It’s been a year since I’ve updated
my blog. I just spent the last hour or
so re-reading all of my previous posts that date back to 2009. And boy oh boy have things changed.
Well,
not everything.
The xmas Grinch re-surfaced this year
and I absolutely could not stop him no matter how much I wanted to. He may have been
displaying his worst Grinchiness yet, even though throughout the holiday season thus far I was feeling at peace with it. I
watched helplessly as my mood dipped further and further into gloomy-Gus-grumpiness
and did not come back out, while everyone in my family noticed and at first tried to ignore
it and then acknowledged it and finally ignored me. It feels as if every
xmas repeats itself and nothing has changed, even though clearly things
have. I listened to the same bad conversations
and arguments, witnessed the tired old scenes play out from every xmas of the past. I felt like the disappointed, pouty child of
my adolescence who didn’t get the presents I wanted. I can recall a particular xmas when I was
about four or five (caught on video tape for posterity no less) where I opened up my present,
a sled, and a confused, then angry/disappointed look came over my face when I
realized it was “used” (made glaringly obvious by way of a giant dent in the
middle of the metal sled). There is a
lot of holiday video footage of younger me opening gifts and having no qualms
about showing my distaste and complete dissatisfaction with a particular
gift. And this xmas felt like my
childhood all over again, with present after present not meeting my
expectations. It wasn’t so much the
gifts themselves that upset me this year.
After all, most of them can be returned or donated or easily forgotten. What was most disappointing was the fact that
I realized more than ever how little my family really knows me. How little they know about the person I’ve
become or even my basic interests and likes.
I have an entire bag of gifts that make me so upset that I literally need
to make them go away physically as fast as possible so I can get that
uncomfortable, weighty, negative feeling off of me. When my space is invaded, my routines are
thrown off and my family is acting out their stale, prescribed holiday performances,
my inner self takes over in a desperate attempt at self-protection in the form
of the xmas Grinch. He may not be
pretty, but he is what happens when I am pushed too far.
I find myself returning to the
behaviors of my not-so-distant Asperger-like past. I am officially not diagnosed with Asperger’s anymore, but when my sensory limits
are surpassed and I feel trapped in every bad xmas past, both physically and
emotionally, my anti-social and selfish behaviors return. I am reminded by my brother that I am not
good at compromising and I put my needs above others. I act as though I am ungrateful and inconsiderate. I am made to feel
ashamed of my feelings and behaviors because they are not socially acceptable. Sometimes I can’t hide my
disappointment. Sometimes I feel grossly
overwhelmed by everyone, especially when they are all being two-faced,
pretending to be the big, happy family we are not. Why must we always suppress our
true feelings? When I am repeatedly put into
situations that push me out of my comfort zone I eventually crack. I need more alone time than most.
Needless to say, I am disappointed
with how xmas went this year. I am disappointed
with my own disappointment and I wish I could have showed my brother and
sister-in-law a more authentic picture of the person I am, and am still
becoming. So now, onto an update which is
well overdue.
It is a year since I last posted
a blog, but not long enough ago that I have forgotten the contents of said
blog. I finally have the answers I was
looking for and so desperately pondered late into that night a year ago. At least most of them. I will try to put it all into simple
terms. I am not bipolar. I have been officially diagnosed as such by
two mental health professionals, but they were wrong. And it both disturbs and saddens me to know that just in my own experience mental health professionals get things wrong a lot. I do not have Asperger’s or a mood disorder or
an anxiety disorder or a personality disorder.
I am no longer depressed. I am no
longer suicidal or full of emptiness or completely disconnected from my self or
my body. I do not self harm, but I still
struggle with keeping binge eating at bay on a daily basis.
I do not require psychotropic drugs or anti-depressants. I see a psychiatrist every 4 months or so to
keep up my prescription of Deplin (a high dose of folic acid), take St. John’s
Wort daily (which may or may not do anything), see a specialized therapist in
Chicago every 3-4 weeks and go to a specialized clinic in Chicago every 5
months for blood work to re-new my prescription. I do not have a mental disorder of any kind no matter what the DSM purports. I am transgender. My body simply does not match my brain. I am in the process of transitioning from
female to male. I have been on
testosterone for nearly 6 months. My
biological sex is female, but my gender identity is closer to male. Sex and gender are two vastly different things. Your sex is the biological and physiological characteristics that are made up of chromosomes, genetics and hormones. Your gender is the socially constructed roles, behaviors and attributes that define how you see yourself. Sexuality and gender are also two vastly different things. Simply put, sexuality is who you want to go to bed with and gender is who you want to go to bed as.
Until I started testosterone, I had no sexual
attraction towards any gender and identified as asexual. Currently, I see myself as a gay male and am
attracted predominately to gay men (transmen or cis-men). But I also find myself attracted to people
who are gender non-conformists/variant: androgynous or masculine females, genderqueers,
transwomen or anyone in the middle of the gender spectrum. I have never been in a relationship and have
never been in love. I am not and will
never be a super masculine man. And that’s
ok. I just know that being female, being
a woman is not an option for me. My
brain is both male and female. There
will always be both male and female parts that make up who I am. I am not a clear cut case of a “man trapped
in a woman's body”. But because society needs
to label everyone in the binary world we live in, if I must choose one, I need
to choose (and present as) male. I did
not know I was different gender-wise as a child or a teenager. I played with both boy and girl toys as a
child and participated in activities that never limited me because I was a girl. I had a pretty
gender-neutral childhood and (to my knowledge) was never held back by my assigned
gender from birth. But my gender/body incongruence wreaked havoc on my social development growing up, even if I didn't have that understanding as a child or meaningful language to express it. I never felt comfortable in my skin. I did not know how to just "be myself." Later into my young adulthood, I started feeling like I was not even real. A pervasive feeling that disturbed my sense of self and practically drove me to insanity. A severe disconnection of mind and body persisted for years and years which is probably the major cause of the severe anxiety and depression that I experienced (as well as the concern that I was suffering from depersonalization disorder for which I sought out treatment).
Since I have begun transitioning, my
life has completely changed. There is no
combination of words that I can string together that could
possibly begin to describe accurately how much better my life is now that I
know I am transgender and have been able to transition. All one has to do is go back and read my
previous posts to see the extreme pain and hopelessness and disconnection that
my life used to be. This is not an easy
path that a person could choose to take, but for me, it was the only option I
had besides death. I try to get the people
I care about to understand that concept but it often falls on deaf ears and is
lost to denial and fear and dashed dreams.
Isn’t a happy son better than a depressed daughter? Isn’t an alive son better than a dead
daughter? I know it’s not that simple,
but at the same time, it is.
I will
probably post a blog that goes into further detail about my transition (but I
can’t really promise anything as I do have a tendency to go months without
posting again). But for now, just know
that I have finally shed the false self I wore most of my life and have begun a
new life with my authentic self coming out.
I have a stable job and have recently been promoted to a manager
position (something I could have never achieved were I still severely depressed
and anxiety-ridden) and I have some support in my transition (therapist,
psychiatrist, co-workers, an old friend, my brother and sister-in-law and, for the most part, my
parents).
What I do not have yet, and desperately
need, is a new name.
