It's my party and I'll cry...

'cause of my hormones.

So I read this book about two months ago called "She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders" by Jennifer Finney Boylan who is an English professor at Colby College who was born as a man, but decided to undergo a sex change operation because she always thought of herself as female. She gave a talk at Duke University in February about this book, and read a few passages from it. She was hilarious in person and I found the passages that she read in the book to be very moving, so I decided to take the plunge and buy it.

I find these sexual/gender issues to be so interesting because they are so mysterious to me, and also because they are so (I think needlessly) polarizing. Anyway, it's an excellent book because it seems as if it is written for those people who are most confounded by someone who is transexual. She makes her perspective more relatable, at least for me, than I thought possible. Not that I think of myself as a male or anything, just that I can *almost* understand how hard it is for her, and why it was just impossible for her to continue on as a man.

So anyway, I cry a lot. I don't really want to, but dumb things make me cry. Like I even teared up when the dad died in the movie Tommy Boy. It's a silly comedy, and there I was wiping tears from my face. And even though I try to fight it, and I hate to admit it, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition always gets the waterworks flowing. But anyway, after reading She's Not There, I don't feel so bad about it. I used to think it was societal influence that makes woman more inclined to cry, but after reading this book, it seems that I can just blame it on hormones. Here is a passage from Jenny's book about the changes she noticed from going on hormones:

My moods began to shift capriciously. I used to cry at things like...It's a Wonderful Life. Now I was less likely to cry at these things and more likely to tear up when a dinner I had cooked didn't turn out right, or when someone said something cruel, or when Luke [her son] put his arms around me and told me he loved me. And when I cried, it wasn't just the stoic silent leaking I was accustomed to. These were big, sobbing tears, and my body shook as they poured out. It felt great.
I liked the freedom of tears. But it was unnerving how close they were to the surface.

I find that to be a very good description of what makes me cry and how easily it happens, even when I really don't want it to. Although for me, it's more of a tearing up, not a body-shaking sob. It's something beyond my psychological control, and apparently also beyond my biological control. So dudes, if you ever see me tear up, don't fret; it's hormonal.