Content Warning: misery & despair.
As mentioned a while back, I'm full-time now, and if I had any fantasy that it would solve all my problems, I would have been rudely awakened from them. I'm not sure it's actually harder to be me, but it's certainly not any easier, just different. I no longer question my choice to live as a woman; if anything, it's been easier than I thought, and I've started the process towards SRS. But the black hole of misery that sits at the center of my soul is, if anything, stronger, or maybe I've just stripped more of the clouds that shielded me from the blindingly bright darkness that it radiates.
There are moments when I feel the joy of being me, when I sing and dance in my kitchen or walk down the sidewalk into town and smile and laugh and say to myself "I'm so glad to be me."
But more often I feel a hole where my heart should be and I get episodes when I shake and moan and my whole body tenses up as if I were in severe pain and I would cry, had the ability to cry not been taken from me long ago. Each episode lasts for only a few minutes, but they leave me physically sore and emotionally exhausted, and I typically have a half dozen or more a day. And I end up feeling like I can't do this any more, I can't keep my head above water any more. If my life permits (usually it doesn't), I crawl into bed and hug my teddy bear and try in vain to cry. (It's affecting my work, too.)
I've been working on this with my therapist. I think what I'm feeling is what I felt when I was a child age 10, 6, maybe younger, or rather what I would have felt if I hadn't been so good at stuffing it down below the level of consciousness for 50-60 years. (Sometimes dissociation is your friend.) Some mix of the sense that everyone hated who I was and would only accept me as I could not be and the sense that it was all my fault and my willful choice that I wasn't "better." And the knowledge that nobody knew or wanted to know what I was going through and they wouldn't have cared if they did. I realize now that it is in my nature to connect to others and that I wilt and dry up like a seed that sprouts on a dry rock in a desert without it, yet every contact was painful and annihilating. So every experience or thought or passing feeling that reminds me of that time triggers me.
Last session, she tried EMDR with me again, but stopped when, as she said, I was simply spiraling downward rather than getting past it. The experience is still too powerful. Then she sat herself down in front of me and looked into my eyes and said something like how much it hurt to see how much that 5-year-old was hurting and that no one should have done that to her. I don't remember much about what she said, but I remember the sense that someone understood and cared and didn't shy away and instead felt that I was worthwhile and a good girl despite everything. It felt good, that's all I know so far. Being able to say some of what is inside and have someone listen and be willing to know and not shy away: that helps push away some of the despair.
(And now it's time to go down and hang up the laundry.)
Comments
"I was worthwhile and a good girl"
glad you got that feeling hon. I have dealt with the feelings of worthlessness my whole life too, so I know how it can suck you dry.
keep focusing on how you felt at that moment.
It will take a long time to sink in.
I'm not sure I was convinced I was worthwhile or anything, but it was enormously comforting to have someone who understood me and what I was going through telling me (in words or otherwise) that I was a good girl.
It takes me a long time to trust. The adults around me would say stuff like how smart or talented I was or that they loved me, but they'd also treat me and talk to me in ways that made it obvious what they actually felt was the opposite. They were good at appearing to be nice and then, once I started to rely on them, dropping me like a hot rock. It's a good way to train someone to believe that someone doing or saying anything nice is just lying. It took me 7 years of being in my Unitarian congregation before I dared trust anyone with my transition.
I've spent most of my life emotionally isolated, and in my isolation cell, I don't have to worry about whether I'm worthwhile or not, or whether I'm a good boy or a good girl or even whether I'm a boy or a girl. It's only when I have to relate to other people that all those issues come up. So it's more a matter of trusting that other people will see me as worthwhile or a good girl or what. Except, of course, that we are social creatures and me especially so, and the piece of me in the isolation cell isn't viable by itself. I am at least in part how other people see me.
C-PTSD is a bitch.
Fantasy vs reality
Ah, I remember those heady early days 27 yrs ago when I went full time. There is no magical change to say the least, just a continuation with the realities of life in another gender. There were other complications that I will not go into but basically you are spot on, experience-wise.
For a lot of us, the first 3 to 5 years will be an intense learning experience where we will learn how to deal with things that any since-birth woman had long figured out how to coppe with growing up so be patient.
Welcome aboard hon.
Being a woman is the easy part
So far, coping with being (=living as) a woman hasn't been the big problem. It's just an endless series of manageable problems and as a techie (I identify as "techie", not male or female), solving problems is my thing.
By far the hardest thing has been coping with being me. Growing up with no one you can trust or feel safe with kind of warps you permanently.
Trust issue
"Growing up with no one you can trust or feel safe with kind of warps you permanently."
I know that feeling all too well. I spent my first six months or so of life in an incubator (two months premature, weighed less than three pounds), then the next 6.5 years in at least a dozen foster homes, possibly even twenty or more. It's hard to build trust with NO stability.
Then I was adopted by someone who honestly shouldn't have done so, as the bastard knew I was gender dysphoric, yet told the people at the Catholic Children's Aid office that had me up for adoption that he would beat it out of me, that he would force me to be a man.
He did beat me, too, pretty much daily from about September of '73 until August of '80 when I told him I would kill him if he touched me again. That killed any contact with the rest of the family, and with the way that they followed his wishes, trust couldn't survive.
Then I got tossed into a group home, fifteen years old, male to male raped three times in six months. Trust destroyed once again.
I've been in relationships now and then over the years, but every time, the trust I gave was betrayed, so now I just live alone.
I've trusted psychs, had one laugh me off as a fuck-up and another drug me to the point I couldn't function. I don't trust psychs now.
I'm not sure if I will ever really feel that I can trust someone enough to take a chance again, I guess only time will tell.
That doesn't even count the fact that I'm marginally passable at best, makeup is a huge hassle, as the foundations I can afford never seem to match my skin tone, leaving me looking grey which stands out too much or too dark which also stands out a lot. Not fun at all. That's a lot of why I just don't bother much with make-up anymore, I've been assaulted a few times just because I was too noticeable.
Well that's good
It took me a while to pick up the social dosey does between women and handle some of the out of the blue things one is not prepared for until one is part of the gang so to speak, the nuances of which I could not appreciate until post-fulltime.
So how do you go about logically solving those kind of things?
Never noticed a problem, actually.
I don't know. It hasn't come up, as far as I can see. I can only guess why.
Maybe it's because I'm mostly dealing with people who know about my past, so they cut me more slack.
Or maybe it's because I've been observing how women interact for years. I do recall that I had to watch myself at work for the last few months because I'd occasionally say things that were appropriate between women but not between a man and a woman.
Or maybe because how women interact simply makes more sense to me. It's how men interact that I could never get the hang of. (Cis men are just so weird!)
Well true about the cis-men thing
I transitioned fully, secretly without any help from family. Plus I only had brothers. Mom was very Chinese that way and would never have treated me anyway but her son. So I had very limited exposure with other women. I also grew up in the 1960s and there was a greater amount of separation in genders and gender roles then there were now. Being raised to fit in forces one to wall off things.
The way women interact have a lot of foibles, the social backstabbing, petty jealousy, verbal jousting etc, I encountered full-on, as I fully pass, have a pretty close to perfect voice etc, so I know they are not making allowances for me being trans at the time.
I take it in stride these days, understand more where other women come from a lot more. I am lesbian and perhaps a bit bi-curious but that's it, so I had the added problem of understanding what other women see in them. Men are weird. Period.