Winter reflections

Hello blog,

As the last few weeks of 2017 wind down here, I have been doing some reflection recently.   While I did manage to take some positive steps during 2017, I am going to think of this past year as a lot of what ifs and difficult times.   While it has not been fun, I think I may have learned a little more about myself this year and hope that will pay off in 2018 and beyond.

I started off the year feeling fairly positive and good with a few months of HRT seeming to put my mind at ease.  However while I felt a kind of internal peace, I also started feeling myself withdraw as I anticipated coming to a critical decision point where it was time to really move forward.  I wish I could be writing here today that I did something with courage and could hold my head up proud about, but honestly I did nothing like that.  Instead, I freaked out and chose the path of self-destruction.  In the very long and cold early hours of a March night, I felt like I could go no further in this world and started to take steps to end everything.

That was an awful night and the month and half intervention left some lasting scars on me.  I still haven't fully recovered yet and often I still think I am going back to that place.  I have multiple people classifying and telling me to ignore these distorted thoughts that go on, but I honestly feel like a failure in this world at times.

Slowly this past month I have started to make some plans and feel like I am getting drawn back into the world of Jaclyn even though I am not able to give up my current one.   It still goes against most logical thoughts and I feel so lonely and lost here.

What will 2018 bring me? I wish I had hat crystal ball or at least some idea here.  I guess that's why I am still here to find out for.

Happy holidays and wishes for a merry new year.

~Jaclyn

my depression

For those people who do not question our gender and suffer from depression, I'd like to let you know that it really sucks.  No this blog is not going to be a long winded ranting about poor me, but rather I'd like to write about the hell I experience on a daily basis trying to cope with my depression.

Lately the depression side of me seems to be winning as I have had a hard time trying to tune it out. No matter what meds or therapy (yes I am sought out our traditional western medicine to no avail), I still feel like shit more days than not.  Its one of those things that I just can't get over it and I find myself not really interested in doing much of anything and questioning why I even try.  I wonder often what is so mentally wrong with me when I look at going down a flight of stairs not really just a method to get where I want but rather an opportunity to do a header and try and land and snap my neck.   I know that some people may say the reason I am depressed is that I am spending all this energy on a daily basis to try and be someone else but I think if I removed my gender issues I would still be depressed.  I wish there could be someone I could talk to but how do you approach someone to tell them you fell totally empty and not even sure why you are even bothering at anything anymore.   I think this falls into that uncomfortable category that you know most people would more like to talk about weather, sports, theather, politics, etc.

I just don't know where to turn or how to keep going on these days.  Depression sucks.

pondering decisions

Dear blog,

We all make important decisions in life and many of these I have found in my experience that I often reflect upon and question if they are correct.  Lately in my wee head I have ruminating on these more and more and not finding much clarity.

The one I have been most thinking about lately has been the one a few months ago to stop HRT and to assess if this is the right direction for me.  In particular I have been wondering about the impact these hormones had upon my inherent happiness.

Of course I can look at the destruction spiral that I went on upon stopping and easily state that it was a bad decision.  There were unanswered questions at that time I was grappling with and still am.  I can say that I feel any further towards answering these or even being able to articulate them.  While my mental brain grapples with these, I have been trying to pair things down to my physical feelings.

At the root of these, I keep returning to that euphoric feeling that seemed to overcane me with each dosage.  It didn't happen right away, but soon afterwards it felt each day like the noise of the outside world would be dissaparate as if I was sinking into a warm bath to escape the troubles and chaos all around me.  At the time I told myself that these feelings were just mental and my wishing, but lately I have been thinking that perhaps this was physical body feeling like it was finally aligning with the right mental one. It is a hard feeling to really describe to someone who has not experienced this, and I have been missing this feeling very badly lately.  I also miss those gentle pangs I would feel in my breasts and feel a little bit on the desperate side to get them back.

I wish I knew the right feelings and was able to understand the right decisions for me. Right now, I just don't know or at least I do and don't let myself admit to it.

Hugs,
Jaclyn

happiness is?

Hello blog,
Today is not a happy day for me.
Actually when I think of the definition of happy, most of the time I don't think I would classify myself at being anywhere near as what the definition may show as the picture of happiness.
This thought is depressing and makes me wonder just what I need to be happy.
To be loved and accepted by others? To feel part of a larger family/community and free to be myself? To represent myself as Jaclyn and transition to a world which only knows me as she?
I really don't know. I know I could answer yes to some/many/all of these questions above at times in my past but I don't think they have provided me with a magical path to happiness.
I know in a clinical sense there is something with dopamine and anti-depressants that when you find the correct mix you are supposed to have some "awakening" experience and feel better inside.
I have tried many of these wonder pills and have yet to experience that.
I just wonder if I don't really have the capacity to be happy at all.  Is that possible and is that ok?
I think I want to be happy and try to be but do I sabotage myself on purpose or am I really just not able to feel this emotion?  I know that I can feel sadness and pain and really those are overcoming me more and more these days.
So maybe I just don't want to be happy in reality.  That feels sad and depressing but yet is a comfortable state that I am used to being in.
Can I be discomfortably happy?  How do I go about doing this?
I dunno. I wish I did but I am feeling the opposite of happy - hopelessness - right now.

Weekend thoughts

Hello Blog,

As the memorial day holiday in the US is almost here, I've started to reflect a little bit on my personal history.  Its almost hard to believe that 4 years ago I finally had enough of the hiding and pretending to come out to my wife about my gender dsyphoria and start talking about it with others.

I have made some small steps since that time but I feel like my progress has been glacial at times.  Most of the time has been a struggle of acceptance, by her, by others, by myself and that has gone in circles at times.   Being trans is not an easy thing and once you start realizing that perhaps your physical and mental gender differ is a total mind warp there.  Often I still wake up wishing that my stupid dna would have aligned these together but that is me being a victim thinking.  After all my years of self-reflection, I have come to the point to just say it is as it is and now just just trying to figure out what to do with it.

Which is probably somewhat where I was 4 years ago.  Damn, do glaciers move painfully slowly sometimes.

The point I still find myself being stuck upon is if I can exist straddling two different worlds and keep it all together.  I've read many blogs and books saying that this is not possible so I wonder why I keep trying to solve an unsolvable problem here.  I am going to start attending some trans events again but this time going with my wife's knowledge rather than sneaking around.  I worry that this may not be enough as I still hurt each time I have to re-dress afterwards and leave that happy world behind.  I know that is probably a big red sign telling me to stop trying to have it both ways, but I guess I am too old and too dumb to know any other one at this time.

Life is so hard some times, I hope that I can make mine easier someday soon.

Hugs,
Jaclyn

Reconciling my spiritual side

Good morning blog,

During the past few months, the one thing my forced vacation has seemed to provided to me is a lot of time for self-reflection.  Today this self-reflection is around what I would consider my spiritual journey.

I have probably spent the majority of my time over the past few years with the physical aspects of my being - they way I look or don't look and how to present myself in a way that makes me feel good.  What I haven't spent much time with is on my emotional or spiritual side.

Now I grew up in a very religious repressive environment so naturally when I think of the word spirituality I naturally become negative.   Talking with my therapist this week made me start to think of this in a different way.  I'm trying to think of my spirituality instead of in the formal religious aspect but as have I feel complete inside.  Its really a different way for me to connect so I'll try to make some sense in my ramblings here.

I know inside that I feel more female than male but instead of thinking of things in two genders I'm trying to think of myself as one whole, and some smashup of feelings and emotions of both.  I am starting to realize that regardless of which physical gender I present myself with, I have both male and female thoughts, feelings and emotions inside.  And that is ok.   It is just me and whom I am.

Now the real tricky and difficult part is accepting and being comfortable with myself regardless of what gender most perceive.  Our environment reacts to our physical appearance, I would get strange looks if I tried to present as male and showed up to work with painted nails for instance.  What I have to reconcile is feeling content and happy with myself regardless of how my nails look and any other physical traits.   I realize that I was not born to be able to blend into a female appearance naturally and do not have limitless resources to achieve this, and if I do transition someday I will still always have some 'maleness' no matter how hard I try to remove all traces of this.  I need to find more of the spiritual strength inside to accept this and to accept who I am - with all my faults along with all my good qualities.

Do we need to lose oneself in order to find ourself along this journey here?  I feel like I have done a lot of work and still have a lot of work to go in order to get rid of all my preconceived feelings about me to get down to my core being.  Is this the key that once I have gotten rid of all the distractions that I can figure out what is really important and make some healthy steps forward to achieving a complete me inside and out?

I am not really sure about most of this, but I do feel that I need to feel content about myself in order to make a change forward or I may be always doubting what step I'm taking.

Hugs,
Jaclyn





  

Fear of change

Hello blog,

I have spending a lot of sleepless nights recently thinking about change and what that all means to me.  Not just change of identity, but internal change in how I feel about myself, relate with others and how I can try and focus on changes to make myself positive and be who I want to be.

These thoughts are good but thoughts without action are ... well, just thoughts.  So then I start thinking of what holds me back from taking action on these thoughts and that is what I'd like to write out more about here.

If I am being truthful, there are many reasons that I don't take action which at the time may be valid and some invalid.  From I am not quite yet ready and it is safer to not make a change (perhaps valid) to it is easier to keep doing the same even if I am miserable (kinda foolish).  When I start listing out all my reasons for not making any changes, most of them boil down to one thing - being afraid of change.

What is this fear of change?  Accepting myself as being transgender I realize that this also means accepting changes physically but more importantly emotionally.  How many people and things in my life will I lose as I continue down that path to accept me is a common question that I have dwelt upon for a long time.  The more important question I am coming to realize that I haven't dwelt on enough is how much will I gain by moving ahead?

So instead of sitting there paralyzed with my fear and thoughts and not doing anything, I am trying a new approach.  I am going to try to take these large goal looming ahead in my transition (moving to full-time happy Jaclyn and being out in the world) to instead take tiny little steps and keep pushing myself to take them.  For example, I am going to try and work on social skills by trying to make new friends and search out support groups and then be patient to do these little things.  It is going to be difficult because of bad past patterns of failing at one small thing and then giving up.  Instead I am going to know that I will move ahead, then back, then ahead, then back and eventually these steps will lead me more forward than backward overall.

While I am trying to avoid the fear, I am still wary of change and of days ahead of me.  I am also telling myself to be afraid of some of the dark days behind when I refused to change and how destructive that was.  I have a long, long, long way to go and know all these changes will be a huge disruption in my life.  I am just looking forward to what amazing things I am going to benefit from with the change instead.

Hugs, Jaclyn

Here's a recent poem I have written about this long road of change that I thought fit in here.

Walking naked in the rain,
Feeling, absorbing, surrounding in pain,
Going down this fruitless path path again,
It is time for me to make a change.

Thoughts carry weight even with actions undone,
They set things in motion not yet begun,
A dangerous exciting path to start down upon,
It is time for me to make a change.

The next time I just want to run away,
The next time I think there's no reason to stay,
The next time I do not want to even face the day,
It is time for me to make a change.

I now realize my inaction has hurt so deeply,
Opportunities that I have thrown away so selfishly,
No more will I continue to act so stupidly,
 A new me, it is time to make a change

Multiple parts of me

Hello blog,

As I start to pick up the pieces from my last crash and burn, I have been doing a lot of self-reflection and self-learning along the way.

One of the things I have been reflecting lately is around self identity and trying to reconcile my femme persona (Jaclyn) with my masculine persona (John).  Talk about a true mind-bender here.
Probably up to the last week my thought was for one to survive, the other one must perish.  Now after a couple of deep thoughts I have come to realize how simplistic and incorrect that statement really is.

As I spend the days right now presenting and functioning as John, I realize that often many parts of my personality or behaviors really are coming from my Jaclyn perspective.  I often feel encouraged by these thoughts and actions as I feel more engaging, open and in touch with my emotional side when I let my Jaclyn side out.

Conversely if this is true, then if there is a day I function and present as Jaclyn, I will still have my John side as part of me.  But that does not need to be bad as it will include all my prior experiences and I can try to work on letting the desirable John traits in and the undesirable ones go.

Thus in reality I feel like I am sorta like the ice cream swirl of personality and perhaps think of myself with a gender neutral name like Jackie to remind me of both parts.  Of course, adding more names will seem to confuse things but then again what is really simple and straightforward in a gender questioning world?

So I think I am going to take this little piece of perspective today and move further towards my quest of understanding and accepting the true me.  I have found a nearby support group with others that prize the gift of multiple gender identity and think that will be a big step to attend and connect with others.

If there is anything this past month and half has taught me, is that I cannot do this myself and I do need help in this world.  I am going to reach out to try and understand all parts of me and to chose to take the positive parts and nuture these regardless of what identity I finally present.  I hope that someday this will become more clearer for me as I keep taking those small steps towards the goal of self acceptance.  For today, I am going to realize that being in touch with multiple sides of me is really a gift that makes me special for whom I really am.

Hugs,
Jaclyn-John-Jackie  

new patterns

Good morning blog,

After a rainy week, this morning we were treated to sunshine and with that and the spring blooms starting to appear it makes me think of new beginnings here.

As a result of my recent many hours of therapeutic work I am not going to try to forget the struggles of the past month but instead accept them and try and focus on today and what I can do instead. 

And in the spirit of actually doing something, I am going to start holding myself accountable to make a healthy choice about my gender identidy and what it means.

I am planning to meet with a therapist with experience treating gender dysphoria patients Monday and to try and communicate this as honestly as I can with my spouse. Being open with her is going to be hard and have consequences but I cannot keep just pretending I’m fine when I really am not.  I also researched and found a transgender therapy support group to join that will be starting in a month.  I don’t think I can do this all by myself anymore and asking others is something that I need to keep doing.

Finally, I am going to try and give myself some space to accept the good things about me rather than dwell on everything that I perceive as bad.  That is going to be a toughy but yesterday to celebrate my progress I had a much needed Jaclyn day out and about.  I spoiled myself by finding some rings and a new dress, and pampered myself by getting my brows cleaned and shaped.  It was very emotional up and down day since this was my first outing since the hospital.  I need to do more of these as it feels good to be authentic and happy inside. 

So today I am choosing to pick myself up a little and take a small step back.  Being trans is not an easy journey nor is a straight line I see now.  But hopefully as the sun shines and brings flowers I will too someday bloom as well.

Hugs,

Jaclyn

  

asking for help

Hello blog,

Originally I was planning to title this entry 'crash and burn' since that seems to summarize up March 2017 for me here.  Instead I am hoping to use the trials of this month as a step back, sideways, and forward or something like that.  The one thing I realize from this journey is that I need to ask for help, and that is one thing I have a really hard time doing.

Here's a quick synapses of the prior month or so of my life that have not been fun.  It started with my HRT prescription running out and me being unable to get in to see the doctor.  Then I had a major blow-up with my therapist corresponding to an strong episode of battling my gender dsyphoria. Combine all that with my constant depression and telling someone that I am worthless and should just swallow 20 Tylenol or something like that earned me a late night trip to the ER combined with
a nice week to spend in a closely monitored hospital stay.  From there I got to apply for work disability and complete a day program for 2.5 weeks before being able to resume my life in limited capacity here.

What did I learn from all this?

I learned to slow down and listen and think a bit.  I learned to listen to my thoughts of self-worthlessness and realize my distorted view of reality.  I learned to listen about self acceptance.  That is a very hard pill and I don't think I can claim victory there just yet.  I learned that the behaviors I was doing that were getting me tired and frustrated just weren't working and really how much longer do I need to bang my head against the proverbial wall not getting anywhere.  I learned that I need to make a change, and to do this I need to ask for help.  That is a tough lesson for someone like me that thinks I can do all this on my own, I can't.  And to get out of the pattern of being stuck I need to surrender and that's not a bad thing - in doing this I am essentially stating that I can't continue on alone and I need to let others in.  So I think I learned some things, but how am I going to put this in practice?

I've reached out to a new therapist and started working on goals and planning steps to determine where I want to go and how to get there.   I've started writing feverishly again, and probably have like 5 or 6 new poems that I've completed.  I've looked up a local transgender support group and I am going to try and talk with others there.  Finally, I've decided that I have to be authentic and true to myself no matter what that would mean to others.

It has been a long and arduous struggle this past month of my life.  This next one will be another struggle too.  I wish I knew what it would bring, but it doesn't and I have to pick up the pieces and go forward.

I need a hug.

~Jaclyn

what is the truth?

When I started this blog a few years ago, I did so because I felt like I needed someplace where I didn't need to hide or pretend to be something else.  More importantly, this blog would be a place that I could be honest and reflective about what I really felt was going on inside of me at that particular moment.  Today I think about this and realize that I need this blog more than ever.

This week I have been struggling so much to understand the truth.  I don't mean this externally in the way every other headline seems to be shouting at others as being fake taking their cue from our supposed leaders, but in the sense that I have trouble with my own internal truth.

Each day I feel like I am constantly lying so much I have completely lost track of the truth,  From the moment I feel I get up and first look in the mirror with disdain, to the parts of the day when I am pretending that I am fine, and continuing to when I am laying in bed awake and lost in my head I feel like I am lying.  When I finally feel brave enough to talk and share something real with me, I still find myself unable to speak the truth or live it.  My life it feels is like one big lie and as I sit now and try to dissect it for the umpteenth time I realize that I don't have a clue what my truth is.

I wonder that besides feeling that I am transgender that the fact that I have no idea of my individual truth makes me unique or gives me greater commonality with the community.  Is this part of the transgender experience to realize that you think you are currently living a lie and need to change, or is this proof that I am not committed enough to be anything else than a delusional pretender?

My therapist said this week the new chic thing is to say that you are transgender.  This statement upset me at first and later threw more doubt over my clouded thoughts.

I need to know my own truth, but I have no idea how to find this anymore.  It just feels like the only truth I do know is how emotionally tiring all this lying really is.

Hugs,
Jaclyn

stuck in the middle

Hello blog,

I've been fighting my dysphoria, my self-confidence, myself and everything lately as I seem to have slipped back into a funk.  The suicidal thoughts and self-cutting has started up once more which is questioning me what I am really doing.  While tomorrow marks week 15 since I started HRT, I sometimes think I should stop as I feel I have no plan or really any idea what I am doing. I feel like more I think the more stress I get and then the stress-eating takes over. I felt disgusted when I last weighed myself and worry that things are going to keep getting worse there.


Today was my second full facial laser clearing and I guess I had some time to stop and think while the strobe lights were hopefully removing some of the nasty facial growth.   I guess what I was concentrating on at first was how I was changing myself to be feminine but lately I've been thinking more that I am changing myself to be less masculing instead.  I know that statement probably doesn't make much sense to anyone who hasn't questioned their gender, but somehow I feel like I am forging something in-between the two.  I question whether I can like this place and be able to function in the world as something other than one of the two and this frankly scares me very much.  For someone who spent most of their time up to now resenting my own appearance, the thought of appreciating myself is really a tough pill that is so much easier said than in practice.

So that is where I guess I am standing at today, I am lost in consideration that if I stop I will be a failure and if I continue I will not be a success.  I wish there was an easy answer to all of this!

Hugs,
Jaclyn

Month three milepost

Hello blog,

Its been awhile since my last post as I have been staying away from social media due to how depressing it has been.  It feels like as a country we are getting more and more divided and too many people are living with fear rather than love. It just saddens me when a collective group becomes so partisan and rules with a us/them mentality.  I hope things will start to settle down and the majority of us who choose peace and love rather than fear and hate start to become more apparent again.

For me, I have been up and down so far this year.  This friday marks my three month anniversary since starting HRT and I should be making some measurements to assess the physical changes.  I don't expect that much in those terms but I am interested in assessing those mental changes more.  Subconsciously I think I am feeling better about myself even though there are days where I feel like I am trapped somewhere in between genders and destined to remain there.  I have stopped the cutting and think about suicide less, but those thoughts still creep in from time to time.  I have taken some smaller steps towards eventually transitioning like checking my employers policy, doing a bra fitting, completing my first face clearing, but it still seems like an event to go out as Jaclyn rather than something everyday,  I had a clinic appointment to check my levels cancelled by the dr. which really bummed me out since it will take another 5 weeks for me to get back on the schedule.  The lack of health care providers and knowledgeable transgender professionals is boggling - there seems to be a large need out in the community and the mental health profession does not seem like it is a need to address it.  I worry with the current mood in the country if this is going to get more and more an issue to find help.  At least I feel fortunate that I can find some help nearby even if I have to wait for the limited resources.

So as we turn the calendar on February, it helps me to plan some more little steps to keep moving ahead.  I have my next face clearing scheduled for this month and I am going to need to do some spring shopping as that will be here soon.  I'm thinking of taking a pampering day to get a facial and mani/pedi before going out to the mall but that will depend on the schedule.  For support, I'm thinking about trying to find a nearby support group even though I have the illogical fear of these situations.  I think that will help me push myself a bit and each little step may eventually lead to one big stride.

Wishing everyone some good luck and peace with the new Chinese year that just began.  Hugs.
Jaclyn