Hi,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a wandering soul trapped into a cage of flesh that doesn't reflect her true nature in her twenties. Ereshkigal is the nickname I chose on this site in reference to the Goddess that ruled Irkalla in the Mesopotamian mythology but you can call me Alice if you want. I decided to made an account there because I am struggling with gender identity issues, which is something that probably won't surprise you, and the more I live, the more my gender dysphoria becomes unbearable as if it was some kind of black poison destroying my entire self mercilessly. I needed a place where I could freely about this kind of subject without fearing being judged harshly or being insulted for that since I received a lot of transphobic insults throughout the internet.

Ever since I were a child I have always felt different from others. Unlike most of people I were extremely introverted, prone to withdraw to the deepest depths of my inner world I founded more interesting than the outside one, and people didn't understand me and saw me basically as some kind of weirdo. It's from this period of my life I were beginning to struggle with the excruciating gap there is between my mind and my body. I have been assigned male at my birth but I never understood why I were born like this. I didn't understand how I could be submitted to such a distortion between the mind and the matter. I have always seen myself within my mind as a young girl with long black hair but since I am trapped in this lamp of flesh, I feel like my whole life has been entirely wasted.

Because of my gender dysphoria I am struggling with self-esteem issues. I always hated myself with all my might, thinking I am an abomination that shouldn't have ever been born, thinking I were something unworthy of being loved. And this downward spiral of self-hatred worsened dramatically since I became a teenager. My body, this hideous prison, began to change in a way that threw me into despair. I couldn't understand rationally why I were engulfed in all  those masculine aspects that made me want to puke. Therefore I spent my entire adolescence being ravaged by this sense of loss and this self-hatred. My head was filled with suicidal thoughts. I even tried to die twice since I couldn't manage to hold this despair of mine. The more I get older, the more I tend to think that my existence is a mistake. I don't know if there is a way for me to escape from this vicious circle, and that makes me utterly unhappy.

Fortunately I have been gifted with an unfathomable imagination. I created an entire world within my own mind in order to cope with the fact that I am dysfunctional. Painting dreams within the palace of my mind gives me some kind of liberation from my suffering even though it's temporary. I just wished I could have been happy in Reality. I just wished I could have been able to know how does it feel to be loved by someone and being able to love this person back. Love is something I can't even imagine in my current state, trapped in this body I abhor so much. My despair reached a point I dissociated myself from my allegedly body. Internet, in a sense, allows me to be freed from this shapeless lamp of flesh and I create different personas, the women that exist me within me. Will I ever be able to become the woman I am inside of me? I just wish I could. What's the point of being alive if you can't even be your true self? There is absolutely none. I don't want to compromise. Time's over for that.

I don't know if you know about this - probably, it's something quite popular on the internet - but I became madly obsessed with the MBTI. For those who don't know about it, it's a personality test that has been mainly inspired by the work of Carl Gustav Jung. Among those sixteen personalities type one stroke in particular : INFJ, the rarest personality type that represents 1.5%. Is there words that can describes the overwhelming feelings I felt when I learnt I had the rarest personality type? I began to cry as if I could understand myself bit by bit. I think it might be exaggerated but I wonder if there is some correlations between my personality type and my gender dysphoria. It's probably wrong since most of the INxJ types I met online weren't particularly subjected to gender dysphoria, but let me to explain. INFJ and INTJ have four cognitive functions that explain their way of thinking. One of them is introverted intuition, their dominant function. Introverted intuition means you have been gifted with a rich, unfathomable inner world. It also describes as a function of the prophets whose inner visions are basically otherworldly. INxJ's last function is extraverted sensing. This function means being in touch with the external world and sensations. But since this function is inferior among INxJs it means it takes a shape that is extremely immature. You know what I mean? It means due to the dichotomy Ni/Se there is always a gap between mind and matter. Which explains why I feel so uneasy in the concrete world and dysphoria worsened that. I feel like I were born in a body that wasn't me - I still think that - and that makes me suffering all the time.

I think I digressed a bit too much. I apologize deeply. ^^

P.S. : Could you please tell me how to wear an avatar there? I am quite clumsy, so...

P.S. 2 : English is not my first language - I am from France - and I must admit I learnt everything all by myself through my endless journeys on the internet. So if there is some things you don't understand because my way of speaking is a bit broken, do not hesitate to tell me. I'll try to be understandable as hard as I can.

Welcome to Susan's Place. As you  will see in the links below, your account will remain locked until you reach 15 quality posts. We do this so we can spot people who aren't welcome here and stop them before they cause harm to our members. All of spend a great deal of time trying to understand why we are the way we are. For a long time nobody knew but recent research indicates that before we were born, our brain develops as the gender opposite that of our body. The only questions we should ask is if a transition is right for us. You might want to look at the "the transition channel" where I think you will find you aren't that different.

From what I understand, the French medical system has a gender program in place. It hasn't been talked about much on the forum but I picked up a few bits and pieces around the site. You should discuss this with you doctor and see what's available. Hopefully someday you will be able to say making an account on Susan's was the best day of your life.

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Your English is amazing, even poetic.  You describe our feelings better than most of us can.  You have obviously suffered, but you have come to the right place.  You clearly understand the psychology of gender dysphoria far more than I do, so I can't help, but I'm sure that you will find people here who can.

Hello, Ereshkigal.

I love your words, they are an artists words. Your English is very good.
Your feeling of disconnection and self loathing is a very familiar one for me. Your inner self can be set free. But it will take time and many, many more miles for you to walk. You will free the real you and she will love the world and all its beautiful problems.

Be strong and live for you.

Paula, X.

Hi Erishkigal 

Welcome to Susan's Place    Glad to have you here, join on in the fun

Hugs

V M

Thank you very much for your replies. I am deeply moved. ^^

Hi Alice! (I went with the name that I could pronounce. )

I know exactly what you mean about fantasy worlds. I would always lay awake at night for hours, building complex worlds in my head. It was my outlet for many, many years in my teens and twenties, rivaled only by playing video games with female characters.

And your English is beautiful!

Hello Roll!

I can relate to everything what you wrote. In my case, I spent a lot of time playing a lot JRPGs in order to escape from this excruciating reality I couldn't accept even though I were trapped in it. I identified myself with complex, deep female characters such as Celes and Terra from Final Fantasy VI, or Elly and Miang from Xenogears. I think there is some kind of mysterious beauty in JRPGs that is utterly non-existent in Reality. I also spent a good amount of my time indulging myself into MMORPGs. I didn't play MMORPGs to be the strongest. That was totally meaningless to me. But I loved to RP with people. It helped me to cope with gender dysphoria. I could be whatever I wanted, a mischievous necromancer with a cynical sense of humor, a disdainful aristocrat always wearing a scornful smile, or a melancholic poetess with eyes filled with despair. I immerge so deeply in those universes I tend to find reality extremely tasteless in comparison. It's as if I were doomed to sublime everything with my imagination. What is impossible in the concrete, material world becomes easy to create within my own world. I feel those things so deeply as if it was happening to me in reality.

Once I imagined myself as a sorceress being haunted by revengeful inquisitors, and I were madly, insanely in love with a young girl with black-haired who sang divinely. The two of us were deeply in love as if our souls were one. And it was the beautiful feeling. We were finally killed by those inquisitors but before dying, we exchanged a bloody kiss. I were literally crying. I am may be a bit morbid but I found this story beautiful. I felt it as if it was real.

Well, I guess I am a hopeless romantic... ^^'

The Singularity may occur in our lifetime so who knows, maybe the Internet could one day be your reality? lol

I actually got INFJ on that test too. I took it for my Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace course at school.

I understand your desire to lose yourself in fantasy. I did that a lot before transitioning. I became fascinated with outsider artists Henry Darger and Daniel Johnston, and the poet William Blake, who all created their own cosmologies complete with archetypes that represented certain aspects of themselves and attempted to emulate them. I drew a lot and the subject of many of my drawings were sullen, dark-haired women (how Freudian). I became engrossed in TV dramas like Six Feet Under and began to feel like I knew the characters in real life. I didn't see myself living past 30, though... it was a sad life. Then I met my current romantic partner and things changed. She was the first person I felt I could be honest with I let slip the whole trans thing at the beginning and, funny thing is, she was okay with it. That was two years ago. I can tell you that my whole life has done a complete 180 and I not longer feel the dissociation you are talking about... well not all the time... physical intimacy still causes a lot of issues for me, but in all other aspects of my life, I'm doing well staying in the present.

But I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. I would encourage you to find some way to get outside your fantasy world though. Take it from someone who has lived in one herself... no matter how engrossing it may feel, deep down you know that it's fantasy and that there will always be a reality behind it. Finding a way to adapt and cope with that reality is the best way to overcome that dread of it. Fantasy is like a drug, you gain a tolerance and will take more and more of it and it will in the end consume you're whole life.

Hi Allie,

Your relationship with girlfriend seems wonderful and you seem to be extremely happy with her. I wish I could meet someone like that during my lifetime. I am also extremely mesmerized with outsiders who managed to transfigure their pain and despair into magnificent art. That is the reason why I shall never cease to be fascinated to read poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Artaud, Verlaine, Lautréamont, Nerval. Their art makes this boring reality strangely vivid as if everything around suddenly became filled with colors and phantasmagorias. And this beauty moves me to the core.

There is indeed always a reality behind fantasies but fantasies is what keeps me alive throughout the years no matter how hard I fell into the depths of despair. If it weren't for my endless imagination I would have died many, many years ago. Certainly I am very disconnected from everything but think about it deeply. Reality is by essence nothing inherently ambiguous. We cannot say with certainty what we see through our senses is real or simply the product of our imaginations. I cannot even say with certainty if what I see myself is real or if I am even a real person or simply a mere illusion. What is reality, after all? What if the entire world around us was unreal? Personally I can't even say for sure if I am a real or just an ephemeral dream. Everything is inherently ambiguous to me. But that's obviously only my humble opinion.

In fact, I feel the unconscious need to dissociate in order to cope with all of my traumas...

Quote from: Ereshkigal on October 21, 2017, 09:39:54 PM
Hi Allie,

Your relationship with girlfriend seems wonderful and you seem to be extremely happy with her. I wish I could meet someone like that during my lifetime. I am also extremely mesmerized with outsiders who managed to transfigure their pain and despair into magnificent art. That is the reason why I shall never cease to be fascinated to read poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Artaud, Verlaine, Lautréamont, Nerval. Their art makes this boring reality strangely vivid as if everything around suddenly became filled with colors and phantasmagorias. And this beauty moves me to the core.

There is indeed always a reality behind fantasies but fantasies is what keeps me alive throughout the years no matter how hard I fell into the depths of despair. If it weren't for my endless imagination I would have died many, many years ago. Certainly I am very disconnected from everything but think about it deeply. Reality is by essence nothing inherently ambiguous. We cannot say with certainty what we see through our senses is real or simply the product of our imaginations. I cannot even say with certainty if what I see myself is real or if I am even a real person or simply a mere illusion. What is reality, after all? What if the entire world around us was unreal? Personally I can't even say for sure if I am a real or just an ephemeral dream. Everything is inherently ambiguous to me. But that's obviously only my humble opinion.

In fact, I feel the unconscious need to dissociate in order to cope with all of my traumas...

I would recommend seeing a therapist for your dissociative symptoms, they sound pretty serious.

Reality, though, I have found to be rather sublime, moreso in fact than fantasy even. There is an inherent sublimity to it that is quite flooring. Meditating upon its smallest details bring to light its most brilliant and awe-inspiring aspects. It's what the Romantics spoke of.

Heidegger is a remarkable thinker with a lot to say on this topic. I think you'd quite like him.

My dissociative symptoms come from traumas I had during the course of those last years. I have been engulfed into toxic relationships that broke me as a person. Therefore I guess my brain tried to protect me unconsciously from all of this pain because otherwise I'd be insane, awfully insane.

To be honest, I am utterly incapable of seeing any beauty within this dull, depressing Reality that is even more depressing to as a DSBM album. Schopenhauer said humans were all destined to suffer and that life was swinging like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom. I find nothing beautiful within all of this.

Nietzsche said once "Become what you are." Maybe that's why I try to keep fighting through those dark ages.

They have treatments that can help you with PTSD.

And as far life being bleak and full of suffering... well, I guess then if living in fantasy helps then I can't blame you for choosing it. Yet it seems that the very fact that there exist people who are not suffering proves that life is not inherently made to make us suffer. Also, suffering is the willful prolongation of pain, which life cannot cause because life has no will. Life is happenstance.

As long as you're comfortable, somehow, that is all that matters ultimately.

Lol I enjoy a good philosophical debate. It's fun talking to you.

Zen is good philosophy too, if you want to look into something that embraces the beauty of life's many ambiguities.

There is people in this world who are not suffering depending on different circumstances. Plus we're all different, and therefore our sensitives are de facto utterly different. Some people are joyous by nature, capable of feeling bliss even in a world filled with despair I guess, while others are inherently melancholic like me. I have always thought life was deprived from any kind of meaning. I spent thousand metaphorical years trying to find a meaning in all this ocean of meaninglessness. But it's difficult when you think there is nothing but a black voice that engulfs all the excruciating emptiness of everything.

Schopenhauer is well-known for being an INFJ. I guess INxx types tend to have a rather pessimistic point of view about life.

Camus also said the only problematical question in life was suicide. He also said that without the meaning of life, there is life itself. I am trying to fight my nihilistic tendencies, something Nietzsche and Dostoevski fought during their lives. Dostoevski even wrote the Demons after the death of a student killed by a revolutionary called Netchaiev. I don't know if you ever read this book but the character named Stavroguine is the crystallization of what Dostoevski feared in nihilism. The book tells the story of a group of revolutionists whose leader wants Stavroguine to replace him because of his dark charisma that frightens everyone. The book is even darker than Crime and Punishment, in my humble opinion.

The Demons marked so much Camus he made an adaptation of his book. I also loved the way Camus was extremely insightful when it comes to dealing with existential matters such as the absurdity of life in The Stranger, which relates the murder of an Algerian by a woman who is obviously struggling with schizoid tendencies, or Caligula a masterpiece that describes the tyrant in a more human way. Rather than being a merciless tyrant whose only purpose is to destroy everything within his way he's described as a fallen idealist petrified by the harshness of life. He said this sentence that I shan't forget Even Pain is deprived from any meaning.

I guess that makes me the minority of the minority being an INFJ with a strong moral sense and longing for good.

Do you want to transition? I ask this because, considering your outlook, there doesn't seem like there's much of a point.

I am still looking for some good within this world. I guess I sounded disillusioned without wanting it...

Yeah, I really want to transition. I am dying bit by bit because I can't...

What's holding you back?

Reading this thread from afar.  Yes, I've identified with your sentiments before.  This was before I accepted myself and accepted that I WILL transition.  The spiral then lessened and sometimes outlook improved dramatically.  It's easy to continue that downward spiral.  It was all part of the shame, fear and denial that used to rule my life.  Maybe time to kick those feelings in the butt?

Bari Jo

Quote from: Allie24 on October 21, 2017, 11:10:37 PM
What's holding you back?

There is a lot of things, for example the fact that I live with a narrow-minded mother who doesn't even imagine we could feel the opposite of what our bodies are. Or practical matters. I am struggling with a severe depression and dyspraxia which makes me unable to work. I fear being on the streets if I decided to come out. But I am obligated to come out. I cannot spend the rest of my existence denying. I am just sometimes extremely frightened. I am very uneasy when it comes to dealing with practical things...

Quote from: Bari Jo on October 22, 2017, 02:25:06 AM
Reading this thread from afar.  Yes, I've identified with your sentiments before.  This was before I accepted myself and accepted that I WILL transition.  The spiral then lessened and sometimes outlook improved dramatically.  It's easy to continue that downward spiral.  It was all part of the shame, fear and denial that used to rule my life.  Maybe time to kick those feelings in the butt?

I am trying very hard to overcome those feelings of shame deep within me. As you say, continuing this downward spiral is not this solution even though it's extremely difficult. I just want to be my true self.

My advice is to find a local trans support group.  The fear of going to one of these was crazy, especially walking through the door.  Then speaking up was scary, admitting something I've always felt shame about.  I've always felt better after a group meeting even if I cried the whole time.  My spiral is less and less each time.

Another is to go to a gender therapist.  These people help you decide and admit who you are.  You can tell them anything and it's their job to support and steer the conversations constructively.

Both of these will help, as does Susan's.  We are here with similar issues and can support as best we can.