I know I asked for it, and seemed to be craving it. It finally happened today. I was misgendered. It is something I haven’t really had to deal with when presenting as myself.
I ordered some pizza from a food court outlet, and when I was handed the pizza I got a, “here ya go, sir.”
It even took me a moment to register that it happened. I didn’t bother saying anything because the chances of me ever seeing this person again are very slim.
At first, I thought it was no big deal. Didn’t really seem to bother me. I told a couple people close to me about it, and got some reassurances.
But as the afternoon went on, I noticed I was getting extremely frustrated with things. If something was in my way, it got kicked, or thrown out of the way. The level went from nothing to sky high in seconds. It has to be from this incident. Nothing else happened today other than my spork broke in half and is now a really short spoon and a really short fork.
To help alleviate things I reached out to a friend that suggested listening to music, or humming. I finally settled on a short walk away from ‘things’ while humming some My Little Ponies song. It helped. Until I started the next task at the job site. Removing a, roughly, 20 year old pampas grass. By shovel. It was going well enough cutting the top off with hedge trimmers, but when I got to the part of actually trying to get the roots out – *poof* back to frustrated.
I started violently digging at the roots, actually hoping that my bad elbow (which has been mending finally) would give out and I’d have to go to the hospital. Hoping that something would tear or let go, or pop out of place. I stopped that pretty quickly when I realized what I was doing. Took an early coffee break at that point.
Things seemed a bit better after that break. Got it done without breaking anything or anyone.
Today’s afternoon has led me to start thinking that maybe all my build ups of frustration throughout my life, have actually been my way of interpreting my dysphoria. It puts a bit of a new spin on the whole idea. I always thought I merely felt resigned to be male, and that it was a background kind of thing. Muted. Distant. But if all my bouts of frustration, where I’d wind up punching things, or being self destructive, if they were from my dysphoria then that would make a lot of sense.
So, now that I possibly know (it feels kinda right) where it’s coming from… the next step is to work on releasing the pressure before it builds to me trying to rip my elbow apart again. And that was from one misgender. One. And I KNEW it was going to happen. I also now know I was not as prepared as I told myself I was.
Hugs,
Jess