Welp…it seems that the obligatory post has thrust itself forward, or rather time has thrust it forward as it rolls on.  Today is the date of my first blog post here, one year ago.

Grace Notes is One Year Old.

It’s funny…way back then, I hardly knew what to write about, I hardly knew anything, really (now, I don’t know much more, but I much more know what I don’t yet know).

I knew that my life had been shattering inside…
I knew that I had admitted, out-loud with words, the deepest secret of my life, one that I had kept even from myself…
I knew that I wanted to die, but could not bear the thought of my darling finding me, or worse yet, not finding me…
I knew that I did not know who I was, and yet I knew very well who I wasn’t…
I knew that I had to get some help, and had searched the internet for counselours in my area, and been led to Heather…

…and that was it.  Heather suggested that I start a blog, and so I sat down, a year ago, and asked Mama (Who at that time was still Lady Grace to me…I had not yet given up deep enough to discover the surface of the depths of Her Great Love Personally for me…for me.)…

It was early, at the usual times I have been haunted since I can remember, and I was up…coping…just coping, using all the ways I had developed over years to push the pain down, to put up some sort of layer between my insides which thrum to even the slightest breeze and jangle with the unfathomable ways of others who say and do things that literally flummox me.

I said out loud, “Lady Grace, here I sit in the night, awake again (naturally), and Heather says to start a blog…what in the world shall I call it?”

You know that feeling when you undress for bed, and the room is cold and you know that under the blankets will be cold too but will warm quickly, and so the moment you are undressed you just snik straight into bed quick as can be lickity-brindle?  And then the first rush of cold covers, followed by that delicious bloom of warmth and you have never felt so snuggly-cozy?

Well, that was what it was like when the title, in whole cloth, snikked into my mind and was bracingly clear and then started to glow warm…as I saw it, and then began to love it…Charissa’s Grace Notes:  Transitioning from works to Grace and death to Life.

And in that year…

I survived a family member not speaking to me for 4 months (4 months!!!  I freaking thought I would die!!  How do you go 4 months and not talk to someone you love?  Heck, I would talk to my bff every 4 minutes if we lived in paradise lol!!)…

I survived major betrayal and blame shifting at ____ …from multiple sources (and I was not even close to being out then)…

I survived suicidal feelings that got so strong and scary that I made an attempt, until She snatched me up (thank you Mama)…and Constance, I think about that day, that horrible day of weeping until I was dry and still couldn’t stop crying, and how words lost their power and I was reduced to literal babbling in the woods as I thought to myself I am insane, I am truly having a mental breakdown, and how close, how awfully close I was…and if I had, none of the poetry that I wrote would be now…I would not know my bff, or my Sissa Kat…my darling would still be unsparkly and shriveled inside and utterly shattered…

I walked into a wonder-ful moment when Mama showed up…and that I will keep to myself…

I continued seeing Heather, and somehow someway together I began to grasp that I am worth something, not a monster or pervert of freak (yeah, those words will likely echo in klaxon intrusion til I am resurrected and set free)…

I discovered that I am a real person, always have been, and have been fighting for the life of the “man” that I portrayed for all those years and I developed a “resilience” (thanks for that word bff) that simply would not give in…I found me…

I found out that I am sort of a cool person at times, and have something to offer thru my poems…

I found the courage to start transition!!  The courage to tell Dr. Jessie (who laughed and rejoiced and said “Oh thank God you finally figured this out, we here knew 6 months ago!)…

I started going to a spoken word poetry group in Portland, one that I didn’t know a soul there, and no one knew me either…and I went there as me…me…Charissa Grace, and in faith I spoke my self to them, my name to them…and they received me, and once in a while they think my poems are good…

I wrote 2 very significant (to me…it didn’t create much of a furor to anyone else) poems…they marked some sort of a turning for me somehow…I think it was after my HRT had had a chance to extinguish the testosterone poisoning I had suffered from for 54 years…

My Heart Dares

Carapace

Those were written at the end of the first quarter of the year, and in hindsight I see that quarter was a detox time…detoxing from the awful assaults death made on me the year before, and the year before, and the year before…the declarations there in those 2 poems are still ringing…

I began to dress as me, out of town and openly, and how can I ever ever ever find the words to tell what that is like, because as you read if you are cis-gender you literally lack the ground of (non)-being to feel this.  If you dressed up as the gender you are not, and went about, seriously, for a day or two…then you would know just a poor facsimile of what dysphoria is…well I began to experience time lived in a non-dysphoric experience…

I further integrated, and regained a ton of childhood memories…and Mama showed me the true reality of “that event”…the one that tore me in two for the next 5 decades…and though I cannot unhear that woman shrieking in fearful angry horror and I will never not hear the epithets she hurled into my fabric, I at last can hear Mama, and Her whispered words tenderly telling me who I am…and She knows cus She is the One who made me…

I began to spontaneously sing worship and praise songs again…and I was shocked when one day I heard myself, and knew I had been singing over an hour and not even knowing that I had…

I began to pray again…oh I had always “prayed” cus that is what a good christian does, right?  Pays the Lord their bribes? (Yes, I went there…and if you are honest you will admit that you have done this, bribed God with your deeds and prayers…)…but I began to pray for real again, pouring out my momentary heart (and ddh you think I talk a lot to you…giggle!  Mama knows…)…

I rode bike with my darling…together…and those times are better than all of my years of riding alone…

…and thru all of that…I wrote here, most everyday, but not always…and I began to discover I have a voice, and a name…

…and 4 days ago, that name became legal…all things are made new, the old has passed away behind me.

Along the way people connected to this blog, and it tickles me that there are actually people who follow these mewlings and musings…and tickles me even more when I see blogs that have thousands of followers!!  LOLOL!!!  How the freak does that even happen, since I really don’t get it how I have any followers at all???  But really?  The only followers that matter are the ones who read each post, and invest it with life, dress them up and let them live far beyond the page…to you is my blood grateful thank you!

And I am still Charissa Grace…God’s Grateful Gleam of Grace displayed…if She and They love me, I know They love you as well and more so.