Ok, so I am starting to figure some things out. This could be triggering and it is about self hate.
When I was just about 5 I told my Mom I am a girl. Things did not go well. She told my Dad and he gave me a crew cut and I could not play with my girlfriends. I was treated differently than my brother and sister. There was a lot of physical violence in the house. To be different and be treated poorly cause a part of me to adopt my parents and brother thinking. A part of me (anti-me) became my worst enemy. The anti-me constantly put me down and feed me a constant barrage of hatred, self hatred.
Going through life I constantly refed myself the memories and feelings that kept me down. No one could ever be as cruel to me as I have been to myself.
Stepping off a curb in Philly in the spring when I was 50 I hit a point when the self hate got to the point of critical.
As I transitioned I started to replay points in my life with different endings. Each time I would stand up to my parents at some life and death point and they would allow me to transition and love me and accept me being different.
My parents and brother are long gone. Others took their place and one by one they are gone or no longer an influence over me. I have transitioned and I am starting to really like myself for who I am. I still have some messaging of shame and insecurity as I go through my journey and jump the next hurdle. I am much stronger now and am figuring things out.
So I created a part of me to shame myself to not be myself. I used self hate to keep myself from being myself. It involved shame and duplicating the hate that was expressed to me from others.
Somewhere along the line of transition my self hate decreased and then stopped. I think the last bit of it left when my ex-wife left. Perhaps I married her to keep myself from transitioning. Not perhaps, I married her as a continuation of my self hate.
Suicidal ideation although sometimes it hits it is minor and very shorted lived compared to before when It could become life threatening. As I go on I kind of want to live.
So I made my self hate, shame and suicidal ideation to suppress who I am. To keep myself from being myself and out of harms way.
Only when I exited the dark tunnel of self hate could I see what I had done to myself. I think letting go of the people and the past of the people that I tried to please was so very important. I think realizing the people at a HRC event Tuesday are like me and I am like them really put things into perspective. I am a good person I am just different than cis hetero. Different can be good.
No one told me dysphoria was curable; no one told me self hate was curable; no one told me I could like who I am becoming or who I am when I came to them for help 5.25 years ago.
