Not a good day

Hello blog,

Today is not a good day or a day where I am feeling any sense of hope.  I've felt like for most of today I have been swimming upstream against a relentless current and I have no energy left to fight it anymore.  I don't know if its the shame and anger with gender dysphoria or angst about another damn day without anything better that is doing me in at present.

I feel like years of therapy has only allowed me to recognize when my depression is coming back and I don't have any tools that work to stop it.  I hate my life so much right now.

I recently talked with someone who's advice was to think of a happy moment and then try to run towards that again.  Rightly or wrongly they told me that I need not to give up so easily when things get tough, and I need to have commitment and consistency in behaviors to change this.

I feel like an idiot because I can't make sense of what that means.  I know it means to find what makes you happy, then to continue relentlessly doing things to achieve it without being deterred.  What I mean is that I have no sense in what makes me happy or if that is a state I can achieve.

I can't recall a moment of free joy in my life and most things now are tinged with shame and regret.  It is getting to the point of hopelessness again that I have been spending alot of time thinking about suicide and just giving up.  I wrote a new batch of good-bye letters today and will probably rip them up tomorrow.

Today feels like a boulder fell out of the sky on top of me and I can't get up.  Today is not a good day.

Getting past my personal transphobia

I feel like I am in the middle of a self-reflecting phase so I have lots of thoughts recently that may come out on the page like verbal diarrhea. So I apologize if this doesn't make much sense beyond inside my head here.

I've been thinking about my trans questioning and my personal history of questioning.  Or more specifically, my personal trauma with trans questioning.

I'm ashamed but more many years and still today I have what others have labeled transphobia for these thoughts.  Meaning that I am scared to admit that I may be trans and then hate and shame fill me because of this.  Most days when thinking of all of this I go back to the time when I tried to admit this to my life partner only to be told I was wrong in these thoughts, I was being filled with suggestions from my therapists and online sources, and how quickly they, my daughter, my family, work and everyone would leave me if I just didn't forget about this and move on.  Since that was almost 11 years ago and I am still writing, I have not been able to forget about this and feel like moving on has been a struggle up and down ever since. 

As much as I would like to say that I have grow wiser and/or made peace, I feel like I am still stuck in the trauma.  I feel like I am still stuck in the transphobia and hate for myself for being me. 

I continue to live a life in hiding, braving enough in safe virtual spaces or rare ventures out in stealth away from those who know my presenting self.  I can't move past this trauma or self shame and have resorted to physical harm rather than any additional emotional stress.   

I feel alone, scared, pathetic, little and don't know what to do or where to go from here.

In short, at this point in my life I feel defeated and all I have left is personal shame and transphobia. I don't want to live like this but also paralyzed to change. I can analyze this, write about it or even talk about it in a safe environment with a therapist but for 99.9% of my life I can't address it, won't address it and probably will be like this forever.

I am feeling so sad and lost today and wish I could just have a hug.

~Jaclyn

Black hole sun

 Hello blog,

This past week has been eventful and really not sure how I am feeling about things completely right now.

As mentioned in my past reflections on trying to determine my identity, I got a chance a few days to witness the total solar eclipse as that experience had been something I had always wanted to do.  Sometimes when do something you always wanted happens it is sort of anti-climatic, I would say that experiencing the solar eclipse for me was anything but that.

I prepared and researched but the whole experience was so amazing beyond words.  Pictures and videos could not prepare me for the moment when the moon's shadow swept in from the southwest and blackened the sky in the middle of a bright sunny day.  It felt unworldly and emotionally and mixture of feelings wrapped up together.  I cheered, cried, was mesmerized and then despaired for the sun to return in a matter of a few short minutes.   The images and feelings are still burned in my memory and it is hard to not think about that.  Below is my amateur photographic attempt of the void we saw in the sky.

Of course being a depressed and broken person that I am, this got me thinking of the emptiness that I feel inside at times.  I got a reality check the following day when I found that sharing too much with my therapist made her feel unable or unsafe for us to continue together.  Being damaged goods means that less and less people feel able to help out and I don't blame them for that belief.  While I guess it is better sooner than to spend a long time together, it still felt like another failure for me when really I was so hoping that she could help me sort out the questions I described in my last posts.

Truth be told, it just sucks and really no one can help me but me. And I don't have a good track record of that so I'm unknowing what to do at this moment. Like the moon and sun in the eclipse, I feel like my life is lining up to complete darkness here.  I question if that will lift or if I will be stuck in blackness and despair is building internally here.  I may be being a drama queen again, but I can't see any way out and feel that hopelessness and feel like I am drawn towards it like a black hole.  

I have been crying alot here and suicidal thoughts keep coming back to me. I don't know why I am a mistake and often think the world could use me being out of it.   I wish I could be more hopeful but I think that I am not wired for that emotion.  I wish I wasn't such a fuck-up.