Of Pink Floyd and Rosebuds... December 07, 2007 magnify

Why do I keep telling myself that I have a future as the woman I've always believed myself to be? Since I first seriously thought about transition when I was 18, I have always looked to the future to maintain that hope. I'm finding that forward-looking strategy to be a major stressor in my life. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to hold on to a future hope. I have an inexorable compulsion to do something TODAY, right here, right now. Tomorrow is a prize I know I'll never receive.

Thinking back to my youth during my high school days of 80's hair bands and tight skinny jeans (I hear that's all back in style), I struggled internally being transgendered and felt I was the only one. Yet even then I felt the challenge to make most of time, not to waste my life away. I remember giving a presentation during English class in 11th grade on this topic of seizing the day. I used the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Time" to explain to my youthful classmates that we will one day look back and rest in the knowledge that we did our best and led a full life, or we will remorsefully retrace those steps in our lives that led to what became an inevitable insignificance.

This song, along with a passion for reading and writing poetry, has always remained relevant to me. Maybe you may find that it helps you as well. I can't look forward to tomorrow anymore. Living a life as a woman and having to return to wear the facade of the male masquerade is tearing me apart. Soon enough I will molt forever from my rattlesnake skin. There is no alternative anymore. I don't have tomorrow to decide.

TIME
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say





To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Robert Herrick -