Writer's Block: Do-over!

[laura_seabrook]

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For anyone who is TRANSSEXUAL, this is initially a "no-brainer". The "obvious" reaction is to say that one would prefer to have been born in the "correct gender." Yes, that would be great, but I'm not so sure about that. I wrote a poem a long time ago, called "The Price", and in it I have a line that reads ....for gender's but a vessel, to keep your soul within.

I think in many ways this is another mis-thought question that one sees in Writer's Block, suggested perhaps by someone who wouldn't change much at all, but curious about others. Anyone who's seen either of the Butterfly Effect films will know that all change or alternation comes with consequences. The main characters in each were driven by regret abut what happened, and what they didn't do in the past. But after such changes they had all the memories of the previous versions of reality, and that was the flaw in it all, because no matter what their reality became, there was always an element that about it that would never compare with the original. It was a no win situation, and no wonder the films had pretty much the same outcome.

So, if I were to have a "do-over" (actually the subject of a story I haven't drawn yet) I definitely wouldn't want to have a memory of the original. So then the question is what would I redo. Possibilities:

• Different sex - Would I prefer to have been born with XX instead of XY chromosomes? Maybe, but who's to say that might not have still had gender dysphoria, becoming an F2M instead of an M2F? Going further would be the above, but with the rider of no such condition. I think I would be a very different person from who I am right now. Maybe I would have married the first boy who took an interest in me, or got me pregnant. And maybe now I would have been guilty of murder (either someone else's or my own). I might have run away at home when I was 14, taken to the streets and become an uncaring sex worker. Or maybe I would still be home looking after my mother, having not moved, not gone to TAFE or university.
• No epilepsy - What if I'd never have had meningitis or epilepsy? My confidence might have been intact for much longer. I may have been involved in more fights at primary and high school. I may have been a practising artist for over 20 years by now. I might have learnt to drive and swim in my teens, instead of doing so when I was 30. Or I may have just been a bully, or maybe my art would be fairly average, instead of like this comic, which I've received more than a few "thank you for doing this" from people over the years.
• Earlier gender transition - I used to think sometimes that I should begun my transition in my teens or early 20s (in the late 1970s) rather than when in my late 30s (in the 1990s).  But, I know that I just wasn't strong enough to have done so at that age. I was still reeling from the effects of my epilepsy and the medication I took for it. And things seemed tougher back then for folk like myself. Also, surgical techniques seemed to be cruder back then, less refined and less able to give one a good result. It took time for me to be who I am.
• Better eyesight - this would have been nice. I would have been ale to read the blackboard at primary school and not now have bifocals. Might have changed slightly how others have related to me, or maybe not. Even so, this seems the least likely candidate for a single change.
• Different parents - can' say that it ever crossed my mind. I come from a working class background. What would I change?

The truth of the matter is, that even if I might be tempted to change something about myself, is that I wouldn't even if i had the opportunity. Who knows that would be absent from my life by such changes? I might never have: moved out from home, or from Western Australia; gone to TAFE/University; owned Pegasus; met either Lee, Jenny or Carol; or drawn comics or done art at all. And these things, for better or worse, have been or are important in the life I do live.

Fuck having a "do over card", I just need to do now, in the here and now, what i need to do.

Comments

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

But if the timeline changed with you, and you hadn't kept your memories, you wouldn't know the difference, right?

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Possibly. However, anyone travelling with the Doctor is immune to that.

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

Who said anything about the Doctor?

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Well clearly a "do-over" card would involve some form of time travel even if it's a "Butterfly Effect" type, in order to influence events (which is why I mention the film). In popular media (especially Trek) aberrations and time loops tend to be self correcting, in that eventually what causes the aberration or loop is corrected and no one even it.

This question though is maybe about one of two things - one's regrets, and the idea of FATE. Would you / could you / will you correct those "mistakes" and "errors" in your past? But without them all, would you still be you?

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

I would be a different me, but then, I wouldn't notice, nor would anyone else, and I'd just keep going blindly down that timeline, just as I'm blindly going down this one.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Years ago when I was leaving Perth, a fellow pagan gave me a mirror to remind me that life is like walking forward while looking into a mirror. We focus on the past, but march into the future. I don't think your is a blind path at all, just an unfolding one.

[kath-ballantyne.livejournal.com]

I know most of my self esteem problems come from being sick and no one believing me but there's a lot of what I have now that I wouldn't give up to change that.