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

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