Accepting My New Journey

     I have some thoughts that I'd like to share and hope that it resonates with someone...anyone really. I started this as a written journal in early 2012 as a way to release the negative emotions, the demons if you will, that have been heavily weighing me down for as long as I can remember. I thought I wanted to die but in truth, I wanted to live and be happy AND I thought I couldn't attain that so the next best thing is to end it all...incorrect, I know, but that's what I thought.

Through the years, I've learned a lot about my own mind and what some of the real issues are that plague me. One thing that has never changed is the nature of wanting to be a helper to people.

I've always had a go between nature that has guided my choices in friends and things I do. I haveconstantly tried to help the left out, the castaways, the black sheep. I even relate to peace making characters in tv shows, movies or books; for example, Benvolio from Romeo and Juliet (I read the book years before Leonardo made it popular so...extra credit for me) and Bull Shannon from Night Court (see my previous entry about characters I want to be like for a full description).

Those characters and a plethora of others are my favorites because they could pick one side but they feel the need to see things from both perspectives and try to help bridge gaps in enemies and I try my best to build bridges in everyday life ina  bunch of ways.

     I have a few examples of everyday bridge building that show my perspective.

I was working as a cashier andf a customer was not paying attention, an old woman's items came to a certain amount (I forge the exact amount so I'm making it up) it came to $12.83 and she would not look at me or respond to anything I said, things like, "Hello, how are you today?" or "Do you have a savings card with us?" 

So I told her the price and did my best to not sound angry when telling her the price of her stuff and waited for her to pay. She began rummaging through her change and I put my hand right next to her purse, clearly waiting for her to put the coins in my hand. My hand was directly under her hands and she moved away from my hands and rudely dropped the change on the counter, causing me to have imaginations of committing Looney Tune type voilence to her self. And mind you my imagination is very vivid so I was supressing it as much as humanly possible. 

Now I could have yelled at her, ignored it or done something back like wait for her to pick it up but I decided to take a second and restrain my mouth from yelling. Then I calmly said to her,"Ya know, when you throw change on the counter like that, cashiers take it as an insult. If you didn't do that, they would appreciate it very much." (again, my memory of the exact words are foggy but it was very similar to this) and she looked at me (for the first time in this entire exchange) and gave me a shocked look, as if I told her I ran over her newborn grandson and finished paying. 

Now I'm sure I should have ignored that but in my mind I was trying to explain in a calm manner to her that the act she performed was not the best way she could do that and a way to build a bridge between her and all cashiers. I truly meant all of that with positivity and care for her even though she complained to my manager. 

Numerous times I have talked to people who have the appearance of seeming uneasy with me in a  open way that shows them I see them as people and not just another customer. I try to make my words personal when I talk to people, making sure to listen and be aware of what others are doing or going through, it often benefits everyone involved. 

     Another giant example of me trying to put this peace maker thing into rpactice in my life is when I come across anyone in service of our country. When I see a police officer, a fire fighter or anyone who is or was in the service (when I know it, of course) I make sure to thank them for their service and tell them I appreciate what they do. That has shown to be a great decision, sometimes they say thank you and go about their business but sometimes they smile, thank me and look honored to be recognized. Those 

situations are worth every effort and they build a relationshiop between society and those people who may not specifically put their life on the line at any point butjust committing to do the job they do, that alone risks their life. 

     All of these examples ar emy way of showing that the gift I have is being a peace maker at heart, it's something that makes me feel like I am useful here on earth when I see it working somehow. 

It makes me feel like I am here for a reason when I'm in one of those situations where I'm able to help someone who looks or feels left out or build some bridge with someone somehow. 

Anyway, my point with all of this is that I have a place on earth and right now with me transitioning, I feel even more confident that I have a place wher I can not only be a peace maker but I can use my situation and my experience in church and with God to show transgendered people that theyr're people too even though they go through a lot of negative stuff.  

Being a trans person who is about to start my new journey, who is right leaning politically, who has been through as much as I've been through and who believes in God and Chritianity I feel there is a bridge that NEEDS to be built between anyone in the larger circles I'm starting to join or associate with and the church. 

I'm starting to feel like there is a reason for me here, finally. If indeed God has led me to this point in my life, I see why a lot of things didn't go the way I thought i wanted them to go throughout my life. And I am okay with a lot of those things, those things I saw as failure makes sense more now than ever before. 

An uncomfortable Talk That Needs to be Talked About

     Ok so I have been thinking about this for a while, I want to address some things that are very real in my world. As a confrontational person, it's easy for me to go to the uncomfortable areas but some of these are hard for even me.So...

     The first thing I want to bring up is the transgender/Christian situation. I know, I'm starting off with a doozy.

Christianity does not support homosexuality, there is no question about this. It specifically says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." Leviticus 18:22 God is speaking to Moses, giving rules for the children of Israel. It's one of very many clear verses that give the principal that men with men is not right by God. I'm sure that's tough to hear for many but it's biblical.

And for anyone who does not care about the bible, the only way to continue civilization is to procreate and the way we procreate is for a man and a woman to be together and make babies, nature would have given another option if things were supposed to be another way. I'm not condemning anyone who doesn't fit this mold but there is truth in this.

The verse specifically referring to trans people I have heard much is Deuteronomy 22:5 which if you're a Christian who happens to be trans, I'm sure you've heard it so much you have it memorized,

"The woman shall not wear that which 

pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man 

put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are 

an abomination unto the LORD thy God."

Let's examine this deeper than the surface, it sounds very bad for someone who wears clothes of the opposite sex...which would be anyone who is trans at least before doing anything to transition. Taking  a few things into consideration, this isn't as clear as it may seem for these reasons:

     1. Most of what we learn and take from the old testament are principals, not laws. The fact that we don't condone stoning people shows that we take the principals of what is right and wrong but don't follow their specific actions. God absolutely wants us to glean truths from even things that we don't do the way they did at that time. That whole chapter has nothing to do with men dressing as women or women dressing as men, the chapter deals with responsibility.

The first verse says if you see your brother's ox, get it and bring it to him (paraphrasing, of course) and continuing on it talks about different responsibilities. Verse 22 teaches the principal that men should not pretend to be like woman or take on their roles to get out of their responsibilities, that's something we need to follow. It's not okay to do anything just to get out of your responsibility.

     2. I know that whether you agree or not, I am a transgendered person just as much as you are [insert your gender here] and it may be a mental illness or it may be a birth defect or it may be because of someone's choices in my life when I was very young that shaped this, no matter what the cause is does not change the fact that it is very real and it's not going away.

The uncomfortable truth about my specific situation is that if I ignore or hide this, I will eventually kill myself. I'm not threatening or saying there is anything to worry about but this is the truth. This is true for many trans people who have dealt with this since long before they let anyone else know about it.

Now I'm saying all of this to show both sides because either side of this conversation believes there is no other side, that the opposition is just wrong and there's no conversation to be had. That is a terrible way to think and it's immature to shut down dialogue with someone who disagrees with you, at least till you hear them out.

Getting personal:
     My decision to transition comes with the decision to refrain from relationships and all things sexual, it has not been an easy decision because it was something very important to me. I came to this decision because The bible says to abstain from all appearance of evil and like I mentioned first in this entry, homosexuality is a sin.

And while I could stand behind being with either gender (I could say that I'm a genetic man so being with women is okay or I could say because I transitioned, I can be with men and not care what others think), I do not think it would be right to be with men and I'm not interested in men anyway.

And the appearance of me as an identifying woman being with another woman would be the appearance of a lesbian relationship. And as I stated before, to shove this down anymore would spell certain doom for VJ so there is only one option for me.

This is a personal decision, I am not telling anyone else not to do what they feel is right as long as you acknowledge these truths that I have brought up. Your life and decisions are between you and God. My goal is not to tell anyone what to do or judge, it's simply to bring up something and let you make your choice based on facts and principals.

     And the next thing is...drum roll...

     I'm going to rant about a few things that I just need to rant about, I hope that's okay. It is? Awesome, you're the best.

     I'm a cashier and I can't tell you how painfully annoying it is the way people regularly treat cashiers. Ignoring them, yelling, cursing at them, acting as though they don't know their job, speaking down to them and more.

I have a few instant rage buttons: when people see my hand out waiting for change and the customer drops it next to my hand on the counter, I want to say the most vile viscous things; when I say hello or something and they don't respond. Oooh man, I feel less than human and that sucks!

And HOW is it okay in our society to talk on the phone (in non extreme or emergency situations...I'm not a monster) while dealing with a cashier. We almost always have to speak to you to do our job so if you can...GET OFF YOUR F*&$%#G PHONE! Sorry for the language, it's been boiling up in me for a while.

One more thing, if a cashier t\asks you for a card for their store and you don't give it to them you cannot get angry when you don't get the store specific sales that come with said card. At least for the duration of your current visit when you do that, we hate you. I know...hate is a harsh word. We hate you. It goes away but it is real at that moment.

     ...I guess that's all. I get those things a lot and needed to vent, thanks for listening...er reading.

Now for the sappy part. I want to thank everyone for your 

support and attention in a world where attention is a 

hard thing to give out. My depression has been a terrible demon 

and expressing myself on here has been life saving at times.

And having fans who read it and hopefully understand 

any of my jumbled mess of thoughts...I thank you. 

Prayers, good words and comments are always appreciated.

Deconstructing Vincent Joseph

     I've been a Christian since 2001 June 27th to be exact) and since then I've tried to surround myself with people who I want to be like and keep away from all that I shouldn't have in my life...well I've tried and tried and tried.

     My friends and the people I associate with has been very important because of the bad apple theory, one bad apple can ruin all the good ones around it, and I've carried that in my social media life and I've tried to be both a "good apple" to those who need to see one around me and in the barrel with good apples. 

     The good things about that theory have been evident: I have successfully learned what being a drunk or a drug addict is before falling for any of that, my social media life has been respectful and always at a higher standard, I've at times learned how to keep up with certain things that I couldn't learn with people who are even at my level and I accepted God in my life at a time when  I could have accepted any amount of terrible things. All that was because I got rid of toxic people and influences from my life and tried my best to stick by the people and things that were better than...well, me.

     Then there is the part that is a big ol' pile of...confusion.  There's the paradox that this creates. So being around people who are better than me has had enormous positive side effects on me BUT at a point that started becoming toxic too in a way. I'm not successful, I haven't ever, in my entire life, even known how to try to be successful yet most of my friends have been born and bred to be a success story, they are all inspirationally great in at least a few ways. 

So I become the bad apple to them, which is evident to them when things come up like we go out to eat or they invite me somewhere that requires ID and I do my normal thing and lose mine while they are outside waiting, leaving me to have to walk out and sadly tell them to go without me because I lost the one thing I need at the moment. Situations like that come up on the regular with me and it's not that I don't get to do things necessarily or that I have to do more to keep up with anyone else; it's the part where I have to walk the long lonely walk to go and tell them that I can't go. That walk becomes harder each and every time I have to walk it. 

     So i walk that walk and the part about me is sad and my friends go on...and I go back somewhere alone...feeling like a full failure. And nothing else. It washes over me, it replays over and over, often I create how much I think they're better off without me. They're having more fun because they're good people and they got rid of the bad apple...so I must be the bad apple, right? Right?! And it only gets worse from there. Now this exact situation only happened once but similar things have occurred many times where I had to back out in order for everyone to have a better time or to actually enjoy themselves. 

     And since I have a literal mind that refuses to change that way of thinking, I look at the math of life: if I am the one that they have to wait for, and I am the one that friends have to pay for and I'm the one that usually doesn't understand things common to them and I am CONSTANTLY the one who doesn't have ANYTHING that they all have (families, lives, the importance of others) I do that math and the answer is I'm the problem. 

     So if I'm the problem, then I should take myself out of their equation to make their lives better and I sit alone and beat myself up over and over and over...and over and over. And it was just pointed out to me that when my friends come to spend time with me or try to cheer me up, while they've been in the real world and have been just doing what they do, I have been mentally destroying myself for so long that I don't even think of myself as human anymore.

So they are like, "Hey, haven't seen you i a while. You okay?" all cheerful and calm. And my response looks like I've been in a Taken movie standing opposite Liam Neeson's character. From my point of view, I'm coming out of a terrorizing situation and trying to calm down (slowly because I have trouble changing moods even when it's proven to me that I should) but to the friend, nothing is actually wrong and I bring them down in my slow reaction to their positivity. That in turn makes them not want to be around me or not really be able to handle my intense sadness/negativity...and when they leave or step back, I repeat the mental beating with more vigor than before. 

     This has grown from a small issue that I can let go of to a painful bitter ball in the pit of my stomach to this intense evil hatred that lives inside me. I know I need to change this, I know I need to accept that things are not the way I see them usually and I know that some of the damage that I saw and currently see as irreversibly broken are i fact possible to be repaired...somehow. Somehow...somehow...somehow; that words seems so far away and almost a fantasy of a dream. Someday (another far away word) I hope to understand how to use this deconstruction to fix some of this stuff.

     My goal with this and with my videos on YouTube and with my art and my prayers and my bible reading and my future therapy and my transitioning and everything else i try to do is all to find a way to be okay. I thank anyone who reads this and I hope it encourages you in any way at all. Let me know if it does, I could truly use that if it's true.

This is where I live

     I try very hard to fight through the negativity in my life, I try to smile my way past those everyday things that happen and I try to remember my goal in life (make other people's life better, event if it's one person at a time in even very small ways) and it honestly seems like every time I take a step in that direction, something happens that COMPLETELY destroys anything I've put together. Completely. Sometimes it's my fault like I make a bad choice and just make things in my life worse and the rest of the time it's like I just get a bad hand in life and I lose.

     I fully acknowledge that I make wing choices and do things that lead to failure. I take responsibility for things that I do that result in my life's non success, not just failure because failure refers to losing our logically bad or wrong things. I have been taught by a lot of people throughout my life that it is cowardly to not take responsibility for my mistakes, sins and won't choices. I also know that sometimes wrong choices aren't "sins" but rather just the not right thing in that moment, like if o choose to either l write something in pen and make a writing error. I made the wing choices in not using a pencil but I didn't do something bad, I just could have made a better decision.

     Then there are luck based situations, for lack of better words, that I just lose with most of the time. Things like: I go to the train station early and the machine that dispenses tickets didn't accept dimes and then the train comes early. I know that everyone faces these situations, but I have this weird curse where logic plays weird games with me more than normal. I have things happen like I'll pull on a paper towel and logic tells me the pretreated line will be where it rips... For normal people; my curse causes it to rip in such an odd way like it'll rip right around where I'm holding it.
   
This is a silly example but imagine every time you ever rip a paper towel, it rips in the worst way possible, how maddening that can get over time. That's where I live. Now imagine this weird logic happening with a lot of areas in life, like every time you hang a picture on your wall something catches the nail to make it uneven, no matter how many times you re adjust it. That's where I live.

These things wouldn't be so bad if there was something big that made hassles worth the trouble but I don't have much of anything to hinge my troubles on; I don't have a girlfriend/wife/prospect of a love interest, no kids, no career that makes it all worth it, no passion that I can't afford and nothing I'm looking forward to really. Knowing there's nothing that I come"home" to makes all these weird things feel ski much more...aimed...yeah aimed sounds like the best word, these things feel aimed at me.

     In fact, the only thing that I even have to look forward to is the thing that is going to alienate me from an amount of close friends...I have no way to end this because at the moment I'm at a loss for words. So I'm asking for prayers and hoping there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope things stop getting worse at some point

     Hope you have a great day.

Where do I go from here??

     So here I am. I Seemingly made up of molecules, awkwardness and contradiction. I was saved in 2001, I accepted Jesus in my heart and still fully believe that I cannot save myself. I accepted and still accept that Jesus is the only way to go to heaven. And at the same time, I have such giant conflicts in my head, things that may never change.

     Now before you say something about being born this way or that I should just not listen to anyone else's opinion, believe me I have thought about all of this. And I am not gonna say I'm perfect at this but I try to do my own things when I know they're the right things to do or when it's something I enjoy or want to do. BUT...my opinions on those two arguments are well thought out and I've played out maybe every single conversation about them possible:
     1. I do believe I was born this way just the same as some people were born gay or straight...and before any Christian friends get upset, I want to clarify that being "born that way" does not mean what you think it means. A person can be born with a a specific desire (such as my desire to eat a million Reese's Peanut Butter Cups)

     We can also be born with an innate desire to hurt people or to commit certain sins or to not like summertime. Being "born that way" is treated like some superpower by non Christians and they try to use that phrase to excuse their actions or their unwillingness to stop themselves from indulging in whatever they want. That's not always a good thing.

     And for the argument that we should not listen to anyone else and do what we want, that notion can be good at times (like when we're scared to speak up at a time that we need to) but it can also be a very selfish and immature philosophy. If you're Tom Hanks and you live completely alone on an island then you should not worry about anyone else...

...but since that's almost totally not true about anyone reading this, you probably have some friends or family that deserve to at least know what's going on in your life. If you have any relationship that yu value, thy deserve to hear something that will affect their life. And you may not want to admit it but your life changing decision WILL affect their life.

     Now I understand some people have a lot of hatred and have to fight through that to stay alive or come to terms with their own lives, I'm not necessarily talking about those cases with those two rebuttals to those arguments.

     Alright so after all that is said, I am left trying to understand my feelings and the truth and my depression and suicidal thoughts and fears and an excitement that I want and a multitude of other emotions and thoughts but not quite as many answers. I am currently trying to pray and put my faith in God and trying to lean on my friends and trying to be strong enough to make decisions and stick to them when they're right. It's not always easy and I'm not expecting to get some magical easy button answer any time soon.

     I can say some things definitively: I know who I am and what I like and what I think. I know that I am transgender and I do not believe it's against church or God to go through with transitioning for non sexual reasons (I am not interested in being with men, in fact I am not interested in being in any relationships) and I know that whether this a mental disorder or a body dis morphia  or for whatever reason that I'm going through this, it is not going to go away. I've felt this disconnect since I was at least 4 years old and have been dealing with it all through my childhood, it's gotten stronger and more relevant throughout my adult life too.

     Well, that's where I am right now and that's what's on my mind currently. A lot of that sounds more negative than positive so I want to end this with the happy stuff:

     I have been painting my nails and learning about makeup and I LOVE IT! I love the ability to express myself and be creative with nail polish! I am also blown away by the support of my friends, even the ones that disagree with my decision so far have been amazingly helpful and delicate with me and sweet. I can't thank you all enough for loving me, it means the world to me.