This is hard! We are remaking and redefining who we are - it involves loss, fear, and sadness as well as opportunity and a chance to finally become whole. Last week I got right to the edge too. My solution is journaling, usually deleted. This time I've kept it because my councilor wants to talk about my thoughts and since it still exists I will post my musing here. I'm OK now more or less, but most of the time still near tears.
Blessings to you:
2/5/2014
I seem to need to blow off some angst – there are times when I question whether I can, or am even worthy of transition. I sometimes suspect that I have neither the courage to be authentic, nor the stamina to see this through. I don't feel pretty, I don't feel feminine – I feel like a woman who has been discarded and without much hope. Today I would have liked to find a dark place to hide (preferably one with a bathroom, and snacks). I know I am being ridiculous; but that does not alleviate the feelings of fear, isolation, and inadequacy that seem to push everything else out of my head.
It is a beautiful, crisp, bright day but I cannot see the sunshine for the shadows. I choose the requiem over the waltz. Much of my memory is thus, but I have believed that part of my life history was left behind. The persistent noise is back. You can't! You're wrong! You're stupid! You're not good enough! ->-bleeped-<-got! Bitch!
You are just not good.
My solace has been in Shelton and yesterday afternoon I went there for an eleven year old's second basketball game, and a five year old's birthday. Didn't work... Will anything if this fails me?
I hate the way I look! I hate having a penis! I hate it when I have to pretend beinga guy! I hate being an adult! I hate being old! I don't like my own soul, it is dark, lonely, and completely pissed off. I don't know why this is so. The outside is ok. People are polite and gracious. Yet I want to grab someone and scream at them to quit being nice, to quit being gracious, to just hurt me or throw me away, but quit the damn smiling. Quit the ->-bleeped-<-ing sham, I know you really detest, pity, or don't even see me!
I know this isn't true. I know I am loved.
Tonight I will go home, walk the dogs, play with Avea and try to put off going to sleep for as long as I am able. I hate the dreams ... I hate the noise ...
I pray this ends soon. It always has, but it has been a long time since I have felt such anomie at such intensity.
2/6/2014
I slept last night, and awoke this morning about 4:00; let the dogs out; and looked at the stars. At sixteen degrees there is no humidity, and even in Seattle the stars are brilliant. They are like old friends, always there, always constant against the blackness and cold. I want to cry but can't. It's close to daylight now, and I've been at work since 6:00. Time to go "heads down" to try to find a really obscure bug in some code written 6 years ago by someone else. I live inside a metaphor, Sisyphus I am coming.
9:51
I was trying to remember what Sartre had to say about anguish, couldn't and so looked it up. Dealing with responsibility in the absence of determinism creates anguish. I am responsible for both myself and others in-so-far as my decisions affect them. Decisions must be made, and the anguish I feel is contrasted with the selfishness I want to eschew. "Forlornness" follows because I perceive myself to be a free agent responsible to my own sense of ethics, sans determinism and deism. The consequences of my transition to everyone I know are therefore to a greater or lesser degree my burden. I cannot be absolved, as there is nothing external to me to grant absolution. I need to internally reconcile the fact that I know that my choice ultimately is authenticity or oblivion. Either way I own the disruptions to the serenity and security of others which flow as a consequence of my actions. Given that I do not now choose oblivion; authenticity ceases to be a choice but is the sole course of action permitted. Thank you Jean Paul.
I wonder where this will go? Can Sisyphus be happy? Can struggle become transcendence?
1:10
Somehow my musings (and some stray hyperlinks) led me to William Blake. Does anyone understand this stuff it its entirety? Yet: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." I struggle with infinity. I struggle with experience in the Gestalt. My perception is linear, focused, and event driven. My cavern has few chinks yet contains heaven and hell within its finite bounds. I think I would like to peer outside, perhaps there is sunshine, perhaps not, but without looking how will I know?
What if that is where oblivion dwells? Death does not frighten me much. My own dissolution holds warmth rather than fear. I have been with the dead, they do not despair, that realm only applies to sentient beings, and the eloquent dead are not sentient.
2/7/2014
6:48 AM
I started reading Janet Mock's Redefining Realness last night. I like her style. This is more polished than her blog. More on that in a couple of days once I finish it; I wonder if I had the gift of "passing privilege", would I be so public or live in stealth; probably the latter. I looked over the last couple of days of entries this morning. Today I choose the waltz over the requiem, but this is getting harder rather than easier. I am neither here nor there, and the tension between the two poles is constant. Yin and Yang – Masculine and Feminine. Am I doomed to continued oscillation? I am both yet neither. I identify strongly with the feminine but feel like a chimera, a gryphon or perhaps more whimsically, a mermaid. I wonder what Homer or Sophocles would muse. Oedipus, blind and banished, found truth in the hand of a young girl. I identify with despair, blindness, and banishment, maybe that is why I like that play so much. Am I also the young girl whose hand holds salvation?
Am I using literature to connect and thereby integrate myself, or to reinforce the boxes of my personality? Both, I think. When I reread Wednesday, that feeling was intolerable! If I sink into that level of despair for long I will vanish emotionally, or physically, or both. Writing, and reading what people smarter than I have to say, opens the lid and gives the steam of my fever an outlet. Always has, I hope it always will.
Should I share this with Regina? I haven't before, but it is somehow worse this time down the rabbit hole.
9:21
I need to leave Ms Mock and journaling alone. I already have to come in tomorrow, and if I don't get productive it will be all day. But I am so anxious. When someone comes into my office with a question or needing a signature, I go into instant professional, calm, efficient and effective. Then they leave, and I feel sucker punched. This is a real physical reaction, and I am close to tears. What's with all the ->-bleeped-<-ing crying? I know that I often relate to myself in the third person. I think most people see the world as a stage at some level, but to a large degree I don't feel present in my own body right now. Yeah, I feel my bra strap, and when I get an itch, I scratch, but in an odd way I perceive this happening to someone else. The paperwork to change my driver's license ought to be back pretty soon. Will Julie with an F be able to keep it together better? Why am I pissed off at her? For decades I wanted and demanded that she go away. Now I am her pretty much all the time. Except on electrolysis day I'm always wearing a little make up. Nobody seems to care, why do I? Donna told me that throwing on a guy shirt doesn't make me pass any more. I didn't tell her that most folks think I'm just another gay dude, which means in a weird way I do pass. Why am I obsessing over something that is actually only an honest expression of my reality? Why is Julie so demanding of my attention? I need her to be patient and let this happen in its own time. There is still such a long way down my path. WTF! I'm in the damn vortex again.
10:13
I sure wind myself up. Glad to have a reference I know pretty well handy:
"If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases."
"remember that my serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations."
"I have to discard my "rights," as well as my expectations, by asking myself, How important is it, really? How important is it compared to my serenity, my emotional sobriety? And when I place more value on my serenity and sobriety than on anything else, I can maintain them at a higher level—at least for the time being."
"Rather, I do whatever is in front of me to be done, and I leave the results up to Him; however it turns out, that's God's will for me."
"My serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance. When I remember this, I can see I've never had it so good."
I am becoming she who is a much better fitting me. I need to be easier on myself. I will not be any more perfect as a woman than I was as a man. Just more authentic. It is OK to be scared. It is OK to be unsure. I am not a bitch. Not at all.
Thank You AA and Dr Paul.
