Today I got a mail from my doctor telling me I had to reapply for my sex-change once again. So now it is get again 4-9 months until I become a real citizen again.

By some reason I got really shaken up by Benazir Bhutto's death. It left an unproportional hole in my stomach. Than later on that day someone I really care about got ill for a while and that made me very worried and (what ever the word for that feeling you get when someone you love hurts. It must have a special word since it is such a specific feeling. But I don't know a word neither in Swedish nor English).

Stupid last 24 hours!

The only good thing I can see in all this buer bear byer beauracracy mess is that I have grown an incredible amount of empathy towards every illegal immigrant. To live without any real possibility to identify yourself is just crazy in this socialistic controlling country.

I'm a tad bitter today. But it will pass. Ohh, it seems like it did the moment I wrote it. Well, then I have nothing more to blog about. Everything is alright now.

I am very easily pleased during the holidays. But soon and very soon it will be all normal again and I'll be back!

Hollywood came to me, or?

So today my American friend arrived. That is all nice an so. But I have met him before (at least most of his personalities). But the biggest thing today was actually when he came and did something he took out his wallet and there I saw something strange. In his wallet there was real American dollars. And yes, as you read this I know you will question that I am adult but that was actually the first time ever I realized that American dollars isn't just a make up thing from all the movies and TV I have watched during my life.

I don't think any American or other native English speaking person can get that feeling I just got. As children we look at cartoon made in the US dubbed to Swedish. Almost all movies are in English with Swedish subtitles. Since few of us knows to read at early age we don't get much of the dialog but learn a lot of English sounds. Then in school at age 10 when I grew up and usually at age 7 nowadays we start to learn English for real. So much of our culture is media based and so very much of the media is from USA.

I have seen us dollars all my life - on TV, in movies, printed on clothes and everything. But up until today I have never seen any real physical money. It was such a strange feeling. Maybe it's for real that country of much strangeness over there. Maybe New York is a real town, maybe George W Bush isn't just made up to be a good source of jokes for Comedy Central. I had to touch the dollars, smell them and try to rip them apart a bit just to really understand they were for real.

I guess I have always known allt that but still I have just sort of assumed it was all fiction. I never thought there was any real people getting their salary in actual dollar. It might have been an actual kid that got their allowance with this dollars that I'm now holding in my hand. Not just kids looking at the TV seeing fictional kids getting their bucks.

Now that important gap between real and fake is starting to fade away. What is for real? Who am I?

As soon as I have my legal issues with my sex change all finished I am going to get myself a passport and going over there! I need to get me some real experiences beyond this.

Midwinter and love ramble

The shortest day has once again passed and lighter days are on its way!

Found a blog I didn't know of earlier today. The author is also a member of a fairly new Swedish association for transgendered issues called KIM I am a bit involved in.

http://genderwarrior.blogspot.com/

I will read it through now while I am drinking my julmust. Julmust is a Swedish x-mas soft drink that is so good it makes Coca Cola drop their sales with 50% here. During December 50% of the soft drinks we buy is julmust.

Tomorrow the sun will set one minute later and in a couple weeks there will be no problem saying when sunrise ends and sunset starts.

I mentioned recently me and my primary partner N was in an article in a local Swedish Christian paper. We was on the cover and the only heading set on it was "Störst av allt är kärleken" - Greatest of them all is love.

I have been thinking a lot about what love is in general but since I read that cover I have gone back to my questions regarding love. I am portraited as someone who knows love and still I have very little clue.

In the chapter from 1 co that Paul tells us love is greatest he describe love like this "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Apart from Paul I have only heard this describtion of love from abused women. "I do love him and I will always protect him and I will always hope he will change". I hope my daughters will never look upon love as something where they shouldn't keep record of wrongs. Everyone should do that I think. Yeah, sometimes it is good to ignore that record but in the long run you have to get stats on that record that works out.

I don't stay with N because of the kind of list Paul made. I just can't imagine that any life without him would be as good as the one with him. If we take Pauls list:

Love...

1. …is patient
2. …is kind
3. …does not envy
4. …does not boast
5. …is not proud
6. …does not dishonor others
7. …is not self-seeking
8. …is not easily angered
9. …keeps no record of wrongs
10. …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
11. …always protects
12. …always trusts
13. …always hopes
14. …always perseveres.

To talk about love as a being of it's own is a good way of Paul to just weird it up a bit but still. How do we have it on these points? After nine years this isn't my look upon it.

1. …is patient. I would say the opposite. With people I don't know I have a rather good patience. When it comes to the people I love I am very impatient. Impatient to meet them soon, impatent for them to do nice and smart things frequently.
   
2. …is kind. Sure. Love gives some kindness. But I am most certainly never as cruel to people I don't love as the ones I love.
   
3. …does not envy. That is just plain silly. When we hear of jealousy love is almost always in the picture. I am not proud of my envy of all the life goodies N has that I don't but it is there and will always be. But I have to say that I like that he has so many envious sides.
   
4. …does not boast. There I can almost agree. At least after a couple of years together I don't feel much need to boast. It's just no point. We are too much of the same person.
   
5. …is not proud. Proud is such a hard word. I am proud of him and our relationship. At least most of the time. But I understand it isn't that kind of proud he was talking about.
   
6. …does not dishonor others. Maybe Love don't but I do from time to time.
   
7. …is not self-seeking. Who looks for love without self-interests?
   
8. …is not easily angered. I don't think I am the only one out there to be the most angry at the one I love most.
   
9. …keeps no record of wrongs. No formal records of course but yeah, I try to keep in mind how we suck and when.
   
10. …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Here I'm sort of in agreement with him. Evil is just evil. Truth is nice, hard but have obvious perks.
    
11. …always protects. Well yes. I think love have a tendency to make us protect each other. But I don't see that as a good side of love. When I get treated badly I mostly swallow it and feel shitty. I have tried getting better of not protecting and that little truth part just makes all the difference.
    
12. …always trust. Not at all. At some periods in our life I have had very little trust. Trust gets built and torn down by other stuff than love. There are many people I trust that I have no love towards. There are some I love deeply but doesn't trust much. Love and trust in a fluffy combo is always sweet but not always a given.
    
13. …always hopes. Maybe I agree here too. At least in the long run.
    
14. …always perseveres. Well, not always and is it a good thing? It is so easy to forget what is best in the long run and just persistent hang in there. To fight just because it is the right thing to do without really defining what's the goal and why.
    

I might have a very pragmatic view on love. But what has been our way of finding love and safety in our life together hasn't been that stupid list. Besides from a bunch of fluffy feelings to begin with it has been a rather simple rule to write and almost impossible to follow: To talk about everything. If things makes us happy we talk about it. If stuff makes us sad, mad or just uncomfortable we talk about it. We talk for hours and hours every week about seemingly meaningless stuff about how we feels but in the longterm that makes us know each other extremely well. It is beyond bonding.

But it is all about that communication. As soon as we stop talking about everything our knowledge about each other don't improve and the bonds loosens up. Love doesn't offer much when communication isn't there. At least it just makes me build up my own image of him and when the real version and my image crashes it hurts and creates loneliness regardless of physical distance. With lots of open communication prevents that sort of crashes a strong togetherness grows and the fluffy stuff grows.

That sounds all nice and are easy when the open communication is about how great everything is and how beautiful eyes you have. But from time to time life is about other stuff. Jealousy, disappointment, uncertainty and such are not that easy and socially encouraged to talk about at the end of the day. But just do it anyways. At least for me any feelings in that area grows fast if I keep it to myself and mostly just disappears if I bring it out in the light.

So, no. Love doesn't conquer everything. Honesty does. And it kind of builds love. Love is great but I have my bet on honesty. And love doesn't at all equals honesty.

So there is my midwinter love ramble. Next time I will write more fun stuff. I think. All i know for sure is that the sun will show for one more minute tomorrow.

A vacation anyone?

I like Sweden. In many ways. But I wouldn't say that I'm proud of it. Here's one reason why I will never be proud:

From the local paper vk.se

Umebo dömd för sexövergrepp på dottern

Två års fängelse blir domen för en umebo i 40-årsåldern som förgripit sig sexuellt på sin egen dotter. Men tingsrätten var inte enig.

Mannen ska vid flera tillfällen ha utfört sexuella handlingar med sin fyraåriga dotter. Bland annat har mannen låtit flickan utföra oralsex.

I won't translate it much because I like you but it is about a man here in my town who today got his ruling for sexually assaulting his own four year old daughter. Amongst other things he forced her to perform oral sex on him. Yes, she was four. It was her father. What does he get? Two years in prison. And that will probably become a lot less if he behaves.

Theoretically we focus a lot on rehabilitation in our jails. The prisons have one person cells with a bed, a desk, a window with curtains, a board to put up posters and cards on the wall and a TV. Many prisoners gets a video game to pass the time. They have to work or finish basic education in there and by securing the basic needs with safety, good food and a nice place to feel at home in the grounds for rehabilitation should be high. Sure I want allt he criminals to turn good but still. Two years? The kid will still be a small child then...

A year ago or so there was a discussion if there would be possible to keep sex offenders in prisons from porn and they agreed to stop the porn channels on TV and porn in common spaces but they decided that it would be unethical to take away the private porn from prisoners and as long as they keep it in their desks and don't bother others.

One prison actually took the matter in their own hands and took away the porn from one rapist in their prison and the prisoner reported it and went all the way to the Supreme Administrative Court who ruled in favor of the prisoner.

I can't understand how the government doesn't view porn consumption for a rapist as something disturbing rehabilitation.

Since we are a country in agreement of never disagree we can't discuss it either. Everyone gets to be sad in silence but shame on anyone who speaks up.

This makes me beyond sad.

A lot of other stuff makes me less sad. I have now been on T for two years. Tomorrow is midwinter and we will start our journey to lightness. Now there is a couple of hours of sunrise, two-three hours when the sun comes up over the tree tops if you're in the right place and then sundown. I'm not in the right place so I can never see the sun up above the horizon if I'm at home and there is just this long sunrise that every day just fail totally and the darkness wins. I will come back when the sun does.

Mission Accomplished!

A month ago i did the annual obligatory bilbesiktning. It is a yearly car inspection we have where they check everything on your car, the amount of rust in important places, that all the lights work, that you're not having to bad exhausts and such. I think it's a good thing. Every car has to be in really good shape at least once a year.

This is the third year we have had a car and also the third car we have had. It is always a bit scary to besiktiga a new car because you sort of get to know if you were tricked when you bought it or not. But every important part of the car was in good shape. But some light bulbs were broken and one headlight aimed to high so it might dazzle the cars I meet.

I bought new light bulbs some days later and changed them but waited with the headlight. That needed tools and I was lazy. Today was the last day to fix it before the car would be illegal to drive so I took my toolbox and went down to the car with the thought it would take me ten minutes. After ten times ten minutes I gave up and went inside and did a first for me. I called a mechanic. I went down and got it fixed and read a flyer telling me that they could tell the bilprovning that the problems were fixed as long as they had the inspection report from bilprovningen. Unfortunately I had that at home and my car in the shop at the time but some sweet talking with the cashier gave me my keys back before I paid to drive home to the other part of the town to get the inspection report and drive back to pay it all and get it approved.

When I showed it to them they correctly told me that they had only changed the headlight and not the bulbs that were in the report. Yeah, that was only light bulbs, I changed them myself. Well, then they couldn't help me because they had to do the changes themselves. I asked how much it would cost me to make them do it again and actually change my already changed bulbs to new new ones to know that they were new but they declined. I was actually willing to pay them to charge me new bulbs but only go out to the car 5 meters away but they refused. Stupid businessmen! So I had to drive a mile to the bilprovning and check my car there.

Four hours of my life I wont get back. But I managed to keep it legal to drive with my car.

But the shitty day soon changed. One of the best blogs here in town is written by the fabulous MJ Bliss and after following her blog for a long time we finally met up for a fika and she was as fun irl ans on her blog. Why does almost every new and fun people I meet in this town come from out of town? That is a strange thing about this place.

My long time readers might remember that the single reason to start this blog was to practise my English. My first posts took hours and hours with the dictionary and now I rarely use the dictionary at all and writes what ever comes to my mind. So I think I might have reached my goal. Especially after today when she gave me the greatest compliment on that part. Until we met she took me for a native English speaker. I haven't even been to any English speaking country (yet). She also gave me a bag of delicious chocolate covered almonds!

Even though she knows Swedish we spoke in English the whole fika and it was only a few times I had to put in some Swedish word that I didn't find the right English one. But at the other hand that happens to me a lot in Swedish too. That a English word comes up before the right Swedish one.

So, then and there I decided to never make any excuses for my English skills anymore. Yeay me!

Now I have to go cook some dinner. The kids last day in school this term gets celibrated with their favorite food and the Swedish national lagom fancy food - tacos. If you ever get to visit a Swedish family eating something to celebrate anything and it isn't pay weekend (we get our salary once a month and almost everybody the same date) it is very lightly it is tacos. It wouldn't surprise me if Swedes eats more tacos than Swedish meatballs. But tonight is the kids night and they decide. I'm just their humble servant. For one night every term at least.

I took some photos of the kids, the gingerbread house and other stuff for the blog but my stupid computer refuses to connect with my phone since a few months so no more photos for you... (yeah I know I have a camera in the computer, and two real digital cameras on my desktop but that is not the point!)

Not another update

God Jul or whatever holiday you may celibrate or avoid!

I have a short brake from decorating gingerbread house 2 and 3. We're having a x-mas orgie here.

For the first time since I moved away from home I am spending x-mas at home. I wonder why we didn't think about that earlier. A lot of my holiday stress is gone when we don't have to plan far away traveling.

We also skipped most of the gifts and other parts of the tradition that I don't like much. The other parts that I do like I enjoy a lot more.

I can recommend that a lot.

But Alex. you might think, why are you talking about that? Make amends for blogfading, explain it and promise to never let it go more than a couple of days between posts like last year!

I don't do well with rules and that rule of having to feel bad for not blogging on my own blog is not really something I will do.

When I started blogging my big focus were spiritual and philosophical wonders regarding transition, non-normality and other stuff that I feel have a great point in being talked about in the open.

When I started to accept myself more and more those questions faded and other questions started to arise. The new questions were stuff I liked to keep for myself. Not really secrets but stuff I didn't want input on from others because I needed to build a foundation for myself first.

Another part is that many of my questions now will keep changing your view on me and I feel like I have put yall through enough already.

Being transgendered is hard in many ways. But in some ways it isn't. Since it isn't a choice but forced upon us and there is no other healthy way to handle it than to accept it and learn to live with it. I often meet people that think it has to do with morality or spirituality but I don't think so. At least for me transition was necessary to keep me (get me) sane.

So here's my warning. You will probably not approve with much that I will write. I don't do well with just writing about how many gingerbread houses I have done so when I write my values and thoughts will come up. Even if they don't fit.

I haven't read this since I don't read stuff about me ->
In Swedish: http://www.tidningenspira.com/artikel.php?id=455