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Recently some folks have either talked with me in personal messages, e-mails, and chatting regarding my overall health. Like anyone with PTSD, I'm going to have good days, bad days, wonderful days and absolutely horrible days. And it is getting better; Three steps forward, one step back, as my neurologist says. Three things contributed this week to an absolutely horrible day the other day with crying and crying and more crying... Did I mention crying. A show of hands here for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.

Most of the time I'm okay, but like some other folks I know, I'm only learning now what the triggers are to memories. And it isn't really healthy to do two things. I shouldn't seek out or try to remember anything...stuff comes along easily enough without prompting. And avoiding things is pointless as well, for the same reason. So I go about my life doing what I have to do to manage and preserve my strength and health for my own sake and my family's sake as well.

Last week was the sixty-first anniversary of my late sister Joann's birthday. I don't need to go into the story; we survived what my uncle did. But remembering her brought back good memories and unprompted but bad memories as well. It also was Father's Day. I have a great 21-year-old son whom I love and respect and honor dearly. But Father's Day also means phone calls and such. My older brother visited our father's grave site Sunday. I cannot tell him that Joann's therapist told me something in a recent conversation, believing that I already knew; my father also molested my sister. She was the victim of a rape by a neighbor as well. So that was a prompt once again. And I got angry! Apart from the folks here and my wife, no one knows about my Dad, and I'm not about to tell my brothers; what would that accomplish except make three of us sad instead of one.

It's really like walking in a mine field, except you're like a cartoon depiction of a soldier in a video game; you don't really die, and you come back right where you left off. Fewer mines than before, and eventually you get to the end of the game. Anyway..the third thing was Angela's blog, which sparked even more memories and a comment by yours truly. As we all may be from time to time, but with me a long-ingrained habit needing to be unlearned, I am quite opinionated on certain things. So I left my opinion there, and I stand by it.

I'm not persevering in my thinking here; it's really unavoidable, like how it feels on an old scar if you drag a stiff or scratchy sleeve across it...it's still sensitive after many years; partly numb, partly sore.

Today I posted a second part to a story I wrote the other day. While it was intended as an answer to some questions that came up, it turned out also as almost a commentary as well, because much of it portrayed exactly how I felt when I wrote my comment. The events are only semi-autobiographical, but the emotions are ones that I expect every survivor may have experienced since they were hurt; anger, shame, fear, guilt, confusion, sadness, regret. And I know there are more emotions than that.

But the other part of the story...the 'clarification' that Joey needs to have before moving into her next phase of transition...is essential for some of us who lay claim in part to the identification "transgender." Joey needed to know that her gender identification wasn't a result of her abuse. I cannot speak for anyone else, and I certainly don't want to speak in general terms. But for me, and I know for many others here, being a victim of rape or molestation had absolutely nothing to do with our gender identification. We are neither 'girls' or 'boys' because of or in spite of the horror visited upon us. We are who we are because we were created that way. Some may have had something done to them that might have acted as a catalyst or a prompting toward discovery, but rape and/or abuse don't make you...You are whom YOU define yourself to be..not an event, not a crime, not an act of cruel violence.

I am transgender; likely more TS than I had ever understood, because that's who I am. I identified myself as wanting to be a girl as early as six. I was raped when I was eight. I didn't become a 'special girl' because of my uncle's sadistic hurtful behavior, and I am not defined by it. I believe I am who I am, as it says somewhere so eloquently, by the GRACE of GOD, not an act of a man. Best regards and thanks for reading! Andrea