Sunday 1 July 2012

Sometimes Everything Is Black Or White

As I write this on this Sunday morning I feel mostly anxiety and apprehension. Last Friday I did the third and final interview for a job with a Dutch company. It's the furthest I have come so far. I could have heard back on it Friday already, but that day passed without a call from the recruiter. Now it'll probably be tomorrow that I'll hear back on it. After three rounds and passing two of them I should feel reasonably assured that things will probably be fine, but the lack of certainty about what is going to happen is very much there.

I can see many branching paths starting tomorrow. One is that I do get this job and end up working in Amsterdam. It'd be ideal in terms of ease of relocating, the legal and media things I have still to do in the Netherlands. If I do not get this job... well, I'm also applying for jobs in the UK, Sweden, Germany and Ireland. It'd probably mean that I'll be leaving the Netherlands and only occasionally visit it. It would be a much bigger, more uncertain change, even if I do intend to leave the Netherlands in the not too distant future.

Among all of this one thing is certain: getting a job and income this month would be an awesome thing. It'd give me so much peace and stability. It'd be unlike anything I have experienced in a long while. The alternative, of not getting a job for another month at least... let's just say that I already feel like a big enough loser. I often wish I had not made that choice seven and a half years ago to not go along with the hospitals. I could have been much happier. In a sense.

True, I'd still be registered as male, and have my old name. I'd also not have my hormone levels adjusted to a healthy level. I'd also not know anything about how my body is put together. I'd not have these legal cases against the Dutch hospitals which could spell the beginning of the end for the routine human rights violations against intersex individuals by physicians worldwide. Yet I could have had an education, a job, my own place... all the peace which one could find in personal success.

Looking back I didn't know that I would be making such an impossible choice: personal, fleeting happiness or sacrificing myself for a good cause.

Those involved in ending the reign of apartheid in 1960s USA didn't enjoy the ridicule and beatings or assassinations it involved. Nelson Mandela didn't enjoy being locked up for decades on Robbeneiland for protesting against the apartheid in South Africa. Gandhi and his followers didn't enjoy the abuse they suffered at the hands of the British to end the occupation of India. They all had but one thing in mind: to end an injustice for all, even at the cost of their own happiness and lives. In the end it's the only thing one can do.

Not that it's easy. Or makes you particularly happy even if you do survive it. The scars will not fade.

All I am hoping for now is that I can get a bit of both, having fought and won many battles already. Some personal happiness by just having a job and a taste of what a 'normal' existence would have been like. Not having to worry about going bankrupt, having my own place and stability. I'd have gambled, sacrificed, and come out the better for it.

It'd be like having a piece of heaven firmly embedded into my skull. And that's a good thing.


Maya

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