I'm Here

* * *

'Hir' - a transcript:

Melissa sits in the back of the classroom afraid to speak up.
She pulls akwardly at her extra loose khaki cargo pants,
She doesn't want the boys to notice her.

James finds himself at the back of a classroom,
His baseball cap casts a shadow on his pimple stained forehead,
A wide shirt hangs from his broad shoulders,
But no one ever noticed him.

"Melissa"
The teacher asks,
And she says nothing because she is not here,
And Melissa has never been here,
Because Melissa is just some abstract jumble of syllables that doesn't fit her position.
She is not what she seems,
She doesn't want to have to explain to her mother for the 232nd time
Why she doesn't want to wear a dress to prom,
Doesn't paint her face it's cause her whole body is painted on.

"Melissa, Melissa"

James doesn't want to have to explain where he came from,
'Cause with the exception of Melissa he has been deemed an abstract reality by everyone.
All he wishes for is to get to wear a tuxedo to prom.

And Melissa has been tucking in breasts that will be growing for three years now,
Been using duct tape to press them down and mould them more into pecs.
She just wishes that people would understand
That at birth her genatils didn't know which way to grow,
Mad at God who couldn't relay a message directly to her hormones
That they should produce more testosterone.
The only person who understands her is James,
And they have been playmates since the age of four,
Around the time girls notice boys and boys notice girls...
See James' family wanted daughters instead of sons,
And Melissa was always like that male beetle that everyone called a ladybug.

"Melissa, Melissa where is she?"

Sometimes she wishes she could rip the skin of her back,
Every moment of everyday feels trapped in the flesh of a stranger,
Melissa.
As she stands to her feet wanting to say:
"I'm here, I've been here since I was born,
So quit asking me if I'm a him or a her,
'Cause when you combine the two pronouns you get H-I-R -
Hir -
And God combined the two genders and put me in this body transgendered,
I'm here so quit talking about me like I'm not here."

James falls back into Melissa's skin,
And the two comfort each other in a syncapated heartbeats,
Waiting for the day when Melissa can finally scrub off this made up genetic make up;
When the teacher asks for James and he can say
"I'm here."

* * *

I think this requires a little explanation...

I first saw this video when it was featured on feministing.com the other day, and it really struck a chord with me. I thought it was both a great performance and an emotive exploration of what it's like to be transgender.
This is not something I feel in a position to be able to comment on - I myself am not trangender, and I don't know anyone who is - but still I felt I was able to relate to 'Melissa', the transexual in the poem. This is because I can definitely relate to the feeling of being torn between conflicting identites.
I also think that Melissa and I relate to the issue in similar ways. Melissa knows that she would prefer to be 'James' ('all he wishes for is to get to wear a tuxedo to prom') but she is stuck with 'her whole body ... painted on' both because people don't understand her situation, and will not accept her as transgender, but also because, to some extent, she is in love with her own ambivalence. She does not want to be known as 'he', but as 'hir', a combination of the two identities.

And that is, I feel, where I stand with my own multiple personalities (though they are not quite as definitely defined as 'James' and 'Melissa'): I take some kind of sadistic pleasure out of my own ambivalence, and revel in my confusion, however painful it is. It's like walking into a dark forest, knowing that you'll never find your way back, but carrying on walking anyway because you want to find whatever's in there - you're convinced there's something there - however hard the journey may be. Every step taken is over hot coals, but still I press onwards, into the depths of myself.
Maybe one day I'll be ready to accept myself for who I am, however many identities that may be, and be able to define myself as 'here'. Until then, I guess I'll just have to keep searching...

O

Today, I feel empty; as if someone has taken an ice-cream scoop and extracted all my inners. It feels as if there is a hole, somewhere in my chest, which is made heavy with the weight of the nothingness that crouches in there. It’s a monster that attaches itself to every fibre of your being; seeping into every pore of your body, so that each thought and motion you attempt is like releasing a lead balloon.

I wonder if emptiness is an affliction or a state of mind. It is certainly something that crawls inside, lodges within the gaps amid your bones and sleeps between your lungs, but it is also all encompassing; all consuming. You get lost in it; you drown in it, but all the time it is within. It seems paradoxical; impossible almost, but it is a nothingness with several dimensions and no shape.

It is not just emotionally consuming: it is also time consuming. It remains with me for anything between several hours, days or even weeks at a time, and all the while existence seems pointless. I do not feel like doing anything, I cannot think straight, and everything around me just seems to wash over me, erasing me. Each time the emptiness sweeps over me, I lose myself a little bit more. It’s so frustrating when, at my age, you are desperately trying to define yourself, make life-changing decisions, and just be you, you find that for every step you take closer to your ‘identity’, you’re taking twenty steps back.

Or maybe this is me, faceless, doomed to be forever lost in emptiness, and a sea of fabricated facades that I’ve constructed myself to get me through life. Each one different, likeable, and well-meaning; but disappointingly lacklustre and one-dimensional. I hate them, but I depend on them, my multiple personalities, to hide behind, for safety. Even if they are only a collection of hollow puppets, at least I am the one pulling the strings.

I would like a nervous breakdown, to collapse, to finally lose control. I am sick of being the one who’s always so composed, so collected, so empty. I put so much pressure on myself to retain this visage of immovable perfection – what I think others want to see – that I am left defenceless to emptiness. I am imprisoned in the carefully constructed house of cards that is myself. I long to let go.
For even in madness, there’s freedom.

Freedom from myself.

* * *

Sometimes I just want to scream and scream and scream.

I'm not sure if this is fact or fiction.