rough morning

Hello blog,

One of the main reasons that I started blogging is that I needed someplace to vent and reflect on the craziness of life, and today I feel like I need this blog to help ease my whirlwind thoughts.

So I apologize to outsiders this will probably not be very coherent but rather a monologue for help me relax.  Of course, probably this can be said for many of my other posts lol :)

I'm really struggling with having left my true self out a bit with being able to "put myself away" at least for awhile as necessary for outward appearances.  I don't know if this is common but even a year ago I was so much better on having Jaclyn time and then going without.  I find that it is getting so hard just to not wait to have Jaclyn time 24/7 anymore and it feels so desperate.

I can't stop looking at the way women dress, react and interact without wishing so bad that I cold be there talking and sharing and being accepted as one of them.  I know that can not be the case and it depresses me more.  Just this morning I was listening to the cold heels of my shoes echo off the parking garage on my way into work and couldn't stop imagining that I was walking in on heels or boots instead of my drab shoes.

Does this feeling ever subside again?

I know that I have gender dysmorphia and can't look into a mirror without feeling uneasy and disgusted.  I spent 5 minutes last night trying to pinch my nose to make it look thinner and stretch my chin to try and imagine how wonderful having facial surgery would be.  Then I look at that sorry excuse on the top of my head for hair and I get violently upset and angry.  Why can't I just be satisfied with the lot life dealt me like everyone else?

Today I go back to my therapist and we will sit there for an hour discussing how my parents didn't nuture me and how I should be more self-confident and how I should like myself.  It all makes logical sense but yet it doesn't.  I don't know how to relate the endless hours at night I lay awake in bed wishing that I had smooth skin and feminine curves and know that this can only be a dream.  My beautiful daughter and wife are the only good things in my life and I cannot lose them but yet as my therapist says perhaps I am trying to sabotage them.  Call it a mental illness or whatever but I still don't understand why I wake up loving my family yet feeling the internal need to tuck my maleness away under my clothes and run out to the mall over lunch in secret.   I'll end up again with a bag of clothes, internal guilt and unbearable feeling to put them on and walk outside and be free.

Somedays I seem to manage these pressures better but today is not that day.  Right now I really don't know what I am but instead know what I am not.

I am not happy, and I am not able to figure out how to make this better.
I am not able to look in a mirror and be thankful for all the fortunate things life has given me.
I am not able to maintain two seperate entities within in this tiny brain of mine.
I am not able to talk, to walk, to fly and be free like so many of the brave sisters I see around that I am in awe of.
I am not a man, I am not a woman.  I don't know what I am.

I can only hope that today and tomorrows get better and I can find some peace and answers.  Isn't that what we all are looking for?