Friday Update #44: The Dream

Hey all, CaptainCaption here.

I wasn't expecting another Friday Update so soon, but I've got something very sad and weird to talk about. But first, it needs context.

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In an effort to stabilize the severity of my pseudo-menstrual cycle and to make it more consistent, a trans woman friend suggested taking progesterone, and my endocrinologist backed up this unexpected course of treatment even though I am only 9 months into HRT. I took my first oral dose of 100 mg today, and it's been an emotional roller coaster of me feeling bitter remorse that I can't ever be a mom. Not a parent, not a dad, but a mother.

Hi, in case you forgot, I'm genderfluid... unless my ongoing mental breakdown isn't because I'm genderfluid (this hyperlink is different; as you'll see, definitions vary!) I worry that breakdown is happening because I was too much of a masculine trans woman for other more girlish trans women like the ones who used to be my friends that when I started I to push back against those co-opting my transition to girlish femininity I broke myself mentally with a weird form of repression, but that's a whole separate bag of worms that is probably more of an anxious worry than a reality. I really don't want to be this way as it's crippling to live like this, but I am genderfluid (yet another link!) because I have no better label to fit what is happening to me.

Regardless of how insane I am or how masculine of a trans woman I strive to be... I've got a female gender identity right now. It's been that way for the past few days, and it's been filled with an unusual amount of dysphoria as a female about my wide shoulders and inability to shave my facial hair (although maybe that's just stress from an upcoming visit from relatives I have to hide my body around).

Anyways, that female gender identity shouldn't have mattered for this, as while I often idly daydream of what my life could have been like as a parent, one thing that has been consistent across gender lines has been how I view myself as a parent, and weirdly, that's as a father. It was not that way today, and there wasn't a pseudo-estrus thing to blame like there was a few weeks ago that made me fully realize I am a lot more bisexual than I gave myself credit for.

While I think the progesterone was to blame for this state of mind, I was miserable that night, and I shared that with a girl who's been very helpful as emotional support and for advice recently, and here are my messages about my worries, with minor redactions:

Well, for starters, I can't even be a trans woman. I don't even get that much. I feel like I'm two steps removed from being a woman and that frustrates me in a gnawing way and whatever is going on with my body isn't a comfort when I've got to fight for time to be whatever echo of an echo of being a cis woman I can.

A friend had to stick to a strict bedtime last night because of work, and I was pushy about making her follow her own bedtime of 1:30 AM and she responded "I'm gonna geez mom."

I got minorly flustered at the time but didn't think much of it, but looking at the message as I wait for her to call and hang out, I feel on the fucking verge of tears. I actually want to be a mom, and not just be a parent and a dad but that, but that's literally impossible.

This woman typed a few kind messages in response about how femininity and motherhood are much wider terms than I view them as, but I'm going to omit her messages and just share mine:

Regardless of me being a woman (and I'm sorry but I just don't see how I'm going to be able to see myself as one when I still see myself as a guy with tits bolted on every time I pass a mirror), I'm never going to be a mother. Whatever other factors of my life exist, that's a reality I just have to accept as an impossibility even if it feels like I'll never be able to.

But ignoring how I physically can't be a mom and how I got sterilized out of being a dad... I can't even be a parent. I'm dead in a decade and trying to have kids is such a selfish request with that knowledge.

Like it's one thing to unexpectedly die young when you're starting a family, but it's not unexpected for me. I think any kid who's even sort of like me would come to the conclusion that I've burdened their entire life with a very selfish personal request, and they won't even have the time to know me, so I think there'd be resentment there as that's how I'd feel in that situation.

Even if I am somehow who is dearly missed and whose memory is beloved, I am a person who can't leave those people I would love holding a bag of my memories for their entire lives.

Maybe I'm hyper-fixating on the unrealistic challenge of being a parent with the impossibility of being a mom because leaving so little behind is an aspect of my mortality I just can't get past. Death is sad and everyone dies alone, but I can't escape this fear that I'm going to have an especially sad and lonely death. All I've got left now is my stupid little niche VN, but it doesn't matter compared to things that truly do.

After that, I went to bed early, hating my life and feeling that progesterone wreaking havoc on my mental state as I longingly wished for motherhood.

That was my state of mind as I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life, and I'm no stranger to receiving powerful ideas during sleep paralysis.

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I woke up from it about two hours ago, and I feel like part of my soul died in the process. I'm utterly heartbroken about the experience, and this is my way of getting over that pain.

Below is my best attempt to remember that dream right after waking up (and bawling my eyes out). It's a bit incoherent, but for clarity, I've filled in a few gaps here and there as I've forgotten some of the events of that semi-lucid dream.

Buckle up, because this gets rough. Content warning about motherhood for anyone sensitive with that envy.

In it, my dream, I met a guy... I don't think I remember his name, but let's say it's Jake. We met at a book signing for a fantasy author my friend has been trying to get me to read for over a year. We're in line together and we have a very specific weird take on the book but we're too shy to ask the author about it, so we go to a nearby coffee shop to talk about it. The coffee doesn't taste good. It's too bitter.

The guy... "Jake," is kind of cute. Why am I thinking that? He's 5'9", a bit muscular but not very much, and has a full beard... he kind of reminds me of me before I started HRT. I'm trans, right? I look at myself in a mirror. I look like me, but also like my profile picture. Dark red hair, 5'7", rather voluptuous, dressed in jeans and a nice blouse. It's confusing, but I realize Jake and I are the opposite sex. That's not quite as confusing, so I roll with it. Am I even attracted to guys? Is this a date? Those parts are both very confusing.

I feel like Jake and I have got some sort of chemistry between us from the moment we start getting into a deep argument about the book's setting, and I'm being a total stick in the mud about realism. I know I'm being a bit absurd demanding a strict adherence to the laws of physics, but I'm having fun, and Jake is too even though I'm being smug and refusing to concede an inch. I've never enjoyed a stupid argument quite like this before, and I want to have more, so we exchange numbers.

We became fast friends after meeting up more. I'm still a writer, but more with independent journalism and long fiction, but people call it feminist and queer and gender writing, so I assume it is even though I find the reduction of my writing to those genres weird.

One day, I got published with a well-received book. I don't remember writing the book. I try to read it but all I can read is the name "Samantha" on the cover. That's me, isn't it? I guess I wrote it. I feel proud.

Jake is a history teacher with a focus on some obscure topic in Europe I love hearing him rant all day about. I don't remember his words so much as I remember his passion. He treats that past as if it were a thing he was living through. I kind of envy that. I feel like I've been drifting through life in the present. I thought I liked history?

Before I knew it, we started living together and I'm too dense to realize we've started dating. I'm not sure I'm attracted to him even though we've had a fair bit of sex. He's a great friend but I don't view whatever we have as anything serious.

That changes when we go on a real date. I think it's our first. Jake treats it as such an important event. I don't get that it's a date at first. Aren't we just getting food at a nicer restaurant?

I get upset because he's acting so stiff and trying to impress me and I tell him while pouting that I like him better when he's not like that, and that's how I realize I like him. I'm weirdly unsurprised. But is it love?

The proposal came out of nowhere during mini golf. He lets me putt ahead of him, but he snuck off at one point to put the box in the hole ahead of us. When I reached into the hole to get my ball, he told me to open the box in there. He's so good at distracting me that I didn't notice the setup. I think it's because I'm so oblivious? I accept, still not thinking it's serious. We're just friends, but upgraded with tax benefits. The proposal was kind of sweet though...

The wedding is small. Immediate family only. My sister calls me her sister. I cry. My parents call me their daughter. I cry harder. Why is this so surprising? I get the ring on my finger. I cry the hardest I've ever cried at the altar but say "I do." I still don't know if this is love.

Honeymoon somewhere tropical, I think in the Pacific. I've started to leg lock during sex. When did I start? I don't stop when we get home. The first kid is on the way soon. I feel him in my belly. A boy. His name will be Alex. I don't know who decided the name, but I love it.

When I hold him in my arms after birth, that's the first time I realize I love these people. It's felt so surreal until now, but now it makes sense. I stop questioning it.

I'm not a great mom, but I'm not a bad mom. I get a C+ at the worst, and Jake picks up the slack. I feel guilty and promise to do better with the next one. I think I want 2. I'm going to be more prepared.

Three years later, she's here. Her name is Caroline, and she's got that Southern charm in her. She shows right away that she's smarter than her brother, and I feel bad that my heart grew a bit more for her than it did for Alex. I do a better job raising her and worry Alex resents me for that.

Alex wants to be a lawyer. He's intelligent but not a genius, but he makes up for that with charisma. Maybe that's because he argued with me and his dad all day and got pretty darned good at outsmarting us.

Caroline is sneakier. She's smart enough to lie and almost never get caught. She's a brat who drives me up the wall, but she wants to be an engineer and I really respect that career choice for some reason. She's a bit of a tomboy, and I feel bad for not being a more feminine role model. Even now, I'm quite masculine. Do I regret not being more feminine for Caroline, or do I regret it for me?

I watch each grow up, and before I know it, the house is empty again except for me and my husband. The fire of love is now a comforting heat like a fireplace. I think I can live the rest of my life here. It's still lonely. Why do I feel that way?

Both kids excel in college. Alex surprises us by being gay. I wish him luck even though I'm still befuddled how I missed that. I'm still not sure that I'm even attracted to men. I think I'm bisexual? Feels weird to be asking that now.

Caroline graduates with honors. She found a guy she wants to marry and start a family with, but she also wants to have a career. She talks with excitement about being a mother but is still a complete tomboy like her mom. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or proud.

The thing I'm most proud of is how good of friends my kids are with each other. They both look up to each other, and I start to think I actually did a good job with them. What else is there left to do? I feel myself being older. I look in the mirror. I have gray strands in my dark red hair. When did that happen?

I get sick soon after my 60th birthday. My doctors have no idea what's wrong, but I sense I've been living on borrowed time in a dream and did what I wanted to here. I would have liked to be a grandmother, but I don't struggle when it's my time. I just wish my sister had made it before I flatlined.

As I die with my family standing around me, I realize that it isn't real. It's a dream. I'm saying goodbye to ghosts. I'm in my bed, crying the hardest I've ever cried, mourning for a life I will never achieve, a person I will never be, a person I will never meet, and the kids I will never have. I try to tell them how I'm so sorry and I beg them to forgive me as I tightly clutch a pillow and sob into it, wishing I hadn't woken up. Because I did, they're gone.

I'm trying so hard not to forget them, but I am. Things were so clear when I woke up, and now they're so muddy. I wish I'd had the wherewithal to write what happened down before I started crying. I cried for a long time. I know I'm forgetting things, and they're really important things, but this is all that I can remember. Maybe it'd have been better if I'd forgotten that dream entirely, but it feels like I shouldn't. Even though it was a dream, it felt agonizingly real.

I... don't think I've ever been this sad in my life. My chest hurts, and it isn't from my boobs. I was so convinced this dream was real after I gave birth. I still vividly remember that. Even though it hurt like hell, I made this mix of a pained wince and a dopey smile as I pushed my first kid out. I held him in my arms and felt my heart expand as I loved him like a mother and I felt complete. Finding out that had never happened (and remembering that it could never happen) was one of the worst events of my life.

When I woke up, it felt like I'd just gotten the cruelest prank in the world played on me. I was so, so certain I had died at the end of it, but when I realized I hadn't, and that it had been all a dream, I felt shocked and horrified. Not only does it feel like I died, but those family members I have lived with for what feels like decades did too. I'm still confused and I have to keep asking myself if I was dreaming then, or if I am dreaming now. Am I just crazy?

Now I know what Zhuang Zhou felt like in Zhangzi's "The Butterfly Dream," that famous philosophical parable in a notable passage from one of the most foundational texts of Taoism:

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou.

But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Unfortunately, the lesson here isn't as simple as there that the distinction between waking and dreaming is another false dichotomy. The Zhuangzi was wrong. Just like my gender, there is a clear line between the two states.

I know how utterly insane this sounds. It was a dream, I know it was a dream, but it felt so real. My brain is still treating it as if it were real. This was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, but it was all just a cruel fantasy my brain built out of a monkey's paw wish to know what it'd be like to be a mother (my bet is the other Samantha was mad I made her a fictional mother in a visual novel called re:Dreamer and returned the favor with a spiteful curse that effected my dream /s).

I'm telling myself that if I don't say goodbye to that fantasy here, I'll never be able to move on, but the truth is that I'm too scared to go back to sleep. I feel like an echo of an echo of a woman, and I'm being haunted by the echo of the echo of the family I wish I could have had but never will.

Alex, Caroline, and the husband who's name I can't even remember... I'm so sorry you weren't real and that I can never make you real. Please forgive me.

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I really don't have anything uplifting to say. I think this broke me. I still feel insane after all. Goodnight.