taimatsu no monogatari

I just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who commented about D being banished from transgym. Writing that entry felt like a throwback to the heyday of LiveJournal, where I was regularly pouring my heart out but more importantly trying to figure out what I think about something -- I've always needed to talk it out, or write it out, to even have a chance of knowing what's really going on in my head.

But reading all the comments as they came in, and trying to answer them with the care and nuance that they demonstrated, was really a callback to those heady days, when interaction and community were really what made that/this place the best it can be, for me anyway.

I was dithering last night on whether to set my alarm for this morning at all, and I might not have if not for all the processing I'd been able to do here.

For all my good intentions to sneak out of bed this morning without disturbing D who hadn't come to bed until late, he woke up when I did, and immediately offered to drive me. I told him he didn't have to, but I could hear the rain and the wind outside and I wasn't exactly looking forward to having to dress for both that and the gym (I'm a sweatmonster even in shorts so there's no question of me covering more of my body than necessary in the gym, and this is the awkward time of year when the best clothes for me to wear outside and the best clothes to wear in the gym start to diverge). I was happy, and grateful, to stay warm and snuggly with him a bit longer.

And when we did leave the house, we were treated to the coincidence of our neighbor and Teddy the dog walking past. I'd just sat down in the car when I heard D say "Hello Teddy!" so I jumped out again and Teddy ran between us for pets, tail wagging madly, and even tried to jump up on me a couple of times which I've never known him to do! It was lovely to see him, and the neighbor (who caught us up on their recent trip to Crete during some really awful weather).

When I got to lift club, I felt weird and subdued, but of course I expected that. With the notable exception of our friend A (who's good enough friends with us to have heard about what happened right away), a lot of the people I would normally talk to or expect to ask after D weren't there, which suited me: I didn't want to talk to anyone.

There were three new-ish people there today, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was one (or more) of them who complained. I am trying very hard not to be bitter about this. I can truthfully say that it's my fervent hope that whoever complained, I hope they hang around for at least as long as D did -- three years! -- and get at least as much out of it as he has, because I'd really hate for it to be less meaningful to them than what has been taken from him and from me.

The instructor, S, did ask me while I was doing leg press "How's D?" Sad, I said. They said they were too, and I believe that. They said they'd forgotten all about D being a cis guy and I said that didn't surprise me (he's lovely and respectful and conscious of his minority status!), but he never forgot: he always made sure to let new people know, he only ever booked on at the last second if there were still free places because he didn't want to take up a space that a trans person could have used... I said I was proud of how gracious (thank you haggis for getting that word to me just in time!) he was about it, and S said that they'd cried reading the short e-mail he'd sent them to say thanks for letting him be a part of this and talked about the difference it'd made to him. I wasn't surprised at that either.

S asked how I was doing too, and I said I'm sad too. I didn't want to get into the complexities of "what if future trans people who'd like to participate need/would benefit from non-trans carers, so I just left it at that, and said I was touched that they'd checked in on me as well.

They said we should sort out some queer-gym thing generally, perhaps at "their" gym (where their actual personal-trainer work happens), and I meant to talk to them about Jacked Fruit, which D & I found out about at alt-Pride, but I didn't get a chance today. The trainer who steps in when S is unavailable is a trustee or something of Jacked Fruit so I think these connections might already exist but it's something I want to check because I was already excited about that as something with a wider scope (LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent) that other people will also benefit from.

And, driving us home, D pointed out a nearby gym that's part of our ex-council-gyms membership, so he can go there while I'm at lift club, much like he's already been going to the gym next to where I do circuits because he'd rather do that than circuits anyway. And of course the two of us can go to those gyms together, as we already have on occasion.

It wasn't my best day at the gym anyway.

The other thing that I don't want to attribute too much to is that my eyes were so sore I had to keep them closed a lot of the way home, which is really unusual. Normally they get tired and are sore like, well, a tired muscle is sore (because that is basically what's happening) but this felt awful, more like I did when I had a bad eye infection as a young kid. I knew it wasn't that, but it was unusual. I didn't think I'd done a bad job at lift club of navigating around machines and not missing things I needed to pay attention to, but I think I was extra aware of having to do all that work myself this morning, which might have tired my eyes out unusually? And again the tiredness could have played a role too. But I'm used to those things, and this felt worse. By the time we got home, there was some of the familiar facial pressure I associate with my sinuses reacting badly, and lately that often seems related to the weather, which has been wild lately -- windy and changeable.

Luckily, it didn't last once I'd gotten into the shower. It could've even been something about getting my hair cut yesterday, by a new guy who wasn't the most careful about keeping/getting the hairs off my face, or the gel he put in -- normally I love those but this one didn't feel as good.

Now, there's nothing I love more than an after-lift club after-shower nap. And this time, D had already laid back down in my bed so I gave in to the temptation to join him instead of to go to the pharmacy and the post office like I would've done in an ideal world.

We slept for a couple of hours. And normally I love a little after-lift-club nap and wake up excited about the rest of my weekend, but today I woke up feeling groggy and exhausted, and I spent the next three hours willing myself not to go back to sleep. But it's been a kind of miserable day: I did manage to wake myself up enough that I wasn't just daydreaming about going up the stairs and back to bed, but I wasn't awake enough to read much, or listen to a podcast, or watch anything. Everything felt impossibly hard, or else so easy that I kept getting distracted from it.

It was a miserable afternoon. I don't know if this is fallout from lift club, or just the effects of my sleep being a mess now that we're in the autumn where it's always a mess, or subacute sinus problems again, or what. Luckily D made an easy dinner and it's one I really like, so I ate well this evening. And we have a nice plan for tomorrow, friends and food, so there is reason for optimism.

( The history of me and D and transgym. )

The e-mail explicitly acknowledges that he started coming along "in a carer/support capacity" and while I'm perfectly capable of going on my own now, it is still palpably easier when he's there with me -- like, I feel different on those occasions, everything's easier and I get to use fewer spoons and have way more fun. That hasn't stopped being the case just because I got past that initial "I don't know where I'm going on my own" problem.

Having known each other as long and as well as D and I have, I don't think it's obvious to bystanders that he's actually helping me out quite a lot. (I remember once being with D and someone else at a pub, and D started reading out the beer options to me, and the other person (I don't even remember who it was) found it weird, and only then did I realize that other people don't necessarily have a conversation about this when they walk into a pub, heh. I really miss it now when I'm out with anybody else and they just ask me "what do you want?" and I'm like how am I supposed to know already? We haven't talked about the beers yet!). So I don't imagine that whoever complained even understands that they're removing an accessibility feature for me.

Not that they need to care even if they do know that. There's no question that a trans person's discomfort or upset trumps my access needs, in a trans-specific space. But that feels weird to me!

I am sure I'll get over myself but right now I don't really want to share a space with people who've taken away something very tangible to me, accessibility, for something I can only value in an abstract way (any X-only space, where here X is trans). I'm well aware that, even in the unlikely instance in which they understand that D was there to help me and not just a perk I was getting by breaking the rule, it'd be the other way around for them: the benefit of the trans-only space is more salient to them than the abstract benefits that I a basically-stranger (presumably; I can't imagine any of our regulars suddenly taking against this arrangement) can derive from having a support person there with me.

I only have this Saturday's lift club before I'll need another long break from it (by next Saturday we'll be in Düsseldorf holy shit!), which I'm kind of glad about. The regulars ask me where D is/how he's doing on the weeks when he's poorly or busy or whatever, and always send me with good wishes for him, and I really don't know how I'd field a question about that right now.

I don't really want to just walk away from this -- it was the first place D and I started to make friends after our circle of close-knit friends and fellow volunteers turned on us starting just before lockdowns -- but it is kinda tempting at the moment. And I'd been so looking forward to getting back after top surgery!

I'm sure I still will. But it feels important not to minimize or push away these feelings while they are here.