Fleecing our Community

One of my biggest pet peeves lately has been various people who prey on transitioners and their fears by overcharging by insane amounts for simple things.

The first kind I noticed recently are those who prey on fears that many of us have in that first time out shopping for clothes. We all had that fear at one time or another when we went out the first time...the fear that we would be seen as freaks or weird. I remember my first time rather vividly...it was a run through a Meijer store here and I picked up a few things that were rather atrocious now that I think about it! But they had self-service lanes and I made it out safely!

But these particular online stores will charge ridiculous amounts for basic clothes. One place I went was charging $80 for a pair of normal underwear and $120 for nylons. They were selling women's blouses for like $150 and up. Lame wigs you can buy at any wig store for $30-50, they were selling for between $250-350 dollars.

The worst kind, I just read about today in my inbox--that of the post-transition person who offers their 'services' at exorbitant rates for pre-transitioners. The email was from my old therapist who hired on a post-transition assoiciate that ofers these kinds of services. You'll love some of these 'classes' she offers:

Transition Goal Setting and Action Planning $160
Fashion and Color Analysis $120
Undergarments and Foundation Basics $120
Nails – Grooming $80
Techniques for facilitating gender matching (e.g. special under garments, body hair management, etc.) $120
Hair Care/Hair Care Sources and Products $80
Real Life Test: Going Public! (Dealing with public outings during a “field trip”) $240

Yeah! Some nice stuff there! I don't begrudge post-transitioners trying to earn a living, but fleecing our community with these ridiculous classes and prices? That really ticks me off. Transition is hard enough without having to worry about being preyed on. It's even worse when people who have already gone through it "give back" to the community by offering things like this at those prices.

Crazy Sci-fi Adventure Dream

I haven't been remembering my dreams lately, but this one was too cool to forget.

Most of the dream was in a dark basement with dim flourescent lighting. I was with a dozen or so people, including some guy who looked like Sam Neil, but a bit older and with grey hair. We were chatting and hiding it seemed. In the dream, it seemed as though everyone I with was gay, and I was the only woman there. Sam Neil-guy was fiddling around with a wrench and touching it to the exposed ceiling pipes in different angles, and was able to create a magnetic field. Eventually, he used this field to vanish into a parallel dimension, leaving behind just the wrench. We were all shocked.

Then the government started to chase us and we moved through the woods to another hideout in an abandoned home in a suburb. Sadly, the government found us, and took us out into the streets. It was early morning and the sky was that hazy dark grey before the sun comes up. As we were being led down the street in a single file line, I mentioned, "So this is how it ends? With no one saying anything?" None of the residents of the houses appeared at all and we were marched toward a long table in the middle of the street with burgers and chips and cheap plates and forks and stuff. This was to be our last meal before we were taken to an extermination camp in a nearby government bus.

Me and another of the guys escaped the meal line and ran for a nearby house. We barged in and headed to the basement where I frantically picked up a random wrench from a workbench nearby and stood up on a ladder and tried pressing it up to the pipes in the exposed ceiling. The guy with me kept telling me to hurry and I could feel a magnetic pull on the wrench. There was a commotion outside as the government agents were breaking in and grabbed my friend and were about to grab me as I tried it one last time.

Then all of a sudden, Sam Neil-guy appears from the ceiling and lands ontop of me, knocking me to the ground to which I blurted out, "I LOVE YOU!!" He smiled, dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans and moved off me to go take care of the government agents and save us! I remember thinking, "Oh he's so dreamy!"

...and then I woke up. Strangely, I woke up 2 minutes before my alarm clock was about to go off.

On religion

I used to be a very devout Conservative Christian...the kinda that pretty much unsettles me now. I was very bigoted, very unhappy, very uninformed. College changed a lot of that and so did finally coming to terms with things in my life.

I finally realized that the Bible is mostly a load of junk, and more of a historical record than not. I also realized that anyone who claims to tell you what happens when you die is also full of it. In becoming a devil's advocate for everything wrong with the Bible, I lost my faith and realized that life is so much more complex than being given a book and told to read it for your insight.

So what then? I started from nothing. I guess I could've stayed with nothing, but it wasn't really spiritual to have nothing. There is no hope for the future with nothing...because right now with science, in zillions of years the universe will have expanded into a freezing death full of nothing but aimless particles.

So I chose.

I chose Christianity because I was familiar with it. I choose to believe against the rationality that there is nothing to believe in. And now my Christianity is refined from the glob of coal it was before, to a shiny diamond of simple beliefs in the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the teachings and life of someone who has been hijacked by many religions for many other purposes. I believe he died for us all and that we are all saved by His Grace. You can choose to believe it or choose not to believe it, but in the end, He Loves you...and I love you.

Is it wrong to choose your religion or does religious awakening happen from other circumstances in life? Do we simply follow the religion of our parents and community or how do we find out what truths mean to us?

Against everything I know to be real and factual, I have faith in something that defies all reason.

A friend I didn't know

Last night, my friends and I went out to celebrate the life of a friend who passed a couple weeks ago. I wasn't able to attend her funeral, but we spent last night at her favorite restaurant in downtown Indianapolis--English Ivy's.

I didn't know too much about her, even though I had hung out with her about a dozen times over the few years. She was one of the people at our therapy group who talked a lot. She had a lot of funny stories, but as for her personal life, I only knew a little.

It just seems sad that I will never get to know them, and that I didn't get to spend more time with them. Maybe we take for granted that friends in our lives will be there, and that there's always a next time that we will see them if we are busy or have other things going on. I knew there were a few times she wanted to get together but I was busy. Now I feel guilty that I let those moments go. Perhaps they could've been one more good memory of her that I would have to share with her friends or jus to reflect on.