II cannot live feeling the way I feel forever. I am not willing to do it. It is breaking my soul down, until I lose little bits of my sense of being a decent human, little pieces of my self respect, my character. I’ve got good coping skills but the stimulus always remains. Being transsexual is traumatizing to me, again and again. I did not choose to feel this way. I actively worked for a long time to feel otherwise. I am only so strong, and I feel pushed, again and again to the absolute bleeding edge of what I can take, and then over… and then I find myself, not yet completely destroyed, but having lost a piece of something crucial. Most of those pieces I have never regained. I carry a certain madness with me all the time, like a schizophrenia, along with a years long growing sadistic nihilism.
So far, I have made it through the painful experience of being transgendered, gaining remarkable insight into my sense of self, my feelings of who I am. Along the way I have learned about body psychology, gotten a degree in Sociology studying gender and sexuality. I learned practical applications of gender psychology in pick up artistry. I have learned about spirituality, Qi Kung, pleasure, pain. I learned hypnosis. I have developed an absurdly high pain tolerance, to emotional, mental and physical pain.
Thus, I think I have done better than many. Maybe I am doing worse than others. I do not know if I can continue. I was tired and spent years ago from this. I feel that the world has no place for hopeless situations, but such things sometimes exist. I feel that I may continue being eroded by this until I finally end it all in another year or two. There may not be a way for me to find greater peace, at least not one I know how to take. It appears to be something I have to find for myself, but I do not know if I can find it! What can I do?
I continue to feel locked out of humanity. The stimulus of my physical existence has and continues to often place me in pale-faced hyperventilating terror, or simply to break my heart. I feel like I am in a nightmare and my basic sense of being is in a state of constant conflict. How long am I expected to live this way? I’m always having to muster to get through it — can one muster forever? Can one hold onto hope through indefinite heartbreak? I think the costs to my sense of self have already grown to great in trying to do so, like I have almost broken my back carrying this burden. Yet I will wake up with it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow….
Apparently this is my one and only experience of life on this planet. I endure, yes, one day at a time, but I think it’s destroying my soul on the same timeframe.
Yeah, well….
at least you’re getting laid,
and you’re not a refugee in Darfur….
and you’re not freakishly tall…
so you don’t have it all that bad….
I got “locked out of humanity” the first day of kindergarten when the kid in front of me asked me what grade I was in, I said kindergarten and he said, “naw, you flunked”. i ran home crying to mom, cuz, you see, I never knew how freakishly tall I was until…
yet, hope springs eternal…
Re: Yeah, well….
LOL. I love you Mike.
Soul
My Friend, I respect you and I respect your pain. I’m convinced that the Buddha spoke truth when he said life is suffering. There is so much we cannot control, and we find ourselves constantly at the mercy of this situation of living, and as we give and give more of ourselves to fit into this situation it can seem like our souls are being ever diminished. I believe though, that the soul is that which cannot, despite our best efforts, be destroyed but only hidden from our eyes.
Sit down, take a breath, see how you feel.
Of all the creatures on earth, we are the only ones who can conceive of being something which we are not, this is what is called our imagination. I appreciate who you are, Jonathon. I think you’re good enough just as you find yourself in this very moment, and I respect you. Sometimes I like to imagine I’m an angel, flying high above the earth, free of my heavy body, but the truth of the matter is that is just not who I am. I can, however, it is within my power to live the qualities of my ideal. I can be kind to others, I can respect them, I can love them as much as I am capable of, and I can even feel at times that I am soaring in my heart. At night, sometimes I can fly in my dreams, sometimes I am a woman in my dreams, sometimes I am an animal, but in my waking life I have been born a man who walks the ground on two legs, and even this has its gifts if I am willing to see them. I can feel my feet on the ground, I can smile to others, I can laugh. I can be a father one day if I choose to, if I choose to I can be a great psychologist, or a great engineer, or a mediocre psychologist or a mediocre engineer, and it’s all okay. I’m allowed to do what I choose.
I’m okay with the fact that you were born with a penis. I’m okay with the fact that you’re a transsexual. I’m okay with the fact that you’re alive. I’m okay with the fact that you’re thinking about killing yourself. To be completely honest, I’d be okay with it if you did kill yourself. Truthfully, I like you though, so I’d rather you didn’t.
I guess what I’m saying is your life is your own, do what you wish, and know that no matter what I respect you.
Re: Soul
I took a materialist path for awhile as well.
I also assumed that the body was like a sailboat, where if you let go of the rudder and sails, it will simply drift. Sailboats aren’t like cars in that they have no inherently self destructive tendency. So I set about to enjoy being a man as much as possible. Yet I found discomfort at best, and often heartbreak. The Blueprint finally helped me see many more of the reasons why in terms of social roles and aesthetics.
I believe that transgender/transsexual is probably a neurological mishap of some sort. I read about a scientist who created a similar condition in rats, at least so far as sexual contact. He was able to get the male and female mice to change their sexual instincts entirely, by shifting something during the earliest part of conception — then they would spend their time attempting to copulate in ways which were biologically impossible for them. I guess they weren’t “imagining” something different… but it’s hard to imagine they felt very satisfied, LOL…
But I finally stopped looking at it from a materialist perspective. You mention “the soul.” Much of the time, so long as I don’t interact in any way with the world, then either gender is not an issue or something inside says, “of course I’m a woman.” Then those interactions with the world feel dissonant when there is a clash…
You’re right in that “only by imagining something different” could any of this mean anything… but I think the cognitive process of imagination is a fairly trickled down layer… I feel that there’s something deeper in the brain that comes out as whatever imaginings we have, those pictures sounds and feelings we make just being the byproduct of deeper processes..