It is not the mind which governs, it is our hormones and perhaps our gut

We can tell us ourselves anything we like, that is what ego is all about.  But there is always this nagging feeling that it is a paper tiger.  Confidence is meaningless when the truth lies elsewhere.

The conscious life is of this earth.  In it, we humans, live with our dreams, our daily responsibilities, bodily aches and pains.  But this is simply our material existence.  Just as the tip speaks little of the iceberg, so too the material on the spiritual.

There is a current of belief that the souls which are our true selves have chosen these physical forms, these bodies, but also the socio-economic context into which we are born, for some reason of play.  I am reading a fabulous book right now for the third time, which takes the line that God is one kinky MF, and taking anything other than a perverse joy in the kinks of the universe is a recipe for discord.  

I’ve spent my life letting my mind pretend to be in charge.  And then one day my whole being rebelled.  It came about through the ego-stripping that I went through with the guidance of a spiritually-inclined dominatrix.  I can’t say if it was intentional on her part, or if she was responding to my intent, but if I strip it down to its bare bones, that’s what I went to her for.  Crack me open.  And together, we left my ego kicking and screaming on the sidelines…and this alien being to my ego, my true self, was born.  

I put the moment of re-birth to that first day that I walked outside in a skirt.  There was something very different about that moment in my life compared to all others.  It was intentional.  Deeply so.  As if I had come to claim my birth right.

And just like that, little by little, I have.  It has been a process of discovery for me as well.  I could not have known then that my act of liberation, act of rebellion would reverberate so deeply through my life, but the more I exist in truth, the more I see it also affects the lives of the people around me.

The most revolutionary element that was born on that day had everything to do with the self.  An ability to be present.  An ability to relish life as it happened.  To experience deliciousness and to revel in its complexity.

But this was simply an opening.  A baby step.  Ayahuasca took me from a baby step to purposeful strides.  The most profound step, however, has been to begin hormones.  Gender-Affirming-Hormone-Treatment is so aptly named.  The war which raged inside me about the sexes, about gender, but also about my physical being and spiritual being, my sexual being, has seemingly dropped into place through hormones.

It is impossible to describe, but none of the things in my material existence which used to matter still matter.  My whole logical structure, my emotions, my desires, have all changed.  So too, my relationship to my body.

There is this false idea that the brain is the master control centre.  Explain then how hormones are a passe-partout?  Every single cell in our bodies takes direction from our hormones.  Including our brains.  And this is as profound, though infinitely more subtle than an on-off switch.  And I can feel it everywhere.  

Not just how I feel physically, but also how I relate to how I feel physically.  My skin feels incredible—both to touch and when touched, but how I process that feeling is also different.

How did I get onto this?

A few posts back I wrote about the return of my libido.  I felt it with my Queen the last two times we played together.  And then I felt it really dramatically dancing with a gorgeous woman at a rave.  Its very welcome, but it feels different.  I also felt it very powerfully during a tantric massage.  But I feel it physically too.  Really, really strongly.  Especially the last two weeks when I have started to self-pleasure.  And I think I can say honestly that it is the first time in my life, in my whole life, that I have masturbated in a strict sense.  Okay, that is not perfectly true—I played with myself to orgasm on three distinct occasions, once in my teens, once in my twenties, and once after.  I can remember each of them, and feeling disgusted with myself.  I didn’t enjoy it, I just needed it.  And I didn’t like that.  This is very different.  I am discovering my body and what it can feel and do and I love it.

One of the two surgeons who will be in charge of my sexual reassignment surgery, more on that later, has been really helpful to me in understanding what is happening to my body.  The brain has been rewired by my hormones and is telling my bits down there that they are what they are going to become, not what they have been.  Please excuse the vulgarity and explicit nature of this.  

My scrotum has become extremely sensitive, much more than ever before, and this is what will become my labia majora.  The skin is also changing colour, with the menarche line turning darker an darker—this is where they will cut, and separate to create the two sides to my vaginal opening.  You see, they are already in the right place…but more than anything else, the tip of my penis has turned very dark, and is so intensely sensitive, all the time.  I can’t wear boxer shorts anymore.  In fact, just wearing panties without tucking, creates too much sensation.  I can’t wait for the head of my penis to be moved into place and given a clitoral hood.  I can’t take anything touching it.  My entire perineum is going wild.

But when I have an orgasm, it isn’t that butt-clenching feeling of the male orgasm.  I feel it in my inner thighs, in my breasts, but also in my stomach and my throat.  The pleasure is also painful, and more diffuse.

I was standing in a café yesterday and the woman behind the bar serving me, who was gorgeous, like a regal Queen from some far-off time and place, paused in front of me as she wiped the counter, and said, “you are so beautiful, you just emanate grace and style, and you are so beautifully dressed, so gorgeous, really, really gorgeous.”  What a nice thing to say to someone.  I was touched and I told her so.

I had been walking around town, my town, and feeling different.  It has been going on for a few days now, and started when I got my hair “done”.  In reality I was having my hair undone, with extensions being taken out, because I don’t need them anymore—my own hair has gotten so long, that I am almost unrecognisable.  What I am feeling is an energy coursing through me.  And that day, before my coffee, I was just walking around aimlessly in a state of bliss and complete delight.  

I have complained a little about Italy and being trans here, and I suppose it is difficult everywhere, but Italy is my home, and I am settling into the idea of that, of never leaving.  I love it here.  And Italy needs trans people to make them comfortable with their own gender and sexuality issues—as this country sure has plenty.  But I love it here, and I am ready to be their trans.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends who have known me for quite a while, as a family man.  They have been a part of the lives of my children and are still part of their lives, and my wife’s life.  They are rare and delicious people who have not taken sides and have managed to just be friends with both of us.  And that’s great.

In their eyes, I could see that I am not the same…that the physical changes taking place are becoming more dramatic, more visible.  I am exuding a different energy.  Some people tell me it is calm.  Others say it is feminine.  I have no idea what it is.  It’s just me.

I guess what I am saying is that by taking hormones, and by living outwardly female, no matter how I look, I am becoming female. It may not be the female experience per se, but it is the trans female experience, and we will never know how different it is. But it is good enough. It is having my cake and eating it.

And yes, the gut, our microbiome, the 80% of our immune system, our limbic system, the controller of our health and well-being? Another system which controls the brain. Controls the body. Curiously, the female-hormone body that I now have feels much more connected to my gut than before. What do I mean? I cannot ignore my body in ways that I might have before. The female body needs tending to in ways that the male body does not. What I eat, what I drink, and how I live, my sleep, exercise, though always important, have taken on a new importance. And I can feel it more explicitly than before.

So what? These two systems are about a state of being. My mind has nothing to do with that. And the more I settle into this state of being, the better and better every aspect of my life becomes.