(There is some graphic, disturbing stuff here, heads up.)
(Also, I posted a little bit of context at the end. These are two different dreams I had during the same summer that I abruptly decided to detransitioned.)
In the Late Late Late Middle Ages of 2015, it was a time of great political turmoil. Political assassinations were weekly but the marketplaces were bustling still. It felt good to walk through the crowds, most people going on as normal, seeing the colorful shop stands and beautiful buildings and cobblestone streets. But election week was coming, and soon I couldn't take the tension in the air, so I stopped going out if I could help it.
At that time my brother's good friend Sue was visiting. I barely noticed them come in and sit to the corner of my right eye. I was out of it, waiting for this season to be over, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring into the mirror in the corner of the living-room.
"What's up with him? Is he okay?" Sue asked.
My brother explained.
"Well, you know, he's worried about what's going on with the election these days. You know about the assassination of Felix. Everyone is saying John and Craig were suicides, but we know they also were killed by supporters of Ellis.
"He's the closest living relative to the duke in the house of James, and Ellis may suspect that he's only pretending to be neutral and uninvolved with the election.
"So there's a real risk they'll go after him too if he goes into town. If they do, they could be hiding in wait for him anywhere. He could be walking down the street and they'll pull him down from the sewers, like they did Craig. What they do is they perform some kind of ritual over their enemies; they invoke a spirit of suicide to possess them and send them back into the world. That spirit would never give him rest until he's persuaded to do it."
I was only half paying attention, but as my brother explained this, my mouth was gaping open. I sunk toward the mirror letting out a weak, low moan. My face was almost grey and my eyes almost black. My body weakly pulled toward the mirror, but I felt a powerful rush in my chest, as if my soul was drawing out into the mirror. In the last moments I felt this foreboding feeling that, for all I knew, if my mind left my body, I would be blasted into an endless expanse. My mind ungrounded by my body would burn itself up and tear itself in every direction, with no way to retrieve it or contain it or ever stop it. And my body unmanaged by my mind would writhe in agony until it too tore itself apart. My vision focused forward closer and closer as I tilted toward the mirror, feeling it about to happen. The corners of my eyes became silvery and white until it filled all my sight, pulling from my chest deeper into the mirror, about to take off.
~
I was kneeling, sitting on my feet, on the floor of my bedroom, when I realized I had been conversing for some time with an invisible power, I don't know for how long. In obedience to an inner prompting, I took up the knife to my right, hardly awake, as if anaesthetized so that I could finally remove my penis. I supposed I was supposed to suppose this was God. No higher power spoke to me before, so, good enough for me; and although I had been starting to think that maybe I would make peace with that part of me after all, this was a rare opportunity to be rid of it painlessly; was I really going to pass it up?
The cut felt like butter. I kept on sliding the knife halfway through my neck when I started to think, "Wow, this is almost too easy. Like hard liquor with no alcohol taste. Wait, am I sure?" With an inch left of the back of my neck, I felt the blade begin to sting my skin...
Just then the Father,
like a cartoon,
appeared fat and bearded,
filling my view.
"Nooooooo!" he bellowed low, as hard as an old man could.
In one motion I drew the knife from my neck and out it came from between my legs, both sealed and in-tact.
___
The first dream is a recurring type of dream (but this is the most dramatic example) where I would feel myself about to have an out of body experience (usually into a mirror). I would usually be curious and excited at first, until it felt like it was about to happen. I would feel a deep sense of foreboding at the last moment and wake up before it could happen. I used to have severe struggles with gender identity, which has several causes from what I can see, at least partly related to an alienation and tension between my mind and body. Looking back, I noticed I had these dreams during the time those feelings were at their worst.
At the time of this first dream I had either just begun to seriously consider detransitioning or already had. (I had just begun detransition when I had the second dream; still debating with myself about it some, but I had already stopped taking the hormones; I never did get surgery, and the idea of surgery always has made me feel ill.) I was having suicidal thoughts around this time. I was overburdened by not knowing how to evaluate my gender identity and uncertainty about what I would do with my future in a lot of ways. I felt that trying to make any sense of gender was useless, that it was like an eyeball trying to look at itself, one of those kinds of things, so I couldn't be bothered to read up on gender politics (before transition, during transition or at this time). I wanted to leave it behind and keep away from situations where I might be expected to give an account for my stance, although I did sometimes feel a need to share how I came to understand it.
I'm not sure which dream came first, but if I had to guess I'm thinking the first one written happened second, in August. The second was on July 31st, 2015.
A few months later, that October, I learned from a blog about Catholic mysticism, about a story from the Autobiography of Abbot Guibert of Nogent (III.29), a story about a man on pilgrimage to a site dedicated to the Apostle James son of Zebedee. He was repenting of his adultery, but secretly held on to his mistress' belt on the way. The devil, taking advantage of this, appeared to him in the guise of St. James, shaming him for his sin and ordered him, for God's sake, to castrate himself and then slit his throat. The pilgrim did so and during his funeral Mass he was resurrected. There he told them how, at his trial, the real Apostle James told Our Lady of his devotion, and that she spoke sweetly to Our Lord for his pardon, who, acknowledging that the devil had hidden under a holy appearance, sent him back to life.
For an ancient pagan story of a divine ecstasy-induced castration, see the Myth of Attis, as in Catullus 63.
Maybe in the first dream I was referred to as "she", since I had been going by she for the last 2 years, but I don't remember specific words here, I just remember the gist of the conversation, so I'm just going with "he".
