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.
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