No Mud, No Lotus : On happiness

Sometime while writing it is easy for me to focus on why life is hard, to focus on how different things hurt, and to spend my time trying to explain what my experience feels like. While this kind of writing is laudable it certainly doesn't reflect the entirety of my life. Recently I have been asked two different questions that have reminded me of the importance of expressing more completely the entirety of my life, including the happiness and the joy.

It was in a delightful interview with a member of my stake presidency that I was asked the first question. In essence I was asked which type of person was I? Was I an LBGT member of the Church who routinely struggled or was I happy? I struggled to find an appropriate answer. How do I answer a question like that? It was only later that I realized how impossible that question is. If I am happy, can I still struggle? If I struggle, feel pain, and feel lost does that mean that I cannot be happy? That underlying assertion really confused me. It may be that my dabbling in Buddhism or my study of ancient Stoic philosophy has corrupted me, but I don't think that happiness means freedom from pain, hardship, or even suffering.

Happiness is a state of life. Happiness is a sense of moving forward, of progressing towards God. I think it is possible to be thoroughly miserable in a moment, but to still look at the entire direction of your life with a sense of satisfaction and contentment. Gender dysphoria still causes me a lot of pain. I still wonder how to best live my life, how to best balance Church and dysphoria, and I still routinely feel lost. On bad days, I still occasionally cry myself to sleep in Amy's arms.

But, during moments of calm clarity I wonder at how marvelous my life is. I have someone in my life who loves me, completely accepts me, and wants to support me and be with me forever. I've stopped feeling ashamed of who I am. I'm open and honest about what living with gender dysphoria is like, and I have some dear friends who really want to understand and be supportive. 

These are things that I never would have imagined only a handful of years ago. These are wonderful joyful reasons to be happy. So, sure. I struggle. It hurts sometimes. I wish I had answers about how to best live my life joyfully and authentically while being a faithful member of the Church. But I refuse to allow these facts to deny me my happiness.

I was also recently asked if I thought it was even possible to balance my need to deal with gender dysphoria in a proactive manner, my desire to remain in complete fellowship with the Church, my desire to avoid conflict and not cause waves in public, and my desire to be transparent and really talk about what being transgender really looks and feels like (particularly with those closest to me). Yeah, that is a lot of balancing... and if I'm really being honest the answer is that I have no idea if it is even possible. I might be just like Captain Ahab chasing his white whale, spending my life searching for the impossible and never reaching a destination. 

But isn't this a desire worth pursuing? Sure it may be impossible to balance all these desires. It might be impossible to be an authentic joyful transperson with full fellowship in the Church and minimal social conflict. But if this were possible... what would it look like? How much authenticity, openness, and femininity would it take before my dysphoria fades away? At what point does this expression start to cause distress to others? Where ultimately does the moral line of right and wrong exist in regards to the Church? It seems to me that to be fully Mormon and fully transgender is to pursue these questions in a thoughtful and personal manner.

Perhaps that is where joy is finally found in knowing that you honestly and earnestly pursued the paradoxes of belief and identity. Perhaps happiness is found not in the destination but entirely in the journey. As the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn says, "no mud, no lotus."

Balance, Identity, and Authenticity

I've been thinking a lot about balance and identity lately. Specifically, on what it means to be authentic to oneself. Are we the person we internally feel like or are we better defined as the person others see us as? And who gets to help define us? God? Church? Family? Friends? Society as a whole? Each of these factors influence our identity to some degree. Are these influences better rejected, or do we become a better truer person by allowing others to help define us and our place in society? 

These are some of the questions that have been bouncing around in my mind lately. Now, I certainly don't claim to have any answers. But I thought a conversation might help me sort through some of the thoughts I have, and maybe help me find an answer or two.

Personally, I feel like authenticity is found in some combination of personal feelings and the feelings of others. I saw a great comment on a New York Times article recently. The comment made the claim that authenticity should "include social awareness, sensitivity to the feelings of others, and solid boundaries between what one chooses to keep private and what one makes public." Obviously what those boundaries and social awareness look like will vary greatly from person to person, but it provides a view of authenticity that includes both personal identity and societal influence. It is this very balance that I am trying to find in my life.

In my mind I see four areas that help define my identity. I am defined by my own personal sense of identity. I am defined by my relationship with Amy, specifically in being the person she sees and defines me as. I am defined by my relationship with God and the Church. Finally, I am defined by society as a whole (with priority placed upon how my relationships with my family and close friends define me). Each of these external relationships defines me just as much as I am able to define myself.

What I find so frustrating is trying to bring these definitions of who I am into balance. Can I be authentic to my internal identity while not destroying those parts of me defined by my very important external relationships? My identity and place in the Church is very important to me, my identity as a husband defines who I am, and the relationships I've had my entire life have shaped the person I am today. I don't know if I would really continue to be me, if I fundamentally changed these relationships. All of these relationships are very much defined by a male identity. How do I balance these definitions of who I am with an internal idea of myself that cringes at every male reference?

An example of this struggle to find balance can be found in the question of names. Names are really powerful symbols. Parents give children names hoping that their children will live up to an ancestral namesake or an expectation the name represents. After that moment a name rapidly becomes a symbol of who that individual is and that name carries all the hopes and dreams for that child. Names represent us and represent what roles we are expected to play in society. Names rapidly come to define who we are to those around us. Names have deep power and eternal significance.

Lately several different people have asked me about preferred names and pronouns. With gender dysphoria male roles, symbols, and expectations cause some degree of pain. The name Kyle feels like a weight I constantly carry around with me, because that name is attached to so many gendered roles and expectations. The pronoun 'he' sounds jarring when used to refer to me. But I'm defined by more than just an internal sense of identity, Amy, Church, and society as a whole have a part in defining who I am as well.

Would abandoning the name Kyle be an abandonment of my male roles, and a part of my identity? I had one friend tell me that if I ever asked to be called be a feminine name, as many trans people in my situation do, he would lose a great deal of respect for me, because he would see that action as an abandonment of my duties. In his mind I would be walking away from being a husband and a priesthood holder. In some ways I agree that changing my name would be a fundamental shift of my identity. I certainly don't want others to view me differently because they believe I've abandoned commitments I made, particularly the commitment of being a husband to Amy.

At church I am Brother Merkley. Is that painful? Yes. But, once again I made a covenant to be a priesthood holder. Brother Merkley represents those promises, and an identity as a male in the Church. This identity is very difficult. But if I am to live up to the promises I've made to a Church I fundamentally believe in, all I can do for now is to live up to those promises as best I can and await further revelation. 

At school I'm Mr. Merkley. Mr. Merkley represents safety, financial security, and social conformity. Sure, once again it hurts to go by a male title but the confrontation, confusion, and harassment that would occur should I try to change that name wouldn't ever be worth it. I despise conflict and don't want to cause any drama. Honestly, just being open about this issue on the internet caused more than enough trauma and anxiety for me this year at school.

So while Kylie may represent my internal identity better, Kyle represents my role as husband and the fact that I was born in a male body with many male experiences, Brother Merkley represents the fact that I have made covenants with God, including holding the priesthood, that are male experiences, and Mr. Merkley represents my desire to avoid conflict and socially conform. Each name is a symbol that represents a part of who I am. Perhaps a single name is not enough to fully represent me, I am all those names and more. Somewhere buried in all those symbols is me. 

How do I balance all these different parts that define who I am? Which parts of my identity ought to be most important? Is it even possible to find real balance, or am I trying to make everyone happy and leaving no one satisfied? I don't know, but I will continue my search for answers.

Sincerely,

me

Gender Dysphoria in the Church : Going Through the Temple

I've been meaning to write a series of narrative posts that might help explain what the experience of gender dysphoria feels like in a Mormon context. Hopefully at some point these will come together into a book of some form. But I thought a good first one might be about the experience of going into the temple and what that feels like for me.

I had been preparing for weeks, perhaps even months, but I kept putting it off. It was so easy to say "I don't feel like it," or "I'm far to busy with more important things." It was easy to say that it was simply too hard to do alone. But if I really took the time to be honest with myself I was afraid: afraid of the pain, afraid of the emotional consequences, and afraid of being reminded that I don't have any answers.

Of course, there's this funny thing called life that happens even if—no, especially if—you are afraid. The temple came up in a casual conversation with some dear friends and I mentioned how extraordinarily hard the experience was for me. Suddenly a resolution had been made that we were doing this together. My excuses vanished like students leaving school on a Friday afternoon. 

It was easy for my excuses to vanish. For a while now I had been feeling so ashamed for not attending the temple. The ordinances that occur in the temple are supposed to be the highest, most sublime form of worship in Mormonism. The endowment was supposed to give me 'endless support and strength' along with 'unlimited inspiration' and 'motivation.()' Not only that, but we believe that it is necessary for us to do our part in helping achieve the salvation and work of redemption for the entire human race. By not going, I wasn't pulling my weight, so to speak. There were individuals, my ancestors even, who were waiting on the other side and I had been ignoring them. How could I not feel ashamed that I was delaying their salvation? How could I not feel a touch guilty that the temple ordinances--which are very gendered--render me a mewling pile of anxiety rather than a sacred instrument of God's work? 

So in some ways I was relieved that I was finally going to do this: once again taking my place in actively participating to build the kingdom of God. The other far larger portion of me was in shock. Remembered pain played through my mind over and over again, a constantly looped track of misery. But I was resolved. Real participation in the Church revolves around temple attendance and maybe this time it would be a little better. Maybe...

I did my best to ignore the looming temple trip, filing it in the back of mind somewhere between deep cleaning the grout and filing paperwork. You know the deep dark forgotten crevices of the mind where such essential tasks reside. Ignoring something never makes it any better, but it sure did help reduce the anxiety in the days preceding the temple trip. So ignore your problems. There's my piece of unhelpful therapeutic advice for the day. 

Of course, before I knew it the day of the temple trip arrived. I couldn't run away or ignore it any longer. I felt like, at the very least, I needed to give this a fair shot, and do my best. So I tried my hardest to place myself in a positive healthy frame of mind before going to the temple. I stopped and took some time to just breath, letting my breath fall in and out over and over again, until gender stopped mattering. I was just me, and all that mattered was my breathing. I spent some time reminding myself why I was doing this. I really wanted to feel like I was participating in a part of God's work. I wanted to once again feel like I really was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for which temple attendance is the highest most noble part of true membership. I wanted to do this for Amy. In some ways I think that to her my temple attendance represents a symbolic showing of my willingness to sacrifice for our relationship, and it makes her so happy to go. In the end, I was just tired of being afraid of the temple. It was time to just face the experience again. I was ready.

Well, I was ready until I put a suit and tie on in preparation to actually go to the temple. Amy and I have worked so hard to build a bubble, a world, where my gender isn't so important. We have dedicated so much time to learning how to avoid popping the fragile sides. We live in constant fear of the emotional flood and the incessant bailing necessary to restore order to our precious and beautiful little world. But, as soon as the tie was around my neck that whole world wavered unsteady under the ponderous weight of masculinity. For a moment I staggered under the load. I might have just given up, but Amy was going with me and we were going to meet some friends at the temple. I even had a male friend who was going to sit next to me and try and make the experience easier. I couldn't give up when I had so much support.

We drove to the new temple on Center Street in Provo which is a beautiful building. Amy and I had been through the open house of the temple but hadn't yet attended a session there. As I walked into the temple the tie around my neck seemed as heavy as many of my students backpacks as they hauled home work that needed to be done after a parent teacher conference. It was a touch hard to breathe and the anxiety was already pressing in a bit, but nothing I couldn't handle. I hardened my resolve and put on my teaching face. You know, that look that always says that you are happy to be there and always willing to work with and help students even if they need a copy of an assignment for the dozenth time. Plus, I was still with Amy, she grounded my every moment creating a safe welcoming place.

Of course immediately after entering Amy and I were separated. I went from the safe comfort of Amy's side into a male changing room. Off flew the suit and tie and only to be replaced with white slacks, a white shirt, a different white tie... I fled the confines of the changing room in record time; racing an imaginary clock counting down the time until the maleness of the space buried me. It was a relief seeing Amy again, and we headed to the chapel to await the beginning of the endowment session.

I spent every moment of time while in the chapel trying to rid myself of the anxiety that had been slowly building up on the trip to the temple and from my foray into the male changing room. I clasped my hands tightly together, took comfort in Amy's presence, and just tried to keep on breathing, repeating over and over with every breath "I could do this, I can do this, I will do this." 

For those of you unfamiliar with an endowment session, the endowment ritually follows the story of the creation of the world, the story of Adam and Eve, the Fall, and the path towards redemption for Adam and Eve and symbolically for all of us as their children. Each individual who participates in the endowment ritually represents either Adam if male or Eve if female. Throughout the endowment, all the participants are reminded of and make covenants to follow the laws of God. These "laws include the law of obedience and sacrifice, the law of the gospel, the law of chastity, and the law of consecration" (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/ezra-taft-benson_vision-hope-youth-zion/). If we follow these laws, God, through the atonement of Christ, promises all mankind the ability to return to back to his presence and leave this fallen world. 

As soon as it is time, we filed out of the chapel and into the actual endowment room. I spent as long as possible standing next to Amy before we were forced apart as women filed to one side of the room and men went to the other. This clearly gendered divide was even symbolically painted into the room itself with the women's side painted with a swan, doves, and flowers while the men's side is represented with a more outdoorsy less markedly feminine scene of a lake and ducks. The very walls of the room constantly reminded me how out of place I felt.

The man who is seated at my left exudes such an aura of masculine confidence that I unconsciously shrink away down into my seat trying to be invisible and not trying not to let my obvious discomfort show. Luckily, my friend is seated on my right, so I can shrink away towards my friend and take comfort in the fact that someone close to me at least kind of understands how hard this experience is.

The endowment begins. The world is created, the days of creation are numbered and recounted. Next Adam and Eve enter the picture. Shortly after their arrival, the brethren are asked to stand. Everyone around me stands, but for a moment I don't, my friend has to nudge me, and embarrassedly, and quickly, I stand. 

I'm sure many people think that I must have drifted off, but in reality I heard the words but didn't make the connection that the word 'brethren' was supposed to apply to me. I don't identify with that word, and in that moment I didn't even recognize that it was supposed to signify me. That moment starts a downward spiral. I can feel the anxiety closing in, but there is still a long ways to go. I dig my thumbnail into the center of my palm hoping that the pain will help ground me for just a while longer.

While the law of personal sacrifice is discussed, I wonder how much more could I sacrifice than being here in this moment, so out of place, so vulnerable, and frankly so scared. I hope fervently that God accepts this sacrifice and this is enough because I honestly don't know how much more I could give. I'm focusing on my breathing now as well, my thumb nail still being driven into the center of my palm. I'm still trying to listen to the words, but it's getting harder.

The presentation turns towards the importance of the commandments and virtuous living, or the law of the gospel.  My hands are shaking, I'm sweating, and I'm trying to look like I still have everything together. I'm beginning to wonder if this ordinance even counts. I'm going through the endowment on behalf a deceased individual who is male, but am I eternally male? We clearly care that males do the work of males and females do the work of females. Am I actually accomplishing anything by being in the temple? Would this just have to done over again anyways? 

The absolutely essential nature of the law of chastity is once again explained. More questions flood into my mind. Once again, if I feel female what is my eternal gender? If my eternal gender is female is my relationship with my wife even appropriate? The question what am I even doing here pounds into my mind like a mathematical repetend over and over again in an unceasing litany of confusion.

Finally, we consecrate all of our time and energy to helping build the kingdom of God. I can't even listen to the words anymore. I can feel myself falling apart, pieces of me drifting away like ash from a burnt piece of paper. I'm focused on tracing the wood grain on the seat in front of me. In my mind I'm not even in the room anymore. Nothing exists except the patterns on the wood grains and my breath. It doesn't hurt so much here.

The ceremony comes to an end, I stumble over the final exchange in my haste to exit into the celestial room. I need to leave, I can't survive a moment longer. I need Amy...

And finally, I enter the celestial room. I see Amy and relief floods through me. Finally, the one person who really understands me, who understands how hard this entire experience was, and who knows that a large reason I endured this experience was because I love her. She looks radiantly happy. The temple always has that effect on her. Divine serenity clings to her like dew on fresh daffodils. I see her smile at me and I know that even if I'm not sure how my Heavenly Father accepts my sacrifice, she at least understands and is so grateful for the gift I have given her today.

We embrace and instantly I'm not so alone anymore. I feel loved for who I am, validated and understood in my pain, and each part of how much I sacrificed to go through this session is seen and accepted. I feel the pieces of myself being pulled back together through her love and concern for me. I know that even though it might take a while everything is going to be ok. Because of her, I find myself again.

As I ponder that, a thought comes strongly to mind. Maybe this is a small taste of what heaven really does feel like. This life is so hard, and we all at times ask ourselves why we suffer, why there is so much pain. We all feel alone. But on the other side we have a Heavenly Father who really understands us, understands how hard every moment is for us, and who knows that we are enduring this life because we loved and trusted Him enough to follow his plan. How great will that comfort and relief be, when we finally get to the other side and receive a loving hug of welcome from our Heavenly Father? I pray that the feeling is analogous to how wonderful I felt being held, understood and loved by Amy in that moment. 

The Great War of Words: Thoughts on The Transgender Bathroom Debate

Lately things have been kind of difficult for me. I've had some tense situations at the school I teach at, where I was awkwardly confronted by a couple different students who had googled my name. Of course, both of these instances occurred in front of entire classes of students which created a great deal of drama--think panic attacks on my part. These instances forced me to come out to my administrator, which ended up being great but it caused even more anxiety. On top of all that, I'm so sick of being constantly bombarded by the war over bathrooms and transgender individuals. 

Seriously, hearing the constant harangue against transgender individuals hurts a lot. I'm tired of hearing that I'm merely deluded, that I'm crazy, and that I'm less than human because of feelings that I have. This pain has been taking its toll on me, which has given me a chance to really consider why I find it so hard. I've had a lot of chances lately to think about fear; because deep down inside, if I'm being honest with myself, I live in a world filled with fear. 

I'm afraid. I'm afraid of being misunderstood, afraid of being confronted for being different, afraid of not being seen as good enough. I'm afraid of being labeled crazy. I'm even afraid of not even being seen as a real person. 

At the heart of these fears is the issue of self-identification. I constantly see the idea of self-identification as being mocked, ridiculed, and derided as simply absurd. Just this morning in regards to a news story addressing the bathroom issue, I saw the mocking question, "Well what if I felt like I was cow; would you respect my right to be treated as a cow?"

Now I can't really speak to or answer any of the questions revolving around self-identification. It's a confusing question, and I get that nothing about it seems logical. In the end, all I can do is share my experience. On a deep and fundamental level I feel female. You might call this self-identification, but to me it just is. That single fact lies at the very foundation of my life. I can't run away from it, I can't hide from it, and I'm constantly reminded of it. I tried running away from it and spent years desperately trying to pray these feelings away and deny them a place in my life. I tried confronting it and spent years in therapy before I accepted the fact that these feelings were never going to change. And I've spent years trying to come to a place of acceptance and balance in my life. At this point, I haven't socially transitioned, I don't demand that particular pronouns be used, and I don't demand to be treated as a female. But that doesn't change the fact that near the very center of my identity are my feelings of being female.

Because this feeling is so fundamentally a part of me, I consider my feelings of a feminine identity nearly sacred. I mean, surely God gave me these feelings for a reason. This is a defining part of who I am. Nearly everything in my life has been shaped through the lens of gender dysphoria.

The current dialogue revolves not so much around actions but around my very sense of identity, which isn't ever going to change. This really hurts. So much of the work I have been trying to do revolves around accepting yourself. That it's ok to have gender dysphoria, that there isn't shame, that in the end you have the freedom to choose how you would like to live your life, and that there are lots of different paths that you can follow. I feel like this open moderate road I've been trying to build is being trampled on and destroyed.

Now this may feel like a harangue against conservatives, but it isn't. Progressives have their own way of discarding any middle roads. After I came out to a close, quite progressive friend, this individual asked me which pronoun I would prefer, which in general is a really empowering thoughtful question. I responded that I try not to make pronouns a big deal, but if they really wanted to know female pronouns certainly make me feel more comfortable since male pronouns are quite triggering. The response I got still shocks me. I was told that once I transitioned they would happily use female pronouns. I felt like I was being pressured to just 'accept' who I really was and transition. Only then would I earn the right to be accepted.

I find myself often feeling crushed between these two competing ideologies. On one hand I'm told to just accept reality: biology says I'm male so I can't have any kind of female identity. On the other hand, I'm told to just accept reality: my identity is who I am and I just need to transition and accept myself. I realize that in every sense that I am biologically male, and I know perfectly well that I feel female. Yet, everyone seems to think that they need to tell me exactly how to live my life. Why can't I be allowed to choose who I would like to be?

I guess the concluding point I would like to make is that there are certainly plenty of places surrounding transgender issues that we as society need to have a conversation. There are ethical questions that need to be navigated by all sides. A real conversation needs to occur. But the one thing that we aren't equipped to discuss is my individual identity, or anyone else's. The one thing we can say is that they are children of God who deserve our love and need us to help them find a middle road where they are free to make their own choices and rid themselves of self-hatred and debilitating shame. 

So in your internet journeys, when things get heated, remember those of us trying to find a middle road. We aren't trying to upend society or force you to change. We are merely trying to keep on living while avoiding getting crushed by the war of words currently engulfing our nation.