What did that 'do something or die' stage feel like on a day to day basis?

[orangejuice]

When people say it was transition or die, how would you describe what that felt like? In terms of your every day experience? Am I kidding myself that I can just keep going on existing. I mean it feels like something has got to give regardless of my gender feelings. You can't go through life not caring about anything all day every day before things catch up with you.

Its my birthday this week. I've just spent another year simply existing. I haven't achieved a thing. I've avoided people and life as much as I could. I feel so soul crushingly ashamed that I basically still live off the privileged start I had in life. At 26 I am still financially reliable on my parents. I loathe myself for that. So I try to exist in the world. I try to force myself to care about things that I don't care about and I pretend to see a future that I don't see. I'm trying to finish a degree that I started ages ago. I'm trying to hang on to that last little bit of energy that still exists within me that I'll be able to turn this around. That I'll be able to get back to being the 'old' me.

It is pretty ridiculous that I still say that to be honest. Because I am referring to a person that I haven't felt like since I was a teenager where my life was more or less this perfect world that kept these feelings at bay. That was before I realised I wasn't going to be a normal person. Am I kidding myself in hoping that I can return to being normal? 

I'm no longer the late developer with women with the awkward first sexual experiences-I'm the 27 year old guy who doesn't have sex. I'm no longer the shy guy who is awkward in relationships-I'm the 27 year old who hasn't had a girlfriend since high school.

All these absences in my life are now so huge. They are things in and of themselves that need turning back the clock nearly a decade now. Yet I still hang on to this idea that I can recapture that earlier version of myself. Even if I'm only really feeling that very rarely. I'm just so tired of fighting all these battles just to get to zero. Maybe I need to accept that I'm not normal?  Maybe I need to blow up my life in all the ways that seem impossible right now? Maybe I don't even have a choice. Maybe what I am experiencing right now is well on the way to that 'do something or die' feeling. Here is a thought experiment of what my life is like right now-

Sunday afternoon-study for Uni in the afternoon, tell myself its ok, you're going to have a life, you're going to get a degree, you're going to get a job, you're going to be a man, that is who you are it's other stuff that has got in your head, you are repulsed by your own reflection right now but you just need to learn to grow into how you look, and become more confident.

Sunday evening-turn on the TV, find myself relating to the woman character in a tv programme, wishing I was her, admiring her clothes and her hair and her body, feeling this crushing sadness and hopelessness that I have this overwhelming feeling which cannot be resolved-look in the mirror-repeat the words 'why' over and over again. Feel overwhelmed, by the feeling, cave in, start to imagine that I am a woman, start to imagine that I have hair and curves and soft skin, get an erection, stop and think 'why'? don't do it. It doesn't make sense. Cave in again and continue to imagine I am a woman, that I could go to University tomorrow as a girl, interact with guys and girls in my class as girl, while thinking this I masturbate and orgasm. Immediately feel horrific. Nothing has been resolved. Only now I feel like a sick disgusting pervert. A weirdo who deserves to die. Go to bed trying to meditate a little through deep breathing and tell myself its ok you can beat this (don't know what beat this means but just that I'll wake up in the morning and things will be different)

Monday morning-wake up and this feeling is instantly waiting for me. I wish I was female. Swing my legs out of bed looking down at my massive feet. Feel awful. I'm this huge guy. How messed up that I feel this way. It doesn't fit. Doesn't work. I'm a freak and if people knew they'd find me disgusting. Take a deep breathe-tell myself its ok- I'm still that person that I used to be-I just need to eradicate some  behaviour- like indulging this feeling. Feel better. Go to class. Sit quietly without talking to anyone. Feel awkward and uncomfortable in my skin as always but I flip back into that 'me' that I used to think I was. I try to look cool and laid back in front of the girl sitting across from me who is kind of good looking. Leave Uni feeling a small sense of achievement, as I'm walking back to my car I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a window. Feel instantly repulsed. Loathe what I see. Loathe my hair that is thinning to the point of being gone. Loathe my huge bony ugly looking skull and face. Feel completely emptied of all hope. Have to bite my lip in anger. Feel the desire to start smashing things. Try to tell myself 'I am sill me' but I don't feel like me anymore. Me is disappearing into some horrible dark place deep in my brain while i have to live life outwardly in this body that I don't know how to fill. Drive home feeling so hopeless for the future and empty. Have to turn the radio off for some reason. Want to be in silence. By the time I get home I've gone through all the mental processes i use to pick myself up-'you have to keep going' 'you can't give up' 'if you give in to this emptiness nothing will ever change' 'it doesn't matter what you look like, you are still you' 'think about the things you can control' By the time I get home I feel better and go and rejoin my local gym which I had planned to do. I just need to pick up all the things that I used to love like sport and exercise. If I get fit and healthy this feeling won't be so important.

Monday evening-Feel better. Study a bit. Feel that sadness and jealousy looking at girls on my facebook feed or on tv but don't allow it to develop. Feel a bit conflicted while texting a friend who is coming home from being abroad for 4 years at the weekend. Arrange to do stuff with him and others. Look forward to it. This is who I am. Remember growing up with him and playing sports with him and just generally being a normal guy at a younger age. Feel more positive about the future but also like a completely broken person. Parts of me are so incompatible-I'm such an idiot for letting that other thing grow. There's something mentally wrong with me that I've allowed myself to feel like that. The old me is who I am. Go to bed.

Tuesday-wake up, feeling is waiting for me, ignore it, go into bathroom, tell myself not to look up  in mirror at my face and balding hair, manage to avoid it, feel good, turn on tv while having breakfast, see women, feel jealousy and sadness an overwhelming desire, I want to be a girl, completely cave in, remember the things I did as a child, tell myself it was because I wanted to be a girl then too, tell myself I am a girl, but this doesn't feel right, I'm not and I've never had a remotely 'girly' side to my life, yet still feel such sadness and frustration and anger that I'm not one, cave in, imagine it in the same way as before, masturbate, orgasm, feel instant revulsion for myself. Shower while thinking I am so screwed, I've tried to beat this feeling for 9 years and failed every day. I need help so badly. But there is no help out there. No one has thought through my options as much as I have. And there is none. Feel like there is no point in life, can't bring myself to do the studying I had planned-only thing I can think to do is sleep, I need the world to go away, I need something to be different, go to sleep telling myself I'll wake up in another universe where I am a girl, or I'll die in my sleep, something will be different, fall asleep.

Wake up just a few hours ago feeling horrible. Realise I am going to be behind on the work that I need to do. I've done it again. I hate myself. I can't achieve anything in life and I never will.

This could pretty much be any few days of the last 5 years of my life. A constant cycle of picking myself up and then falling down again. Is this what life feels like when gender dysphoria is so bad that you can't ignore it?

[Deborah]

At its worst I laid in my bed, unloaded my pistol, and rehearsed putting it to my temple and pulling the trigger.  I had the whole thing pictured and planned in my mind.  Fortunately it only reached that point once.  That was my impetus to finally confess things to my wife.

At its next worst, which happened a lot, was to lie in bed at night and pray that I die sometime during the night and never wake up again.  That happening every night was the impetus to go see the Dr because I was afraid that I would soon be considering the pistol again.


Sapere Aude

[orangejuice]

Hi Deborah, thanks for the reply. As I said I also lie in bed sometimes and hope I'll die in my sleep. I was doing it a lot at one point, but now it seems more like I pray. Not sure what I'm praying to but I believe in something. Suppose you could call that God. But I often go to bed repeating 'please help me or kill me' in my head. I think about killing myself a lot but never actually doing it. I don't think I could ever actually go through with it which is a positive I guess. Maybe I'm not there yet. But sometimes I wish it was an option on the table to deal with this hand I've been dealt. But its not. I couldn't do it to my family, which brings its own messed up resentments. The actual act of dying scares me too-I often think the only way I could do it was actually if I had a gun. It would have to be instant. But I live in the UK so thankfully we don't have guns here. Good gun control argument right there.

[Obfuskatie]

I waited until my 29th birthday before I had my rock bottom moment where I stayed in bed and avoided my roommates and friends because I was afraid I'd commit suicide if I went out. I couldn't do that to my mom and brother, so I made a deal with myself, I could postpone the whole suicide until after telling them I'm trans and trying the whole transition thing. I used to view getting to where I am now as shooting the moon.
Transition is hard, but it gets easier in some ways as you go. The biggest and most important thing I think is to talk to people. Be real and find peers who accept the whole you. If you're lucky, some or all of your family with be supportive. But your found family will consist of the friends, SOs and mentors you find along the way.


     Hugs,
- Katie
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[stephaniec]

I wasn't going to go any farther , so I  went to the emergency room and they got me help

[Ms Grace]

When I graduated from hoping a bus would jump the curb and smear me on the sidewalk to actually thinking about ways to kill myself I decided enough was enough and went to see my wonderfully supportive doctor. Just over four months later I was on HRT and the feeling that I was finally doing something about it was many degrees of awesome.

[orangejuice]

Ye. I suppose I'm trying to avoid getting to that point. It's weird though, I beat myself up a lot about being a weak person and not having the drive and determination to be successful in life, but it might be actually because I'm too determined- I'm constantly devising plans and strategies and ways of coping with this- they obviously never work and maybe if I was 'weaker' it would all have come to a head somehow. It's like I'm fighting a losing battle but I'll never stop fighting, which means I'm going to spend my whole life in this miserable place one above from killing myself.

I'm waiting to see a therapist right now and hoping somehow that will help but I'm just getting tired of fighting this constant mental battle just to get to neutral. I'd really like to be able to live out there in the world and want stuff from life.

[JoanneB]

Generally a fog, or more like trying to see underwater without a mask or goggles because of the tears. Even a few stolen moments at work. Otherwise work hours were a just a haze, being the machine and then some, trying not to think.

At home, alone, too much free time, The Worse. Make a smoothie and too many Akira Kirosawa movies come into play as I imagine "Just how painful is disemboweling yourself? After all, in just 5 minutes it's all over". Or that drive past your favorite stretch of road where you can vaporize your car at 90+ MPH into the concrete wall.

[Laura_Squirrel]

That part for I, was from late April to the beginning of August of '06. Those were some pretty dark times. I thought about suicide a lot. I was constantly depressed. Even when I was intoxicated, I was depressed. That was usually never the case. The intoxicants would usually bury the depression. But, this was so intense, that nothing helped. I remember considering suicide at the end of July of that year. But, I decided that since I was at that point, I had nothing left to lose. So, I came out to my mom several days later. Even though it was good to finally get it out. It created its own set of problems. But, that's the way that it went.

[AnonyMs]

I never got to that point, but where I did get to was quite terrifying. I've never understood before what its like to be suicidal, and I probably still don't, but I was well on the way.

I'm fine now, but I'm always on the lookout for that slide into depression, and I swear I'm never going to let that happen again.

[CarlyMcx]

I love life and have a very strong will to live, so for me it never involved serious thoughts about suicide or a suicide attempt.  Instead, for me, "transition or die" means having my body constantly wracked by stress related illnesses like TMJ and GERD, and being assaulted by constant panic attacks.

It means driving to work in a suit and tie, and from the moment getting into the car, being hit with chest pains, neck pains, jaw pains, constantly thinking I am about to die from a heart attack, and and experiencing a lot of the same physical feelings of a heart attack, the pains, the nausea, the sweating, lots of trips to the emergency room, only to see my symptoms vanish when I arrive there and be told there is nothing wrong with me.

I've had a full body scan, heart scan with calcium scoring, and soon I will be having my second cardiac stress test on the treadmill.

It means that wearing panties under the suit and tie helps a little bit, thinking of myself as a girl helps a little bit, imagining myself dressed female for work helps a little bit.

It means I live for when I can finish work, come home and change my clothes to something more feminine.  It means I cry with sadness every time I lose a little more hair off the front, it means I cry with happiness when I get my wig and makeup on and see what could be.

But now I have my health insurance back in place, and this week marks the completion of some major financial rearrangements. 

Soon I will call my insurer (Kaiser) and try to arrange to see a gender therapist.  Because I am pretty sure that if I can get even just low dose estrogen, the panic attacks will vanish.

[IdontEven]

Well this is a cheery thread!

For me it was sort of the opposite of transition or die. I spent a lifetime hoping/waiting/expecting to die. When I realized that wasn't going to happen I had to start making other plans. When I realized there was the possibility for something more than abject misery I started pursuing it. Who knew that life didn't have to resemble The Nothing?

[Estelle]

Simply put, it felt like complete despair: a soul-crushing combination of apathy, restlessness, alienation, and hopelessness. I was alive, but I didn't feel alive; I was merely existing. It was so bad that I chose to do something about it immediately, even though I knew that my entire family would disown me and that I'd become homeless.

[Kylo]

I wonder how much of my issues is really down to GD.

...but having something to pin the blame on has only amplified negative feelings - although it has revealed a potential exit as opposed to an endless haze of feeling generally crap but not knowing exactly why. At this point it feels time to take responsibility for this knowledge - do something (the only thing I can now 'do' about this problem - transition ) or do not do it. Cynicism has served me well in life, so I'm not expecting transition to solve most of my problems, and I'm expecting most of them to remain even after. I don't feel like I will be a "new me" unfortunately. But I'll do it anyway because I have to know.

I do have a nagging feeling I'm just one of those people who are particularly sensitive to existential issues but for some reason haven't developed a coping mechanism involving getting out of my skull as often as I can. I suppose it'll come to a head one day - it all feels cumulative. Last few days I've been wondering if even with transition my only real destiny is to jump off a tall building. Some people can just never be fixed - I guess my mother's a prime example and I'm carrying plenty of her genes it seems. I guess I'm not sure if I can be or not at this point, but I'm sure that one day I will be sure of the answer and if the answer is no then I will have to take that long walk off the short pier. Just something I can feel as a certainty that will become clear, as sure as I knew when I was a kid that I was different, and that I would never have a regular life like other people. I hope the answer's yes, but I don't feel in control of the truth. I have tried to be, believe me.

Day to day it feels like I'm strutting up and down on my own personal stage in my head, going over and over these feelings I'm having to myself, whether I'm doing the best I can to do SOMETHING about them all at this point as soon as possible... but with the suspicion it's all a waste of time. The waiting game is annoying, the estrogen levels in my body drives me NUTS - literally, since they've been all over the place since last year and I've come close to complete nervous breakdown several times feels like - and if I allow myself to think too hard about my predicament I become "not a nice person to be around" as my S.O. puts it in the nicest possible way. Every waking moment my brain is thinking about things in a protracted, anal, calculating manner - it always has - and the only thing I can do at this point while I wait is to make it think about other things, and concentrate as hard as I can on my work. I'm actually overworked, I do that so damn much. I mean I have like 2 jobs and I've got uni essays and projects to do and blogs to write and I know it's just too much. But if I drop any of that I'll just be left thinking about what I'm not happy with and what I haven't got and that'll be the end of me. Just in basic survival mode, and hoping to lose some nerve endings if it takes some of this away.

I don't think so much of feeling free or being someone else and all that. I know my problems follow me wherever I go, there is nowhere to run. I guess I'm not tormented daily by the idea of what I'm missing out on but more that I think I'm not myself. That's it - I don't feel myself. I know this damn estrogen makes me anxious, high strung, distrustful, emotional, etc. and if for the sake of argument would I choose changing my body or just getting HRT to put my brain into balance I'd choose the HRT right now just to stop it. Having that hormone mix with my personality is just horrendous - I feel like I'm experiencing all the worst traits of a human personality all crammed together and my head is just completely out of whack. I don't think I can trust my own head sometimes and that's all I've really got. That's what I rely on to survive. Terrifying thought.

Nobody would know this, though. I might as well be a stone on the outside. The inside would probably look like a demented animal because that's how it feels. I don't even wanna know the extent of the damage, I just want something done or to stop caring.

[orangejuice]

I do have a nagging feeling I'm just one of those people who are particularly sensitive to existential issues but for some reason haven't developed a coping mechanism involving getting out of my skull as often as I can. I suppose it'll come to a head one day - it all feels cumulative. Last few days I've been wondering if even with transition my only real destiny is to jump off a tall building.

Relate to that a lot. It's a nightmare to separate. I mean I obviously have a problem. And I accept that it's both not normal and not my fault. But the only thing I know for certain in all of this is that I hate who I am. If I had a more optimistic nature or if I wasn't such a deep thinker who knows maybe I'd be able to just carry on fine in life. They could be part of the same thing- but the daily hopelessness comes from the fact that I can't change who I am. I don't like myself and I can't change it.

[DarkWolf_7]

It felt that I was just succumbing to how I felt in my early teen years, only to be more on and off later on, completely hopeless to the point where I just didn't expect to have a future. I can relate a lot to the whole going to sleep at night and praying that I wouldn't wake up the next morning. People use to say how death scared them and that should have been a red flag right there that something is wrong when I wasn't (I am still waiting to be at that point where I can truthfully say that it does scare me). Before transitioning that was just building up inside me again and I knew I didn't want to be at a point again where I just wanted to suffocate myself for the sake of the people who know me. I felt this awful on and off for years and I hoped that I could get to the point where I start transitioning because it is my last hope to free myself, even if only slightly, from depression.

[stephaniec]

Well, I going to say someone that has kept me alive, but I also know that this is my own solution and doesn't pertain to anyone else because we are unique and we need our own solutions. Please understand that I know the sensitivity that others have about what I'm about to say and honestly I mean absolutely no  harm whatsoever to anyone else or their views and thoughts. I'm just saying this because it's my personal truth and we all have different personal truths that are just as valid as everyone else's truth. The thing and only thing that has given me any hope through all that I've been through in my 64 years on this planet is my faith. I truly would have given up a very long time ago when I was addicted to LSD and constantly thought of death and just lying down on the street and letting a car hit me. My faith is my love and my joy . I truly have nothing , but my faith and I will never ever abandon my faith. This is just my personal solution to my pain and in no way is to infringe on any one else's view on life.

[Deborah]

Before HRT I never disliked who I was.  I actually liked myself quite a bit.  But I did hate what I was and that constant thought led to long term (I think low grade) depression and anger issues.  It didn't really interfere with getting on with life although I think I was often operating at less than 100% due to the incessant mental barrage.

Maybe this is just another way of describing what everyone else feels.  But I never felt any self hatred, just despair and eventually hopelessness for being in the wrong form.


Sapere Aude

[Kylo]

Relate to that a lot. It's a nightmare to separate. I mean I obviously have a problem. And I accept that it's both not normal and not my fault. But the only thing I know for certain in all of this is that I hate who I am. If I had a more optimistic nature or if I wasn't such a deep thinker who knows maybe I'd be able to just carry on fine in life. They could be part of the same thing- but the daily hopelessness comes from the fact that I can't change who I am. I don't like myself and I can't change it.

I think you probably can change it.

For the first 19 or so years of my life I deeply hated myself and probably with good reason. I wasn't a very nice human being and I knew I was going nowhere. If I didn't act to change something there (not transition at that point, just trying to shape myself into more of a person I liked) I was probably going to end up in a juvie, and I knew it.

I really did try hard to be a better person and I believe I succeeded in that. It was a tough grind but possible if you make it into a way of life and a way of thinking. I like myself now, my personality that is - the person I worked to become - so I know that's at least possible. It's also possible to make optimism and escape an automatic way of thinking - after all here I am trying to encourage you and tell you there's hope when I didn't believe there was hope for myself back then, and I did it without even thinking just now as it's how I reprogrammed myself to be. I don't hate myself anymore, just my body, and the fact my brain is filled with the wrong hormone levels that probably make me more neurotic than I should be... but yeah, I think anyone can do it. It comes down to what the parameters are in your mind that define admirable and ...awful I guess. If you think someone who gives their all to do better even if they're flawed is more admirable than awful, then make yourself do that whenever you can and you'll no longer have a reason to think yourself awful.

Well, it applies to the more existential aspects of unhappiness rather than the physical ones we worry about of course. But they can change too, I guess. So can what you consider acceptable about yourself. I was bothered as a kid because I thought I was ugly and then I asked myself why am I even bothered if I'm ugly - what purpose does not being ugly really serve to me? Turns out I'm not really that ugly and I was assuming that as a female my worth would be measured by how much I was prepared to hide my face with make up. Having lived being perceived as female for a while I discovered that wasn't actually true - beauty barely came into it as a fact which was why it was so easy for me to ignore and still go about my life. It doesn't dictate most people's lives at all. And in the end I realized I didn't even care about that. So that was one strike off the list of plagues. Your list may well be very different, but you see what I mean.