so sorry

sitting in the dark alone again

numbers pile on the floor with no end

wishing to be freed

wishing to be gone indeed

there no end to this infinite time

as the tears wet my face.

i've cried and searched everywhere in vain

i've resolved that there is no solution to my pain

cutting my flesh does not release my hate

hitting myself does not register in my thoughts

i am nothing but a mistake.

i want to end it all right now

take that final step that final bow

i have planned and prepped so many ways

i have thought of this for so many days

i am nothing but a mistake.

that safety valve that keeps me here

i hate that more and more each year

i hear how much pain i would cause

i see how much a burden and pain i cause

i am nothing but a mistake.

this misery soon from which i'll be free

this misery i've reached  the end for me

just quietly sitting alone here in the dark 

nothing more

i am nothing but a mistake.

Post election anxiety

I'm really struggling here living in the US post election and could use some reassurance not to go off the ledge.

I guess I wasn't as surprised as that an rich old white male won again an election in our supposedly great democracy.  I feared that was going to happen as too many people here are fearful to have a woman president from any genders.

What I am really struggling with is the loss of all three branches of government that is supposed to allow for check and balances of any one viewpoint.  I've lived through the zealousness of the republican party drunk on power before and the anxiety of what's ahead seems downright scary.

For a transgender person in America I feel like we are going back 50 years at least.  Here is a snippet of some of the viewpoints being expressed by our future asshole-in-chief:

“On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on gender-affirming care — ridiculous. I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump said in a video posted to social media. “I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.”

Trump also said he would support allowing “victims to sue doctors” who have performed transgender procedures on children.

He will also ask Congress to pass a bill that mandates that the only genders the federal government will recognize are those assigned at birth.

I'm not an out living transgender person or a young adult and this sort of rhetoric really shakes me.  I know that this sort of hate speech is also being spouted towards immigrants, disabled people, people needing federal support, etc. and I should not feel alone.  I am so scared for so many LGBTQIA+ people as I remember growing up in an area where being out was akin to taking your chance with mob violence.   

I am having a really tough time believing things are going to be ok.  I feel so sorry for my daughter to have to inherit this mess and can't believe how so many people could have felt that the hateful misogynistic views in the project 2025 is what they wanted and that things will be better than them with it.

I am just so scared right now and having trouble to cope.  I wish I was alone with that.

Leaving the past behind

 Hello blog,

As probably apparent by my recent postings recalling past experiences, I have a hard time leaving the past behind and moving forward.

I was hoping that writing things out would be a cathartic experience and I could move along, but alas my situation has not changed much if any for a long time here.

I have also thought that going through the process of asking for forgiveness and accepting it for past traumas would also ease my mental stress, but I feel like I am unable to absorb this as well.

I know logically that I have protected and walled myself away from the world defensively after feeling pain to the point that I can no longer escape.  I am not able to trust others and believe in my heart that things will ever change.

In short, I don't know how to let go of my past.  I know that it has no benefit to me and only causes my depression to crash over me in waves to the point that I feel incapacitated and don't want to get out of bed in the morning as it seems pointless.

I'm struggling and I am unable to express this desperation in any other way besides the safety of anonymous writing here.  My current livelihood appears to be in jeopardy as my company is collapsing and this just feels like another layer of worthless to heap upon me.   I get agitated when anyone provides me with pity as I know that I am the source and cause of all my problems.

I guess I don't have a point here but just feel like I am untethered in a stormy sea and land is no one to be seen.  I think that I need to let go of my past but perhaps my misery is the company I seek.  

I dunno as always.   Just so glad I have a place here to vent and cry.

My gender story (Part 1 - Point of Orgin)

 My gender story

I was born male. That I know and it a difficult fact that I carry around with me each day. It is a painful fact that somedays is all-consuming and somedays is not really anything I think about.

As I have grown older and the world has expanded in understanding, I have continued to think about and question this each day.  I know that it is not something that 99.9% of the world spends as much time dwelling upon but that is just me I guess.  

But I know now that I am not alone and others have painfully similar stories.  That is probably why I am drawn to reading other transgender blogs - not just to not feel alone but to also search for some answers or help in understanding myself and my path.

Also why am I writing this all out now is not something that I have a good answer for.  Perhaps I am looking for some therapeutic relief, or need some voice as I feel trapped and alone or have some other mental defect.  I just feel like I need to do it so I am.

My thoughts with gender started around the age of recognition of gender roles between boy and girl that were drilled into me in the traditional fashion.   Boys wear boy, girls pink;  boys play sports/physical games while girls have dolls and homemaker play.  My late 70s/80s childhood was literally something shown as the traditional 50s home in terms of what was taught, expected and rewarded/punished if you did not follow the society rules.

I didn't like this and started wishing to be part of the other girls side while I was hammered into me the need to stay on my side with the boys around me.  I remember my first vivid dreams around 10 or so when I would magically wake up as a girl instead of my current body.

As I got older, things just got worse.  Puberty was so confusing and the most horrible period of my life.  I felt so ugly and my awkward shyness and non-hip look did not help me from being bullied and alone often.  I keep secretly feeling how much better my life would have been if I was female, and that thinking did not help me either.   I would start experimenting with clothes, makeup and jewelry from my Mom or sister's closet but that came at a cost. The severely damning protestant church that ruled our household brought visions of shame and sin for thinking and acting on these thoughts.  I was a freak, a sexual deviant, and an abomination in the eyes of God.

High school was the worst four years of my life and I have repressed many painful memories of it. I was mostly an outcast but I did manage a small number of friends that I could connect with that were not part of the popular crowd.

One of my few good friends was hidden/not-so-hidden gay or bisexual male that I connected with.  While he was way more social than me, he did sort of adopt me and we became close friends.  While I accepted him and didn't care about his sexual preferences, I could have been more empathetic and open to hearing how difficult it was for him in the ultra-conservative area we lived in.  I didn't really ask but yet felt like we had an unspoken connection - I knew he wasn't completely straight but I didn't mind, and I think he always suspected that I was confused on lost in my own sexuality but he didn't mind.  I was close on a couple of times about confessing my secret thoughts about my gender confusion but never had the guts to speak.  I often wonder if he already sensed most of this.

Around my senior year in high school, I remember while most of the boys talked about wanting to date one of the girls that I really wanted to be one of them instead.  I think one time I was experimenting with my Mom's clothes she noticed things but nothing would ever be said.  My view of doing this and then being a shameful sexual pervert continued to cycle louder in me.

After graduation, I remember a time with my friend that we stole some of my parents booze and we got drunk together over at his place with his parents out of town.  I think I passed out or something but remember waking up with him climbing into bed with me.  He started to initiate kissing and then removing my clothes, and I pretended to sleep and not notice what was happening.  Eventually he started having sex with me and I don't know why but I just froze and couldn't do anything even though my rouse of sleeping was gone.  To this day I don't know if I really wanted this to happen or not and feel like there must be deep reasons inside me that I didn't stop things.  The next day, I pretended that I was so drunk the night before that I remembered nothing and didn't bring up the sex or talk about it.  I spent alot of time after this feeling so shameful and wrong and hating myself for cross-dressing and being gay.  I equated these things together and that I needed to remove this from my life.  I avoided my friend after that and soon went off to college to forget about things.

But feelings of gender don't seem to ever stop no matter how hard you try to forget them.  

I have done alot of therapy and alot of thinking of how my past shaped me and this is just the start of the pattern I feel still stuck in today.  I have equated my gender confusion or body dysphoria or sexuality on being wrong and shameful and something to hide from the world.  I feel that even wishing to give my nails a clear coat of polish or shave my chest equates me to being some sexual deviant and something wrong in the eyes of everyone that is important in my life.  I cannot seem to stop this behavior and pattern and if anything the shame has built up to a soul-crushing amount and left me hopeless.

I am going to keep trying to chronicle my story here in several parts but thought this made a good point to pause and reflect.  During the next part of my life I attempted to isolate myself, conform to what I was taught to be and eventually meet my soulmate.  Despite all of this, truth be told I still had times when my gender perversion or whatever I felt it was got the best of me and then was followed by periods of profound shame and guilt.  

Until then... 

My gender story (Part 2 - Quiet Times)

 My gender story (con't)

This continuation of my current endeavor to try and recap my history and gender confusion that I started detailing in my last blog entry.  While I am trying to keep to only the highlights that stand out to me as part of my gender explorations, this still may be rather verbose and winded as stories go.  I am not the most gifted with the English language so I do apologize for grammatical errors, misspellings and other poorly structured sentences that I have used to try and get my main points across.

Why I am doing this is in part to try and provide a comprehensive history that I can share with therapists and others since I do have troubles talking them out loud.  Probably the main reason of this though is that I feel so low and alone at a point right now and just need to talk this out even though I have no audience.

I feel like the depression that has swallowed me is hopeless to struggle against anymore.  My days are all emotionless voids and darkness with no one else around. I am resigned to this and accept it is what it is.

But getting back to my story, in my last entry I tried to detail parts of my first 18 years growing up and how I dealt with trying to be a man as my father often told me to be.   I never have been good at that and learned to stop crying after being admonished for shedding tears as a kid at things I should not have. 

I grew up not really having many friends and feeling left out and in the wrong sex. From my surroundings, I absorbed and understood that not being a straight hetero-sexual tough looking male was akin to being a shameful sexual deviant sinner that should never be seen outside.  That may seem like a harsh sentence but it is what I learned and really not much different from what I remember seeing in culture during that time (1980s) as I remember how people around me bashed any pop icons that blurred lines (David Bowie, Boy George, etc) or how trans people were cast as sexual deviants or causes for laughter in movies (Tootsie, Rocky Horror Picture, etc).  Yes I know I chose to accept and believe these stereotypes, I am not trying to imply that culture caused me to feel the shame and guilt I learned, but rather that is how I developed and absorbed their messages into feelings about myself.

At age 18, my little bubble of ultra conservative society was popped when I moved out and attended college for the first time. While I like to think I was open to new things, I will admit that adjusting and moving out was difficult for me and I did bring some unpleasant parts of my upbringing along with me.

In college, I tried to go extra-masculine (which is funny if you know me) and had my first girlfriend and heterosexual sexual experience during my freshman year.  That was a mixture of confusion and trying to learn how to be and I do think I was romantically foolish during this time.  After we broke up after my freshman year, I retreated back into my shell away from things.  The few people I knew from high school were all going in different directions then and I tried to force myself into more popularity with the college crowd which was very awkward for me. '

It was at this point I could feel the little self esteem I had totally go away.  I avoided people and relationships as I felt that it was only going to lead to rejection.  I tried to substitute alcohol and fun instead of being real just as I thought I would make me better.   I concentrated on school and the next few years passed without any real emotional growth as I did not feel safe to share.

Along with avoiding most things during this time, I pretty much abandoned any gender questioning although thoughts would arise from time to time.   As I graduated college, got a job and moved out into my first apartment, these feelings would then arise more often.

Around my mid 20s, I finally had a job where I could afford an apartment on my own.  At this point of life I was feeling recluse and still had little to no self esteem.   I worked and concentrated on what I thought was needed to be successful and make people happy.   The only big difference was that at night after work I would return home to the quietness og being alone with only my personal thoughts as company.

During these times, I started returning to my gender exploration as part of my internal questioning.  After moving to a new apartment, I found the prior landlord had left some of her outfits in a basement storage and I was told I could toss things out.  To me this was like leaving a bottle of whiskey behind for an alcoholic to find and I soon started trying things on and buying other clothes in secret.  This led to further feelings of shame and guilt almost immediately as I had no idea why I was doing this.  I remember the constant dislike for body hair that I started to develop and the first few times I found that I had lost control and removed it.  These times were not good and the self hate of my body image developed so strongly during this time.  This is when I first started hating mirrors and the depression and anger of seeing myself in them intensified.

I started to spiral at this time to the point that drinking until I passed out was the only way I could manage to handle being alone all weekend long.  At work and at home, I played the charades that I was straight and happy but in truth I was more miserable now than ever before.  I half-hearted attempted to end everything with a bottle of wine and pills one night and woke up the next day in a pile of vomit with a throbbing headache and feeling so alone and sad.

Something needed to change.  I decided it was living like this and thought it was time to run away.  I applied and was accepted to grad school 500+ miles away and told myself that things would be better there.  

At first it felt a bit better or at least I seemed busy and not trapped in my thoughts/body hate and shame.  After being out of academia for around five years, it was a bit of a challenge getting back into the school mindset and it was definitely a different environment than undergrad.  As I was nearing my final semester, I started to feel the loneliness and despair returning.  Then something miraculous happened to change my life. 

During my final term at grad school, I had placed a personal ad in one of the first online forums (AOL) as part of a whim.  This was during the beginning dial-up years of the internet and when admitting you used online ads to find someone seemed embarrassing.   However unorthodox it was at that time, my future wife happened to respond and very quickly I found myself dating for the first time in years.

This was so different and scary trying to learn to share with someone when having no confidence in yourself.  I don't know how we connected, but we seemed to amazingly and she has become my best friend, the love of my life, and my soulmate forever.  I soon graduated from grad school, got a job and we continued dating for another year until we decided to commit to each other and get married.  

This was just a month after turning 30 and I felt that finally things were right with me.  I had survived my 20s somehow and felt that I was where I belonged going forward.  I did not share with my wife my personal self-hate, my low self-esteem, my gender confusion questioning (as I assumed that was done with now), or even my suicidal thoughts and actions at times.  Perhaps I am a very shitty person not to have revealed all of that but again I felt that was in a closet never to come out again. 

Things like this don't go away to you no matter how much you try to hide or deny them.  I am such an idiot sometimes.

My gender story (Part 3 - New Explorations)

 My gender story (con't) 

As I continue to write and think about my journey, it is helping me in understanding by looking at periods of my life separately and then how they feed into each other.

Part 1 was growing up in an ultra conservative environment and the struggles with my feelings of not being right and not having any clue of things.  This innocence ended when my friend took advantage of me in an episode that I am not sure if I was a sexual victim or was unconsciously instigating.  Whatever it was, this led me into an unhealthy pattern that I described in part 2 where I was not able to form relationships or friendships, isolating and abused alcohol and settled into a deep depression during my 20s.  For my gender story, this was something that equated more shame and guilt with my feelings and led to repression and denial of feelings whenever they arose.

This pattern continued into my early 30s along with my struggles to have a healthy relationship as well.  My wife and I marries and for the most part I didn't spend alot of time questioning my gender as  I felt things were more like they should be and I was finally right.  Probably for a good 5 years or so most of my questioning of gender was a non-issue as it looked like things had gone away.  I spent most of that time being busy with building a relationship with my wife and starting a stable family together. 

Our daughter came along during this time as the most positive thing that I feel I have ever contributed to in my life.  That was an amazing time and incredible experience even though part of me felt guilty that my wife could experience child birth and bonding with her in ways I was not physically able to.  Besides that pang of jealousy, I don't recall struggling much with my gender during her infancy and trying to be a good father figure for her.

Somewhere near my mid 30s, things started to change and pretty rapidly.  I am not sure of the complete order and amount of time between events but will try to recollect the best I can remember in terms of my gender questioning.    I think there was always some constant background thoughts that may have come up when we would visit the mall or seeing other female social interactions but for most times this would subside shortly afterwards.

Probably I was around 37 or 38 is when this background hum became more constant and I found myself thinking about gender pretty constantly.  It is hard to explain how this background noise can become so obsessive, but I found myself spending alot of time thinking about how nice it would be to have gorgeous hair or smooth skin or to basically not be trapped in a male body here.  My dislike for my physical appearance I believe dropped into personal disgust around this time and I started avoiding mirrors when changing or anything that would show me what I really looked like. 

While my self hate was growing deeper, I was escaping this by spending more time on my obsessive thoughts of being a woman and these soon started to turn into actions.  First it was just browsing or looking at models online to imagine things, but then it became trips into stores looking at clothes pretending I was searching for someone else.

When the browsing stopped being enough, I found myself purchasing some items and hiding them away.  When I got home and was alone, I would feel a rush of trying them on but then also would feel the crush of shame and embarrassment of this behavior soon thereafter.  Sometimes I would be buying and returning things to the local goodwill within the same day it seemed.

But not always, and soon I started to accumulate a hidden stash of clothes.  It felt good and bad having these and I really did not feel in control.  I felt some shameful like a pervert or fetishist or something but also felt unable to stop.  It was also around this time when I discovered the term transgender online as the internet was finally available and I realized that there were other people out there like me.

My obsessive thoughts seemed to have a new outlet in this online world and I found myself reading countless transgender blogs, stories and threads on various places.  

I don't know how to express spending around 40 years feeling like you are alone only to realize that there are others like you out there.  I would like to say that dissipated my shame and guilt but it didn't.  It was more of another period of time of confusion and wonder.  I even started using experience blogs to write anonymously as a precursor to blogging here that I continue to use for escapism.

This rabbit hole of the internet seemed to be the encouragement I needed to overcome my shame and guilt and continue exploring.  Really those feelings were so strong at the time so I don't think I really needed much encouragement but I keep wanting to try more.   Soon, my purchasing of women's clothes to sneak and try at home hidden away became more of a want to be outside dressed.  I could sneak things under my clothes, but really felt foolish and really I wanted to feel 'passable' and just to be female.

I realized then I needed more help with makeup and found a wonderful lady that offered help and support for the transgender community. I worked up the courage and visited her studio and for the first time came out to someone about my issues.  It was so incredible how non-judgmental and kind she was, and I remember telling me she didn't care and wanted to treat me like one of her sisters.   When she fitted me with my first wig that was a transformative process that I remember crying for one of the few times and not worrying about someone seeing me do that.

She also helped me with makeup and outfits and actually for the first time I could look in a mirror and see a woman.  While I still keep everything hidden and tightly away at home, this image fixated in my mind.  I took some of my first shots and was so shocked in seeing the smile on my face in the image. 

I continued looking at transgender stories online, dressing in private and trying makeup when I could ensure not being seen.  But like the steps before, I felt like I wanted more and more even though I felt torn inside.   I would sneak on my wig when driving around or change into women's jeans in a parking lot just to feel like I was out even though I was still hiding.  I accumulated more and more clothing and found every spare alone moment to try something new.  While this seemed like a freeing time of self-exploration, there was a steep price for me to pay for this.  The hiding and anxiety about being caught and guilt seemed to grow with each new little step and like an addict I kept telling myself to stop but couldn't.

I remember one weekend my family was out of town and I had connected with a local transwoman and met up with her.  I was so nervous and scared and she was nothing but incredibly understanding, supportive and amazing.  While our whole adventure involved going out for a drink at a local bar, it was so freeing and nerve-wracking just being out in public for the first time.  I sort of felt like Bambi on her legs for the first time and was sure everyone was stating at me but couldn't believe how well she would tell me to ignore them and how nonchalant she was.  I did see her one other time but felt so jealous of her and how she was married and her wife accepted her and even allowed her to keep a separate place t go to whenever she felt the need to let her hair down.  Again, someone who was very kind to me and probably deserved more thanks in return that I offered.

This seemed like a time when forces were dragging me apart inside.  I can't justify that I was always right but I was swinging rapidly from wanting to explore being dressed and outside in the world as a woman and the guilt and shame from sneaking around, hiding and being a freak from my family.

I needed someone to work through all of this and make some sense of this so I researched a gender specialized therapist and started to make some private appointments without letting my wife know.  This still felt very wrong to me but also felt like the only thing I could handle.  That eventually led me to the next major point as I knew that this charade could not continue at home.

My gender story (Part 4 - My coming out disaster)

My gender story (con't)

Unlike my my last entry that covered a fairly long period of time in my life (around 10 years), this section here is more around an intense short time period where my gender perspective changed or was corrected depending on how you look at it.    During the busy time after my marriage where I settled into some stability, and then through the first several years of my daughter's life, I was able to compartmentalize my gender confusion and ignore for most of the time without issues.  That putting away of thoughts didn't seem to last and eventually the noise of this started preoccupying my thoughts to the point of exploring them.   A new world online had opened up and this seemed to feed my desire which seemed to build rather quickly.   I became more emboldened in my actions based on these feelings and started to become obsessed with a world that I did not understand.  I needed help and reached out with what I thought was the correct thing to do.  In hindsight, I was setting myself up for a huge disaster.

In was early 2013 by this time and I had started seeing a gender therapist to try just to understand why I was doing the things I was.  She did a good job explaining what transgender meant and turning me on to a very good book that I thought described me in the gender dysphoria section fairly accurately.   I started making it an outing to go to see her dressed as Jaclyn, taking more and more care in my outfit and makeup.  As I was working harder on this process, it was getting more difficult to hide and sneak everything back and forth, find some isolated parking garage to change and apply makeup and then reverse everything and sneak back into the house.  My mental state was getting worse and worse and I felt that soon my wife would catch on or something would implode.

I decided then that I needed to come clean and try and confess to my wife despite the worry of her throwing me out of the house.  Her and my eight-year old daughter were everything in the world to me, and imagining life without them was impossible.  But I also felt like it was going to be impossible to keep going at the pace I was without being caught or completely losing my shit.   So I started talking with my therapist on a path to come out to my wife.

I remember working through this coming out story and my therapist's advice that I wasn't ready.  I probably should have waited but I also felt so stressed out at the time and needed to get things out so I was torn. I worked and wrote and rewrote out the words several times to try and organize my thoughts.

I reflect now and wonder what possible desired outcome for these actions I was hoping for.  I think I had read so many stories where these sort of proclamations was showered with support and love and believed in the fairy tale ending.  I dunno, but got stuck on doing this.

When the week arrived prior to when I was going to come out, I sat my wife down and tried to ask her to come with me to see my therapist.   From there, my plan went completely sideways and not towards a positive outcome.  The news of going to see a therapist in a few days to talk about something I didn't want to go into at the moment started a major panic attack on her part.

I didn't think of her perspective (or enough of it at least) and looking back I can see why she got hysterical.  However, at the moment her panic and hysteria feed into my anxiety and fears and this combination was like dumping more gasoline onto a bonfire.  We were both not in a very good state when I tried to sit her down and read to her my letter and come clean to her about my gender confusion.

I have repressed most of her reaction because it was too painful to me, but suffice it to state that it involved her crying alot, screaming at me about being some sexual deviant and pedophile, and clearly telling me that she could not be married to a non-heterosexual male in all aspects.

How do you communicate to the love of your life that all you want to be is with her when she only wants to be with you if your physical appearance and actions are what you hate.  In my case, you don't but only accept that my love for my wife and family was more important than anything else.  I told her this and it was still a very painful retraction from my original words.

We did keep the appointment with the therapist a few days later, which was another painful rehashing of what I thought was my truth.  Afterwards, we sat outside of her office and my wife convinced me of all the ways the therapist was putting these thoughts in my head and how unqualified and dangerous she was.  My wife probably sounds demonic in this retelling, but honestly I agreed with her and I am still unsure to this day what my truth really is.

The next few months were very difficult times in our household, I tried to go back from what I said and my wife needed constant reassurance just for us to stay together.  I purged most of my clothes and makeup, keeping my wig and a few sentimental items that were too hard to get rid of.   I tried a new therapist (a man therapist picked out to help me develop my sense of being a man), but that didn't last long as I found him phony and couldn't find agreement with him.  

Looking back now, I second guess alot of things but also don't know if it the similar mindset how I would have done things differently.  I know that this experience validated most of my feelings of shame and guilt still today and I still relive it from time to time.  My wife has apologized for her reactions being over the top and hurtful, and I am still working on accepting this apology and also apologizing to her for the pain I caused her as well.

During our reconciliation period later while not knowing anything of the reason for our stress my father-in-law gave me the advice that somethings we should just keep to ourselves.  In the wake of the disaster that was in mind supposed to release and not cause stress, I am really not sure how to take this advice.  

My gender story (Part 5- Out of control)

 My gender story (con't)

This next section recalls my behaviors and actions following the trauma which was my coming out attempt.  While I vowed to forget my mistake that was my thought I was transgender, I often had troubles in leaving this behind me.  I am not proud of alot of my actions during this period, and I still keep most of it guarded because of the guilt and shame involved.   I will attempt to be candid to the best of my ability but will probably only allude to some of my actions that I am most ashamed of.

After attempting to come out to my wife and then attempting to retract everything, I did retreat back into myself and my shame and self-hate were at a all time high.   I purged most of my clothes, my makeup and accessories and worked on trying to bring peace and reconciliation back into our household.

I have rationalized that I must not really be 100% trans since I was able to admit everything I was thinking and doing was wrong and I was able to remove and literally trash that part of my life.  This repeated pattern of thoughts and actions by me continue to cause me to question who I am still today.

I really, really tried so hard to forgive my wife and move on with us.  Some of the words and statements she made were the most hurtful anyone has ever said to me, and even after the weekend of my coming out she continued to repeat how wrong I was for even having these thoughts.

I tried a coupe of therapists and those all seemed to end in disaster as I felt defensive and most of our sessions felt more argumentative than anything else.  My inability to be open to therapy was another argument at home which resulted in me pretending to go to sessions for several months before admitting I had quit.

Most of the next year was a struggle as I would sometimes relapse and go back to some of the stories and blogs, and then follow it up with a lengthy session of shame, guilt and self-hate.  I wanted it all to go away and be done with this part of my life.

I just couldn't give things up.

Eventually, the feminine desires within me were too much.  I am so ashamed but I just needed to give in.  I started repurchasing a wardrobe and going back to hiding/lying about the feelings I had.  I justified things to myself in that it would be fine with "a don't ask don't tell" understanding. Once I had made that justification in my mid, the floodgates opened up with an unstoppable force.

Slowly I started dressing again in secret but this hiding away was not enough for me.  I needed to go out and have more.   When the family was home, I would think about the logistics of going out when I could; and when they were away I put these plans in motion.   I mingled with some of the local transgender social events when they happened to fall in a time when I was home alone.  I played hooky from work on some days and did shopping trips to the mall or outlets by myself or with others I had contacted with.   During work trips and conferences, I would sneak a suitcase of female clothes with me and then spend the evenings after the day's events enfemme out in bars, clubs and around town.

I also engaged in other activities that I am very ashamed about.  Wanting the attention and company, I also found men online that were looking to date and hook up with transgender women. I know that I wanted the attention and to be appreciated, but I also felt obligated to perform sexual acts on them.  I think I felt like I needed to please them to keep men interested in me, but it also questions in me my own sexual orientation as I cannot deny that I instigated this sometimes.

Often after these outings, I would go back into a cycle of depression and shame, which sometimes involved me throwing away clothes and always hating myself further for these feelings.  

But while I endured this torturous cycle in hiding, it keep getting more intense instead of being able to stop and walk away.  Dressing and feeling feminine on occasion wasn't enough, and my self hate for my body was so overwhelming that I started hitting and cutting myself in disgust.  I started removing more body hair even in places not as hidden, and started during facial electrolysis to help reduce the gross beard that would come back every day.  I waxed my chest and legs when I knew I didn't need to expose them to others during colder seasons, and snuck clear coat polish on my toe and fingernails.

My body was causing me so much pain every moment I was awake and I spent hours imagining FFS or other surgeries to fix it.  I made an appointment at a city clinic that provided self-consent HRT and started in secret taking estrogen and testosterone blocking medication.

Taking female hormones was the most wonderful and most terrible months of my life.  The feelings inside when taking my daily dosage were some incredibly calming, like if it blocked the consistent noise of self-hate I would hear.  It became the only thing I could think about and I couldn't calm down for the day until I had that pleasant melting feeling of the pills under my tongue dissolving.

I can't say I noticed major physical changes in the six months that I was on HRT, but I do recall the enjoyment of losing my male libido as that always felt uncomfortable to me.  I think it was around when that was happening that I started to panic about what I was doing and the guilt and shame of this was building.  How could I do this to my family made me feel so selfish and I knew I needed to stop.

I forced myself to quit and instead of feeling good about this, the self-hate and shame were all I could think about.  My cutting and bruising was now almost everyday, as I wanted so much to go back on medication and also so much wanted to not go back.  I felt depressed, isolated, a failure to my family and a failure to myself.

I wanted to kill myself.  So much, I started to replace the constant thoughts about being a woman with constant thoughts of suicide.  I came up with several plans, wrote notes and tore them up, and then wrote new ones again.  I was out of control and in the middle of the night when this was too much I went to a suicide preventation site and confessed that I was going to end my life.

If it was a disaster to my wife to have to hear how her husband thought he was transgender, imagine how horrible it must have been to have emergency people knocking down your door in the middle of the night asking for your husband who wanted to kill himself.  I don't know how she has the capacity and the ability to forgive me for so much, but I owe her so much for putting her through these episodes.

What followed next was difficult for me.  I had to endure a forced hospitalization where I worried what my wife, daughter and family thought of me (besides my wife, we kept the details secret from my daughter and family), followed by a lengthy time of daily therapy sessions.  I tried to manage my thoughts, feelings and shame through this and again put things behind me.  My wife again stuck with me through this and I was fortunate that my work was understanding to allow me to return to my past state even after everything that happened.

I have never really talked much about this with my daughter about these times and still feel shitty about that fact.  I feel like I have made so many mistakes that I am not sure where to even start to make up to everyone in my life.  I think that is part of my depression that I carry with me every single day thinking of the disappointment I am to them if they only knew some of this story.

My gender story (Part 6 - Struggle to make any sense)

My gender story (con't)

In my previous postings, I tried to recap alot of my internal thoughts and feeling associated with the events that seemed to bring me forward and backward when dealing with my appearance and gender.  I first grew up struggling with confusion and dislike with my body while living in a conservative environment and developed hostile shame and guilt feelings towards myself for having these thoughts.  My perverted sense of self had me avoiding relationships and repressing things for a long time until afterwards.  When I had these confusing feelings towards my gender and body to the point that I needed to research, I found that the world had changed and so much more information and opportunities were now available.  This brought on an obsessive period of self-exploration and self-determination that in the end proved destructive and may not be completely correct.  After recovering from that disaster, I was drawn again into exploration and actions that I feel guilty and ashamed of.  Combining my prior self-hate, low esteem, shame and guilt brought me to the edge of depression and where suicide seemed like the only answer from there.  Picking up from my recovery of a forced hospitalization and intensive ordered therapy would be the next stage in my saga.

It was not an easy time post my suicidal low point for me.  While I didn't have any idea why I couldn't stop my racing thoughts about my gender expression and body hate, I looked at the different sessions and medications as a possible answer for questions I didn't know how to ask.  I went through several therapists and several different anti-depressants during this time without anything providing any relief.  I stopped dressing and going out for a bit as I tried to control myself from going around the destructive cycle that always seemed to end up with bad results.  I tend to be a dweller on things, and more that I dwelled the more the self hate grew inside me.

I got rid of majority of clothes many times but never was able to get rid of everything.  I feel like this is like not really putting out a forest fire but leaving hot ashes that may smolder and eventually flare up again and again.  

I would sometimes go out but I started to feel the shame and guilt come on before even getting out the front door now.   I tried self questioning with therapists and even dressing and presenting as Jaclyn with them but the moment I removed the clothes, the shame and guilt stomped on me.  I felt more and more like a total fraud with my family and with myself, and the self-image disgust got me feeling physically ill when looking at myself in a mirror.

Covid-19 came and that pretty much destroyed most social chances and stopped my dressing as was never alone at home anymore.  I started cutting and self-abuse rather rapidly and the hopelessness and depression felt so heavy on top of me.   This led to another forced intensive hospitalization as self-harm and depression felt like the only answers.   

Again, I think this was mostly a stop gap as I feel like it was treating symptoms and not the disease.  I know that my negativity is to blame, but it left me with more unanswered questions than feeling like I had a path forward.

This pretty much is the point where I am currently struggling with.  I have pretty much stopped going outside dressed as Jaclyn at this time.  I continue to struggle with my body image and self-hate, and feel disgusted with myself even thinking about it while I write here.  Hidden locked away from anyone, I will occasionally give in and get out my clothes and makeup and pretend, but the shame and guilt is suffocating anymore.  

I've started trying to write and explore what I am since I don't feel like any label can really capture me and my actions.  I feel so lonely and hopeless on most days, and the depression and suicidal ideation is my constant companion always.  I'm trying to open up to therapists and others, but I feel so defensive and unable to really trust anyone to give that any chance of success.

I don't have any positive outlook on my future trajectory as I feel like there is no hope of turning around anymore.  I feel foolish, pathetic, sick, disgusting and without really any positive traits in my introverted world I have created.   My life does not have any fairy tale endings, and I struggle just to appreciate how fortunate I have things and my family that has been stayed by me through all the crap I have offered up.

I don't know what the next chapter will be, as I continue to struggle to make sense of this and all the prior ones.  For now, I am going to sign off, but will continue to be here processing and hurting in silence.

Until I have another chapter to write,

Jaclyn  

Thoughts of a failure

 Thoughts of a failure:

Its been almost a dozen years since my coming out disaster and all the struggles and lately I have been feeling the failures of myself piling up like a large snow pile at the end of winter. The pile just seems to keep getting larger and larger and hope for it disappearing seems impossible at that time.

I've been thinking of all the self inflicted disasters that real or perceived I feel keep following me around. I feel like a real fraud, a drama queen, an epic failure.  

In short I am not proud of myself and there is nothing worthwhile I feel inside of me. I write anonymously in my blog or in a diary because I can't even talk about how pathetic I feel to others without the amount of shame becoming all-consuming and stealing my voice. I am feeling so low right now typing out these words and knowing how pathetic I am.

So what else to do?

I've been trying to write and talk some more with my soul mate as sort of a second coming out of sorts.  I am trying to apologize for how the first time I sprung all these surprises and made so many assumptions that someone else would understand and accept without shock, anger, sadness on what changes this would mean for our life together.  I am trying to forgive some of the intense hurtful words and actions that came up as a reaction which is so hard to discern between what someone doesn't mean to say and what they really do feel during stressful times.

I want to apologize for the shame and disgust and self-loathing I feel each day and my failure in being able to move past this and accept the truth on what I am.  I know that talking about these things makes life at home uncomfortable and really has no benefit.  I am trying to detail in the letter how I hate myself so much more just having these feelings and when I dress or shave body hair or browse clothing and pretend to be something I am not, how much pain and hurt I cause myself and want to apologize to them. 

I still think about suicide many times every single day as I way to escape and while it may hurt my family in the short term it would be less hurtful for them than the long-term humiliation of having a freak like me if word ever got out.  Again, I am so sorry for being pathetic and weak and in so many ways not being what they need from me.

I've been trying to write out all of this and what to do about things and it just ends up in a whinny, nonsensical listing of all my failures and apologies for being me and I ball it up and toss it in the trash.  I've tried and tried again here and I don't have any direction or logic or able to put things down in writing.

In other words, I feel like I am a failure at even describing how much of a failure I am.  

I'm not writing this for any sympathy, I just feel beaten down to the point that there is no hope of things ever turning around. 

I feel beaten down past the point where I can protest or logic past anymore.

I feel beaten down and numb for any hope of happiness and have given up.

I am ashamed at all of this because on the surface I have nothing to complain about, I am fortunate compared to so so many others out there in this world that may problems seem like nothing compared to what they deal with each day.

I know that my end will come at my hands and it is not a matter of if but rather a matter of how and when.  This darkness is all my tunnel vision can see anymore and the thought seems more welcoming to me every day that I trudge along.

This probably will not be the end but another failure to add to my snow pile that will never melt.  I am wishing for the frostbite so that I no longer have to feel the cold.

My time

 

There's a moment of time right now that is gone before it is known,

There's a moment in this life when choices are made with answers unknown,

There's a moment in this world when it is spinning too fast for you to hold on,

I am just giving up and stop trying to belong.

My life is filled with hidden emptiness and despair from all others,

I cannot be feel love as every time it is too much the cost,

I cannot be vulnerable as every time I have I have just lost,

And I cannot hope anymore for a different tomorrow.

I am sad, I am alone, 

I am in this world that doesn't want me

And values me more not being here anymore.

I see rain and I'm glad the sun is gone,

I see pain and I'm comforted by its familiarity,

I see tears and I'm confused why I have none.

There's a moment when the hiding needs to end,

There's a moment when pretending is not your friend,

There's a moment when the value of your life is worth less than the pain of its loss,

That moment is every time for me.

Will I ever go out again

Good morning blog,

Recently I received a quick hello from a girlfriend that lives close by wanting to get together and catch up. Nothing special, just a chance to go out and have coffee and chat in a public space as Jaclyn with her.

The problem with that is requiring me to dress and go out again.  

I feel like I have slid all the way backwards to the point when being seen in public is scary and unfathomable once again.  I remember so many failed attempts to get to the front door and turn around and now I don't even feel able to get that far.

I can't explain it, its not like I'm hiding from my family as I was before when I stayed hidden away.  I just feel like I no longer fit in or that I no longer can manage to have the strength to go through the process.

What I really think the issue is that I can't deal with the afterwards again.   I feel like I am skipping any happiness or breath of fresh air I would have gotten by going out and going straight to the shame and self-disgust of myself that comes when I take off the makeup and clothes.

This hopeless feeling is soul crushing and I just feel dread getting up and moving through each day again as me. I feel so sad and like crying. There's nowhere to go

happy birthday to me

 Hello blog,

Just feeling a little reflective as another birthday is coming up this week here.  Another trip in orbit around around our nearest star and not much to report on for me.

I was hoping a few weeks ago to start spending some honest time with myself trying to figure out who I am or better yet what I want to be.  I feel a little defeated as even though I have written and thought about things I feel I am still no closer to any clarity.  In fact, I feel like I continue to take one or two steps back and feel so disappointed in myself.

I wish I could just get up in the morning and look forward to something rather than the usually drudgery and hate to face another day.  I don't feel like I can talk to anyone about my depression anymore and don't feel I can mentally change from this.  Perhaps this is the state I feel most comfortable, it just makes me cry when I think about it.

Anyways, another day marches on and time to put one foot in front of the other and try to fake it again. I hate that saying fake it until you make it since I don't know where that is or don't think anything will ever change.

~Jaclyn

Anniversary week

Hello blog,

Coming up this week will be the anniversary of my coming out at least to the first people in my life.  Not sure if I can really consider it much since I stay hidden from most people, but it is sort of an anniversary I keep for myself.

Hard to believe that it will be now 11 years since that date and it is always a time I take to reflect and take inventory of my present situation.  Really in the 11 years I feel mostly this situation is unchanged and I feel a bit depressed.

I am not sure if I should consider this a failure or the only state for me as I seem to be unable to move from where I am at.  I have taken small steps forward throughout the years only to come backwards with more second guessing and shame at pretending to be something I am not.

I don't know what I am anymore but also don't know why I can't motivate myself to do anything different. I am just a mess and probably won't be anything more than that.

Happy anniversary Jaclyn.  At least here I have a momentary escape.

What does gratitude mean to me?

Hello blog,

I recently was tasked at taking some self-reflection and thinking about what I was grateful for.  I have really been struggling with this as I feel trapped in self-misery and self-hate and happiness something that I see others have but will never accomplish on my own.  Here is my personal thoughts to keep my journal authentic, but it may be triggering/depressing for most audiences outside my head. 

What does gratitude mean to me?  

In appearance, I have everything that my upbringing in white middle-class America has told me to shoot for.  I have a wife, an outstanding daughter, a home, well-paying job, good health, some retirement money set aside, etc.  I don't have financial stress in my life and have the ability to afford to handle any emergencies and still take some exotic vacations once in awhile.

So why am I so miserable every day when I wake up? Why does the world to me look like just a dull shade of grey every day, monochromatic and no better that any day in the past or future.  I think something inside of me is biologically wrong.  I don't want to get into the nature versus nurture debate but I think inside my wiring is just all fucked up. I should be happy. I should be thankful and grateful with all the blessings I have.  I should just be more positive and appreciative.  I should, should, should ....

Despite all these shoulds, the fact is that I can't make myself happy.  Actually the concept of happiness seems like a foreign emotion that has shriveled up and disintegrated inside that collection of neurons that is called my brain.  Like gratitude, happiness also seems like a nebulous concept that doesn't have any meaning to me.

So if I don't possess gratitude and don't possess happiness, does that mean I only possess resentment and misery.  Is the fact I can't even fathom the positive traits like gratitude and happiness because I cannot give up the negative traits in my life?

Clinically I can define many reasons that someone could look at me and nod their head at factors that may have caused me to feel resentful.   We can start with childhood as all therapy does, and talk about how my family was not normal with a special needs sister that took alot of the resources.  Being different to the outside world is never a good thing, and I could probably claim that I development resentment toward my peers based off of this.  I was also near the bottom of my group in terms of good looks, athletic ability, talked funny and had a very shy personality so that again made me different.  I never developed close friends and dated little and again withdrew further from the world I resented.  As I explored my gender issues later in life, I started to resent that I was male which only threw more gasoline on the dumpster fire that was my self-hate and loathing.  I even sometimes felt resentful that today's trans community has so much more understanding than we did in the pre-internet age (although it appears the world is only superficially understanding and even that minimal level is causing alot of societal friction).

As I list all these things out, I am guessing I am resentful but it feels like it must be a subconscious feeling since I don't go around all day long thinking things like "I wish I was like... or I hate that this is like .." .  Instead, I have the more active feelings of acceptance of my worthlessness.  I may have had a shitty childhood but I have accepted that I can't change, I can't use to make excuses for how I am today because of, that was a result of my actions and really blaming my parents or the environment or anything will not do any good.

Likewise, I have accepted that there is no one to be resentful towards the way my life is today because this is a product of my own doing.   Like gratitude, resentfulness seems like an obtuse trait that I can't feel honestly towards the world at all.

Instead all the hate and anger I have is directed back at me.  I feel like the only emotion that I truly possess and that takes up 100% of me is my self-hate at myself.  Just writing a few words about my self-hate feels so triggering as all I hear are loud voices screaming inside my head about how fucked up I am, how I can't do anything right, how that I am beyond repair, how I just wish I was never born.

I feel like I can't get back to a positive topic like being grateful for all I have without it dissolving into my self-loathing and my self-hate.  I can say out look all that I should give thanks for but internally I feel like the only thankful thing I could have is to end this miserable life.

I've tried talking this out, or listening to tools to change my mind's thinking on things but I just keep up ending on here.  I feel so unable to dig out of this and change and perhaps I need something more radical like a frontal lobotomy since I can't change.  I can hear others tell me it is because change requires discomfort but that I really don't feel lying in self-hate is really comfortable either. Suicide is always out there as a solution albeit not a popular one.   Given my acceptance that I can't feel gratitude or anything besides self-hate every fucking moment of every fucking day, it makes me wonder why I just don't go down that route.  I feel like for me the question of suicide is not a matter of if but a matter of when I just finally relent to it.  This is the cycle of self-hate and misery at my inability to ever change, and the answer my warped mind ends up every time.

So, trying to bring this back from my bleak mindset, I guess I should have gratitude for not killing myself.  I should have gratitude that despite inside feeling so miserable almost every moment, I do have the resources to manage a fake persona and support my family.  I should be grateful for being able to act normal in a world while hating myself in it.  I know back to the shoulds, but since I don't possess the capacity for anything positive, a should is the best I can provide.

I should be grateful for another blissful grey day ahead.  For me, that is about as close to happy I can get.

The A* word

 Hello blog,

Lately I have been thinking a lot of what I consider the A* word, authentic.   I am guessing to anyone residing outside of my brain, my aversion to this word probably at best seems foolish.

To me though, this particular word especially spoken in phrases like "live your life authentic" or "be the authentic you" just seems to upset me.  I've noticed that and tried to analyze the reason to death here.

The only conclusion I get towards why this word sets me off is because I have no idea what authentic truly means to me.  I have thought and thought so much on this that frankly I have no clue what direction is up. down or anywhere in-between.

Authentic to me may be embracing my identity as a trans person but yet when I do that I feel like a fraud and pretending to be something for reasons I'm not sure of.  When I try to model my life in my assigned gender, I feel self-hatred and disgust and never quite feel like I live up to that either.  When I go back and forth, I feel like I am ashamed and immature, and hate hiding away or thinking that things will just go away.

I am so so tired of this shit and not knowing anything anymore.   I wish I didn't spend so much time questioning myself over this, but I keep wondering about how do I know what's right for me?  Is this a sign or a perpetual dark hole that I will always keep spinning about.

I dunno.  I am just getting too old and too tired of this and life anymore.

Sorry for spinning an old topic here, but it seems like some of the same thoughts continue to cycle throughout my wee brain.

Hugs,

Jaclyn

Old pictures

 Hello blog,

With the return of warm weather, this weekend turned into being a productive one here for spring cleaning and tidying up my home for the summer.  One project I finally got around to doing was to go through some old boxes of collected knick-knacks and things that had been sitting around in a box collecting dust.  As I was in the middle of this project, I came across an old envelop stuffed with photos that I had saved over the past 20+ years and totally forgot about.

To my surprise, in the middle of these photos I stumbled across a set of the first pictures I ever took posed as Jaclyn.  These were close to 15 years ago and were about the time I first honestly tried to pull things together and before I ever got enough confidence to go outside in public.  

Those images have been stuck in my head most of the start of this week and I have been feeling a lot of emotions positive and negative since finding them.  Looking at these I really feel the transphobia of the first attempting at passing and looking natural.  I feel like a clown with way too much blush and eye shadow and hair/body brings me to many feelings of inadequacy and personal ugliness.

Then there is also some of the feelings deeper than the 2D images that come to me when looking at the photos.  I remember the time that I first tried to coordinate outfits and the lady that was so supportive in helping me explore/discover this in the first place.  I wonder if I came across that person today what I would be telling her.

As I keep processing the images and memories, there is also shame, guilt and confusion that is roiling through me.  Right now I feel like I am wading through a period of absolute confusion, about which way is up or down, about which way I want to go.  Somedays I feel ok and somedays I feel bottoming out and on the verge of just giving up on life and whatever.  I feel that my path is not a linear one, and that I continue to suffer from any internal sense of me.

I would like to accept me except I don't know what the me is that I would be accepting.  I am so sad and frustrated right now that I am so lost, and wish I had someone to tell me what to do.

For now, the only thing I feel capable of doing is to stuff these pictures and memories and feelings away into a box and shove it deep away from thought.    I'm still not better and I know that only I can change things.  I just can't do that even though I want so bad to remove the can't.  

~Stuck in time,

Jaclyn

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.

What am I (part 4: items 11-14)

 

Hello blog, 

I'm hoping that today's post will wrap up a fairly prolific week in which I have been spending alot of time processing many thoughts and ideas in my self-questioning evaluation.   After today I will be taking a little break to step back and view this picture all together and decide what it is telling me.  

Right now I am so close that all I can see is the blurriness of tiny little color dots instead of a the overall masterpiece that makes up a picture.  

In my past posts I have mused about my how my thoughts & behaviors towards gender questioning, obsessions with appearance and gender expressions, sexual and physical thoughts and actions may reveal some understanding of what I am.  When considering this big question, I also need to examine other mental behaviors that may be a reaction to how I view myself.

In particular, I know that I have a hard time over-thinking about things and also dwelling and feeling regret.  In part this has led to deep depressive states and I do not think I will ever have a period of my life when suicide is not at least a passing thought.  It is just the core makeup of my mental state here and perhaps telling in way like how I spend so much time hating my physical body or obsess over my thoughts and wishes.   I will warn if you are like me, suicide discussion can be triggering and will advise to avoid if that is your case as well.

Understanding myself - thoughts/behaviors/actions

(11.)   Analysis paralysis - hand-wringing and perseverating but not doing anything

If there ever is a major decision in life that I make a sudden, definitive decision then that will be the first and perhaps anyone who knows me will really question my sanity.  Overthinking and perseverating are pretty much the standard that I do for anything.

Case in point, posting number five on questioning how to label myself with more to come.  

I don't know why I get stuck at this point and often wonder if that is because I am not asking the correct questions or that what I think is correct is not the true answer.   I think when I come down to understanding if I am trans or if this is just something I really am not but pretend to want to be, not being able to definitively answer/determine anything feels like a sign to me.  I don't want to make a life changing decision and get buyers remorse right after making this, but not being able to decide either way is even a worse fate.

Is my indecisiveness a telling sign that I am looking for something that really isn't there?  

(12.) Stop / Purging - why do I wan and wax

Besides being stuck in the middle of deciding anything, I also wonder if the fact that my obsessions with gender have waxed/waned in different times in my life.

For a good period of time from my late 20s to mid 30s, most of these thoughts seemed to be absent. If I was really trans, could this be true or is this a sign that I am something else. I mean, if I could really stop at one point, doesn't that mean it is not really my nature.

I have purged my wardrobe along with my thoughts but those periods seem to have shorter rebound timelines.  But I was able to do it at one time so I should not really be trans or wouldn't I not have been able to do it in the first place.  Of course, the opposite is that I end up repurchasing later so is that a sign to the contrary.

I feel so turned around and confused and again that imposter syndrome makes me feel like I shouldn't have this if I was trans.   Or do normal people also experience similar thinking and shame about things then return to them. 

(13.) Depression / denial cycle

After all this perseverating and purging, this always seems to lead me back to depression.  I know the cycle may be I think about a new look, obsess over pictures and search for the ultimate outfit, go out and try it on and come home with it, feel good for a fleeting moment then feel the shame rolling in like the evening fog, finally to hid/deny/purge/hate and feel depressed.

It is a very exhausting cycle that I know when its coming but can't get off of it.   I spend multiple hours of awake most nights and throughout the days with this shame, self-hate and what would be clinical depression.

Anti-depressants and fancy therapy haven't helped as I am always trapped with me.  I can't even dream of life ever getting better and this exercise of trying to define myself has started the cycle spinning again in my broken brain.

If I was trans, wouldn't thinking about these things cure my depression or at least stop the cycle.  Again, I know I have flawed logic but I also don't think I can just ignore the years of depression and low self-worth.

(14.) Suicide

Finally, the last point to consider is my constant thoughts of suicide.  This act is constantly on my mind and each day I deal with idealizations of this constantly.

I have submitted that one day this will be my fate, not a matter of if but rather a matter of when.  I have multiple methods, plans, final notes to leave, etc. and feel that I am prepared for this anytime.  I know I have no value for my life as I don't see much redeeming, but also know that I have some hard-wired safety switch that has been holding me back for the most part so far (besides the two half-assed attempts).    Whatever the reason, I guess I am still here and writing this due to some hope that while I cynically feel is unobtainable I also cling to as a last resort.  

Whatever it means, the only thing in my life that rivals my constant questions about gender is my constant thought of my death.  I cannot explain what I get out of closing my eyes while crossing a busy street or holding a bag over my head or looking at a bottle of pills and imagining what I may do.  I must be broken or sick but I will probably do something to simulate or pretend suicide before the end of the day and still go on to do it again the next one.   

This topic may seem so far off in questioning one's gender or label, but again I am wondering if this a sign that I really am one thing or a fraud and failure or what I am.

Well, that is the end for now of me trying to enumerate the thoughts/behaviors/feelings that make me wonder what my label is and calls for a long pause to reflect.  Clarity like optimism is something I do not possess and this exercise is like stirring up the water in a pond with the mud from the bottom.

I am going to sign off for now, and hope that this weekend leads to clear skies and I can experience the solar eclipse headed nearby.  I will at least return to revisit and talk about how I try to tie all my random thoughts here together soon.

Until then, hugs ~ Jaclyn

What am I (part 3: items 7-10)

Continuing on my prior threads, I going to attempt to be honest about my thoughts towards physical aspects of my gender and sex.  These items are some of the most intimate and most difficult for me to be honest and open about.  This may not make sense and be confusing as I am not sure how or if sex and gender are tied together.  I will caution that while I try to remain fairly PG, some ideas may be adult content in nature here.

Understanding myself - thoughts/behaviors/actions

(7.) Sexuality - exploring and openness

While I know that gender and sex are totally different things, there still is some intertwining between these two at least in my mind.  At least in my case I have had different thoughts since starting to question my gender or at least some sexual repression I have been more open to explore since then.  I'm really not sure but think these things may have a bearing on what I finally classify myself as.

For my sexuality like my gender, I don't think I have a straight hetero-/homo- sexuality camp that I fall into and it has been filled with questions.  I am married and spent most of my presenting life as a vanilla plain straight male in public.  I don't feel that it is a simple to say if my gender is female then I'm a lesbian because in honesty my desires seem to be more around a person or situation than towards a specific gender. 

As Jaclyn, I have gone out and dated several men and like that experience.  I am not sure if it is having the feeling that I am being desired as a woman that I like from this or if it is men I really want.  When not dressed I think about sexual encounters with both sexes and even fantasy what it may be like with a woman as Jaclyn at times. 

I feel like I want to explore more of this and really the biggest thing I like is that expressing myself as Jaclyn seems to open me up to sexual experiences.  I don't know if this attitude here really has anything to do with me understanding my gender but rather more to do with not being so repressive in sex.

(8.) Physical sex - wanting to switch from what I have to what I have not

Besides the confusion of sexual attraction, I also feel conflicted by the physical aspects that I am not sure has anything to do with gender. 

To carry on the body self-hate, my sexual genitalia is really a huge part of disgust with me.  I hate looking at it, feeling it, having it and dreamed of how wonderful having things removed may feel.  When I do engage in sex with my partner, I find myself more often than not wishing that our roles and equipment were reversed and feel shameful for concentrating on that rather than the physical connection.

I have days when the bits and tackle bother me so much I need to tuck and wear a gaff even under boy clothes to imagine it gone.  I have imagined surgery and breast augmentation not only for the appearance but to be able to look at my naked body without any fake pads or anything and see another gender.

I often wonder if other men think of such things or how they feel about their junk.  I hate that machismo locker room talk about how big things are and pretending that your god status is determined by how often and how good you use or at least can brag about using it.

Really for me, sex is a vulnerable thing to be naked and intimate with someone and make them feel good brings me pleasure.  I want to feel open, desired, fantasized about and free from feelings of self-disgust in terms intimacy. 

I don't think this ties to my gender as I think these things are not equipment specific. I dunno.

(8.) Other plastic surgery dreams 

Beside dreaming about surgeries to primary and secondary sexual characteristics, I also spend time researching and looking at pre-/post-surgical treatments for other characteristics.

Facial surgery and reshaping is something even larger in my mind than any boob or custom vagina job. When I think about contouring or filling in other things, I often wonder if this is not about trying to look more female but due to my inability to not feel comfortable in my unaltered state.

I feel like these changes will not really change how I feel but rather make me feel more plastic without addressing the true ugliness underneath.  Nonetheless, I still seem to spend time on social media seeing post FFS pictures and dreaming of that reality.  It makes me feel shallow and shameful and again not sure what this all means.

(9.)  Vocal disgust - why can't I stand my voice?

I have spent many hours studying female mannerisms and how to walk, gesture, etc.  But still there is one thing that bothers me even in dark places where appearances cannot be seen.

This is my voice.  Or in other words, the voice I hear from my mouth back in my ears and makes me cringe. 

I know again there are vocal trainings and surgeries to change this, but the point I am wondering is why I can't just accept and embrace the current one I have. While other aspects of puberty really really sucked (don't get me started on the body hair thing or the body growth shifts), but my voice changing was a horrible period in my life.

I remember being moved down in choir as my voice deepened which was a predecessor of me moving out of choir as I hated the new pitch.  I still to this day hate so much that I can only sing along with male singers on the radio without straining or cracking my voice and find my singing to be so awful.

I know gender has nothing to do about being able to carry a tune, but for me it is another characteristic of my body that I have spent a really long time obsessing about.

 

(10.)  HRT desire - contentment or placebo effect 

I'll admit that there has been around 6 months of my life I tried prescription HRT and I like it.  I don't know why I started spending a long time thinking about this and what I expected, but it seemed to be better medication than any anti-depressant that I have attempted.

There were some physical effects (soreness in the chest, decrease in male activity) but those were not what I liked about it.  What I enjoyed the most was the mental aspect of them.  

Being on HRT seemed to bring on an unexpected mental calmness, it is so hard to explain but it was like the relaxation of slipping into a warm bath tub or having some quite in the eternal buzzing in my mind. I don't remember many wild mood swings but more of a contentment feeling within and continued dependency for them stronger each day.

I have debated what these feelings really are often in my head here and wonder if they were really true or just a placebo effect after researching others that had taken HRT.   I felt severe depression around the time after I forced myself to stop but not sure if the depression or stopping the hormones really came first.

I don't know if this was a physical reaction to my body from a supplement my brain had been craving or if again this was a reaction to my feelings of not being right.  

I think looking back to review this post, I still lack clarity to understand everything together.  In one hand, I feel like I have longing for physical changes, sexual desire and openness associated related to traditional roles of the opposite gender.  On the other, I wonder if all these fantasies, thoughts, actions and behaviors were the result of oppressing or trying to not accepting my natural self and I am using feelings of the opposite gender to support these things.  I wish there was a simple way to determine the truth here and I guess that is why I am going through all of this in the first path anyways. 

I'm coming close to my last few items and will wrap up my initial list problem in my next post.  Then will need more time to try to tie this all together and decide what it means. 

Until then, hugs ~ Jaclyn

What am I (part 2: items 4-6)

 Hello Blog - 

Continuing my previous threads here, I wanted to keep up momentum and try to get as much down in writing before hitting any blocks or depression states. 

One personal lifetime goal that I am coming up is experiencing a total solar eclipse live.  Given that this may be the last total one in the US for a long time, I have been making plans to travel to the path next Monday afternoon to hopefully be part of this event.    As I am crossing my fingers for clear skies to view the upcoming solar eclipse next week, I feel a bit reflective on other lifetime goals and experiences.  

Exploring and trying to understand myself in some ways has been at least another experience that has been exclusive to me as well.   I guess that in some ways is why I feel the need to keep listing and thinking about these things and use this blog to 'get them out' of my wee head here. 

I appreciate anyone that may stumble across these words and understand how perplexing I may seem.  At a minimum, I use this blog for me and can only imagine how this may all read some time down the road.  For today though, I keep crossing my fingers that this process will clear my own personal skies and hope that I can see clearly from it.   

Understanding myself - thoughts/behaviors/actions

(4.) Feelings of my appearance presenting as another gender.

Something that has confused me in my life is my relationship to appearance in either gender.   Growing up as a boy, I was always curious with appearance and clothes that girls got to wear which I was forbidden from.  I tried my mom's clothes and makeup on in secret and hid away my shame for many years when sneaking anything feminine on.  Later on in life, I started in the obsessing/buying/purging cycles of clothes in secret and seriously started with trying on wigs, makeup and other tools to change my look.  Soon trying to match outfits and accessories together with cute shoes would become a hidden passion. 

Probably the point that I most remember most vividly is the first time I let myself free and got a professional makeover and photo shoot (hint - image on the blog page here). When I first stepped in front of a mirror and took my whole appearance in that flooding feeling of joy was so unexpected and overcoming.  I can't really put that feeling into words but the rush of that moment still comes back to me at times here.

Since that point, I have continued to go back and forth with appearance.  I seem to pick something to obsess on for awhile (finding a cute pair of boots, a nice casual jeans/blouse combo, a flirty and fun sun dress, etc.) and then put everything away hidden for awhile.  

I still feel much shame and shallowness that I seem to focus on my appearance as I know there are much more important things than clothes to define a person. I wonder if this is some type of kink or fetish since sometimes I can feel sexy and sometimes I can just feel relaxed in other clothes. Sometimes I want to build up my wardrobe and sometimes I want to throw things out and move on.  I guess I don't know what to make out of this.  

(5.)  Internal image disgust / obsession with hair

As opposite with obsessing over presenting in a different gender is my internal disgust and self-hate I have with my "natural" image. 

I am not sure if I am sick or insecure but I really hate, hate, hate, hate, hate looking at myself and struggle so bad at pretending that I am fine with myself.  I can't look at a mirror, photos of me make cringe inside and really there is not one solitary part of my body that I like.

This may be called body dysmorphia or other fancy terms but it feels like a shameful sickness of mine.  We tell children to love the person inside and not the outside but I fall down with this all the time.  I feel silly, shallow, weak, and/or hypocritical as I go through life pretending that I am happy with myself an how I look doesn't matter.  I've heard fake it until you make it but I have trouble believing that making it is ever possible for me.  Just thinking of my image while writing here makes me feel uncomfortable and wonder why I can't let this just go.

To take this dumpster fire and toss on gallons of gasoline would be for me to express my feelings towards hair.

Male body hair is even more loathsome that the disgust I feel for my body overall.  If you are cis female or have very light/no body hair I cannot explain to you how cat-shit vomit my body feels when I look at the disgusting follicles.  I can get stuck in cycles where I obsess over patches of hair on my chest, my legs, hands, underarms, face, wherever and wish I could get over it.  I've even splurged on rare ocurances on waxing treatments that felt so heavenly blissful when done but then I feel the shame and weakness in needing to have done this later.

The one spot I wish I had more hair is antagonizing the part of me that is lacking which is on top of this chrome dome of stupidity.  I think the one moment that changed me more than anything else was trying on my first female wig.  OMG was that fucking incredible to feel like I had hair. Even though I feel like I have no idea how to style or fashion, just putting on a wig is the one thing that makes me feel like I go from one person to Jaclyn and lifts me up so very much.    I will often just wear my wig with the rest of my male appearance just to get that feeling as it is so transformative.  Likewise, the one moment that feels soul-crushing is the moment that I have to take it off and tuck it back away in hiding.   The pain of putting away seems to hurt more each time that I now feel shy about even getting my wig out because I think of the moment I need to put it away.

I'm not sure what to make with all my body insecurity and hair obsession and what it all means.  I feel like I am insecure or shallow that I can't get past this at times and this is inescapable as each day I have to wake up to my physical form and go on.  

(6.)  Feelings in social settings with other trans people.

Since I decided a dozen years or so ago to start venturing out in the world at times as Jaclyn, I have also had mixed feelings around other trans people.   In my first interactions, it felt really nice and validating to have found some other people that had similar thoughts and feelings.

As I continued to go out sporadically and in hidden as my significant other was opposed to this, some of these feelings have changed.  I guess while I look forward and want to do this, I also feel really insecure and like a fraud around them.  Especially when I hear others who go out or live authentically fulltime, I feel sheepish and shameful that I know I will be going home to hide away for a long time after that night. 

During and post Covid here, I tried a few zoom support groups and still have that imposter feeling around others.  I guess the way I would describe this is that I feel like I don't deserve or have earned the right to be around them.  I know that I am not passable or whatever that means and that just seems to pile on my insecurities.  

I guess I feel if I was really trans then I would not feel so uncomfortable but I also feel so lonely and alone and want to be part of a group.  I don't know if this is a sign of anything or just my issues.

Well, these issues are pretty heavy and weighing on me here.  I was hoping that they would provide some clarity but I feel even more confused right now.  I will keep pushing myself forward here as I have many more points to consider but need to come back another day for that.  

I keep hoping for clearer vision and feel like I am muddling through the fog.  Until then, Hugs ~ Jaclyn

What am I (part 1: items 1-3)

 Good morning blog,

As I rambled on in my last musing, I have had alot of things in my head lately and I am going to try to spit them out virtually here as I continue to process.   In my last musing, one of the big questions on my mind was getting to understand what I really am.  Not just to have a label to be able to relate this for others, but more importantly to spend the time to be brutally honest with myself and understanding.  I'm really unsure if this will point me into any direction as a result or what I hope to gain out of this, but I feel like right now this is the thing to do.

So I start this post with the first set of numerous thoughts/behaviors/actions that I have regarding myself.  I count 14 or 15 of these but will probably change this as some are pretty similar.  Since writing them all out at once would be very long and wordy, I am going to break these up into multiple posts so I can take a break at times from thinking and try to remain fresh.  So self-judgement aside, here goes the first 3 items on my personal checklist to explore.

Understanding myself - thoughts/behaviors/actions

(1.) Amount of time contemplating gender definition.

I feel like a spend a lot of time contemplating my gender and often wonder if that is normal, weird and/or telling in any way.   This is not just something recent as it has been on my mind it seems like most of my life.   I can remember snippets of being young and trying to figure out why there was a boys team and a girls team and how I never seemed to feel comfortable in either.  I know that I was told directly how to be a man and how I was supposed to act both physically and emotionally and often wondered why the world was defined this way (or probably since I was not able to naturally fit into one team I must be wrong deep inside).  As I got older and this thing called the internet came into existence (I know that I am dating myself that most of my life was pre-world wide web), my questions and understanding about gender have greatly evolved in the past 15-20 years.  I interpret gender nowadays as not being a binary female/male only state but rather that an individual exists in a more fluid / undefinable mix between these two which can vary from day to day, hour to hour.  I think I prefer to call myself non-binary not because I want a third option but rather that I want a definition of neither male nor female because I don't feel I am either. Sort of like I am abstaining from answering this question although I know everyone from passports to drivers licenses to bathroom monitors in this world demand you to declare.   

Anyways, my question around this point is not to try to answer my personal definition but more wondering why I spend so much time thinking about it.  Is that normal? Do cis gender people who don't question their gender spend time thinking about this or is this a simple, easy truth like 'Duh, I'm a man' and there is no point in thinking further about that.  The honest truth is that I often feel like my mind is seriously fucked up and that I spend as much time thinking about gender and then how it defines or not defines me.  I don't know what that says about me but that is my contemplation point here.     

(2.) Obsession with trans books, podcasts, blogs, etc.

Sort of coinciding with the amount of time I spend thinking about gender, I also wonder why I have at times been reading/listening/browsing trans related books, posts, podcasts, etc.  I think probably around 15 years or so ago I googled my first transgender information sites online and was flooded by all this information that I never thought of or knew before.  For anyone under 25, this probably doesn't make sense as that was always there for them.  For me growing up, I never ever thought of going to a library to research anything around transgender and never saw anyone in person (or more correctly realized that I saw a real life trans person).   My only knowledge of trans people were the stereotype freaks/weirdos portrayed in most movies and shows (Klinger on Mash as a punchline to get out of the service, the Rocky horror picture show as sexual fetish freaks not from this world or normalcy) and I feel ashamed at my ignorance.  

After I started to research online, for me I started writing my personal blog here as I way to process and reflect.  I also find myself obsessed at times with other people's blogs or podcasts, and scroll through the social pages like Facebook looking for other people that feel like me.  I've read several books others have written about their transition and usually agree with some parts but also feel jealous or empty at the end that my story wouldn't have as nice a story.  I write this blog and keep coming back to it even after taking long breaks for god knows what reason but to be in my small part in the community.  

I don't really know what to make out of all of this - is it a fascination to a forbidden world or questioning or self-reflection or what not.  I just know that I have spent too much time consuming trans information here and question if I am normal.

(3.) Transformative fantasies/wishes

My third observation today that makes me wonder if I am normal or what I am is around dreaming / wishing fantasies of waking up in a different body.   Simply put, one of my long standing birthday wishes has been to blow out the candles and wake up in a genetic female body the next day.  I think if someone had a magic pill, I would swallow it without hesitation but since that is so far-fetched I don't see the point in that exercise.  

What I wonder is how normal is it for other people to have this fantasy.  Do cis women ever dream what it would be like to wake up without breasts, a mustache and jeans looser in the crouch (and with usable pockets).   Do normal men wonder how it would feel to have flowing hair, smooth skin and female sexual characteristics?  I don't know why I have had and continue to have from time to time these fantasies about my body magically changing as it seems so ludicrous to write about it and makes me feel ashamed at something so crazy.  

I think I am going to stop here today after these rambling points as I feel like this is only the tip of chasing the white rabbit down the mysterious rabbit hole that are my thoughts here.  I will be back shortly to continue these as I have many more questions and even less answers than these.  I still feel as far away from determining anything as I did yesterday, last week, last year etc. and hope that this will at least help me in some small way.

Until the next time, hugs. ~Jaclyn