Just to be

 Hello blog,

As I am winding down my ketamine sessions, I wanted to take a moment to self-reflect here on the thoughts going through my head at this moment in time.

It has been really hard treatment sessions for me and I did not expect how much it would take out of me. Perhaps I am not a good pharmaceutical person but this treatment has not given me many highs but more a difficult struggle against as my nature is to resist giving up control.  Nevertheless, I continue to push myself to undertake while trying not to judge but to observe the feelings and emotions that get stirred up.

Perhaps the largest feelings that seem to revolve around trying to get past my all consuming self-hate and to accept the different facets of myself without judgement.  There is inner child trauma and struggle there as I need to break past the patterns I developed as a result of prior words and actions that I have absorbed. But really the biggest issue keeps coming back to loving and accepting myself as Jaclyn.

Today the biggest thing that I wish I could feel is the freedom to be out and to just be.  Probably sounds really simple to be walking down the street or at the mall or wherever and to be myself without any thoughts/worries that others may judge me or view me as a freak or some other misguided thought I assume others think when they see Jaclyn.

I just want to be alive and just to be.   There are so many implications, complications, questions and negotiations with my family around this simple sentence and I am not going to delude myself to think that it will be simple and that others will agree with everything.  

What I think though is that I need to start this conversation over again - perhaps slowly only a bit at a time - but I do need to stop pretending it is not something I want and to face the music so to say.

In a way, it feels like coming out once again.  12 years ago I attempted this and planned everything out down to the words that I would say and still it was a large disaster.

I am not sure what will happen this time, but I am not going to plan and not going to try to avalanche my family all at once but rather try to take a more deliberate (albeit a painfully slow one to me) approach to come out again.  In my mind I really wish I could transition tomorrow into a 24/7 woman but I am going to approach this without trying to plan or look ahead and to see where I land after a bit.

I hope that this makes sense.  I tend to doubt myself and chicken out and hope I can have the strength to better my life.  In some ways, I feel like my life depends on it (maybe I am a drama queen lol).

Until then, trying to take things day by day here.

Hugs,
Jaclyn

  

Forgiving myself

Hello blog,

This weekend marks the 12th anniversary of one of the main reasons that I started writing down my inner thoughts and ideas.  Specifically, this past Friday was the 12th anniversary of my first coming out to anyone in my family or friend cycle.  

Thinking back on that time, I started writing a few years earlier as I was coming to understand myself, my inner feelings towards gender and then using it to work out what I would do with this knowledge in the outside real world.

That particular day 12 years ago went so disastrously wrong and so differently that what I was hoping for.  I have spent uncountable number of hours since reliving and contemplating this day, feeling so much sadness, pain, hate, confusion and doubting myself and what I was really expecting.

I know realize that it was really not realistic for the thoughts and feelings that took me almost 30 years to figure out to be shared and understood in one short afternoon.  I was so hurt from the initial reactions from "your therapist must be filing you with these incorrect ideas" to "are you gay, does that make me gay" to "you are wrong" to some other name calling that I don't want to enumerate.   My partner from that day has since asked for forgiveness of her reaction in our limited conversations since then.

While I have been thinking that I am struggling at not being able to forgive her, in the past few weeks I have started to realize is that the real reason is that I have not forgiven myself.

I have not forgiven myself for the perceived pain I caused her and myself on that day since I was not at the point of true self acceptance.  I have not forgiven myself for the struggles during these past 12 years that at times have results in mental health so bad that I have alarmed others to act on my behalf.  I have not forgiven myself and tried to cut and eliminate this part of my life while being totally obsessed with it at other times.

I have not forgiven myself for having Jaclyn as part of my life.  Not my only part or the shameful part or the hidden part.  Jaclyn is a part of my life at all times like my male part is regardless of the appearance I put on.

I realize that now and I am working on daily affirmations to reassure myself this - " I am not a failure.  I am valuable.  The world is better with me in it".

The question is really what do I do from here to go forward.

I feel like I have in some ways taken a really really long way to get back to the same place I was 12 years ago.  Maybe not, I have many of other experiences and actually I think I am at a better place with my self-assurance and knowledge of what I want.  

All that is left to do is to have the conversation again but this time with strength and self assurance.  I have thought about this and have chickened out so many times - the day after my coming out 12 years ago, after my hospital stays, after talking with others in the community, after so many hours of self contemplation, after .....

Like how much I felt before I need to have that conversation again.  But with compassion and listening to my partner, to not deter my feelings if responses are not what I was hoping for, and with forgiveness for myself for taking so long to get to this point and all the failures before now.

I need to come out again, not as Jaclyn but as myself with many different facets that I don't need to hide or feel ashamed about.  I can't control others reactions or predict what the results will be, but to be true and honest to others and more importantly to myself.

I forgive myself and love myself for who I am.

Push to reach the summit of mount acceptance

 Hello Blog,

This week I am coming up on a date on a calendar that has caused me great angst in the past.  It will be date that I mark the anniversary of my coming out - that is the date that I shared the feelings I had hidden deep inside me about my gender with my family for the first time.

This will be my 12th anniversary of this date, and looking back brings alot of emotions to the surface.  Most of them not very good as my first attempt at coming out was a crash and burn disaster as I have detailed and pined about many many times in this blog.

I remember the reason I started this blog was to try and get an outlet to share my thoughts and build up for that date I would eventually come out.  That was one of those things which in hindsight seems really short sighted and I have used this outlet from time to time for so much more.  Mostly to have a safe place to explore, to scream out the thoughts that I hid deep inside from others, and a place to keep my sanity.

I am preparing for my next treatment session which will occur right before this anniversary, and I am preparing for a specific purpose of this session.  While it is an artificial environment, I am intending to try to force myself to be open and vulnerable and to face the fearsome prospect of accepting myself.  I know that I have been my biggest critic, my biggest foe and destructor trying to protect myself while inflicting so much self harm.  I need to face myself and wage the battle inside my head and finally reach that point of self acceptance that I has been the holy grail I have been searching for.

If I can achieve that, then the next part is to go forward with others.  That is another scary mountain to climb but I can't even start that path until I summit the fear inside of accepting myself and that this is good.

I am Jaclyn and Jaclyn will always be a part of me.  

hanging on by my pinkie

 Hanging on by just my pinkie.  

That's sort of where I am at this moment in time as it feels like the quietness I am portraying is hiding the storms roiling inside of me.  I have been agonizing over my cycle of my self-acceptance / rejection / depression and lately these have become really intense.  I am not sure if the ketamine treatments are intensifying this or if this is just another intense period of my gender identity questioning but either way I feel very near the edge.  I feel like I am at the point right now where I am just hanging on to my current reality by just one pinkie and dangling and barely holding on.

Today my therapist told me that it is hardest right before change and hardest right before breaking through. I don't know what I am breaking through and don't feel prepared for anything, but I think change will be coming no matter how much I fight against it.  I know that I have been fighting it and scared of the future and a mix of fear and emotions and holding on to the tiniest bit.  I just need to let go.