Days of Gratitude - Three Days, Three Places, From A Butterfly To A Bucket

It was a strange week.

I slept in four beds in four places.  This is not a usual thing for me.  These three days include three places.  Crawley, Greater Manchester, and Newcastle.  It all felt very strange.

Notes:

I will probably not be allowed to live down my statement to the effect that we didn't need a coat.  In my defence, a coat wouldn't have done much good against the storm.  A hermetically sealed diving suit would probably have leaked against that much rain.

The last picture here shows one of my favourites out of any photo my dad took and exhibited in his years of exhibiting photos in the local camera club and sometimes further afield.  It shows a little girl called Vanessa.  We were camping somewhere near the France-Switzerland border.  Each day the girl was sent out to fill a bucket with water from the slow running tap.  One day my dad said hello to her, not worrying about the language gap.  And he took some photos.  They probably won him a prize.

The day after these was the start of a brand new experience for me.  One that has proved to be something of a confidence boost.

September 13^th


Grateful to have left Crawley. All the necessaries are done for now. My parents' house is on the market. I hope it sells easily.

Grateful that Amanda and I didn't drown. We were out in the worst of the storm. A little wet! A wall of water between us and her door as if the house had been replaced by the torrent of Hardraw Force.

Pictures:

A butterfly at Crawley station.

And Amanda and myself on a bus in what was still a gorgeous hot and sunny day in Salford. 















September 14^th


Grateful to have been able to see Amanda. Just for a night. But one night is better than none.

Grateful to be home now. I have a whole day to recover from being away and my head is informing me of how tired it actually is.

Grateful the house in Crawley is now officially for sale and has viewings.

Photos:

The house used to be the Jesus Army community house in Salford. I detoured in the morning to see it. It's a place I used to visit 20 years ago.

A picture I see when passing through Leeds on the coach. This time I remembered to take a picture when passing and was fortunate to press the button on the phone at the right time.

September 15^th


Grateful for a day of rest. It is desperately needed.

I have unpacked most of the boxes from Crawley and put up some of my dad's prints.

I think I need a week to get over Crawley. I have had a day. Tomorrow will be very unrestful and totally unknown. Eek!

2016. Day One. Things For Which I Am Grateful.

It's a new year.  An idea was suggested at the last Sunday Assembly that there would be a facebook group on which people would post pictures each day of things for which they are grateful.  I've signed up and started posting early.  Celebrating our gratitude and the gratitude of others is a good idea.  And in the spirit of that, here's a blog post filled with some of the things for which I am grateful.

2015 was unexpectedly hard for me, perhaps the hardest I've ever had.  That is saying a lot given what's happened in previous years - not least 2013 and 2014 in which I came to terms with my gender, my precious faith fell apart, my dad's health deteriorated rapidly and my mum died of cancer.  In 2015 my mental health has been worse than it has been for a very long time and there have been some awful times.  Awful times.  Many tears.  Near despair.  Meltdowns.  Shutdowns.  Sometimes very publicly.  I am currently on four different waiting lists relating to different aspects of my mental health.  But today I don't want to focus on the bad parts of the year because there has been so much good.

So.  Some positives.  There are many to choose from.  These are just a few.

Autism.

2015 has been the year of accepting myself as autistic, starting to learn what that means for my entire life and for the future.  It's been the year of gaining a lot more self understanding.  It's been very difficult for me but worthwhile.  The way that certain unconscious survival techniques fell apart and I learned what it's like without them has been staggeringly difficult.  But I am glad to know who I am at a base level and to be at the point where I can begin to learn to live as who I am rather than as who I am not.

The process of reading and learning and of examining my entire life has been wild.  It affects pretty much every aspect of how I see my life and of how I should seek to be living it in the future.  And through the year I've found excellent people to read online and then met great people.  That led in August to Autscape, a four day gathering/conference for autistic people.  Such a wonderful time.  My name badge from Autscape hangs by my bed.

Autism will affect the rest of my life.  The hopes for this year include learning a lot more about it, seeking some training in how to help and educate others, to be involved with a network in Newcastle for support, advocacy, campaigning and education and to go back to university and study autism in an academic context.  The hopes for the rest of my life are to live it more fully, as someone who can be wonderfully autistic rather than thinking she is a dysfunctional neurotypical.  There will probably be many surprises.

I could write much about autism and my life, and I'm sure much will be written this year.

The Church.

My faith has seen highs and lows and most of the time I don't particularly believe in a creator God-being.  But church is still a home and the people there have stuck by me through everything - even the time where my mental health was such that I pulled out of leading worship half way through a service in which I was helping lead worship.  I haven't been able to go back to that role or any other role.  I am grateful for what Northern Lights MCC has been in my life for the last two and a half years.

Friends I didn't know a year ago.

In particular:

The autistic friend who helped me accept that I might be autistic after all and helped me get to the point at which I had to face myself.  She also got me to read the first of a series of books that I mention later.  And I am grateful for her company, which is always relaxing because there is open encouragement to be who we are and to accept each other in all our perfect imperfections.

The wonderful Christian friend I met at an atheist gathering.  She is so accepting and has encouraged me consistently to be myself, that it's okay to be me, and has encouraged me to explore creativity.  And she tells me how I've helped her which is great to know.

The wonderful witch friend I met at a day singing Christian songs.  Her company is relaxing and I just know whatever happens time with her won't be predictable.  Case in point:  The day I went for a walk in the country with her and ended up leading a pagan funeral for someone's dog.

The wonderful people who are a part of Autism In Mind, a charity based in Sunderland that does so much excellent work for autistic people and in campaigning and education.

Two of the Blue Babes.  Wonderful people I met at Autscape.  We started a little group to talk (and mainly text) and we've been in contact since.  I hope to see them both before Autscape if I can.  The cat pictured belongs to one of the Babes.

And last, but most definitely not least, the other member of the Blue Babes.  Another wonderful person.  We have become very close and she is massively precious to me.  I am extremely thankful that we met and that we have become what we have become.  I guess I may be writing more about us through the course of this year.  There have been quite a few surprises in the last year but she is the biggest surprise I've had and I am grateful to be surprised in this way.  We love each other so much and are both incredibly thankful that we have each other and can share what we share.

This is Portal.  She made Portal for me.  Portal is named partly because we can't be together much but can be connected by a Portal.  Portal is also named after the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Hearts.  To represent us.  Together.  We love.

One of us is blue.  The other is purple.







Just a few positives.  I could talk of my home, my wife, my child, the way people were understanding when my mental health stopped me doing things that I could really have done with doing.  I could talk of Shape Note singing and the joy of that terrible noise!  I could talk of living in Newcastle which is a place that's been so good to me.  I could talk of playing in the sunshine in the water fountains of the Olympic Park when visiting one of the Blue Babes.

I could talk of encountering Broadacre House, of being able to help with the work for refugees - if only for a brief period of good mental health, of the mindfulness groups I've been to there.  And there will be a Broadacre post sometime - with some of the photos I took wandering round the place a few months ago.  I reckon there will be more unexpected Broadacre things in my life this year.  Here's a collaborative picture a few of us made in a session during the Peace Conference there in September.

I could talk of drinking tea in Tea Sutra.  There was a lot of tea drinking in 2015.

I could talk of the joy of having a concessionary bus pass.  The joy of being able to get to the coast easily, not having to buy a ticket, and seeing sights like this.

I could talk of the way I endlessly find new music to enjoy.  Of how much I like my noise cancelling headphones.  I could talk about how 2015 was the year in which I made my first steps into playing with art and how it looks like that will develop this year.  Art is freedom.  The future can be freedom too.  This is my first art attempt - made for a friend's birthday.

I could talk of spirituality and the exploration in the last year.  Or of the free meditation group, Soul Food Spaces, that I have been introduced to in the autumn.  I could talk about an incredible series of children's books, Skulduggery Pleasant.  (If you haven't read those books, read those books)  And of the first post-Skulduggery book by Derek Landy and how fun the signing evening was when we got him to sign two full sets of his books.

I could talk about how my hormone treatment as a transgender woman is progressing well.  I could talk of how I was able to see a friend again who I hadn't seen since 1988.  I could talk about the fact I've taken more photographs in the last four months than perhaps in the previous forty-four years.  I could talk about how we replaced our very collapsed sofa with a lovely, comfy three piece suite, which cost us £25 plus delivery.

I could talk of so many things.  That's not an exhaustive list.

Yes, 2015 has been one of the most difficult of my life.  But there is so much good.  And today I choose to focus on all that is good.  And a year that starts out surprisingly very different to how the last one began.  There are a lot more challenges.

But I firmly believe that the future will be better than the past.

18 Months - The Best of My Life

Eighteen months ago tonight I came out to myself as transgender, as a woman, in a way which left no possible room for denying the truth about who I am.  That night was the end of a process of finding space, of allowing myself to explore my thoughts and feelings with an honesty which had not been possible before.  On that night I stood in front of the mirror in a skirt and blouse, for the first time able to dress in such clothes without feeling great shame.  And I recognised myself for who I am.  I spent much time talking with myself as I stood at the mirror, and welcomed Clare into her existence - I already knew my name through dreams.  Until that night I could, had I so chosen, locked everything away again and gone back to the way things were, put the recent thoughts and experiments down to an aberration, a mistake.  After that night there was no possibility of going back.

That was the end of a process of experimenting with self-honesty but it set the course for the rest of my life.  Eighteen months on I look back and can say that it has been the best time of my life.  The best.

Here are just some of the things that have happened:

• My mother died of cancer.
• My father became seriously ill with dementia.  He's now in a care home having spent several months in hospital.  He broke one hip while in a different care home.  He broke the other hip while in the hospital.  And being hundreds of miles away I've been able to do nothing to help him and have had to leave everything to other family members.
• My cherished Christian faith died, very painfully, over the course of a year.
• We've had all the usual sort of family problems here - plus a few more.  But I don't talk of those online.
• I have been sexually assaulted.  The police couldn't find the assailant.
• I have received much verbal abuse in the street for dressing as I dress.  Thankfully that's pretty rare now but to being with it happened pretty much every time I left the house.
• I've spent sixteen of the eighteen months waiting for medical treatment.  That treatment has only just begun.

Yes, plenty of horrible things have happened.  Most people would say that the year in which they basically lose both their parents, their faith, and undergo abuse and assault would be among the worst in their lives.  Circumstances have indeed been pretty poor in many respects.

So how can I say that the last eighteen months have been the best of my life?  How bad must the experience of my first forty years have been if so much can have happened and it still be my best time?

It's simple.  I have lived these months as myself, free.  I have learned to love myself.  I have learned that the truth of who I am does not to be utterly crushed, despised.  I have learned that I am not a thing of shame.

And I've remembered and healed a lot of my past.  All the clues and thoughts and acts that I'd suppressed for so long.  Many painful memories and many confusing memories.  They're still coming to light now.  Just this week I remembered things from my childhood.  Words said to me by my parents - who were of course doing their best but in the 1970s couldn't see past their little boy.  But words that led me further into Hell and the long attempt at self-annihilation.  Remembering them hurt.  A lot.  But now they can be left behind and peace can be found.  Some of that language may sound over dramatic.  I promise you that it isn't.

It's been the best eighteen months of my life.  And that brings my past into sharp relief.  I knew it was bad.  For thirty years even the best of days contained the shadow of depression, ever felt.  So many episodes of mental illness.  So many years of not knowing if I'd be alive by Christmas.  So many years in which others had to suffer through that uncertainty.  Looking at photographs from my life is hard as there are very few in which I cannot see signs of that shadow.  Even on the days of many smiles those photos display pain, if you know what to look for.  Comparing my present with my past shows me just how awful my inner life was for all those years.

There are a lot of challenges involved with being transgender.  But the chance to be who I really am outweighs pretty much any rubbish that life could throw my way.  Because, accepting myself and being Clare took away the cause of that shadow of depression

I've lost friends.  But I've gained more friends.  And my wife and child stand by me giving full support for me being who I truly am.  I am truly fortunate.
I've lost that faith.  But I've gained a better faith.  And have written much about that wild journey.
I've cried many tears in the difficulties.  Many more tears for my parents.  Many more tears as the past has come to light and been grieved for and healed.  But I've also learned the meaning of crying tears of joy.
I've suffered transphobic abuse.  But I've grown stronger through battling onwards regardless.  And I've been fortunate.  The abuse has only been verbal.  I know others who have been less fortunate.
I've been sexually assaulted.  There aren't many "buts" to that.  But it could have been a lot worse than it was.  Many women are sexually assaulted.  I don't want to belittle what happened to me but so many women have suffered far worse assaults, or repeated assaults, or rape.  I count myself fortunate.
I've experienced fear as I never felt it before.  But I've overcome that fear in walking into freedom.
I've lost my mother.  But that last year was precious, to be able to share just that short time with her, knowing she was proud of her daughter.
I've lost my father - though he is of course still living.  I must admit that the silver lining is harder to find when I think of him and the sadness we all have for everything that his illness has brought to him.
I've remembered much pain from my past.  But I've been able to clean those events and words, repair wounds, and leave them behind so the future can be better.
I've waited so long for treatment - for the physical help in being who I am, having transitioned mentally and socially last year.  But the treatment has begun, just about.  I'm now on the lowest dose of oestrogen and waiting for my next appointment which should lead to increased hormonal treatment.  Waiting impatiently - as every timeline I've been given in the last eighteen months turned out to be a false expectation.  That next appointment, from what I was told, should have been this week.  It will be next year.

I know who I am.  And I accept who I am, embrace myself in love.  That in turn enables me better to receive love from others and to show love too.  The changes are immense.  I find myself doing things, frequently, that the old me wouldn't have done.  I'd either not have conceived of being able to do them or felt great shame that I couldn't do them.

I know that there is still quite a way to go.  The healing is not complete.  And without too much trouble I could make a long list of things I don't do but would be better for doing.  And a list of things I do and say that would be better left undone or unsaid.  A long way to go but the difference between now and then is to me nothing short of a miracle.

Yes.  The past year and a half has been full of the most difficult things I've ever faced.  Full of pain.  Full of challenge.

Yes.  Those months have also been the very best of my life so far.  The very best.  By a very, very long way.  Simply because they have been lived free.

Honest Thoughts About My Father - His Dementia, His Care, His Being So Far Away

This is the day my dad finally leaves hospital for a new care home - the same one that was looked at in the summer before social services moved him to a completely different one without anyone's permission or consultation.  That was awful.  My cousin (why my cousin?) was phoned and asked if he could collect my dad the next day and take him to a different home.  None of that had even been mentioned to my mother and moving my dad wasn't discussed with anyone.  It was a done deal before any family member knew anything about it.  My mother hated the fact that she wasn't consulted, that she had no say whatsoever in the care of her own husband.  That was pretty heart breaking for her.  Yes.  Social services broke the heart of a woman who was dying of cancer.  It's as simple as that.

My dad has been in hospital for very nearly 3 months having broken one hip in the care home and then broken the other in the hospital.  For legal reasons I cannot write about the circumstances of the falls that led to either broken hip.  The new home looks pretty good - certainly better than the old one.  I can safely say that much, based on Care Quality Commission reports.  The report on the old one talked a lot about under staffing, people left very unsupervised.  Including the inspectors finding one person left alone, naked, hanging over a bath.  To think of people paying £800 a week for that to happen is shocking.  The report on the new home has lots of nice green ticks and none of the red crosses in the report on the other home.  Reading the report on the old home was so worrying.  I never passed the report to my mother.  That would have broken her heart even more to think of my dad being there.

It's a relief that he'll not be in a hospital room all day every day but be somewhere where specialist care - nursing and activities and so on - are offered.  And it's a great relief that the CQC reports I've read are not scary but say that residents are well looked after.  It's still annoying though.  My brother visited the new home back in the summer and it was thought that when my dad was moved from the first home he was in it would be to that one.  We thought it was basically arranged.  Four months on he's going there, recovering from two broken hips he doesn't know were broken and with various extra health issues picked up along the way.

It would be so good to be there in Sussex and be of some use.  It would have been so good to be able to have been there for him through the months.  So frustrating to be so far away and to be basically useless in any of this.  Family there have had to pull all the strings and be the visitors and they've been marvellous in finding the care home, liaising with social services and in sorting the finances.  They deserve so much credit and thanks for all they've done.  Shame I couldn't be there but for a number of reasons (which haven't been mentioned online or have just been hinted at) it's not been a possibility.  Hard not to feel deep guilt even though life had to be as it has been.  If only I could be in two places at once - supporting him there and supporting those non-online things here.   And we can all say 'if only', so many times.

I have considered the possibility of moving him to a care home up here - definitely not the local one though.  But up here there's only me and down there is a wide family and in theory friends too - though the latter are invisible.  Had that support network not been there I'd have definitely sorted that somehow.  Though I don't know quite how you move someone from a hospital in Surrey, under the care of Sussex social services, to a care home or hospital in Tyne and Wear.  In the end it may be better if he moves here if there's a decent enough home that can be got to regularly.  That might end up being better for him - certainly better for me because I could be of some use and keep up the visits - but that's not a decision for now.  Have to see how things pan out into next year.

I may have to cancel the essentials at some point soon and go down and quickly clear and sell a house - depending on what the rules are about paying for the care that will either be urgent or not.  I look at those essentials and wonder how or when.  It depends whether care is dependent on the money being in the bank of if there will be an account to be paid once the house is sold.  I should know about that soon.

And then thinking about those essentials, all that needs doing, and grieving for many things, my brain fries - it's very fragile at the moment.  I've put a little of that online but only a little - I'd prefer to focus on the good things most of the time if I can rather than focusing on just how close I came a few days ago to using a knife in a less than productive manner. Years after self-harm the memories and mental scars remain and the knowledge that in the very short term it helped get me through a hundred inner crises.

Nobody knows, or can know, the prognosis for my dad.  Two years ago nobody could have known any of this, or known that my mum wouldn't be there.  Less than 13 months ago they were here.  He was ill of course but we were still able to do so much.  This illness rather ignores the words of Terry Pratchett that a person with dementia can still write several novels.  His deterioration has been rapid.  That may continue or he may plateau.  Impossible to say.  I just hope that in the time and health that remains he will be reasonably content in the new home, will be well looked after and that if he eventually ends up here the local care home would be just as good.


Of course most of us are at the stage where we have to be honest and say that, for his own sake, we'd prefer him not to stay alive for too long.  It goes against my old Catholic instinct of saying that life is God's gift to be cherished in whatever form it takes.  But it's how most people come to feel about any close friend or relation with dementia.  For him to die while he still has something, while he can still find an enjoyment is a far better image than thinking of him utterly helpless, unresponsive, unfunctioning in the corner of a room for year after year.  It is an awful feeling to almost wish your own father would die.  But it's a common one when we witness so much suffering, so much emptying out of the person who used to be there, so much damage to the brain.  It's hard not to feel deep guilt about it all even when you know that it's entirely a matter of mercy not malice.  It's clear to me that life should not be prolonged at any cost, that life is not just the beating of a heart.  And even in the hospital, at a time when he was pretty sick, there was a DNR order for him.  That was decided upon by the family there but I was in full agreement.  If he goes, let him.  Don't save him for a continuation of the decline.

It would be so good to get there this year to see my dad (and to sort that house some more).  But looking at things as they stand I'm guessing that probably won't happen - I guess at February.  And possibly by then he won't know who I am - he just managed it during the summer but of course could only know me as he not she.  Which was fine.  He's the only person on the planet I'm happy to have refer to me as he.  Because it's not his fault.  I wish he could have got to know me as she before getting ill, but this is life and we so often can't have what we wish for.  We'd all wish for many different things if it would ease the suffering of ourselves, our loved ones and seven billion strangers.

I just hope that in the new care home, with proper care, he will be reasonably content and find things to be able to smile at, while smiling is a possible.  I hope he settles there and is encouraged to be as active as possible.  I hope that, whatever the illness continues to do to him, he is more or less at peace whether living in a real world or a world that is only real to him.  I hope so.  And I will see him again, when that can happen.