I'm done with my degree program at Everett Community College, done but for the technicalities of crossing t's and dotting i's. When I went to school, this time around, I did it on the Post-9/11 GI Bill. I earned this as part of my compensation package while on active duty with the US Army. The GI Bill paid tuition directly to my school each quarter, and gave me a monthly cost-of-living stipend on a sliding scale that adjusted for active weeks of school in session for any given month. It also gave me a book stipend, up to $1,000 per year.
While far from extravagant, the stipend did permit me to move out of the church parking lot where hashtag-my-favorite-mistake and I lived for about a year and a half. It allowed me to keep paying on my car to avoid losing it completely, ultimately paying it off as the loan finished amortizing while my only income was the stipend. It kept my cats fed, it let me eat while I went to school, and it let me pay rent, most months, to my landlord, who happens to also be a very good friend. A very good friend who let me stay in this room for about a year before he asked me for any money at all.
Now that I've finished my degree, the hard part begins. I need to find a job. I will get one last partial GI Bill disbursement in late December or early January, and that's it. Once it gets here, I will probably have about $1,000 to my name. And even though DSHS says my car is worth about $2,700, my net worth is still well below zero.
Sounds rough, right? So, why am I smiling?
Because it is and it isn't rough. For a trans woman, I'm doing remarkably well. I have shelter. A little bit of money. I've managed to finish a degree program, and I haven't been forced into sex work. Yet. If all goes well, I'll be doing some kind of administrative work within a month, and be back into technical work within another five, all while still pursuing performance opportunities, with the support of an amazing girlfriend.
Part of pursuing performance (including modeling, acting, singing, and dancing) professionally is demonstrating comfort with public scrutiny. This wasn't a formal consideration when I just up and decided I was a public figure. A lot of it is stuff that I already do anyway, and things like the daily outfit selfies evolved out of wanting to track changes in my body that resulted from HRT. The goal, though, has always been to provide a candid window into my life. That's why, when I do a modeling shoot, I snap behind-the-scenes shots, and don't just put up the finished ones. It's why you can see close-ups of my face before and after electrolysis, even though neither is particularly attractive.
Some people think of social media as a way to project the image of a better life than what they actually have. To hide misery and create the kind of veneer of happiness that causes people to be shocked when they hear about a divorce announcement. I'd seen some news recently about a model who went kinda Shia LaBeouf about her career and the mechanisms of achieving internet fame, and her whole angle was about how social media is a lie. While I get what she was saying for her own life, I don't see mine that way.
I see my social media outlets as an intentional focus. For most of my life, I was incredibly ungrateful, and felt very entitled. I was very well-off in terms of survival needs, but I'd become so largely by accident. When the dot-com bubble burst and I found myself without proof of current skills in the form of any sort of degree or certification, I also found myself without professional contacts who wanted to hire me on the basis of having worked with me before, because they'd all lost their jobs, too. My entire professional network was out of work, and I sat around thinking, "why me?"
On paper, right now, today, my life is a train wreck. On fire. At the bottom of a cliff it just drove off of. I have thousands of dollars in actual debt spread across the last 20 years, probably thousands more in fraudulent debt assigned to me by a jilted ex, I live in a room in my friend's house which could be taken from me at a moment's notice, I don't have a job, I have uncovered medical expenses that I need to pay for out-of-pocket, girls like me are routinely subjected to discrimination that ranges from the absurd to the fatal.
Making all of those things into the defining aspects of my life would not be accurate, though. More and more, I've been developing my capacity to be genuinely grateful for the real bounty of my life. I have wonderful friends who respect me for who I am, and don't judge me based on my life circumstances. I've been able to rescue a number of cats who exist because of my mistakes, and, as hard as it will be, I now have the time and space and opportunity to start rehoming them. I have had the good fortune to have lunch with a state representative because I'd taken a paid performance opportunity. After we did our bit, I bent his ear for a moment about trans issues, and gave him one of my social cards. Isn't that wonderful?
One of the gentlemen at my table at this luncheon was the
I still have my guitar, the same one I've had since the early '90s. My hands still work well enough for me to play it. The songs I've written and performed with it have won praise from professional working musicians who move in circles I never believed I'd be even remotely connected to, even after I spent years petulantly wondering why nobody had discovered me and my music while I mostly hid in my room and played songs for myself. I have the respect and friendship of former instructors from The Art Institute of Seattle, one of whom wants to collaborate with me musically, another who invited me to see a private screening of his current work, another who is building an art installation and fashion show concept with trans women at its core, and wants me to model for it, still another who wants me to come speak to their Gender and Sexuality Studies class.
I have an amazing, patient, stable, brilliant, geeky, loving, determined, thoughtful girlfriend.
There's good and bad all around us, all the time. It's all gonna be there, no matter what. I spent about 25 years focusing on what was shitty, and I did it so well that I crippled my capacity to feel emotion of any sort, never mind just pleasure or gratitude. The shitty was limitless. I became a part of it as it became a part of me, and I. Was. Miserable.
Now, I've spent about a year really practicing focusing on what's wonderful. And I've come to realize that the wonderful is limitless, too. And now that it's become a part of me, I strive to bring a positive feedback loop with me wherever I go, instead of a negative one. I give a stranger a genuine smile, and get one back, and we're both a little happier for it. We both have one more thing to look back on, that day, and say, "that was wonderful." I get attacked on social media, and I reason with the attacker, wishing them well at the end of our interaction, no matter the outcome. People message me privately to say my compassion was inspiring to them, my refusal to fight at the expense of true engagement. We both have one more thing to look back on, that day, and say, "that was wonderful."
This is a trying time. My resources are now very painfully finite. But, I applied for SNAP, and they approved my claim. Now, if nothing else, I'll be able to eat. And that is wonderful. If I get a job in the next week, I'll look back and say, "that was a scary week, but now that it's past, it wasn't so bad." If I get a job in three months, I'll say, "that was a really rough three months, but now I can really get to work." And all along the way, I'll say, "here I am, today, smiling, because I am such a lucky girl."
It's not that I have had more luck. It's that I've been consciously focusing on it.
And that is wonderful.
