So, I'll try to briefly explain my situation first so you all know what I'm dealing with. I'm FTM, started transitioning in 2011, got fired three months after coming out at work, lost all my family and friends except my closest friend, jobless for several months until I got a job where I was treated with much hostility and lost my job a few weeks later when I could no longer bind (wore 2 binders at the same time for 10 to 14 hours per day, messed up my ribs etc), depleted my savings just to pay rent, and now I freelance online making less than minimum wage and I don't get a tenth of the amount of work I want. The short answer of why I can't just make more money online is I don't have any to invest in getting a website (tried making one myself, it was a disaster; site no longer exists), and I can't find any site where I can list my gigs without fancy education (college, whatever) or monthly/yearly subscriptions I can't afford.
Yeah, I'm not great at being brief. Sorry. Anyway, I'm barely getting by financially/emotionally. The only reason I am not homeless is I was able to get a reduced rate on my rent. I can pay for rent and some groceries but that's pretty much it. I keep convincing myself that it's going to get better, that I'll get more work or that I'll be able to raise my prices without losing my customers (every time I do that, I have at least two weeks of getting 2 or 3 orders, tops, before I start getting enough work to not freak out over "omg I won't be able to pay rent this month"). But it's just a pipe dream because nothing's changing, I'm dirt poor, and I'm just stuck in this financial rut.
Emotionally, I am freaking out all the time. I was only on T for about 6 months before I couldn't afford it (the office visit and bloodwork, more so than the actual T), and let me tell ya, the only thing harder than waiting to get on T when you're young and stuck at your parents' house, or when you can't afford it yet, or whatever, is being on it and then having to involuntarily stop. That in and of itself is enough to make me really depressed.
Since I can't bind, I don't really pass most of the time, and so I avoid going out in public as much as possible. I'm a shy introvert as it is, and adding the whole "I hate the way I look, this isn't me, people think I look like a girl..." thing doesn't help. I've basically developed extreme social anxiety, where after I go out in public for whatever reason, even if it's just for a few minutes, I end up shaking and crying once I'm back in my room, regardless of whether people were nice to me or not. It just freaks me out so bad, it's a nightmare that doesn't ever end, where at best I look like a 12-year-old boy. I'm tired of people thinking that I look like a freak, or treating me like I'm some sort of disgusting space alien with a million contagious diseases. I'm tired of being ashamed of the way I look no matter what I wear or how much effort I put into looking like a regular guy.
I've been trying to be more social in an effort to get over this social anxiety and reduce the very persistent depression, but it's just making it worse. I see other people hanging out with their friends and having fun, just being normal, and I think, that'll never be me.
It's not just that I'm trans. I have epilepsy, and either the seizures or whatever is causing them has resulted in very mild brain damage. I'm not stupid. I just have trouble communicating now; putting even very simple ideas into words is difficult when I'm speaking (not really a problem when I write), I often forget common phrases/cliches (like knowing that there's a cliche about a pot and a kettle being black, but forgetting how it goes), I sometimes literally say a different word than what I'm trying to say (not a "Freudian slip;" just my brain messing up), and sometimes I literally cannot speak (it goes away if I wait about a minute or so--try pausing for 60 seconds the next time you're in mid-sentence in a conversation and you'll have an idea of how embarrassing/awkward it is). It's humiliating.
I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of this whole "it doesn't matter what others think of me; as long as I know I'm a man, that's all that matters." It just makes me feel like I'm trying to live in some fantasy world that doesn't exist, while in the real world, I just feel like a freak. I'm tired of trying to convince myself that eventually it gets better, and I'll have money for T and a hysterectomy so I'll never have to deal with hell week again or feel like a girl (my chest makes me feel like a girl, but it's E that's the worst as far as that goes; if I was on T, I could deal with not being able to bind a lot easier because I'd feel more masculine and more like myself).
I don't know what to do. I wish I could just die, but that's really not an option for me; no matter how suicidal I feel, I'm not going to actually go through with it because if I kill myself, there's about a 98% chance that my best friend (who isn't trans but also deals with chronic depression) will kill himself shortly after.
I feel like almost everything good in my life has been taken away. My friend had to move out of state (I wanted to go with him, but couldn't for financial reasons), so I don't even have him to talk to in person anymore. I don't really know what I'm doing with my life anymore; it just feels like everything's a big waste of time. I rarely feel happy, and when I do it doesn't last long. Every time I start to make a bit of progress financially (such as earning enough that I can actually save a bit of money), it quickly goes back to the same or a worse situation where I have to use the money I saved just so I can have enough for rent.
My life is like I'm pounding at a brick wall with my bare hands, and just as a brick comes loose, my hand is broken, and while I fix that, someone on the other side of the wall puts in a new brick. That wasn't a good analogy but whatever. My point is, it's a freaking mess and it feels like it's all for nothing.
I'm sorry. Here I am, posting a really long rant, and I don't even know what I expect from it. I've tried pretty much everything (well, except illegal stuff; I'm too paranoid for that) to get out of this situation, so I honestly don't think there's any "answer" to this mess. I haven't gone into detail about all that stuff since this post is already really long, but this isn't something where I'm just giving up without first putting in any effort to change things. From my perspective, anyway, the only shot I have of fixing this is finishing my novel and publishing it and getting lucky enough to make enough money from that to transition and start really living again. But let's face it, it's not easy to write a novel (well, not a good one, anyway) when you're extremely depressed, and even if it were finished there's no guarantee I could get it published or that people would even like it. So it's basically my version of hoping to win the lottery, except the chances are a bit better.
TL;DR: My life sucks; it's probably never going to get better; and although people who aren't depressed probably think it's a good thing, it's all the more psychologically difficult for me to handle because suicide isn't an option for me, so I feel trapped. I want to change and I want to fix this, but it seems impossible, especially since I have very limited resources.
