Hey people, this is an email I just sent to my therapist which probably no one will be in the slightest bit interested in, but I really got so much of spilling my guts out to people with experience in this stuff before that I thought I would again in the off chance anyone can actually be bothered reading all 3839 words!
I'd usually be really embarassed about being this attention seeking, but what the heck, none of you know who I am! The internet is great!
Hi Dr,
I remember you said I could send you an email if I wanted and I thought it might be useful. You might regret it as this will be no doubt be long again! As I mentioned the other day there are sort of a couple of huge things about my life that make me really depressed that are not necessarily related to my unusual gender feelings. As a result I find it hard to know what is the thing I need to fix to feel better and so I think it will be beneficial if you are aware of those things too. I'll list them and then try to explain if and how I think they could relate to my gender feelings. Here goes, again sorry this will probably be long!
my leg injury
This has been a massive aspect of my life that has made me very unhappy. Sport was really the only enjoyment I got out of life. That might sound like I must have had a pretty miserable time but it was actually the opposite because I was able to do it all the time as a kid and a teenager. I loved exercising in any way. I would go to the gym every day and feel kind of down if I couldn't. I've always been a very shy person. I have always had this feeling that I'm different to everyone else. I feel like everyone else lives in the world in front of them and I live in my head. It's like I have this suffocating layer between me and the world-like in every interaction I have with anybody all my actions and words are filtered through this wall of a thousand thoughts. By the time they come out they don't feel authentic. I never really know when I'm being really me. I constantly feel like I'm just doing what I think might be acceptable to others or saying what I think others would say. Playing sport was the only place where that filter just lifted completely. All of a sudden I knew who I was. I knew exactly what I was doing and what I wanted. It was the only place I really liked myself. I was confident on the sports field. Even a leader. I was captain. Since injuring my hip that feeling has gone. It's a long story but I spent two and a half years trying to get it fixed, I received multiple and contradicting diagnoses. It drove me crazy. I know the problem was real but the way it all unfolded I couldn't help but feel I was being soft, or it was somehow my fault. It got to the point where if it couldn't be fixed, all I wanted was someone to say definitively-'yes this is the problem, and it'll never be fixed properly.' Instead it was, 'it might be this', 'I think it's this' or 'this might work'. People would ask me why I wasn't playing and I couldn't really tell them why. It was, and still is, a really lonely and frustrating feeling. After two and half years of being very unhappy I was having my second operation on it and I decided that I only had one option-to pretend like it was fixed after no matter how it really felt. I felt like I'd reached the limit of what I could handle in terms of going to doctor after doctor because I was so unhappy. The operation did seem to help a little but I still felt significantly impeded in my ability to run. I made the decision I was going to go ahead and train and play sports anyway.
It has not been the same experience for me since. I found that the feeling of relief, confidence, of that barrier lifting in my head that I mentioned above, was gone. I didn't trust my body. Instead of just instinctively doing what I knew to be the right thing, everything goes through that filter again. When your head is a hundred steps ahead of what your body is actually capable of it is hard to handle and just adds all those thoughts back in to your head rather than just doing. It won't be uncommon for me to be actually running around and thinking 'this is rubbish', because I can see things but can't but I can't do them. One of the worst things is no one knows that I'm dealing with that. And at risk of sounding cocky what also makes it worse is my ability as a player. There are some things that I can do on the pitch which don't necessarily rely on being hugely athletic with my legs. So people see those things and naturally assume that I'm fully fit. It's only me who knows that I am not. The nature of the way the injury feels is really lonely too. The best way I can describe it is that running feels wonky. It's not that I can't at all, or that I get huge pain when I do, but that it feels unnatural. It's like mechanically something is going wrong when I run. Anyway because of this over the years since the injury, I have gone back to playing, found it massively frustrating, and then quit again. I have done this over and over. I've done it so many times and I know people don't know why. I know I have the reputation of showing up for a few weeks and then quitting. It's hard not to feel bad about yourself when you know that is how others see you. On top of it all I have had to watch as a few of my other friends, who, again at risk of sounding cocky, aren't as good as I know I would have been- go on and achieve reasonable success. I have one friend who has sort of found that love of exercise and the gym that I used to have. He didn't have it before but now it's sort of become his thing. I've watched him go from a fairly quiet, reserved person, to a confident, outgoing, popular one, and it's all because those things just come added on with being a success on the field. It's so petty and I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am going to be honest- I hate it. I feel like everything that I liked, that made me me, that was my thing, that I got all my confidence from, has been taken away, and I've had to watch someone else take all those things. And then he is the nicest guy, so I feel nothing but self-loathing for having these stupid, selfish thoughts. I feel so ashamed that I can't just be happy for him.
I also feel so much shame that I've handled my injury so badly. Its been so long now that I've been feeling this way and I'm 25-I'd be half way through my sporting life anyway, as a hobby or otherwise. There's more to life than that and people have to deal with way worse things happening than I have had to and so again the fact that I still can't handle it fills me with complete self-loathing. I can't help but feel others have the same opinion. They are sympathetic that getting injured was an unlucky thing to happen but that it is pathetic that I haven't got over it. I sort of feel like that washed up guy you see in movies who peaked at high school. And I hate myself for it.
my social anxiety
Another thing that I have been dealing with, which makes me unhappy, and which I have always felt was separate form any gender feelings is some social anxiety. This is where I have always felt that feeling of being different to everyone else comes from. I find being around people in general quite difficult. My injury problem causes me to not enjoy playing sport, but there is a massive social aspect to it as well, a side of it that you are supposed to enjoy. That isn't the case for me. Any place where I'm around more than one or two people I feel really uncomfortable. I sweat a lot and the feeling of being trapped in my head is unbearable- to the point where I just want to go home. When I do and shut the door behind me I get a massive feeling of relief. When you are having to overcome that on a daily basis it makes life pretty miserable. It is difficult because deep down I don't feel that is who I am. When I am myself I actually feel I'm a pretty laid back and confident person, which may sound like a contradiction, but that's the person I am when I'm around people I'm comfortable with. People who really know me. It's just that the situations where I am able to feel like myself have become fewer and fewer over the years to the point where I almost feel like its zero now.
I always had this feeling in the back of my head that sport was going to be my way out of life; like it was going to allow me to build a life without ever having to do all the things that I knew I was going to find difficult. A massive thing that brings me down now is when I think of the future I don't want anything from it. I don't want anything from tomorrow. I don't want anything from next week or next year or five years from now. Most of the time I stay up way too late watching TV because when I think about going to bed I feel like then I'll just wake up and it will be tomorrow and then what? This is why I feel like I'm faking it all the time. Everything I do or say I just feel like I'm lying. I feel so uncomfortable going through all the normal conversations you have on a daily basis because I know the real answer to most questions for me is 'I don't care'. I feel like I'm different to everyone else. Like I'm missing the part of me that is supposed to give you the drive to want a future, to go out and meet people, to follow a career and pursue relationships.
my appearance
Again I am really embarrassed to admit it but I'll just try and be as honest as I can. My hair started to fall out when I was 18 and I have yet to figure out how to handle that. It makes me depressed every single day. I feel it has changed my appearance a lot. I also hate the way my features have changed. Everything seems to have got bigger. Basically I used to like the way I looked but now I hate it. A simple glance in a shop window can literally make me depressed for days. A trip to the bathroom when out can change a good night to a bad one in a second just by glancing in the mirror. It's mostly the hair loss thing. I can't handle it. Again I know it's completely vain and pathetic. People have it worse than me and I still have a relatively normal looking head of hair. Since I've been 18 I've thought, this sucks but I guess one day I'll be mature enough to not let it bother me. That hasn't happened. If anything I feel worse about it every single day.
my addictive behaviour
I mentioned to you that I have developed a bit of an addiction to masturbation. This in itself causes me massive amounts of shame. After doing it I don't want to go out, I don't want to see anyone, I don't want to answer my phone because I hate myself so much. I try more or less on a daily basis to stop but it's been 7 years now without success. The constant cycle of doing it, resolving to stop, and failing, leaves me feeling completely depressed and hopeless. It definitely doesn't help with my physical fitness either. I always have this feeling in the back of my mind that I've exacerbated my injury over the years; like I've brought everything on myself because of this shameful habit that I can't stop.
So now I think it will be helpful if I explain if or how all this affects things when I'm trying to figure out the unusual gender stuff.
the injury
I think of a scenario where I could have continued doing all the things that I like to do and that make me happy. It's possible that would have allowed me to be happy as a whole. I always imagined being female. I liked doing it. It was like imagining winning the lottery or imagining being a superhero as a kid, but that was all it was. It didn't feel like anything real, and that may have been because what was real for me at the time, I was perfectly happy with. I liked myself and I was happy doing the things that I loved. I guess I am scared that the combination of things that have made me depressed about myself have made me focus on the gender feelings and turn them from something fun to imagine into something more, and that is not necessarily what is really 'true' for me.
the social anxiety
I hear a lot of transgender people express exactly the same feelings as I have always had. That they always felt like something was wrong, that they were different, that they felt like they were living a lie. This is really difficult for me because I really relate to those feelings, but they often come with the added explanation that they felt like they were pretending to be a guy or filling a role. I never felt like that. I felt different, but not because of being a guy. I have always put it down to being shy and painfully self-aware. It makes a lot of sense to say, well if you look at that in conjunction with my unusual gender feelings this makes perfect sense. I can definitely see why that explanation makes sense, but I don't really feel that link between the two. I try to look back and see if the times and things I felt uncomfortable with were 'male' in the stereotypical sense. I do remember realising at around 12-13 that I was a deeper type of thinker than other boys at that age and more emotionally understanding too. I would sort of find some of the humour immature at that time and I was aware that I might make a more 'female' observation about something that others didn't, but I made plenty of 'male' ones too. I actually remember thinking that I'm going to be better at chatting up girls than my friends because I knew that I understood them better! That made me happy and only served to sort of reinforce my proud male self.
It wasn't until 18 when relationships and sex became a constant topic of conversation that I began to feel really different. I realised that I didn't feel the same way about it that most guys do. I basically don't have that desire to pursue sex constantly like my friends did/do. I feel like a total outcast because of that. It was something that I wanted to happen but just as a sort of checklist in terms of growing up. I'm also aware that I kind of have a more emotional sexuality if that makes sense. Things changed again after my first sexual experience and continued to change as I got older. I'll leave this bit out as I put it in my previous email but as I mentioned there is a whole bunch of confusion about my sexuality. I sort of feel like it isn't related to my body in any way. I know it's really weird but I feel like my sexuality virtually has a female body.
my appearance
Again this is difficult because I read a lot of transgender people saying that they hate the way they look, that they feel like their body doesn't represent who they are. I feel exactly the same. The future looking the way I feel I'm going to look seems unbearable. I feel like who I am is trapped in my head and when I look in the mirror I don't see me anymore, but I used to, and again I don't have that added part that it is because my body is male. I sort of have this suggestion in my head that why I liked my appearance younger but not now, is because my face and body have masculinized. The things that I can't stand are typically male things, like going bald and my forehead and features sort of getting bigger. But again I've never made that link before. There was nothing that I hated previously about looking in the mirror and seeing a guy. Again I think I could be making my gender feelings more of an issue because it would give me permission to change my body, when again it might not necessarily be really what is going on with me.
the addictive behaviour
This is the most difficult part to understand. I think that I said to you in my session that if I was to resolve those gender feelings it would be like fixing only a little part of me which I said was the complete shame I feel all the time. You rightly said that isn't really a 'little' part, but here is what I really can't figure out. All the other stuff, all the things which I hear more typically are reasons why people feel they need to change their gender, the social uncomfortableness with being seen as the opposite sex and feeling uncomfortable at filling that gender role; I definitely think I have some of that aspect of gender dysphoria, but I'm not sure that is what brings things to the surface for me. What does make my unusual gender feelings a massive issue is the addictive behaviour that comes with it. That and my sexuality. I feel like I don't need to be female, I just need the longing to be female to go away, and I need my sexuality to 'fit' my body. I think all the rest of the stuff I could easily handle. On the handful of times I have tried to stop masturbating and made it longer than a week, during that period, at the times when I'm not thinking about it, sitting talking to my friends for example, I feel better, a lot better, but I'm never able to stop it from coming back. It can be triggered by anything, it's not as if you can avoid females completely. It can take someone's hair, or someone's clothes, or a picture, or something on TV, or a dream. I can't stop that longing from coming back. And then the only thing that I can do about it is masturbate, which I do and then feel completely horrible about myself.
I suppose sitting here thinking it all through, one of the strongest things that I would lead me to the conclusion that I am transgender, is that if I think of the future as a girl, I could imagine one. When I imagine waking up in the morning as a girl I always feel like I'd want to go out and do something, anything, which is the complete opposite of how I feel now. I feel like all the shame I feel about not feeling like I have a purpose, about not having any idea about a career, wouldn't matter. Like I could do anything and it wouldn't matter I'd be happy. BUT I still feel it's possible that that is just because the desire has grown over time and it doesn't mean it didn't originate in a sexual place. But then again maybe it doesn't really matter where it comes from. If I was given the choice to take a pill and be female forever I would.
I feel so depressed and trapped by all this. There is no answer to it. I want to be female. But I don't want to be a guy trying to be female. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of what hormones can do, I know they can do pretty amazing things, but they wouldn't work for me. There are also so many reasons why going through that isn't an option never mind the physical ones. I'm really shy, I hate any attention, and I have a tendency to constantly question everything (you may have noticed!) When your conviction would be tested every single day there doesn't seem any way I wouldn't be miserable going through that. I also think the part of me that would feel more comfortable being female is really deep down, sort of emotionally, but outwardly I'm pretty male. I mean if I was a girl, I don't think there would be anything hugely masculine about me, but the fact that I wouldn't be a girl, instead look like a guy trying to be a girl, me being me would make people uncomfortable, I think it would even make me uncomfortable. I know it's totally wrong and I shouldn't feel like this but when I see transgender people who obviously don't pass as their desired gender it does makes me feel uncomfortable. I'd never judge anyone, or dislike them as people in any way because of that, I even admire the strength that it takes to be yourself and not care about what others think, but that's not me. Even if physically I felt I could pass as a girl there's something about having to fake a voice that again makes me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't do it. Never mind the money it could take being a 25 year old student with no idea of where I'm going in life.
That's about it. Sorry this is crazy long! I feel like I have to know I've said everything. I really hope I can try and take something from seeing you. Right now I just feel like the future for me is only going to be about holding life at bay long enough to get through it. All I want to do right now is watch TV and sleep because it takes my mind off somewhere else. I feel like I could never kill myself but having said that I'm pretty scared of where I could be in 5 years or 10 years if I can't feel differently about myself. Nice cheery note on to end on! Thanks for reading, (if you managed!) and I look forward to seeing you next week.
