Sorry it’s been a while. I’ll do an update post soon, but this is going to be a pretty specific post.

I went to see my therapist last week, as mostly a catch up session; it’d been almost a year since we’d last spoken, and I’d gone through a relationship breakup, losing friends, blood clots, surgery approval, a new relationship, changes in self image, etc…

At the end of the session, I made another appointment, and told her a few things I wanted to discuss. One was about mourning the life I never had – much in the same way I’ve mourned the child I’ll never have. This is turning into a more complicated issue.

In a discussion with my girlfriend, or actually one of her alters, I found some startling similarities with how my mind worked in that regard as well. While I don’t believe I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (I lack a few diagnostic criteria), the mechanism that my brain used is quite relatable.

I essentially created James. He (as I’ve mentioned previously, James was as close to male as I could make him) wasn’t created over night. He evolved from a need, or desire, to conform to my world. In an act of protectionism, I created this persona to present to the outside world.

That persona allowed me to:

avoid being bullied
avoid being alienated
feel less abnormal
hide and/or fit in
disguise myself
have a life

Of course it wasn’t perfect. In situations like this it never is. I was drawing on those around me to base this persona on, because as I’ve found out, it certainly was not me.

So anyway, I was chatting with her alter, and recalled that my therapist had me try and manifest James and myself in a session, to see what they might say to each other. It was more meta than actually thinking I had 2 distinct personalities (and the reason I don’t think I have D.I.D. is that they are not separate identities).

When that happened, I had a rather profound moment of James apologizing to me. I’ve written about this in the past. But we didn’t really explore more beyond that. I got really emotional, and that kind of ended the moment. Now I’m exploring that a bit deeper.

The apology was, essentially, for keeping me locked up deep down, underneath all the shit that he couldn’t deal with (which included me – he didn’t really know how to deal with me). He tried letting me out in controlled environments. But I was still caged, and I don’t just mean by location. He would not give up control, he’d just enlarge the prison a bit. This is what my ‘crossdressing’ was, and why I always had trouble moving or expressing naturally until I got rid of the James part.

In my talk with Melissa the next day, I was saying that i didn’t really forgive James for what he had done to me, even though I know he was trying to protect me (that was why I built him). She then asked if things would have been better if I had been out 10, 15, 20 years ago. No. I would have been in a lot more pain, a lot more depression, WAY more acute dysphoria, and very likely suicidal.

So, James actually did save me. I can admit that. So, I can, and do, forgive him. The real issue is that I don’t forgive myself yet. I didn’t even try to unbury myself. I never tried to wrest control from him. The one time cracks did form in his protective bubble, I tried to kill myself. I needed him for sure – he kept me alive. But where was I? The real me? I can’t blame James for me not trying to exist.

In fact, it likely was me helping keep the self denial in full effect. I whispered that I was fine with existing in private situations. Why was I okay with this for so long? Why, when I did sense freedom, did I just want to end everything? (yes, there were other circumstances in play, but still).

Early in transition, I just attributed this to being so deep under everything, that I wasn’t able to exert in any way. I don’t think that’s true. I think it was fear. I was afraid of all the things I built James to protect me from. I never faced ANY of those fears though. They MAY have been true, real fears, but not once (to my recollection anyway) had I ever been threatened with any of that.

I had been able to live without any real gendered oppression early in life. I played with wigs and skirts and stuffed animals and cars and action figures. When I saw dozens more children, eventually, in kindergarten (or maybe it even started before that, and just accelerated in K) I decided to emulate those I looked like. I know I got asked often if I was a boy or a girl. Maybe someone said something about my long hair? I don’t know.

I’m rambling. The issue is why didn’t I at least try and face my fears. Why was I so content to go the route I went. I was a fairly extroverted kid until about age 5. I distinctly remember switching from outgoing to shy. That was the point James took over. What was I hiding from so early? It’s infuriating that I don’t have a ton of memories from this stage in my life. I have vivid memories from before this. Then things are muddy for a few years. Around age 8 I start remembering things again.

So, what do I need to do to forgive myself? I can’t change the past. It’d be nice if I could remember more of my mental state back then. By the time I start remembering again I’m in full self denial. There must have been a transition stage for that. Maybe I’m putting too much responsibility on a very young mind.

Hmm, maybe that’s the problem. Ok, this kind of makes sense. Because I, buried under everything, was not always super present, maybe it took me a while to grow up. Everything was coming in under a heavily processed filter. This could explain a few other things too (such as my inner child). I shouldn’t expect that I was as hyper self aware as I am now. Of course I wasn’t. I was just a kid. We don’t know why some children self assimilate, they just do. It could even be instinctual.

I know I’m not weak. I consider myself to be very strong. I feel I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. I’ve always been driven by frustration. Every major change or decision in my life is driven by frustration. For good or bad. Maybe this was true of myself even back then. Something about how life was going at that time was frustrating me. Something I didn’t know how to even process – maybe it was, in all likelihood, dysphoria. Seems like a good enough scapegoat.

Maybe THAT was what scared me, or frustrated me at least, to bring about ‘James’. If it was something that was rational like that, I can’t even blame myself. I survived as best I could. And I DID survive. Ultimately, that’s the most important part. I am finally out from my prison. James has been integrated and no longer exists as a semi-separate entity. I’ll go into that in another post.

I’m going to process this some more, but I think I’m on a good track. It’s something that makes sense. It may not be accurate, but I don’t think I’ll ever know exactly.

*******

A brief exposition on my personalities. I have a few. Most of us do. The extent of their separation varies from person to person. People who put on their ‘game face’, or inner child, or the salesman, the teacher, the domme etc…

My personalities have a bit more separation and distinction between them.

James – The protector. The outward male persona that developed over 30+ years of hiding myself. Also the athlete and the gamer. The one that did not like eating mushrooms, raw fish, squash, food on the bone. An introvert by necessity. The filter. James doesn’t really exist as a separate persona anymore. He’s been integrated. He’s part of why I ultimately identify as non-binary. I’ve tossed aside his ridiculous parts – the filter, the strange eating rituals, the introvert. But I’ve kept the protector, the athlete, the gamer, and a bit of the masculinity (which used to worry me, but I’m cool with it now).

Jessica – me. The totality of me. Including ALL my personalities. I grew up without really having a name except maybe Jamie when I was young, but then James co-opted that. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I got a new name. Part of me was allowed to express in total secrecy (Starting at age 8), and then my prison got larger as friends were allowed to see some of me. They were never getting all of me though, because James (as the filter) was still there. I am VERY strong. Extroverted. Talkative. Loving. Emotional as hell.

Lyrren – my inner child. I have claimed this name for this part of me. I express my inner child at times for many different reasons. I never want to lose my ability to play, and be silly. But also this part of me is ULTRA vulnerable. Lyrren isn’t seen directly by many, except a close knit group of friends. She’s the one that does Lego, does jig-saw puzzles even after saying I don’t like puzzles, and demands I get certain stuffies. Lyrren also serves as a way for me to recapture something that was lost to me. MY childhood. I grew up fairly fast, and from age 5 up, it was more James’ childhood than mine.

There are other nameless personalities too, more like what everyone else has.

I thought I was doing well. In many ways I am. In many ways I’m not.

A few bad/sad things have happened over the last couple weeks, and I’ve not been handling them well at all. I’ve been hurting quite a bit. Crying still comes really easy, but it’s not helping like it did. I’m not able to resolve anything, and I just circle around the feelings. My frustration builds really fast again, and I wound up punching Sunday night.

This is something I’m not supposed to do on blood thinners. I bruised 2 knuckles pretty bad. One of the hardest punches I’ve ever thrown at a lamppost. I couldn’t close my hand for a bit after. I’ve been trying not to beat myself up over doing this. It happened. I’m not proud of it, but I shouldn’t be ashamed of it either.

My emotional landscape is completely foreign to me right now. I’m not how I was before hormones, and definitely not like how I was on hormones. It’s some twisted set of both paradigms clashing together. And I really don’t know how to cope with anything. The thing that’s worked best is a particular friend that’s really come through for me twice with a walk along the water and conversation.

Other friends have been helpful too, very helpful. But this friend has a way of slowly changing the conversation and before I know it I’m smiling and laughing. But not so fast, that I don’t have time to talk out my problems. It works very well. It’s not a fix, but it’s a good stop gap that I will take any time I can get it.

The plus side of all this is that I’m not spiraling. I circle, but I’m not piling shit on myself trying to make myself worse. So, that’s good. I just want to go back to feeling like ‘me’. I want the comfort of emotions that I’m used to, and that were finally working properly.

I have about another 2-3 weeks without my lovely estrogen. This is now entirely my doing though. I could be back on hormones right now. I am getting my tattoo and my extra ear piercings before going back on blood thinners (and thusly, estrogen).

I will also be talking to my endocrinologist about alternate androgen blockers. What I’m taking now is not suppressing testosterone at all. Either I get something different, or I get an orchiectomy before my surgery.

This period of time off of hormones has definitely prepared me for my surgery where I’ll be off them for 3 weeks. That will be a walk in the park compared to what I’ve experienced with my blood clots. I look forward to the pain of healing, the nausea I’ll feel from the extent of the surgery. It will be nothing compared to these last 3 months.

– Jessica

I ordered some pizza from a food court outlet, and when I was handed the pizza I got a, “here ya go, sir.”

It even took me a moment to register that it happened. I didn’t bother saying anything because the chances of me ever seeing this person again are very slim.

At first, I thought it was no big deal. Didn’t really seem to bother me. I told a couple people close to me about it, and got some reassurances.

But as the afternoon went on, I noticed I was getting extremely frustrated with things. If something was in my way, it got kicked, or thrown out of the way. The level went from nothing to sky high in seconds. It has to be from this incident. Nothing else happened today other than my spork broke in half and is now a really short spoon and a really short fork.

To help alleviate things I reached out to a friend that suggested listening to music, or humming. I finally settled on a short walk away from ‘things’ while humming some My Little Ponies song. It helped. Until I started the next task at the job site. Removing a, roughly, 20 year old pampas grass. By shovel. It was going well enough cutting the top off with hedge trimmers, but when I got to the part of actually trying to get the roots out – *poof* back to frustrated.

I started violently digging at the roots, actually hoping that my bad elbow (which has been mending finally) would give out and I’d have to go to the hospital. Hoping that something would tear or let go, or pop out of place. I stopped that pretty quickly when I realized what I was doing. Took an early coffee break at that point.

Things seemed a bit better after that break. Got it done without breaking anything or anyone.

Today’s afternoon has led me to start thinking that maybe all my build ups of frustration throughout my life, have actually been my way of interpreting my dysphoria. It puts a bit of a new spin on the whole idea. I always thought I merely felt resigned to be male, and that it was a background kind of thing. Muted. Distant. But if all my bouts of frustration, where I’d wind up punching things, or being self destructive, if they were from my dysphoria then that would make a lot of sense.

So, now that I possibly know (it feels kinda right) where it’s coming from… the next step is to work on releasing the pressure before it builds to me trying to rip my elbow apart again. And that was from one misgender. One. And I KNEW it was going to happen. I also now know I was not as prepared as I told myself I was.

Hugs,
Jess

I haven’t had the best week, or month for that matter. I have started a second blog that only a select set of close friends get to see because it’s where I write about daily stuff – and it’s very raw and open. Once it’s been digested a bit, or something has resolved, or whatever, then I feel I can reveal at least some of it on here.

I actually started this blog post before starting the other blog, but in light of the last month, it was relevant enough to mention it. And I had put this one off since starting it. So, now I’m finishing it. Some parts will necessarily be vague, but I think you’ll get the point.

I have punched several times since I last wrote that I thought I was a big girl and all done punching things. I could simply cry about stuff and make it all better, so no punchy punchy.

Well, I was having an extremely dysphoric Friday a few weeks ago, and found myself in a bathroom on the verge of bawling my eyes out – I was at work. Instead of just doing the smart thing and, you know, actually bawling my eyes out, I punched a concrete wall very hard to distract myself from emotional pain.

Physical pain is so much easier to deal with. It hurts. You know why. You take painkillers. Problem solved.

Emotional pain is not like that. It hurts. You usually don’t know exactly why, if you’re lucky enough to have a clue. You can take drugs, or alcohol, or something else. Problem is usually not solved. Repeat.

So, just to make sure I wasn’t going to start crying, I punched the wall again. My knuckle hurt for several weeks. So, it worked for the time being. Until I got home. It was all I could do to hold it together long enough to get upstairs to bed. I collapsed onto the bed, grabbed Charlie, and squeezed him so tight as the tears started. During this cry, I even developed a new self harm where I dug my fingernails into my shoulder to the point where I drew blood. Oh yay.

After this occurrence, I tried to pass it off as me being in James work mode. I wasn’t being myself fully. That’s a total cop out. Which I realized last week.

Last week, I had an episode with a very close friend, where I wound up feeling utterly rejected. It was probably the most powerful emotion to hit me in a VERY long time (decades). I instantly shut down. I told Teresa I had to go for a walk – it was 7pm. To her credit, she let me. She wouldn’t have been able to stop me, I was pretty much unreachable right then.

I started walking. I didn’t have a destination in mind. Every ten minutes or so, I’d stop and break down in sobs. I didn’t care if anyone saw me. And then I’d continue on. Two times during this walk the pain was too much inside. Two times I punched steel lampposts. Very hard.

Rejection and failure are two things I don’t handle well at all.

There’s no real point to this entry other than to confess to it. To be honest about it. To all of you, and to myself. This isn’t something that magically goes away because you finally realize your true self. It’s something that I will probably always have to deal with and always work on.

– Jess

Some days I really feel like my mind is split. Somewhere between the real me and the scared, timid, hiding, secretive projection of masculinity of what was.

Essentially fragmented somewhere between Jess and James. Nature and Habit. Free and Caged.

What triggers my old habits? What allows nature to to win out?

It feels like, by and large, that it is my work environment that triggers the old habits. It is such a struggle, an exhausting struggle, to fight through the mire and sludge of habit to be me when I’m at work. A struggle I often don’t win. I slip down into that muck too frequently. It fills my throat, deepening my voice. It slurps its way around my mind, holding down my spirit. I feel like I’m drowning inside my own head.

I have small victories every now and then at work, and then they’re taken away from me. Lost in that murk. That inky black and brown murk. Every time I hear, “James” it gets thicker. Every time I hear, “him” it gets darker. Every time I hear, “he” it gets harder to keep above it all.

I can see and feel it happening inside my head. I’ve been signing my name at work as Jess now, and have been giving that as my name when asked. Today, I said James. Today was not a good day. That same conversation I was asked if I had children. It was not in the usual context that it was asked, and shouldn’t have triggered me, but it did.

That conversation had so many things that I could have taken as positives. But all I did was focus on the negatives. I’m infertile. I look like a male.

The positives were, the guy thought I was in my mid 30s. He looked at my fingernails at least 8 times, without any reaction (bright red and sparkly thanks to Rain). He called me contemplative. He agreed that I should be doing something intellectual or artistic. He asked if I could be an artist or writer. The two things I most want to be. It’s like it was written on me. He asked if I had a book in me.

I’m happy that I can remember those points. But they were not given much thought at the time of the conversation. I’m trying to take them in now. Trying to get rid of the ugly mood that’s been dragging me down all day. I managed to push it aside for a few hours, but now an empty house has left me in my head again.

I think I need a spa day. I need to be pampered.

I get told, often, how courageous I am. I get it. How it comes across that way. Certain things I do, I agree, are courageous. I put myself out there, every time I write one of these blog posts. I disseminate everything, and withhold nothing. I’m a complete open book. I’m proud to be out, proud to be trans, and proud to be me. I’ll accept that as being labelled courageous.

Transitioning, though, is not done from courage for me. When I realized who I am, I had to make a choice. I’ve been corrected by someone very close to me, that this was indeed a choice I made. It was a very easy choice, but still… The choice was to transition, or slowly degrade into self destruction and probably suicide.

Before I allowed myself to see who I am, there was a wall of denial.  That wall had been slowly crumbling since its creation. A huge crack formed when I was 23, and led to my attempt on my own life. I couldn’t deal with the fear of what I saw behind that wall. I plastered that crack up, and continued on. Turning a blind eye to what I should have been seeing. Me.

Frustration leads pretty much every major life decision I make. There have been exceptions to that, every last one of the exceptions is driven by love. But I’m talking about frustration right now. Frustration is the main reason of my self harm, the main reason I came out, the main reason I sought counselling, and the main driving force behind my transition.

It is not transformed into courageousness. It is pure and primal. I broke down and obliterated that wall of denial because I couldn’t take it anymore. There would be no rebuilding it, it was dust. So, it was like the crack that formed when I was 23, but bigger. I was flooded with all my true feelings and thoughts. Transition is a lifeline to make it through those feelings and thoughts.

I have a strong desire to live, be happy, and love myself for once. So, the path of self destruction and loss was not a very appealing choice. Besides, with me living authentically, my love for others has expanded, and become truer.

Frustration with how I fooled, lied, and denied myself, is a driving force that pretty much has me ignoring what society thinks of me (positive or negative). I see now, it is where my confidence is coming from. I HAVE to do this, or I simply won’t be.

I don’t get mad when people tell me. I stopped trying to argue about it, even. And it takes a lot for me to stop arguing.

It is not courage.

It is survival.

And I will survive.

– Jess.

Self harm is any activity where you, essentially, hurt yourself on purpose. It can take many forms, ranging from cutting your skin, burning yourself, intentionally preventing wounds from healing, punching things, etc…

It is done to express and deal with deep distress and emotional pain.

In my case, my main method would be to punch brick or concrete walls. Wooden ones would do in a pinch, but there was too much give to them. Other ones I did, included punching my own forehead, and I would often pick scabs way too early. I also tended to massage bruises to feel the pain from them more readily and keep them around longer.

I should point out that I have not done this in a while, and definitely not since December 8th. I’m not proud that I did it, but I thought it was something I should talk about.

The underlying emotion was always an intense feeling of utter frustration. Obviously, in hindsight now, I can see where that was building up from. The pain I caused, had the opposite effect on my emotions. It numbed them. The more my hand or knuckles hurt, the less my insides hurt.

I think that this was also why I played ball hockey without shin pads for the longest time. My shin bones are riddled with dents from all the hockey sticks that have hacked me. Again, it was emotionally numbing. I only started wearing shin pads after one particular hack cut my skin through the fat layer.

I also think that while there was an effect of numbing, there was also a dampening of my internal filters. Enough so, that I (Jess) could experience the world. It was only a tiny little bit, but I’m pretty sure it was there. After all, most of that frustration was coming from me.

I’m surprised I never broke any bones with the walls. I was never trying to, but sometimes I’d punch harder and harder and harder to see how much pain I could stand, and how numb it would make my emotions. Because of the effects, the pain feels good not bad. It was helping me deal with things.

For me, this was just another way of coping with emotions I didn’t want to deal with. Numb them if they bubble up from where I tried to bury them. Anything except actually experiencing them. *facepalm*

I seriously doubt I will do this anymore. It’s not needed for me. I have taken ownership of my emotions, they are mine, I am not theirs’. It just gets a bit tricky with still kinda being James for 9-10 hours a day on weekdays.

– Jess