This is A post I wrote on a forum I'm active on.
It was originally posted on January 12th 2013
It's all still relevant so It might as well be a first post.
Besides, it saves me having to think of anything intelligent right now.
Today brought news that my financial situation is worse than I thought.
I avoid things that scare me and money is something that scares me a lot.
I've been avoiding certain issues for way to long and they just caught up with me.
My first reaction was to have a panic attack, grab a knife and pace rapidly around my kitchen weighing the pros and cons of suicide.
In the end I concluded my life is worth more than the 16 grand looming over it and put the knife down.
But why? Why can't I deal with these things?
Why have I, for my whole life spent so much time living in my own private reality?
When I was very young, had you of asked me whether I was a boy or a girl, I probably would have said I was a boy.
Case closed.
If you'd asked me whether I thought I'd stay that way, I'm pretty sure I would have said no.
Open that case file back up.
Of course no one ever asked that, and I spent most of my time running around in the fields and woods playing with elves who didn't care and not being terribly concerned about any of that gender nonsense anyway.
My parents were hippies and didn't enforce and strong gender roles, and in my head I was confidant that the anatomy thing would just work itself out.
Magic was real and there wasn't a problem.
I think I was eight or nine when I fist encountered real resistance to my internal sense of gender.
I announced during play time at school that I was one of the female characters in the make believe world we were playing in.
Pause.
"But she's a girl!"
Beat,
and before I can answer,
My friend Mathew (a very astute and compasionate eight year old to be sure) says
"You me a boy version right?"
"Err, Yes, that's what I meant!"
Life ring gratefully received, nothing more was said.
Over the years my disphoria has been mostly experienced as a feeling of total disconnection from the universe at large. A sort of existential dread that has pushed me to look for answers in psychology, religion, meditation and for a long time drugs and alcohol.
I was about fifteen when I went looking for information on how one got a "sex change" and what I found back then gave me the impression that it was all surgical, super expensive and not terribly effective.
Ok, better get used to being a boy.
That was when I fist took acid and started on a ten year crusade against my own mind.
I brought the full power of psychedelic drugs and eastern religion to bear on the problem.
During this time I developed an amazing capacity for existential angst that manifested every time I encountered difficult adult type life choices.
I'd become despondent over the pointlessness of my dead end jobs and ended up cutting to get me through the day at work.
I was angry at the world for not giving me opportunities to use my creative and intellectual talents, all while refusing to face obstacles that I deemed "unfair".
My moral superiority to the way the world worked served as an excuse to ignore things I didn't want to do.
While I quit the drugs and religion (although not the alcohol) about seven years ago and had been getting myself together I still kept ignoring medical bills that needed to be paid and spending money I didn't have.
I kept being overwhelmed by a sense of disconnection from reality which left me unable to understand my own behavior.
Nothing I had encountered in the fields of psychology or spiritual practice seemed to help.
I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.
Last August I told my wife I was Trans.
She's been amazing.
Friends have been amazing.
I started hormones seven weeks ago and my wife and I are finally communicating for the first time in years.
I stopped drinking and started running.
I'm generally more together than I ever have been.
Aside from the suspicion that I'm faking it all.
For the first time in all these years of searching for an answer to why I'm so screwed up I found something that not only brought me piece of mind but has allowed me to functionally improve as a human being, and I'm trying to undermine it.
I've been wrong for so long I can't tell what's right.
I am terrified of losing this.
I'm terrified of being wrong about who I am.
Because if I am wrong,
If I'm not Trans,
Them I'm just a failure as a human being.
Rowan thank you so much for honestly sharing your experience, your fears, and your vulnerability. The very rawness of your words strikes home with issues that I experience myself. The issue of panic, fear, futility. Simply not being able to deal, is what strikes home with me.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the world comes crashing down. But in the end all that is ever broken are our illusions.
ReplyDeleteI think we'd all do well to remember that we build a house of cards for ourselves, forgetting that as children the true delight came when we went one card too far and everything tumbled to the ground :)
You know, lately I've been realizing how different I am all growed up compared to what I was like as a child. I especially experience it when doing "childish" things, like playing with Legos. I no longer play with legos. I make lego models and dioramas. I don't have the imagination that I used to... and realizing this troubles me. I play with kids and they're fully immersed in this world they've created where the toys are interacting with one another, but I only see hands and plastic. hmmm
ReplyDeleteThe illusion of a seamless experience of self is such wicked piece of trickery. As much doubt as I deal with, I still thrill at the refutation of something as seemingly concrete as my own body. I believe we've talked about personal narrative before and again, it's worth remembering how achingly dull the stories we tell about our own lives would seem to our child selves :)
ReplyDelete