It Gets Better : Losing a Beard

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We have dark times in our lives. They pass. Life is wonderful, beautiful, and full of powerful private moments. This is a recreation of one of mine.
Transcript follows. I *did* deviate from the script a teensy bit. Working on inserting timestamps for CC.

Turn on the shower, turn on the white noise, because I mostly like what's in my head these days. Mostly. Blanket the world in the roar and shush of bouncing drop, and listen to the thoughts I'll write down when it's done, long hair dripping down my back so much slower than I type.
I think by feel, fingers of mind tracing a thought, it's bumps and texture, and I shave by feel too, just trimming up the edges and...
Shit.
Shit
Shit
Shit
There it is again, that same face. Thirty three and its still the same face, too feminine, effeminate, more like your mother's, more like a woman's, prettier than handsome, more sensitive than strong, it's the wrong kind of face for a man, or a boy, boy in a small machine-shop town, everyone a stranger but I'm the one who's strange and they never let me forget it, before they even knew why they hated me, hurt me, but...
Damn this body. Too thick, too rough, too hard and scarred, nothing like the lovely men, lovely faces with lovely thin bodies that made their faces work, Peter Murphy swimming, just swimming, in that turtleneck black I couldn't wear without splitting its seams. Too thick for ballet, John, Bastard, Beautiful John said I looked like Karate Guy, blocky and square and stone, not like John, slender, serpentine, legs long and beautiful as icicles.
All these years and I never thought to ask if Karate Guy was a compliment: strong like he wished he was, as I wanted to be beautiful like him, like his slender hands.
Not mine. Not artists hands, dancers hands. Carpenter's hands, meat packers hands, and I keep looking at them and wondering if anyone else notices that they're not quite the same size, never will be again, not after this one, right one, writing one was smashed in a door, with the kids, the jeers, the catcalls, and the teacher just watched, and I don't think they knew why.
But later, some did. Some even apologized, awkward, stuttering over a beer, and I realized they've been holding it in, the guilt for hate and spite they'd done, that the kindest thing, for them and me, was to just forgive them.
Then kick their ass at darts.
Because by then I'd grown strong enough, my life was big enough, full enough, that forgiveness cost me nothing, and they'd bought me top-shelf scotch.
Strong because I found other people, who trusted, accepted, loved, and it didn't take long at all, when it happened, it happened so fast, suddenly my life was full of people who smiled, and flirted, and nurtured, loaned me all the good movies, snuck in together in the student union so I could spring the lock on the ice cream cooler and talked all night about other nights that weren't as good, and they got it, loved each other, hold each other up and cheer like when I arm wrestled that girl named Elvis, lost, she clapped me on the back, clapped a bottle of Burgunday into my hands and talked till dawn about our lovers, about how it felt to be strange and strong.
And how weird it feels when people really get it.
How grateful I am that I notice.
I think of folk who had it smooth, from tinker toys to football teams, always understood, always just what was expected, and I feel a bit sad. Those understandings were like chains, and later, spray-paint trophies, gold colored paint over brass and plastic. Light, flimsy, hollow. When someone accepts them, it's only what's expected.
But for me, every smile, every wink, is better than stolen ice cream. My life is full of richness, stories, poetry and music made by people that love me, people that I love, all peculiar and beautiful like that rugged man, gruff and rough and a trucker hat, the kind of man who should grow up in small machine-shop towns, who may have looked like a woman once (though it hardly matters now) who complimented me on my transition, how comfortable I seemed with such a mix or mass or mess of the feminine and masculine.
We talked about changes people make, or didn't make, how sometimes memory wakes up and tries to drag us back to jeering kids who don't know why they say the things they do, and how these days those memories can make us smile, that we survived, and live lives where we understand ourselves a little better every day.
You know, actually...
I look pretty damn good.
I like what's in my head these days.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• gay
• bi
• lesbian
• trans
• LGBT
• gender
• it
• gets
• better
• beauty
• strength
• honest
• beautiful
• strong
• honesty
• outsider
• outcast
• healing
• confidence
• self
• acceptance
• self-acceptance
• love
• loving

[TheCarruths]

I'm usually pretty tolerant of trolling (especially when its friends). Not here.

[msa1985]

A man is all things. He kills, weeps and he sings through blood stained pixie lips.

[SassiBoB]

This is amazing.

[azrienoch]

Feels good to do a video like that, doesn't it?

[NatureGnome]

my body is not beautiful, im too tall, too barrel chested, too large of thighs, too strong to feel normal and precise. Im told i should play football, but i don't like hurting people, but i like throwing punches too much... my body and mind are contradictions. So i abuse it, throw it around, starve it, drown it, and over work it... and i do the same with my mind. I found that i am not a athlete, an academic, a runner, a fighter. Im just me, and am not defined by any type. Love urself :) i do

[JoSieLove2Sing4u]

Love the ending kiss *Bravo* ♥

[JoSieLove2Sing4u]

((( ♥ ))) I like whats in your head too

[YouStoleMyTube]

Awesome... Good video.

[Sombrek]

Stopping at 6:02.

Picture perfect.

[Sombrek]

I would have to say probably the best It Gets Better video I've seen.

[fauyd]

The video is good but I have a question about the video around 2:18. Did you have to purposely make you fingers all prune-like for that shot, or no? Because in all my years of showers, which nearly double my years of baths, I have never gotten "pruney" fingers from showering. If "yes", then I guess you really were suffering for your art, lol.