XI-04-1989 “sometimes i catch myself in the mirror,” i wrote yesterday, of who i am & who i’ll become, yes, am and become, i want to be able to record this process with precision in my writing; but when i put it like that, does that mean i’m afraid of losing her?

a flock of wild ducks passed me by, i heard their voices from afar & searched the horizon for their feathers, when i finally found them high above me in the twilight; how intensely one must let the beauty of the world within oneself, so that one is ready to save it

XI-11-1989 i think everything i’ve written so far is only because Jayne-Ann had kept quiet, kept withdrawing; now that she’s come out of hiding, no longer willing to remain quiet, i’ve had to start writing all over, even if my experiences endure along with their validity. i haven’t been able to write these last few weeks, overcoming my own barriers to speaking, speaking again & against speech, i share the fate of many people, and yet in my previous texts, every now and again, the feminine in me had a chance to speak, those sensations, observations, and discoveries were all sincere: the marvelous is but one facet of life, always spared, unspoken; no matter how my language might change, internally, essentially, in its quality, it will not become unknowable, for it draws its life from the same identity i have assumed, it’s been with me for a long time, it’s the reason i move

XI-13-1989 in the evening along the road of the new open-cast mine, seams of fog had fallen over the path, and the areas of the cleared wood were relieved of their earthiness by the moonlight, the frost, the fog; the crowns of the few remaining trees seemed moored in the middle of nowhere, tethered to the white ground like rising mushroom clouds, they seemed to belong to a distant time, not to our realm, as though they were only apparitions

XI-25-1989 able to feel very intensely for others, for example when an injustice befalls them, everything in me resists this injustice; but, on the other hand, i seem insensitive to some, when someone is afflicted by an illness or has an accident, not that illness is alien to me—i cannot feel it as wrong, as so many do; i can mourn the loss of friends, sympathize with the wrongs done to them, but when they are possessed by an illness i cannot offer that kind of sympathy; i respond to them as i did before they were sick, perhaps helping in a certain way, but i cannot show any sympathy for the illness, such sentences like: “oh you poor thing,” “but why… they are such a good person,” i often hear these sentences that declare illness an injustice that can overtake many a person, just not the loved one who has fallen ill, & they are repugnant to me & hinder any sympathy, they push the patient even deeper into their suffering, making it unamenable

it could be that transsexuality is also a disease, but since that other identity took root in me so early & so deeply, i can live as her if i want to, regardless of whatever its causes & whatever i can uncover about her origins in me

XI-26-1989 cold yesterday, snow in the morning, forgot my gloves while laying wreaths at the cemetery with CS, CS is not yet sure of our relationship or its character, since I turned out to be a “woman on the inside;” on the one hand, at our last meeting, our relationship as a woman to woman went beyond the character of a friendship, without it then having to have sexual traits (she hardly had them back then, even as she loved me as a “man”), yesterday she seemed to regard me more as a friend, even as she called me by my male name when she used to say “angel,” which surprised even her; she’s finding it difficult to establish a new relationship between us, to relate any quality of my old self to who i am now; i was able to allay some fears about the side effects of hormone replacement therapy, the lack of information about it in this country causes so much damage; later on i’d like to speak & write openly about accepting myself & my transition, without the fear of having to unearth something unpleasant again, this will be easy for me because my femininity has always come out since my early childhood, and this transition is a process of its coming to the surface in my history, a process of liberation, of unveiling, even if i don’t have a desire to hide my previous life; this long time in my shell has brought many painful experiences, but i, like others, can draw from them & bring them into this life

physically i find myself already changed even without hormones, simply because of my willingness, and yet i don’t want to deceive myself, some experiences will be denied me forever, pregnancy, childbirth, periods… but i never want to go back into the prison of MAN; i wear a violet scarf over my black blouse, the ends of which fall over my chest and back, i let my hair down, which i usually only kept behind my shoulders, i let it fall to one side, it is in this way i move freely & in accordance with my inner well-being

a walk along the Outer Alster in Hamburg, a light fog that makes the opposite shore seem even further away; the atmosphere, the mingling of cultures, reminded me of Amsterdam, the air on the banks with the freshness of a dirty river, in the morning, the memories of town canals came back, the waters of the Rhine, where we’d find tiny little shells; i didn’t see the Elbe, only her breath, which made us shiver when we got out of the taxi on the Reeperbahn the night before, in my habit of “taking a chance,” i let myself be taken by a woman in a heated courtyard of the Red-light District, we went upstairs to her room, where i was supposed to undress, but she had to have sensed that i wasn’t THE man, not adventurous in that way, we spoke, she managed an orgasm in which i felt no pleasure; she explained that her parents had come to terms with her work, or were at least happy to shelter her so she could work without much risk of being harassed or exposed to AIDS; Hans & Steffen were waiting for me outside, i thought i’d been released from prison when i returned to the street, we went into an empty bar across the quarter, i cried because of what had just happened, Steffen didn’t want to calm me down for a while, i felt that i had hurt myself in taking this chance, and at the same time, i felt like this episode was a final farewell to my life up until now, to all my attempts at life as a man, the outer appearance that had ruled over my entire life up to now; the woman was very gentle with me, there was no hint of that cinematic cliché: that prostitutes reacted in a vulgar & insulted manner if the client didn’t behave like a “normal man”

other friends have also taken my coming out positively & accepted me for who, what, how i am, and i’m glad i don’t need to hide or conceal anything anymore; Gaby said that if i called myself Herrison in our language i’d seem too exotic, something i would like to avoid, but on the other hand, strangers might call me “Ms. Igel”—this change almost feels too simple, seems too simple to me, and i also feel reminded of my mother, as though “Mrs. Igel” already belongs to her, but could not be mine. maybe this is similar to the fear of becoming one’s own mother? “Mrs. Igel” is not available due to the “indolence of mothers” i experienced as a child, but perhaps also due to the conventional image of womanhood (?) i don’t have to deny the masculine in me, it was always there, even if peripheral, not driving, like the feminine, which i hid from the outside world & myself

XI-28-1989 i still feel ridiculous, exposed, whenever i speak or write of myself using “die,” “-in,”^* and often avoid it entirely; that’s how deep this pain or how extensive this denial goes, and external judgements don’t help much either

* tr. note: the feminine singular article and nominal suffix

XI-30-1989 so this is my letter to the world that never wrote me back, it feels as though i move through a fog without any guidance, i speak into its clouds and the sounds disappear therein

it’s been easier for people who exchange letters with me to get used to my new name; in writing they can get closer to it; those who i often meet still see me the way i am, hardly changed; can they sense what has changed in me in terms of attitudes, behavior, moods? i really need some visible sign of change, how else could this name be binding for those i’m just getting to know now, for those in the future; fog today, and frost on every plant, the maple looks like it’s in bloom

XII-02-1989 the language acclimates to things, objects, of its own accord, in the best case, for example, when i record a dream, it becomes formal in the process of explication.

sometimes the thought of how little time i have left to live as a woman, time to live out the woman in me, to live her to every consequence—and it’s not just a half, it’s a whole life that i can live like this, despite the “half of my life” that’s transpired; all of the changes, ages that one experiences, every moment of one’s own development—they are always a whole life, in every moment one is completely present & whole

XII-09-1989 i think one’s inner & social identity are the criteria that determine which gender one feels or knows one belongs to, which results in one’s self-perception of living (but identity crises related to gender are something else entirely, for transsexuals, our gender is physically contradicted, fully & holistically developed, we do not share our consciousness with others, & hardly with ourselves); Andrea reverses these criteria, as though she, unconsciously, doesn’t want to concede the status of “woman” to me, maybe she thinks: a little bit of femininity doesn’t make a woman—and she’d be right, if this were solely an external affair for me; she, who seems happy for me about my decision, often pushes me back with simple remarks, such as “I’m the only woman in the room…” something that clearly hurts me right now and which I can’t, as of yet, contradict; i wonder if these phrases come to her consciously, or if something inside her is resisting the fact of me & and thus “allows” her to speak in this way

XII-11-1989 dream: i saw a man transformed into a woman with small breasts & a bearded face, was saddened at this sight & prospect, but later discovered that he was just a man with a muscular chest (bodybuilding)

tomorrow i’ll get the prescription for hormone therapy, on wednesday i’ll start—will anything change in a month’s time?

XII-17-1989 yesterday my parents came to visit, i couldn’t share this news with them, mainly because something of a better understanding had just developed between us that i didn’t want to immediately jeopardize; i’ll have to tell them, write them, because they invited me to christmas & i don’t want to pretend, don’t want to wear those clothes

dreamt of a guitar hanging from a high-rise window by a wire, its wooden body charred, and we heard a singing sound, a crying, emanating from it; Bettina pulled it up by a silk thread, rocked it back & forth in her hands, stroked the wood, but the crying that seemed to be coming from the soundhole wouldn’t stop

XII-18-1989 as i transcribe older dreams, i feel that i’ve gotten past the theme of guilt which has dominated me for so long, that the guilt complex is no longer important to me in that way, that it no longer binds me, he no longer binds me, i don’t have to keep writing to him; however, the dreams i transcribe are still determined, still marked by him

XII-19-1989 dream: i looked down at myself, naked, to see if my breasts were beginning to grow, i discovered a growth under my left breast, brown, but when i examined the growth it appeared to be a second nipple, my right breast appeared unchanged, but both seemed to have gained some fullness, so i was able to accept this extra nipple

I-06-1990 yesterday at the southern cemetery, a layer of snow had settled over the blossoming everlastings, they looked like faded patterns of carpets or wallpaper, we came across a field of burial urns, planted with low conifers, like bonsai, with fully grown crowns, this landscape seemed bizarre, with its mournful edges of snow, it seemed like the materialization of a dream i had years prior, of the burial of a dwarf in a miniature graveyard like this, tiny obelisks scattered about and i, abandoned by the funeral party

I-09-1990 dream: i was lying in the bed of a large room, one of my friend’s, who was saying good night as they lay down in the room next door, i looked at the door, a lamp was burning beside it on a table, shaded so it gave off a mild yellow light, and as i looked at the lamp longer i saw a moth circling it, after a while it seemed to be a butterfly, large & white, and i was afraid it might come too close to me, its shape growing larger as it flew, flying around the light, i pulled myself together enough to run to my friend; when i reached the door and turned around it had become a bird, crouching in its white feathers next to the lamp, and i was naked