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