dysphoria, pendulum of madness

[ElDudette]

Spent most of the day with my headspace in male mode, and with it a school of piranha of doubt.  In the last half hour it's flipped to female, with phantom sensations and locked in a screaming agony that there isn't any way to just instantly turn into a woman. I wish I could shed this skin, or emerge from a cocoon, I wouldn't even care if ther was a magice spell, contraption or what ever that stripped 20yrs off my life to do it..  it's so damn maddening and frustrating, and I know at some point this will swing back to the other side and chew me alive from that end....... I need to scream but nothing happens when I try.

[Andreja Silvija]

Honestly, I am glad that the process of transition is so slow, at the least the wait to start HRT. Most transwomen and men are sure of their identity. It's a good test to see whether or not you are going through a phase or are sure you want to permanently change your body and mind, which hormones and surgeries will do. A good article my therapist gave me on my first visit was this: http://darlenetandogenderblog.com/2014/03/07/on-being-sure/.

But I understand what you are going through, well it wasn't to this extent, but to tell the truth for a long time I convinced myself I was just gay. I wasn't a woman even though I hated being male. I was just gay. I realized though, I hated being seen and treated as male. That I shouldn't reject myself just to please my parents and people I didn't know. I can confidently say I am woman and can't wait for my 1st endocrinologist appointment later this month. I hope that you sort out your identity and feel the calmness of knowing who you are and not being afraid of what other people think.

Love,
Andreja

[ElDudette]

Thank you for that article. It & the comments on it helped me remember what a friend at support asked me last night.  "What thoughts make you happiest?"

I am sure I am female, it's just that the last 20yrs of putting on a poker face & acting as a guy keeps causing dramatic thought & emotion oscillations because I've never been one to think in terms of absolute certainty (it would drive my exwife up the wall when I'd add the caveat "I'm reasonably sure, but not absolutely") .   Mentally for me, it's almost like driving a car on an icy road with a drunk passenger that keeps being an $@#hole and jerking the wheel thinking it's funny to see you panic as you steer and counter steer trying to keep the car from going sideways.

When I meditate on it I find I'm happiest when everything is humming ♀'s song

I've never actually enjoyed 'being a guy', at best I can say I was emotionally inert about physically being male. When I went in for a physical after laying the bike down on gravel, I joked with the doc "take 'em, won't bother me any." and I was a little disappointed that they were only bruised. I appreciated my brute strength but that's about it.

Always I've looked at women with a strong envy and longed to be one.  It's only been recently that I've understood that what I once thought of as raw lusting was really a complex cocktail of envy, yearning to be, and attraction. Since I put together the puzzle, when I stop and say to myself "I know who I am.. I am a woman!" My heart flutters and runs wide open with happiness (it's caused me to tremble hard enough that a friend thought I was having a panic attack one day)


pardon if any of that was incoherent, I should have been asleep 3hrs ago >.<