the pillowcase off my bed. Making sure they didn't see, I tied it to the doorknob. I tied a slipknot in it and slid my head through. Then I squatted, kicked my legs out, and dangled with my butt off the ground. Things were going dim, but they caught me. I know they got me down and restrained me. Next thing I know they're shoving a pill down my throat. Zyprexa, a powerful antipsychotic.

I passed out and awoke in a dissociated fugue, unable to move. The rage was gone, but all the hurt, both physical and mental, was still there. I couldn't cry. I could barely whisper. Lifting a hand was difficult. They administered my morning medications, plus more Zyprexa.

They dragged me down the hall (not literally - I was stumbling as they held me up) to bathe me. I don't really remember it. I had a visitor whom I won't name. They wanted to give me a massage to make me feel better. The orderlies helped lay me face down on a... something, I don't remember if it was a bed or a gurney or what... in a room with privacy.

It started with my back. I didn't like it. It felt like they were using soap, not lotion. They didn't go far down, though, only about halfway down my back. Then they started on my legs. That outright hurt. Remember the non-painful sensations feeling painful? This is someone who knew about that symptom and inflicted this on me anyway. It hurt. "No," I muttered as loud as I could manage, "stop." They didn't hear me, apparently. "Hurts," I tried again. More massaging my calves, tearing at my flesh. The massaging moved upward. Knees. Lower thighs. Upper thighs. It just hurt before, but this was starting to feel violating. Starting to brush up to my butt and around to the inside of my upper thigh. "No," I tried to scream, but only a mumble emerged. I reached up with all my might to stop them, but my arm barely moved. But they did stop - to shush me and push my arm back down before resuming. I tried to crane my head to make them hear me. "Please, no." More shushing. "It's okay." My neck lost strength and my head fell back down. I quietly whimpered as they massaged my butt and inner thigh.

I passed out from the emotional exhaustion. I woke up in my room and dragged myself to a corner where no one could be behind me. I curled into the fetal position and let my head droop back and forth, sometimes hitting the wall. It wasn't forceful - I couldn't have managed force even if I wanted to.

I was already on a drug called Neurontin for my nerve pain. It dulled the pain, sure. It also dulled my mind, made me lethargic, slowed my metabolism, ballooned my weight, made speaking difficult (I couldn't word good), and wreaked havoc on my ability to form new memories. I was on 1500 mg three times a day when I entered the psych ward. Since it allegedly worked as a mood stabilizer (funny story, it totally doesn't based on all the best research), they increased that, first to 1800 then to 2000 for a total of 6000 mg/day. My pharmacologist would later call this borderline malpractice - it loses efficacy at such high doses and basically all you're doing is adding to side effects. Which may have been the purpose. It helped the Zyprexa with incapacitating me.

There was actually a plausibly legitimate reason for this. They needed to keep me from hurting myself while the Paxil left my system and I stabilized, and incapacitating me was a good way to do that. But it was miserable and it made me easy prey, as you saw.

I didn't really eat those first few days. I had to pick at it a little while they watched - had to be a good little psycho. But I didn't want to. I may have been too out of it for much of the pain to register anymore, but I still wanted nothing more than to die.

The 72 hours on my 5150 order expired and it was renewed with a 5250 order, a 2 week extension.

What finally drew me out of the room was the need for human contact, any human contact. I shambled out there, still weighed down by the Neurontin and Zyprexa (though building some tolerance at least), and I think talked to one of the nurses. It kind of went from there. The nurses were all very nice and respectful, even to a psychotic 18 year old, and I thank them for that.

Social contact got me in a different mode. It distracted me from my misery and made me forget I wanted to kill myself. But only while I was talking. Back in my room, in my thoughts, I still wanted to die. Still, I could be good and behave. It was the only way to get transferred to the normal ward, where they promised me better painkillers and a lidocaine IV.

So I behaved. And so I was rewarded a few days later. They took me out of lockdown and gave me a new, much nicer room in the nicer, bigger non-lockdown side of the ward. They also almost immediately gave me the IV anesthetic, as promised.

The people on the locked ward were all recluses in really bad places, so I didn't really interact with any of them. The unlocked ward had a crazy cast of characters. Old, young, middle-aged; mental illness, dysmorphia, addiction. Addiction was a pretty common thing for people to be there for. 

There was one girl there who still haunts me. She was so anorexic - like horrifying anorexic, Auschwitz-anorexic - she was in a wheelchair with a feeding tube up her nose. She was too weak to speak above a whisper. I'm not sure why, but seeing her like that really got to me. She made me feel sad, and not the kind of sad I was already feeling.

There was a lounge on the ward and access to movies. I distinctly remember watching True Romance with some roadie in there for rehab.

There were the silly arts and crafts activities. I got nothing out of them, naturally. No, less than nothing. They just gave me anxiety about how awful it would be if I drew/whatever anything and vicarious embarrassment when people would explain what they made.

At some point I think they might have told my parents I was bipolar. I don't really remember. They seemed to figure the Neurontin was plenty and there was no need to pursue other treatment. Just keep me off SSRIs, that's all.

I slowly picked back up to "normal" and even a little happy - other people's happiness, and their obvious hopes for me, was infectious.

After another 5250 and close to 3 weeks total involuntarily committed, I was released from the ward into my (IIRC) mother's custody. I did kind of miss it at first - there was no lidocaine IV at home.

Postscript: Being in the psych ward was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's also something I'm glad happened, considering the alternative is that I'd be fucking dead. People can be shitty, doctors can be dumb, others take advantage, but at least I'm still here.

Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Lunatic

That's me. It's apparently Mental Health Awareness Week and a friend inspired me to do something for it. Specifically, this is a coming out of sorts. I've alluded to some mental health problems, but I haven't outright owned this stuff to all that many people.

I'm weird. I know I'm weird. But I think I'm normal-weird, not going-to-shoot-up-a-school weird. People who struggle with what I do often get ignorantly tarred as the latter category. So I guess I'm here to say: Hello, my name is Rachel, and I'm a perfectly mostly harmless lunatic.

There are names for what my damage is. I have bipolar disorder with mixed and psychotic features, rapid cycling and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. They're labels, they make it easier to grasp what I'm dealing with due to its similarities to what afflict other people, but they're just labels. Let's break down what they actually mean.

Bipolar disorder: My moods can vary wildly, and I don't mean the garbage people call a "mood swings." I mean they can vary between weeks-to-months-long suicidal depression; or grandiose, sleepless hyperactivity; or uncontrollable hair-trigger rage; or unquenchable lust with an unstoppable sex drive; or batfuck insanity (it's a technical term); or any combination thereof. Sometimes things can trigger it, like sleep deprivation or emotional trauma or just the change of seasons. Sometimes it just happens because fuck you, that's why. When it does happen, I can see it happening, but that doesn't diminish its power at all. So I know I'm easily angered - great, that doesn't make me any less easily angered. I have to be constantly on guard against my emotions, my sleep patterns, my energy levels, and my libido. If any of them get too high or too low, too much or too little, that's a sign of an episode. And episodes always end poorly sooner or later, one way or another.

Mixed features: This means I have the kind of bipolar where I can get "mixed" episodes - manic and depressed at the same time. These are the most dangerous bipolar episodes, because they combine the suicidal feelings of depression with the manic impulsivity. You have the depression to want to kill yourself and the energy and inclination to actually do it. It can also involve rapid fluctuation in the span of seconds. Laughing and crying at the same time is pretty stereotypical, especially if you combine that with dancing and howling in rage. If you're mixed, you're all over the damn place, and really only get the worst of both the mania and depression, none of the redeeming qualities.

Psychotic features: I hallucinate. I have delusions. I hear music, whispers, muffled voices, chanting - none of them actually there. I see shadow people moving in the edges of my vision, or sneaking around outside my window when I'm not looking directly out of it. They're not really there, not even visually; they're just kind of there, always just at the edges of my ability to discern them. I'm sure my activities are being tracked by someone, my every click and scroll on the computer, the time I spend on what page, by some entity who wants to use it to (successfully) divine my inner thoughts and feelings. Yes click on this, that'll look good; don't click on that, they'll figure you out. Anything feminine or female-oriented used to be in the latter category - I didn't want them to know I wished I was a girl. This kind of thing tends to happen when I'm manic. I'm not schizoaffective (I don't think... there are troubling signs I might be somewhere in the vicinity), but I do get raging psychosis and inward-turning antisocial patterns in some of my manias.

Rapid cycling: Strictly speaking, this means I can have four or more depressive, manic, mixed, or hypomanic episodes in the span of a year. As a practical matter it means that I might be in a euphoric mania and a couple weeks later I crash into crippling depression when it burns out, only to fly into a psychotic, dysphoric mania after a month of stability. When I'm not medicated, I probably average 5-10 episodes of various sorts per year, ranging from a few weeks to a few months, with stability sometimes in between them. A good chunk of my life is spent jumping from episode to episode if I'm not treated.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD): A variant of PTSD with some distinct differences. For starters, it doesn't happen from a single traumatic event. Instead, it's from prolonged trauma without hope of escape, or at least the perception of no escape. It's most common in two groups of people: torture survivors / POWs, and domestic abuse survivors. It has a lot in common with PTSD - night terrors, hypervigilence (being hyper-alert to danger and "jumpy"), dissociation, amnesia or hypermnesia (the opposite, where the memories are unnaturally vivid), and flashbacks. The flashbacks tend to be different, however - not always, but usually. "Atypical flashbacks." Sometimes called "emotional flashbacks," instead of hyper-realistically re-living the experience, you re-live the emotions and feelings of the experience, as though experiencing it all over again. It can be completely debilitating when it happens. My cat has had to snap me out of the dissociated sobbing of these flashbacks by nuzzling her cold nose to my face. Another "feature" distinct to C-PTSD is attachment issues. It causes sometimes crippling problems with the ability to form and maintain relationships. All of them are tainted by the relationship with one's captors or abusers. It results in a push-pull not unlike borderline personality disorder, due to a tension between defense mechanisms (push) and a sort of echo of Stockholm syndrome (pull). It can promote dependency and co-dependency. It can cause one to seek a rescuer or savior to liberate them from the pain and isolation. Basically, it can cripple the ability to have healthy relationships.

Your bloghostess has suffered most of these effects. Without medication, I wake up screaming almost every night, sometimes multiple times a night. Some painful memories are hyper-vivid and others are dissociated to the point of being remembered in the third person. Without medication, I practically jump out of my skin if I hear a sudden noise behind me. It took me a long time to be at all okay with human touch; it was panic-inducing and the opposite of comforting. And my ability to form and maintain relationships is something I continue to struggle with; in some regards, my development is stunted at an adolescent level on that front.

I tried to "hack" some of these things for a while, turn them to my advantage as I stupidly thought possible. You know, things like deliberately triggering, prolonging, and exacerbating hypomania to avoid sleep and be extra productive. Makes sense, right? Of course, I'd always crash even harder when it inevitably ended, and I dropped out of school after being reckless and all over the place for years.

I attempted suicide twice in one day when I had a psychotic mixed episode. I tried to slit my wrists, then I hanged myself. It made perfect sense at the time. It was the only way out of my intractable situation of constant chronic pain and a hopeless, meaningless life. The psychosis and mania took me from thinking it might be a good idea to knowing it was the one right thing to do and impulsively acting on it. (It's fortunate I was so out of my mind that I was ineffectual and able to be stopped.)

I almost committed suicide again in another mixed episode. Everything just hurt so bad, life hurt so bad; everything was hopeless and miserable and lonely. So I was going to jump off a ~20 story building. I was fortunate a friend talked me down.

I came close to attempting a fourth time in yet another mixed episode. I was going to take everything in my medicine cabinet and try to overdose. It made complete sense, even though it shouldn't have. My future was looking up for once. I was back in school with a shot at real research. I was finally me - Rachel, not Ryan. I had a loving and supportive girlfriend for the first time in my life. Life was good. But it didn't feel good. It felt absolutely miserable and terrible and hopeless. Life felt so awful I wanted - really wanted - to die. My girlfriend got me to delay my plan - just postpone it. Then she dragged me to my psychologist. 

Suicide, and the constant prospect of feeling suicidal, is a normal part of my life. You'll notice all those were mixed episodes; that's when I have the inclination to do something with those feelings. But when just plain depressed, or my C-PTSD is triggered, the thought is always there. When I'm sane, like now, I know I'd want anyone to beat me into submission if they had to in order to save me from myself. But when I'm feeling it, it's what I "really" want - to die. "Just fucking kill yourself," directed at myself, has spilled out of my mouth unbidden more times than I can count.

That last close call, I was already fairly well medicated - all that was missing from the cocktail was my antipsychotic (see below). It's what's called a "breakthrough episode" - it breaks through the otherwise effective medication. Even stable now, I always have to fear that prospect. And if it happens, I have to fear that it will render one or more of my medications ineffective for me from then on. There are indicators I look for. One is that I have trouble sleeping and staying asleep. Another is that my legs become painful and hypersensitive once again. These are indications of mania. Or maybe everything stops being pleasurable and I can't sleep less than 12 hours. That could indicate depression. 

So that's my damage. I'm a wreck. Or I would be without the lovely friends I have helping me. No, I don't mean therapists and the like (though they are helpful). I mean my medications. They patch me up and hold me together. With them, I have no flashbacks, no night terrors, minimal hypervigilence, no depression, and no mania. I'm on 7 (count 'em), plus 2 I take as needed. Let's go through what it takes to keep a lunatic sane, shall we?

Lamictal: I actually take this for two things. First and foremost, it acts as a mood stabilizer, primarily warding off depression but also combating mania. I also take it to deal with "partial" seizures in my temporal lobes that cause hallucinations and synaesthesia, and may trigger bipolar episodes. 

Lithium: The classic bipolar medication. I take this as a mood stabilizer that primarily works to combat mania, also working less so against depression. 

Viibryd: This is my antidepressant, which also generally reduces anxiety (like the hypervigilence). So for both my bipolar and C-PTSD. My psychologist calls it Prozac+BuSpar. This is a new one still under patent, so it costs an arm and a leg. (All the rest of these are out of patent, mostly long out of patent. Like, generic since the 70s.)

Risperdal: An antipsychotic. Ooh, scary! It wards off my psychosis and helps keep my mania in check. It also probably helps with the C-PTSD related dissociation and flashbacks. 

Prazosin: I take this to get rid of the night terrors (thing super-nightmares) that wake me up. It's a goddamn miracle drug. 

Estradiol and Spironolactone: These actually aren't for insanity - they're to make me hormonally female. The spironolactone eliminates testosterone from my system and the estradiol is metabolized into estrogen. 

Propranolol: I take this as needed for "actute" (short-term/spike in) anxiety. It works like a charm. I was shaking and my voice quivering while practicing before a presentation, then it kicked in and I gave the actual presentation no problem. I also take it if I get a fine motor tremor, which can happen if I don't drink enough water with the lithium. 

Benztropine: One problem with Risperdal is that increasing the dose, especially too quickly, can cause a painful neck spasm. This eliminates that spasm, so I take it whenever I increase my Risperdal dose. 

That's a lot of drugs, but I wouldn't give any of them up. On a day to day basis, I have zero side effects. These drugs are just perfectly compatible with me. It's a pharmacological miracle. 

That wasn't always the case. I've had some terrible experiences with drugs. Neurontin, Elavil, Paxil, Zyprexa, Depakote, Seroquel... It took a lot of trial and error to get things right. And it was hell at times. I gave up on treatment for years when I wasn't given other options, and I'm still not sure there was anything wrong with that decision. Paxil landed me in the psych ward and Depakote robbed me of my ability to feel feelings, think thoughts, or do anything but shamble around like the walking dead.

But being unmedicated was its own kind of hell, and I will never go back to that. While still figuring out what your own special pharmacology is, though, it's really a matter of picking your poison. Want to kill yourself, or be unable to brain? Hallucinate and have paranoid delusions, or be an emotionless zombie? Decisions decisions...

There's also therapy, but that only goes so far. Traditional therapy works great for my gender dysphoria issues, and my C-PTSD has significantly improved with the help of exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. But a lot of things just aren't amenable to that. There ain't no therapy in the world gonna do shit about my psychosis or episodes. Might help me cope with the mild ones, might help me identify the others, but that's as far as it goes.

Anyway, now you know just how crazy I am. I can stop trying to soft-pedal it or conceal any of it.

This is me. This is who I am. I'm not proud of it, I don't like it, but this is an honest picture of me.

I hope I don't frighten you too much.

Storytime Sunday: The Wrong Kind of Squirter

After starting hormone therapy in February, my libido disappeared almost entirely. This tends to happen when you lose all your testosterone. For months I could still drool (literally drool) over pretty girls, but there was really no inclination to do anything. Like, I might drool thinking of sucking on some titties, but I had no desire to touch myself or feel any sexual stimulation - it was all purely conceptual.

In July, my libido started to come back and it really came back. It was like I was a teenager all over again. (Right... I sometimes forget I'm literally going through puberty.) But there was a problem: I could no longer get erections (no testosterone, remember?) and stimulation didn't feel the same even without, so I had no idea how to satisfy the itch. I knew what to do, though: I'd ask /r/asktransgender. The responses were overwhelming. I was best off getting assistance from a "helper" - a helper named the Hitachi Magic Wand:

For scale, end to end is from my elbow to the middle of my hand

I was so excited when it arrived. I ripped it out of the box and immediately got down to figuring it out. It was pretty easy. So I pulled up some eye candy from my hard drive and checked /r/dykesgonewild for anything new, and got comfortable on my bed. I laid a towel out, applied some lube, and started testing it out using one of the methods I'd been told.

It felt really good. Like, leg spasms good. But after a couple minutes it became seriously overstimulating. I wouldn't have stuck with it if that's how it started, but I felt close to orgasm, so I kept going. Just bite your lip and power through, I told myself. 

That was a mistake.

So close, so close. Just a little more. Suddenly I felt an ecstatic release. It felt like 1/2 an orgasm, and I figured it might just be dulled by the hormones. Something shot out of my penis and I thought it was cum. But it continued to keep coming. It shot into the air in a big, clear, spurting stream. Oh shit!

By the time I realized what was happening and managed to stop the flow, I had pissed all over my belly, my tits, my legs, my arm, my bed, and of course the vibrator. It soaked through the towel, through the sheets, and into the mattress. So instead of an orgasm I got my bed and half my body drenched in piss.

The best part is, I went to the bathroom right before starting to make sure that wouldn't be a problem. Less than 10 minutes from "bladder empty" to "the fucking Nile river."

Of course, the first thing I did after cleaning myself up was post the story to /r/TIFU. Some girl in comments tried to convince me I squirted, not pissed myself. Bless her heart. Lulzy commenters ran with it. Comments like, "Always wanted to be a girl, never knew you'd be a squirter." I replied, "Always wanted to be a squirter, but not that kind!"

Did I ever mention how I realized I was trans?

I know this has occasionally come up so some readers are certainly aware of at least the rough outline. But seeing that it's nowhere on the blog, I figure I should put it here for the posterity and the benefit lulz of others.

May 10^th, 2013, I had the first date of my life. It went well, to say the least. You know the joke "what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A moving truck"? Well, that pretty much happened. And all of a sudden I had a girlfriend.

I can't remember if it came up on my screensaver or if she found it on Facebook (probably the former), but a week or so later she saw a picture of me that caught her attention.

Pre-alpha Rachel prototype

I was horribly embarrassed that she saw that. "Is that you," she incredulously asked. I turned bright red. "Uh... yeah," I stammered. "It was a thing they did, up at my last college," I hastened to add, "Dragfest, everyone dressed in drag and got wasted." Yeah, that justified it.

May 24^th, two weeks after our first date: she's sitting on the couch out front and I'm in the kitchen for some reason. She calls to me. "So, uhm... those pictures of you in drag."

I freeze. "Yeah..."

"Well, you know I'm bi. And... I like having a girlfriend."

'Is she asking for this relationship to be open,' I'm wondering, 'and what does that have to do with those embarrassing pictures?' "Okay..."

"So I was wondering if you might be willing to dress up and be my girlfriend sometimes."

Time stopped. My heart pounded in my ears and my temperature shot up a few degrees. This couldn't be happening, but it was. That's it, now or never. This is my one and only chance. "Can I be your girlfriend all the time?"

My mind was so reeling I don't even remember quite what she said next. But she quickly got to asking me if I was trans. "Yeah... I'm sorry." I couldn't help but apologize.

Her response, in effect? "Well that explains a lot." I was confused by that; I asked what she meant. She told me I kissed and made love like a girl, that it explained my 'issues' with using my hardware in bed, that it explained some of my quirks and anxieties, why she was attracted to me after having written off guys and decided she was a lesbian. Less seriously, she joked about how I and our relationship were conforming to lesbian stereotypes.

She said if I wanted to be her girlfriend all the time, I could be. She loved me as her boyfriend and she'd love me as her girlfriend.

And that's how I realized I was really trans, that it wasn't just idle ideation. I had my chance to make it happen, and I took it. And for giving me that chance (and for helping me start to transition, and teaching me how to be a girl, and helping name me, and...) I am eternally grateful.

Remnants

Remnants of my twisted inner life.

I've mentioned my intrusive thoughts before - the sick, twisted thoughts that would obsessively take over my mind and wouldn't leave until I, to be blunt, masturbated to them. These left me, seemingly for good, when I started hormone therapy. But in the time from age 14 to 31, I'd accumulated quite a collection of related images. See, I wasn't the only person with such sick thoughts, and plenty of others drew or rendered representations of them. I savored and collected these representations, to the tune of 6.5 GB compressed.

I had forgotten I had kept these, in a single one-piece RAR archive. I only remembered because of the pedo priest with his 131,000 pedophilic images. Let me be clear: there is nothing pedophilic in my archive. I am not a pedophile and never have been, even in the worst throes of my sickest intrusive thoughts. Just to be clear. It just reminded me of it.

I packed these images (and stories) up in that archive, and deleted the uncompressed files, when I felt the intrusive thoughts leave me 7 months ago. But I kept the archive. Initially it was because I thought I might want to decompress it and view the images again in the future - that the intrusive thoughts would come back. But now, knowing almost certainly that they're gone for good (as long as I keep estrogen instead of testosterone in my veins), I still keep them. Why?

I feel like that lone file - CAKE.rar - is a reminder to me. A reminder of what I once was, of what my mind is like with the wrong hormones. Of what I am naturally, without medical intervention. I never intend to open or decompress it. But seeing it, sitting there, it won't let me forget. And I feel like I have to remember the consequences of not being my true self.

I probably should delete it. No, I know I should delete it. But for some reason I can't bring myself to. It feels like deleting a part of myself. A part I absolutely despise and run away from, but a part of me nonetheless.

Someone please talk me into deleting it. Because I just can't bring myself to on my own.

Expectations, Excitement, and Disappointment (pointless ramblings)

I have some bad habits. Things that aren't good for my mental health. I won't get into all of them; the relevant ones here:

• I look at /r/transtimelines
• I look at /r/transpassing
• I read other MtF girls' accounts of their progress
• I let myself get excited about every little bit of my own progress

These habits conspire to set me up for guaranteed disappointment. I've been on hormone therapy for 6 months now; my boobs are AA (yes, it's a real size, smaller than A) and show no signs of continuing to grow. The fat distribution on my face and in my body is still fairly masculine - especially in my body. 

Don't get me wrong, I've made a lot of progress. But sometimes it doesn't feel that way. When my nipples started to grow, I jumped with joy; that just prepared me to despair when they stopped. Same with my boobs, which I'm now despairing over for their lack of soreness, a sure sign of growth. I was just so excited when I could say "I have boobs," it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be constant growth. Even though I know it's in fits and starts, I'm constantly afraid this is as big as they'll get. I can see changes to my face when I compare pictures, but when I look in the mirror I still see a man. My belly flab isn't going much of anywhere, least of all to my hips. Even though I've seen tables and graphs of normally expected timelines, and I see that I'm basically within normal range (though these expected values put hormone changes as happening for 4 years - I want to be ready for SRS long before that, dammit!), I despair.

My other bad habits get in the way of feeling good about that sometimes. I see timelines and read about progress where girls are looking totally female at 6 months, or have B cup breasts before this point. I look down at my AA's and I'm not a happy girl. I see timelines where 2 months of progress puts my 6 months to shame. I rationally know these are outliers, but inside they hurt.

I get frustrated. Girls talk about their endocrinologists giving them 8mg of estradiol a day; mine won't let me go higher than 4mg and I worry what I'm missing out on, how much better my progress could be. Mine started me at 50mg of spironolactone; 100mg sounds like it's a more typical starting dose. And again, I wonder what I missed out on in those first months with all that testosterone still afflicting me.

Of course, the second my boobs start hurting again, the second my nipples become tender again, I will light up in incandescent optimism. And when it stagnates, just look at a few timelines and I'm back to despair. That's how I'm feeling down after all the excitement at 6 months. And again, excited going to 200mg of the spiro, feeling my boobs get a little soreness, now down again after it goes away.

I get excited and it sets me up for disappointment. I see better-than-average timelines and it sets me up for disappointment. I hope too hard and it sets me up for disappointment. 

I should learn to expect nothing, and then be happy (not excited) with everything I get.

/angst

Half a Year

This is a milestone. Half a year since I began hormones.

This update won't be like the others. It won't be an itemized list of the minutiae of the past month. Instead, prepare for some rambling musings on the whole experience, where I started, where I'm going, and what it all means.

Beginnings

Wednesday, February 26ᵗʰ. I put on my skirt, my frilly top, my high-heeled boots, and way too much makeup. I gobbled some of my anti-anxiety medication, paced around, and finally got in my car. My appointment was right behind the physics building, where I spent all my time at UNM; I parked right next to the LIDAR array our research group is working on. I don't pray, but I certainly hoped to myself, “oh please don't step outside to work on the damn thing now” (re: my boss). My heart was pounding the whole way to the clinic; I scrupulously avoided eye contact.

I checked in, a truly cringeworthy experience. Internally I had a bitter chuckle at the irony: I was there as Rachel, to see a doctor about being Rachel, and I had to check in and interact with everyone as Ryan (because paperwork). I was so nervous waiting in the exam room for the doctor. When he got there he started asking me questions about what I expected from the hormones. No, I’m not expecting it to get rid of my facial or body hair. Yes, I know there’s only so much it can do for appearance with immutable bone structure. No, I don’t expect it to change my voice. He suggested I might want to get a laser ablation procedure done on my vocal folds to undo some of the damage wrought by testosterone during puberty. Basically, he wanted to make sure my expectations were realistic.

I was afraid I might answer something wrong and he wouldn’t give me the hormones. But 15 minutes later I walked out of there with two prescriptions – spironolactone to get rid of my testosterone, and estradiol to replace it with estrogen – and a spring in my step (yes, even in heels). I went home, switched to boy mode, and went straight to the pharmacy. That Wednesday afternoon, I took my first doses, and my first step toward physically becoming Rachel.

Retcon

Comic book fans will be familiar with the term 'retcon' in layman's terms means that the writer waves his hand and tells you 'Remember when we said this? We screwed up, forget about that.' 

 Retroactive Continuity: rewriting past events to be consistent with the new present.

My brain is doing this to me now and it's a very strange experience. Some of my memories are being amended to be consistent with the present. The memories stay almost completely the same, except one or two things are different. The other day something reminded me of walking around the neighborhood in high school. It was a vivid memory, as my random memories tend to be.

Two things were retconned, though. First, my CRPS has been written out of existence in that memory. Gone, entirely. Like it was never there. I see this as consistency with the fact that it's been in remission for a decade. It's no longer really a part of my life, so why would it be there in a memory that had nothing to do with it?

Second, I've been rewritten as a girl. Not a trans girl in transition or anything. I was a girl and always had been. This is incredibly detailed retconning, too. I "remember" what I was wearing; I "remember" my sense of what I looked like; I "remember" my stride, completely different from how I actually walked at the time.

So now I'm remembering my life as it wasn't, subconsciously replacing the actual me with an alternate me more consistent with my present self-image. It's almost like I don't actually remember me in any of those memories - I remember my interactions with the world around me, then insert myself into it.

I'm not completely sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I hate the failure of memory and the fundamental dishonesty of my brain. What I consider fantasy is replacing reality. But is it really? The only thing that seems changed is me - the rest of the memory seems intact. And is a change of "me" to maintain better coherence with the present me really so bad? Besides, it feels really good.

Regardless of the merits of the confabulation, my brain is being pretty clear about things:

Remember when you were a boy? That was a mistake, forget about that.

Identity Crisis

Warning: Wangst ahead

tl;dr: Suddenly having trouble calling myself female instead of transfemale.

*sigh* I'm having an identity crisis. I choose to identify as just plain female, not transfemale, But now I'm not sure I can do that. I want to be just female, but wanting doesn't make it so. I was never socialized as a girl, I didn't have the experience of growing up as a girl or of living my adult life as one. The maleness of that is a part of me, however much I wish I didn't have it or wish I could jettison it.

Can I ever legitimately claim to just be female, not specifically transfemale? My therapist assures me that after 7-10 years or so (so when I'm 40, ugh) I'll reach a "post-trans" state where it doesn't even occur to me that I'm trans. I have my doubts about that; we'll see. For now, I just don't know that I can claim to actually be what I merely want to be.

This didn't quite come out of nowhere. I've been having crazy dreams this week. Some of them really drove this home for me, either because someone rejected my femininity and insisted I was male (which robbed me of my female voice and features - them saying it made them correct), or because I dreamed I was a cis woman and waking up felt like being snapped out of a happy delusion.

Still, as a transwoman, I'm a subcategory of just plain woman, not something separate and distinct. I just feel now like "female" carries too strong a connotation of cis or at least early transition. Not being either, having lived my whole life male, I feel like it's a lie, or at least misleading.

Not changing it on Facebook, though. I have to cling to the hope and desire to one day not be 'that trans girl' (which probably says more about my own insecurities than anyone's perception of me). *sigh*

Annals of Puberty 2.0: 5 months, Oh How the Time Flies

Boobies!

5 months. It seems like yesterday I walked into the doctor's office, nervous as hell, seeking medication (spiro and estrogen). Where has all the time gone?

So what's been going on with my transition, and what have the hormones changed? Well, for starters, I have boobs now. They're small and my nipples are still horribly male in appearance, but these are definitely boobs - they're starting to get shape, and they have completely the right texture. I spent, let's call it half an hour straight, playing with them yesterday - because I can - and discovered they also now make me feel funny in my tummy when they're adequately stimulated. Yay, boobies!

My body hair growth has been changing, too. The hairs on my arms are now about half very fine blond hair, not the coarse black it used to be (and half still is). Body hair grows slower, too. It now takes 3 or 4 days for my leg hair to grow in to the point it used to in just one day. I absolutely love this "never shave your arms and shave your legs twice a week" situation and can't wait for it to really get where it's going. It's nice when my transition lines up with my laziness.

I've been taking care of more things related to my name change. Wait, have I even posted since that happened? I don't think so. So I legally changed my name. For all official purposes, my name is no longer Ryan Patrick; now it's Rachel Lindsey. I also got a new driver's license to reflect that. Totally awesomesauce: my new license also correctly identifies me as female.

I got my new Social Security card and, much to my surprise, the wait at the SSA was short and they were helpful and efficient about it. I couldn't believe it. The biggest hassle was the security at the entrance. I then finally changed my name with UNM, which actually confused the hell out of me. I got a message at my Gmail account forwarded from my school account, listed as from Rachel Lindsey. I did a double take, like, wait, what?

I did give myself a little setback a week-and-a-half-ish ago. I became a bit of a shut-in and didn't speak for a whole week. I didn't speak at all. And when I decided to rejoin the world, I tried to warm up my voice before leaving and found I had completely lost it. My feminized voice was just gone. I found it again over the next few days, but it really drove home the fact that I need to keep practicing and keep doing in order to transition.

Something it's good I lost is the feeling that I'm "presenting" in public. I still get that feeling when I directly interact with people I don't know, but just out doing my thing? I'm just out doing my thing. I'm not all self-conscious about my clothes or makeup or (fake, bigger) boobs or mannerisms. I think I'm becoming more secure in my femininity. I'm not constantly plagued by fears and self-loathing: "tranny", "shemale", "pretending", "drag", "disguise", "transvestite", "autogynephilia"... These thoughts aren't gone, per se, but my brain now mostly reserves them for times of acute failure. Dresses, as much as I like them, still make me self-conscious, though.

Something that's helped is that I've been getting "ma'am"ed and "miss"ed more - as long as they see me before they hear my voice. (It may be back, but it still needs a lot of work.) "Miss" is pretty rare - it's usually "ma'am", but it's nice when I do get it. I'm not sure what the difference is that's caused this. Maybe it's the other way around and my security causes people to read me as more feminine / not an imposter.

NSFW change: My libido has been steadily climbing. At first it dropped when I started the hormones, but now I feel like I really am going through puberty again. I'm drooling over every remotely attractive woman I see. But I have no outlet for it, no relief. Masturbation is an iffy proposition. Thanks to the spironolactone, I don't have to worry about - and can't really get - erections. And I haven't figured out quite how to get myself off without one (yes, it is possible). I'm like a horny teenage girl who hasn't figured out how to operate her cooter yet. Now if I could just chow down on some pussy, the problem would be solved...

In summary:

• Boobies! have a discernible shape.
• My body hair is thinning out and slowing down.
• Boobies! have the right texture.
• I changed my name, officially and for pretty much everything that matters.
• Boobies! hang down when I lean forward.
• I changed my gender on my state ID.
• Boobies! make me feel happy and weird inside when I play with them.
• Oops, I accidentally my voice. But it's all better now - I just need to remember not to be a hermit.
• Boobies! have nipples less sensitive than their max sensitivity (i.e., the shower doesn't hurt), but still sensitive.
• I'm becoming more secure in my femininity.
• Boobies! are one of the greatest things ever.
• Holy hell have I been getting horny lately, and I have no outlet for it.
• Tits.

Full-Time

This is it. It's like my bat mitzvah or something. I am, as of yesterday, officially "full-time." After coming out to my boss, there's no one left in my life who doesn't know, so I no longer have any reason to present as Ryan to anyone, ever. The legalities of that will have to wait a few weeks, but now I can already be Rachel whenever, wherever, and to whomever, I want.

It snuck up on me, to be honest. I wasn't planning to start full-time until the fall semester, but with no one left to come out to, there's no reason not to start now. No more "boy mode" and "girl mode," just "me mode." Mind you, "me mode" (f.k.a. "girl mode") is a lot of work - a solid 2 hours every morning. You might even call this a full-time job now. But it's rewarding work, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Well, except getting the results without having to do the work. But I'm *ahem* working on that.

So I guess this is farewell to an old friend. Let's pour one out for my main man Ryan - RIP, buddy. Your work is done here.

Annals of Puberty 2.0: Month 2

This month brings less physical changes - those are mostly incremental - and more emotional changes. In a word, I feel: normal. But also:

• Watch out, Facebook censors! My nipples have been getting softer. They feel less like they used to and more like female nipples. One of these days one of you will have to report my #NipsOfFreedom
• There are times when my whole... I won't call them breasts yet, but my circumnipple regions, are sensitive to pressure. Like, scrubbing them with soap in the shower is like scrubbing a bruise.
• My appetite is up, and it's pissing me off. I know a growing girl needs her lunch, but dammit, there's plenty to repurpose hanging out around my gut already.
• I'm far less anxious, ridiculously so. I'm taking maybe 10% as much of my anti-anxiety meds compared to when I started. Used to be 3 pills a day on most days, now it's one maybe twice a week, if that. It's not like I'm anxiety-free, but it's reduced and easier to deal with. At least in spitting distance of normal-ish.
• What are these emotions I'm feeling? Is this was it is to be "normal"? I get excited without trembling and sweating, I get upset without flipping out, I get happy without feeling like an idiot. WTF? I mean, I can't convey just how much of a change this is. My computer blew up with sparks and smoke, then later that day I got a test back with a D on it, and though I was upset, sure, I wasn't anywhere near the end of my rope. I just dealt with it as best I could, moved on, and maybe grumbled a little. Apparently I'm a more normal, well-adjusted girl than I ever was a guy.
• Sleep is no longer alternating bouts of pathological insomnia and hypersomnia. It's not perfectly consistent, but it's whatever I make of it. "Wake up early, go to bed early"/"sleep in late, have trouble falling asleep" stuff. Normal.
• Intrusive thoughts I used to have are entirely gone. This is a welcome respite from their awful content (no details; you'd need a week on /r/aww do bleach your brain). I'm free of these disturbing and overwhelming thoughts for the first time since... geez, at least 6th grade. I feel normal for once, not all sick and broken inside.