26 • THE LAURELS GENDER IDENTITY CLINIC VISIT 07

Future me here *waves* in this diary entry, I mention how me and my gender therapist were going to Skype our next session, instead of me physically going into The Laurels Gender Identity Clinic. Well, we never did, we would have in total 28 therapy sessions together, before she left to have a baby, and we always did them in person :) I’m glad we did, because it’s now 2020, and due to the virus and everything, me and my new therapist have our sessions over video calls, and it’s not the same.

There’s something about being face to face in the same room, picking up each others lil mannerisms, feeling the energy, and being totally present with no distractions that’s missing via video. Looking back now, I’m so thankful for our time together.

*end of future me*

It’s that time again, back on the train for The Laurels Gender Identity Clinic! I’ll be honest, I nearly didn’t go today. I’ve been covering for a lady at work whose off sick and so I had less than 90 minutes to get from work, home, dressed, bag packed and walk to the train station. The ride home from work takes 30 minutes, so it was a mad rush. I was so close to saying I couldn’t make it, but I said to myself, “No! I can and I will make it” :)

I’m a bit nervous today. I don’t want to talk about Mum anymore. I’ve moved on from that. I’m also at a place with my gender to the point where I feel I have very little to talk about. It is what it is. So I don’t know what I’ll talk about with my gender therapist today. I’m excited to see her, that’s the main thing. I do feel maybe our time is nearing an end. Maybe she has helped me and it’s time to move on? This is a feeling I had before with my Councillor Heather back in 2014, and when I felt it than, a week later we said goodbye and I haven’t seen her since :( I did email her to say hello last year, so maybe now this chapter with my gender therapist is coming to an end.

I’m going to go and do some drawing exercises now, the train hasn’t even started moving yet, still in the station … and to think I rushed to get here lol

Back on the train.

That was actually a really nice session. We talked about how maybe our true spirit isn’t a gender, maybe we are all a non-gender creatures and it’s only being a human that has made us have to be a gender. It’s nice to think that, I’ve even had feelings of that during meditation :) I told her how after coming out of the non-binary group last time I had the overwhelming feeling of ‘I don’t care what gender I am.’

This is what I feel now, I don’t care anymore. I used to be so obsessed with finding out what I was, but now, I’m just me. I don’t need to know anything else :)

She asked me if it felt like time to end our meetings. I didn’t even mention it, but she must have felt the same vibe. I said it does feel like I’ve reached a nice place, in the future things may change, but right now I’m pretty content with my gender issues as I focus on my art. I said I would like to still see her, so we will meet again in two months, but next time we’re going to Skype.

We also spoke about art. She said how she watched a documentary about an artist who would draw characters from his mind, but they would be so dark and scary that he was ashamed of them. He’d throw them in the bin so no one could see them, but his partner would fish them out and say he should share them. This lead us down the path of how inside each one of us is potential for dark and evil. We spoke about dreams, and I bought up Joseph Campbell with his Hero with a Thousand Faces book.

She’s going to read it and pass it around the office. I haven’t read it, but I’ve watched videos about how it’s a really good book detailing how there is effectively only one story ever told. All myths, religions, and even films etc are all based around one main story. We spoke about the Characters I want to create, which will be heavy based around Anime and Femininity. This spun off into a talk about how she felt characters in Anime are often gender indifferent. Females having masculine traits, and males female traits; Maybe that’s why I connect with Japanese Anime so much?

I said I’m going to turn her into a character in the future :) I can see her being like the Oracle off The Matrix. The one we go to for all the secrets and truth! My gender therapist will be an awesome character :)

So it ended up being a really nice day!

Visit eight took place on 13th June 2016 and was the ‘I always knew this day would come‘ visit