She was dating somebody when she came out as trans. They broke up and then she was dating somebody else, and then they’d been broken up for a week when she started hanging out with Steph. She’s never been a single woman, she’s only been a woman in the context of relationships. Those relationships have been acting as cushions, as safety nets, enabling her not to have to figure out who she is, what she needs from her life. Anything.

Nevada has stuff to say about relationships. Of course a lot of focus is internal; the relationship with oneself. This is the easiest to recognize in the book as it is a trans book and what is transitioning but a massive battle with our socially constructed self-image? It’s how we are able to overcome this internal battle that molds our approach to external relationships.

The kind of abstract puzzles that make us up are never easy to solve. For starters, our pieces are not jigsaw-shaped and placed on a table. They’re inside us, invisible to others and only conveyed through the limitations of language and symbols. Another challenge is that there’s no edge pieces and no picture to work towards. Only our emotions guide us, and well, we all know how reliable emotions can be. On top of all that, sometimes we don’t even have all the pieces we need. Whether they’re buried by trauma or obscured by external social and culture forces, we can be missing the crucial links needed to put everything together.

So we’re all kinda lost and feeling incomplete and looking for answers; looking for our missing piece. Like that Shel Silverstein book. Except with more self-destructive behaviors and instead of trying to looking on the sidewalk, we sometimes try to find it in relationships. When we’re missing major pieces, it’s easy to look at relationships as the missing piece. When we do this, we become entangled in someone else’s incomplete puzzle just as they risk becoming entangled in ours.

This isn’t to say that all relationships are like this or that seeing yourself in a partner leads to stunted growth. It’s more that if you’re using the relationship as a tool instead of involving yourself in a shared experience, that’s when the problems begins to arise.

Maria began her transition in a relationship. When that ended, she jumped from relationship to relationship, always following her need to find a new person to find herself in. Every relationship was a means to an end, a relationship for the sake of having a relationship, and thus doomed from the outset. Maria was looking at her whole in another fractured person.

This isn’t just for her romantic or sexual relationships because she had a tendency to use everyone in her lives. Which is something Piranha called her out on. Maria’s not intentionally doing this of course. It's not like Maria is an unempathetic manipulator. She’s just broken and seeking wholeness and using the methods that we’re taught by society.

After reaching her epiphany after her adventure of self-discovery and grand theft auto, she does begin to find personal growth and try to use her wealth of experience to change the life of a poor little egg stuck in some shithole in Nevada. And James found his mirror, seeking the reflection that would make him whole. He was more than happy to let this “hot, weird dyke trans girl delivered by Divine Providence” become his missing piece. To complete him and solve him in the way that he could not.

Until he freaked out, relapsed, stole $200 of heroin, and ditched Maria to return to Nicole and use her to perform the masculinity he thought was meant to define him.

And now to tie this back to my own experiences, I’m going to have to do something I’ve been dreading. I hated James the first time I read the book. I was Maria! I was the quirky lovable trans girl that figured it out and James… I get that he’s figuring it out but I was never a loser like that. Sure I stumbled a bit on my journey but… okay I give up. I have to be honest with myself and that means I have to confess this. Here it goes.

Before I knew what HRT was, before I admitted to myself I wanted makeup and femme clothes, before I even realized that I liked to use gender neutral nicknames because I hated my deadname, before I even fully understood what trans was outside of harmful stereotypes, I was James.

Okay, not exactly James. No one is a carbon copy. I wasn’t a stoner in some nowhere town in Nevada, I’ve never worked at a Walmart, and I was not the target of nasty rumors about having a bed made of boogers. That I’m aware of. I wouldn’t have stolen heroin; I was pretty straight edge back then and subliminated my dysphoria into making music, drawing, and rp chatrooms instead of drugs. Oh and don't forget the video games. Can't forget those.

But what about the rest? Ghost apartment with no apparent personality? Check. Apathetic outlook on my potential and future? Check. Difficulty connecting with others on any serious level? Check and maybe still like this. Pathetically “consuming” fetish "material" late at night before ashamedly crawling into bed? Um.

:susie-blush:

[REDACTED FOR TMI]

Anyway.

Like James, I had disinterest in relationships. I had one extremely short one in high school that didn’t go well and then I already gave up. I just sunk away into the warm comforting glow of the internet. Online friends are friends right? Who needs meatspace friends? Who needs to be in a relationship?

Well okay maybe disinterest isn’t right. It would be more accurate to say I was scared of being exposed when I didn’t even understand myself. How could I let someone into my internal landscape when I couldn’t navigate it myself?

As I said before, we’re often searching for those missing pieces in others. James didn’t say no to Nicole when she asked him out. Deep down he wanted to be seen, even if on the surface he believes he doesn’t. He wanted to Nicole to make him feel the way he was supposed, to not be so “weird” or feel like an outcast. This was a maladaptive relationship and set for failure but these are things better to recognized in hindsight.

And it was the same for me. Eventually I left my cave and did my best to paint over my James-ness because I was tired of being lonely and isolated. (Un?)Fortunately for me, the bar for “cishet” relationships is so very low. Feral and stunted as I was, existing outside of my own head for even just a bit was all that was needed to eventually have someone ask me out. I was scared but also touch-starved and maybe just maybe things could work out. The answer is no, it would not work out. (That particular relationship was quite damaging but that’s a story for another time.)

After that fell apart, I sorta entered my Maria era, at least in terms of relationships. I was tired of hiding, I wanted to be seen (even if I wasn’t fully aware of why or how), and wanted to be “normal” and fit in with everyone else. I didn’t return to the cave but started a dysfunctional cycle of entering new relationships with anyone that asked me out, feeling incomplete without one, and trying to find the answers in others instead of within. They’re interested in me, certainly they see something in me and so I can learn something about myself through them, right? (Answer is nearly all of them had they own gender stuff they were working through and on some level maybe doing the same thing I was doing. I wish it led to enlightenment but...)

And since I’m demisexual but didn’t know what that was yet, this created an additional harmful dynamic where I was entering relationships with people who were attracted to me but I was not really attracted to them, just subsuming myself into whatever personality traits they had all just so I could feel a sense of normalcy. Sex kinda sucked because there was a hormonal drive so stuff did happen sometimes I was also not very interested in initiating so they always felt like I "didn't find them sexually attractive" which I guess also something James dealt with.

Between demisexuality and my impenetrable emotional walls I was never able to really connect in a way that build a healthy, worthwhile relationship. Then I would eventually catch feelings after building some emotional intimacy but by then the damage had already been done, I was too emotionally unavailable for too long, and the relationship had ended. Which sucks because once that switch has been flipped for me the feels are intense and now I had to sit with them alone. Those feelings of rejection made me lonely and desperate for another relationship and so I was caught in a cycle.

It's no surprise that finally confronting my inner conflicts and making steps to understand and work with myself coincided with an ability to establish healthier, lasting relationships. Did I mention therapy is cool and good?