Ramblings of a Transgirl

Helpers and kindness and rescues of hope
our hearts can't withstand the pain
These people, this place, all are scars
on the psyche of our brains.

Instead of scars, we should now have
these tattered wings of hope
one day at a time, one breath at a time,
preventing the snap of a rope.

You wouldn't imagine these things that kill,
these tiny little knives,
but you can't see inside our our souls
inside we always die.

The body remembers;
the soul forgets;
she cannot withstand the pain.

She cannot protect;
cannot remember;
her very own special name.

She dares not look up;
She dares not look down,
in fear of what eyes will see.

She cannot look forward,
or back to the side,
for fear of drowning in sea.

A sea of emotions,
a sea of despair,
she paddles ever across.

No lighthouse, no beacon
no ship's passing light,
she is forever lost.

As you might guess from the title, I've not really recovered from the last week, or even the weeks leading up to it. It still feels like a dream I don't know how to wake up from, a knife lodged deep within my heart.

I don't know how it came to this.

Intellectually, I do, but emotionally, it hurts too much to think about. To think of those we've already lost, those we will lose, and all the pain and suffering this has already caused. The price we pay for this mistake is not just in property. Not even just in lives. The price we will pay is the heart-breaking of an entire generation.

My heart is already broken. I don't know what to do. I know what I should do, what avenues there are to help comfort and fight against what is and white will be, but it hurts so much I can't even move, hurts so much I can barely get out of bed in the mornings. It is as though I have an anchor chained to a bolt embedded in my heart, and I have not the strength to remove it.

I keep trying to piece it back together,
how such a terrible thing could be,
but my heart just keeps on bleeding,
hope draining out of me.

I know I need to fight this.
I know I need to stand,
but I'm not sure if I could cry
without a helping hand.

This heart-pain is the deepest
that I have ever felt
that dark and cold and terrible
pain that will not let me rest.

Finally cried last night, and boy did I cry a lot. I know I've talked about tears before, after Kubo, and after a few other small moments here and there. Up until now, though, I haven't cried tears for me. I've cried situationally, cried for what I saw and what it made me feel, but never for myself. Never.

Last night, I cried, and it hit my like a truck. Wandering though files on my server, I found first AMV Hell, and then the Read or Die OVA, something I've watched many times before. Last night, though, it finally cracked me.

I've seen it before and laughed at the exploits of "The Paper!" and the trouble the rest of the crew goes to to keep her alive. I've watched a story of pain and seen the terrifying power of kindness, a story that breaks the world. And yet, I never saw it, never felt, never saw my heartstrings. I never saw them cut before, and never fell while dreaming.

There are yet more tears to come,
but these ones I will cherish.
They gave me back the life I lost,
and without I would perish.

Because if I am honest now,
if I can really feel it,
I did not know I breath today,
and I cannot believe it.

A resonance of pain and blood,
of love and horrid sadness,
has broken my heart open now,
and I weep tears of gladness.

I don't know how I'm going to live.
I don't know how I'll now heal.
But this I know, and this I cry,
"I'll not follow death's peal!"

More words will come,
words that explain,
words that I'll try to speak,
but now, today, and for a while,
I'll lie here, hurt and weak.

Man, it's been a year.

Early for retrospectives, I know, but *sheer sigh of exhaustion* holy moly. This hasn't been an easy one. It's been 20 months since I moved from Arizona and started this whole crazy adventure, and I'm pretty lucky to have done it when I did. I say that because I honestly don't think I have the strength to  do it again. If time reversed and I found myself back in Arizona with all the memories and knowledge I now have, but having to go back through all the hard times I've been through since, I'm pretty sure I'd kill myself. A lot of days I wonder how I never did. >.<

As much as I'm improving, and as much progress as I've made, this is still hard... every single day. Crushing pressure the likes of which not even the oceans can summon has given way to the kindling of a soul, but one who has been horribly mauled in the intervening years. Shards of self, like pieces of a broken crystal, have been slowly reassembled, but their glow still hurts to look at, the pain obvious in the broken light they cast.

I'm still here, and I'm still trying; but the body-blows have been devastating. I feel like one often does after a hard day of physical work: beaten, sore, and exhausted. Always, always tired. I know what this is, and I know I have to fight it, because I am improving, but there are days I'm still not sure if it's going to win. There are times (like now), where I would give anything to just stop hurting, to stop being afraid. All I want to do is shake myself apart, to scream and cry... but those tears still aren't coming. Some have, but there are many more to come. >.<

I didn't really mean for this journal to go in this direction, but I guess it had to be said. I'm still hurting, and I'm still hurting a lot. Maybe it's just that I can see it finally, but I'm a fucking mess at the moment and could really use some help. >.< I just want the pain to stop. >.<

(And yes, I am seeking medical help... just still feel like shit. >.<)

This one might be a bit disjointed. I've been trying to write the past few weeks, but my energy levels just haven't been there. Maybe it's the medication (Zoloft). Maybe it's the phone call from my sister last week. I just don't know. Whatever it is, I've been nowhere near 100% for a while.

Since I need to write, but am not sure what to write about, I'm just going to start with a bit of a status update. The last few weeks have been rough. I started deep DNMS therapy shortly after my last post, and while it's really helpful, reaching back to comfort my earlier self is a hell of an energy drain. In fact, the first session, combined with an event that happened shortly thereafter (~3 hours or so) knocked me out of commission for a good week and a half. :/

I'm going to try and talk about the therapy a little bit here, but I need to acknowledge, at least in a little detail, the aforementioned event, because it's had a profound effect on my own mental state the last couple weeks. I've learned a lot about the true depth and power of depression and anxiety in the last year, but never more so in the depths of my own mind last October. On that night a few Thursdays ago, I learned a different lesson along the same lines as I spent more than two hours trying to talk a friend down from committing suicide. I learned what it meant to fail. I learned what it meant to fail another, to fail myself, and what will happen if we fail each other.

While she survived the night, I had no way to know she would when she finally disappeared on me. As I laid there, texts going unanswered, I finally collapsed, energy levels flat-lining after far too much energy expenditure in one short span of hours. I awakened to find her alive, and I am eternally grateful for that, but I am scared now. Scared for all of us. :S We have got to do something about the hate and violence directed towards us. We have got to do something about the way we teach children that they are broken in so many ways. And maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to teach everyone else that they can be safe and happy along the way. >.<

This cannot happen any more. We have got to help on another, to help ourselves, and to reach out to those in need. The next few months, and perhaps even years, may be terrible ones, but we can make it through this. We must. We have to teach the rest.

...I guess I didn't talk about therapy, but that's okay. Maybe next time. :S

As usual, expect this journal to be a bit rough. Discussions of abuse are contained within. (Note that I have not yet internalized a lot of what I'm writing about, but *am* trying to come to terms with it. And yeah, I'll reach out when things get bad, because I have a feeling they're going to...)

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Today, I need to talk about abuse. I don't want to, desperately do not want to, but I have to, whether I like it or not. Today... I have to acknowledge a lifetime of abuse. And even as I type this, I have to acknowledge that I keep trying to sugar-coat it, to some way or somehow make those who are responsible somehow not at fault, but... we know where that path leads.

Today, I need to talk about two forms of abuse.

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If you're reading this, there's a chance you've heard me reference my father's anger issues. There's a good chance you've also heard me dismiss them, often with words like "but he never struck me" or "I can understand why...". It's hard not to think like that, when you grow up in a randomly hostile household, but those are classic responses by victims of abuse.

It doesn't matter why someone abused you, what limits they set on that abuse, or even if they fought with themselves and hated themselves for doing it. It doesn't matter that your other parent defended you over and over whenever they were there to see it, or that they had heated arguments "outside your hearing" as a child about these things. It doesn't matter, because the consequences don't care about any of that and are just as devastating. They could be even more devastating, because those rays of hope kept you coming back to experience it over and over rather than finally breaking fully away.

[Editor's note: I've read a lot about these behaviors, but sure as hell never expected to be writing these kind of words about myself. >.<]

My earliest memories of my father are not happy ones. I don't remember a lot of what growing up was like. But I do remember some things. I remember, way back in early grade school, my homework assignments being torn apart in front of me because I failed to sign my name at the top. (I had to redo them completely.) I remember my father so angry he chased me around the family room of our house. (This happened multiple times.) I remember the night he got so angry he left me idling in the car, driver's side door wide open, sitting in the passenger seat as he walked towards home. These are not normal memories. And these are not things that should ever happen to a child.

My father may hate himself thoroughly for a lifetime of choices he wish he could undo, but there was no excuse for treating me in such a manner. I was innocent, and did not understand why these things were happening to me. I could not understand why someone who loved me could suddenly flip from Jekyl to Hyde, and so, I lived in fear.

I guess it's no wonder that I tried to build myself into a weapon... Fortress walls are awfully comforting when there is a real monster on the loose. And though you might yell "Fuck you!" or other such things from the top of those walls, you're still just as vulnerable if you step outside them. It's no wonder that I locked those doors. :S

I don't know what else to say about this for the moment, so I'm going to leave it here and switch tacks to my mother, and the environment in which I grew up...

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I am not precisely sure how to describe what's wrong with this, but I need to try. I guess I'll start with my mom being Catholic, and very, very conservative. I've been trying to make peace with that world-view for about 29 years now, but I have failed, and this is why...

My mom's branch of conservatism is the one everyone commonly associated with Fox News. When I say that, I mean it pretty literally, as that channel was on in the kitchen, and in the upstairs TV room pretty much every hour my mom was awake. (She'd leave it on high volume so she could just walk through the house listening. When the TV wasn't on, Rush Limbaugh was, the radio in the kitchen blasting his broadcasts loud enough to be heard through a closed door. Now, I'm not going to sugar-coat this one. That stuff... *all of it*... is extremely toxic. Without even touching on the political content, which has its own problems, the way things are framed to create constant anger and feelings of victimization create an /extremely negative/ environment, 100% of the time. The simple lack of any real source of inspiration in that media is /itself/ astonishing to consider.

Bluntly, my mom is anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender rights, and quietly racist to boot. Some of that is theoretically because she is Catholic, but like many conservatives, that's not really the underlying reason. She is uncomfortable with anything that violates tradition, and uses her religion as an excuse to disparage anything outside the sphere of what she deems acceptable behavior. (See prior journals re: shame and passive-aggressive behavior for context there.)

So... Is this abuse? I'm asking honestly, because I don't know how to think about this stuff. Is it abuse to bring your child up in a house where there is a constant influx of anger and hate? What if your kid is (as I was) a member of one of the groups that is being attacked? What if you don't know?

Just to give an idea of where things are currently at, I need to share my mom's words to me when I told her I was transgender. No words of anger were spoken, but words of devastation were. "I wish I had died not knowing."

Those words have not changed since.

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At this point, I'm seriously considering cutting off all contact with my parents, permanently. I'd be willing to revisit that in a few years, provided some serious on-going therapy work, but I don't know that they have that many years left. (They're older than most folks assume.) If I cut contact for 5-10 years (the kind of time period we're talking about), it's pretty likely that one or both won't be alive at that point.

Basically, I'm still processing all this, but I sure as hell don't know what to do. Input is welcome. >.<

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Links:
 - https://drsharongalor.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/why-do-trauma-survivors-blame-themselves/

I was reading a few things today and they got me thinking.  I want to expand on my previous discussion about shame.  I'll start by saying that shame is absolutely *the* thing that has crippled me from a mental health standpoint for years on end.  It still is impacting me, and though I'm now getting professional help in dealing with it, it's something I feel a need to talk about.  Why?  I know I'm not the only one.

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So let's talk about shame.  Shame is one of society's ways of saying "No, that's wrong. That's not acceptable here."  And, in all fairness, society does sometimes need the ability to say that.  It should be fair for people who care about each other to communicate about harmful behavior and attempt to come to a resolution.  But... shame isn't the way that happens.

Attempting to influence someone through shame is, quite possibly, the most toxic and passive-aggressive thing you can do.  We've all been guilt-ed by shame at some point or another, and we all know how it goes.  Disapproval of personal behavior can start with as little as a nasty look, and can, in time, escalate full blown social isolation.  Rather than addressing the underlying problem directly, shame relies on the person performing the undesired behavior to eventually become uncomfortable enough that they chose the group dynamic over their own.  Even worse, since there's no direct communication about the cause of the disapproval, the person subjected to it is often left in an anxious state, trying to guess what they might have done wrong.  Sometimes it's clear cut, but not always.

So let's talk about the toxic effects of shame.  It's not like we don't know what it does to people.  It's not as if we don't know it drives them to anxiety and depression, to self-hatred well before it makes any change the person outside sees.  This process of internalizing the fact that something about yourself is wrong can take years to unravel, and that's only assuming the person in question actually manages to reach out and ask for help.

I guess what I want to say here is this.  Shame sucks the life out of the person it is directed against.  It is the tool of those who do not have the courage to speak out and actually say what they think problems are.  "She knows what she's doing wrong." and "He's getting what he deserves." in reference to these kinds of actions are an outright cancer, and we need to start cutting it out.

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With that out of the way, I'll add my own story here.  This is something I've never written down, and I'm honestly not sure how it'll come out, but it's a start.

I grew up in a household that used shame and passive-aggressive behavior as a method of control, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  It's been ten years since I left home and I've barely made a dent in the damage that it did.  Though I'm working with a wonderful therapist on this and other issues now, I still can't function entirely normally in relationships, to say nothing of my issues with gender and sexuality.

In that household, like many others, we were taught from the time we were little to not "air our dirty laundry in public".  Basically, if you had a personal problem, you were not to discuss it or otherwise let on that something was going on around anyone outside my immediate family (the unspoken idea being that to do so would bring shame upon all of us).  In practice, this extended at least somewhat into discussing issues that affected us within the family as well, leaving us alone an isolated with our problems, repressing and pretending like everything was always 'fine.'  That's a word I can hardly use anymore, as it and the corresponding "It's nothing." are now huge red flags for me in any conversation.

Here's the thing.  Directing shame at 'undesired' behaviors (sexuality, gender, etc) inside the family, while directing those within it to never speak to outsiders for support was a fucking terrible system.  It created a self-reinforcing feedback loop that turned anything outside 'normal' into self-hate, and forced me to emotionally disconnect from my family and wear a mask at all times in order to self-protect.  I understand *why* they did it, that some of these things (religion especially) bring into question their own sense of identity in a way they're not comfortable with, but it's still not something that's easy to confront.  Or forgive.

I'm still fighting these demons, and I don't win every day.  Some days they best me, and it's everything I can do to force myself to go to work.  I'll talk more about my response to anxiety and the accompanying depression in future posts, but suffice to say that I think I understand why anxiety and paralysis are linked for me now, largely as a result of managing to write this out.

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I want to leave with a few resources that have helped me over the years.  I'll be talking about these more in future posts, but for now a short description (and the links) will suffice.

QC is a story about a group of friends in the northeast US who move into an out of relationships with each other.  All of the characters are 'real' in the sense that they all have issues, some of them very serious.  Running the gamut from anxiety to control and OCD, to outright grief, this strip will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.  And all the time you'll be learning, about both yourself and others.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1

Venus Envy is recent find, but one I wish I had found ages ago.  Both the artist Erin and the main character Zoe are transgender, and though Zoe's struggles take place way back in high school (well before I managed to break out of *any* of my shell), they still mean a lot.  If you've ever wanted to understand a transgender person's desire to just fit in, be normal, and be accepted, you'll want to read this.  Beware though, it's not an easy read.  Lots of tears ahead.

http://www.venusenvycomic.com/index.php?id=2

Sunstone is another recent find.  I've actually never considered myself to be interested in BDSM-related material, but this comic caught me a bit by surprise.  The way it portrays an alternate lifestyle in such a positive and loving way, with no fear or judgment, is absolutely huge.  Learning new ways love can be seen and experienced is never a bad thing, and as much as it surprised me, I think it might surprise you. 

(NSFW link warning) http://shiniez.deviantart.com/gallery/35675685/chapter-1-completed?offset=0